Where Light Falls Audio Description for Sight Impaired Visitors: Site 3 (North side)

Transcript

You are standing at the north side of St Paul’s Cathedral, next to Paternoster Row.

People dressed as members of the St Paul’s night watch, stand on the right hand side of a large window. They wear tin helmets and thick coats to keep out the cold. They scan the night sky, occasionally lifting binoculars to their eyes, looking out for bombers above, that could destroy St Paul’s.

On the left hand side of the window, the second half of the poem “From the Log Book” by Keith Jarrett is projected.

The words When morning came, the light overpowered the darkness start to emerge from smoke and mist

The next verse of the poem appears:

Sunken into this Cathedral’s fabric,
a tile bows in its commemoration
of determination and defiance,
but who now can sing humanity’s song?

Then the words Does rubble speak the same language as hope?  appear underneath, emerging from smoke. As the words sharpen, the letters from the word rubble tumble into place

The next verse appears:
Where do shadows hide when no light is cast?
Shall we salvage this too from our history – 
the toll of uncertainty’s sleeplessness?
Can we find un-silent sanctuary?

At first, the word “hide” is missing, but the lines of the poetry are pulled apart to reveal the word’s letters, that then travel to their rightful place in the line above

This section of the poem then fades away and the wall is blank

The next section of the poem begins with the words My childhood home, a memory made of longing: if it stood still through time, maybe I could too emerging from the smoke

The lines of the poem appear

Who can measure fear’s wingspan, its claw’s reach?
When morning comes, may my structures rebuild,
may the light overpower the darkness,
may my landscape be rewritten in bold.

The word “rebuild” is fragmented and joins back together again.

This section of the poem fades away and is replaced by the following line, once again, emerging from smoke and mist

Bravery and protection matter more than ever before.

And the next verse appears on the wall:

Firebomb turns to fireweed, wounds are salvaged
from wounds, safe becomes our treasured mantra,
and this city surrounds itself with shells
of memories passed down, of photographs.

The word “surrounds” becomes very large and covers the rest of the verse. It starts to bend backwards, in to a circle shape and rotate around the rest of the verse before shrinking back down and joining the rest of the words on that line of poetry.

This section of the poem fades away and the wall is blank again. 

The following line appears, emerging from smoke

Hope finds breath between sirens.

Then the next stanza appears.

The fireweed outside has long-since blossomed
to buildings that reflect a watchful sun
and we summon the aftermath’s silence  
through this structure of endless echoing.

The word “echoing” appears last, fading into view. Then the word “blossomed” grows larger and stays slightly bigger than then other words. Finally, a yellow orb emerges from the word “sun” and floats down to form the full stop at the next line of text.

the final line of poetry emerges.

When morning comes, I’ll wear a dome of hope, intact

The words fade and the poem comes to an end. The wall is blank.

The second half of the poem is now complete. You can walk around to site one on the south side of the cathedral and listen to the audio description for the first half of the poem. Or you can walk to the front of the cathedral to site two, to experience the whole poem being read by Keith Jarrett with accompanying sound track. There is an audio description of site two as well.

Audio descriptions for other sites at St Paul's Cathedral

• Scene setting and instructions
• Site 1: South
• Site 2: Front façade
• Site 3: North (current page)