Does desolation have a waveform?
The deafening sounds of an empty house.
Void of content, of contentment.
How dizzying the waveform of this roofless, rotting edifice.
How defining.
Mavisbank House stands, although only just, on a hill overlooking its former policies near the village of Polton in Midlothian. It yawns and pitches and crumbles imperceptibly as I approach. I gaze up at it from outside the high metal fence which is both perimeter and prison.
Encircled by trees, the area where the house sits has already conjured for me an aura of menace and desolation. Others have gone in and filmed "inside", and you’ll find a number of rather uninspired and shaky camera examples of this on YouTube. There's also some overhead footage from drones, and those videos more than anything else show the remarkable symmetry and splendour of this once great building.
But I didn't want to go any further than the fence . . .
. . . and I wasn't possessed of the necessary papers.
Designed by William Adam as a Palladian mansion with Baroque features, and constructed in the 1720s, Mavisbank remained a family home until it was utilised in the mid-nineteenth century as a lunatic asylum which remained its fate for more than 75 years. Neglected after the hospital closed and gutted by a fire in the 1970s, it's in a very sorry state.
Today, it appears that the house has no legal owner, a somewhat uncommon and difficult proposition in Scots law. The Mavisbank Trust has made valiant efforts over the last two decades to find funding to restore the property and its policies, but so far there's been no great windfall to help secure the future of the house and bring it back to something of its former glory (see the gallery of images on the Trust's site here.
This might be an icehouse, but I didn't venture inside. It was already cold enough.
Perhaps it was the greyness of the morning, perhaps that I was alone and hadn't seen a soul since I left the village to walk here, but the overall feeling around the house was strange and unnerving. A murder of crows watched me from the trees, occasionally disturbed from their rest to patrol the buildings. These dark custodians didn't lighten the mood any.
After an hour or so wandering round the house and grounds, I knew it was time to say a quiet farewell to Mavisbank.
And so, almost 300 years after it was built, how does it sound?
I pose the question: does the knowledge of the location of this recording affect the listener's perception?
Imagine yourself motionless there, poised under grey skies, a hint of moisture in the surrounding air.
Imagine the feel of the grass under your feet, a sense of ill-defined scratchings from the undergrowth.
Imagine there is no other person close by. Probably.
Imagine that house of windowless eyes watching you, whichever way you turn.
Does desolation have a waveform? I believe it does.