Iceland, the fractures between and beneath

A friend of mine recently brought me back some volcanic lava back from Iceland and my curiosity was ignited, it was this sense of Iceland being a breathing living underground island. Snaefellsjokull, the Icelandic glacier which conceals the fictional passage to the Centre of the Earth, stimulated Chris Watson's radio 4 sonic project on Iceland.

The sound of ice exhaling, of bubbling water surfacing, Watson calls it earth music, it's like Andrews liver salts carbonated, fizzing. Sigur Ros is interviewed about the way his music interprets the space and threat of Iceland; his music has a sense of opening out, unwinding rising and hovering. Iceland seems to be breathing, unfathomable in it's earth skin, the yawning sea, which snatches moments beneath the lava The inside of caves exude a continuous grumble.

I must go I need to experience that voluminous space, the holes the cracks, the fractures between and beneath.

lava gift, Iceland 2011


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