Memory Syndrome
—Dani Salvadori
WALK 1 / VIDEO 1 – Erith Marshes
WALK 1
I planned to walk. I planned to walk with others. If I could. I planned to walk in parts of the city that were unknown to me. But my first walk I planned to do alone. My first walk was a test. It was in a part of the city that was not unknown. I had spent a miserable year there. I spent that year learning things I did not want to learn. I was not the first person who had been miserable in that part of the city. Down by the river. On the bleak marshes. Overcome with the industry that had flushed out of the city. Overgrown with nettles. Overflown by geese. Charles Dickens had been miserable there before me. In the marsh country, down by the river. In a bleak place overgrown with nettles.
2 people, A & B, sitting, concentrating, watching a video on a laptop
SHOT LIST
Outside Erith station, just after the train from London Bridge has departed. A comes through the barriers clutching a stapled A4 document.
She consults the document and walks slightly left out of the station forecourt to join the main road.
She looks anxiously to the right up the main road.
Consulting the document again A walks towards the river. The camera follows her.
She reaches a railing and looks out over the river. The tide is out. All that can be seen are cracks in the wet sand and the tracks of wading birds.
She walks along to her right staring from time to time at the river, occasionally she takes a photograph.
Eventually A reaches the marshland overlooking the river.
Finding her way through waist high pink marsh herbs she makes her way to the edge of the marsh. She does not look at the scrap metal yard behind her.
Her attention is grabbed by a flock of geese that take off to her right.
In the far distance she can see a motorway bridge over the Thames. She is alone.
B: It’s like watching through a spotted veil. What’s behind by the spots?
A: A hill. A portakabin. A crash helmet. Pink rubber boots. I couldn’t find any of them. Nor snow. Nor the sound of numbers falling into place. Everything from before.
B: All I can see is grey, the river, distance and the marshes. All I can hear is the sound of metal bashing. And geese. I can hear geese.
A: I think I picked up someone else’s memories instead of mine.
B: Of what?
A: Clanking metal with an undercurrent of fear.
B: There’s nothing new on that marsh you know.
A: [nods]
WALK 2 / VIDEO 2 – Foots Cray Meadows
WALK 2
I planned another walk. I planned another walk and I found someone to walk with. I hoped for a different day. I had left the Thames. I had walked away from the estuary. It was a part of the city unknown to me. With bridges over a gentle river. With ducks and dog walkers. With old churches from when it was not the city. Old churches from when it was its own place. I had no expectations about this part of the city.
A & B again, sitting, concentrating on a video on a laptop. In the video A is joined by C.
SHOT LIST
A sunny day, a winding road. To the right are trees, to the left the edges of a London suburb. A bus is heard in the distance.
A & C enter through a metal gate. C is clutching an A4 document enclosed in a plastic wallet. There is a metal sign post titled Foots Cray Meadows. To the right Bexley and Crayford. To the left Sidcup and Kingston. Kingston is 44 miles away.
After consulting the document A & C look left and then right. Their faces brighten.
They walk up the road and enter an overgrown churchyard through an avenue of yew trees.
C sits on a stone memorial at the edge of the graveyard.
A wanders around the graveyard looking at the memorials. The camera remains at eye level.
They have a conversation but it is indistinct. A is telling C a long story.
At the end of the story A wanders off to the far end of the churchyard.
C unwraps a biscuit and drinks some water.
After viewing the video A goes to the bookcase, takes out a map. She leaves the room, clutching her phone and the map.
WALK 3 / VIDEO 3 – Albany Park to All Saints, Foots Cray
A & B are talking over Zoom. The conversation is recorded. After it is over B sends the recording to A.
B: I accept that you did not know what you would find there. But what did you talk about when you were there?
A: I think it was lozenges, stone lozenges.
B: Like cough sweets you can’t eat?
A: Like Pip’s brothers in their stone sarcophagi. On their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets. When Magwitch found him and turned him upside down.
B: Was Dickens there too?
A: I don’t know. But there must have been something there that I can no longer remember. Something that didn’t find a resting place in my mind.
A is sat at a computer, wearing a headset. She is talking into voice recording software. By her side are a print out of the first page of Great Expectations, a stiff-covered guide book and an Ordinance Survey map.
WALK 3
A: I planned another walk. A repeated walk. Through suburbs. To a church. A pilgrimage to excavate a memory. To excavate my memory. A pilgrimage to lose the shadow of Pip. And his dead and buried brothers. Born on their backs. With their hands in their trousers-pockets. Alexander. Bartholomew. Abraham. Tobias. Roger. Brothers of Pip. Born on their backs. With their hands in their trousers-pockets.
A picks up her phone and scrolls through video clips on the phone. She puts it down and starts to record her voice again.
A: I had remembered so clearly. A row of five or six infant shaped stone sarcophagi sitting above ground. Pricking the tears of mourners and the others who just wander in. But they were in another place quite far from here.
I did not find Pip’s brothers. Or perhaps I did, but they had not died as babies. They had grown up and married and died and chosen their graves to be shaped like lozenges. And chosen to be buried but still above ground so barely buried. And in twos and fours to say we were more than one and we are still here so you will not forget us.
But to remember we need words. The words have gone from graves, from records long stolen, from mourners’ minds long silenced. All that is left is moss and ivy and yew trees.
SHOT LIST
All shots are at eye level. A does not appear in the video.
Looking up at a metal sign post titled Foots Cray Meadows. To the right Bexley and Crayford. To the left Sidcup and Kingston. Kingston is 44 miles away.
The view from a moving suburban train: railway tracks and paraphernalia, offices, housing, warehouses, cranes, bare trees. In the distance a glimpse of Tower Bridge.
A suburban train platform watching a departing train. Two people walk to the stairs leading to the exit. There is an empty bench on the platform.
A curved street in the suburbs. A white van crosses the street ahead.
Looking down a suburban street. A single decker bus drives up the road.
A path, trees. A dog walker passes with a black and white dog at her heels.
The camera pans over a lake. There are many bare trees. An arched footbridge in the distance
Repeat of shot 1.
An arched entrance to a churchyard. A jogger runs past.
The camera goes through the arch to a short avenue of yew trees.
– 16. Various panning shots in graveyard. Many tombs of different shapes.
Static black and white photo of gravestone. Camera pulls away to reveal many small lozenge shaped tombs.
It is some days later. A closes an iPad, puts on her headset and again records her voice.
A: Then I realised that my memories had not come to rest because they were not my memories alone. I left Pip’s memories of that other churchyard behind. I walked to the bus stop.
Credits: Maps from Open Street Map ©OpenStreetMap contributors
DANI SALVADORI is a poet, video and image maker based in London, UK whose work has been shown in galleries and festivals worldwide and published in a range of poetry publications including recently: Abridged, the Harpy Hybrid Review, Diseases Anthology and After Poetry. Her hybrid piece Of many things I have no clear remembrance was highly commended in the Fish Short Memoir Prize 2023, Ireland. Her recent video ‘Weather Diary’ has been shown in a number of festivals worldwide including the International Migration and Environment Festival, Canada. She is studying for MA Creative Writing: Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee.