All Things Bright & Beautiful

Photo from www.morguefile.com

The fields fizz with skylarks. I hear a ripe peal of chaffinch. A robin gushes. I remember its recent winter trickle. 'I can't believe it', a jubilant dog walker says to me. The day is so lovely she looks as if she's about to break into song, like someone in Dawn Chorus by artist Marcus Coates.

I discovered the Marcus Coates bird video in this Guardian article originally. Dawn Chorus is the most accessible I've seen of his work. He makes some very, very strange performance pieces leaving viewers puzzled as to whether he is serious or not; he seems both playful and profound. He creates shamanistic performances, inhabiting animal personae. His squeals, squeaks and grunts embarrass his audience. They touch a nerve.

If I think of one of my most embarrassing moments it could be the time I was about eight years old being led on horseback in a field during a riding lesson. A dog howled. I joined in. The bored teen in charge gave me a disgusted, perplexed glance. That's what was embarrassing. But there was no self-consciousness in the exact moment of my sympathetic howl. I just felt I was at one with the animals. I think it was the same time of year as now, the season when we are all switched back on.