Dreaming of the moor

Today’s photograph depicts pollarded willows stand in the flooded land at Tealham Moor, in Somerset, UK, taken by Frances Annear, who writes:

“Pollarding is an ancient custom to provide fodder for animals or fire wood. The moors around Wedmore had willow trees planted to mark tracks across the land, so that when the land flooded [an annual, winter, occurrence] the trees marked the firmer land for transport. Tealham Moor is part of the Somerset Levels and Moors which have been drained and managed – with varying levels of success – from the time of the Domesday Book.”

The image inspired this piece called “Dreaming of the moor” by Lisa Rae Bartolomei:

“The image of Tealham Moor I found quite evocative and mysterious and a landscape quite foreign to that which I’m familiar with in Australia.

“I did a little research into the types of wildlife that live in the flood plains and manipulated some recordings of ducks, skylarks and dragonflies with synthetic elements to create a dreamscape of the beauty and foreboding atmosphere of the photo of a place that only exists for me in my imagination.

“The melodic material was composed by me playing my Roland JP-8000 and evoking the image of The Tealham Moor in my mind as I played the keyboard. At points in the composition the processed sounds and real world material collide to illustrate the intersection between real and imagined space created by my perception of the image.”