The Serpentine Path

Jo Johnson

The Serpentine Path is a long-form piece released at the end of March 2021 on Going In. Going In is a sub-label of The Bunker New York which specialises in long-form compositions. They’re all breath-taking pieces of work and this is one of my favourite releases on the label.

Travelling towards the horizon you’re delicately carried in between the fluid textural landscape. Each part of your body starts to evaporate slowly, almost as if you were the world and the world was you. Invited by the atmosphere to another realm of existence the space seems to form into something you’ve never seen before. Wistful vapours on a shore that never ends, the tide merges softly into the edge of your mind.

The environment around you forms and shifts with gradual movements harnessing the impossibility of this moment. Adrift memories lay bare on the stones of the present. They cloud what was once an experience to behold. There is no progression, no regression. Time stretches so far but it is no longer linear. Your search is no longer necessary, you no longer need to look for something, it was here all along.

Outward pathways have long reflected inward ones. Pre-modern man followed well-worn animal tracks that later became pathways for pagan procession rituals, which later were co-opted by early Christianity. In the Middle Ages, it was the dream and destiny of many to seek pilgrimage via these pathways. When times of political turmoil upended one’s ability to travel, labyrinths laid on religious grounds provided a kind of solution: the path could still be walked, the many steps could be taken, even if this gesture was symbolic.