The Scales of the World

The Scales of the World

Prelude Cracking To the north it was dark; the skyhanging around mountains - a mantle of water.White curtains of lace pulled closed by cyclonic air over brilliant illuminated fragments -copse, river limb, field. Rooks in chaos choreographise the swirls of westerlies that rush forwards,pressing upon all boughs and all bows to the squalling blastknocked flat crackfingered roots bent backwardssalute the sky or flail to cover wrinkled boles,exposed and flashed the secret earthen crotchin multiple junctures groping this wall of saturated air,shuddering phloembark offunclothed and shameless thrash each whip of seasoned growth,the sappy hair crowned yellow-green,face planted, mouth full of mud. Smashed teeth of timbersink craven desires into grassy skin,peeling and weeping under watered eyes,bud bulges sluiced. Knock knotted the old man willow,so horny he sexes the wormsand risesengorged from their bed. To the North the hills arealready under night’s hands,soft and cold. Chapter 1 Willow Snake Light oozing between sky and land, slipping quietly into my eyes as I walk the banks of the river, feeling the air fill my ears and nose, the shy fluttering of leaves as willows bow their serpentine greeting, shaking in fear of my knife. Here are the bones and corded frame, the interwoven histories. Cutting and regrowth. I came here at this time the year before the year before the year and cut the wands. You are children to the blade and bough; an uneasy and unequal alliance. I will make with you a vessel, a vehicle to carry any who wish to travel. You will become a basket depending beneath the pregnancy of a balloon. Your sinuous dance in this early breeze will become corrugated and solidified. You shed your tails for me in an understanding that I will leave your heart uncut. Reaching across to the nearest limb I hold the length with one hand and prepare to slice down with the other, blade in motion, then stop, all actions frozen. Up and onto my arm a green snake has twisted itself - linking branch and flesh. Locking us together, blood and sap, leaves scales and hair. Chlorophylous The stick falls straight,weighted heel fromhand to earth returning,thoughts suspended. His work fell shortcaught wanting for love - lay there, recumbent unbent and green. Struck first by thought and then by lightening - seared his crown clean, a bifurcating crack. Painting and dancing, calypso collapso, alone in the meadow cutting staves. Alone in the meadow with coppice and pollard, purple black nimbus consuming the sky. Reaping the ribs for a basket weave; plum wood handles curled like ears. A basket to carry his crippled heart, a gift of desire and vegetal fears. Small browned leaves spin wound tornado round in momentary flight and scutter away. Cumulations lift through charged, thick air and his hair stands tall, excited and changed. Arms around a bundle of womanly wands weighing his thoughts, colouring in heat. The sky is riven, burst asunder, strikes the heavens upon his head. Soundlessly fuse blown collapse and slide, a boneless fillet, kippered and knackered. Red round circle burned entry and exit, head to coccyx then jumped to earth. Around him a nest of fallen willow, reciprocity - each limb holds another. Fallow lies the field at rest under rain and silent too this man, hands and face open. Spring rises jubilant, grass blades cut through the warp of his clothes and he is naked. The cast net of sticks strikes out roots and reaches up vivid viridian arms. Twice the height of man with one season’s growth, flowing up across years - around human remains. Standing now both man and wood with chlorophyllous hair together in the meadow. Chapter 2 Glass Snake Fragments of a sleeping world; I saw you blink, slowly, first one eye and then the other; washing away a glass scale that was forming there. I opened my mouth to speak to you and found upon my tongue’s tip, another; held out my hand towards you and felt the reflected nuance of this gesture, caught within the curved facets of a glass shard. There is something hidden here but how to see it? This moment slides circumferentially. The closure of a lid cupped with saline care around planetary sight. I scry with my little eye something that no one can see. Broken Scales Hold your tongue! Thus spakeththe all and none.We sat in the garden dark,shaved and inscribed,a tumbler in your hand of fire,of burnt umber.Pure is your eye and without loathing,mine Übermensch,snap off your tail in seven pieces - smooth manoeuvre.Shatter scatter scales, broadcastwith frequencyyour cataleptic convulsionssilent, dancing;the biggest come-on confusion.Whilst you depart,the all and none has all but goneand philosophyhas become a trophy wifeto now and then. In failing evening’s light I ran, away from and to wards in simultaneity. The air was cool and shadows coalesced between young trees, their arms, like my own, reaching upwards towards the gradient sky melting from aquamarine into darkest pitch. Overhead an air balloon was passing like a thought or an offer. From it depended a basket woven with green willow and below that a rope. As the aeronautilus sailed overhead this pendulation passed between and amongst the branched figures, catching and releasing. An invitation or a reluctance. I ran, away from and towards with an increasing sense of urgency and reached. My hand on an arm so long, with fingers so remote, and closed them in faith upon the cord. I was raised at once into the air, my feet limp, toe’s tips trailing between the finger-branches and leaves. Above me the willow basket, above that, gas and ropes and cloth of the balloon. For some moments it seemed that my fate was not my own and that I was a passenger, the journey unknowable and inscrutable. The night thickened around me. In my hand the rope twisted and cooled, coiled and sheared. A glass snake’s tail. Then shattered, a million million scales dis embodied and falling upon the world. I fell into the forest night. Turned, within the hips of the sky and dropped like water into a glass vase, head towards the earth, limbs curled around. There was a silence, a stasis, in which the balloon trailed away above the forest and darkness. Then the glass cracked. A triplet of seams fracturing the vessel from rim to pedestal. You blinked again and here we are, glass in my mouth and something awakening at the corner of your eye, possibilities without promises; a sudden softness, pupils deepening, lids relaxing, skin becoming translucent and fragmented, head sleek. With a drunken lucidity I hold out my hand, finger extended, not pointing but indicating or receiving like some stuccoed archetype on a Roman ceiling, and there across the whorls lay a scale of glass. I begin to talk, speech broken and dangerous, your image fractures, all meaning is lost. Chapter 3 Moura - The Eyed Lizard I see you in the moment before crossing,extirpated, fallen, deciduous.Leaves beautiful and rustedmark you on both arms,veins browning against golden yellow -and lie there through a season of exchanges.Stone curls in your hair,built each in turn and pulledinto place - a braided distaff.Here you hold the ground withyour body of eyesan ocellated visionwhose focus burnsand leaches out.Matted matters etched cleanthat would press you flat and hold youbeyond all reasonable doubt.In the moment of seeing youyou are no more than my own eye. This is the path, if you are looking for it. This way will take you, into my house of stones, ledges lined with vessels, voyagers beneath the earth. And look at you, fallen as you are and so small like a faerie, like a curled leaf, golden in this autumnal sun. You arrive where we shall all arrive, at the glimmer, the glamour; one leg extended, heel first with decisive stride, chin up, eyes upon the horizon, arms in full swing. Then stop, vitrified, while the truth falls from the sky upon your shoulders and you are measured, weighted, counted. And here you with your refractive index, your edges, your hints and glints and glimmers. Here you in split infinities and prismatic splendour. Here the flushed royalty of colours, jewelled and faceted, and at the corner of each closed eye a cut stone whose angles avoid and whose shape slides. The most precious of births. Compassion solidified and smashed. You are a splinter upon my tongue, deflecting my words, cutting the sense. Across your surface my breath accelerates, throwing out syllables that can strip skin and lacerate love. This is the direction we will take together, forwards a foregone conclusion, into, between and beneath stones. You are my most treasured, my child. Let the scales grow over your eyes to form a vision of brilliance, a kaleidoscope of futures. Light is flying out across the hillside; passing through and around leaves, amongst dancing insects rising and falling in columns of air, then onwards over dark brown waters where they slither and coil upon the ground and thence thus then to you, upon your granite lintel, illuminating the smashed vessel within which you travel, colouring your translucent body with a precious glow. Hold my hand, little one, you can take the final step now. Lead with your toes and not your heel, let your arms dance, light fills your eyes and your head, pours into your body. You must become the vase, the hand to hold the world, the hips through which all life will pass. The sun striking your surface will cast a million shimmering spells upon the sky and we shall move onto the earth together, Mouras Encantadas. Chapter 4 The Great Serpent Call me by my mother’s name,Manetta Creek;Call me when the waters rise andWhirlwind spirits shriek. Green witch open your horned face,Thrash and devastate,Our thunderous nation drownedIn dubious virtues, raging fates. Winged and crowned most sinuous -Crested, jewelled, disorderedI will slide from beneath you toCover your stone face over. Max ax ak cracks the sidewalk;Fluids seeping from your walls;Sacred greed and deliverance,Re-creation born from sucking all. Waters surround us, aqueous humours,Seeing and envisioning;Becalmed our hearts must become -There is nothing dry about loving. The thing about liquid is that it moves, is in a state of constant change, so hard to hold in your hands, impossible to retain or restrain. Even glass is fluid, sliding down its own pains. The ribbons of my wings and crest flutter and dance within the force of dark waters, within the muscle of Manetta Creek. I am osmotic, seeping and seething. Skin is no boundary, I am inter-membranous. My flood is your flood, your blood mine and our levels are rising. Dip your flask at the spring, sink its glass sides beneath surface tensions, swallow the permeations - no drought here, no parched throat. Words are liquidity, meanings in motion. From your mouth flows a force, a cascade of dialectical diatribes, a golden lexicon. The meeting of many waters, whose effluents become a single pool, whose secretions ooze, passed and expelled from the body land, from the containment of continents. The thing about floods is that they are expansive and incontrovertible. Your glass is cracked, my friend, and you will run dry. Together we will breach the dam, break the waters of understanding, pass through all barriers. Arise with me, for together we must unbalance the scales of the world. Our cells are full, super-saturated sanctuaries, yours and mine. The humour is shifting from vitreous to aqueous and you will see. All oceans become one and cover the encrustations of humanity. Cover me up and water me down, I gush, mouth full and open, gurgitation and ebullience. Baptise the land, soak its hand, wash away all thought, scour the bed of remembrance, scourging it with rolling boulders, a mudslide, mountains in fluxation and rained to the point of sanity. If all the seas were one sea, what a great sea that would be. If all the trees were one tree, standing alone upon a drowned world, a tree of sinuous limbs and pythonic virtues, a queen and mother reflecting upon the future, what a great tree that would be. A head of green leaves and rooted, fast, between geologies. Roots that pass through the furnace, bifurcating and piercing the globe. Two boles, North and South, an axial conditioning. Two arms, North and South and in the curved hand of each a bud, a child. A world apart. Opposition in order. These children must swell and ripen, fall from their respective mothers and swim through the maelström, motes upon the eye of the earth. Only then will we recede, only then will I return to the river beneath the land. Text and drawings Copyright © 2023 by Alex Rigg All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. First Printing: 2023ISBN 978-1-7384975-0-8 Oceanallover; Auchenstroan House; Moniaive; Thornhill; Dumfries and Galloway; DG3 4JD; Scotland Contact: live@oceanallover.co.uk *Music - Follow This Link for Oceanallover on Bandcamp [https://oceanallover.bandcamp.com/album/the-scales-of-the-world] *Please refer to the Oceanallover Bandcamp site for music credits. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a public episode. 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Recounting

I had the pleasure recently to present some work as part of an exhibition with Rec[ount] in Barcelona. This is a really interesting project looking at how numbers, numbering and accountability influences our lives. Here is a quote from their web-site and a link to read more: “We are a small group of individuals who came together to expand the horizon of artistic and scientific debates around quantification and accountability in society. Through this project we aim to engage artists and academics in an exchange and co-creation around numbers. The project involves a photography prize which aims to guide the lens of photographs around the world towards quantification, its aesthetics, and its effects/affects on humans, their bodies, their relations/lives, but also nature and human’s relations to it. The submissions would then be used as the basis for academic reflections/developments. Following two academic workshops involving a selected group of scholars working at the crossroads of art and accounting/quantification we aim to publish an edited volume which would include prints of selected photographic submissions and academic contributions/reflections. This is an invitation to think about how our lives are changing due to the rising capacity and urge to quantify. Below are some of the questions for which we search “fresh” answers. What accounts do we create (or forget to create) as we quantify? What practices have emerged or vanished as a result of quantification? What intended and not intended consequences it brings about? What controversies and difficulties lie under the apparent rationality of this process?” Link to the Rec[ount] website [https://recountphotoaward.org/about/] ~~~~~~~~ I made a collaborative performance with the fabulous violinist Olvido Lanza, along with three of the Rec[ount] team. Thanks so much to Wafa and Afshin for looking after me and offering this inspiring opportunity. The poems here were written before, during and after my visit to El Clot district of Barcelona, also known as Clot De La Mel - Hole Of Honey. It was a district of vegetable growing and beehives before it became absorbed into the city of Barcelona. Here are my words for the recording on this podcast: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Re-Counting (some words for Spring) Line of SightAt the greyhound track verdantParakeets turn over leaves with hookedbeaks beside an ocean of concretesmoothed, cast in sweeping contoursthat seal in the tracks, holding fasta history of sleek beasts in line of sight,coursing in sinuous ripples of drivenjaws. Short lives of obedience andspeed. Named and valued, brushed,dieted and measured. Each racea gauge of days remaining. Nowthe race itself has been retired,its bounding oval put down in asphaltfor joggers, bladers and youths totest their metal, recreate anepic battle for validation. A Day With Helmut Woke to a day from adream of relationships,humans in bonds ambiguouswith intentions unclear.Moved from that into calmamid measured conversations,thoughts of future journeys,biscuits and coffee.This followed by lion’s legson a table round,sheep’s fleece nurseryrhymes, red squirrelacrobatical astonishmentsand then an adder atthe door in a compressedess, zigzagged and warmingin the sun of Spring’stime - finding the rightbody heat for hunting mice. Stained Her face of stainedglass hungimperiouslylike achandelier,bodyshining with thelight of self,illuminating heracolytes withpearls andinsights,daughter fromdynasticfragility,clothed in crystalsheavy,opaque andbeautiful.Hung,an atmosphericstirring -lostto a room of fear.All venturesshrivel and slipbehind and within,stains spreading outwardsfrom vacuous innardsthe lady of the limpshines darkly herglass greasy fingersheard and not seenturning the latch,letting herself outback wards offa spell of joining.Enchanté Mademoiselle,and adieu. Growing Into The Day Sunlight through new beech leavesChiff Chaff fresh in fromthe South alreadywith eggs to hatch howthe search accelerates fromdormant to decorouspendulant flowers filledwith insects vibrate incolours, flood my thoughtsand sleeping passions hearthe fall of rain upon foliageand its consumptionby thirsty earth busyfeeding trees thatopen their fingers andstretch their armscaught I am inwondermentfeel my own walkingroots luxuriate infecundity. Plummet Gannets diving intotranslucent green wavesoff the shore on Salt Pans Roadmob and cut the air foldshut, dropping scissor-formpierce the sea paff paffpaffpaff paffpaffSwim unseen through glassywater snaps shuttheir beak blades caughtthe silvering scaly dartspulled up beyond the sea’s skininto roistering May airshard-back gulletted passout of ken, from all knowledgeflown to Ailsa Craig,rock of ages, giant’s head,gone to feed the fledgelingfishers. Palmic There’s a hole in my heart line,a palmic interventionordemonster able fissurepinned perhapspierced possiblyrecounting a puncture,the bursting of a balloonI popped sometime past a bangingof the door toa room withinwithin whichI fear to enter andon enteringI fear to seethe head upon whichmy hair is growingand the column of lightthat fills me,shining through a windowin my sole. Hands Holding the hand of hope,walking beneath the sameumber el a,saying out loudsaying out loudfor hope to hear,speaking of,allowing,conceiving andin such conceptionlook outwards, away fromdeceiving ordeception imaginethe shape of today inthe clothes of celebration.Having two hands,who holds the other? Chancy The thing waited formakes no promises.The thing unlooked formakes no apology.The thing expectedcan still surprise.Pick a card and wonderwas it waiting there for you?Carefully considerits placement as a veto,slipped amongst the mundanewhen you looked the other way;palmed and flippedto play the trick;cut played and dealtto buy or stick,the meaning lostin cards counting.I’ll flush and fold,my hearts pounding. Fording Eating out with friends in the crashingrain of a street, red canopy runningwith water, waiters crossing through a streamof cars to carry our dishes, their voyagesupon turbulent seas most noble inpursuit of satiation.Swifts ride upon upper airs withsqueals of delight, pigeons fluff andburble around roof tops andbaker’s shops. Dog s**t fresh along an alleyreeks of wildness and darker nature,smells of verdure creeping at pavementlevel, the hills surrounding wait forthis city to return to earth. Childrenin an unseen yard are tumultuous,growing visible after rain, shapes arisingin materiality conjoined through soundto fill the air. Knees Bought some bees boxedin a yellow plastic crate,fore-legs extended out -insectivorous inmates -begging water, nectar ora hollowed place safefrom clawed paws androdent dentures.The queen rode pillionwith six maids attendant;her fertile abdomen filledwith generational ganymetes. Long Live The Queen! Tipped them in furredcascade into a hive kneltto receive a single sting uponthe larynxblesséd voice box, from whoseinhibitious utterancesI would be free. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` (Words and drawing - ©Alex Rigg 2026) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe [https://theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Live at Knockengorroch Festival 2026

This is a live recording made by the very wonderful Alasdair who creates such a magic sound in The Longhouse. It brings you the whole thing, warts and all. Although you will have to use your imagination to see the warts. Thanks also to Nick Jenkins and Katch Holmes for inviting us to be part of the event. This performance was presented at Knockengorroch Festival in Galloway in May 2026. We showed The Sailmaker’s Palm in The Longhouse, a very atmospheric and intimate space by the banks of the river Deugh. This was our forth appearance at the festival in as many years, and great fun. Thanks to the marvellous Oceanallover team, and for those of you that couldn’t be there - we missed you! Dance - Suzi Cunningham, Aaron Jeffrey, Dylan Read and Rosamund McCormac. Music - Joey Sanderson (Jellobass & vocals), Richie Merchant (brass and charango), Nick Jenkins (fiddle), Emma Gillespie (Found sounds & vocals) and Fiona Stephen (violin). Narration, direction and design - Alex Rigg The festival has been running since 1998. I was there that year, playing with Two Left Feet ceilidh band. It continues to be a great gathering of open-minded and happy people. Both of my sons bring their music to the festival with their bands Muckle Spree and Samson Sounds. Link to Knockengorroch - festival website [https://www.knockengorroch.org.uk/about/] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On another historical note, I have a long-standing relationship with The Wickerman Music Festival which was also a big deal for the region. Trevor Leat (of Two Left Feet fame) and myself built the fire-giant for the festival every year from 2002 until it finished in 2014. Trevor is a consummate willow sculptor as well as musician. The Wickerman Festival reached an audience of eighteen thousand people and we burned the sculpture each year at midnight on Saturday. We had the fire down to a fine art, albeit with the very basic technology of straw, willow and a lighter. A month of work burned in about thirty minutes. It was really exhilarating!! Link to The Wickerman Music Festival - Wikipedia entry [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickerman_Festival] I am not an avid festival-goer and slightly intimidated by large groups of people when mingling as a member of the crowd. However, I have very much enjoyed all of my experiences on the Galloway festival scene, including the very unique Nithraid which will be happening on August the 15th this year and will once again feature Oceanallover leading the progress of the Salty Coo. You can read more about the festival here: Link to Nithraid - festival website [https://nithraid.org/] Oceanallover have been part of many festivals and celebrations in Dumfries and Galloway over the thirty years that I have been based here. This next picture show Liz Rankin as Catherine the Great in a project that I made with Mark Zygadlo and Ian Smith called ‘ The Lost Supper’. In this particular version we performed in the snow outside The Stove Network, Dumfries as part of The Big Burns Supper in 2013. Nithraid in Dumfries will be the next chance for you so see my performance work , followed by an appearance at the Pianodrome , Edinburgh on August the 20th. Link to the Pianodrome website [https://www.pianodrome.org/] We will also be performing as part of the Findhorn Bay Festival in October this year. Link to The Finhorn Bay Festival website [https://findhornbayfestival.com/] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My new collaborative project Didar -The Encounter will be opening at Summerhall in October. I’ll write more about this soon, but here is an image to give you a flavour of the work. The photograph was taken by Xeder and we were working with Danna Sim. This project is a collaboration with Xeder, Danna Sim, Topaz Pauls, Suzi Cunningham and Bram E Geiben. Link to the Summerhall website [https://www.summerhallarts.co.uk/] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe [https://theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

March Winds

Writing during the drifting of our planet in its relationship to the sun; moving through the equinox from winter into spring. A homage to the land journeys of amphibians everywhere. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe [https://theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

February 2026

Written and recorded on Valentine's day, 2026 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe [https://theokenstone.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]