The Wolf Slumbers

Art germinates from the seeds of ideas and this germination was long fought.

A field in the far north of Scotland, studded with the worn teeth of slumbering dreams, a burn of purest silver cuts through like a silk blade.

A desire to make art, to resurrect the old and make it better, new.

Red Tape is wrestled, codified, altered, challenged, cut.

Earth Shifters move in, weed and scrub grasses are denuded. An edifice, a steel skeleton, is raised, its purpose utilitarian, It does not dream of itself but, rather, holds and encases the dreams of the makers.

Wind cuts through the steel bones, frosts assail her but she stands, mute and immutable.

Skin next, rivets and sheeting, annexes are raised, brothers of a smaller scale.

Interior is gained, wind and water shut out. The makers, the fabricators, the men of steel take up house and throw twists of pipe into strange angles and bends. Machinery of unknown utility is wheeled into place, heavy plant that lays roots and will never move from this spot. History being planted, grandchildren will hear the hiss through these pipes.

Burners, boilers, mashers, inexplicable corners and contrivances, chimneys, filters and, lastly, a glass house for the spirits to flow, a tap where engineering becomes craft.

And then, after restless days and nights and weeks and months, a flame comes to life, the trapped soul of the burn warms and magic is conjured.

The Wolf Rises, unchained.

Hard Graft becomes Engineering becomes Craft becomes Art.

And Art is what awaits, casks wait in reposed rank. Fat bellied, narrow necked, dreaming in years.

Here, I stand in worship, rows and rows of the impossible, stored flame, liquid, honeyed, inexplicable.

Walls creak, shadows cycle across the slatted bellies, humidity rises and falls, years fall away, mellowness oozes through these rooms, these dirt-floored warehouses where a promise can almost be heard.

And, between these rows, the wolf slumbers, his heart slowly beating, dreaming of the promise.