08. Maps

In this final episode of Keywords, presenter Zoe Comyns is guided by Maps.
Beginning with mapping a stream in her neighbourhood, writer Elizabeth Reeder celebrates and interrogates the nature of mapping - from the Ordinance Survey maps to Google Maps - and she notes the impact that maps have on our world and on ourselves.
Writer ER Murray escapes current restrictions and recalls a trip to Long Island in West Cork where her husband proposed to her with a hand-drawn treasure map. She dug up three bottles containing letters that could only be read once all of them were found. And - of course- there was one with ‘X Marks The Spot’!
Simon Ferris and Rebecca Kennedy play the parts of Tom and Rachel who are navigating their way around a seating plan for their wedding but Lockdown begins to play tricks on them. Like many of us they have to chart new journeys in their relationship as they live at very close quarters. Which film to watch? What to cook? Who uses which cup? This short drama maps the route from the ridiculous to the psychotic.
Over the past eight episodes Keywords has commissioned more than 60 writers, sound artists and producers- many established, others just emerging. As Zoe says, ‘this series is a shared space to express that imagination, fleeting thoughts, deep seated beliefs and new ways of looking.’
We hear short excerpts and poems by Niamh Ní Dhónaill, Tanya O’Sullivan, Deirdre McLaughlin, Gary Brown, Fiona H each taking as their departure point the Keyword Maps.
Danielle McLaughlin is on board a flight and is inspired by what is outside, down below - or as the old maps used to say ‘Here Be Dragons’. We’ve all been on planes where the behaviour of our fellow passengers make us feel uncomfortable. She considers these and other travellers from times past.
A sound map of Planet Earth was sent into Space in space by NASA in 1977. A Golden Record was placed on Voyager. It contained samples of music and greetings from across the globe. We hear Hello From The Children of Planet Earth, a composition by Mike Glennon that combines recordings made for the Voyager Interstellar Record.
And continuing our journey into Space we also hear a poem by Thomas Mixon, Thirty Years From Now Saturn Completes Another Orbit.
Dee Roycroft’s The Meteorology of Emotions charts the changing moods around the country in a playful piece that is inspired by the weather charts we see every night after the news - ‘a slow moving storm of grief will make its way across the country during the night.’
Keywords is presented and produced by Zoe Comyns and is a New Normal Production funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Sound and Vision Fund.