It was a troubling departure from London...all was in a state of disarray. At midnight, with only four hours to go until the alarm call for departure to Stone Henge, I still felt I had to continue with the puppet. He would somehow be important during the festive period - I wanted him to look his best. I wanted him to have a black velvet jacket.
Four am on the morning of the 21st of December, the Winter Solstice, the puppet was wrapped in a blanket, tied with cord, and would later sit on my lap as my bleary eyes watched the scenery change from North London to Wiltshire. Three years after first setting foot inside Stone Henge for the shortest day of the year, we were returning.
It was beautiful to be back. There was the same awe and the same feeling of returning to a safe, sacred, ancient space filled only with people whose similar inclinations had led them to make their voyage there, that very early morning. However, a fear passed through me - that I wouldn't feel the same magic, the same physical sensations which, last time, overwhelmed me. We listened to the Druids' ceremony. I felt like a spectator, whereas last time I felt like a participator...it made me feel empty. Then I remembered the puppet wrapped in its blanket and bound with its cord, hanging from my shoulder, ready to serenade the 2yr old son of my good friend Melissa who we were due to find in amongst the stones. I suddenly knew that this would be a space in which, if I unwrapped my puppet and let him sit on one of the stones, come alive, start breathing, watching and moving, he would be totally accepted. I began to unwrap the puppet.
Well thats the very moment when those crazy feelings returned. It was as though a fever was suddenly seeping into all the muscles of my body, draining them, weakening them, as if they were contracting against their will. The feeling that I had ingested magic mushrooms, or some strange substance beginning to overtake all of my limbs. It was the very feeling I had had three years previously and it didn't come on gradually, it arrived with a jolt - the moment I unwrapped the puppet. Strange.
We found the rock. Tall, thin, above my head height. I gently lifted the puppet so that he was sitting on the rock, looking down onto the hundreds of heads witnessing the solstice ceremony. I could not see the puppet, nor could I see the figures beneath him in his panorama. But one hand was on the stick controlling his head, the other held the metal rod guiding his left hand. And so the puppet became a spectator, a mute onlooker expressing his emotions through the raising of his hands and the turning of his head.
Dear blog, this was my first ever puppetry performance. This was the morning that I stepped into the unknown. Sure enough, he didn't let me down. He felt, he watched, I was wrapped in bliss to be living through him. My feelings finally had a home, a world to inhabit.
The ceremony came to an end, the crowd dispersed. There was an interim. Then the attention rotated 180 degrees. Now the sea of faces were watching the puppet. There was no more dialogue from the Druids to promt the puppet's performance now, only the simple fact that this figure was here, on a rock, on this morning. He continued to live, breathe, create his own story, feed off all around him. Cameras bleeped and flashed.
The lady who smiled the most throughout the performance wondered what the puppet was called, and when I told her it didn't have a name, that today was the first day of its completion and existence, she wondered whether it might be named after Sylvanus, after her Druid guide. And so on 21st December my very first puppet was christened Sylvanus.
