Luke Kaplan

Research

Wandering Scotland

“Photographs emerge from both exterior realities and our inner selves – from within and from without. They cross our paths, but we also carry them. You could say that my eyes see, but my heart photographs.” – Graciela Iturbide

“My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here.” – Robert Burns

 Image: researcher’s own

I set out to research refugees in Scotland. It’s a subject which is obviously very topical, political, divisive, contentious. Migration drives political and social discourse and decision making all over the world; it has certainly done so in the UK. More specifically, however, I set out to research climate refugees: people forced to relocate due to environmental pressures. It is not currently a recognised reason for granting refugee status, but it will none the less increase in the coming years, as climate change causes greater disruptions.

And there were other, more subtle, angles to this research: my interest in working with refugees or exiles was in part driven by my own sense of being an outsider – of my otherness. And my draw to include environmental issues in this research was partly driven by my own strong responses to differences in place – in the different nature of different places.

When I got to Scotland, I was overwhelmed; I struggled to navigate the procedures I would need to go through to even meet and speak to refugees, never mind photograph them (in fact I struggled to merely navigate public transport and street crossings). And even if I did manage to do that, what would my photographs possibly have to say into this complex and loaded conversation?

I felt entirely inadequate to the task, out of my depth, out of place – dislocated. I felt lost, and mostly lost for words. And so in the silence I allowed my old film camera to act as guide and interlocutor. My own sense of otherness, and this subjective sense of being out of place and cut-off, hovered always on the periphery, until it seeped into the centre of my focus. What was recorded photographically, then, is as much my own inner response to where I found myself as it is what presented itself visually.

There is no equating my own situation as a visiting researcher with that of a refugee or exile; an inner sense of otherness is not the same experience as that faced by people who are forced by dire necessity, by questions of life and death, to uproot themselves. Nonetheless, as I wandered through Scotland, by bus and train and on foot, I let my camera draw me to what that sense of being strange in a strange land felt like viscerally and emotionally, what it looked like.

What emerged is a visual story; it is a story about the highlands, and about loneliness, and about rain. I chose to illustrate that visual narrative with accompanying words. It is not the story of a refugee, but nor is it entirely my own – the narrator here is drawn from various sources, different longings and lonelinessess, both personal and subjective, as well as more general and imagined. It is a story about encountering Scotland carrying loss within, and seeing it’s echoes without.

Images: researcher’s own

The streets here are grey and wet. Neither hot nor cold today.

Stone and concrete buildings rise on either side to form narrow gullies

through which I’m funnelled.

They give little purchase: too hard; or I’m too soft.

I feel soft, hollow inside, like I might collapse inward at any moment.

Adrift and unmoored swirling through these streets.

This place just bounces me off its surfaces.

Bacon butty with brown sauce in the corner of a café

because it lets me blend in for a moment, look like I’m from here;

but it sticks in my teeth and sits heavy in my belly.

And I won’t ever wander down this street again, so why here?

Where else?

There’s so much more money here than I’m used to. Everything’s transactional –

consume enough and I might hope to be consumed within.

But I can’t meet the asking price, so it’s surfaces remain impervious

and I have no currency here.

Everyone is trained to be polite if not nice,

but better not meet their eyes on the street – it could cost you a glare or a sneer

maybe a night if you play your cards right.

Either way, regrets to be discarded with a slight of hand

to collect in the gutters with the others.

Image: researcher’s own

16:38 train from Queen Street station heading up north.

I find myself wandering again. In a situation again.

Slipping from place to place, outside each one as I pass through.

Always just passing through.

Strange again; I find myself strange again.

Out of place and ill at ease, I’d hide in my pocket

but it’s full of those pebbles I carry with me.

Not that there’s much more space out there –

surrounded by people – bounded by other human bodies, moving masses.

Voices, smells, flesh and hair,

and always averted eyes or eyes that slide slickly across me

noting instantly what I am not, but haven’t yet spotted what I am.

So I’ll try going north.

On a Tuesday I stumble onto a city

made of cold stone and hard wind.

The set in their faces there is menacing, I can’t stay.

Surrounded again by people in their queues

for buses and trains and street crossings and overpriced lodgings.

But out amongst the hills and the lochs everyone is a tourist –

passing by reading their cues from snap-shot itineraries.

I am itinerant and unreadable again. No solitude here.

Though always alone. And lonely

and the multitude of milling people

voices scraping over waterproofs offer no solace.

I’m struggling to work here, my mind caught between stations

en route from some forgotten platform to an unclear destination

stuck on the tracks, or lurching uncomfortably.

When I’m here I’m always the last one to speak, always skirting the margins.

Like someone else’s scrawl down the side of a text.

Always mincing my words and stewing my feet.

The land is thick and water-logged.

It clings to me like some needy damp thing

soaks in through soles and clings clogged to boot treads.

Intrepid mountaineers with boots of the latest lightweight material

water-proof eye-balls and well-developed calf muscles

head for the summit carrying bags replete with just the right snacks

to keep them keen and motivated even though the weather is shit.

And they don’t notice the water lying dark and still

and maybe only thigh-high, but possibly mind-deep.

These impenetrable thick shadow-thoughts that have been lying here

pooled amongst the heather from before – long before.

Your ancestor’s ancestor’s dreams. You can try to side-step them

keep your eyes on the prize of the peak

but I swear there’s some pent-up power down there in the mountain’s loins.

The woods brood from slopes, silent inside and lugubrious

densely mulched, moss-rocked. When the sun finally thinks to sink

and those shadows are so thick you could trip over them

snare in them like a fly unaware it has already entered the spider’s house

then you’ll see. For one who wanders in the woods

the flicker of light in the cottage window offers the possibility of salvation –

and of destruction, both.

Image: researcher’s own

These hills and forests scare me, there’s a visceral presence:

an absence. Dispelled when glanced at, but if you defocus your eyes, you know

or pretend you’re busy clipping your finger-nails

or make like you have an email to send

or just sit on a stone or a stump picking small grey ticks from your seams

but secretly watch the periphery, you’ll know.

But the water is sweet, and tastes of heather and bracken.

Even the water from the tap. Better yet the cold flow of rivers

scooped up straight in cupped hands.

On a Friday morning the city and the sky remain the same

slate smoke soot; hard steelstone clouds the same

impenetrable grey as the buildings.

Their weight pins down the green growth in towns and cities

as though it were leaves of paper that the wind might blow away

stone slabs in churchyards that hold souls in place

stymieing the thin stems that push through paving, roof tiles.

The names of someone’s ancestors get carved on stone to stand through time

but they’re washed by wind and unceasing rain

to a stripped stippled script, a broken braille, illegible.

But they were already forgotten by me before –

I’m sorry, I just didn’t remember them in the first place.

My own memories have no such chisel and rock

they seep and sink and rise and steep and brew and drain away.

My forehead and knuckles are bruised from this hard stone.

But I’ll keep going – the stone will splinter, given time.

Hasn’t happened yet. My senses splinter in these streets

memories meet the insoluble cobbles and paving, are dashed and lost.

I’m homesick. My mind pulls and trips.

I feel the rain slither down my neck.

But when I’ve just woken in the morning, still suspended

between a blurred wholeness held at some impenetrable depth

and the sharp edges and angles of day anticipated –

you know that feeling –

then I remember entire worlds that are dry

I long for leaves that crackle and crumble underfoot

yellow grass stems that snap and twist against my legs

sand and soil golden-orange, and dry boulders warm and red.

My feet kick up damp leaves here thick with the smell of mulch

composting matter, dying and breaking down to feed the growing.

Roots grow deep here. I’ll keep walking.

The names of these places slur on my lips – I never know if I’m saying them right:

I slept two nights in Drumnadrochit

and stole part of it away like a poor pickpocket.

I took off my clothes to cross the River Spean

water icy and strong washed my sins away clean.

Climbed a fence through the Braes o’ Lachaber

from one sheep farmer to the fields of his neighbour.

Stomped the boggy sides of Stob Coire Easain

where the cow’s stares were profound but their lowing inane.

And there’s Barcaldine and Benderloch, Shieldaig and Ardeslaig,

Kainakill (which sounds too biblical), Achiltibuie, Badenscallie

there’s Badcall, and Tongue, Greshornish, Grabhair and Scalpay.

But I never went to those last – just felt over their names on a map

weird hard little stones from some other world

to be carried in my mouth like broken teeth.

I did go to Ballater by bus

walked up Craigendaroch hill with a friend.

We spoke about what the world looked like in childhood

what it means to have left home, to split yourself between places

so that return is impossible.

It’s just a circling now that we do

circling round. Round the hill there are a couple oak trees, but it’s mostly pine.

So why is it called Craigendaroch?

I read about it on a sign: it means ‘rocky hill of oaks’.

Maybe in some other time. The old days.

In older days still it wasn’t even a hill – it was connected to other highground

but a glacier scraped past, scoured out it’s sides

left it standing isolate, but good for a view.

And on it’s sides now in midsummer we discover

blueberries amongst green leaves in bunches like grapes.

This is what the world looked like in childhood, in moments –

remember? Abundance – of time

of the small shared feasts come upon unexpectedly

of treasure in the undergrowth. Fingers stained dark by juices.

Though it must have been other berries for me, other hillsides.

And these aren’t blueberries – they’re bilberries.

Even better. I’ve never had a bilberry before.

In southern cities the streets swirl and the sun

splits clouds for a second to hit high stone walls

and people with decent money who carry high water marks

tattooed on their thighs and hide their intentions in takeaway coffee cups

mill about and turn and smile

as if it’s the highlands that have rolled all the way downhill.

It’s a trick of the light.

Image: researcher’s own

To view Luke’s work with additional photographs and original formatting, download here: