I like the idea of incorporating the research from forced entertainment on fragmented speech with the main focus of our piece which we want to be relating back to the soldiers of the 4th battalion who trained at the drill hall. We had decided we liked the idea of using poetry as a form of text in our piece and so i began more research to finding texts…
After going to the other Library in Lincoln to see if i could find anything about the Drill Halls history i was unsuccessful in finding much apart from some newspaper articles about recruitment which could be an interesting idea to use a text that isn’t already like a performance and have juxtaposed types of audio being heard:
I then went to the Museum of Lincolnshire life where i found lots of facts out about the Territorial army who were the 4th and 5th Battalion. However I came across a folder full of diary extracts of Billy Lounds which have stuck in my head and is the main thing i took away from my visit…
His letters were written to a girl named Dora, who is thought of either a dear friend or perhaps more than that. I became really attached to this character Billy who is of course a real person but his writing made me imagine he was in a film
I decided to pick my favourite extracts from his diary and one part even sounds like a poem, and I chopped up some lines and picked the most powerful ones as to which I thought would make the most interesting to listen to as an audio piece.
Dear Dora
Who can sit and narrate bare facts on a day like this when the whole world is shouting
‘I am full of romance.
Ah! Fill the gap.
What boots it to repeat
That Time is slipping underneath our feet.
Unborn tomorrow
And dead yesterday
Why fret about them if
today be sweet’
Omar Khayam
Don’t you think the wicked old Persian had found the elixir of life?
Just making every minute precious!
Listen to him –
‘one thing is certain! That time flies,
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies.
The rose that once has blown for ever dies’
Dear Dora
Now just at this moment I expect Lincoln is fast using all its charms to fascinate the beholder. The colouring of your (and my) dear Lincoln is different from anything else anywhere. If ever you’re very happy and the day is couleur de rose, birds singing and everybody you want with you – everybody you don’t want safely miles away, (if such there be) and a glorious feeling that there is lots of life to love and all that’s nice in the world – well that’s a little bit of the soul of Lincoln which you find at 2pm any summer day in the Minster Yard. The worst of this France is that one can’t find anything to rouse one’s artistic imagination. In fact it is also interesting that one could spend years and years searching out all the ins and outs of it and never know all. Have you ever entered the Arboretum from the top gate and told yourself that you are in an old garden in Florence or somewhere like that – quite easy on a summer day. More, enter the Cathedral at say 4pm sit at the back of the knave – don’t do anything but sit as still as a mouse and the Cathedral will start to tell you its tale. It will tell you how old it is. I don’t mean that it will start to give you dates and numbers – no, it will make you realise its age and superiority – it will tell you what hundreds of people have sat just as you are sitting and heard its tale. It will make you laugh and cry and you will feel you will know lots that you never knew before –
So much for that.
Now suppose that I start to talk sense. I’d rather not…
Dear Dora
I have just received great news, our battalion commences leave instantly-10% at a time, seven days including travelling. So I hope I may see you soon. Do you know, there is nothing which I wish for more-than that when the war is over I am once more a “Civvie” I may come back to Barclays Lincoln at my old digs and that everything will be as before. I think I shall do so. Let us hope so.
Ain’t it absolutely shocking of me for not writing? If you have any charity in your big loveable heart to spare for ‘a lonely soldier’-forgive me.
We have to parade at 6.50 am – with clean buttons and boots – and shaved – so we can’t be accused of slothfulness can we? They just call the roll and then dismiss us ‘til 8.45 when we drill ‘til 12.30 and then 2.15 to 4.30 – I am pleased to state that am still alive (more or less). We have been inoculated once and are been done again on Friday and get no drill for 48 hours.