NIGHTWALKER
A creative essay on women walking at night, the night body and darkness in the city. A personal report on research project with Brigstow Institute.
Preamble -
In the 1700’s a frenzied arrival of street lighting completely rearranged our cities and our night. Overcome with the spectacle of engineering, street lighting was rolled out at a pace, becoming a symbol for this age of enlightenment. It also marks the beginning of a nyctophobia that has persisted ever since. With the eradication of darkness, it’s qualities and associations are also dismissed. That is to say; the mythic, mystic, ancient, supernatural, and all that is deemed unwanted in the day or in society. The night was already a place of policing and surveillance, and any one out at night was questionable. But the introduction of lit and un-lit areas tightened the framework of what is good or bad, accepted or not, lawful or criminal. Darker areas become places of preserving nighttime cultures. This treatment of the night reveals what values in societies are hardened, but also tells of an unwillingness to let go of our chief sense – sight. Darkness requires us to rely on other senses, ones we are more vulnerable within. At this time walking at night was seen as a symptom of ill mental health. That it did, in fact, bring about ill mental health. It was believed, or told, that the night held a dark vapour that could poison you. That demons circulated at night, eventually possessing those who are out too long.
About 6 years ago, living in the countryside, I started walking at twilight. With so much space and quiet, I could experience the transition from day to night very clearly. It started to feel important to witness, and so I would walk at the last hour of the day regularly. I was initially drawn to the beauty of this handover, but ultimately, I became very fond of the dark. I found the countryside to be darkness rich: thick complete woods, mirrored silky rivers, an observable galactic sky.
I had wandered around at night before; circling estates as a teenager or getting myself home from a night out. But this new walking was no longer practical, or a way to socialise. It was a solitary dark-bathing. At this time in my life, I was freshly grieving. I was often very restless indoors, where my feelings compressed. There was a softness to the night, and my own meandering within it. It offered what I needed. Something kindly dim, non-demanding and spacious.
After a different kind of emotional upheaval, I moved back to the city in a state of constant vibration. It was a ferocious energy. It was probably anger. I did what I knew and walked at night. This time, however, I found darkness hard to locate. And so, my walking became a search for darkness. I found it (or variations of it) in the water, under the bridges, down the alleyways, in the graveyards, in the long grass of the park. This began a few years of dark mapping a city I already knew. Experiencing many tones of night walking; from euphoric to haunting, sketchy to peaceful. Now, I mostly walk to listen to music, to dream and think. I find myself almost dancing, I meet a lot of wildlife (or what seems like a lot).
What I know is that the night is its own world and a fragile threshold to others. That the darkness is a potential refuge, one that is hard to access. And as a woman walking at night, I am acting against domesticity and in defiance of what is considered safe. These experiences led me to talk and walk with others, a creative report on which follows.
NIGHT WALK
Within a recent Brigstow project (research institute at the University of Bristol) I discussed the feminine nightwalker with two night historians; Dr Eleanor Rycroft and Dr Andy Flack. Following these conversations I designed a performance score (set of instructions or prompts) for a night walk. These walks were undertaken by four night-interested artists; Jan-Ming Lee, Nina Santes, Katsura Isobe and Ann-Marie Fairbrother, as well as myself and Eleanor. Each woman recorded herself speaking before and after the walk, quotes from these recordings are included, and have been used as prompts for writing.
1. ALLEYWAY
We all spoke of another self. A night self. We spoke of the ‘every-day self’. She is tiresome, tired, bound up. She is allocated. She is project-heavy. The ‘every-night self’ is less known, but full of desires. This self is closer to the body, is a body. A night body, that we would like to know. This is what I heard them say, above the sound of footsteps, taking them to a starting place for a night walk. I heard them changing, already changing. ‘I am up for being changed’, I say. Could this night body be an equal? When this body spoke it’s first words were ones of longing. To be cloaked, to disappear, to be quiet, to skulk.
I will walk at night to see another part of me that is hidden - beneath the mask - of my everyday self - myself that is – deep – quiet – hidden. I will walk at night to be away from hustle and bustle of everyday life, hustle and bustle of people. I will walk at night to escape.
- Katsura
She wasn’t the only one to say escape. Everyone left things behind them. Left them willingly. Dropped them quickly so they wouldn’t snag. I saw it happen like a clay shell cracking and breaking, then falling back on the pavement in bits. Is this where the night body lives - encased? Seek darkness, was the instruction. Under trees, behind vans, stored in the underpass.
We had trouble finding darkness, we could only find very small patches of dark, but when I was in them, I wanted to bathe in them, and feel the darkness like a space, which my body could inhabit.
- Eleanor
The intrusion of light is abhorrent, a pest. A constant disturbance to our shadow bathing. Disappearance disallowed and uncared for. We found what we could. Any scrap of darkness, to sustain a night body. And like disgruntled vampires we frowned and complained at all this light.
2. LONG GRASS
She spoke of adventure, and I was so glad she did. That sparky sense, that secret wink, for going out with no proper purpose. To seek - to find- to see what’s up. Get into some trouble, or some beauty – her agency and receptiveness, her up-for-it-ness rippling in her voice.
And I feel so relaxed in my body, excited and part of something. I felt refreshed as I turn back now.
- Ann-Marie
I watched her walk backwards, into the woods. Walking plainly, strangely, in reverse. It seemed to me that she had walked out of these woods, and was now on rewind. Her image shattered with passing light. We were giddy under the long tree branches that we were hiding behind. We ran across the field hand in hand and laughed the whole time. All grown women, knocking about like teenagers. Teenage; a template of loitering and pissing about. Of being awake. Of using public space like it’s yours. Or like it could be. The night eyes returning all blissed out. Ready to sleep. Can you be lulled and stirred at the same time?
I will always love the sense, the possibility, of strangeness.
- Nina
So strange, those women, lying on the ground. Blending into shadows. Trying to see a monochrome world. They had paws and soft ears, they had tentacles. The language for the body moved into animal territory. Listening when we don’t usually listen. Feeling when we don’t usually feel. The body becoming sensorially different – we welcomed this. We acknowledge and appreciate that it is a more tender self.
And the felt sense, I still feel it now, as I am padding out of the tunnel of trees and back into the streets that my feet are very awake, listening to the ground, attentive…and now in my walk another little fox trotting by, I’ve seen three tonight, quiet young foxes.
- Ann-Marie
All we want is to see is an animal. Hedgehog, Badger, Fox, Cat, Rabbit. No report without an animal. A success story – we did it - we managed to not be alone, or separated. We were seen by someone other than ourselves. Is a night gaze an animal gaze? She was just thankful that the hedgehogs are still here. That we haven’t destroyed everything already. Do we feel blessed by the gaze of an animal? Is it sacred to be in the presence of another and not be ‘read’. Is this night body sanctified by being witnessed by another nocturnal being?
I walked in the night with my tentacles and antennae out, wanting to meet those that aren’t human, the humans got in the way sometimes.
- Jan-Ming
3. BRIDGE
Too much can come out of the dark. It is hard to hold its blankness. To accept nothingness. What is placed in the nothing? Why do I feel I am being watched? What hostility is in my room, in my house, in the street, in the world? A monster? A man? Can I practice not dragging this hostility with me...can I leave it where it lives? In these softer moments can I recognise and hold fear like an object before me? Can I build new knowledge of the night, and of fear? Can this navigation help me make new choices, ones of trust, ones of hope?
There’s a quality of darkness that feels a bit like a void. There was this tunnel, and we walked through the tunnel and on the left there was a rectangle shape, dark shape, and it felt like there was space in it but I wasn’t sure how big it was and I was scared of this hole in the wall, I was really scared, I could notice my breath becoming short.
- Nina
In the edges of the cemetery, we saw a shadow moving too quickly. I have my story, and she has hers. More are developing. Stories that have been experienced by many – weaving into a universe, a parallel universe. And like those who have been abducted by aliens – we come back from this universe but can’t remember it properly. I said it was ‘too weird’, I said it was ‘disorientating’. She said that it ‘darted’, that it ‘crouched’. There are tricks of the dark. Best to cut and run, best to, and anyway, I won’t tell you about it because I don’t want you to think that I’m mad.
Walking into an edge of fear and kind of merging into a liberation, dark pool of freedom, expansion, maybe the fear is the gateway.
- Ann-Marie
4. GRAVEYARD
We walk in pairs and meet each other as dark company – peripheral, silent, suggestive – alone in the dark is one thing, together in the dark is another.
I will walk tonight because I can.
- Eleanor
We made circles of intention, boundary walking, backwards, as witches do. In a story of the curtailing of witches, he said that there were not enough men and so all these women were roaming around freely, something had to be done. Nighttime suspicion is old; what are you up to? Now fostered by todays tensions – it continues, wriggling with questions - are they one of ‘those’.
We squealed into the darkness like an exorcism. We shook our hands vigorously under the bridge. She let me disappear and she let me come back. We lay next to each other in the middle of the path. She looked up at the canopy, transfixed, I don’t know what with. We turned towards each other and rested, in each other’s arms, I felt like an otter, no – that’s not it – I felt like myself.
I walked in the night and I’m still walking in the night, so strange, so strange that people don’t walk in the night.
- Jan-Ming
I am bored of safety, I am bored of safety, I am bored of safety. But when I walk, I imagine, in my periphery – women in different positions; lying, crouching, standing, smoking on the balcony, walking, running, dancing, hiding in a bush. I thank them for being and staying peripheral, for allowing me to feel both safe and free.
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With thanks to Dr Eleanor Rycroft, Dr Andy Flack, Jan-Ming Lee, Nina Santes, Katsura Isobe, Ann-Marie Fairbrother, and the Brigstow Institute. I have recently received Arts Council Funding to develop a new audio work on night walking, with support from MAYK in Bristol I aim to share this as a work in progress in April 2025.
Some related reading:
Why I adore the night by Jeanette Winterson (essay)
Wanderers, a history of women walking by Kerri Andrews
Strangers, essays on human and nonhuman by Rebecca Tamas
Notes from the gloomy city: rethinking the relationship between light and dark by Tim Edensor (essay)
At Day’s Close; a history of nighttime by A, Roger Ekrich
Pit Murk (a collection of short stories about the dark) by Hannah Sullivan
Some related art:
1999: Janet Cardiff (audio walk) – ‘Missing Voice Case Study B’
1981: Sophie Calle (performance/photography) – ‘The Shadow’ and ‘A Woman Vanishes’
2014: Ana Lily AmirPour (film) - A girl walks home alone at night.