This is the howl that we all have inside us. It’s born of love, and loss.

The howl comes with our birthright of experience and love.

It was carved with an acknowledgement of human frailty in the face of death and loss and change. It’s a monument to those who came and went before us, unmarked and unmourned, and for those in the future, who come after us, who will bear the dreadful repercussions of the profligacy and cruelty of our time.

In the age of this piece of stone, in the hundreds of millions of years shown in the physical, material presence of it, and its variegated beauty, lies the story of the long time, the drip drip drip of water in a cave somewhere, the forming of this stone through deep geological time; we can imagine perhaps the cosmological time scale, of billions of years, where we find inklings of the pace and power of the creation of our planet, and our universe... we can get a notion of where, and what, in fact we are…

After the howl, sometimes, there is quiet and peace, the grace even, that comes with the knowledge of how beautiful and complex are the people and places we loved, and lost, and are losing; and sometimes, possibly, gently, a surrender to the sense that we are here to serve the Earth, and the Earths future...

When it was shown in Islington, in London, in January 2008, it produced a wide and remarkable response: of wonder and enthusiasm, with many, many people wanting it to stay...

Emily Young, London, 2008