Liminal Magpie
A magpie accompanied me home after a hard heartbreak, she flew with me from corner to corner. She become a sprit animal for me after this encounter, I began to see the chattering black and white birds more and more and always (it seemed) at times I needed direction.
As I begin to write this in my house in Austria, mountains and fog outside and a healthy Autumn chill in the air that is beginning to smell like snow already. I put the radio on and hear the words ‘Six for gold, Seven's for a secret never told’. I’d been feeling nervous about recording an audio for The Collective Energies, but hearing this song emerge from my computer as I began planning the story, felt like an invitation to begin and rise to the challenge.
A magpie accompanied me home after a hard heartbreak. She flew with me from corner to corner. She became a sprit animal and I began to see the chattering black and white birds more and more and always (it seemed), at times when I needed direction. At one point I would trust their flight paths as the direction I should drive for adventure, she even found me on a trip to the most Northern point of Sweden inside the arctic circle. We had witnessed no other animals, but there she sat opposite our hut. It felt incredible to have her there in the dry, freezing, cold magnificence of a landscape that showed us only a pink dawn or dusk and in time, the Northern Lights in green reminiscence of her tail feathers.
The story I have been invited to tell and that accompanies my image, is the story of its creation.
I found a dead magpie. She was lying on the side of the road and I couldn’t help but pick her up. There was no thought other than ‘this is incredible’. When do you ever get up close to a bird such as this? I wanted to spend time with her, photograph her, solidify our connection.
Feeling a little grossed out as well as excited about what I had just done, I put her in a shoe box I’d found in the car boot and placed her on the seat next to me.
I arrive home, it’s a sunny day and I run for my camera. I place the magpie on a table and she lays as if flying. I gently nudge her head and wings to exaggerate this impression and spend time taking images from different angles, immersed in the petrol colours, the body that still feels alive, passing though moments of fascination, horror, wonder and excitement.
Magpies hold funerals, they stand around the body and cry out, nudge the body and cry out. Once I had finished my photography I was at a loss, what to do now?
Bury the magpie as we did family pets back in my childhood, small fragile animals whose presence meant so much when alive. I placed the magpie in the shoe box with flowers, replaced the lid and buried her in the soil.
My intention was to create the most beautiful image I can imagine, to create the illusion of flight, of breaking free, to breathe a second life into this bird, this magpie.
And here she sits in this image, in this ground, in this liminal space between life, death and new life.
I hope I did her justice.
Magpie : The Unthanks : Lyrics
One's for sorrow
Two's for joy
Three's for a girl and
Four's for a boy
Five's for silver
Six for gold
Seven's for a secret never told
Devil, devil, I defy thee
Devil, devil, I defy thee
Devil, devil, I defy thee
Oh the magpie brings us tidings
Of news both fair and foul
She's more cunning than the raven
More wise than any owl
For she brings us news of the harvest
Of the barley, wheat, and corn
And she knows when we'll go to our graves
And how we shall be born
Chorus
She brings us news when from the right
Grief when from the left
Of all the news that's in the air
We know to trust her best
For she sees us at our labor
And she mocks us at our work
And she steals the eggs from out of the nest
And she can mob the hawk
Chourus
Now, the priest he says we're wicked
But to worship the devil's bird
Ah but we respect the old ways
And we disregard his word
For we know they rest uneasy
As we slumber in the night
And we'll always leave out a little bit of meat
For the bird that's black and white
Image copyright Sarah Jeffs www.sarahjeffs.com
