Spinning Discs was written in response to all of the submissions on the interactive map. I went through each submission - poetry, field recordings, tunes, photography, video and artwork - and from each piece either wrote a single line response or picked a line of writing/section of melody to incorporate into the song. There were several themes which kept cropping up including links to our heritage, the movement of people along the Dee and Don and the calming influence of being outdoors. The first line ‘spinning discs above our head’ was inspired by a photograph of hills with disc shaped clouds overhead. This brought to mind the idea of spinning plates and how busy our lives are, as well as the active process of searching through the map on google earth and how we can visit different locations and get a sense of the place through the use of satellite imagery. One of the entries talked about ‘sleepers in the kirkyard’ and I was drawn to this idea of people at rest in the old kirkyards around Aberdeenshire. This helped me bring in the idea of the passage of time and touch on the changing landscape views.

Jenny Sturgeon