It is Proven (2020) [extract] sound piece, 38 minutes. Transcript of extract below.
TRIGGER WARNING: This piece contains reference to disordered eating, bulimia, anorexia and laxative abuse.
It is Proven is both a sound piece and text work based on the early 20th century translation of The Physicians of Myddfai. The text is written in an anachronistic blend of Middle English, early 20th century and contemporary language, with some 16th century slang, to reflect reading and translation as an act of time travel. The text takes all of the cures for gut problems which occur in The Physicians of Myddfai and transforms them into a fictional narrative.
A PDF of the full text is available by clicking on the PDF icon. A transcript of the extract of the sound piece is available on this page, below
Transcript of extract:
1.117
Surfet. I cannot quite explain why I have frequent lyke to ete so much that I fele quite nauseous. This urge takes over approximately every other day, and I often will ete to the point of extreme distention of the mawe, then purge the contents violently. To inflate then deflate: I need this sensation. This eventide I ete seven bananas and fele extremely sicke, and yet the bananas will not rise through the oesophagus: I cannot purge them. This is abhorrent: the inability to purge is the absolute worst fear of one who will purge.
It had been that on Sunnenday, I would ete greet quantity of banana and porridge, then, a mere two houres later, a greet quantity of salmon and wheaten bred, swiftly followed by greet quantity of chocolate brownie and raspberrie, and make myself quite ill throughout Monenday. It was only when I was prescribed the contraceptive pill and the appetite increased quite fourfold that I desired to ete this amount and more, every day, and I knew the flesh would fatten if the appetite gain’d maistry. Lo, apprehend I a violent methodology of purging. It is not a prescription I would recommend or share with you. This eventide, though, it does prove ineffectual, and the bananas remain stuck. I let them be, I digest them, much as I loathe digestion.
I take a turnip and boil it in goat milk, and take gentle sips until the stomak is quelled.
1.122
The bowels will not loosen, they are obstinately firm and static. I am quite at the end of my tether, knowing that I must continue eten in order to promote peristalsis, and yet not wishing to add to the compounding mass of shit accruing in the mawe. When I lie on my bed, I can fele a thick rope of excrement extending up the transverse colon.
Thistles as the thistles on the enamell’d broche my mother would wear, the purple tarnish’d and scuffed. I remember not her wearing this broche, I only remember it sitting in her jewellery box, and should I chance to remove it, she would find it in the hand and she would tell me: this is the first piece of jewellery your father did buy for me. I boil the roots of small thistles that grow in the woods, these roots of thistles I boil in water, this water I drinche with relish.