Oceanallover

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The Sailmaker’s Palm

The cloth is cut to make your sheet
The wind now moves across the sea
The eye through which your rope is tied
Is spliced to the mast and eternity.

Your heart is an anchor without a chain
Your arms a yard without a sail
Your hands a capstan turning free
While spume and deeps and rigging wail.

Here a sailor never wetted
Here a catcher of zephyr breath
Here the shape of the So’ So’ West
As it fights against your brave wind nets.

By this stitching I will bind you
By all the birds of seven tides
By sky and salt and water green
I’ll hold my course ’til you arrive.

This is a story about salt and sails, about the persistence of
mystery, transmutation and transcendence. It is an allegorical
tale told through music, dance, costume and words. It follows
a sailmaker and a salter on a journey to find a release from the
structures and strictures of their lives.
Sail making and salt panning have both been very vital crafts for
coastal communities. Salt was essential for survival, helping to
preserve food during winter months and maintaining a basic level
of health and cleanliness. Sails allowed people to catch the wind
and use its power to help with fishing, trade and travel, linking
communities in areas where travel by land was difficult and
dangerous.
The Sailmaker’s Palm is a discussion of boundaries, looking at the
tensions between differing states of awareness. Salt, water and air
have cycled through changes across the geology of our Earth for
years without number. Humanity is part of that cycle, the water
and minerals in our body are what life is made from.