Old dear in the headlamps, 2021

Old dear in the headlamps came from an overwhelming sense of nostalgia as my children left home. Reading Svetlana Boym, I learned that nostalgia was originally a diagnosis for displaced people in 17th century Europe. As a transplant from North America and in the middle of a global pandemic, the idea of nostalgia as a disease resonated with me.

According to Boym one of the first ‘symptoms’ of nostalgia is hearing the voices of loved ones in the mouths of others. Experimenting in the studio, lip-synching songs my parents loved, developed into lip-synching my son’s voice singing a favourite song from his childhood. The Cowboy’s Lament is a ghost story in song. A famous American ballad it derived from an 18thc British folk broadside called The Unfortunate Rake. In this way, The Cowboy’s Lament migrated from the British Isles to North America.

At night in Bonaly Country Park, a familiar place is transformed. I become a spectre in my own life.