David Buckland and KT Tunstall discuss personal responses to the voyage, being in an Arctic environment, new songs, shifting practice and engaging with climate change as an artist.
Friday, September 26th
Plane landing at Kangerlussuaq
We could see the east coast of Greenland, indifferent, majestic, and there they were – icebergs from above!! Aaaarrr!! We were suddenly all toddlers, looking down on the little minty sailboats being shoved out of the nest of the shore, forced to take off on voyages from which they would never return. Ever diminishing, ever more alone. Gliding off into the vastness.
5 hours sailing down the gargantuan straight of Sondre Stromfjord, the light starts to get soaked up by the time. Like a waking dream. Milky green sea that looks alive. A beautifully perfected valley scraped out of the landscape as our guide, singing us out of its mouth. The weirdness. The spook. That half-light that makes you feel like the whites of your eyes are glowing. A low-lying cloud that turns a scottish landscape into a science fiction set. The boat is full and buzzing like a hive. The Belgian-Danish bar and restaurant manager Jan (Yan? Xian?!) has the best and weirdest burr on his r’s I’ve ever heard. Want to teach him the Ragged Rascal Ran tongue twister.
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You know that Apple Mac screen saver with the cosmic tracer thing swirling around? About 10 of us were stood on deck late night and looked up at the same time that it escaped out of someone’s laptop, gained gargantuan proportions and launched itself out of the sky above our heads in neon green; spinning, speeding, an incredible Catherine Wheel firework that made us all scream. I stayed out there for an hour and a half in minus ten, making myself laugh as my frozen face was about 5 seconds behind any words I tried to say. The best light show in the world.
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KT Tunstall and Emily Venables follow our route on the map as we return South towards Kangerlussuaq.
It’s cold, cold, cold. Tired eyes in a warm, grateful way. I saw different things today, alternative layers, other people’s stories. I love it here and I don’t want to leave. I’ve said it already, but it is so dreamlike. Definite tones of Wes Anderson’s ‘The Life Aquatic’; if only we had 40 blue boiler suits and red woollen bobble hats. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jarvis Cocker playing ambient mood music in the bar, icebergs peering in through the port-holes. Friendly scientists dropping large flashing contraptions into the water in the dark to map the mountains below the surface. Ko, David (Steve Zissou)’s wonderful right hand man making heart-meltingly sincere announcements in his lovely Dutch accent about getting into the Zodiac boats to go and ‘explorrr the shorrr’ and ending every time “……That Ish All”.
Marcus made me weep laughing this evening by re-enacting his presentation at an arts and crafts awards ceremony, the ‘Best Porcelain Hedgehog’ category making me nearly wee.
Woke up with a belly-full of metaphorical tequila. Still feel the shape of the balloon-dog heart in there, but feel altogether better about that. I know it’s good to feel this.
Snap, snap, walking in a Baltic alien landscape and still the grass grows through the snow, all that life that waits patiently beneath for endless sun. Dark red berries fresh under foot stain the powder like blood and trigger thoughts of the hunting that goes on here.
Blood on snow is a disturbing picture, and one that says much about our situation as humans on a planet straining to meet our needs and greeds. But the Greenlandic skill of using every last scrap of animal and knowing what to use it for is undoubtedly impressive.
Finally I saw the ribbons in the sky, the northern lights. Slow and suggested, swaying velvet curtains in a drafty cosmos. We all played a gig in a bar tonight, I don’t know what happened but the great boot from outwith crushed my mojo…Floored by quiet endings, the rip of other roars, it’s not good when you reject yourself in a Greenlandic bar faced with the brilliance of Hitchcock, Cocker, Wainwright, Sakamoto, Carlton and Feist. Not my night. My heart is twisted up like kid’s balloon and I imagine looks like a poodle.
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KT wowed Cape Farewell-ers and Greenlanders alike during an impromptu performance at an Ilulissat bar called Murphy’s, backed by the local Disko Bay Blues.
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KT Tunstall and Luke Bullen. Arctic wear by Greenpeace.
Photo: Nathan Gallagher
Bleak, sleet, cold; howling packs of half wolf hounds that have had their barks bred out of them. Black sand, with blue white icebergs as big as multi-storey car-parks, road bridges, office blocks. Their little relatives pecking at sand, littering the beach. Each of these unliftable baby ‘bergs look like something. A chicken. A swan. A turtle.
The dogs are everywhere, chained, wet, wild. I see a mother with two unchained puppies strangling herself to try and reach a huge hole another dog has dug himself, all the other dogs wailing and straining towards it. The dog in the centre has caught one of her puppies. I walk away feeling ill and deeply domesticated.
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KT and Luke on the shore in Qeqertassuak. Photo: Nathan Gallagher.
