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You are here: Home / The Sitting Room

The Sitting Room

Sit down inside W.S. Merwin’s hand-built garden dojo. Immerse yourself in the sounds of his palm forest, deep in the Pe‘ahi Stream valley, on Maui’s rugged and rural north coast. 

NOTE: Please make sure your sound is turned on. Click the bottom right corner of the video to enlarge.


Sayler / Morris
Threshold (Meditation Edit for The Merwin Conservancy), 2020

This new edit of Threshold is a meditative video created by artist duo Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris (Sayler / Morris and The Canary Project), in collaboration with The Merwin Conservancy, as an offering of sanctuary in a time of crisis. The filmmakers wish to thank W.S. Merwin and Paula Merwin for generously welcoming them to film at their home in 2016.

Threshold was originally part of a site-specific installation in collaboration with Ian Boyden titled Palm: All Awake in the Darkness that was commissioned by American Writers Museum in Chicago with support from the Poetry Foundation.  The video was shot entirely in and around a small room that the poet W.S. Merwin built for meditation. This room sits in the middle of a palm garden that Merwin and his wife Paula grew on a wasteland left by colonial plantations on Maui. Tree-by-tree, they transformed the land into what Merwin called a “garden that aspires to be a forest.” The title of the video is taken from one of Merwin’s poems in which he writes, “what did I have to do with anything I could remember / all I did not know went on beginning around me…”

Concept, direction and editing:  Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris (Sayler / Morris)
Sound design:  Matthew Patterson Curry and Sayler / Morris
Videography: Sayler / Morris
Additional videography:  Lauren Harper
Color correction and additional editing:  Andrew Rice

Produced by Sara Tekula for the Merwin Conservancy

Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0


“The Sitting Room” has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BOMB Magazine, among other national media organizations.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michael Morrison says

    March 30, 2020 at 9:52 am

    Reminds me of 1997 when my wife and I took care of a hui property in Upper Nahiku after my best friend died there the previous year. Two old cabins on an overflow stream. Only natural sounds all day and night unless a distant neighbor fired up a chainsaw. Was a great place to write, read and work and easily fall into a rhythm of quiet growth and interior/exterior exploration.

    Reply
  2. Karen O'Brien says

    March 30, 2020 at 1:47 pm

    thank you thank you thank you

    Reply
  3. Linda Toussaint says

    March 30, 2020 at 2:51 pm

    I lived on Maui in that area for several years and had a friend who lived on his road. This video is just beautiful, the sound and I could “smell” it, instantly transported. Thank you. thank you so much for this amazing break in my day.

    Reply
  4. Randi Rohde says

    March 30, 2020 at 4:24 pm

    The thing that struck me about Merwin’s Zen meditation shack, when I saw it in person, was that it’s a potting shed on the opposite side: The yin and yang of manual exertion on one side and mental immersion on the other. I wanted so to sit up there and look out. Now I have and may again. Thank you for this lovely evocative video.

    Reply
    • Deb says

      March 30, 2020 at 11:56 pm

      Thank you for sharing about the potting shed. :)

      Reply
  5. Mae Martin says

    March 30, 2020 at 6:02 pm

    I dragged my Teenage kids there on a Maui vacation. They gave me dirty looks the whole afternoon but have thanked me since. What an amazing place. One of the best places on the planet. And this film is a beautiful And amazing representation of how the deep rooted work the Merwin’s Will forever be endowed by the natural universe. The only true thing we can count on.

    Reply
    • Sara Tekula says

      May 4, 2020 at 12:17 pm

      Mae, thank you for joining us in the garden, and for bringing your family. We hope you can return again.

      Reply
  6. Eloise Van Tassel says

    March 31, 2020 at 5:12 am

    What a welcome antidote to the daily news feed.

    Reply
    • Sara Tekula says

      May 4, 2020 at 12:16 pm

      Mahalo, we most certainly agree.

      Reply
  7. Dania says

    March 31, 2020 at 6:40 am

    Even though I live a short car ride away, everything in inaccessible right now. Hunkering down and thinking about the past and how meaningful it is to our collective future.

    Reply
    • Sara Tekula says

      May 4, 2020 at 12:16 pm

      We’d love to think with you, Dania! Visit this little valley in Ha‘ikū as often as you like, through video.

      Reply
  8. Piper Morris says

    March 31, 2020 at 7:01 am

    As one who does not meditate well (I have tried!), I was determined to focus and be mindful while watching this lovely evocative film. CNN News breaking news about the coronavirus epidemic and political fundraising emails flashed occasionally in the upper right corner of my laptop screen, but I tuned them out (rare for me) and just watched the slow, lulling motion of the palm fronds, and let the tropical bird calls and the very, quiet subtle music center me. Twenty minutes was almost too much for me, restless soul that I am, but I stayed with it. And it made all the difference in my mindset. Thank you for making this.

    Reply
    • Sara Tekula says

      May 4, 2020 at 12:15 pm

      Thank you for sharing your experience, Piper. And, for staying with it!

      Reply
  9. Lewis Koch says

    March 31, 2020 at 8:19 am

    Music for the eye
    in perfect pitch
    The picture pours a meditation

    … and we find that 20 minutes is just the beginning

    “I had thought it was what would come later but it had
    been waiting.”

    Reply
    • Sara Tekula says

      May 4, 2020 at 12:14 pm

      Beautiful.

      Reply
  10. Mark Langan says

    March 31, 2020 at 9:52 am

    Very nice. I was working on my sculptural art and barely watched any of the video as the sounds were what took me to a different place. Lovely…thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Sara Tekula says

      May 4, 2020 at 12:14 pm

      That is so good to hear! The sound really was done beautifully, and listening to the garden is a wonderful practice.

      Reply
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