Where to begin. I have to say that writing this from a slight distance (one and a half months and back on the other side of the world), the most overwhelming feeling I have is of having left so many things undone. Not that I feel I did not do enough during my time at MoKS, but simply that there was so much more I could have done. One month was not enough.

My daily excursions into the disused sections of the decaying ex-collective farm did slow as the temperature dropped, and the snow came in. But I would not have switched the weather for a more mild and stable one. I saw many pictures of Mooste in the summer sun, and it almost looked like another place. The chance to see the weather change over the month, and its effect on the landscape and soundscape was wonderful. When I arrived at the beginning of November everything was wet and soggy. Even in the forest the snapping of twigs under foot did not make their usually brittle snaps and cracks. All was muted somehow. Then everything froze. Sounds became crunchy and crackly underfoot again. The last leaves falling on the frozen road where clearly audible from a distance. And then came the snow again placing a sonic mute on the landscape. And finally, as it came closer to my departure, the snow melted creating a constant dripping and running of water. The metal pipes leading from the guttering at MoKS make a particularly wonderful sound. And finally followed by the wet squelchy sounds of the ground returning to mud.

I could have stayed in Mooste and recorded it's amazing spaces for months. I'm luck to find one such site at home every few month and suddenly I was surrounded by many of them within 10 minutes walk. However the various excursions that John took me on where equally incredible, and still slightly hard to take in even now. The frozen rubble of one of John's favourite sites at Podra, a recording trip with Felicity Mangan, Maksims Shentelevs and Kaspars Kalnins to a large disused Soviet military base in north Latvia, sitting on the side of the road in the cold and dark listening to the singing of telegraph wires/poles swaying in the wind, and finally four of us by the side of a small lake (I think??), huddled inside a small metal box in the rain, setting the thing resonating. Felicity accidentally startling a flock of ducking, sending them flying directly over us.

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The activities Evelyn and John have instigated, facilitated or encouraged at MoKS are extremely impressive. As is the thinking behind it. Rather than trying to “raise” everyday life to the level of Art, it seemed to me to be a matter of simply using art as a way of living and exploring life and your surrounds. And much much more...........................

Thank you very much to Evelyn, John, Siim and Felicty for making my stay at MoKS such at enjoyable and thought provoking one.