Whispers, they wreathed around her...

House breaking (excerpt from "We lay here slowly sinking").

"I am beginning to map the city through which parts of my life I have left there. I pass places and when I do this I am sometimes able to leave things behind, but I know that also in a way I have lost these things, like diaries a mother burned or a head that’s got old; you know they must be somewhere, but if they’re destroyed or forgotten, who’s going to remember them? I do not know if anyone will ever find these things once I’ve left them behind. If this ever happens.
Would they batter at the windows? These memories. Shake them like a wind that had got trapped the wrong side of glass. It could be violent in there if they were of you. Cold and blowing against each other. Or the heat of those feelings – maybe it would be more like them – hot hot heat. Burning. But the glass wouldn’t crack, melt, blow out with a sudden gust. It could all just be quiet; be peaceful after all. It was the remembering that made them active, behave in this way. Without me perhaps they’d stay still, and the room would be very light – white with bright sunshine, but not too warm. It would be clear. Just a large sash window and a wooden floor. If I went inside I would float invisible – I could not really be there.
I like to walk away from these houses once I’ve filled them. I don’t break in – if they are truly empty I maybe test a window or push at the back door, go inside and sit a while and think out all I thought that day. I write it down if it gets very complicated – leave a note tucked into the skirting board. But mostly I just rest my hands against an outside wall, push my nose against a window and breathe gently – memory swims in that way in moist patterns, absorbed as they dissolve from view. I wonder if these houses get lived in again. Whether the new person breathes in what I left alone there. Maybe my memory swims round their heads – makes them wake up sometimes and wonder. And if not, then I think it would just condense and trickle to the floor – seep sideways to the walls – hide itself in bricks and mortar. It could expand then ‘til the house was riddled with memory, ‘til it shook with unheard quivers when the wind blew too strong. This is not a sign of weakness. They are now stronger from within."

Welcome to and the ghosts so silver, where stories are left to be found; to be stumbled across in an everyday world; to illustrate your day as you leave the house and go to work, potter along to the shops for a newspaper or a can of drink. As the reader it is you that can bring our stories to life - the ones we have lost, echoes and memories, things that have been hanging around for minutes or years just to be found and brought back again.

Over the next few days I will lay out our projects - the things we do to place these stories in your world, trigger a history you did not know you had, a new relationship with the city or countryside you walk through. Places are talking to you, you just have to listen a little harder to the quiet things...