Letty McHugh: Anchoress's Watch. In April 2020 I started experiencing a visual disturbance I'd be trained to recognise as signs my immune system was attacking my retina. Over the next few weeks I experienced really intense photophobia, meaning that it hurt to look at any kind of light, so I was spending a lot of time in bed with the curtains closed, looking at the ceiling. I felt really trapped in my 3 by 4 metre room, surrounded by medication. I felt like my world had shrunk to be contained inside: this bed, this floor and what I could see out of my window. To get myself out of one particularly tough afternoon I started imagining that I was living as a hermit or an anchoress, but dedicating myself to art instead of Jesus.
So back in the day, a hermit or an anchoress would deliberately isolate themselves in a special cell to create space for quiet contemplation. I pictured my cell as one of the upside down boat sheds on the beach, at Lindisfarne, where I'd spent a lot of afternoons happier than this one in my childhood. And I started imagining what my own anchorage would look like if I made it as a textile installation once I had recovered from this relapse.
I imagined that I would live in it like a modern anchoress, in an art gallery somewhere, and the outside would be beautiful and intriguing for the visitors. And the inside of the space would double up as the perfect room to be chronically ill in. In this perfect space, I would transcend my physical suffering and dedicate myself solely to the making of great art. I imagined myself content and dedicated to my work, more productive than I've ever been at any other stage of my life. Filling up notebooks and notebooks full of burning, genius thoughts. I thought it would be like...I was a lighthouse keeper, and my work would be these little missives that I'd send out from my space of isolation, like the beam of a lighthouse light, or messages in a bottle thrown out from the gallery window.
I would never feel lonely or trapped inside my anchorage, because I'd have all the art I was making to bring me connection. I imagined myself the perfect place to play in the quiet and imagine I was somewhere else.
Letty McHugh: Insomniac's Watch. I'm recording this at 2:38am, it's early November. You know those nights when you just can't sleep no matter what you do? Um, and you're just kind of tossing and turning and eventually you decide it's better to get up and clean the kitchen than to keep trying to go to bed. I think there's something really...human, about those nights and really...you know, we've all been through it.
Um, and...everybody says life is short, but life doesn't feel short at 2:36am when you can't get to sleep. It feels like the nights are gonna go on forever, it feels like this night will never end. When I can't sleep sometimes, I keep all my lights switched off and I look out of my bedroom window, particularly to look for...a lot of interesting cats on my street, and sometimes if I get lucky I see a fox, but that's besides the point. I like to look out the window, and I don't know if you've ever experienced insomnia but you can kind of feel like the...the loneliest, loneliest place in the world, it feels like you're the only person in the world who's awake and it feels like the night is never gonna end.
And sometimes, when I'm feeling like that and I'm looking out the window, I can see rows and rows of terraced houses from my bedroom window. Sometimes I'll be looking out of that window, and sometimes across the valley a little square of yellow will appear, or a car will drive past, and just seeing that light makes me know that there's somebody else awake in the night. I think that that's just...such a magical feeling, it always makes me feel so much less alone, and I always start thinking about that person, and why they're awake and if they, you know, have a tiny screaming baby or if they've been having some wild time and they've just got home, or...um, you know maybe their cat wants feeding.
Whatever. Maybe they're the same as me; maybe they're feeling lonely and sick and having a hard time, and just knowing that that other person on the other side of the valley has their light switched on makes me feel less alone, and usually I can fall back to sleep thinking about that person, and I just think that's...the power of connection. How even in our most isolated moments just knowing there's somebody else out there makes us feel so much less alone
But also it's just the power we don't know we have: that that person who switched their light on has no idea how important that glimpse of light was to me. And...that's why I think we need to keep putting things out there into the universe, just to let each other know that we're alive and we're not alone.
Letty McHugh: Magnetic Miracle Watch. The thing about living with chronic illness - with an incurable chronic illness like what I live with - is you really have to work on curing yourself of faith that one day you're going to get better, because that can be really destructive in your life because you end up waiting to feel better, to live...and, say, the beautiful morning like the one I've filmed out of this window in Liverpool.
Um, I had a migraine, this day, but I could still stop and appreciate the gorgeous view, the little boats, the fluffy clouds. I have been having maybe three migraines a week since my relapse last April. I have been wearing a magnetic bracelet for a while because I read an article that said wearing magnetic bracelets on all your pulse points is supposed to help reduce your migraine days...doesn't help, doesn't help.
But I can't stop myself looking for something to help. It's like...you have to weed that faith out of your soul like dandelions. They keep growing back. You're on a never-ending quest for something that's gonna make you feel better. I sometimes think my Google search history would read like the prayer of a pilgrim. Google: grant me a cure for my migraines, the ability to spot quackery, and the sense to put my phone down.
Letty McHugh: Artificial Dawn Chorus Watch. I have the alarm on my phone set to an artificial dawn chorus. It's supposed to help to have birdsong wake you up in the morning instead of, you know, a terrible, blaring alarm noise. I'm not really sure of the science behind it but it's cheerful and I believe in doing anything that is harmless and helps you get through the night. I once read that birds sing at the dawn to let their mates know that they've survived the night.
Birds aren't daft, you know? They navigate the world, if you think about swallows coming every summer from Africa, and what birds know...is that it's hard to get through the night. It's hard to get through the night if you're a tiny songbird. But it's also hard to get through the night if you're a person, and hard to get through the metaphorical night, the dark times in our life. I think that we should learn from the birds and when we do something miraculous like surviving to see another dawn, we should celebrate that miracle.
I can't actually sing...but, this is what I'm doing instead. Making this recording, making this piece of art to let you know that I made it to see another day and to let you know that I think you can make it too.
Letty McHugh: Harbour Wall Watch. On a winter afternoon, stuck in bed, I remember the poppies I saw on an afternoon in June, cut down by a man with a lawnmower the day after I filmed them. I try to keep faith that the migraine will pass and the poppies will grow back.
Letty McHugh: Cliché Sunset Watch. In the summer of 2021, I spent a week in Seahouses in Northumbria, pretending I was one of the monks of Lindisfarne. When I was there, I filmed this beautiful sunset on the longest day across the harbour wall looking out towards Bamburgh Castle, Lindisfarne. It felt so mystical and meaningful until I turned around and about twenty-five people in the static caravan park that's out of shot were also leaning on the same wall to film the sunset.