‘Tapping secrecies of stone’: Irish roads as performances of movement, measurement, and memory

Abstract

Roads have always held a particular fascination for me. Perhaps it is because they hold the promise of movement, travel, and escape. Certain roads remain embedded in my memory: The roads to the bluffs of Santa Cruz where I choreographed my first dance; Tioga Road in the Sierra Mountains of California where I drove as a 20 year old and watched shooting stars from my Volkswagen, and the Wicklow mountain roads I explored as a student hoping to commune with the literary spirits of Samuel Beckett, J. M. Synge, and James Joyce. Roads run deep-they inscribe themselves in us. They can suggest motion or enact a boundary, provide a connection between distant places, beckon a journey without end, or disguise a secret route. This chapter considers roads as vital cultural spaces which give rise to scenes of performance and which at times might be seen as performances themselves. Roads direct and redirect our movements and sometimes play with our perceptions of reality and illusion, shifting our perspective when they change direction. Like the ‘perils of Dublin pavements’ that confronted Bloom as he headed through the city’s streets, roads are gestures, intersecting with our bodies and our thoughts as we negotiate the uncertainties of the ground.3 Rather than view Irish roads as inert or static cultural tracts, I see them as conduits for movement and memory operating within the larger spatial history of Ireland and in conjunction with a repertoire of cultural practices.