Éric Giraudet de Boudemange

Thrill of the void, horizontal vertigo? Scared by the thought of solitary nights in the glow of the Créac’h, Gregory Buchert offered to share the custody of the semaphore in August 2013. During three weeks, we roamed the island at the whim of our filming. Gregory put on the costume of a drunken sailor, the first role of his Geranos. I, on the other hand, tried to catch a girl from Ushant in the rocks tinted with foam. Iro arod is a path on the shorelines followed by islanders to gather the grounded wood. Here, it’s a game. A woman in a traditional costume from Ushant throws a die which faces marked with triangles show the direction of the next throw. A wandering as pointless as it is absurd, a ritual characterized by the cracking of the cube and the howl of the waves at the foot of the cliff.

We would leave at dawn looking for low-angled light that fed our foam mattresses and high weeds. At night, we would trade our daily anecdotes in exchange for the sailor stories of Nicolas Floc’h, sprawled on a pile of fish that had been slaughtered that same morning. Around, the obscurity of the landscape erased itself in the sweeping of the Créac’h, which cadence punctuated our stories. We lived with Isabelle, Nicolas and their son, Ann, Chao, Marcel, Sophie, Thomas, Julia, Sarah, Laetitia, Arthur and Gwennina. The last night, with our wives, we shared a lamb roasted under the mound. I exchanged a glance with my guarding companion while sweeping my plate with a piece of Harris sandwich bread. The lightning of the Créac’h licked the coast like huge rocky canines planted in the foamy darkness; a pure beam, unshakeable, the color of our friendship.