Author: Mark Renney

It is vital that I have somewhere to hibernate, a place where I can lay dormant, for years, decades, even longer if necessary, although I do need to flicker, albeit briefly, from time to time. I have to be seen or at least cause someone to shiver, to feel uncertain, disoriented.

Any inanimate object will suffice as long as it still contains a hint of the organic but wood no longer sustains me as it once did. The trees are declining, fading, and the existing timber, handcrafted and recycled time and again, has become corrupted, contaminated.

I cannot survive in metal and struggle amidst gears and cogs and transistors and cables and microchips. I don’t flourish in the ether, not as I once did but I do have potential and it is still possible for me to appear on a screen.

I crave for the knotted and gnarly branches of the Ancient Oak but the trees are declining, fading, and so I must find and take solace wherever I can. I settle in a strip of celluloid, rest in canisters, amongst the reels of forgotten blockbusters, in home movies or a collection of pop songs. I can immerse myself in a spool of magnetic tape, in video and audio cassettes. But how often now does someone run film through a projector or push one of these relics into a machine and press ‘play’. I have become obsolete and perhaps that is for the best. My intentions have never been benevolent and there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden, not anymore.