tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70242941878802018782024-03-21T06:04:04.028+00:00Sparks In Electric JellyMovies, Books, Art, Music, Oddities and AllsortsJez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.comBlogger326125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-17428286723770941292018-10-16T23:10:00.000+01:002018-10-17T20:24:13.787+01:00The Dark Masters Trilogy by Stephen Volk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOhF-0wWyq48PBHAMa9a6Tz1qRc2FnQ1fcqYpzhu2kA_yJfV0Kxc24ne35Udh5IccJ0Y-6jZefQvTeb9N5lihumcfbcYNiRvoYuxNlT_qCEZY7ZSmyzR0rEMLJ414-i2BhFMOeE25PYzW/s1600/dark-masters-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOhF-0wWyq48PBHAMa9a6Tz1qRc2FnQ1fcqYpzhu2kA_yJfV0Kxc24ne35Udh5IccJ0Y-6jZefQvTeb9N5lihumcfbcYNiRvoYuxNlT_qCEZY7ZSmyzR0rEMLJ414-i2BhFMOeE25PYzW/s400/dark-masters-cover.jpg" width="306" height="400" data-original-width="925" data-original-height="1209" /></a></div><br />
Three of Stephen Volk’s recent novellas, portrait stories of significant figures in the fields of horror and the macabre, have been lovingly and lavishly repackaged and conjoined as the <a href="https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/the-dark-masters-trilogy--hardcover-by-stephen-volk-4696-p.asp">‘Dark Masters Trilogy’</a>. Here we meet, in youth, middle age and premature old age, ‘Fred’ Hitchcock, Dennis Wheatley and Peter Cushing in the environs of Leytonstone, Netherwood and Whitstable. It’s a resonant overarching title. The real characters embedded in these tales of psychological suspense, uneasy horror and occult powerplay were all masters of the dark arts. But the darkness is also the existential void, the crisis of the soul with which Volk confronts them. Peter Cushing’s sense of desolation after the death of his beloved wife Helen; ‘Fred’ Hitchock’s childhood bewilderment at the strange machinations of the adult world; and the sense of inadequacy and social inferiority which bedevils Dennis Wheatley. <br />
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There is a thematic coherence which fully warrants the use of the word ‘trilogy’, and subtle links are included which connect the worlds of the three focal characters. In Whitstable, a waitress is referred to as ‘a Kentish Kim Novak’; Both Hitch and Aleister Crowley are likened to Buddha; Alesteir Crowley recalls an encounter with a young and enthusiastic Christopher Lee, who professes to be an ‘enormous fan’ of Dennis Wheatley (a gentle dig at Sir Christopher’s tendency to name drop); and Dennis Wheatley recalls his friendship with Hitch and Alma. But is this testing, this drawing out through the psychic scouring of adversity and terror, which draws the three portraits together and provides us with such a rich, ambiguous and ultimately loving depiction of legendary figures made human, revered icons rendered vulnerable. The stories, inflected with biographical detail but straying far from the straight path of fact, nevertheless feel true. Volk’s investment in the lives and the work stamps them with the hallmark of authenticity. <br />
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Novellas they may be, but Whitstable, Leytonstone and Netherwood are highly concentrated, multi-layered works which encompass a complex array of themes. As the titles suggest, they are partly evocations of place. The East End London of Leytonstone, where Fred’s father owned a grocer’s at 517 The High Road; The Kentish fishing town of Whitstable where Peter Cushing became such a well known resident; and the Hastings guest-house where Alesteir Crowley lived out his declining years. But these are also places rooted in particular historical moments, hence the appending of dates to the titles in the contents pages. Leytonstone is set in 1906, the pre-First World War twilight of Empire; Netherwood takes place amidst the post-war ruination and austerity of 1947 – ‘the blighted land’ as Dennis Wheatley thinks of it whilst gazing out of the train window; And Whitstable is situated in 1971, at the beginning of the steady decline of the decade following the euphoria of the 60s. <br />
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Together, they offer a kaleidoscopic portrait of England (more particularly, South Eastern England) across the twentieth century. Volk has a way of nailing time and place with a keen, haiku-like phrase. An ‘airfix blue sky’ is the perfect simile for a clear 70s day. And the use of the word ‘malachite’ to describe the particular shade of green livery employed by southern railway carriages somehow immediately fixes them to the 40s world, to British Transport Film colour. Indeed, the very fact that Dennis Wheatley, a writer at the height of his bestselling renown with the wealth attendant upon it, travels by train says much about the nature of post-war, pre-Beeching Britain. Small details are also used like cuttings in a nostalgic scrapbook to summon the particularities of an era. In the case of the 1971 of Whitstable, songs on the radio (Grandad and My Sweet Lord), Pan Books of Horror and a Doctor Who Radio Times cover heralding the first appearance of Roger Delgado’s Master. <br />
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This national portraiture also encompasses a keen sense of class division, which Volk delineates with great subtlety. The ‘monster’ of Whitstable is a working class character, and Peter Cushing’s entrance into his ‘lair’ and encounter with a working class mother is a finely observed distillation of the bristling class conflicts boiling to the surface at the time. It’s a measure of the novella’s loving tribute to Cushing (it was first published in his centenary year) that he is shown as being entirely understanding of her verbal hostility towards his refined accent and bearing, even though he feels each ‘fuck’ thrown at him as a blow. The class distinctions of the East End Edwardian milieu are exemplified by the division of the local into saloon and public bar areas. Even within the fairly narrow economic range of this neighbourhood, there seems some inherent need to put up barriers to make the stratifications of social position visible, to ensure they are correctly observed. The tensions created by the maintenance of such appearances are one of the barely understood influences which go towards forming the character of young Fred, and thereby, of course, his subsequent art. <br />
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Dennis Wheatley is plagued by a sense of social inferiority, of the hollowness of his achievements. Joan, his wife, is from an aristocratic background and he never feels a part of her circle; ‘they were Joan’s people, not his’, as his inner chorus comments during a recollection of a grilling at a particularly awful party. Like Hitch, the persona put on by the adult Fred, he feels the obligation to put on a front, an affable, clubbable façade. Peter Cushing, feeling utterly hollow in his grieving for Helen, also finds himself compelled to don his outward cloak of charm and gentile courtesy when all he really wants to do is hide from the bright life and expectations of the world. Pedro Marques’ cover art captures this aspect of the trilogy perfectly. The sense that we are glimpsing a series of authentic, troubled selves behind a carefully fashioned masquerade. This is not to say that we are offered the kind of one-dimensional ‘dark-side’ portraits of well-loved characters which have been a staple of TV biopics for some time now. These three stories are an attempt to create rounded, human characters by taking biographical details and fleshing them out with themes and preoccupations distilled from the work. <br />
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It’s an interesting fictional form, a blend of tribute, biographical meditation and auto-commentary on the subjects’ work. All three masters are caught within refractions and inversions of their own archetypal tales. Peter Cushing’s confrontation with a monster whose ‘evil’ seems inherent and ineradicable; Fred’s early reification of the ‘fair-haired girl’ icon, his manufacture of a suspense narrative whose ultimate, ever-receding aim is self-discovery; and Dennis Wheatley’s reluctant involvement in an occult thriller with the model for one of his own villainous magi, Alesteir Crowley - A scenario which complicates his own need for a world in which the forces of darkness and light are clearly defined, as they had seemed to be during the war. <br />
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These all work magnificently as tales of terror, unease and suspense in and of themselves. But the moulding of the fictional narratives around psychological portraits of actual artists (whether their artistry comprised of writing, film directing or acting), the splicing together of art and biography, results in a reflection on the extent to which authors, auteurs and actors invest truthful elements of their own being into their work (to whatever degree of self-consciousness or fanciful disguise). This also becomes a comment, particularly pertinent in an age of rampant celebrity, on the way that readers or viewers can mine books, films or performances for seams of the creator’s authentic inner life, which may be hidden by the cultivated public persona presented to the prying world. Dennis Wheatley’s experiences at Netherwood, his co-option and testing by the arch manipulator Alesteir Crowley, leads him to contemplate the theme for his next novel, the book which will free him form a debilitating period of writer’s block, a crisis of self-belief. He comes up with the title and the character sketch of the protagonist: The Haunting of Toby Jugg. With its portrayal of an airman physically and psychologically traumatised by the experience of war, it’s generally considered his most substantive and personally nuanced achievement. <br />
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Oddly enough, I have recently come across two further pieces of writing which have directly reflected upon the Dark Masters Trilogy. Earlier this year, I saw the film <a href="http://shirleycollinsmovie.com/">The Ballad of Shirley Collins</a> and later read Shirley’s excellent autobiographical memoirs <a href="http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/all-in-the-downs/">All In The Downs</a>. Collins was a young girl growing up in Hastings during the post-war period. Her mother was a member of the local Communist party and would send Shirley and her sister Dolly out into the town to sell the party magazine the Daily Worker. Dennis Wheatley would have been horrified to see it. In the film, Shirley is seen watching the revived Jack In the Green ceremony in her old home town. More Pagan rituals in Hastings. She was aware of Crowley’s presence at Netherwood at the time. She notes that she and Dolly first sang in public at Oakhurst Hotel on The Ridge as part of a Hastings Communist Party social weekend. Netherwood was just nearby. Crowley ‘had a reputation as a person to keep clear of – and I know that when Dolly and I were walking along The Ridge to The Harrow where our Uncle Wally and Aunt Nell in their Tudor farmhouse, we’d always cross to the other side of the road and creep by. Then run!’ This is no doubt an anecdote which she has regaled to her good friend David Tibet, who was instrumental in encouraging her back to singing once more. Tibet creates powerful music of an incantatory, recitative nature with Current 93, constructing his own occult mythologies in which the forces of good and evil battle struggle for ascendancy in scenarios of Gnostic apocalypse. He was also one of the authors of Netherwood: The Last Resort of Alesteir Crowley, by a ‘Gentleman of Hastings’, a book which Volk found in a bookshop in the Old Town (an area which Shirley’s mum considered ‘rough’) and which proved indispensable for the writing of his own Netherwood tale. The introduction of All In the Downs is written by Stewart Lee, a great fan and supporter of Collins. Lee is one of the writers appearing in an anthology of horror stories written by comedians and edited by Johnny Mains and Robin Ince, <a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/dead-funny-9781907773761">Dead Funny</a> (and its follow up, Dead Funny Encore). Volk dedicates the Dark Masters Trilogy to Johnny.<br />
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Another comedian with a story appearing in Dead Funny is Matthew Holness. His story Possum, about a tormented puppeteer, is the basis for a forthcoming film of the same name (with a very, very disturbing poster, particularly if you are an arachnaphobe). Holness was interviewed by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/12/from-garth-marenghi-to-big-screen-horror-what-the-lost-boy-of-comedy-did-next">the Guardian</a> about it. He talked about his childhood in Whitstable, and his early obsession with the horror genre. He met with Peter Cushing in town, of course. Cushing ‘expressed concern that the six-year old asking for an autograph knew so much about Hammer’. Did young Matthew have a copy of Dennis Gifford’s Monsters In The Movies, I wonder. When he passed his 11-plus, Cushing gave him a copy of his autobiography with a lengthy inscription (yes, he really was a lovely man). Connections, connections. <br />
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In telling tales whose focal characters are key figures in the literature and cinema of horror and the macabre and incorporating them within contemporary variations of their own archetypal narratives, Volk also interrogates the nature of the genre. He suggests the insights into human nature, the understanding of the moral struggles constantly at work in the world and, strangely enough, the comforts which it can afford. Dennis Wheatley, in being granted a glimpse of his eventual obscurity, comes to the conclusion that there is a certain nobility and honour, an essential usefulness in providing people with imaginatively diverting and luridly exciting entertainments in a post-war era which has left people in a state of psychological shock. The names of Dachau, Buchenwald and Belsen are recited like an appalling dark litany in both Netherwood and Whitstable. In Leytonstone, the celebration of Empire Day, a tableau which is built around the famous photo of young Fred, clad in military attire, sat upon a pony outside his dad’s grocers in a street bedecked with Union Jacks, anticipates the clash of Imperial powers in the First World War, and the disastrous fractures of world politics and economics which ensued. What can a literature of terror do to encompass (or even to attempt to exclude) such terrible knowledge of the depths to which humanity can sink? How can the old Romantic and Gothic traditions continue to provide their sublime terrors, their subtle frissons in the face of the numbing extremity of the horrors starkly presented in newpaper photos or on the TV screen throughout the 20th century. Peter Cushing perhaps speaks for Volk in his self-defence of the genre for which he had unwittingly become such a defining figure. Answering a no-doubt oft-voiced question as to why he made such ‘horrible films’, he explains ‘I think the best so called “horror” shows us our worst fears in symbolic form and tries to tell us in dramatic form how we can overcome them’. <br />
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For Volk, a romantic humanist, the answer is connection, always connection. It is Hitch’s tragedy that he never truly seems to find it. There is always a hollow chamber within, a cell inhabited for life by the confused and frightened boy who must keep the world at bay with ordered systems (from train and tramspotting to the plotting of perfect cinematic thrill rides) and a bluffly remote façade of macabre joviality. The damage sustained in childhood and carried through into adulthood, and the threat to children from the damaged or simply monstrous is a theme which recurs in Volk’s fiction, from Afterlife to Ghost Watch and The Awakening. It is present throughout this trilogy too. <br />
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Both Cushing and Wheatley are firm believers in a benevolent Christian God, a force for good in the world. Their worldview is strongly moral, with an underpinning commitment to confronting evil wherever it might be encountered. For Wheatley, as for so many others, the Second World War was a fight against the encroachment of an evil ideological poison in the world. The ritual battle he takes part in with Crowley as an unlikely ally is a struggle against a kind of occult fascism, an attempt to use magic potency attained through pitiless cruelty and brutish bullying to exert a violent, self-aggrandising power. The dark magus whom they oppose is the antithesis to Wheatley’s values and it turns out, surprisingly, Crowley’s. His utter disconnection from all human connection, fellow-feeling and compassion are what makes him truly monstrous. The same is true for the monster whom Cushing confronts in Whitstable. He talks of life being about satisfying ones appetites, and talks of developing the taste for the once prevalent local delicacy of oysters (a scene with uncomfortable echoes of Laurence Olivier’s seduction of Tony Curtis in Spartacus). This is stated as if it were a self-evident truth. Cushing quietly offers an alternative credo in his mind. Life is given meaning through love. Peter’s love for Helen, and Dennis’ love for Joan. This is the redemptive force. Whether it derives from a benevolent God or from the shining heart of the Human spirit. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-56945699362741689352017-12-28T21:55:00.000+00:002017-12-28T22:01:34.516+00:00Freeform Fall Out: Absurd Conclusions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmjXfoSAphUmMHDBjPETYhHVuqW6Losecz1dCDzGeCMIMU1ZuuTisbAKadO-NKd5oqNAd51KBVOELVvqBl-_-p4mO45tjZv0LCdR2rO-cjitT00W9vvU0KF_nqqIBxWEHwMIxMY-BHBQSq/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h17m00s996.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmjXfoSAphUmMHDBjPETYhHVuqW6Losecz1dCDzGeCMIMU1ZuuTisbAKadO-NKd5oqNAd51KBVOELVvqBl-_-p4mO45tjZv0LCdR2rO-cjitT00W9vvU0KF_nqqIBxWEHwMIxMY-BHBQSq/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h17m00s996.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><br />
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What to make of Fall Out. Its radical abandonment of traditional narrative structure and refusal to offer neat conclusions or some overarching explicatory rationale to round things off annoyed the hell out of many viewers. It resembled some of the science fiction being published in New Worlds magazine at the time under the tutelage of Michael Moorcock and his merry band of rebels, taking generic conventions and inverting them, cutting them up and rearranging them in new and kaleidoscopic configurations. Inner space was the new destination, the controls set for the heart of the collective unconscious, cruising above the media landscape and confronting the spectres of modernist alienation rather than the aliens of outer space fiction. There’s something of the playfully revolutionary jouissance of the Jerry Cornelius stories, written by Moorcock and other hands and featuring the Harlequinesque anti-hero who was something of a New Worlds house character, to the seemingly chaotic free for all of this grand folly of a finale. Entirely apposite, then, that the novelisation of The Prisoner, published in 1969, was written by a stalwart of the New Worlds scene, Thomas Disch. His own highly cerebral, witty, absurdist novel Camp Concentration, serialised in New Worlds in 1967 and published in 1968, had a definite air of The Prisoner about it. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD-Hi9zRBXmUThxl4Jo51ebGTallXRVFLFWATYt3IA0jldqURtELcPWKVqzq8TdtPPwSzoXCaMmNInQzvDnQxc98S7B0xxJhlZxo0lQB7pg5q9eUos9m9QTdlxWlG9C3TjBmAUw31KCzf7/s1600/cornelius_dean.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD-Hi9zRBXmUThxl4Jo51ebGTallXRVFLFWATYt3IA0jldqURtELcPWKVqzq8TdtPPwSzoXCaMmNInQzvDnQxc98S7B0xxJhlZxo0lQB7pg5q9eUos9m9QTdlxWlG9C3TjBmAUw31KCzf7/s400/cornelius_dean.jpg" width="302" height="400" data-original-width="300" data-original-height="397" /></a></div><blockquote>Mal Dean's depiction of Jerry Cornelius in New Worlds</blockquote>The title itself could be interpreted in any number of ways, and hints at the way language itself is toyed with, dissected and punningly reassembled to probe new meanings, in the last two episodes. It could indicate the radioactive devastation of nuclear fallout; or it could be a falling out of love, something which the general public certainly experienced in the wake of the final episode; a falling out of favour; the tumbling out of some environment or vehicle; or the outcome or after effect of some momentous event. So the very choice of title breathes ambiguity and a multiple set of possible meanings. Nothing is fixed, everything is open and fluid, inviting a personal response, a direct and active engagement. It’s really the perfect form with which to finish the series. The viewer is not directed, there is no imposed message; Merely a succession of suggestive pointers, symbols, archetypes and associative triggers which invite the viewer to make their own connections, to unspool their own thread through the labyrinth. It’s a free improvisation, written in a burst of intense and fevered creativity by Patrick McGoohan, the structure forming in its own arc of burning creation; A Pink Floyd UFO Club freak out or Coltrane Ayler blast, communing with the divine fire or with some inner core of self-immolating spirit. In keeping with this spirit, I will follow the freeform line wheresoever it might lead me, allowing it to spark whatever connections and flaring associations light up my brain. Tune in, turn on, fall out.<br />
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A funereal organ plays as we are guided through a recap of the previous episode, this singular ‘previously on…’ convention introduced to make the continuity between Once Upon A Time and Fall Out apparent. The ‘till death do us part’ zero sum game is condensed into a couple of highly charged minutes, the seven ages of man played out briefly on the notional stage, stripped of all but significant or emotionally resonant props. A spare setting for the psychodramatic duel played out in the arena of inner space. Such staging would be taken to its ultimate filmic conclusion in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, houses and streets delineated by lines drawn on bare boards. The influence of the theatre of the absurd seems apparent here, of playwrights like Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett. Minimal props (two dustbins, a single bare tree) paring external reality to its essence; circular, sparring dialogue used as power play, actual meaningful communication frequently devolving into fragmented and nonsensical anti-language; a similar breakdown in logic and the accepted moral order; and a general air of universality, unanchored to specific time or place. These are internal stages upon which the eternal dramas of the human condition are played out, often with a nod and a wink, an antic aspect and dark, gallows humour which sticks two fingers up at whoever is in charge of the whole mess, whoever is Number One. Absurdism was a popular artistic mode in countries oppressed by authoritarian regimes. The existential condition could easily be translated into the political. Vaclav Havel’s plays from the 1960 were filled with absurdism and one of the finest films of the Czech New Wave cinema, which flourished in the brief Prague Spring before the Soviet tanks rolled in in 1968, Jan Nemec’s The Party and the Guests, is distinctly Prisoner-like in its mood. Protagonists of absurdist dramas, generally of lowly state and lacking appreciable power or agency, struggle to find meaning in a world which seems almost comically arbitrary and full of cruel irony. They seldom succeed in their quest. Some come to accept that this is the fundamental nature of the universe and adjust their perspective and expectations accordingly. Or not. A paradigmatic scene occurs at the end of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The two Chaplinesque (or Keatonesque?) clowns debate the practicalities of hanging themselves on the single bleak tree which has been the central focus of the spartan theatrical landscape throughout. One of them removes his belt for the purpose. His trousers fall down. Ya gotta laugh.<br />
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So, Number 2 lies dead in the shipping container bedsit prison, the steel shutter slamming shut with conclusive finality. A book loudly closed. In this Seven Ages of Man scenario, he was tricked into taking on the final role, a transference with fatal consequence. A deadly fall out. The smooth-headed surveillance ‘eye’ from the control room asks Number 6 ‘what do you desire?’ A highly suggestive question with hints of fairy tale wizardry. Be careful what you wish for. No.6 wishes to meet No.1. ‘I’ll take you’, he is told, and they walk out of the room, past the red ‘doomsday’ countdown clock, it’s hands set in the midnight position. <br />
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The titles are a variant on the repetitive norm, the reiterated words of defiance followed by the mocking laughter of authority. A circling aerial shot celebrates the eccentric architectural hodge-podge of Portmeirion, and its equally eccentric architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, is thanked (with a free advertisement for The Hotel Portmeirion – you too can come and stay in The Village). A different, looser take on Ron Grainer’s theme emphasises heavy bass brass, creating an atmosphere of ominous anticipation. Alexis Kanner’s credit is boxed, making it look like a calling card. Look out for him, Patrick McGoohan is saying. As the circling gyre narrows, we home in on the dome of Number 2’s residence, at which point Patrick McGoohan’s writing and directing credit is superimposed on the screen. We are spiralling in to the heart of the maze, to the secret chamber within which the mystery of power, of the ultimate authority will be revealed. Or so we might innocently assume.<br />
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In the lift to the underworld. Close ups of the faces of the scrutinizer and the butler are like masks of fixed solemnity. Number 6, in contrast, has a mildly sardonic turn to his lips, a refusal to take this funereal parade with the same level of gravity. He has become aware of the essential absurdity of the environment in which he has found himself. To accept it on its own terms, to accede to the hierarchical structure it has created, would be to become a part of it, to cease questioning and seeking to uncover and ultimately destroy the power which underlies it. His shadow is cast on steel doors as they slide apart; the divided self, the schizoid man. Beyond are two portable clothes racks hung with shivering, clacking coat hangers. They are like surrealist objets trouvées, the kind of suggestive sculptures made from everyday artefacts that are lent a sinister or uncanny air by a focus on their form or likeness to other forms, their utility de-emphasised; Duchamp’s bicycle wheel or Max Ernst’s vacuum cleaner (later appropriated by Frank Zappa). At the end of the corridor they form, a pallid plastercast dummy wearing Number 6’s civvies. ‘We thought you’d be happier as yourself’, the scrutinizer says in a hollow, machine-like voice. It’s the first hint at an instability, a hollowness at the heart of Number 6. The costumes of the Village pageant, the guises he has put on in the course of his enforced role on its artificially bright stage, have all been put away. He is left with the rather austere clothing of the self. No hint of holiday camp jollity, adventure story regalia or Western cowboy gear here. What is the self we are left with when the dressing-up box is put away? <br />
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The white-faced dummy looks tense, hunched, with a lurching gait. Together with its broad forehead and dangling, apelike arms, it has the bearing of Frankenstein’s pitiful creature, sundered from its contemptuous father-creator at its unnatural birth and stumbling blindly through a hostile world, prone to exploitation by manipulative forces offering the semblance of friendship. The camera zooms in on this mocking dummy, the kind of effigy carried in procession before being burned in a ritual blaze. Number 6’s shadow stands beside it for a brief instant before it merges with this pale self. The black and the white, the shadow and the light. We shall see this motif repeated shortly. A close-up of the dummy’s head, and we see Number 6’s hand reach for the neck as if to throttle it. A hint of self-negation, of an aspect of the hidden self which needs to be eliminated? Shadows of revelations to come. This implicit gesture of violence, momentary though it is (the hand, after a brief hesitation, moves down to unbutton the ‘casual’ shirt) heralds the fanfare of the French national anthem, leading in to the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. From the very outset its use is highly ironic. <br />
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More doors slide open (this is an underground lair with a proliferation of sliding doors) revealing Number 6 in his grey everyman suit, the institutional grey of the steely corridors. We process through a rocky corridor whose geological nooks are filled with an installation of jukeboxes, all seemingly playing the Beatles anthem, beamed to the world via communication satellite on 25th June 1967. The jukeboxes make for an incongruously sleek chrome and glass, neon-illuminated presence in these chthonic corridors; the natural and artificial set in uneasy juxtaposition. The shaky, hand-held camera, which gives an air of cinema verité immediacy, zooms in on the jukeboxes, isolating them as pop art objects, signifiers of primary coloured space-age consumerism. The culture of the future NOW. Oddly enough, none of the songs glimpsed remotely conjures the spirit of the psychedelic age, the summer of love now 50 years distant as I am writing. One which particularly catches the eye is Al Jolson, the embodiment of minstrelsy, the black-face entertainments whose grotesque stereotyping of African-American performers were being torn to shreds by the fierce rhetoric of black power revolutionaries. <br />
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At the end of the rocky corridor, an imposing wooden door with massive, rust-aged lock. A door heavy with the weight and mass of immemorial power and authority, only to be opened by those entrusted with the impressively sized key. This in close proximity to the array of juke boxes, surface modernity co-existing with a superstructure of unchanging tradition. Britain was never very good at ‘going modern’, as the artist Paul Nash put it. There was always likely to be a foundation of romantic, pre-modern antiquity beneath the sleek, silvery façade. The old guard remained in control, despite surface appearances. And the Butler, of course, is ready with the key, opening the way into the underworld. <br />
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On the other side of the door, an illuminated sign reading Well Come. Words cracked apart, new meaning created, as in classic proto-absurdist writings such as Alice in Wonderland and the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear (whose Incidents in the Life of My Uncle Arly had been filmed to memorably haunting effect by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in the company of John Lennon; Cook also making a daffily distracted and hyperactive white rabbit in Jonathan Miller’s 1966 BBC play of Alice). Here, the open greeting becomes a testy command as well as another reference to ‘wellness’, mental stability. The large cavern we enter is like a parody of a James Bond villain’s lair. All bustling activity amongst clearly distinguished groups of functionaries. The disposable minions. Clusters of stalactites hang down like swords of Damocles in racked arrays, or inverted rows of rockets ready for launching. The whole idea of a subterranean rocket base draws on the experimental laboratories set up by the Nazis in the hollowed out caverns of the Mittelwerk complex under Kohnstein Mountain in central Germany, near Nordhausen. It was here that V2 rockets were built and tested, technology co-opted by the Americans after the war, leading to intercontinental ballistic missile capability (and the Apollo missions leading to the first Moon landing which led to the modernist, techno-utopian space age dreaming of the 60s). The NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) base was installed in a complex beneath Cheyenne Mountain in the 1960s, becoming fully functional in 1967 (the year that McGoohan wrote Fall Out) and housing aerial surveillance and space defence facilities. <br />
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The cavern is full of bustling activity, but there seem to be distinct areas, zones of designated purpose. Medics in green gowns attend to clusters of clinical equipment, scientists in lab coat robes fine tune the dials of imposing banks of electronic control units; 60s computers the size of cathedral organs whose executive capacity could now be condensed onto a hand held device. And mobile cadres of military police, their uniforms having a distinctly American cut. National guardsmen on call to protect the people against themselves. All the stratified elements of a technocratic society.<br />
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The echoing 4:4 tympany of marching military manoeuvres segues seamlessly into the rippling applause of a robed and masked gathering, figures ranked in raked seating. The camera’s panning glide combined with this sonic splicing makes a clear connection between armed force and this occult, masonic judiciary; the secret cult of the elite, those born to power. The masks worn by this select order are split into black and white divisions, happy/sad turns of the smiling or downcast mouth. The theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy combined, the one containing the other. This is the theatre of the absurd, after all, where we laugh at the tragic madness inherent in the human condition, at the tautological justifications of power, control and oppression in the name of freedom, happiness and peace. The black and white divisions betoken a simple-minded dualism, an us and them worldview which creates the conditions for conflict and authoritarian ‘mutuality’. <br />
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The masks give the robed individuals a universalised lack of identity, freedom from the burden of the self. They are reduced to singular types, the fixed and unresponsive face of authority. Approval or opprobrium – the masks offer both. The raised or downturned thumb, according to whim or expediency. Desktop name blocks assign particular areas of control or scrutiny, ranging from specific groups of people to more notional social and philosophical concepts or movements. Direct control and mind control, the baton and the gun combined with the treatise, headline-courting speech and propaganda broadcast. The first three we see are ‘welfare’, ‘pacifists’ and ‘activists’. Elements of the liberal agenda and world view which must be allowed a certain degree of expression and purchase, but not permitted to take root too firmly and thus grow beyond the compass of control. There’s a vagueness about these blanket terms too, which makes them useful tools. When language loses its definition, its precision of meaning, it can be used to evade responsibility and accountability. Amorphous and malleable language can be formed into a weapon, broad terminology honed and sharpened into an insulting dart aimed at an opponent. ‘Pacifist’ and ‘activist’ as reductive, dismissive shorthand for ‘troublemaker’, ‘malcontent’, ‘enemy’; ‘welfare’ as ‘dependency’, ‘weakness’, ‘burden’. The echoes of All You Need Is Love fade away, dying into the rocky crevasses of the age-old chamber. Power is deep rooted, geologically embedded. Its tinny strains in this environment make the ideals of pacifism and activism seem hollow, without any substantial grounding. Flowers in gun barrels are unlikely to make any impact here. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkjKhtre9NcL3BFfSoktmkP_6BwKZr7Y3fOiueieMv_0cqGDzpFQVDgUSoytTNZfIV_FbASIIncdlKrE0-dnKCeqtICdISauP8v6H5E5bBfKugbDj9g717nQJuJ6trfa8F9cZ6qolY2jBe/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h21m31s605.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkjKhtre9NcL3BFfSoktmkP_6BwKZr7Y3fOiueieMv_0cqGDzpFQVDgUSoytTNZfIV_FbASIIncdlKrE0-dnKCeqtICdISauP8v6H5E5bBfKugbDj9g717nQJuJ6trfa8F9cZ6qolY2jBe/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h21m31s605.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><br />
The overseeing eye, the central, orange alerting scrutiniser, puts on his own robe with an economical, flapping crispness of gesture and affixes his concealing mask. His identity, such as it is, is willingly subsumed. He will be identified as ‘identification’ itself, taking his place next to ‘therapy’, ‘reactionists’ and ‘nationalists’. The latter qualities forms of madness requiring therapeutic ‘readjustment’, in the manner of Soviet dissidents silenced with treatments in mental hospitals. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS3kHllpEWoLAl-lHw3r6_qDR4V9ma93MzL65El75RTWtr5jbjb8piug9-GwB84h3U4m0sIf143bWs8epzLWPcayaPv9HfV_KzuRnbWXoH0btbPfUw78RrGRMSZWP1L61teCZjifZhUtzI/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h21m23s794.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS3kHllpEWoLAl-lHw3r6_qDR4V9ma93MzL65El75RTWtr5jbjb8piug9-GwB84h3U4m0sIf143bWs8epzLWPcayaPv9HfV_KzuRnbWXoH0btbPfUw78RrGRMSZWP1L61teCZjifZhUtzI/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h21m23s794.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Surveying the scene</blockquote>A wide-angled camera follows No.6 around the stage-set scene. As with Once Upon A Time, the sense of stage-set design is deliberate, its artificiality foregrounded. And here is our master of ceremonies, looking down from an elevated speaker’s podium, dressed in judge’s drag, red ermine-trimmed robes and 18th century wig. It is none other than the No.2 subjected to mocking caricature as a petty, tantrum-throwing Napoleon in the bedtime story told by No.6 in The Girl Who Was Death. Well, come he invites, leading the guest of honour on. Alexis Kanner, now in the guise of No.48, briefly pops up from a hissing silo which belches clouds of vaporous steam, bound with metallic bands to a sturdy steel rod. A latterday heretic at a technocratic stake, babbling nonsense rhymes to himself as he awaits his fate. An inconvenient reminder that, despite the rapturous applause greeting No.6, the embodiment of resistance and individual integrity, this is not the land of the free. <br />
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The judge is a comic, gavel-thumping buffoon. The red robes and long-outmoded wigs of the judiciary make them a natural target for caricature. They make for a readily available symbol of the establishment’s distance from the realities of the modern world, its rootedness in arcane ritual and tradition. The judge looks as if he belongs in the parochial world of Anthony Trollope novels rather than in this hi-tech bunker. This incongruous blend of tradition and modernity, conservative nostalgia existing side by side with technocratic sleekness, was exploited to quirkily amusing effect in The Avengers, filmed in colour for the first time in 1966 and using its potential to full pop art effect. In Lindsay Anderson’s If…, released in 1968 (the year of Fall Out’s first broadcast) Peter Jeffrey’s headmaster declares that ‘Britain today is a powerhouse of ideas, experiments, imagination, everything from pop music to pig breeding, from atom power stations to mini skirts. That’s the challenge we’ve got to meet’. He says this with his schoolmaster’s robes flapping out behind him whilst standing in front of the neo-gothic arches of a public school steeped in ritual and tradition valorising the continuity of inherited power, addressing boys dressed in a uniform which appears to have remained unchanged since the mid-Victorian period. There is little hint of modernity here.<br />
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Order is called, the applause instantly silenced and ‘a matter of democratic crisis’ announced. Is this to be a trial? If so, then of whom, or what? The intention seems to be ‘to resolve the question of revolt’, an abstruse matter more suited to the sociology classes newly emergent in the 60s. A sanctimonious appeal for civilised conduct is swiftly followed by the observation that ‘errant children must sometimes be brought to book with a smack on their backside’, a remark made with a significant glance at Alexis Kanner’s distractedly humming No.48 and accompanied with a clap of the hands and a manic look of unrestrained glee. I’m reminded of Lindsay Anderson once again (he and Patrick McGoohan seem very much fellow spirits) and the scene in his modern 1970s picaresque O Lucky Man! in which a judge, having pronounced firm and punitive sentence on Malcolm McDowell’s hapless everyman Travis, retreats to the private chambers to undress and receive a damn good thrashing. The judge’s gestures towards corporal punishment gain immediate, reflexive applause. The crowd-pleasing prospect of the Roman circus, give ‘em a bit of blood, a good hanging. As a ‘deterrent’, of course. The ultimate extension of such thinking onto a global scale would be the ‘regrettable bullet’, the bomb which hisses and steams in the corner of the cavern. It is the devouring, fire breathing dragon, the focus of fear from countless mythologies, and this is its lair. And as in the tales of old, it is imperative not to waken it from its torpid slumber. <br />
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The assembly is declared ‘in security’; more dissected words, meanings prised apart and realigned. Fuse them and create insecurity, a more accurate reason for convening, perhaps. No.6 is presented and the judge reaches for heights of elevated, over the top rhetoric. The tone is fawning, obsequious, and leads to the approbatory order ‘this assembly rises to you – sir’. He has been ennobled, given a new title. From Six to Sir. A new kind of depersonalisation? Conducted applause is quelled at a gesture. There is a sense that the whole ceremony is carefully scripted, orchestrated by some unknown author. ‘The transfer of ultimate power requires some tedious ceremony’, the judge apologises with unctuous, hand-wringing deference. The mode of address is modified according to the position of the addressee within the hierarchy of power. No.6, Sir, is invited to ascend a dais atop which sits ‘the chair of honour’, a gilded throne with ornate, rococo putti poutingly looking down from its carved frame. It’s an ego seat, the sort of vanity throne millionaire footballers or property magnates like to be photographed in. The furnishings of self-importance and inflated self-regard. Sir takes the seat, a comic rendition of ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’, in the manner of the ‘Pop Goes The Weasel’ variants which have sent mocking echoes through the Village in previous episodes, accompanying his enthronement, undermining any air of grandiose ceremony which might otherwise attend it. Does it suit him? He looks quietly pleased at this point, poised and relaxed. But we have come to learn that he is very good at biding his time.<br />
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A crane shot looks down over the back of the throne to the guards below. He really is in an elevated position now. A position of power. The throne facing the judge’s podium (or, given his predilection for priestly pronouncement, pulpit). From Sir’s perspective, we switch to a bomb’s-eye view, the baleful green-eyed gaze looking down over all. The symbol of ultimate power, the high-pressure exhalations of steam suggestive of huge latent energies on the verge of destructive release. The switch between elevated throne and bomb perspectives is already hinting at a link between Sir and whatever power fuels the terrible missile.<br />
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The shipping crate descends with clunking metallic gracelessness, its loud and effortful docking giving an impression of great bulk and mass. The barred room is revealed with No.2 still lying dead within. A rising alarm is combined with the closing of steel eyelids over the green eye, and we notice the emphatic red stripe of a number 1 above it for the first time. The all-seeing surveillance eye, the eye of God, or some gnostic demi-urge ruling over its delusory sub-creation. Some kind of command is conveyed to the judge, who complies by issuing the order to ‘resuscitate’. It is all too apparent who (or what) is truly in charge here. The judge’s rhetoric will increasingly appear as empty bombast from hereon in. The bomb itself is the soul of concision. Its message is very clear, and brooks no disobedience. Erect and monumental, it is its own towering, modernist statue testifying to totalitarian power. <br />
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No.2’s final collapse into breathlessness and death is reversed on the oversized monitor projection screen, accompanied by a sped up and backward masked soundtrack; the self-consuming concrète signature of the psychedelic summer of love, as rehearsed on The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows and further explored by the likes of Traffic, The Pretty Things, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and many others. The sound of heady dislocation, of senses being deranged. ‘Revolution’, the judge smilingly observes, as if acknowledging the cultural upheavals such sounds evoke. The revolution in the head. It’s an odd word to hear from his lips. But this is not the sloganeering word which would accrue such hip cachet in 1968 amongst the rock, dope and Ché set. This is evolution with an ‘r’ added; refashioned evolution, enabled by advanced medical technology and occult science. Control over the body, over the state of life and death. Godlike power! A celluloid resurrection. The image is all, as our idea of the self becomes increasingly mediated. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFbiokza8FknCqdi05j43KFLzCuWwT9S4NEJECoyj-jhF2yIfF7P0cWUaGqo9bSRMPOFeJiFkOOerAa-MhY3uaTKPzv-AnrrhXzPqVHGDapNEbW2QcKNimAU_vdxAFdaHE7_BotcfaQz12/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h23m33s105.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFbiokza8FknCqdi05j43KFLzCuWwT9S4NEJECoyj-jhF2yIfF7P0cWUaGqo9bSRMPOFeJiFkOOerAa-MhY3uaTKPzv-AnrrhXzPqVHGDapNEbW2QcKNimAU_vdxAFdaHE7_BotcfaQz12/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h23m33s105.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Dalek surgery</blockquote>The corporeal remains of No.2 are wheeled out by medics, masks perpetuating the general state of anonymous depersonalisation amongst the various cadres which pervades the cavern. The Butler climbs the dais to stand by No.6 (for let us maintain his old identification for the time being, to avoid confusion), giving him the slightest of deferent nods. As the prospect of resurrection is mooted, realigned allegiances are subtly acknowledged. No.2 is subjected to an undignified makeover, accompanied by inappropriate romantic music; part extreme day at the hairdressers, part invasive surgical procedure. With head positioned beneath a conical, 50s robot hairstyling ‘pod’, face entirely covered with shaving foam, he is menaced by a mask extending on a telescoping arm to smother him. It is vaguely reminiscent of a Dalek’s sink plunger appendage. No.2 appears to be turning into a cybernetic hybrid, a techno-medical miracle man. But what will remain of his essential, true self? Is our humanity somehow diminished by our reliance on technology? On the screen, we see the spinning mobile familiar from the General’s speedlearn broadcasts, the camera zooming in and out on its flashing, gyroscopic form. It’s our cue to go into the ads, a little bit of metafictional commentary. ‘Consume’, ‘Obey’, ‘Conform’, ‘Do Not Question Authority’ as the hidden subliminal messages in John Carpenter’s satirical science fiction movie They Live direct us. <br />
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We come back from our interlude of subliminal suggestion, mnemonic jingles firmly lodged in the filing sytems of the subconscious, to hear an instructive lecture from the judge. ‘Revolt can take many forms’, he explains with tedious pedantry. We are about to witness the first of three examples. No.48 emerges from his silo. ‘Thanks for the trip, dad’, he says, with more than a little sardonicism (censor alert! Drug reference!) He will continue speaking in this strange, archaic beatnik argot throughout. Perhaps Patrick McGoohan was thinking back to his role as the jazz drummer Johnny Cousin in the 1961 Othello adaptation All Night Long. This mode of speech, staccato in delivery and pared down to the simplest of syllabic utterances, feels strangely removed from any particular time period. It has more in common with the invented Nadsat lingo of Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange, or of the abbreviated, simplified vocabulary of the media-saturated future portrayed in Nigel Kneale’s TV play The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968), a key referent when thinking of The Prisoner.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivRus-5BTTysxOj4dMKcmOpvyttpVvezCWVC8PWNFNqk3PIHg3ksSj9yK-GE5V8vhRE-fXkfbo9llJGGi0zz9Si03_tYyvghLMvCOvkbMUd5naRTJrOWxkKHaRl0Y0TYbtft4CnhwOwY8S/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h24m33s387.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivRus-5BTTysxOj4dMKcmOpvyttpVvezCWVC8PWNFNqk3PIHg3ksSj9yK-GE5V8vhRE-fXkfbo9llJGGi0zz9Si03_tYyvghLMvCOvkbMUd5naRTJrOWxkKHaRl0Y0TYbtft4CnhwOwY8S/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h24m33s387.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><br />
His theme tune is Dem Bones, a piece of minstrelsy which harks back to our glimpse of Al Jolson on the jukebox (the version here is by the white Canadian vocal quartet The Four Lads, recorded in 1961). It’s a resurrection song, drawing on the biblical story of Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones. He prophesies that the bones will rise again at the word of the Lord, an allegory for the rebirth of nation. Harlem Renaissance writer James Weldon Johnson imagines them drawing together and reconnecting, conjuring up a vision of dancing Harryhausen skeletons in a barren wilderness (a post-apocalyptic landscape?) It’s a song with an implicit sense of mortality, but not a morbid one. These are the kind of skeletons who might be seen, bedecked with roses and sporting Uncle Sam hats, on the covers of Grateful Dead albums. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0_umbGtIsELi4EmHCmKuFHwkWOLnv6x3h92tgko8u4Yq0_TuAmNX43sWHPMpUQ71Pgcap3zAvJBH1g0fzLvhIWmymXu-LeG6895aoiyiPjsVYfdlnkVEGeaB6EmPcEDHHwgddRVlAtO0x/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h24m43s588.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0_umbGtIsELi4EmHCmKuFHwkWOLnv6x3h92tgko8u4Yq0_TuAmNX43sWHPMpUQ71Pgcap3zAvJBH1g0fzLvhIWmymXu-LeG6895aoiyiPjsVYfdlnkVEGeaB6EmPcEDHHwgddRVlAtO0x/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h24m43s588.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><br />
No.48 is set free from his ‘stake’ and cautiously creeps out. With his top hat, roguishly ruffled shirt, black jacket and trousers rounded off with white sneakers, he is like a mocking parody of the sinister funereal aspect adopted by the Village ‘collectors’. An aspect which would also be adopted by the apple ‘bonkers’ in the animated Beatles fantasia Yellow Submarine the following year. A red flower affixed to the hat offsets the dolorous black and a cowbell pendant from a long chain gives the appearance either of a pilgrim or a leper; the bell one of the hippy accoutrements co-opted from the Indian subcontinent. Gold-braided epaulettes also dandify military dress, Sgt Pepper, I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet Edwardian finery from the London Summer of Love. Hippie uniforms. No.48 is alert and wary, like an animal emerging from cover, from the rabbit hole. He looks like an artful dodger urchin, sweaty and besmirched from his confinement in the underworld, the purgatorial holding tube. His look is part London hippy, part LA freak. There’s a certain resemblance to the San Francisco ‘Digger’ Emmett Grogan, particularly in a well-known photo in which he is adopting a wide-legged pose (as if afflicted by poverty-induced Dickensian rickets) and sticking two fingers up with cheeky ragamuffin defiance. No.48 is definitely more merry prankster than passive flower child, more yippie than hippie. <br />
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Judge and jury are driven wild by the strains of Dem Bones unleashed along with No.48. The infectious rhythm throws them into a state of chaotic outrage, this flaunting of due solemnity stirring up a flapping, flustered commotion. The eye of No.1 cracks open and the alarm sounds, adding an extra level of tension to the general panic. Music as revolutionary force, the intoxicating power of Pan’s flute driving celebrants and unwitting auditors alike in to a state of wild, frenzied ecstasy. The music is silenced and order restored. The judge launches into a pontificating speech, puffed up with the dramatic pomp of his own oratory. ‘Youth with its enthusiasm, which rebels against any accepted norm because it must, and we sympathise’, he declaims, turning No.48 into the embodiment of an entire generation. He himself is momentarily like an archetypal progressive 60s judge, one of the Lady Chatterley trial liberalisers inching their confused, classbound and morally earnest way towards greater tolerance and openness. Turning again to If…, he is once more like Peter Jeffrey’s headmaster. He stands in the college quadrangle on founder’s day as Mick Travis and his crusaders launch their armed revolution against the hated establishment figures in this public-school as microcosm of Britain allegory: the church, the army, the teachers as political and judicial legislators and the prefects as brutal police enforcers. ‘Boys! Boys! I understand you! Listen to reason and trust me. Trust me!’ he complacently pleads, arms outstretched in earnest entreaty. The outsider in their group, the woman in their male bande à part, puts a bullet in his head. Again, no peace and love here.<br />
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The judge’s tone soon turns from exaggerated sympathy, the affected understanding of the patronising patriarch, to spittle-flecked vehemence, the rhetoric becoming violent and punitive. ‘When the function of society is endangered, such revolts must cease. They are non-productive and must be ABOLISHED’. Crushed, quashed, elimated, ranks of militarised police sent in with shields and batons. There is a close-up on No.48’s still face, frozen in a look of crestfallen dejection, like a melancholy mime. He raises his bell and gives it a sad little tinkle. ‘Hear the word of the Lord’, he says in conclusion. ‘Lord’ here takes on a satirical cast; M’Lord, your honour, honourable member of the upper chamber, the House of Lords. Sir!<br />
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The tinkle of the bell is like a call to revolt, a meditative cue leading to violent action. Kill for peace. No.6 was repeatedly goaded in the degree absolute duel of Once Upon A Time to relinquish his pacifism and go for the kill. He is reminded that ‘in the war, you killed’, an assertion to which he accedes, with the qualification that he killed ‘for peace’. With Dem Bones echoing around the cavern once more, No.48 leads everybody on a merry dance. It’s like a revolutionary Gene Kelly number, a choreographed ballet of evasion and pursuit covering all the spaces of this underground microcosm. Leaping up onto the science embankment, waltzing around the mobile medical camp, ascending the judicial dais before finally falling to the ground, surrounded by a thicket of pointing gun barrels. The moment where Gene Kelly (‘Gene’ Kanner) slides to his knees and raises his arms to the skies, the camera craning up and drawing the routine to a conclusion. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDSiKuTfDYRidLcVdO5AXtJu8kBeCOO7k2tcDpoAaFIT85OEAjy6DVub32_d3E_ye5-Z2ryQreQA7qdczBhEGEUdCgHR5tNV0TayuJ7-ODWqT8KIXtqUsy4BFetNECD_4qQ29QYHqx2aYf/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h26m46s295.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDSiKuTfDYRidLcVdO5AXtJu8kBeCOO7k2tcDpoAaFIT85OEAjy6DVub32_d3E_ye5-Z2ryQreQA7qdczBhEGEUdCgHR5tNV0TayuJ7-ODWqT8KIXtqUsy4BFetNECD_4qQ29QYHqx2aYf/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h26m46s295.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Recognition</blockquote>Into this tense moment of frozen suspension, No.6 throws in the words ‘young man’. Not so much a means of address as a formal naming. A granting of identity. ‘Give it to me again’, No.48 says with a look of eager anticipation. Someone is listening, he has got through. The routine has found its audience. No.6 gives a tight, controlled smile. Sincere for its lack of phony beam, its cool. ‘Don’t knock yourself out’, he replies in his characteristically terse manner. No.48 springs up, standing rigidly, as if to attention. The camera glides swiftly over to a close-up on his smiling face, turned sideways to look at No.6. ‘I’m bone all over’, he declares, with evident satisfaction. A connection has been made, bone on bone. A new body of outsiders is forming. <br />
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A high crane shot looks down from on high at No.48, corralled by the prodding guns of the military police. It is the judge’s elevated perspective. ‘We must maintain the status quo’, he proclaims, the word of the Lord. Familiarity is discouraged, divisions and social ranks are to be maintained, given numbers observed. Contact across class or professional borders is frowned upon and made note of. Number 1 communicates once more in its alarm siren language, a dialect which commands attention, its green, glowing eye fixing on the judge. He understands the dialect, although he obviously can’t respond in kind. The military police retreat and the new form of address is accepted. No.6’s will is being done. ‘We are obliged, sir’, the judge genuflects. ‘Don’t mention it, dad’ comes the response, followed by a wry exchange of glances between No.6 and No.48.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE6DgQp4nTlSWhSHwFjK5cUXYxsBXtj6fddI0siyqo6NjVpV7Bfp6wfXhOMi1roXs72djVgm-2OjS-fZba_E2tfKfasoEIW5GZB5c0Qc0g-TFT43v7CbHZhMJN13iJ-fstGg7EVxMsLVrG/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h28m41s042.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE6DgQp4nTlSWhSHwFjK5cUXYxsBXtj6fddI0siyqo6NjVpV7Bfp6wfXhOMi1roXs72djVgm-2OjS-fZba_E2tfKfasoEIW5GZB5c0Qc0g-TFT43v7CbHZhMJN13iJ-fstGg7EVxMsLVrG/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h28m41s042.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Observance</blockquote>There follows a farcical trial which takes the form of a rapidfire exchange of dialogue between No.48 and the judge in a hip pidgin argot. The judge may not be able to speak like an armed warhead, but he makes the attempting at adopting youth speak (‘give it to me baby’). Sense is less important than the interplay between the two figures in what amounts to a fast rally, short phrases racketed back and forth, rapid camera cutting creating a kinetic momentum. Some kind of transference take place through the adoption of this condensed lingo, new sense winkled out from nonsense. An Edward Lear or Alfred Jarry Ubu Roi dialogue, advanced pataphysics in action. No.48 instigates a table thumping ‘take, take’ chant, spreading from judge to jury, the elevated crane shot showing the judge joining in the percussive beat with a look of frenzied greed upon his face. No.48 has conducted the dialogue on his own terms and revealed the true nature of authority, the simple, base motivation beneath its platitudinous posturing, the puffed up pontifications of the judge. He kneels down, as if carrying the weight of this knowledge, and holds his arms out in a cruciform pose, head bowed. Youth as sacrificial victim, Isaac offered before the Lord. The camera glides past the ‘Rehabilitation, Education, Youngsters’ name blocks on the jury desks, more aspects of society requiring scrutiny and control. <br />
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A ring of the bell brings the judge and jury out of their trance state, the conductor bringing the performance to a close. The tiny tinkle of the peace bell, held delicately between thumb and forefinger, is the converse sound to the aggressive thumping of the gavel. But it proves just as effective in bringing the gathering to order. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_LD67N-rY-izlBxAGTdlgDxCZwios7uueVpX1UBZLXlw4KvNgK-V2BPHV1eDCON_cc8nf5EtNL5_zlqWns-1o30SzmZkwyMgUd9JT_Y6ou5UtHLAYBVqObE3KoPc75IqlrKcNj6aRF7gs/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h27m50s123.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_LD67N-rY-izlBxAGTdlgDxCZwios7uueVpX1UBZLXlw4KvNgK-V2BPHV1eDCON_cc8nf5EtNL5_zlqWns-1o30SzmZkwyMgUd9JT_Y6ou5UtHLAYBVqObE3KoPc75IqlrKcNj6aRF7gs/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h27m50s123.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Connection</blockquote>The judge, completely misreading (mistranslating) the situation, failing to perceive the act of self-revelation into which he has been conducted, says ‘now you’re high!’ ‘I’m low’, No.48 corrects him. An offer of inter-generational connection is made, an attempt to reach across the generation gap, to create a universality out of ancestral descent, of common humanity; ‘The bones is yours, dad. They came from you my daddy’. But the judge is only interested in using his perceived communication breakthrough to exert power and authority. ‘Confess, confess’, he chants, like come Counter-reformation inquisitor. The chant is taken up by the jury, who fall easily into mass sloganeering chorus. And we are back to the St Vitus Dance of Dem Bones, this time soaked with reverb, as if to emphasise its artificiality, the sense that this time it is a recording being cued up once more. No.48, still in Christlike pose, looks back to No.6 and the Butler, who calmly watch the proceedings whilst the judge and jury are once more possessed with the frenzied spirit of reactionary revelry. Filled with intoxication of power. A small tip of the topper acknowledges their co-fraternity. They stand (or sit) outside this mass hysteria, individuals observing the mob mentality of the conformist mind. As the music plays on, cued by an invisible hand, we see the ‘Entertainments’ and ‘Recreation’ name blocks, further elements of social control (thinking once more of those hidden They Live commands). These blocks are becoming like chapter headings, or markers of the end of episodes. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHkN-b5djVO8ezsfknbBTkly3Q63HjOOxl6fGoGWt0pMpjFot7v-RYSyL7a3RXw2pLbIsSmqYs2lQrcHTzTdZM-hgVm9TwS8mxb7W90NSgIYU074RCqna-ZsyCvCOECS5U-0JzlI3gMSxX/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h28m30s392.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHkN-b5djVO8ezsfknbBTkly3Q63HjOOxl6fGoGWt0pMpjFot7v-RYSyL7a3RXw2pLbIsSmqYs2lQrcHTzTdZM-hgVm9TwS8mxb7W90NSgIYU074RCqna-ZsyCvCOECS5U-0JzlI3gMSxX/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h28m30s392.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Greybeard judgement</blockquote>The judge seems possessed by a spirit of demented hatred as he twitches and jerks to the music. ‘Hip, hip, hooray!’ rounds off the chanting, and once more we ‘hear the word of the Lord’. That word is ‘Guilty!’, spat out with venomous vituperation. The charge, only now read out, after the verdict has been arrived at, is elucidated by one of the anonymous jury members whose board identifies him as being in charge of ‘Anarchists’ (nestled in between ‘Identification’ and ‘Recreation’). We can see a grey beard projecting beneath the chin of his mask, however, trembling with anger and indignation. This is the judgement of age upon youth, the father upon the son. The accusations of ‘total defiance’, the questioning of authority, ‘unhealthy aspects of speech and dress’ and, perhaps most seriously, ‘the refusal to observe, wear or respond to his number’. To know his place. No.48 looks on with amusement, little surprised at the foreordained outcome and punctuating the grave oratory with the occasional tinkle of his bell. The judge looks to No.6 to seek his approval, an acknowledgement of new authority, even if it is only nominal. A regal nod of assent from the throne. ‘I…note them’, Sir remarks of the proceedings, maintaining a cool neutrality. ‘I take it you have no comment at this stage’, the judge prompts. ‘….Not at this stage’, No.6 replies after a dramatic pause. Not at this stage and not on this stage. But he will have comment, at the right time. He awaits his moment. He has learned patience.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ37SxiFS9gOG8H7veRU7I1-7AhohP6es0J6wLo4CzH-FrvQN1LV1DAOHV7jMkBnw1qqWuDmC30oeEaTttmt0cbbg6GRD_sMZl5i5bev91-6HtyCnadLcE8ZiLXXNJvY0OejfMEHbxXXem/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h29m25s606.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ37SxiFS9gOG8H7veRU7I1-7AhohP6es0J6wLo4CzH-FrvQN1LV1DAOHV7jMkBnw1qqWuDmC30oeEaTttmt0cbbg6GRD_sMZl5i5bev91-6HtyCnadLcE8ZiLXXNJvY0OejfMEHbxXXem/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h29m25s606.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Passive Resistance</blockquote>No.48 is carried back to his silo, cross-legged and folded-armed, offering no resistance but no assistance. He is like a peaceful protestor being removed from a sit-in demonstration by the police. He descends, still singing in a babbling undertone, the rebel song of defiant nonsense which conveys another new sense (to some, just a nuisance). ‘I think you’ll find our next revolutionary a different kettle of fish altogether’, the judge announces before collapsing into uproarious, semi-hysterical laughter. The flashing ‘General’ gyroscope appears on the screen again. It’s time for more subliminal conditioning, the advent of the ad break. Be seeing you on the other side.<br />
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The Dalek suction cup is removed to reveal No.2 freshly shaved and shorn with a neatly clipped moustache. He awakens bemused and shaken and reaches for his heart, as if to check that he really is alive. Or perhaps he reaches for his number badge to affirm his identity, his current position. On the large screen there is a reminder of his former self, the hale and hearty fellow bellowing with laughter. It sounds as if the screen self is mocking this new, bewildered incarnation, staggering from his seat of medical resurrection. All present point to the stilled image of No.2 on the screen and join in with the guffaws which still reverberate around the cavern. He has become a figure of fun. But he maintains a vestige of authority and stills the hollow hilarity with a raised hand. Into the ensuing, anticipatory silence he roars ‘I feel a new man’, and laughs in a direct echo of the recorded example we’ve just heard. But no-one joins in with the present laughter. <br />
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Turning to see No.6 on the throne, he greets him with the same jocular familiarity with which he addressed him in his first stint as No.2. ‘My dear chap’, he says with real warmth. ‘Enthroned at last, eh’. He has understood No.6’s underlying psychology, the compulsions and principles which drive him, better than anyone. Turning to the Butler, ‘my little friend, ever faithful’, he beckons him down as if he were a dog. But he remains in his new place, stoically impassive as ever. ‘New allegiances’, No.2 observes with weary resignation. ‘Such is the price of fame’. He turns to address the gathering in a grandiloquent and theatrical manner. ‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen’. Are there any ladies present? This is a notably male affair, with not one single female member of the cast. Then again, 60s counterculture and politics, revolutionary or otherwise, and were notable male. It wouldn’t be until the 70s that feminism (a genuine, continuing and lasting revolution) would begin fully to assert itself. ‘A most extraordinary thing happened on my way…here’, he continues.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBVnh2xHio4iypVIItTTRVn65Nt3MiFHGlPHo6aev6uCsIojWsCZ8XYdEADCur5vopejLlRfwkqAsqtAs1_vj-YkJ2XYNaGkrBFJRFTWiqA72fhtO_304RwqmdroSeiWlzyDkbcWLxOo4q/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h30m46s925.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBVnh2xHio4iypVIItTTRVn65Nt3MiFHGlPHo6aev6uCsIojWsCZ8XYdEADCur5vopejLlRfwkqAsqtAs1_vj-YkJ2XYNaGkrBFJRFTWiqA72fhtO_304RwqmdroSeiWlzyDkbcWLxOo4q/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h30m46s925.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>New configurations of power</blockquote>Now the laughter comes, the jury transformed into a quaking mass of mirth. He seems in absolute command of proceedings, a seasoned orator in his element. Not waiting for an invitation, he ascends the judge’s podium and delivers a speech as if he were at the despatch box. Noting the political power he once wielded, and the ‘use’ the ‘community’ found for him, abducted into the Village just as No.6 had been, he comes out as a born-again rebel, repudiating the weakness of his old self. ‘What is deplorable is that I resisted for so short a time. A fine tribute to your methods’. He really is a new man. Or the old man back again. <br />
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His demise is replayed on the big screen; a terrible thing for anyone to witness, their own death. ‘You couldn’t even let me rest in peace’, he observes with considerable bitterness. ‘How was it done?’ But if he expects explication here, then he has learned nothing (and perhaps the same could be said of the TV audience). ‘Did you ever meet Him?’, No.6 asks, having to further clarify ‘meet Number One’. ‘Face to face?’, No.2 responds, but it comes out sounding like ‘faith to faith’. When No.6 affirms, he roars ‘Meet Him?’ (the capital H implied) with a tone of utter incredulity. The very idea is regarded with contemptuous dismissiveness. And if this No.2 never came near to such an encounter, it’s highly unlikely that any other did. Number One remains the great unknown, the enduring mystery. The Great I Am who has departed the stage set which he constructed. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin78txMAoU1DVcegqnlaztAT673Cj5mry-0bewJQ-YChxj375k3KddA5xSAPww00YvUMW4l_kMhQtGAH_OQALwWcxranzRVTe33NfsIvDAQGt-jJUyQd7aYg6IM0jnMUCQLJKWd7PQ7qGQ/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h31m30s704.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin78txMAoU1DVcegqnlaztAT673Cj5mry-0bewJQ-YChxj375k3KddA5xSAPww00YvUMW4l_kMhQtGAH_OQALwWcxranzRVTe33NfsIvDAQGt-jJUyQd7aYg6IM0jnMUCQLJKWd7PQ7qGQ/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h31m30s704.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Standing up to technologised tyranny</blockquote>Now is the time for such an encounter, however. He approaches the Number One bomb with sidling steps, as if edging towards the brink of a deep chasm, and stares at its closed metal lids. The eye lazily opens like that of a sluggish lizard and he averts his gaze, his sober face lit a sickly green. A naughty, impish look overtakes his features, and he suddenly resembles a mischievous schoolboy plotting some puckish prank. One of the If… gang, grown up but recalling rebellious days. ‘Shall I?’, he wonders aloud. ‘Give him a stare?’ Then, with self-responsive determination, ‘I shall give him a stare!’ He walks proudly up to the eye. Distantly, a voice cries ‘you’ll die’, all but drowned out by the rising outrage of the keening siren. ‘Then I’ll die with my own mind’, he declares, the honourable code of an intellectual hero. He tears his number badge off and flips it aside, discarding it with contemptuous disregard. Throwing the idea away with its physical emblem. ‘You’ll hypnotise me no longer’, he promises. There is a billowing exhalation and the eye slides fully open. He spits on it and lets forth a laugh of unbridled glee, as if he can’t quite believe the bold recklessness of his own actions. He turns around with a ‘whatcha gonna do now’ look, a ‘come and get me’ readiness. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAk7HWWtEhsEGXf5YHWVcFAw_KD6WwAjITNtj8RniDbzk3QHPniEszQ1YkNbAE3dzfMJrSyEOxejDXeSOpit0azwdXC7SHSUNoE-tUqoCAjwjwVEPaXLNq8z1AY7Lu9klpBih5BcUq-36K/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h33m02s409.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAk7HWWtEhsEGXf5YHWVcFAw_KD6WwAjITNtj8RniDbzk3QHPniEszQ1YkNbAE3dzfMJrSyEOxejDXeSOpit0azwdXC7SHSUNoE-tUqoCAjwjwVEPaXLNq8z1AY7Lu9klpBih5BcUq-36K/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h33m02s409.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Passive resistance 2</blockquote>No.6 now gives the order, his authority seemingly intensifying. ‘Hold him…until my inauguration’. No.2 is led away in a dignified processional, arms outstretched in cruciform acquiescence between two military policemen. Another rebel martyr. Returned to his restrictive silo, he goes down laughing; lout and extended laughter at the establishment, at its manifold absurdities. A refusal to take it as seriously as it takes itself, one form of resistance. This was the decade of the satire boom, after all, with the Cambridge Footlights, That Was The Week That Was, the birth of Private Eye and Peter Cook’s Establishment club. The old No.2 (now, like No.48, numberless) has one last word before descending. Looking up into the camera with a fourth wall breaking aside to the audience, he utters that signature Village farewell, ‘be seeing you’. The last time we will hear those words, in The Prisoner at any rate. Exit, laughing uproariously. <br />
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We now look up at a sober and reflective judge, the camera angles of power adjusted. Having played very little part in No.2’s ‘trial’, he embarks on his next explicatory exegesis. At this point it feels like a summary speech before proceedings move onto the next stage. No.6’s ‘inauguration’ perhaps. ‘We have just witnessed two forms of revolt’, he explains, as if to a hall full of slightly dim students. The first was ‘unco-ordinated youth’, the words spat out with undisguised venom. The second ‘an established, successful, secure member of the establishment turning upon and biting the hand that feeds him’. ‘These attitudes are dangerous’, he concludes, the camera pulling back to reveal the military police standing at attention beneath the podium. ‘They contribute nothing to our culture and are to be stamped out’. And the means to achieve that erasure are readily displayed before our eyes. The fascistic nature of authority wielded through armed strength is laid bare. This kind of brutish, firmly stated philosophy is popular amongst certain sections of the populace, however. Give ‘em a dose of national service. The judge’s words are greeted with a round of applause. The camera retreats until No.6 is drawn into the frame, raised throne facing judge’s podium. <br />
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The Number One bomb beeps into life, as if prompting the puppet judge to utter his following encomium. No.6 is subjected to a glowing paean of praise, a valorisation which places him at the other end of the scale. The fawning rhetoric is accompanied by footage of his house being purchased for him, the KAR1 racer being polished and prepared. All is to be restored, the pre-Village status quo reinstated. He is the heroic rebel, the exemplar, the moral compass. He has prevailed ‘despite materialistic efforts’. Is the judge making some allusion to the soul here, introducing the idea of some spiritual dimension to man’s being? ‘All that remains is recognition of a man’, he concludes, the kind of pompous puffery which you might find on the sleevenotes of another tedious 1960s Frank Sinatra LP. ‘Lead us or go’, he offers, holding out the possibility of power (the same offer once proffered to No.2?) We are witnessing the Temptation of No.6. <br />
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A treasure box wheeled in on a hostess trolley offers the material means for freedom. Money, shelter (the key to his house) and unimpeded mobility (passport and traveller’s cheques). A small purse with ‘petty cash’ looks suspiciously like a pouch filled with 30 pieces of silver. Blood money. Hearing that he is free to go, No.6 uses his old interrogatory method. The Occam’s razored question which can be repeated ad infinitum, the five year old’s neverending inquisition. In The General, it destroyed the all-knowing computer with the one simple yet unanswerable question, fed into it by No.6: ‘W.H.Y. Question mark’. Now he uses it to press the judge into clarifying his position. Each response amplifies his standing until he is effectively granted the holy status of sainthood. ‘You are pure, you know the way, show us…your revolt is good and honest. You are the only individual, we need you’. By this point, the judge’s speech has taken on the cadence and language of liturgical incantation. ‘I see’, No.6 finally concedes, although perhaps he is only responding to those final words, ‘we need you’. ‘I’m an individual?’ he asks tentatively, as if this assertion weren’t at the centre of his crusade throughout his Village sojourn. The response, ‘you are on your own’, puzzles him, however. ‘I fail to see’, he replies. Is individuality an aspect of egotism. Does it involve a rejection of the idea of community, of communal identity (the Village sacrilege of ‘unmutuality’)? There is no such thing as society, as another leader once declared. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihVL73aMeX704g6zyPymNt2LwekO1EvzzR_EXDKt_SBZzpW4lY8AmqDg6K_z7LDHH-K0cKEhiCP_4jEDXIUBARwYXqcqgjpo1Gizx8OCJE3MWKsQebkpgzFdMzgEhUb1NfnJbfhLACd3Xi/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h35m39s431.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihVL73aMeX704g6zyPymNt2LwekO1EvzzR_EXDKt_SBZzpW4lY8AmqDg6K_z7LDHH-K0cKEhiCP_4jEDXIUBARwYXqcqgjpo1Gizx8OCJE3MWKsQebkpgzFdMzgEhUb1NfnJbfhLACd3Xi/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h35m39s431.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Taking the loot</blockquote>‘All of this is…yours’, the judge indicates with an expansive sweep of the arm whose import seems to extend well beyond the confines of the cavern. ‘We plead for you to lead us’. He descends from the podium, inviting No.6 to ‘take the stand – address us’. To take to the podium and turn it into a pulpit, a barricade from which to preach revolution, the downfall of all he surveys. He appears hesitant, however. Unsure of himself, the ‘why?’ still echoing around his mind. Can it all really be this easy? Such a sudden and wholesale reversal of the former power dynamic, a ceding of authority which amounts to complete surrender. The Temptation of No.6 continues with a direct appeal to his ego, the ‘I’ of pride and self-belief, the core of the unbending pillar of individuality. ‘You are the greatest, make a statement, Sir, we are all yours’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg20iaRyRr_r5CrM43Jre_Rz3ME_qJ0Z33_E4iVw9T1iwH9vbFAsnvNygTp7J7xphlIMHNoPjyRvYUDp1rd1_xBi8cCSoYX_QPOFGK9laaH6403zMVIUos97VmTIn7nuf77yMo-C_EDl2Lz/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h36m06s326.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg20iaRyRr_r5CrM43Jre_Rz3ME_qJ0Z33_E4iVw9T1iwH9vbFAsnvNygTp7J7xphlIMHNoPjyRvYUDp1rd1_xBi8cCSoYX_QPOFGK9laaH6403zMVIUos97VmTIn7nuf77yMo-C_EDl2Lz/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h36m06s326.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>The great speech</blockquote>No.6 is won over, the ego rises and Sir descends from his throne, taking the key, cash and passport as he passes. Preparing for a quick getaway. But he must make his proclamation first, his firebrand speech which will, of course, be a masterclass in impassioned oratory, transforming hearts and minds and destined to be quoted by succeeding generations. A ripple of applause urges him onward, celebratory processional music adding to the sense of momentous occasion. This will be the climax, No.6 speaks, excoriates the evils of political coercion, mind control and enforced conformity. A gentle tap of the gavel to still the applause, and indrawn breath and… ‘I’. The following words are drowned out by loud, rapturous affirmation, applause and bovine yeasaying. A House of Commons cacophony. A bang of the gavel and a glance at the convocation gathered behind him brings silence, but another ‘I’ immediately triggers further censorious approbation. This too is the price of fame. You never get beyond that towering ‘I’. Once you become (or are made into) an icon, an objectified embodiment of a set of beliefs or ideals, your actual opinion is of little interest. You are the vessel for the opinions and provocations of others. No.6’s ego, his ‘I’, has proved his downfall, the fall out of his heroic struggle and the renown it has brought him. He has been co-opted and thus lost his voice. His passionate speech, so long in the mental composition, is reduced to a series of hollow and increasingly desperate physical gestures. A look of awful horror distorts his face. The judge stills the humiliating hubbub with one casually upraised finger. He is the conductor now. A lesson learned. Things cannot be changed from within. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtJ1BODISl_Wm3rnRByz2gmgRPbB0B4Dlk_76Am01UTjIlN5RBIKiQhE5DYmPwTlXXR7ZmZp0a0O9QfLxS0XhSgZvrwA6LY0DrO5NdcV5X0LwRyKfEOmvPJwTOPqt4JxIQ3Zn-8Armggmj/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h37m31s108.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtJ1BODISl_Wm3rnRByz2gmgRPbB0B4Dlk_76Am01UTjIlN5RBIKiQhE5DYmPwTlXXR7ZmZp0a0O9QfLxS0XhSgZvrwA6LY0DrO5NdcV5X0LwRyKfEOmvPJwTOPqt4JxIQ3Zn-8Armggmj/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h37m31s108.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Realisation</blockquote>No.6’s look of horror relaxes into an dawning of resigned awareness; A painful but necessary enlightenment. ‘Sir, on behalf of us all, we thank you’, the judge says, the fawning language now coloured with a distinctly sardonic shade. His ego has been shattered, but this is a necessary prelude. A ritual humbling before the meeting with Number One. He takes one last look at the gathering before allowing himself to be led to the silo, an accompanying fanfare now mocking and undermining rather than ceremonial, in true Village style. One final rendezvous, a descent into the underworld, a conclusive unveiling. After these commercial messages, beamed directly at your id. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUXhFxVfmjqMBIE4Up2Z65d_j9VcIuDR8RQIA5GGJZwOEw6U4OixLNrFuh9CHg4V5Mf_Y_GXYdyX0IUMkVRI8EUiryQnZcsxtV7HrlgmqhVqiZh-NJ4xiVvavNQcgdpjC_sgP_wlqGUXBb/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h38m14s977.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUXhFxVfmjqMBIE4Up2Z65d_j9VcIuDR8RQIA5GGJZwOEw6U4OixLNrFuh9CHg4V5Mf_Y_GXYdyX0IUMkVRI8EUiryQnZcsxtV7HrlgmqhVqiZh-NJ4xiVvavNQcgdpjC_sgP_wlqGUXBb/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h38m14s977.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Through the rabbit hole</blockquote>We view No.6’s descent into the underworld from below. He has gone down the rabbit hole. What further episodes of Carrollian absurdity await him below, what homicidal monarchs will he encounter? The waning elliptical moon of light from the world above crowns No.6’s noble brow as it looms above us. He truly looks like an icon, complete with glowing halo. Having been ennobled, is he now to be sanctified? From Sir to St. Will such elevation to the ranks of the holy prove equally hollow? He takes a slightly sardonic but at the same time bewildered look back at the world above. Will he ever return, see the light again (even if it is artificial). Sweat beads his brow, just had besmirched the faces of Nos.2 and 48 after they had been risen. It’s the heat of the Inferno, the first circle of Hell. In the grey corridors below, Nos.2 and 48 are locked into their ‘orbits’, just as the sinners in Dante’s Inferno are trapped in their own circles within Hell’s poetically judicial structure. These transparent tubes are like museum specimen jars, designed to display informative exemplars of particular ‘types’. Their unceasing jive song and volcanic laughter continue within the narrow confines, waiting to burst out and infect the world once more. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-4Cd9VQqiCx9il-8v9ov17N-umKVW-1J48VcUop4_UVMdOycVQLad9moAlgOe-XEMF0pk_6yDZVe1AqbgR3xQWbO9JAlgQQGCshQ3k_z7XTCAqdRGly9wNngKpiFC2BFwZPKTro96ShJ3/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h38m31s123.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-4Cd9VQqiCx9il-8v9ov17N-umKVW-1J48VcUop4_UVMdOycVQLad9moAlgOe-XEMF0pk_6yDZVe1AqbgR3xQWbO9JAlgQQGCshQ3k_z7XTCAqdRGly9wNngKpiFC2BFwZPKTro96ShJ3/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h38m31s123.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Rebel orbits</blockquote>Another, unnumbered ‘orbit’ tube opens up to give No.6/Sir (Sir Six?) access. An orbit especially prepared for him, awaiting this climactic moment? The Village announcement jingle heralds the arrival of the Butler, striding purposefully down the corridor. Robed scientists are absorbed in adjusting dials on the walls, looking like acolytes in some technocratic temple. Occult technology, demonic science. The Butler arrives at his side and with the merest of gestures (he is the most economical of fellows) gives him permission to ascend the spiral stair. We began the episode with a helicoptered point of view spiralling into towards No.2’s house. Now we spiral up a coiling staircase into the final chamber of power, the heart of the nautilus shell. Power with Power. It’s the endpoint of the spiralling path we’ve been taking with No.6 from the very beginning, with numerous illuminating diversions and wrong turns along the way. <br />
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No.6 ascends, a look of tense anticipation on his face. Does he secretly know what he will discover? The camera circles up and into the room, its wayward hand-held navigation and wide-angled distortions adding to a sense of perceptual dislocation, of a sensorium on the brink of some disastrous implosion. We are crossing an event horizon beyond which some immense mental gravitation force compresses and stretches consensual reality to the point of complete breakdown. We are in the heart of Rocket Number One, the volatile bomb and it is Revelation time. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsEBW3obP4V9Oq9LUrf9EoSdmf7fqYz6VSKE6E_jxrjzxBFS30vl8on1X1AuT0wd3ASe3vXR0L8fcOasE86FjFPlKDUHApcorqPHtqf8GJlxEAHj2esmL5P0dU976Yb08nPdCM6TkLbZG_/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h39m53s108.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsEBW3obP4V9Oq9LUrf9EoSdmf7fqYz6VSKE6E_jxrjzxBFS30vl8on1X1AuT0wd3ASe3vXR0L8fcOasE86FjFPlKDUHApcorqPHtqf8GJlxEAHj2esmL5P0dU976Yb08nPdCM6TkLbZG_/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h39m53s108.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Global control</blockquote>Control centre is spartan and functional. The steady drip of electronic sound is suggestive of a heart monitor registering life signs. A collection of planetary globes of varying sizes is clustered on a tabletop like so many pale blue bowling balls. One is clearly not enough. Here is a multitude of worlds, hinting at megalomania. If the planet is many things to many people, then total control can only be exerted by claiming all possible worlds, all dreamed of worldviews. The vision of Charlie Chaplin’s Hitlerian caricature Adenoid Hinckel dancing about his command room with a giant inflatable globe comes to mind. Of course, the routine ends when the balloon bursts with a resounding bang.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5t5ESNcgXr_H7Zbp5qKhD2ESrV1RUwmkl2DuPw8oRxRXIAVMlRLElyxulD0N7cw4IJoIL49JXEwfyBAY0cjku_QOJnryb-4CiR1iFDJngLK2uCeGMdNJ6lC_yHoe5Q6Ea2S8puxQ6jEA/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h40m33s043.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5t5ESNcgXr_H7Zbp5qKhD2ESrV1RUwmkl2DuPw8oRxRXIAVMlRLElyxulD0N7cw4IJoIL49JXEwfyBAY0cjku_QOJnryb-4CiR1iFDJngLK2uCeGMdNJ6lC_yHoe5Q6Ea2S8puxQ6jEA/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h40m33s043.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>The fascination with the self</blockquote>The curved pop art bones of plastic phones stand out with brightly coloured red and yellow contrast against the grey metal walls. These are the phones through which so many commands have been issued, gaily coloured, childlike objects which have inspired so much fear. Modern pop art design as a symbol of doom. The tyrannical terror lying beneath the plastic surface of cheerful commercialism. The authoritarianism which makes children of all of us. A TV screen broadcasts No.6’s cautious approach. A McLuhanesque mirror reflecting the true self, the mediated self. As Professor Brian O’Blivion would suggest some 20 years later in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, ‘the TV screen is the retina of the mind’s eye’. And this the retina of the baleful green eye of the Number One bomb which has been watching proceedings beyond. We are in the confined space delineated by the walls of the braincase, the bone cave of the mind, a skull reinforced by metallic shielding. This is the source of all power, the human mind and the myriad possibilities it is able to imagine, the potentialities it can unleash. No.6’s defiant declaration of independence appears on the screen. ‘I will not be pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own’. A positive negation repeated three times, like Peter’s denial after the crucifixion. Three is the magic number. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvLgqzZYd-N2uWoSrkMO1HMY1Hy8oCOrgw7IxV1lL9f3_sENm4-nPvpkb6rFozWqEyNx7ev29uQVXNHGeTKBSgDlyIej_DMePSWrdGqpYJ-Rd0EjYtNkuE4I-Ine4kW-aFm8tJ6GyauNe1/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h40m55s715.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvLgqzZYd-N2uWoSrkMO1HMY1Hy8oCOrgw7IxV1lL9f3_sENm4-nPvpkb6rFozWqEyNx7ev29uQVXNHGeTKBSgDlyIej_DMePSWrdGqpYJ-Rd0EjYtNkuE4I-Ine4kW-aFm8tJ6GyauNe1/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h40m55s715.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>The fragile ego</blockquote>A cowled figure slowly proffers a glass globe to No.6, holding it with the reverence and care due to something of both immense value and brittle fragility. It’s like the crystal snowglobe which Charles Foster Kane holds at the start of Orson Welles’ dissection of power and public reputation Citizen Kane, and which he drops as he utters his dying words. A globe which somehow contains the condensed singularity of his life. The delicate container of the hidden self. The globe held out here is a scrying glass offering true insight. Its inverted fish-eye lens perspective encompasses the control panels and phones, the instrumentation of power. And the circuitry of the mind? The globe is ceremoniously transferred just as the mediated No.6 on the screen says ‘my life is my own’. Well, here it is then. This is your life. The recording stutters, reductively distilling the heroic statement of individualism into a shrill, chittering ‘I,I,I’. The bars crash on No.6’s head as it rushes forward with a look of intense determination. It’s a symbolic scene we’ve seen over and over again at the end of every episode. The prisoner failing to escape, either physically or, increasingly as time unfolds, in some metaphysical sense. The rushing head is reminiscent of the bizarre and disturbing scene in Hitchcock’s Vertigo in which James Stewart’s Scotty’s abstracted head is propelled down a vertiginous corridor somewhere in the depths of his inner landscape as his outer form sits with catatonic blankness in a hospital room. The bars crash three times, a ringing percussion. Here is the ultimate prison, the cells of the self, Piranesian catacombs of the mind. The globe falls to the ground, shattering into a thousand scintillant fragments. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1G1R2LBtS1gkq7yjCYR3ZRqPJ3WPE_9m90ZAbjFnA-cEcadbvaZ2AErXgcoWPViy76fzVmtcCP-jrt3EFfLvT6m8jEE0kfGZ7TpobZDlgcxTb5W9OxtK8OE96mh480ux-fF53uxRIp3tW/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h41m14s433.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1G1R2LBtS1gkq7yjCYR3ZRqPJ3WPE_9m90ZAbjFnA-cEcadbvaZ2AErXgcoWPViy76fzVmtcCP-jrt3EFfLvT6m8jEE0kfGZ7TpobZDlgcxTb5W9OxtK8OE96mh480ux-fF53uxRIp3tW/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h41m14s433.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>The madness of power</blockquote>The time of revelation is now upon us. The robed figure draws his arms wide, like a cult leader offering some unholy sacrament (or like Christopher Lee’s Lord Summerisle telling poor old Inspector Howie ‘it is time for your appointment with the Wicker Man). It is the cult of the self, of the ego fascinated by its own reflection, studiously posing in front of the mirror. A cult which has only magnified over the ensuing decades. The circled Number One is ironed onto the front of the robes like the identifying number on a goalkeeper’s jersey (the most existential position on the pitch, as Camus, Nabokov and Wim Wenders would attest). The ‘I’ is repeated, accelerating and rising to a pitch of hysteria which is the herald of madness. No.6’s hair has lost its usual brylcreemed sheen and sculpted lacquer and flops in uncombed disarray (another echo of Scotty). Hairstyles as indicators of mental states. Although the look of wild edginess on his face is indicator enough that No.6 is on the borders of sanity. It is the rictus grin familiar from the films and TV shows of David Lynch. <br />
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He rips off the black and white theatrical mask, the stage persona, to reveal an ape mask below, gibbering its repeated ‘I’ chant. No.1 is I, the base self, the babbling, grasping, unreasoning creature of the id. Unfiltered desire, greed and acquisitiveness. The ‘I want’ part of the mind (the ‘take, take, take’ which No.48 exposed) concerned only with the instant gratification of its own instincts and impulses. It contains unconscious wells of destructive as well as creative force, the death drive as well as the life impulse, Eros and Thanatos both. Here, in the heart of the bomb, the Thanatopic principle has become dominant. Just as it had in Forbidden Planet, the forces of the Professor’s id disastrously magnified by the alien Krell machinery to create and indestructible monster, let loose in a seeming Arcadian idyll. The monkey mask of the id is torn off to reveal the ego below. And as he must have known, the face revealed is his own. No.6, or perhaps Patrick McGoohan himself. The character in search of an author successful in his quest. The insane laughter which is loosened by his unmasking is partly the madness courted by the artist who delves deeply within themselves to unearth some fundamental truth, some core of the self which pushes the creative impulse to its limits. ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality’, as TS Eliot suggested, but it is the duty of the serious artist to bare as much of it as they are able, no matter the cost. <br />
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No.6 chases his insane ego around the globe table. The camera movements are now wholly uncoordinated, catching a black and white blur of robes and suit, with a brief flash of warning red from the fire extinguisher and a defining tone of sick green light (again hearkening back to Vertigo and the scene in which the refashioned Madeleine walks into the room). Number One Ego is chased babbling from the nosecone, No.6 locking the hatch after him. Get out of my head! It is done, the overinflated ego, the amplified ‘I’ has been expelled. It’s akin to an exorcism, banishing the ghost inside. Outside, the steel lids of the bomb eye are shuttered. For good? The judge, now seated in the throne (his throne all along, perhaps) looks pensively on. Has this all been anticipated? Is No.6 still being manipulated like a puppet?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRXQfrjMzamyqdOmKljj1Xj5tEBdhemISxjNxxVB8ETmAT3t229OOJR2hJhOxUBWfCOIrVk8dSxw6q-AqyHIxQfdg7jdeBEv-s7zPKaVK0QiUfV7ENz0ogn1END0ob2iJsDuOtOXVGAny/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h42m14s556.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPRXQfrjMzamyqdOmKljj1Xj5tEBdhemISxjNxxVB8ETmAT3t229OOJR2hJhOxUBWfCOIrVk8dSxw6q-AqyHIxQfdg7jdeBEv-s7zPKaVK0QiUfV7ENz0ogn1END0ob2iJsDuOtOXVGAny/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h42m14s556.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>The revolution begins - exit from the ego chamber</blockquote>Back down below, the camera focuses on the red of the fire extinguisher, the bright primary colour of revolution, danger, passion, anger, blood. No.6 picks it up and descends. Revolution starts in the head before spreading out into the world. Battle commences, the Butler joining in as a loyal footsoldier. The fire extinguisher, intended for the damping down of flames, is used as a weapon to fan them. Guns are requisitioned and the songs and laughter of Nos.2 and 48 set free from their silos to join in the insurgency. The bomb is primed and a doom organ accompanies the chaos erupting in the cavern above. The rebels ascend in robed disguise and open fire with machine guns. This is like the armed revolution with which If… climaxes. A full on surrealist assault on the establishment order which can be taken on an allegorical level. Even if no blood is actually shed, if the revolution is in the head rather than on the streets (The Stones’ Street Fighting Man would set the modish tone for revolutionary ’68) violence on some level seems unavoidable. Power, or dominant ideologies, are not relinquished without a struggle. The strains of All You Need Is Love, echoing down the jukebox tunnel, are drowned out by the percussive rattle of gunfire. It’s a symbolically ironic sound collage, anticipated by the song’s fading into the parade ground stomp of military boots at the start of the episode.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiItFR660fpLWHg3FfVmghnVOjkaGKgzr4tXYO3UKwiD_Wwd3l6qSL_4A0ZLwsAgYddxZKVSUqJDRfPNnghn5yXU3bpbGQTliz2GgX_jOE6SwqNn6s-uM1tdgGr77kO9hkncpQ5fBziyYCw/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h44m16s329.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiItFR660fpLWHg3FfVmghnVOjkaGKgzr4tXYO3UKwiD_Wwd3l6qSL_4A0ZLwsAgYddxZKVSUqJDRfPNnghn5yXU3bpbGQTliz2GgX_jOE6SwqNn6s-uM1tdgGr77kO9hkncpQ5fBziyYCw/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h44m16s329.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Revolution from below - the insurrectionaries ascend</blockquote>Driven on by bullets and the urgent alarm of the countdown warning, the cavern assembly flees in a bizarre panicked parade of red robed judges, soldiers and a column of frogmen on fold-up bikes. Again, If… springs to mind, with its emblematic founders day gathering of armoured knights, mitred bishops, floral-hatted ladies, uniformed generals, gowned masters and embroidered-waistcoated prefect police falling under fire. The frogmen add a surreal touch. After all, surrealism was initially a revolutionary movement (the revolution in the head) before it was watered down into shorthand for freaky weirdness for weirdness’ sake. A similar fate which befell psychedelia and the whole idea of 60s experimentalism, the urge to discover new forms and once more set about deranging the senses to uncover new perspectives and hidden truths. Yeah, far out. It’s a trip, man. Like, what were they on when they made that? Fall Out has suffered from this syndrome. From the idea that it was a modish, throwaway indulgence, more weirdness for weirdness’ sake. It’s all too easy to dismiss vividly imaginative or challenging work on this basis (and if it’s not drugs, it must be madness) particularly when it emerges from this period. But a revolution in the head, a conceptual breakthrough, a shift in consciousness requires new forms. New waves, new worlds. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia0_pi67UQLPy4LqTjABgX-RKZNNy8pqEmbiQ7CCAb9HQ-d-0BR1CLOwR4TTBQd382-MXGI3YOYn_QF0Y3x0MLgwxmZQbTtUv9uTV4FN80FFHLynr4VzTQjxYY3tIzGUNEEZfP6LZLCgMG/s1600/if_1253188626_crop_515x391.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia0_pi67UQLPy4LqTjABgX-RKZNNy8pqEmbiQ7CCAb9HQ-d-0BR1CLOwR4TTBQd382-MXGI3YOYn_QF0Y3x0MLgwxmZQbTtUv9uTV4FN80FFHLynr4VzTQjxYY3tIzGUNEEZfP6LZLCgMG/s400/if_1253188626_crop_515x391.jpg" width="400" height="304" data-original-width="515" data-original-height="391" /></a></div><blockquote>Parallel revolutions - Lindsay Anderson's If...</blockquote>The fold-up bikes, a 60s innovation and symbol of mobile urban modernity, are a diminished form of the penny farthing, which had been such a central, enigmatic symbol throughout the series. Constructed piece by piece during the end credits of each episode. These little versions are now pedalled out in a hurried and far from dignified fashion. The baroque and elevated perspective of power reduced to the hunched-up fluster of these comical clown bikes. Frogmen pedallers are as near to fish on bicycles as we are likely to get. The frogmen costumes may also be a sly pastiche of the underwater scenes in Thunderball, and by extension of the studied cool of the Bond series as a whole. Elegant in their element, absurd out of it. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7rGGr8rweBsiyqphfRnq92BiwJ3wJwl_Kh6ZFs-C9rI53o9l6-KkZ755uSP8_SNPD7oVQR-5RJFQdjhvvrnFC9VO3AJVwJiX-LLMX8j-Groyv8VEE0U3JV0n80JJptQc8Dfh8oUrfOiO/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h45m12s443.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7rGGr8rweBsiyqphfRnq92BiwJ3wJwl_Kh6ZFs-C9rI53o9l6-KkZ755uSP8_SNPD7oVQR-5RJFQdjhvvrnFC9VO3AJVwJiX-LLMX8j-Groyv8VEE0U3JV0n80JJptQc8Dfh8oUrfOiO/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h45m12s443.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Establishment panic</blockquote>Fast cut scenes show us the panicked evacuation of the Village, fleets of helicopters rising above the children’s storybook domes and minarets. Saigon was a few years in the future, but the helicopter as the emblematic vessel of the Viet Nam war was already fixed in people’s minds via regular news footage. The mad dash of the colourfully caped villagers, scattering blindly in all directions, contrasts with the opening aerial shots in which all were calmly going about their daily business.<br />
The rebels exit in the prison room, No.2’s container coffin, which turns out to be attached to the back of an articulated lorry. A poetically ironic means of escape. Escape from incarceration by taking your prison cell with you. What once confined now protects. The Butler’s smashing through the gates at the end of the tunnel coincides with the launching of the rocket, which rises between the old residences of No.2 and No.6, the gulf between individual and institutional power filled with fire. Stock footage of one of the Apollo launches (yet to land a man on the Moon, of course), notionally arising from the hollowed out caverns below, tacitly acknowledges the origins of the American space programme with Werner von Braun and those terrible workshops beneath the Kohnstein mountains.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj5kxYINVXOHsi6t72R-vLtOQDydTCUgbrrcPSAxXXzoquXhmFTUQO3s9ngDPNlBC098DwEhNGn2D1VYr_Sj4WiVF82sdPeldiF0YlDqSWt7mO9M6h2CtXSswUGO-971klKJaq93JjFKhb/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h48m04s230.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj5kxYINVXOHsi6t72R-vLtOQDydTCUgbrrcPSAxXXzoquXhmFTUQO3s9ngDPNlBC098DwEhNGn2D1VYr_Sj4WiVF82sdPeldiF0YlDqSWt7mO9M6h2CtXSswUGO-971klKJaq93JjFKhb/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h48m04s230.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><br />
And it’s goodbye to Rover, who rises briefly only to dissolve in a bubbling Venusian soup, a primordial broth. A speeded up version of ‘I Love You Very Much’ accompanies its return to undivided matter, protozoan gloop. An ‘I,I,I’ song in an absurd register, another ego bubble burst. This odd, childlike Pinky and Perky ditty blends with electronic Village concrète sound to unsettling effect. We never see the fall out from the rocket. There is never any explosive conclusion, the concrete answers or fiery destruction which people were expecting. The rocket rises in the sky and we can imagine it continuing to rise beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, the destructive impulse expelled into the outer reaches of space (or perhaps transformed into that race to reach the Moon). Like the orbiting craft in 2001:A Space Odyssey which is the ultimate product of early man’s discovery of the weapon, the bludgeoning bone tossed triumphantly up into the starry heavens. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzohe1ZxPWlgC5x9_xb9AcXVgWF_U4mYmYWsFw7iSbRqPRQEl_EE8p6ouzUbt0Ug9WzgTvccF_9vx6C95l2xSfDNKx6aui-p6iQP64CtUEMBUTMQp4ezeG7lkjC9Rs7LKVw3fcxgFM6M1D/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h48m31s943.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzohe1ZxPWlgC5x9_xb9AcXVgWF_U4mYmYWsFw7iSbRqPRQEl_EE8p6ouzUbt0Ug9WzgTvccF_9vx6C95l2xSfDNKx6aui-p6iQP64CtUEMBUTMQp4ezeG7lkjC9Rs7LKVw3fcxgFM6M1D/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h48m31s943.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Death of Rover</blockquote><br />
The final scenes, in which our bande à part enjoy their newly won freedom, are filled with a spirit of lightness and joy which remains infectiously uplifting on every viewing. They breathe the heady optimism of their times. The room on the road, the rebels hastily divesting themselves of their robes and throwing the guns out. They were a means of overthrowing power, not of maintaining it. An archetypal city gent in his Roller (a type long since consigned to cultural history), bowler-hatted and with red rosebud in his buttonhole (the rose rhyming with that pinned to No.48’s topper) tunes in his radio with an elegantly grey-gloved hand. Dem Bones has infected his airwaves, and he is soon passing the articulated human zoo cage in which the rebels are dancing to the music in their heads. No.6 sashays with a silver tea tray (he’s the butler now in this democratic band) while No.2 and No.48 link arms and dosey-doe. Wild youth and reflective establishment dancing together, the songs of innocence and experience combining to the tune of this foolishly wise nonsense refrain of connection and resurrection. The gent in his status car does a comedy double-take before accelerating past towards the City and more sensible affairs. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJPNOfJzHKsFDXAhQerTEqEtagA9-cBDIYxXpn9DRm7AEOW9AReLSKiVluKm-fV0sJhkURhpyA4ch36C0gziNzoFA_wMLicmT7frz233Gdl6cZWBj3z-zCyohI0e1Rg6Y32kTvclBxkL42/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h49m19s709.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJPNOfJzHKsFDXAhQerTEqEtagA9-cBDIYxXpn9DRm7AEOW9AReLSKiVluKm-fV0sJhkURhpyA4ch36C0gziNzoFA_wMLicmT7frz233Gdl6cZWBj3z-zCyohI0e1Rg6Y32kTvclBxkL42/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h49m19s709.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Fucking with the establishment</blockquote>No.48 jumps off and says his farewells, hitching along the A20. Shots of London are accompanied by romantic music. No.6 is on home territory again. The lorry pulls up on the Embankment, immediately attracting the attention of a passing bobby (remember them?). No.2 walks proudly towards the Houses of Parliament and strikes an iconic pose, looking up at Big Ben as the chimes strike. A little nod to his former self, the incumbent No.2 in the first ‘escape’ episode, The Chimes of Big Ben. We can assume that these chimes are authentic, however, witnessed and heard in situ. No.6 watches him enter the House of Commons, waving goodbye from across the road, a safely neutral distance. We can imagine him becoming a rebellious backbencher, a principled thorn in the side of whatever government holds power. Turning around, he sees a policeman (the same one who greeted their arrival?). We switch to the perspective of the Butler, who impassively watches him doing the hip bone dance as the music makes once last appearance. In the real, extra-fictional world, passersby throw curious glances at Patrick McGoohan’s antic behaviour. But with characteristic Englishness, they pretend that nothing unusual is occurring and pass hurriedly on. An then we get that glorious final image, No.6 hand in hand with the Butler as they run to catch the departing no.59 bus (numbers useful in this context), leaping up onto the Routemaster’s platform. Be seeing you!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrjzGtK3r76m0xETIzxyy1pR4R7XhRo2WnWRPmmANnGaB_x0aDNl4k9U3mmSlYXKKuG5Tsgi-wBGKuwsrenaCeqZwaKos5aeSRcuBc096bncgBcod6b0ZcirLqgtasDkz6OTwsyZMXgju/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h52m48s623.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrjzGtK3r76m0xETIzxyy1pR4R7XhRo2WnWRPmmANnGaB_x0aDNl4k9U3mmSlYXKKuG5Tsgi-wBGKuwsrenaCeqZwaKos5aeSRcuBc096bncgBcod6b0ZcirLqgtasDkz6OTwsyZMXgju/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h52m48s623.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Bonedance for the constabulary</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7VTVejyKo3bD2bbhUhMPlr-w6nVkYJNT4CTRmqX8tfoTswCS6vpw5n_hsi1g_tcb-reZwOguEfYQxerxPyhDjFHAeHG8ZhXG9rG7g8aMaqai9owIS0LnBaAS88Yz-t9tBsTZXkH_7V3du/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h53m20s946.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7VTVejyKo3bD2bbhUhMPlr-w6nVkYJNT4CTRmqX8tfoTswCS6vpw5n_hsi1g_tcb-reZwOguEfYQxerxPyhDjFHAeHG8ZhXG9rG7g8aMaqai9owIS0LnBaAS88Yz-t9tBsTZXkH_7V3du/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h53m20s946.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div><blockquote>Catching the No.59 - Heading South</blockquote>Alexis Kanner is privileged in the credits once more. And here he is, happily striding along in the middle of the road. Taking a step outside the fiction, here are actors utterly committed to the singular vision of Patrick McGoohan, ready to follow him to the edge of madness. Willing to risk life, limb and sanity. To dodge traffic on a busy (for the time) A road. Having tried one direction, he skips through the passing cars and gives the other way a go. Life lies ahead of him, he can try out all routes. Let fate play its part. Who knows where the wind will blow him. His optimism and openness to the play of chance are the tokens of bright-eyed youth, carefree and yet to accumulate the experiential burden of caution and suspicion. <br />
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No.6 arrives back at No.1, his home, with KAR120C parked outside, and the door glides open for Angelo Muscat’s Butler, now credited. He gives a hint of a departing bow, to us as much as to his new boss and liberator (although where does the real power lie? If anywhere now). And for Patrick McGoohan? The credit simply reads Prisoner. The prisoner of his own creation, which has driven him to the edge of sanity? The credit suggests and intense level of identification between actor (and in the end writer and director) and character. This is a part and an artistic endeavour in to which he has put everything. The credit suggests that he knows that it will to a large part be his greatest legacy, the work with which he will forever by most closely identified. It’s an intuition which would prove entire accurate. Leo McKern is now dressed in standard bowler hat with white carnation in his buttonhole, formally attired for his credit. He poses by the statue of Richard the Lionheart in front of the Houses of Parliament. A visual pun, perhaps. Leo the Lion.<br />
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And we’re back to the start, looping to the opening shot of the credits. The KAR on the runway, No.6 smiling as he races into the future. This time he really is going somewhere unimaginable though. No longer to stride furiously down that underground corridor and burst through those institutional doors like a gunfighter entering a saloon. Now the road is open. The choices are his and they are manifold. Freedom!<br />
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The penny farthing assembles itself one last time. We are still not sure as to why, or what it might signify. We never will be. Goodnight children. Everywhere!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fyrzCk9Ag3fdkuh92BJl_6QtF_lDtLv2hWS8FHwACPf3xYpIWokouQi5py2XDdT38FEFMdG9njdTcNX2cqiQGkr4xFeeCRsGthVimixZhl_f7dLdGcBvSgVAlVjy6agWhzpc_rXQGW_z/s1600/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h59m00s048.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8fyrzCk9Ag3fdkuh92BJl_6QtF_lDtLv2hWS8FHwACPf3xYpIWokouQi5py2XDdT38FEFMdG9njdTcNX2cqiQGkr4xFeeCRsGthVimixZhl_f7dLdGcBvSgVAlVjy6agWhzpc_rXQGW_z/s400/vlcsnap-2017-12-28-20h59m00s048.png" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="768" data-original-height="576" /></a></div>Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-25078871338485753792017-12-06T20:51:00.001+00:002017-12-06T20:58:02.535+00:00Folklore Tapes: The First Five YearsAn overview originally uploaded for a Bleep.com 'advent calendar' release of a special 5 year mix in 2016. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxT3Anpp1zJdBMFWLfq5_N8QmWoE0UCBneUdNHbl7FI7qr0FE2ZBHDclL4g8d4kWXx_AtFZt2CqZclpHS1ge64pTkZHO_fWYj4jBk6pD2iS8ed6fTNEUyOW05MByiaz1hbPd5Cvp911cFj/s1600/DSCN4376.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxT3Anpp1zJdBMFWLfq5_N8QmWoE0UCBneUdNHbl7FI7qr0FE2ZBHDclL4g8d4kWXx_AtFZt2CqZclpHS1ge64pTkZHO_fWYj4jBk6pD2iS8ed6fTNEUyOW05MByiaz1hbPd5Cvp911cFj/s400/DSCN4376.JPG" width="400" height="383" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1530" /></a><br />
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FTV. Five years of <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/">Folklore Tapes</a>. It feels odd writing it down, both because it feels like this motley collective has been around for a far greater span of time – they have certainly amassed an impressive body of work for a mere half decade; and because their art seeks to transcend the notion of time. Only Timelessness, as David Chatton Barker and Ian Humberstone’s flickering 8mm eyeflash trip through Dartmoor landscapes (and inscapes) expresses it. The Folklore Tapes folks are essentially British visionary romantics in the spiritual lineage of William Blake and Samuel Palmer, Paul Nash and Michael Powell, Arthur Machen and Derek Jarman. All explorers of the genius loci, the spirit of place inhabiting landscapes in which geology, history and myth (personal or universal) have become compressed into intermingling strata. These antecedents are monumental presences in an alternative underground current, often rendered invisible or given scant, disdainful regard within a cultural climate overwhelmingly favourable to realism, whether social or psychological. It’s significant that several are visual artists. The visual element of the Folklore Tapes world is hugely important. This incorporates the exquisite graphic design of David Chatton Barker, which has graced most of the releases; the idiosyncratic packaging (from bespoke boxes and brightly coloured cassette casings to envelopes imprinted with unique ink-stamps and hollowed out and rebound books); the handmade, decorated and reconfigured instruments which are art objects in themselves (rather like Harry Partch’s ensemble of cloud-chamber bowls, gourd trees and chromelodeons); and the performances in which film and projections play such an important part. <br />
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The temporal may be transcended, or its linearity looped and warped, but Folklore Tapes was initially more spatially specific. It all began down in Devon, in the somnolent cathedral city of Exeter. These were the days of Devon Folklore Tapes, and the first release, Two Witches, set the template. A study and aural invocation of two local conjuring women from the nineteenth century, Hannah Hemley from Hembury and Mariann Voaden, who had inhabited a rough, tumbledown cottage near Bratton Clovelly, north-west of the Moor. Bratton Clovelly (whose church boasts a magnifent Norman font set about with fire-tongued dragons, impassively chthonic giants’ heads and solar wheels) is not too far from the Lewtrenchard parish of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, who recalled Mariann in his 1908 book Devon Characters and Strange Events. Both locales may prove fertile ground for future exploration by folklore tapes researchers. Two Witches was a collaboration between David Chatton Barker and Ian Humberstone, who continue to be the central HQ of Folklore Tapes operations to this day, the binary system around which various bodies have since orbited. The guiding ethos and essential aesthetic approach was in place from the very start; the exploration and poetic evocation of folklore and the folkloric spirit through research, notes, quotations, field explorations and recordings, visual artwork and music. <br />
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David and Ian called themselves researchers rather than musicians or artists, an appellation which somehow incorporated all of the above into one coherent and all-embracing practice. The placing of a cassette inside a hollowed out book was also significant. The contents were a way of ‘reading’ the stories of the two witches through an act of identification, an imaginative inhabitation of the witches’ world which translated research into the direct emotional affect of music. The Rev. Baring-Gould may have offered one conduit into this world (just as he had lent imaginative fuel to Bram Stoker, researching Dracula in the British Library, through his Book of Werewolves), but it is Theo Brown who has proved the tutelary spirit guiding the Folklore Tapes seekers, from the beginning and for always. Brown was an unorthodox folklorist, working outside the clubbish confines of academia and therefore scorned by many of its pompous proponents. She engaged directly with her subjects, travelling about Dartmoor in her caravan and getting to know the inhabitants of its villages personally. Her accounts are written in a poetic style, retaining the element of storytelling bewitchment and colourful detail essential to bringing folk tales and legends to vivid, compelling life. <br />
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When Ian and David eventually came to pay tribute to Theo in 2014 with their Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor collection, they did so with the care and reverence due to such a formative and continuing influence. In their notes, they liken her to Delia Derbyshire, Lotte Reiniger and Vera Chytilova, the Czech director of Daisies and Fruit of Paradise – all women touched by inspiration, passionate individualists who struggled to make their highly distinctive voices heard. The box housing the varied artefacts of this multi-media release was a treasure chest, tapes making way for 7 x 7” inch records (a magically symmetrical calculus presenting the vinyl medium itself as an occult artefact), each carrying a sound picture of a Dartmoor village or locale and its attendant legends or spirits etched into its grooves, otherworldly presences ready to be released into the room as sinister resonances through the trembling vibrations of the speaker cones (or directly into your head through your phones). A DVD of the film Only Timelessness was included, its celluloid record of expeditions onto the moor digitised but losing none of the elemental texture of fracture and frost cracking and the corroded earth colours of biological decay nurtured by burying the reels in the organic matter of the moor for a month (the influence of Stan Brakhage evident and openly acknowledged). Damage and erosion is re-imagined as alchemical transformation, geological time running like a fissure through the images of the present to create a dual vision, an abstracted landscape where the processes of millennia are inscribed upon the experience of the moment, resulting in a sense of numinous immanence inherent in every rock, tree and stream (the kind of feeling which Arthur Machen attempted to convey in his story Hill of Dreams). <br />
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This is the territory from which myth and legend, folklore and superstition is born, making wraithlike and evanescent contact with the human imagination, emerging from the protean moods of the local weather and the unfiltered white noise of the rushing river as much as from the chthonic bones of granite underlying the whole humpbacked topography, occasionally emerging as the gnarled, arthritic knuckles of the tors. And it’s the abstracted landscape and its inherent spirit, ancient and intensely of the everpresent now, which preoccupied romantic moderns like Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious. And Theo Brown too. Also contained within the treasure chest was a series of postcards reproducing the woodcuts which she created as illustrations for her books and publications. For she was an artist too, having trained at the Westminster School of Art in the 1930s – even more reason for her to be the guiding anima presiding over the ongoing Folklore Tapes quest. Of course, every treasure box needs a map, and one was duly presented here – a guide to finding the geographical locales over which the records layer uncanny atmospheres. Although once there, such inner soundscaping may prove unnecessary. The Genius Loci works its own magic. The green box lid is illustrated with a silhouette profile portrait of a youthful Theo Brown contained within a circle, as if it were intended for a lover’s locket. Her face is lined with the fine cracquelure of leaf-lined veins, fragile and fissile but in its verdure holding the promise of renewed life. It’s a superb illustration which amounts to a declaration of love, and a determination to keep Theo’s spirit and vitality alive. It is this continuity of spirit, I feel, which lies at the heart of the whole Folklore Tapes adventure. <br />
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After a year or so, the Devon diaspora began. Folklore folks lit out to triangulate the hidden topographies lying between Exeter and Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh, London and the Shetlands, travelling and mapping new roads whilst continuing to unearth the old ways and the legends and lore which inhere within the amalgam of their centuried strata. And David and Ian picked up a ragtag band of fellow travellers along the way, some journeying for a prolonged period, others for a short stretch of the path. Here’s David Jaycock, weaving enchanted arabesques out of arcane guitar tunings as he would go on to do in his feted collaboration with Marry Waterson, the latest scion of the regal folk clan; and here’s Rob St John, visionary crooner of transported states and dream-infused landscapes, paying his respects to the Pendle witches on the 400th anniversary of their infamous trial; and spiritual father Andy Votel, fooling nobody behind his Wicker Man-citing Anworth Kirk nom de stylus, hymning and finding compassionate communion with lost Dartmoor soul Kitty Jay in a manner very different to Seth Lakeman on the second Devon Folklore Tapes release Graves; Magpahi (aka Alison Cooper) and Paper Dollhouse (Astrud Steehouder & Nina Bosnic) investigating rituals and practices in Devon folklore; Carl Turney and Brian Campbell taking off their surgical masks and emerging from the sinister psych Clinic to recreate a succession of calendrical customs; Sam McLoughlin (of Sam and the Plants renown) coaxing electronic sounds from unlikely places and embracing his dark persona as N. Racker; Mary Stark observing the turning wheel of the year and tuning in to the subtle shifts in its moods; The Blue Funz (Alex Borland and Daniel Potter) making merry hell and proving obligingly chameleonic to fit in with the atmosphere or requirements of the occasion, morphing at will into White, Yellow, Black, Gun Metal Grey and even, presumably for a particularly swanky do, Platinum Funz; and, of particular significance, the first post-Broadcast music created by James Cargill, in cahoots with old bandmate Roj Stevens and long-time friend, Ghost Box co-founder, graphic designer and Focus Group collagist Julian House. Their musique concrète narratives continue the direction started on the Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age LP. The name they have chosen for themselves, Children of Alice, pays homage to Trish Keenan, who loved Lewis Carroll’s book of nonsensical wisdom and in particularly the 1966 Jonathan Miller film, shot in gloriously psychedelic black and white. She is part of the Alice trio, her spirit inhabiting everything they do, and by extension she is also a member of the Folklore Tapes collective. There is no fixed present, only timelessness. She is there, always there. <br />
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The house Folklore Tapes musical style could be described as programmatic folk improv concrete psych soundscaping, although even such an unwieldy handle fails to cover all bases. Some concentrate on a few of these elements, others just one (there is an a capella folk tune on one of the Calendar Customs releases), whist the occasional brave soul attempts the whole shebang. Often the approach is more granular and pointillist, attention paid to the particles of sound, the suggestive noises which conjure up half-heard echoes, voices and animate scrabblings with no readily identifiable point of origin. Small sounds require concentrated listening on the part of performer and auditor, bringing artist and listener closer together. MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva) and Gruppo Nuova Consonanza (the Italian improv group which numbered Ennio Morricone amongst its ensemble members), with their real time improvisations, AMM with their favouring of small sounds and a tendency towards hushed quietude, and Hugh Davies with his homemade pocket ‘Shozyg’ musical devices all provide useful musical comparisons. But that’s only one aspect of the Folklore Tapes sound. Whilst they generally eschew rock moves, an occasional riff may break out and startle because of its very singularity. Ian Humberstone can certainly crank out the psyched-up guitar when the need arises, and make it sound surprisingly funky at the same time. And whilst this might not be the time and place to rock, there are plenty of sacred stones, and sounds ground and clacked from carefully selected pebbles and flints. <br />
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Writing is also an integral part of the FT project. Ian Humberstone’s treatise on Black Dog legends has been a long-treasured and extensively worked-upon endeavour, and gave birth to another treasure box of a release: Folklore Tapes Occultural Creatures Vol.1 – Black Dog Traditions of England. Its Rorschach hound splattered upon a gold embossed disc is an inspired bit of design, and the contents live up to its promise. Ian’s book is at the heart of it, and there are also spoken word interludes in the accompanying recording. The attention to detail in this work of art extends to the traditional inkpad print impressed upon the inside of the box lid, this time a pattern of clawed pawprints arrayed around a central, spiral-inscribed pad. The Black Dog Traditions box (or reliquary, as it is referred to within) is another central release in the Folklore Tapes canon, the realisation of a personal project (obsession?). Ian’s writing is wonderfully poetic and you can feel the presence of Theo Brown standing approvingly at his shoulder. The writing really comes to life when read out in performance. The black dog tales (and particularly the tale of the Barguest of Troller’s Gill) have been adapted into electrifying performance pieces, narration and in the moment musical soundscaping blending with intuitively congruent improvisational nous. The soft Scottish burr of Ian’s lulling reading voice works wonderfully to cast a spell over the entranced audience. Other writers have also been drawn into the fold, including your humble scribe, who has provided the notes to the four extant Calendar Customs releases (celebrating the ritual moments of the old year) and Bristol hauntologist and cultural polymath Richard Locksley-Hobson, who wrote about the eccentric folklorist and local ‘character’ Tatersall Wilkinson for the Lancashire Folklore Tapes release Memories of Hurstwood. And then there is the mysterious Barum Ware, a name which sounds like an old Dorset village centred on an ancient parish church and adjacent inn-house with beech-lined hillfort just beyond its bounds, but which in fact derives from the vases crafted in Barnstaple (once known as Barum) from Devon’s distinctive red clay. And M.Ware is indeed a vessel for jewelled, decadent prose weaving images redolent of Poe and Lovecraft, Beardsley and Harry Clarke. He has produced some illuminated and intoxicating sleeve notes and it is rumoured that his work can also be found in a fabled journal, whose possible provenance is whispered abroad by a favoured few. <br />
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The inspired amateurism of Theo Brown makes itself felt in the instrumentation with which the Folklore Tapes musical researchers draw their sound pictures. These are charity shop orchestras and boot fair chamber groups. Amplified thumb pianos are constructed from hacksaw blades, player pianos reconditioned with bellchimes bolted on, home-strung wire zithers mic’d up for radiophonic ‘terror zings’, battery operated fans used as whirring propellor-plectra, paint pots and other household hardware pattered upon and bicycle wheels set into perpetual motion by attaching them to turntables and run with a lightly held stick for bespoke plinking thruuungs. Harmoniums, warmly humming portable analogue synths, bells, accordions, fiddles and even guitars are even employed. It makes for a fascinating performative spectacle, audiences craning forward to try and work out exactly how these sounds are being produced by these folk intently crouched over their floor-scattered devices as if they were cooking a pan of beans over a campfire. No ELP sized fleet of articulated lorries is required for this nonetheless rich and varied orchestra. It all fits quite comfortably in a hired transit van. <br />
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The budget ingenuity and of necessity-birthed invention (of necessity and, I suspect, also of moral choice) extends to the garage and garden shed multimedia contraptions which are employed for performances in art galleries, witchcraft museums and riverside festival tents. All have a whiff of Heath-Robinsonesque absurdity, but it’s a wonderful absurdity, a discovery of utility in the throwaway (without any Womble preciousness). Feathers, leaves and branches are scattered about and decked around pillars and posts. The husk of a fan becomes a mandala upon which a sheep’s skull is reverently placed (decorated with curved twigs and soon fleshed with candle wax). An antediluvian smoke machine wheezes thickenting seafogs out of its battered frame, filling tent spaces until radiant shafts of coloured light seem to take on an almost physical form. Sheets are hung up and become screens for the outline projection of ferns, dried flowers and seedheads. And centrally, an old overhead projector is switched into heat-producing action (the heat an occasional boon in some chilly environs). A functional device once associated with lectures and lessons, the rigorous and formalised decanting of fixed knowledge, becomes an anarchic and defiantly hands-on artistic tool (and one in which the prestidigitating hand of the artist is made transparently apparent). Transparencies are picked up and thrust under the light before being whipped away and replaced with another lying close to hand; a rapid transference performed with semi-improvised urgency. It’s a reincarnation of the magic lantern shows of the pre-cinematic age using 70s technology. Bill Douglas would have approved. Coloured inks are occasionally flicked and smeared across the transparencies with violent action art gestures. Inky fingers are then wiped across light-dazzled brows, leaving blue eye shadows and scarlet scars. This shamanic face-painting lends the illuminated operators a look of wild intensity, smudged with coloured axle grease from the mechanical toil of fixing immortal engines and sparking soft machines. These are the labours of the Folklore Tapes collective. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. And these boys and girls now have a good many years of experience underneath their belts. Long may the merry parade continue. Here’s to the next five years of research into the timeless. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirPV5Uh3U3-U6hU83kWXbhhS6NYH5XeoRvko9rDV-YIW3mFZQkoEekQxvDoisiFUzcMeeFtb3_jRpmCKso_JqKC9ycK9FmnC0sInTlK9NYyEvGofDrl80ZDIxRvfWpbZIU9Bef9HcNNAbC/s1600/DSCN4243_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirPV5Uh3U3-U6hU83kWXbhhS6NYH5XeoRvko9rDV-YIW3mFZQkoEekQxvDoisiFUzcMeeFtb3_jRpmCKso_JqKC9ycK9FmnC0sInTlK9NYyEvGofDrl80ZDIxRvfWpbZIU9Bef9HcNNAbC/s400/DSCN4243_01.JPG" width="292" height="400" data-original-width="583" data-original-height="800" /></a></div>Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-30282050797471849002017-07-01T23:23:00.000+01:002017-07-02T11:11:51.094+01:00A Canterbury TaleNotes for an introduction to a film club screening.<br />
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Powell and Pressburger – an alliterative pairing whose enunciation immediately summons up an aura of magic and enchantment for me. I first came across their films in the 1980s when they were being rediscovered after several decades of neglect and critical disdain. I remember going to see them in the NFT and the repertory cinemas of London (the Scala and the Everyman were particular favourites). I fell in love with them and experienced an indefinable thrill every time I saw them. They were a part of my self-education, my teenage cultural awakening and they have remained a vital part of my life ever since, re-awakening those feelings every time I see them. I feel such an affinity for them that it probably wouldn’t be going too far to say that they are an inherent part of my soul. My English soul.<br />
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Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were, for 17 years between 1939-1956, an inseparable creative partnership, their intuitive understanding of one another leading to a series of films which were collaborations in the most intimate and complete sense. Emeric expressed the close conjunction of their artistic temperaments, saying ‘ he knows what I am going to say even before I say it – maybe even before I have thought it – and that is very rare’. Powell, with typical impishness, described their relationship as being like ‘a marriage without sex’, the qualification an addendum which perhaps didn’t need spelling out. All the films they made for the independent production company they set up in 1942 and called The Archers were credited as being written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Their logo saw a golden arrow joining 8 others on the Technicolor target (or monochrome if it was a black and white film), although it thunked in just outside the bullseye. Powell sent Emeric a copy of a rhyme written by James Agee: ‘The arrow was pure gold/But somehow missed the target./But as all Golden Arrow trippers know/’Tis better to miss Naples than hit Margate’. <br />
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There was no creative hierarchy or division, this was a collective act of creation. Michael Powell explained the idea behind this amalgamated credit some years later; ‘We wanted the titles to express the order of importance as we thought it’ he said, ‘so we decided on Written, Produced and Directed. In other words you’ve got to have a bloody good story to start with and it’s got to be well developed and then it’s got to be well produced, you’ve got to find the money and dress it properly, and that sort of thing…and then directing is purely one of the other things, like photography’. Of course they each had their particular role, but wouldn’t exclude the other from influencing their work. Powell would further elaborate in an interview for Variety in 1980: ‘in theory we made the films together; in practice, of course, I’m a director, just as Emeric had a long struggle to establish himself as a writer. So basically our ideas were usually Emeric’s conception as a story and Emeric’s working out in script form, from then we worked together and I would take over the direction, but every decision that was of any importance, including, of course, the editing particularly…was all made by the two of us together’. <br />
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Emeric was Hungarian, born in Miskolc in the northeastern part of the country. His father was an estate manager (the Pressburgers came from Pressburg, once the regional capital of Hungary but by this time, as Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia). He had a rural childhood growing up on farms, a pastoral upbringing which would strongly influence his worldview and his writing. This is made manifest in A Canterbury Tale above all else. He was educated in the city of Temesvar. When the maps were redrawn by the Allies in the aftermath of the first world war Temesvar was swallowed up by Romania and became Timisoara. It was the start of Emeric’s stateless roamings through the 20th century, his Hungarian nationality and his Jewish identity making him a target for the unwanted attentions of a succession of oppressive powers. He escaped to Prague before making his way to Germany (always his preferred destination) and eventually to the UFA studios in Berlin. His time there as a screenwriter and editor gave him an education in film-making and production which was to stand him in excellent stead for his later work. The Nazis came to power, however, and it wasn’t long before Jews in the film industry were targeted. 31st March 1933 was Jewish Boycott Day, a purge of the studios which saw a mass exodus of talented artists and engineers. Emeric stayed on in Berlin, reluctant to leave. But a phone call tipping him and impressing upon him the urgency of his immediate departure led him to flee to France with swiftly procured passports. He lived and worked in Paris for a couple of years before sailing over to England in 1935. <br />
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Three years later, in 1938, he travelled to Denham studios to start working on a picture for his fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda (soundtrack to be composed by Miklos Rosza, another Hungarian!) called The Spy in Black and was introduced to its brash and sometimes abrasive director, Michael Powell. The quiet Hungarian and the romantically extravagant Englishman almost immediately formed a bond which would last until their deaths. Perhaps even beyond. Powell’s second volume of memoirs, Million-Dollar Movie, describes a meeting with Emeric in his modest country dwelling, Shoemaker’s Cottage (‘a little number that looks as if it had been run up by the Brothers Grimm’), 50 years since their first encounter. They talk companionably about the old times, and about their artistic relationship. Emeric expounds on their philosophy, concluding that they remained always amateurs, dedicated to their vision. It’s only as the conversation reaches its conclusion that Powell reveals that Emeric was, at this point, already dead. It’s typical of the mutual generosity inherent in their partnership that, at the end of his lengthy 2 volume autobiography, he should let his dear friend have the final word.<br />
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Michael Powell himself was a Man of Kent (as distinct from a Kentish Man). He grew up in the Kentish Weald and Downland, a landscape of oast houses, hop fields, chestnut woods, meandering rivers, ridgeways and downland meadows. His family was based at Howletts farm near Canterbury then Hoath, even nearer to the city in which he received his early education. Like Emeric, his was a rural upbringing. A Canterbury Tale finds him returning to the landscape of his childhood. During the filming, he stayed at an inn in Fordwich, just a few miles from the old farms he remembered so vividly (as the first volume of his autobiography, A Life In Movies, attests). But despite this, A Canterbury Tale is Emeric’s film. Powell admits as much, and Emeric, always a modest man, said ‘this is the only one of them that is entirely mine’. It’s good to emphasise Emeric’s contribution because it is often eclipsed by the focus on Powell as the ‘auteur’ director (the fault of Martin Scorsese and the Cahiers du Cinema mob). Emeric’s stamp can be seen in the outsider perspective which predominates in this portrait of the Kentish landscape and spirit. In particular, the perspective of John Sweet’s Sgt Bob Johnson from Oregon. He’s perpetually mystified and amused by English ways; by their phones, their obsession with tea, their stoicism, their uncooperative mirrrors, their habit of shaking hands. <br />
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Eventually, Emeric became more English than anyone. Anton Walbrook’s extraordinarily moving refugee speech in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is essentially his expression of his own feelings. He found a home in these isles after years of enforced wandering and exile. And he ended up in Shoemaker’s Cottage in Suffolk, a true English country home. But he always remained Hungarian at heart. Many of his closest friends were Hungarian. And he never lost his taste for Hungarian cooking, spiced with plenty of paprika; a taste he shared with his English friend. As Kevin Macdonald writes in his biography of his grandfather Emeric, ‘Michael was enthusiastic about another of Emeric’s great loves. On cold winter evenings in London he was introduced to Hungarian cooking. Pots of goulash, bowls of cucumber salad and flocks of chicken paprika were set before him. But most of all Michael remembered the turkey’. Theo’s (Anton Walbrook’s) speech in Colonel Blimp, talking of his close friendship with Roger Livesey’s Clive Candy, echoed Emeric’s feelings and friendship with Michael Powell. They referred to each other with loving familiarity as ‘old horse’ or ‘Holmes and ‘Watson’ (Emeric, surprisingly, Holmes). Emeric was both supremely English and the eternal outsider. A condition which lent him his unique insight into the national character.<br />
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A Canterbury Tale was filmed in 1943, as preparations for D-Day were in full swing. Signs of the war are evident. There is extensive bomb damage evident in the centre of Canterbury. Denham studio sets were substituted for parts of cathedral. The stained glass in the Nave had been removed for the duration to preserve it from potential destruction. These scenes were a triumph for German designer Alfred Junge (who had spent a period of internment on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien), who would later go on to create the Himalayas on Pinewood stagesets for Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus. The cathedral bells had also been cossetted away for their own protection. Those are not the real ones used for dissolve shots at beginning and end. They are miniatures, but with real bell ringers ‘miming’ them to assure realistic changes.<br />
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Emeric was not allowed into Kent during the shooting even as daily visitor to set. This was the decision of Percy Sillitoe, the chief constable of Kent, who deemed him a risk as a technical ‘illegal alien’ (Hungary was a Nazi ally). He stayed in Powell’s cottage in Bratton Fleming in Devon. The troops seen in Canterbury at end were on their manoeuvres in preparing for D-Day, a piece of historical verisimilitude which gives the film an added frisson in the modern day. Who knows how many of those individuals marching through the pilgrim’s gates made it back. Of course, the landings were over by the time film was released in 1944. This was already history (unthinkable otherwise that such manoeuvres would be revealed).<br />
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Emeric said that A Canterbury Tale was the first stage in the Archer’s ‘Crusade against materialism’. In the context of the war and the vision of the world which would be built after its end, he asked ‘who is going to think about the human values, the values that we are fighting for’. Looking back at Canterbury Tales created a sense of continuity, linking the ancestral past with the present, conjoined by the mystical connection with landscape and memory. They were moral tales, blending chilvalry and noble sentiment with bawdy humour. Exactly the sort of thing which would court the approval of J. Arthur Rank, that arch Methodist. Having initially contemplated a period adaption, Micheal and Emeric decided to do a modern version. Emeric posited ‘a tale of 4 modern pilgrims, of the old road that runs to Canterbury, and of the English countryside which is eternal’. This sense of the eternal is central to the mystical quality of the film, the sense that time is insubstantial; that the landscape makes the past and the stories and lives which have become a part of and helped to shape its contours, its woodlands, streams and meadows immanent, particularly along the old ways trod by so many feet and carved by so many cartwheels over the centuries. Colpepper’s speech before his evening lecture makes this explicit. "Well there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road and as you walk, think of them, and the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you did, they sweated and paused for breath, just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. Ford the same rivers, the same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back, and rest, and watch the clouds sailing as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter, and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend in the road, where they too, saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head, to see them on the road behind me."<br />
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The opening quote from Chaucer, with pilgrims riding on horseback, also creates a palpable sense of connection. 'Whanne that Aprille with his shoures sote/The droghte of Marche hat perced to the rote.../And small fowles maken melodye,/That slepen al the night with open ye/(So Priketh hem nature in hir corages):/Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages'. The hawk transmogrifying into a spitfire is a bravura piece of visual poetry eliding past and present (and many have noted the parallel with 2001:A Space Odyssey). This is the anti-materialism that Emeric speaks of. But there are also links with the British documentary movement, the poetic realism of Humphrey Jennings in particular (Listen to Britain, Heart of Britain, Words for Battle, A Diary for Timothy, Spare Time). The blend of location shooting with the heightened effects of studio shoots creates this heady blend of the poetic and the real. There is also and interest in observing, in going off and exploring; hence the non-sequential and meandering narrative, like the serpentine Stour we see running across the Kentish plain. This deviation form sequential narrative was, in its own traditional way, very modern. This might go some way towards explaining the lack of understanding by contemporary reviewers, such as the unsympathetic Dilys Powell.<br />
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Powell and Pressburger had always fostered a fine repertory company of actors. Powell had wanted to draw upon his stars from Colonel Blimp, Roger Livesey and Deborah Kerr, to take the central roles in A Canterbury Tale. But Livesey simply didn’t understand the part of Colpepper. Like a number of critics, contemporary and otherwise, he found the glueman aspect distasteful. Deborah Kerr had just signed to MGM and was also at the tempestuous (always tempestuous with Micky) end of a relationship with Powell. Thomas Culpepper was played by Eric Portman, who had previously been in the Powell and Pressburger pictures One of Aircraft is Missing and its converse companion, 49th Parallel, in which he was monstrously memorable as the vessel for Nazi doctrine Leiutentant Hirth. The three leads were all giving their first film performances. Michael Powell met Sheila Sim at a party with her new fiancé, Richard Attenborough (who would have a small part in Powell and Pressburger’s timeless masterpiece, A Matter of Life and Death). They were later to marry, and she would eventually become Lady Attenborough. Dennis Price had been found in a theatre production some months before and Powell had kept him in mind ever since. Sgt John Sweet, the gloriously innocent heart of the film, was an American GI whom Powell had spotted in a touring US army production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. He made a big impression on him as the narrator. His simple and unaffected performance feels true and enormously affecting due to its lack of artifice. Also featured is Esmond Knight in a triple role. He intones the opening Chaucerian narration, plays the ‘village idiot’ with his strangely arch, 18th century aspect (a wise fool), and the waxed-moustached, pipe-clenching soldier at Colpepper’s lecture. Michael Powell had wanted him for Portman’s role as Hirth in 49th Parallel. But he had been persuaded by Vernon Sewell to join the navy. His ship The Prince of Wales was hit by the Bismarck, an encounter in which he lost one eye and was blinded in the other. Powell cast him in the film Silver Fleet (an Archers production directed by Sewell) anyway and always included him in later pictures where possible , as here. Knight eventually regained some sight in his remaining eye. But his hugely enjoyable comic turn here is all the more admirable knowing the circumstances under which it was delivered. Also look out for station guard at the start, an immediately recognisable presence even here in his youth. He never really changed. I won’t tell you who it is, but you can always greet him with a saucy ‘oh, hello’. <br />
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The film is also blessed by Erwin Hillier’s luminous cinematography. He had a background in the German UFA studio. He started work as camera assistant on Fritz Lang’s M, and may indeed have bumped into Emeric Pressbuger, who also worked at UFA, at some time. They had a shared apprenticeship. The black and white contrasts, shadows and light blending in the mysterious night, have all the hallmarks of German expressionism. A style which would also be transposed, via another German cinematographer, Karl Freund, into the Universal horror style of Frankenstein (and there are definite echoes of horror in A Canterbury Tale – it would have been interesting to see what a Powell and Pressburger/Hammer collaboration would have produced). Michael Powell also noted Hillier’s obsession with cloudscapes, another significant feature of A Canterbury Tale. ‘The only thing he was a bit loony about was clouds in the sky’, he notes in A Life In Movies. ‘He detested a clear sky, and it sometimes seemed to me that he forgot about the story and the actors in order to gratify this passion. “Meekee, Meekee, please wait another few minutes”, he would plead. “There is a little cloud over there and it is coming our way, I’m sure it is”.<br />
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Allan Gray’s music perfectly blends in with the sound of bells at the beginning and end. And his angelic choir perfectly expresses the mystery of the landscape, the spirit of place. There is also a social dimension here. The contrast of the city with the countryside. A nascent ecological consciousness is evident, embodied in Colpepper’s favoured reading, Soil and Soul. Colpepper is religious figure with a decidedly ancient aspect. Michael Powell noted of Eric Portman’s Culpepper that he ‘had the face of a medieval ascetic’, which ‘could quite easily have been torn out of a medieval manuscript’. This medieval aspect also plays into the misogyny of the glueman, his historical refusal to acknowledge the place of women in society (although the glue also acts as a metaphor for social cohesion, and for the pouring in of knowledge and learning), This is seen in his refusal to allow women to work on his farm. The film acts as a rebalancing of this divisive vision of the past. Through his observation of women at work, and their lack of fear (none of the ‘victims’ of the glueman whom Alison interviews, all engaged in active and responsible working roles, express anything more than irritation at his activities) he learns as well; as he does through his relationship with Alison. <br />
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In the end, all receive their blessings. The entry into Canterbury is transcendent and really quite profoundly moving. Emeric succeeded completely in his crusade against materialism. Even Colpepper, his sins revealed before him, his confession made, receives some sort of exclulpation, although he stands penitently apart from the crowd. We end with the chiming of the bells and a return to Chaucer. Time transcended. The pilgrim’s way remains open. Enter through the gates and find the truth that lies within your heart. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihdUevpgsBdHSfSdCSW-T9RzA0LilPWSTjTO29pp-iPhiRNexx8AlIRMncuQJwHre-EEUN-YItZUuvo8N8iTJ0z11DyKb3HTC6CziG4XZayy9OEAFIwWYRCKc7yne4LcLkowkvKXbgnsxT/s1600/16105574_2035187016707832_5307673381978704545_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihdUevpgsBdHSfSdCSW-T9RzA0LilPWSTjTO29pp-iPhiRNexx8AlIRMncuQJwHre-EEUN-YItZUuvo8N8iTJ0z11DyKb3HTC6CziG4XZayy9OEAFIwWYRCKc7yne4LcLkowkvKXbgnsxT/s400/16105574_2035187016707832_5307673381978704545_n.jpg" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="720" /></a></div>Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-21600897429555812752017-05-10T22:05:00.002+01:002017-05-10T22:07:56.127+01:00Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin HershAsked to come up with a book from the library shelves I would recommend, I decided upon Kristin Hersh's wonderful novelistic memoir of the early days of Throwing Muses, her struggles with strange mental states, her passion for music and her friendship with Betty Hutton. I wrote a little too much for a 90 second youtube spot, but here's the whole lot:<br />
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Kristin Hersh is a singer who first revealed her extraordinary songwriting talents in the group Throwing Muses, whose angular, splintered pop and glinting shards of lyrical poetry cut an artfully beguiling swathe across the late 80s and 90s. She also recorded a series of solo albums which spanned the dynamic range from hushed acoustic whisper to snarling guitar noise, gathering force for the full, fierce banshee howl of her hardcore trio 50 Foot Wave. Paradoxical Undressing was published in the US as Rat Girl with a cover by Gilbert Hernandez which seemed to bring Kristin into the universe of the Love and Rockets comics he created with his brother Jaime; She’d certainly fit in there. The book looks at the early days of her musical career. It’s no conventional rock autobiography, however. Drawing on a diary she began writing at the age of 18, this is the story of one year in the life of a character called Kristin Hersh. The title suggests a revealingly naked honesty, but also a portrayal from a distance. This was a traumatic time for Kristin, a period encompassing the ecstatic highs of musical transport and the lows of mental breakdown and hospitalisation. When she was a child she had a serious accident; she was knocked off her bicycle by a car and suffered significant head injuries. It was from this date that her mental health problems started. Rather than voices in her head, she heard songs; Urgent, wild and sometimes savage songs which needed to be released. She was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, later adjusted, as with so many, to bipolar disorder. The self she writes about here is a person viewed from afar, a shadow skin shed along the way. It’s a recreation of a character, damaged but full of artistic fire and curiosity, finding her way in the world, possessed by the raging, chaotic music in her head and trying to find the right vessel with which to set it loose upon an unsuspecting public. ‘For what it’s worth’, she writes in the introduction, ‘this my old diary’s story, riddled with enormous holes and true’. <br />
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The book is also a story of an unlikely friendship; that between Kristin, attending college at a precocious age thanks to a hippie professor father known as The Dude, and Betty Hutton, a film star of the 40s and 50s, going back to study after the fading of her career; Krissy and Betty. Betty is a defiantly individual old lady with a penchant for blue cowboy boots and hats, and a love of life which defies the depredations of time. She shares her wayward wisdom with Kristin, and the dialogues between them are some of the highlights of the book. ‘Everything that wacky old Betty Hutton told me was true’ Kristin writes in the introduction and the book is dedicated to her, although sadly she died before its publication. Betty comes along to some of Kristin’s early Throwing Muses gigs, sometimes with a priest in tow and offers a wryly amusing outsider’s perspective on the sweaty, unglamorous and intense indie scene. She is like a wise grandmother in a modern folktale, helping Kristin grow into herself, to find a sense of purpose and remain true to it; to take some control over the chaos inside. She tells her, in the manner of a blessing, ‘it’s okay to be scared sweetheart. How’re you gonna give ‘em your heart if you don’t have one’. In the song Elizabeth June which she wrote about Betty, Kristin remotely replies, with the wisdom of experience, ‘and you were right it was okay to be scared’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgxroCUhxzhY1mA-SpvuPyoX3RwychJzLnNwa6q9bAs0NBDco31zTJYzTAibu6RbSXaaO5sjG9siPH5D7Iodgk5wea2C3PdQknjBXntiqgxtCm4JZHCigfVFV1iAtHIepbtEgVFBUCG7H/s1600/DSCN1210.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgxroCUhxzhY1mA-SpvuPyoX3RwychJzLnNwa6q9bAs0NBDco31zTJYzTAibu6RbSXaaO5sjG9siPH5D7Iodgk5wea2C3PdQknjBXntiqgxtCm4JZHCigfVFV1iAtHIepbtEgVFBUCG7H/s400/DSCN1210.JPG" width="400" height="374" /></a></div><blockquote>Kristin at the Phoenix</blockquote>The two quotes which preface the book come from Dostoyevsky and Micky Dolenz, the joker of The Monkees. In tandem, they hint at the range of the book, its combination of seriousness and play. And Mickey’s quote, ‘the universe is godding’, is as gnomically profound as the words of the great Russian novelist. The pairing also points to the fact that this is as much novel as it is musical memoir. It is impressionistic, elliptical, funny, honest and poetic. The narrative is nonlinear, moving in and out of moments and encounters with a fluidity which expresses the intensity of these formative youthful days. Fragments of song lyrics are interpolated throughout, taken from the full expanse of Kristin’s songwriting career, offering parenthetical comment on the passages they footnote. ‘Songs don’t commit to linear time’, she explains. ‘songs’re weird: they tell the future and they tell the past, but they can’t seem to tell the difference’. This lyrical trail also points to the way in which the raw material of life is forged and honed into the transformed, universal matter of art. Music is seen as pure expression throughout, something which transcends the grubby, deceitful disappointment of everyday life. It is a holy calling and Kristin is on a mission, no matter the damage she might sustain as a result of its pursuit. But with this book she finds another means of expression. Her prose is beautifully balanced, its style even and carefully judged, her language poetic without ever becoming precious. There is a cool and humorous feel to her writing, and she maintains a wide-eyed distance from what at times are catastrophic personal breakdowns. She writes about mental illness with direct immediacy; there’s no attempt at analysis or clinical insight. This is an attempt to convey how it feels, a close-up and intimate mapping of the inner landscape of a mind in terrible turmoil. It is at times astonishingly powerful and brings with it a huge empathic charge. I can only think of Virginia Woolf as a comparative writer who brings her own suffering to bear on the portrayal of chaotic mental states with such searing insight. <br />
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Kristin is a great observer too. She writes perceptively about the details of everyday life and her evocations of the world around her are acute, vivid and full of an open and enquiring wonder at the beauty of life. Ultimately, what I get from this book is a sense of optimism and an enduring commitment to both art and life, which are seen as inextricably linked. Kristin takes her protagonist, herself, through some dark experiences, but she never loses her love of life, her wonder at its crazy, wild beauty. At the end, she is expecting her first child. Her latest album, Wyatt at the Coyote Palace makes reference to another of her children. Like all of her recent albums, the music on the CD is contained within a book. Kristin continues to combine the arts of songwriting and prose to hugely rewarding effect. I saw her at the Phoenix last year, her songs interspersed with readings. It was a stunning gig, bewitching, entrancing and communicating with typical intensity and directness. ‘I absolutely did not invent this’ she writes at the end of the book, before leaving us with a lyrical fragment from the song Cartoons: ‘I wasn’t staring. I was just looking far away, dazzled by something I forgot’. So, this is an act of remembrance and invention. Which doesn’t mean it’s not all true. Paradoxical Undressing.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4m4_TRiioc9ih5sEdqJfdpo4iYCrAZmohZ9fCgnhf5OLmBcqI-fpjyDle2JyWg49fe9rySqeBs1DeThKa1rTMy7d6yKZ7bkbK52oBKDpOGFeCzq9k9WP7jk16y8YOFUafJQ9DIKrnWyx/s1600/DSCN1221.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4m4_TRiioc9ih5sEdqJfdpo4iYCrAZmohZ9fCgnhf5OLmBcqI-fpjyDle2JyWg49fe9rySqeBs1DeThKa1rTMy7d6yKZ7bkbK52oBKDpOGFeCzq9k9WP7jk16y8YOFUafJQ9DIKrnWyx/s400/DSCN1221.JPG" width="400" height="292" /></a></div>Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-16484635478034215212017-03-31T23:15:00.000+01:002017-03-31T23:15:39.711+01:00Children Of AliceOriginally published as a Warp Records press release for the debut LP by Children of Alice. <br />
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<a href="http://www.childrenofalice.com/">Children of Alice</a> have been quietly producing amorphous and intoxicating soundscapes as part of the <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/">Folklore Tapes</a> collective for a number of years now, beginning in 2013 with Harbinger of Spring on the shared Ornithology release. This poetic conjuration of rebirth and new growth was the first unfurling of post-Broadcast creation from James Cargill, one half of the personal and artistic relationship at the heart of that epochal and increasingly feted band. The name Children of Alice was chosen as an act of tribute to the late Trish Keenan, for whom Alice in Wonderland and in particular Jonathan Miller’s summerhazy 60s idyll of an adaptation, was a presiding inspiration. The name invokes her abiding spirit and also creates a sense of continuity with the evolving Broadcast soundworld, which became more concentrated and individual as it refined itself and adapted to new configurations. The group (or perhaps we should call them a collaborative triad, since they occupy island territory far removed from the familiar shores of rock, though still keeping it in vision on the far horizon) consists of Cargill along with his former bandmate Roj Stevens (who played keyboards in Broadcast) and Julian House, co-founder of <a href="http://ghostbox.co.uk/">Ghost Box records</a>, whose distinctive graphic design work also gives the label its signature look, and hidden prestidigitator behind The Focus Group. <br />
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Both Stevens and Cargill lent their incubating musical presence to the 2013 Focus Group album Elektrik Carousel, and a fully-fledged collaboration was hatched with the Ornithology record a few months later. Stevens had released a solo record on Ghost Box in 2009, The Transactional Dharma of Roj Stevens, whose clicking and ratcheting clockwork rhythms suggested the cogs and teeth of complex interlocking machineries and automata set into keywound or water-powered motion. He brings a similar sensibility to the recordings here, creating an impression of irregular, juddering forward motion, a Heath-Robinsonesque progression. House is a concrète collagiste, his assemblages torn by abrupt a deliberately rough-edged jump-cuts, audio analogues of his visual work. Cargill’s warm synth colours infuse the whole with sustaining solar radiance, and bass lines redolent of the Broadcast duo LP Tender Buttons occasionally rise to the surface before drifting off on the mercurial flux of transformative sound. Julian House had previously collaborated with James Cargill on the album Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate the Witch Cults of the Radio Age, and Children of Alice further explore and expand upon these researches (and those carried out on the Mother is the Milky Way tour CD). These are sound pictures whose discrete movements, organically morphing musical matter and sudden transitions produce a sense of passage through a kaleidoscopically refracted panorama and form a narrative of journeys into inner landscapes. The sound world is gently psychedelic, full of backmasked tapes, phased flutes and analogue hum. Clocks and birds chime and twitter, processed autoharps and glockenspiels glint and shimmer, woodblocks and hand-drums plock and patter. <br />
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The music the Children of Alice triad make is impossible to narrowly define. It dissolves the limiting boundaries between field recordings, musique concrète, electronica, programmatic classical music, psych folk, experimental rock, radiophonic sound, library cues, hip-hop sampling and imaginary soundtracks. These four pieces (songs or tracks seem inadequate handles to define them) are pastoral concrète, a romantic English modernism (for, to answer Paul Nash’s rhetorical question, it IS possible to go modern and be British) which replaces brutalism and the clashing bruitage of the city with birdsong, folk chatter and the sundappled buzz and hum of a summer’s afternoon (shades of XTC’s Summer’s Cauldron, with its ‘insect bomber Buddhist droning’) and hedgerow bricolage. There is an inherent lightness to these sound pictures, a feeling of expansiveness and joyful exploration. Inner and outer worlds meet, and the divide between them becomes indistinct and, in the end, irrelevant. <br />
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Harbinger of Spring is the lengthiest pieces here, a sonic suite which guides us through a varied terrain, its successive sections like rooms in a spatially transcendent mental mansion, interiors and landscapes interpenetrating like one of Paul Nash’s surreal rooms, lapped by oceanic edges and lit by pendant moons. Beginning with cuckoo sounds which spring from carved, concertinaed clock automata to transform into woodland heralds of the turning season, this playful pastoral tone poem evokes both post-war electronic and electroacoustic composers such as Jonathan Harvey, Trevor Wishart (the morphing of human agonies into bird choruses in the immensely powerful Red Bird), Bernard Parmegiani and Pierre Henry, and British composers such as Benjamin Britten with his Spring Symphony (Broadcast had already drawn on Britten’s music for their song Echo’s Answer) and the Delius drift of reveries like The Walk to the Paradise Garden and In A Summer Garden. Messiaen’s Catalogue D’Oiseaux piano pieces are also a point of comparison, their field-notated birdsong imitations set within musical evocations of landscape, weather and seasonal climate. The fact that comparisons from the classical and avant-garde worlds are easier to draw than examples from the realms of rock and pop indicates the sui generis nature of Children of Alice’s music. There really is nothing else like this being produced at the moment. <br />
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Harbinger of Spring set the pattern for subsequent releases in the Folklore Tapes Calendar Customs series – a harbinger of the seasonal tone-poems to come. The Liminal Space from FTCCI Fore Halloween, Rite of the Maypole – An Unruly Procession from FTCCII: Merry May and Invocation of a Midsummer Reverie from FTCCIV: Crown of Light summon up the spirit of seasonal rites and traditions, whether as remembrance, reproduction or ongoing observances. Landscape, time and ritual are inseparable, and these pieces are full of the spirit of an age in which the seasons of man and the cycles of the pastoral year were in close synchrony. The nature of the music makes the substance of time malleable, folding it in and stretching it out, moulding it until it becomes immaterial, eternal. Only timelessness remains, a process of perpetual becoming, recession and renewal; but never an ending or a beginning. <br />
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Elements of these pieces trigger associative responses, particularly from those Broadcast fans attuned to the influences Trish and James have promulgated over the years through mixes and interview effusiveness. A revving motorcycle engine brings The Owl Service to mind; cracking flagellations and ‘orgy vocals’ Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and David Vorhaus’ White Noise track My Game of Loving; swooping sirens and agitated voices the public information films which portrayed a world in which fatal danger was everpresent in the seemingly ordinary and everyday; singing, glassy sonorities the unearthly calls of Les Sculptures Sonores; the ratcheting clogs of a large clock, with its imprisoning linear temporality, the mechanism which features in the Angela Carterish Czech fairytale fantasy Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (a firm favourite of Trish’s); and are those stridulating creaks and boings the sound of Froglets, making a surprise visitation from the soup-rich asteroid of The Clangers? These associations (and many more particular to the individual auditor) all add to the richness of the experience. For these are condensed and multi-layered soundworlds which bear repeated listening. They are unique works of singular imagination, and this first LP by Children of Alice is an extraordinarily inventive work. May it be a harbinger of many further explorations and investigations of cults and rituals, inscapes and landscapes, the temporal and the transcendental to come. Meanwhile, lay back and immerse yourself in these transformative sonic poems, take the hands of the Children of Alice and let your mind drift and come into sudden sharp focus as they lead you into undreamed of yet instantly familiar worlds. Like Alice herself on that hazy summer’s day, dream and wake UP! <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-39797598713185916652017-03-24T18:54:00.000+00:002017-03-25T08:32:02.219+00:00The Little Gift by Stephen VolkI’ve attempted to avoid mentioning one of the central incidents in the story, but surrounding allusions will inevitably give a good deal of the game away. So to avoid disappointment and irritation I will hereby issue a SEMI-SPOILER alert. <br />
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<a href="http://www.stephenvolk.net/">Stephen Volk’s</a> novella <a href="http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/the-little-gift-hardcover-by-stephen-volk-4237-p.asp">The Little Gift</a> may be a relatively short work, but it contains volumes within its carefully constructed narrative. It comments upon the aridity of corporate clone culture, the subtle but everpresent divisions of class, the vital import of art and spiritual nourishment in an aggressively materialistic world, the coarsening effect of tabloid journalism and the philosophical distinction between instinctive and morally conscious action. As a story written by an author generally working within the horror genre (and I think that, with its exploration of the dark corners of the human psyche, this qualifies as a horror story) it is also strident in its rejection of the prurient allure of one of the modern avatars of the monstrous, the serial killer. A brutally realist monster for materialist times, stripped of all supernatural mystery and ripped from the lurid headlines of the real world. They are driven only by debased appetites, playing on fears of physical pain and torturous death rather than any threat to the soul, inviting the lurch of nausea in place of the vertigo felt in the presence of the uncanny.<br />
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Above all, however, The Little Gift is a terribly human story filled with an empathetic awareness of the frangibility of the emotional self, the fragility of bodies – bodies and souls. Its cruel ironies and correspondences (and I shall endeavour not to reveal the central irony, which is embodied in the title) act as harsh lessons, stunning blows leading to damaged self-awareness. It begins with our first person narrator in the midst of night terrors, the existential dread given form by sleeplessness. They obviously have a subconscious source beyond their ostensible cause, the little gifts of dead mice and birds left by the cat. Something fundamental is exposed in the vulnerable hours before dawn. <br />
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The little gift left by the pitiless pet at the start of the novella seems like some physical manifestation of these night fears. The mauled, near-dead bird is a token of feline fellow-feeling, a sharing of the kill with the pride, allowing the privilege of the final death-blow to lie with the chief provider. The link between human and animal is established at the outset and is reiterated throughout the story. The narrator sees the cat’s actions as instinctive, engineered by ‘millions of years of evolution’. His own actions, the impulsive affair he falls into, are seen in similarly materialistic terms, animalistic drives followed at a time when his sense of self has been reduced to a dulled nullity. He fantasises about sex in the toilet, the ultimate reduction of passion to basic physical need and fears that some pheremonal musk might betray him to his wife, as if she could sniff him out. The first kiss, the peremptory prelude, takes place in the gardens of the grand house in which the corporate away day is taking place, the failed competitors for the prize mate aimlessly shuffling around the topiary like statuesque figures in a demystified version of Last Year in Marienbad. Later, on a trip with his family, the narrator pulls in at a location called Heaven’s Gate which offers a prospect over Longleat Park and the animals living in the safari park there. It’s a different view of the animal kingdom akin to the anodyne paintings of lions settling down with the lambs in the summery fields of the Lord found on the covers of the Jehovah’s Witness circular Watchtower. If this offers a converse metaphor for family life, then it is a fantasy, a forcefully willed ideal which bears no relation to true nature. Even emotions and psychological problems are spoken of in materialistic terms, with talk of Neuro Linguistic Programming and the Kübler-Ross stages of grief. All along, the narrator is aware of ‘the little man inside me, my soul’. <br />
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The scattered detritus of torn-out feathers are described discovered by the narrator’s wife at the beginning of the story are described as ‘dark commas’ spread across the room, their radius indicative of a fluttering struggle, agonies prolonged by the playful predator. It’s a powerfully poetic image, the comma marking a pause before an ensuing clause, the crux upon which a sentence turns; an interlude in the continuity of a life. But their provenance as the dismembered remains of a dying creature is also suggestive of a full stop, an ending in a parallel sentence. The image of a dark, feathered comma is used as a demarcation of significant moments of change in the narrative. Laid horizontally between certain paragraphs, it underlines temporal shifts or decisive alterations of intention or perception; the drift of time and mind. These symbolic punctuation marks are part of the visual schema for the book created by Pedro Marques which add a significant element to the overall impact. The exquisite surrealist corpse of the cover illustration, the dismembered doll angel with its bird head and plucked wings, is a disturbing yet strangely beautiful image. <br />
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The comma in the life of the protagonist is the banal disruption of a mid-life crisis. Volk depicts this with all the confused immediacy and panicked lack of perspective a first-person narrative affords. The very specificity of the details with which the narrator sums up his life – the Range Rover Evoque, the ‘gorgeous’ Kawasaki and the half-timbered cottage in All Cannings in Devizes – along with the contemptuously mocking self-awareness accompanying their listing, point to the falsity of such materialist aspirations as indicators of success and happiness. Tellingly, his ‘beautiful’ wife and ‘two gorgeous, healthy children’ (gorgeous like a Kawasaki) are tagged onto the end of the list as an afterthought, unnamed additions to the tokens of boastful achievement. You can almost hear David Byrne’s semi-hysterical vocal asking ‘well, how did I get here?’<br />
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What’s in a name? Naming or the withholding of names is important in The Little Gift. The narrator remains unnamed throughout and thus maintains the anonymity of the nameless. Although we are privy to the intimacies of his inner life at a time of personal crisis we see little beyond the borders of his brief and vividly real liaison. He remains essentially ill-defined, the primacy of family to his sense of self asserted rather than depicted. He also denies the serial killer his name, refusing to add to his mythologisation, his transformation into a folk demon. I’m reminded here of the ending of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth in which the brutal fascist captain is told in the moments before his execution that his name as a father will be denied him, never mentioned to the son that the woman who is about to take his life is cradling. He will be erased from his family tree. The shared namelessness adds to the sense that killer and narrator are connected however, both remotely touching one another on the spectrum of blank disconnection. ‘He always seemed part of me, attached by some dark umbilical’, our protagonist admits at the end. ‘The little man inside me’, perhaps, his dark soul. Or the ineradicable infection passed on by debased acts (again, don’t mythologise them by using the word evil, as if there were some inverted transcendence or any kind of active anti-morality at play), the tainting of the soul through contact, propagated through the grubbily ink-stained vector of the tabloids. <br />
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Part of Volk’s purpose here is to regain the humanity of the victims, to force us to empathise with them in their darkest moment, to be with them in the terror of their final loneliness without for one moment using their experience for the most despicable kind of prurient onlooking. It is something which has to be done with the utmost sensitivity, because we are approaching real and enduring suffering here. Volk is no stranger to addressing the darkest areas of human experience however, notably in the series After Life, which was fearless in its confrontation of the most distressing of scenarios (and which featured an episode which once more demythologised the serial killer archetype, exposing the blankness at the core of such characters). He always retains a humanist outlook which makes us feel for his characters, never revelling in or unnecessarily dwelling upon physical pain. And it is the humanity of the killer’s victims which is of the essence here, the acts themselves revealed only indirectly through the flashgun snapshots of tabloid reports. It’s a similar approach to that taken by Phil Rickman in his Merrily Watkins novel The Lamp of the Wicked, which also deals with the poisonous legacy of the Gloucester murders. Merrily has the ultimate nightmare in which she dreams that of daughter Jane (a character with whom we have become intimate over previous novels) being bundled into the back of the builders van. It’s a humanisation of the victim at the most intimate level, and allows her to empathise all the more with those who lost the people they loved in such a terrible way and who have to endure such dark imaginings over and over again. Such a shared humanist perspective suggests an affinity between the work of Rickman and Volk; an affinity which was obviously picked up by whoever commissioned Volk to adapt Rickman’s second Merrily Watkins novel Midwinter of the Spirit.<br />
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His wife and children are initially unnamed too, merely referred to in terms of their family connection. It is only after he meets his lover that they take on names and become more clearly defined as individuals, just as he feels himself waking up into a sense of an authentic self once more. His rehumanisation humanises them. Their names feel like they have an allegorical ring to them: Trudy, the true one and his daughters Verity (more truth) and Amber (the precious, the catcher of warm, hearthglow light). His lover’s name blends hints of the exotic with counterbalancing mundanity, the romantic with the drab everyday. Ghislaine is a French name which could have come from an old troubadour romance, whilst the surname Hammond is rooted in the English heartland in which this anti-romance takes place. The element of Frenchness may also be a nod to the British films of the grey 50s in which any element of illicit love (a fairly broad definition back then) tended to involve French actresses such as Simone Signoret (see Room At the Top) or other continentals who were more prone to that sort of thing. She has a hidden middle name too, of Italian provenance this time. Lenzi, which temporarily transports her out of the landscapes of motorway service stations and conference centres into the genuinely romantic dream of villages in the Tuscan hills. <br />
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Volk is brilliant at building up anti-romantic detail, with the precise location of a rendezvous at a services on the M5 between junctions 11a and 12 exposing its crushingly dispiriting nature whilst enabling us to locate it on our maps and explore its ambience for ourselves should we so wish. But he also finds beauty in imperfection, in the vulnerability and tenderness of those struggling to find happiness or fulfilment in a disconnected, corporate world but refusing to give up on themselves or others. We are defined by our imperfections as much as anything, he suggests. And it is those imperfections, the departures from an airbrushed presentation of the self to the world which make Ghislaine so plausibly real, and which makes her so attractive to our narrator. They catch onto one another as they drift aimlessly by, spinning closely around in a temporary dance of mutual recognition. <br />
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There is also a subtly portrayed class barrier between them. Not a gulf, but the kind of fine gradation which still creates instinctive divisions in the stratified society of Britain. Ghislaine is from Birmingham, we are initially led to believe. This misapprehension (she is actually from Wolverhampton, we later discover) is indicative of the generalised stereotype into which people are instantly assigned at first encounter, the reduction of the individual to a set of crude assumptions. Birmingham is a place synonymous with dour, brutalist pragmatism and an absence of romance, of any spark of the visionary. For me, as the home of the bands Broadcast, Pram and their various associates, it’s a major locus of magic and strange enchantment, an indication that rich interior landscapes and constellations of the imagination can be discovered and flourish in any environment. It contrasts markedly with the Wiltshire idyll in which the narrator lives, however. Ghislaine’s relatives may have come from the Tuscan countryside, Lenzis filling the graveyards there, but it is a place that her family have long since left behind for the built-up, motorway-bound terrain of the midlands. Our narrator, meanwhile, is able to take advantage of a ‘gite with a swimming pool near Brignoles, a former olive press’ which belongs to a company director. It may very well say something about my position within the British class spectrum that I had to look up what a gite was. Ghislaine has the contrasting prospect of a hen night in Barcelona, travelling by Easyjet and staying at a place called the Hotel Derby. Again, Volk is spot on when it comes to providing the telling anti-romantic detail. He could no doubt write a fine romantic comedy full of such wry observation if he had the mind to. I strongly suspect he doesn’t. Ghislaine’s one taste of upper crust living comes during the away day weekend, which takes place at a stately home converted into a conference centre. It hardly counts. <br />
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In a way, the class divide makes the passionate interlude all the more urgent and affecting. They both see each other for who they really are, with all trappings of status stripped away. As is always the case, however, it is far easier for our narrator to retreat back into the protective compound of his wealth, the stability of family. He is required to make the decisive move, but his default setting is drift. He simply doesn’t have the killer instinct. That has to be provided by someone else. An actual killer, perhaps. There is something peculiarly, poignantly English about his struggle to express his desires, to even articulate his feelings to himself. A verbal dance of self-deprecation skips lightly away from direct statement and it is down to Ghislaine to direct the affair, to read the all-too obvious signs. This disconnection from desire and clogged up communication is embodied in the fact that he finds it easier to make contact via the remote, truncated means of text messages. Printed out in bold type, these are disturbingly echoed in the lurid tabloid headlines and flashes of pruriently detailed reportage which are also printed in bold. Both condense, coarsen and elide truth, weakening the empathy which comes from true human connection.<br />
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These equivalences and correspondences create a sense of interconnected patterns spanning all manner of divides. Ultimately, they link a ‘respectable’, hard-working family man with an indolent, despicable killer, an unreadable void whose humanity has, at some point, been wholly erased. Or was he merely, like the housecat whose impulses are indulged, merely doing what he was programmed to do by nature. Are we more than a collective mess of amalgamated instincts? What makes us different from animals? Are we moral beings or are we just kidding ourselves? Mention of ISIS headlines on the news taking over once the killer’s tale is done raise the stakes and places such questions on a global scale. We have been offered the possibility of a religious work of art by Matisse, inspired by the kindness of a Catholic nurse who subsequently became a nun, as some kind of redemptive embodiment of the spiritual nobility inherent in the human soul. The description of the glass, its vivid colours and living light (‘the intense blue of the Mediterranean and the Madonna’ – beautiful writing here) gives an almost catechistic pagan sense of the immediacy of being. The equivalences which are so much a part of this intricately structured novella once more provide ironic counterparts however. And it would take a particularly intense moment of Blakean visionary transport to experience a similar flooding of divine light in the Gloucester services off the M5. The final image could have taken place in those services (thus echoing filmic images of dissolving or bubbling liquids stared at by James Mason in Odd Man Out and Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver, both characters suffering crises of identity and hovering on the edge of death and violence). I’ve always been fascinated by the way in which sugar cubes absorb and draw up the tea or coffee into which they’re dipped until they’re entirely consumed by it and I’m clearly not alone. Here, such an effect acts as a complex and ambiguous piece of symbolism. The sugarcube soul, absorbing that to which it is exposed? A metaphor for the transient nature of all things, the vital importance of making the most of our short span? Of not allowing ourselves to drift into the dissipation of the unexamined life, slowly reduced to the sludge of base, instinctual existence? Or of the way in which the lonely, monadic self can find indivisible commonality with another if it is prepared to open itself up and communicate with complete honesty? Our narrator used to take two sugars. He ends up taking one, which he watches darkening with the stain of his black coffee. Perhaps he still has some distance to go. <br />
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These are profound issues, questions which address the fundamentals of who we are as individuals, as political and social beings; as humans in fact. No easy resolution is arrived at, no closure comfortably attained. In the insidious, dangerous manner in which expert storytellers operate, we are invited to think for ourselves, to think about ourselves. It is Stephen Volk’s Little Gift to us. I for one am thankful for it.<br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-32158844508859958072016-06-22T23:23:00.000+01:002016-06-22T23:23:34.187+01:00Midsummer Traditions and FolkloreA longer version of an essay included with the <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/">Folklore Tapes</a> box <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/product/folklore-tapes-calendar-customs-vol-iv-crown-of-light">Calendar Customs IV: Crown of Light</a><br />
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Midsummer is the most natural time of the year for a celebration marked by simple pleasure and unaffected joy. The midwinter rites of Christmastide, the diametric opposite of midsummer on the face of the annular calendar, have an air of fortification and remembrance – illumination kindled to hold back the dark and nurture a hope for solar renaissance. If midwinter is the time when the seeds of light are sown, midsummer is the moment when they flower to their fullest extent. The sun is at its apogee, its long arc across the sky vaulting to its utmost height. The earth, spinning through its axially tilting orbital dance, presents its northern hemisphere to bask in solar warmth, bringing out its summer colours – bright grassy greens and buttercup yellows, speedwell blues and poppy reds. Darkness has been cast aside, compressed into a few brief hours (or dispelled altogether if you travel far enough north into the Scottish isles or Scandinavian wilds). The triumph of light, of the spirit of life, is to be rejoiced in unreservedly, no matter how brief its moment of ascendance. <br />
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As with midwinter rites, including Christmas day itself, there is a slight misalignment with the precise moment of solstice division into maximal periods of light and dark. The summer solstice falls on the 21st June. The first rays of the rising sun shafting through the megaliths of Stonehenge onto its central ‘altar’ stone are greeted by Druid revivalists, rooted in 18th century reinventions. Thousands of bystanders respond to the morning solar radiance with the glinting digital scintillations of their mobile cameras and phones – a very modern form of worship, attracting a mass congregation, if only for this one day. The antiquarian dream of Stonehenge as a solar temple of the Druids is one which enchanted William Blake amongst others, as the image of a megalithic trilithon gateway for the giants of old Albion in his illuminated book Jerusalem attests. Mere fancy it may be, but it’s one which still exerts considerable influence on the contemporary imagination, mired in a materialistic present and yearning for a sense of connection with a magical past. <br />
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Traditional midsummer celebrations have not taken place at the time of the solstice, however, but three days later on the 24th, St John’s Day, and even more so on its preceding eve. This is the date which has come to be officially designated midsummer’s day. Further festivities were held on the joint saint day of Peter and Paul, the 28th. Many must have simply bridged the two festival days with continuous merriment. And remember, this is the time of Glastonbury weather (the Glastonbury festival being a modern manifestation of midsummer revels), so suggesting alternative dates for a festival which was of its essence an outdoors celebration was an eminently pragmatic hedging of bets. <br />
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There’s really only one way to celebrate the supremacy of the sun and whatever divinities are associated with it: build up huge fires on the high places of the landscape to reflect some of its flaring, mesmerically roiling photosphere back at it; to emulate some of its warmth, that radiance which makes the heart lighter, the spirit more buoyant. Poets have recognised the spiritual refreshment afforded by this time of light, its countermanding of wintry melancholy. Matthew Arnold, in Thyrsis, his elegy to his friend Arthur Hugh Clough, asks of those who suggest their spirit departs with the falling blossom ‘too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?/Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,/Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,/Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,/Sweet-William with his homely cottage smell,/And stocks in fragrant blow;/Roses that down the alleys shine afar,/And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,/And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,/And the full moon, and the white evening-star.’<br />
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John Clare, the farm labourer poet, who suffered desperately from the depredations of depression, nevertheless revelled in the ecstatic moods of summer: ‘Now swathy summer by rude health embrowned/Precedence takes of rosy fingered spring/And laughing joy with wild flowers prankt and crowned/A wild and giddy thing/With health robust from every care unbound/Comes on zephers wing/And cheers the toiling clown.<br />
Happy as holiday enjoying face/Loud tongued and ‘merry as a marriage bell’/They lightsome step sheds joy in every place/And where the troubled dwell/Thy witching smiles weans them of half their cares/And from thy sunny spell/They greet joy unawares’. <br />
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Accounts from as far back as the 4th century in the old French province of Acquitaine record midsummer fire festivals in which blazing wheels were set rolling down steep hillsides – the solar disc turning on its tumbling course. In mid 19th century Buckfastleigh in Devon a wheel with rim and spokes wrapped in straw was set ablaze and rolled from the heights on midsummer eve, accompanied on its fiery descent by villagers pelting alongside, attempting to steer it with sticks to a steamy dousing in the river Dart. If they succeeded in their endeavour, good fortune would prevail over the coming months, and a good harvest guaranteed. If not, they’d had a wild time and could repair breathlessly to the nearest alehouse to drown their thirst. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifAFVi-WdHfygCUSIadr_4NejTdgxms8TMcyJ9R3B7PP1C9AOnYNJpkRzN_cFjHzRFpiLEFrHr8tMYZ6PmsfhIujAFsHek6utuelvnUNuDNyQ8d8E68gHzfsloMPW7KZOic-3DHQTDlJVb/s1600/DSCN4493_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifAFVi-WdHfygCUSIadr_4NejTdgxms8TMcyJ9R3B7PP1C9AOnYNJpkRzN_cFjHzRFpiLEFrHr8tMYZ6PmsfhIujAFsHek6utuelvnUNuDNyQ8d8E68gHzfsloMPW7KZOic-3DHQTDlJVb/s400/DSCN4493_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Font in Bratton Clovelly church, Devon</blockquote>The representation of the sun as a wheel was common in medieval times. It symbolised both its daily progress across the sky and the procession of the solar year with its seasonal transformations. Solar wheels can be traced on many Norman fonts, often the oldest objects in rural parish churches. Like many other pagan symbols or allegorical beasts, they have been translated into a Christian idiom. This marked a process of continuity and fusion as much as an imposition of alien values. It was the cataclysmic historical and cultural rift of the Reformation which brought this continuum of belief and practice to a violent iconoclastic end. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtjnfTvSadvAGXtVgfp4udFe4vHqDlSO7eyA2MTB6gVhW0SrqjxksAJXLmHpCmEs7M1Y-x0hunv7BsVTqzZiMZY8-fCFGPPOVjrTJGTVCrJVB_U5vXL5kx93bpQqULpoLrtO_6oC6dnc6/s1600/John_Aubrey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtjnfTvSadvAGXtVgfp4udFe4vHqDlSO7eyA2MTB6gVhW0SrqjxksAJXLmHpCmEs7M1Y-x0hunv7BsVTqzZiMZY8-fCFGPPOVjrTJGTVCrJVB_U5vXL5kx93bpQqULpoLrtO_6oC6dnc6/s400/John_Aubrey.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>John Aubrey</blockquote>The fires of medieval belief and ritual were increasingly stamped out, both literally and figuratively. The antiquarian John Aubrey wrote, in his 1688 volume Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme (a pioneering folkloric work), ‘still in many places on St John’s night they make Fires on the Hills: but the Civill Warres comeing on have putt all these Rites or customes quite out of fashion’. Nevertheless, the tradition lived on the further reaches of the isles. <br />
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Hilltop fires were lit on St John’s Eve across England and Eastern and Northern Scotland and in the Northern Isles (less so in the Celtic lands of Wales, Ireland and the Western Isles). In Scotland, the sun’s progress would be ritually re-enacted by processing around the fields three times sunwise (ie clockwise) with blazing torches held aloft, the crops and herds thereby blessed. Bonfires were started as the sun slowly sank below the horizon, staining the sky with its tangerine and vermillion afterglow. In the Northern Isles, Johnsmas fires were built from varied materials including heather, fish bones, peat, flowers, seaweed and feathers. <br />
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In Westernmost Cornwall, chains of fires were lit tracing the rugged, curving concave coastline of Mount’s Bay from Penzance to the Lizard. Cornish midsummer fire traditions were revived by the Old Cornwall Society in 1929, colouring them with druidic romance whose nationalist elements lent the proceedings a curiously formal, civic air. Beginning atop the tor of Carn Brea, the site of a Neolithic settlement, the fires are blessed in the old Cornish language and flowers arranged in the shape of a sickle thrown into the flames by a local girl designated the Lady of the Flowers. The sickle anticipates the harvest whilst the ceremony is a decorous and fragrant reminder of a more elementally superstitious past when a bountiful harvest required the offering of human life. Antiquarians in previous centuries dreamed of detecting remnants of the wicker giant sacrifices which Julius Caesar claimed to have witnessed in the Gaul of the 1st century BC in midsummer fire rituals, but there was really no evidence to support the fabric of their fancies. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSqSJS_nMErha1qmm_qfX5uthHPV4Gh0Uc4MvEwy_50N3f6ZM92tnqoDiuoZdTkGWojho1YtX5kYPmC4XjvC58MjWgC2ZjaaIp8Nt7SEdNe7KSvLpKXaiGZkhGRRblewjxUGWzraM59oqt/s1600/mainMediaSize%253D0x480_x0%253D_x1%253D_y0%253D_y1%253D_format%253D_type%253Dimage_publish%253Dtrue_alf_ticket%253Dguest_image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSqSJS_nMErha1qmm_qfX5uthHPV4Gh0Uc4MvEwy_50N3f6ZM92tnqoDiuoZdTkGWojho1YtX5kYPmC4XjvC58MjWgC2ZjaaIp8Nt7SEdNe7KSvLpKXaiGZkhGRRblewjxUGWzraM59oqt/s400/mainMediaSize%253D0x480_x0%253D_x1%253D_y0%253D_y1%253D_format%253D_type%253Dimage_publish%253Dtrue_alf_ticket%253Dguest_image.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Sir Benjamin Stone's picture of the Whalton Baal Fire rites in 1903</blockquote>The Baal Fire at Whalton in Northumberland is lit on the village green on the 4th July, harking back to the old midsummer’s eve date before the rift between the Julian calendar and its Gregorian replacement opened up in September 1752, a faultline which swallowed up 11 days (precious moments guarded by the Paladin of the Lost Hour in Harlan Ellison’s short story). It’s a celebration which can lay claim to real continuity, perhaps even with a pre-Reformation tradition. The word baal could derive from the Celtic bel, meaning the sun, or light, or from the Anglo-Saxon bael, meaning fire (which is also the root of Beltane). Fuel for the fire is carried by hand to the place of burning, and children dance around the stacked tinder before it is set alight as the evening shadows gather. Couples take over from the children, dancing around the flames and later leaping over the crackling embers, as was the way with midsummer fires across the land. Leaping the fire and darting through its smoke, breathing in and wreathing the body with its heady woodscent aroma was an act of purification and invited good fortune. <br />
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A Shropshire monk writing in the 14th century described the ‘three manner of fires’ which were made on St John’s eve. ‘One is of clean bones and no wood, and is called a bonfire; another is of clean wood and no bones, and is called a wakefire, for men sitteth and wake by it; the third is made of bones and wood, and is called St John’s Fire’. The bonefire was a purifying conflagration, its evil stench and acrid smoke driving away malevolent forces and keeping pestilence at bay. The wake fire was the sociable circle of warmth around which people would gather for the night. St John’s Fire was a ritual blaze with a rather more solemn ambience. <br />
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It wasn’t just in rural areas that fires were started. The estimable John Stow, Elizabethan tailor and self-educated antiquarian (who we’ve encountered in previous Calendar Customs explorations) recorded his good-humoured observations of London midsummer celebrations in his invaluable and highly readable 1598 masterpiece Survey of London. ‘In the month of June and July, on the vigils of festival days, and on the same festival days in the evening after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires in the streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them: the wealthier sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfires, would set out tables on the vigils, furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for His benefits bestowed on them. These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst neighbours before at controversy, were there, by the labour of others, reconciled, and made of bitter enemies loving friends; and also for the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air’. As well as re-iterating the idea of fire and its smoke as a purgative and purifying force before the potentially arid and pestilential days of the long summer, Stow gets to the heart of the matter here; a communal fire acts as a focal point for gathering around and generates good spirits and an amiable atmosphere. It’s this as much as any symbolic, spiritual or magical purpose which explains the widespread popularity of midsummer fire ceremonies over so many centuries. Even an 18th century protestant cleric such as Henry Bourne, writing in his 1725 volume Antiquitates Vulgares, recognised the fundamental innocence of such impulses (unless taken too far, of course, he felt compelled to add): ‘when they (the fires) are only kindled as tokens of joy, to excite innocent mirth and diversion, and promote peace and good neighbourhood, they are lawful and innocent, and deserve no censure. And therefore when on Midsummer-Eve, St Peter’s Eve, and some other times, we make bonfires before shops and houses there would be no harm in doing so, was it not that some continue their diversion to too late hours, and others are guilty of excessive drinking’. <br />
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Fires burning in the streets of London naturally cast the looming shadow of King Mob, summoning the potential spirit of its mutinously grinning collective visage. It’s perhaps no surprise that the city watch played an increasingly prominent role in the medieval and Tudor periods. From the 14th century onwards, they were required to parade through the streets in their gayest finery, carrying flaming ‘cresset’ buckets on poles slung over their shoulders. No such finery for the black-clad, baton-wielding riot police who set about the latterday travellers intent on holding a free Solstice festival in the fields around Stonehenge in 1985, a one-sided altercation which became known as the Battle of the Beanfield (although ‘rout’ would be a more accurate description). <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIt9B5Xn5SA1mkifmhU05GnI8sqRS4crin4saJcWbjxu7kQ-rHHE328RGAxhQZATEes4-YCQlRcVs1jy2oFI83D_1oZEmgh0Rb9Pko59AE9gx5Fd7ZJ1n5qlkm_wU5fRtqVSvhYLh6CNEv/s1600/giant-and-hob-nob.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIt9B5Xn5SA1mkifmhU05GnI8sqRS4crin4saJcWbjxu7kQ-rHHE328RGAxhQZATEes4-YCQlRcVs1jy2oFI83D_1oZEmgh0Rb9Pko59AE9gx5Fd7ZJ1n5qlkm_wU5fRtqVSvhYLh6CNEv/s400/giant-and-hob-nob.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The Salisbury Giant and sidekick Hob-Nob</blockquote>Midsummer parades grew in size and theatricality throughout the Tudor period, with passing pageants featuring creatures and characters from biblical and national mythologies. Giants were prominent (as they would be) along with saints, dragons, hobby horses, Moorish kings, Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, unicorns and Jesus Christ himself, all accompanied by minstrels and morris dancers and brought to moving picture life in the pixillating flicker of a hundred smoking torches. Such pageantry was another victim of Reformation and Civil War. As early as 1533, Henry VIII’s Royal Council was looking to curtail these potentially rebellious gatherings, and in 1539 he succeeded in suppressing the annual London march for the remaining 8 years of his reign. It was never the same again and soon faded away completely, a fate which befell similar parades across the country. A mouldering remnant of an effigy was discovered in 1844 in the backrooms of a Tailor’s Guildhall in Salisbury; a giant which once bestrode the midsummer parades, now a tattered, dimineshed shade of its former self. It now lies quiescent in the city museum. <br />
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Midsummer parades have been reinvented in some areas, though, notably so in Penzance. The Mazey Day festival has been fashioned around the old Golowan (St John’s Eve) celebrations. At midnight on St John’s Eve, a Penglaz ‘obby ‘oss is brought out, a flower-garlanded and gaily beribboned horse’s skull held aloft on a pole, its empty sockets filled with the night’s shadows, chomping incisors flashing an enamelled grin in the torchlight. A female ‘teaser’ leads it in a snaking serpent dance down to the quayside, the townspeople twisting and turning in its mesmerically swaying wake. <br />
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Midsummer is not one of the festival periods during which the worlds of faerie are at a perigee point of proximity to the waking world. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its fairy court and mischievous sprites making sport with human destiny is, despite its title, set on May Day eve. Midsummer’s eve is still a time steeped in powerful magic, however. Although Midsummer is a solar festival, a daylit affair, this is also the point at which the astrological calendar moves into the house of Cancer, a sign associated with water and the moon. <br />
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It was thought to be a time when witches were active, going abroad to gather flowers and herbs whose potency was at its height on this night. As John Aubrey noted, ‘Midsummer Eve is counted or called the Witches’ Night’. Cornish Penwith witches were said to gather on Burns Down above Zennor on midsummer’s eve, the nomenclature denoting the many fires which were lit amongst the natural cauldrons of the granite landscape basins and on the tables of dolmen stones. The Witches’ Rock which was the ultimate site for their midnight assembly is no longer there, having been broken up and possibly used for stone wall construction in the nineteenth century. It used to be said that touching the rock nine times at midnight would afford protection against ill-fortune – a species of associative counter-magic. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the farm which lies beneath Burns Down is called Tregerthen, or Rowan Tree Farm. Rowan wood afforded powerful protection against the depredations of witchcraft, and twigs tied together with red ribbons and hung above stable and farmhouse doors would keep harmful magic at bay. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03jQ6edVajTzHDWlqIMVbbmaql_LX2eRZdRv8lMDeg-bDBLCIE_yiR71mtRV8lyUhd0PVCv5Mm9KY9CAv3P7uL5iHxlZBtLTpcuPrGiTVQrs-M75W3runKCXFvhMyAXBhfFtW6cwbjByn/s1600/StJohnsWort_botanical-illustration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03jQ6edVajTzHDWlqIMVbbmaql_LX2eRZdRv8lMDeg-bDBLCIE_yiR71mtRV8lyUhd0PVCv5Mm9KY9CAv3P7uL5iHxlZBtLTpcuPrGiTVQrs-M75W3runKCXFvhMyAXBhfFtW6cwbjByn/s400/StJohnsWort_botanical-illustration.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>St John's Wort</blockquote>Effigies of witches were burned in some fires, a tradition revived by the Cornish at St Cleer. A witch’s broom and hat are perched on the peak of the bonfire mountain. When it is lit, a variety of herbs and flowers are thrown onto the pyre to nullify their efficacy in any witchery attempted in the vicinity. The very flowers used for the purposes of witchcraft (or, as was more likely the case, herbal medicine) could be employed as magical protection. Garlands of vervain, yarrow, mugwort, plaintain, dwarf elder, corn marigold (the ‘summer’s bride’), orpins and, most powerfully of all, St John’s wort (or chase-devil) could be hung on doors to repel malevolent spells, or burned in midsummer fires to create a purifying incense. Yarrow hung up on St John’s Eve would ward of sickness for the coming year. Those seeking St John’s Wort on the evening when its magic was at its most potent might have a bit of hunt on their hands, however. It was said to be able to move to evade those intent on picking it. <br />
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Of course, midsummer flowers were beautiful decorations, magical powers notwithstanding. John Stow noted ‘on the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on St. Peter and Paul the Apostles, every man’s door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John’s wort, orpine, white lilies, and such like, garnished upon with garlands of beautiful flowers’, their colours brought out in the evening by the illumination of hundreds of lamps to ‘make a goodly show’. Another tradition involved the creation of midsummer cushions; either an actual cushion upon which flowers were arrayed, or a stool covered in a layer of thick, clayish soil into which flowers were embedded. The poet John Clare loved such presentations and wanted to title one of his later collections The Midsummer Cushion. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg60EG2uqXkM9prU8OExvRRCQNueNfB4VTIwhMX4DJzYzrPDSrLN_I2a_h51UqJ8VokTvKE_jPI_5OLNCygaQim9oRm_a-xjZEGXnqxCFTGEotxT6CcPKohcdVQBgt5oUYaCSqthq4OS2gY/s1600/stock-photo-78865323-bertram-anderson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg60EG2uqXkM9prU8OExvRRCQNueNfB4VTIwhMX4DJzYzrPDSrLN_I2a_h51UqJ8VokTvKE_jPI_5OLNCygaQim9oRm_a-xjZEGXnqxCFTGEotxT6CcPKohcdVQBgt5oUYaCSqthq4OS2gY/s400/stock-photo-78865323-bertram-anderson.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Orpine</blockquote>Midsummer was a time considered particularly propitious for divination, especially when foretelling romantic fortunes. Flowers play their part here too. The prominent floral aspect of midsummer rites and celebrations is hardly surprising given that this is the time of fullest flowering. Two orpine flowers were hung together, sometimes resting against a plate, on midsummer’s eve. If, on the following morning, they had inclined towards one another, love would blossom and fidelity was assured. If they turned away from each other, love would fade and loyalties stray. In the disastrous event of the orpines withering, a death in the household was foretold. Fortunately, this was highly unlikely. Orpine flowers were renowned for remaining fresh long after having been cut, hence one of their common names, life-long. Another such name was ‘midsummer men’, indicating how closely and widely they were associated with these divinations. <br />
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The magical potency of flowers reached its peak on St John’s eve, and in some cases this was the only time at which their power became manifest. A piece of mugwort ‘coal’ dug up beneath its roots (in actuality a rotted part of those roots) on St John’s Eve would afford protection from plague, ague, lightning, carbuncle and burning, and was thus a highly sought after natural treasure on this one enchanted night. Fernseed (the tiny spores on the underside of fern leaves) was particularly elusive, supposedly appearing on this one evening of the year and no other. If you were somehow able to gather it (and you would likely face opposition from witches jealously guarding their special patch) it would confer upon you the power of invisibility. Sacred springs or wells could also be used for divination, with the bubbles or ripples produced by offerings of coins, bent pins or flowers thrown upon the waters providing answers to questions of love and matrimony. These offerings, or coloured ribbons tied to adjacent trees, would activate the healing powers of the waters. <br />
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A sunwise circumnavigation of the well was often part of the ritual, as at the Pin Well in Alnwick Park in Northumberland. Processing or dancing in a circling, sunwise direction was a feature of many midsummer celebrations, modelling the ecliptic solar passage across the sky and thereby invoking its power and blessing. Never anti-sunwise (or widdershins), however; that would summon dark otherworldly forces into your life and invite ill fortune. The North Eastern antiquarian Moses Aaron Richardson, writing in the 6th volume of his mid-19th century collection titled, with exhaustively thorough accuracy, ‘The Local Historian's Table Book of Remarkable Occurrences, Historical Facts, Legendary and Descriptive Ballads, &c., connected with the Counties of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, and Durham’, remarks upon the three holy wells near Longwitton-hall in Northumberland. ‘Great concourses of people from all parts, also used to assemble here in the memory of old people on “Midsummer Sunday and the Sunday following” and amuse themselves with leaping, eating gingerbread brought for sale to the spot, and drinking the waters of the wells’. He also notes the myth of the guardian dragon associated with the wells, a creature capable of making itself invisible and renewing itself by dipping its tail in the healing waters. It was defeated by one Sir Guy of Warwick, who noticed its secret and cunningly interposed himself between the beast and its source of power, hacking it about until it could take no more, curled up and died. The wells were thenceforth free for all to use. Three cheers for Sir Guy!<br />
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To retain the magical properties of plants and flowers gathered St John’s Eve, or the divinatory secrets of sacred waters, it was a general requirement that complete and solemn silence was maintained. The Moomins understood this, as Tove Jansson related in Moominsummer Madness. After sitting by their midsummer fire for a spell, Moomintroll, the Snork Maiden and the Fillyjonk venture out into the night meadows to gather nine kinds of flower (as we have seen with the Witches’ Rock, nine is something of a magic number). The Snork Maiden recalls previous midsummer evenings when ‘we went off to pick nine kinds of flowers and put them under our pillow and then our dreams came true. But you weren’t allowed to say a word while you picked them, not afterwards until morning’. This most magically-wise of creatures also knew some midsummer romantic divinatory rites: ‘First you must turn seven times around yourself, mumbling a little and stamping your feet. Then you go backwards to a well, and turn around, and look down in it. And then, down in the water, you’ll see the person you’re going to marry’. <br />
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Midsummer’s eve in the Moomin’s world was also the only time to sow the seeds which almost instantaneously germinate into the small, ghostworm creatures known as the Hattifatteners. More midsummer’s eve sowing magic could be achieved by a girl who walked 12 times (sunwise, of course) around a church, scattering hempseed in her wake whilst intoning the rhyme ‘hempseed I sow/Hempseed I hoe/Let him tht is my true love/Come after me and mow’. The phantom of her future love would then appear, trailing after her, completely under her spell. <br />
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A more unsavoury form of love divination is practised in the kitchen, with the midsummer’s eve baking of dumb cakes by a small gathering of women. Once more, the preparation and cooking must be carried out in complete silence. The ingredients are simple and few: half flour and half flour mixed into a dough with the piss of each participant. Each in turn makes a mark or scratches an initial on the cake (or cakes). After the rigorous observation of various scrupulously specified instructions (for this is a highly ritualised recipe) the baked cakes are taken out of the oven and the spectres of future husbands appear to break the piece of cake (or take the smaller bunlike variants) bearing the mark of their bride-to-be and present it to her. As with all supernatural procedures, there were attendant dangers. The anonymous author of the 1685 volume Mother Bunch’s Closet Newly Broke Open (Mother Bunch herself, perhaps) concluded his or her instruction with the saucily valedictory line ‘if there be any so unfortunate to hear a bell, I wish I had them to my bedfellows this night to prevent leading apes to hell’. Leading apes in hell, a phrase which turns up in a number of Shakespearean quotes, was the proverbial fate of old maids in the 16th and 17th centuries, although its precise meaning remains obscure. However, the fact that it is taking place in hell suggests that it’s unlikely to be pleasant. So, a recipe which risks bestial intercourse of whatever variety in the fiery pits. You don’t get that in Delia (as far as I’m aware). <br />
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The combination of summer heat and the heightened influence of the moon led to midsummer being considered a time of delirium and madness, particularly for those already affected by such states. Tove Jansson’s Moominsummer Madness plays on such associations, as well as on the theatrical elements which are also central to the novel. The phrase midsummer madness was common in Shakespeare’s time. In Twelfth Night, Olivia responds to Malvolio’s absurdly misguided advances by declaring ‘why, this is very midsummer madness’. Such tendencies lend St John’s eve festivities and edgily antic air, creating a sense of licensed lunacy and abandon. Midsummer sports such as swinging fireballs on the end of chains, running with tar barrels, leaping through flames or rolling burning wheels down hills were ways of toying with chaos, playing with scarcely contained elemental forces that could easily grow rapidly out of control and scorch, char or completely consume; A good analogy for those skirting the borders of mania. Perhaps by allowing the demons of the mind their night of wild freedom, their longer term ravages might be curtailed in the dog days to come. <br />
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The ephemeral nature of the sun’s triumph was acknowledged in rites which anticipated harvest time, the fruiting and going to seed of plants now in the full glory of efflorescence. The smoke from fires was partly intended to ritually cleanse the air, protecting crops and herds from pestilence and blight. In Herefordshire and Somerset, fires were lit adjacent to orchards to encourage a good crop in the autumn, as John Aubrey noted: ‘On Midsummer-eve, they make fire in the fields in the waies: sc. to Blesse the Apples’. The ephemerality of human life was also underlined by the south western custom of the midsummer’s eve church porch watch. On the long, hazy evening and short, balmy (hopefully) night of this enchanted evening, it was the phantoms of the living which drifted dreamily abroad, as we’ve seen in the context of a number of the divinatory rituals. The porch watcher could observe the villagers filing dumbly into the parish church, departing once more at midnight. If any remained inside, it was a sure sign that they would die during the following year (in some variations of the tradition, it was only those thus marked who entered the church in the first place). Once more, dangers attended this encounter with the supernatural. If the watcher was overcome with weariness and slipped into sleep during their nightlong vigil, they would join the phantom congregation remaining inside before the next St John’s eve. <br />
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For all that it kept one eye on the time to come, and on the dwindling of the light, midsummer’s eve and its ensuing day were all about celebrating the moment. The sun is rising now, climbing to the height of its radiant glory. Light and warmth and joy fill our hearts in this instant, This Instant! So let us gather around the convivial fires, revel in the amber glow bronzing one another’s faces and leap boldly through the flames and fragrant smoke. Surrender to the holy midsummer madness. We are alive. Blessings and thanks to Bright Phoebus, to the lifegiver, to The Sun. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-68699879559811760442016-04-15T22:24:00.000+01:002016-04-15T22:29:13.586+01:00Folklore Tapes: Occultural Creatures Vol.1 - Black Dog Traditions of England<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5GKWErz960G1R9f4bnsVKuYZTeV9s_tNzT7xY_0L4VvVyYXFODyCbQ0rxJ-dYpIsGAIahE_TjGKwO-ZgCq8gjWWukGC1qx6soDwzQeDVe1n_Y7NVz562NgqeNJDe78FKch64b_iRcWShn/s1600/book794.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5GKWErz960G1R9f4bnsVKuYZTeV9s_tNzT7xY_0L4VvVyYXFODyCbQ0rxJ-dYpIsGAIahE_TjGKwO-ZgCq8gjWWukGC1qx6soDwzQeDVe1n_Y7NVz562NgqeNJDe78FKch64b_iRcWShn/s400/book794.jpg" /></a></div><br />
The <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/product/ftoci-black-dog-traditions-of-england">latest offering</a> from the <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/">Folklore Tapes</a> folk (<a href="http://ianhumberstone.co.uk/">Ian Humberstone</a> and David Chatton Barker in this instance) is a treasure box filled with exquisite objects, a reliquary as the promotional copy casts it. The unholy contents are far from saintly, however. These relics are collected reports and rumours, historical remnants in the form of oral tales and myths in set down in ballad form. Here are dark terrors, tenebrous forms condensed from the night’s impenetrable blackness and given wild, bestial life. This is the opening release in a new Occultural Creatures series and the first supernatural manifestation to be sighted is the terrible, protean outline of the black dog. <br />
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At the heart of the project, its scholarly foundation and narrative bone structure, is Ian Humberstone’s investigative study of black dog traditions in England. It has academic heft and an authority anchored by extensive footnotes and bibliographic markers. Fervid poring over little consulted texts are supported by field expeditions and first hand explorations and interviews, mining local knowledge and gaining a feel for the geography of myth, the spirit of folkloric place. Where it succeeds over more dusty tomes is in its ability to bring the stories alive, to create a rich sense of atmosphere, conjuring time, space and mood and making the sense of dread and uncanny mystery palpable. These are accounts made to be read aloud, as indeed a number of them have been in a handful of compelling performances. The ‘prowling and ill-omened animation of the witching hour’ has been brought to life as a stark woodcut silhouette thrown onto a white screen of ghostly cloth by an overhead projector, backdrops shifted in the blink of an eye by a prestidigitator’s hand whipping away photographic transparencies. ‘Listen close and I will tell you all I know’, Ian begins. It’s as if we are gathered around the warm, hypnotically flickering radiance of a fire, the shadows cast to the periphery of vision by the beguiling coil and sway of its transient flames. <br />
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The prose has a bewitching cadence, an enchanting use of the language of romance which lends it a bardic quality. Read it in your head in measured metre with a soft Scottish brogue to hear it in its optimum form. Ian Humberstone traces the development of the ubiquitous black dogs of legend and folklore from demonic beasts, embodiments of hellish power, to the less corporeal though no less terrifying outlines of spectre-hounds, haunters of dark lanes and wild moors or guardians of magical hoards. He gathers together the linguistic branches of the black dog family, the regional vernacular which produces barguests, shocks and hooters, gytrash, padfeet and skrikers. They are manifold but tend to share common characteristics; uncommonly large black hounds with eyes as big as saucers. Occasionally they swell in size, expanding to take on an aspect of cosmic horror, becoming indistinguishable from the terror of the night’s dark abyss. <br />
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Ian travels the length of the land to gather tales of these dread beasts, tracking their footprints to Devon, Herefordshire and Norfolk, Yorkshire, Somerset and even to the dark, stinking heart of old London town. Photographs, soft with film stock grain, add eyeflash instants, impressions of landscape and the particularity of place. Tudor ruins with their long-cold fireplaces; the graveyards of flinty East-Anglian churches; stygian fern and ash-leaf veiled cave-mouths; and the imprint of the black dog on weather vanes, pub and road signs. Our fearless and intrepid explorers, messrs. Humberstone and Chatton Barker, are glimpsed as figures in these landscapes, picking their way through the tumbled limestone trail of Troller’s Gill, measuring out the distances of the high moorland or soaking up the sun outside the Black Dog Inn. <br />
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There are also stills from the celluloid strips of David Chatton Barker’s 16mm film, also included in the box. The stock is deliberately corroded, subjected to weathering and bio-chemical erosion by elements taken from different black dog sites. The patterns thus produced lend an air of antiquity to the film (an antiquity already inbuilt, in these our accelerated times, by the physicality of the medium, the care and labour required for its development). These are strips of film steeped in long time, partaking of the slow geological transformations of the world. They also reflect the transformations of the tales marking the brief moment of human presence in the landscape. Tales whose articulation of a forbidding wildness, an essential otherness, express a subconscious awareness of the tenuous provisionality of this habitation. The blotched and cracked surfaces of the filmstrips are like relief charts for some hidden territory, Ordinance Survey maps for the otherworld or route maps for the inner landscape. The black dogs traverse these celluloid terrains like mental emanations, suggestive silhouettes etched onto the retina via inky Rorschach smears. ‘So what do you see in this one?’ ‘The spectre-hound of hell’. ‘Ah, most interesting….’<br />
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The treasure box also houses a 12” LP, which summons up sonic atmospheres to bring the book’s manifestations to life. It is best heard with the lights down low. It begins with the comforting flutter and weave of birdsong, allowing a moment of calm before the black dog is summoned. A dull, metallic clang, a bell with no ecclesiastical resonance, no hint of heavenly overtones, sounds like a huge feeding bowl being struck with a giant’s wooden spoon. ‘Here boy, fresh bones’. <br />
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The moaning of a nocturnal wind sets the scene for the Barguest of Dob Park Lodge, the discomforting accompaniment to the night journey of the treasure hunter who ventured into the underworld beneath the old, deserted Tudor mansion. It’s a wind gusting in from elsewhere, a chill otherworld. As Ian Humberstone puts it, ‘here we leave the known world behind and step ovesr the threshold into myth’. Deep, echoing booms sound out the cavernous spaces, hinting at far-off activity, hammering, pounding labours or the earth-shuddering thuds of giant footsteps. There are small chittering sounds closer at hand, dry scuttling and stridulation in the impenetrable shadows. The rustily rotating wheels and gears of some clanking, ratcheting machinery can be heard in the muffled distance, gradually becoming clearer and more defined in the aural spectrum, growing steadily nearer; the clockwork mechanics of fate winding through its inexorable motions.<br />
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The inquisitive hoot of an owl signals a change of scene as we head down south again to listen to the Devon landlord’s tale. The landlord of the Black Dog pub, naturally. Glinting clusters of zithery notes suggest raindrops shivering from the eaves outside, or sparks spitting from the hearth of the inn at Uplyme. Our host talks of ‘inheriting’ the legends along with the pub. It is the landlord’s duty to tell the tales which have been passed on to him, to perpetuate the local legends which tend to find their oral node in the convivial communal space of the pub. Marina Warner writes of the local folklore and memory encoded in pub names, citing the old Mother Redcap in London. For many years it commemorated a neighbourhood character, an old witch of great and dubious renown in the area. Novelty pub names of contrived eccentricity imposed by the large brewers erased this marker of history, character and custom. As she wrote in her 2006 article for the Guardian, ‘Pub names and signs are some of the oldest surviving traces of exchanges and folklore in a particular place. More and more names and phrases in the public arena are tied to adverts and commodities – global creep of meanings for everybody and no one’. <br />
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The Black Dog in Uplyme remains, however, and the dog who once took up a regular inglenook residence in the evening was a benevolent guardian, a spectral companion like the one which watches over Tarkovsky’s stalker as he lies down to rest in the Zone. The one encountered outside is far more to be feared, a shape torn from the fabric of the night, swelling to take on the dimension of a dark constellation. <br />
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The coming of the beast said to be a reincarnation of the restless spirit of Black Vaughan, the unloved lord of the manor of Hergest Court in Herefordshire whose malign influence seemed to persist beyond the grave, is foretold by dolorous doom chimes. These are soon overlaid by wintry minor key toy piano melancholy, the deadened notes falling like snowflakes. Menacing synth brood adds a final unsettling layer of ground mist to this lost John Carpenter theme. Something is padding towards us in the darkness, and there is nothing we can do to evade it. The legend of Black Vaughan, his fate and the curse of his black dog haunted ancestors, along with the theories that the origins of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, lie here on the Herefordshire borders rather than on the moors of Devon, form the basis of The Prayer of the Night Shepherd, one of Phil Rickman’s excellent novels featuring the diocesan deliverance consultant (or, to use the old parlance, exorcist) Merrily Watkins. <br />
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A brief interlude of light, a respite from night’s oppressive terrors. Birdsong pastoral sets the scene for a playfully piping synth gavotte (or somesuch renaissance caper), a reconstructed parade to Dog Village conducted according to the fanciful colourations of the modern imagination; pageantry with all the authentic antiquity of recollected horror films and pysch-folk albums. And none the worse for it. <br />
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The Eastern legends of Black Shuck are related by Malcolm Busby with an estuarine Essex matter of factness. He’s a natural storyteller, a conspiratorial narrator. We feel the beguiling magic of these oral histories, and are compelled to lean in a little closer to tell the tales as they were told to him. Spectral winds shiver and moan in the background, carrying with them the sharp, salty tang of the coastal marshes. This is another fireside gathering on a night you wouldn’t care to be abroad. To be out….there. At the end, after empty glasses a slammed onto the table with an air of determined finality (this one really is the last), yearning synth melodies and hazy chorales suggest our genuine need for such stories, for the presence of something other in the world, the persistence of mystery, of the wild unknown, even if it produces shudders of terror (shudders which are secretly to be relished). <br />
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We head north again to seek out the Barguest of Troller’s Gill. As we pick our way cautiously through the scree and boulder rubble littering the passage of this narrow valley scarring the limestone landscape we hear an eerie descending trill. Otherworldly bird calls with a coiled metallic sheen, made (we might imagine) by lamp-eyed, sharp-beaked creatures of the kind found perching in the blasted branches of the spook-infested woods surrounding the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West. The voices, which don’t sound like they come from any creature of flesh and blood, multiply, as if a sinister flock were gathering – deathbirds anticipating a carrion feast. A trickling stream and footsteps navigating rocky ground sound an aural map of the terrain. A folkish tune with plinking, bicycle wheel accompaniment suggestive of raindrop splashes develops into a haunting, gliding music box melody. A dance of fate, a death waltz. <br />
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An ominous drone heralds the London tour guide’s tale, a grim Newgate legend from the foul heart of the famine-blighted middle ages involving sorcery, cannibalism and a murderously vengeful hound. As if to emphasise that the shadows of the past are not easily exorcised, particularly when attached to places of such dark notoriety, he ends by pointing to the old site of Dead Man’s Walk (now Amen Court), the passageway leading from the cells to the gallows, where the shade of the black dog can still sometimes be seen flitting across the ill-lit wall. Naturally, such sightings do not bode well for the unfortunate observer. <br />
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Finally we ascend to the moorland heights of Somerset to encounter the Watchdogs of the Wambarrows. A metallic shimmer evokes the uncanny nature of the landscape, and swooning waves of blurry sound conjure up a delirious, hallucinatory atmosphere. Amorphous, transient forms wisp into being before dissipating and swirling away with the mists. A ghostly howling emerges from and is absorbed into the blustering perturbations of the chill air. Nothing is certain in this charged, uncanny topography. <br />
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This is a highly entertaining and imaginatively engaging survey of the black dog legends of England which wears its in-depth research lightly, making it accessible to all. Beautifully presented as ever, it is an exquisite work of art underpinned by genuine scholarship. This is a labour of love long in the birthing, and its been well worth the wait. So read the book as you listen to the record, and don’t be surprised if you hear the padding of phantom feet, the distant hint of wild, haunted howling. Wherever you are, the black dog is on your trail. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-66958681322287808892016-02-26T12:43:00.001+00:002016-02-26T12:48:31.172+00:00Valerie and Her Week of WondersNotes for a filmclub screening.<br />
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Valerie and her Week of Wonders is a Czech film made in 1969, the year after the Prague Spring and its brutal suppression by the Soviet Union. It’s a colourful fantasy, both rooted in its time and place (it’s very central European and very 60s) and with a universality which gives it broad appeal. Part surrealist serial, part folkloric fairytale with elements of gothic horror it is the story of a young girl’s first steps towards the adult world. Her dreamworld is populated by a strange cast of characters, grandmothers, monsters, minstrels and missionaries whose identities are constantly shifting as if they were all part of some carnivalesque parade or harlequinade. Through her adventures she learns more about the world she inhabits and becomes more confident in negotiating her way around it, more sure of herself. Throughout it all she remains magically protected, partly through the agency of her magic earrings; her unassailable innocence is like a protecting veil, repelling those who would assault and corrupt her. It is a story about the usefulness of stories, the value to be found in fairytale fantasies which help us find our place in the world and warn us of its dangers without ever losing our sense of enchantment with its manifold wonders.<br />
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The psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim wrote about the value of fairytales in guiding children towards the adult world in his 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment, taking a Freudian perspective on their scarcely concealed subtexts. He suggests (and I’ve changed his use of male pronouns to make it more relevant to the context of Valerie) that ‘in order to master the psychological problems of growing up – overcoming narcissistic disappointments, oedipal dilemmas, sibling rivalries; becoming able to relinquish childhood dependencies; gaining a feeling of selfhood and of self-worth, and a sense of moral obligation – a child needs to understand what is going on within her conscious self so that she can also cope with that which goes on in her unconscious. She can achieve this understanding, and with it the ability to cope, not through rational comprehension of the nature and content of her unconscious, but by becoming familiar with it through spinning out daydreams – ruminating, rearranging, and fantasizing about suitable story elements in response to unconscious pressures. By doing this, the child fits unconscious content into conscious fantasies, which they enable her to deal with that content. It is here that fairy tales have unequalled value, because they offer new dimensions to the child’s imagination which would be impossible for her to discover as truly as her own. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which she can structure her daydreams and with them give better direction to her life’.<br />
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Angela Carter was a little more wary of finding useful guidance for negotiating life’s universal dilemmas in fairytales. She liked Charles Perrault’s no-nonsense variations on Little Red Riding Hood and Puss in Boots. But she remembered bed-time readings of Hans Christian Andersen with horror. ‘Please make it stop, I used to say…but they kept on assaulting my sensibilities with Andersen’s fairy-tales with a grand air of self-satisfaction. Weren’t these dreadful stories Children’s Classics? Weren’t they only doing their cultural duty by forcing them on me? Isn’t the function of a good fairy-tale to instil fear, trembling and the sickness unto death in the existential virgin, anyway? And why should children have a good time? The sooner you learn your own impotence in the face of universal despair, the better’. She sought in her own revisionist fairytales, collected in The Bloody Chamber and elsewhere, and in her anthologies of traditional folkloric fairytales, to find examples which reflected women’s experiences; stories which might be of use to women and girls alike, presenting them with heroines they could identify with and learn from. In her introduction to her Virago Book of Fairy Tales collection she wrote ‘that I and many other women should go looking for fairy-tale heroines (reflects) a wish to validate my claim to a fair share of the future by staking my claim to my share of the past. She notes of fairy-tales that ‘on the surface, these stories tend to perform a normative function – to reinforce the ties that bind people together, rather than to question them. Life on the economic edge is sufficiently precarious without continual existential struggle. But the qualities these stories recommend for the survival and prosperity of women are never those of passive subordination’. Carter certainly found something of value in Valerie. She saw it when it received it premiere in the National Film Theatre in London, emerging in the 80s after a long period of obscurity languishing on the shelf of the banned. She loved it, and it was a strong influence on the writing of the screenplay of The Company of Wolves, her adaptation of her own Bloody Chamber stories, and her subsequent adaptation of her early novel The Magic Toyshop for a TV film. The Company of Wolves is a close cousin to Valerie, created very much in the same spirit. <br />
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Valerie is often thought of as being the last of the films emerging from the so-called Czech New Wave, a group of filmmakers emerging from the FAMU school which had been established in Prague in 1947. Having been banned for many years by the authoritarian Communist government, with its reforged iron links with the Soviet Union, it has been rediscovered in the west in recent decades and has steadily built up a cult cache fostered by a dedicated band of proselytisers. Many of these have emerged from the musical world, amongst them Andy Votel of the Finders Keepers label, who organised a number of screenings and who released Lubos Fiser’s luminous score on Finders Keepers, and the late Trish Keenan of the group Broadcast. Trish had a particularly personal relationship with the film and voiced what many perhaps feel in her sleevenotes to the soundtrack release. Watching the film and subsequently listening to her cassette recording of the soundtrack, ‘it was like a door had been opened in my subconscious and fragments of memories and dreams rejoiced right there in my living room’. Broadcast have been a favourite band of mine for a long time and it was Trish’s reverence for Valerie, expressed in a number of interviews, which made me seek it out. I found a copy on an old Redemption dvd, a label which mixed horror and Euro exploitation, the self-produced photographic covers no less lurid for being in black and white. The print they used was faded and dust-flecked (they had no resources for restorations) but the magic shone through nonetheless. I was immediately entranced. It’s magical central European fairytale world seemed to work according to a dream logic all its own, but I felt wholly attuned to it, not worrying about whether it made any sense or had any overt meaning. Its spell was cast, its enchantment made manifest on some deeper level than the rational. I knew I would be returning again and again to the town square with its central fountain, to the strange underground crypts, the labyrinthine house, the surrounding fields and lakes. Trish wrote about being ‘confirmed by the church of Lubos Fiser’. I was a convert too.<br />
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The film is an adaptation of a novel by the poet and surrealist writer Viteslav Nezval. Nezval was a creative force in a number of artistic fields in the early twentieth century. He was instrumental in setting up the Poetist movement in the 20s, whose writers aimed to lyrically portray the Czech landscape and to view the world through a heightened, imaginative perspective. It was essentially the direct opposite to the socialist realist outlook which would predominate from the Stalinist period onward. Inevitably there was a manifesto, the Poetist Manifesto, which was written in 1924. It set out the poetist beliefst thusly: poetist art should be ‘playful, unheroic, unphilosophical, mischievous, and fantastic’, and offer ‘a magnificent entertainment, a harlequinade of feeling and imagination…a marvellous kaleidoscope’. The sense of playfulness, of a kaleidoscopic masquerade of the fantastic is certainly characteristic of the film Valerie. It is also shot with a beautifully lyrical eye, full of sun-dappled lakes and mist-hazed meadows, evocations of the sensual world in its landscapes and its small details (and there is indeed something very Kate Bushlike about Valerie). The lyrical feel is beautifully captured in the cinematography of Jan Curik, who collaborated regularly with Valerie director Jaromil Jires. The scene in which Valerie runs through the morning meadow has an almost mystical quality to it, the light and mist suggesting a heavenly otherworld. Curik manages to convey the feel of summer with an almost palpable warmth and freshness. His evocation of summer moods is particularly impressive given the fact that it was apparently raining for the greater part of the shoot.<br />
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This Czech lyricism found visual realisation in a number of films in the late 20s and early 30s on which Nezval collaborated with director Gustav Machaty. He wrote the scripts for Erotikon and From Saturday to Sunday and was also involved with the 1932 picture Ecstasy. This achieved a certain notoriety due to the scenes in which its female star, Heddy Kiester, goes skinnydipping in a Czech lake. No big deal in its homeland, where the lyrical feel for landscape was often accompanied by a sensual connection between character and natural environment. However, when Heddy Kiester relocated to America, changed her name to Lamarr and became a major Hollywood star, such innocent pleasures were seen as scandalous in the censorious climate of the post-Hayes code era. The Hayes Code had been written by Will Hayes in 1927 and subsequently revised in 1930, when it was given more clout in order to save the great American public from being corrupted by the movies and led into the ways of sin. With covert input from the Catholic church, its puritanical conservatism is ironically similar to the censorship imposed by the Soviet state (and all authoritarian regimes). Valerie would fall foul of such censorship, its anti-clericalism and depiction of a younger generation vampirically fed upon by a corrupt elder generation interpreted as veiled anti-authoritarianism. Its very lack of readily identifiable plot and morally unambiguous message was enough to outrage the philistine overseers of the iron state. If they failed to immediately understand a work of art, they deemed it ‘elitist’, assumed it harboured a dangerous subtext and banned it. <br />
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Another collaborator on these three films from the late 20s and early 30s was an artist called Alexandr Hadkenschmied. His role was fairly loosely defined but he brought an experimental and exploratory aesthetic to bear on what was largely straightforward narrative drama. He emigrated to America in 1939 (he was obliged to leave the country after working on an anti-Nazi documentary), where he adjusted his name to Alexander Hammid and married the writer and filmmaker Maya Deren. They collaborated on the 1943 film Meshes of the Afternoon which bears some resemblance to Valerie in that it is a film which proceeds according to dream logic, shifts from domestic spaces to natural environments (the beach in this case), features magical objects and tokens, is filled with an atmosphere of heady surrealism and is viewed from a female perspective. There is a shot in Meshes, often reproduced, in which Maya Deren (who takes the dreamer’s role) stands at a window, hands pressed against the glass, looking pensively to one side, her face merging with the reflections of foliage and branches in the pane. This pose is almost exactly reproduced when Valerie gazes out from an oval carriage window. A conscious homage perhaps? You can sometimes see Maya peering up from the basement of the Cavern Club in Exeter when the door opposite the Boston Tea Party is open for bar deliveries. Incidentally, Meshes of the Afternoon, like Valerie, has been influential on a number of musicians. The group Pram, who emerged from the same Brum scene as Broadcast titled and EP Meshes and, in case this didn’t sufficiently spell out their love of Maya Deren, also wrote a song called Meshes of the Afternoon for their Helium LP.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOs68JlmuPA_sGsy-e5Vvjc5blp_3VYzGbUFmEg-aKV2goIDEynfaE2n0ez0oTJKzX7EPF2WKbtVpmhMz0pjs1nd0xU3WV5V1dSFkzsI3mdhJTnKHfKWmre62DQ3oR6s81dgksR4RHqY6w/s1600/maya-deren_meshes-of-the-afternoon_window_tate-modern_pink-pigeon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOs68JlmuPA_sGsy-e5Vvjc5blp_3VYzGbUFmEg-aKV2goIDEynfaE2n0ez0oTJKzX7EPF2WKbtVpmhMz0pjs1nd0xU3WV5V1dSFkzsI3mdhJTnKHfKWmre62DQ3oR6s81dgksR4RHqY6w/s400/maya-deren_meshes-of-the-afternoon_window_tate-modern_pink-pigeon.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlpW5NA3GNbMGnGp7lTlodldnE-y6eYzF_DRH1hocCfpIRd_Ro6t0ODgnkEDEcqqNaxgQb03fbBM3VVdvX-Y_C_75G2cp5ZEdlN4SgHFuQK9YLxNt21yo57Zw9fhSwgMYQOJR55U86TGyo/s1600/Valerie+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlpW5NA3GNbMGnGp7lTlodldnE-y6eYzF_DRH1hocCfpIRd_Ro6t0ODgnkEDEcqqNaxgQb03fbBM3VVdvX-Y_C_75G2cp5ZEdlN4SgHFuQK9YLxNt21yo57Zw9fhSwgMYQOJR55U86TGyo/s400/Valerie+1.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Valerie and Maya Deren - on the threshold of dream</blockquote>Viteslav Nezval was also a founding member and leader of the Czech surrealist group, which grew out of the concerns of the Poetist movement, and was officially established in 1934. Czechoslovakia was a significant site of surrealist activity, a satellite with a strong connection to the mother planet of Paris. This was perhaps unsurprising given the tradition of the fantastic in late 19th and early 20th century Czech literature; a tradition whose most renowned proponents were Franz Kafka and Gustave Meyrinck (author of The Golem), even if both did write in German. The novel Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a product of Nezval’s surrealist period. It was completed in 1935 but not finally published until a decade later, in 1945. By this time, Nezval had utterly renounced surrealism, poetism and any form of art which delighted in the unfettered imagination. He’d long been a communist, but he now grew more hardline and followed the Stalinist credo that socialist realism was the only valid form for art to take. Art which formed a useful social function or provided emotive propaganda for the state. Films about socialist martyrs were perennially popular. Jaromel Jires would make one in the wake of Valerie’s post-Prague Spring disappearance, And Give My Love to the Swallows. Nezval even sank so low as to pen a poetic paean of obsequious praise to Stalin. Like most manifesto-writing artistic tyrants, Nezval wasn’t content merely to follow his own artistic path. He wanted everyone else to travel it as well, with all alternative routes to be barricaded with road blocks. He attempted to dissolve the surrealist group in 1938, but fortunately failed to exercise his reductive authority. The group went underground during the war and the subsequent Soviet dominion but re-emerged during the Prague spring of the 60s. One of its major creative talents was the artist, filmmaker and animator Jan Svankmajer, whose superb, surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland, simply titled Alice, screened at Studio 74 in the Phoenix as part of the Animated Exeter festival last Friday. Alice was established as part of the surrealist canon from the early days of the movement, and its influence can certainly be felt in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, the film in particular. Alice was also a firm favourite of Trish Keenan, who particularly loved Jonathan Miller’s dreamy summer of love version for the BBC, with its languorous score by Ravi Shankar. <br />
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Nezval’s loyalty to the party had one advantage in subsequent years however. It meant that director Jaromil Jires was able to get his long-planned film of Valerie passed for production by the communist authorities who dictated what was or was not acceptable. The presence of Nezval’s son Robert in the cast (he plays the check-suited drummer who leads the players into the town square) lent a further air of official sanction to the project. It’s certainly not the kind of thing which Nezval himself would have approved during his tenure as head of the Orwellian Ministry of Information film department from 1945-50. However, he was safely out of the way by 1969, having died in 1958, his reputation for unswerving loyalty intact. Sadly, his son, born out of wedlock and presumably unrecognised by his father in the hypocritically puritan climate of the party hierarchy, committed suicide in 1971, shortly after the film’s release.<br />
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Jaromil Jires was part of the Czech new wave movement which emerged in the 60s, taking advantage of the new spirit of post-Stalinist liberalism which led to the Prague spring of 1968. This was the year in which the reforming president Alexander Dubcek attempted to outline a new form of socialism and free his country from totalitarian control. A number of important talents emerged from the FAMU film school, including directors Frantisek Vlacil, Jiri Menzel, Vera Chytilov, Jan Nemec, Milos Forman and Ivan Passer. The new wave films of the 60s often had a spirit of youthful rebellion which fitted in with the more general worldwide sense of generational conflict which characterised the decade. The assumptions and authority, moral and political, of the older generation were brought into question, and the emerging generation attempted to forge a new worldview, a new way of living. Forman’s Loves of a Blonde and The Fireman’s Ball, Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains and Larks on a String, Juraj Jakubisco’s Birds, Orphans and Fools and, in particular, Vera Chytilova’s Daisies and Fruit of Paradise all partake of this spirit, as does Valerie. This congruence with wider countercultural trends is one reason why the films of the Czech new wave, and Valerie above all, have found such favour with musicians in the modern alternative rock sphere. Indeed, some of you may remember the Exeter collective Birds, Orphans and Fools, named after Jakubisco’s film, who brightened the city with music, art and screenings of strange and wonderful movies a while back. Another collective formed around members of the American psych-folk group Espers, going by the name of the Valerie Project. They got together to record an alternative soundtrack to Valerie, having already performed it live at several screenings, thus proving the transatlantic appeal of the film. The recording was released on the Drag City label in 2007, so you can cue it up and experience the film in an entirely different way. Although this does seem sacrilegious given the sheer sublime beauty of Lubos Fiser’s luminous score.<br />
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Several of the filmmakers associated with the Czech new wave left the country after the Soviet invasion of 1968 and found a natural place in the independent American cinema of the 70s, which had also emerged from 60s countercultural origins. Milos Forman made One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Ivan Passer the underrated Cutter’s Way, a brilliant post-60 lament which heralds the dawn of Reaganite America. Valerie was made after the Soviet tanks had rolled into the streets of Prague in 1968, ending the brief, bright spring promising the summery air of freedom to come, now crushed beneath rumbling, clanking treads and smothered by iron grey clouds. It’s often regarded as the last film of the Czech new wave and therefore has a certain valedictory air to it (valedictory Valerie). Its summer idylls are dreams of what might have been, and in their universality, also serve in general as a requiem for the softer kind of 60s utopianism.<br />
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Valerie was Jaromil Jires’ third film. The first, made in 1963, was The Cry, whose central protagonist is a TV repairman who gains glimpses into the lives of the customers whose homes he enters and who also reflects on his own life. It’s loose, playful and full of incidental observations and incorporates dream and fantasy sequences in a way that Richard Lester would in his 60s movies with or without The Beatles. The year before making Valerie he shot The Joke, an adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel of the same name. A real product of the Prague spring in that it was unthinkable that it could have been made earlier, it cast a bitterly ironic and straightforwardly critical eye on the Stalinist period of the 50s. Its central character suffers terribly for a throwaway quip on a postcard sent to his girlfriend which reads ‘long live Trotsky’. The film was still shooting when the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague. Inevitably, it didn’t fare well with the new regime. <br />
Valerie was unlike anything Jires had previously produced. This undoubtedly owes a great deal to one of his key collaborators on the film, Ester Krumbachova. Krumbachova was a figure of major importance within the Czech new wave. The fact that she only directed one film herself (The Murder of Engineer Devil of 1970, surely due for rediscovery and re-release) merely serves to undermine the French auteur theory which would ascribe the director as the singular creator behind any given picture. She wrote, or co-wrote, a number of scripts for the landmark films of the new wave, including Jan Nemec’s Kafkaesque The Party and the Guests, his lyrical Martyrs of Love, and collaborated most fruitfully with Vera Chytilova on two films towards the end of the 60s, Daisies and Fruit of Paradise. These surreal, highly colourful pictures both feature wilful female protagonists who act out their desires in a manner both strident and playful. Fruit of Paradise in particular has a lyrical sensuality and feel for landscape and palpable texture which is very reminiscent of Valerie. The symbolism of the forbidden apple and the fruit of paradise, of the Edenic garden also links the two films. Valerie cheerfully crunches into one of the apples which have been lined up around her funeral bier. Indeed, she eats a variety of fruits throughout the film, as does the protagonist of Fruit of Paradise. This natural sense of pleasure, the pleasure in the natural, is very different from the conspicuous consumption of the doll-like automatons of Daisies, who self-consciously ‘go bad’ to fit in with a world which they have decided has no meaning or purpose. They end up cramming their face full of rich meats, creamy desserts and cakes from a banqueting table which they raid and thoroughly trash. <br />
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Krumbachova was, in addition to being a writer and sometime director, a costume and set designer, roles she fulfilled for Valerie. Clearly she was a woman of manifold talents and her creative influence over Valerie was considerable. This female signature on the film is important given the sensitive subject matter of a young girl’s coming of age and her vision of the adult world of sexuality through the symbolic lens of folkloric fairytale. Her authorship and her creation of the film’s visual look noticeably transforms the tone of the book and avoids any element of exploitation which might otherwise have tainted the story. This is Valerie’s film, Valerie’s dream, Valerie’s useful fairy-tale. We see everything through her eyes. She may be subject to various threats, confronted with disturbing and even horrific sights, assailed by vampires, wereweasels and perverted priests. But she remains magically protected throughout, either by her enchanted earrings, or by Orlik, or increasingly be her own command over every situation. Her adversaries try to bind her to the machineries of time, but she soon masters the mysteries of dream logic. She becomes a lucid dreamer, recognising that ‘it’s just a dream – I’m dreaming it all’. And if it’s her dream (the dream of life) then she can control it, wander through it and watch, learning all the time. Valerie observes her own story with curiosity and even, later, amusement (the moment where she sticks her tongue out at the priest whose about to burn her at the stake is priceless). The adult world is initially frightening and bewildering, with its secrets, hypocrisies and contradictions (represented by the shifting nature of the familial characters, their ever-changing masks). But as she learns, loses her fear and gains command of her environment, it becomes something to anticipate with equanimity and pleasure, stripped of its secrets and lies. The final parade and circle dance offers a world of guiltless pleasure ,the repressive, hypocritical priest penned in a domed cage like a squatting black toad to keep him from doing any further harm. But Valerie isn’t ready yet. She wanders around the sunny glade, watching and smiling before retreating to her familiar white bed, drifting into peaceful sleep to wake from her dream.<br />
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Krumbachova’s set designs contrast the clean sunlit rooms aboveground with the dusty crypts below; the sepulchral gothic world of tombs and cobwebs with the obsessively tidy and well ordered spaces of the grandmother’s house to which they are connected, providing a subconscious underside. Valerie’s room is a pure, unsullied white, her sanctuary and the outward manifestation of her inner world. It is briefly and shockingly invaded by the black-clad, predatory priest as he tries to possess her physically and colonise her secret self. But he is repelled by her power of innocence, confronted with his own monstrousness. His assault on Valerie’s innocence kills him, as will the weasel’s later on (although death is a relative state in this dreamworld). <br />
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Krumbachova’s costume for the weasel, with his lustrously black vampiric cape, draws heavily on traditional gothic elements. The monster make-up, with white face and bald head, pointed ears and prominent teeth, is a variant on the look of Max Schreck’s Nosferatu from FW Murnau’s 1922 classic (a film which Nezval hugely admired). The weasel (more literally translated in the novel as polecat) takes the vampire back to the peasant figure familiar from old Central and Eastern European folklore. Far from the aristocratic figure of Bram Stoker’s novel, these creatures of village superstition were more animalistic and more likely to be a threat to your livestock than your maiden daughter. Rather than fearing garlic, they were likely to reek of the stuff.<br />
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Krumbachova suffered like so many in the wake of the Soviet invasion, and retreated from the world of film for a while. She did return in triumphant fashion in 1976 however, designing the sets and costumes for Karel Kachyna’s wonderful fairy-tale film Mala Morska Vila (The Little Mermaid). Her creations include the incredible blue undersea hairstyles sported by the merfolk – resplendent impermanent waves. They’re the finest movie hairstyles since Ernest Thesiger’s Dr Pretorius grandiloquently unveiled Elsa Lanchester’s white-streaked art deco Bride of Frankenstein barnet back in 1935. The blue mermaid look was one which the singer Jane Weaver adapted for her 2010 album The Fallen By Watchbird, her own version of a Czech-style fairy-tale fantasy.<br />
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Mention finally has to be made of Lubos Fiser’s gorgeous score. With its lullabies and fanfares, gothic organ chords and delicately plucked lutes, children’s choirs and lusty male choruses, lyrical themes and crashing dissonant chords, music box waltzes and meditative harpsichord nocturnes it is the perfect accompaniment to Valerie’s kaleidoscopic dream and the constant abrupt transformations which occur within it. The lightly tinkling celeste motif which heralds the magical transformations wrought by Valerie’s earrings is a recurrent sound and perfectly evokes the aura of enchantment which surrounds her like a shimmering shield. Fiser went on to score another colourful gothic fantasy in 1972, Juraj Herz’s Morgiana. But he was also a prominent composer in the post-war Czech world of classical music, although he suffered neglect through his failure to conform to the requirements of the state. His piece 15 Prints After Durer’s Apocalypse gained him international recognition after it won a UNESCO prize in 1967. His classical work benefitted to an extent from a revival in the period after the Velvet Revolution, and the process of rediscovery continues to this day, some 17 years after his death. <br />
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Fiser’s lullaby theme for Valerie, the music we hear both at the beginning and end of the film and throughout in a procession of variations, was adapted by Trish Keenan for the Broadcast song Valerie, included on the 2003 album Haha Sound. This presented her own take on the film’s aura of enchantment, voicing her identification with Valerie and her wondrous adventures. I’ll leave you with the lyrics as a guide, Trish’s code for entering the dreamworld of Valerie:<br />
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Inside the mask another disguise<br />
I fall to sleep before closing my eyes<br />
Tiredness draws in my head a cartoon<br />
Sun at the window, good things coming soon<br />
Shake your earrings over my head<br />
Lay down your dreams on my pillow<br />
Before bed<br />
The silence of ice at the borders of day<br />
Sun in my face will not keep them away<br />
Sinking me into the white of your room<br />
Sky through the curtain, good things coming soon<br />
Shake your earrings over my head<br />
Lay down your dreams on my pillow<br />
Before bed.<br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-262795300879791722015-12-22T20:03:00.002+00:002015-12-22T20:03:57.472+00:00Midwinter Rites and Rituals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7zG8Ul5c4PgDwLCxAAOrfyDHFcYef-NX32AbZY7cMyC3aynyhBDQCBT_nGIPE8qJZLI85RPbAatanmV5J69afeDzuyGySGNy4Yx-vjhEjCuEBrMZewosbjLASDXLRwUe-9ayG1387eAG/s1600/FTCCIIIweb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7zG8Ul5c4PgDwLCxAAOrfyDHFcYef-NX32AbZY7cMyC3aynyhBDQCBT_nGIPE8qJZLI85RPbAatanmV5J69afeDzuyGySGNy4Yx-vjhEjCuEBrMZewosbjLASDXLRwUe-9ayG1387eAG/s400/FTCCIIIweb.jpg" /></a></div><br />
This is a slightly longer version of the essay included in the splendid <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/">Folklore Tapes</a> release <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/product/folklore-tapes-calendar-customs-vol-iii-mid-winter-rites-revelries">Calendar Customs III</a>.<br />
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Midwinter is the low ebb of the year, the heart of the lifeless season when the sun describes a wearily flattened arc across the sky, it luminosity dimmed and wan, its passage brief. Shadows lengthen, the branches grow bare and bony, temperature drops and darkness prevails. The spirit sinks and a general sense of lassitude fills the soul. It is a season of shivering and sighs in which summer warmth and light become a hazy memory. There is a need for cheer, for hope and conviviality, for reminders of Spring’s renewal to come. Old midwinter rites and rituals, centring around Christmastide observances and celebrations, bring a little warmth and light into this chill time of scarcity and spiritual despond. <br />
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In the pre-industrial age, the pattern of the pastoral and agricultural year shaped the rhythms of human labour and rest. The midwinter period between December and early January encompassed weeks when there was little to be done save a bit of dung spreading. The holidays could extend from St Nicholas Day on the 6th December to Plough Monday, the first to fall after Twelfth Night. Plough Monday marked the recommencement of the agricultural year. It was a still interval of cessation during which the coming year could be contemplated and good fortune invoked through the observance of certain propitiatory acts (or the studious avoidance of others). Bells were tolled in various parishes on Christmas Eve to keep the Devil and his ill-doing at bay over the ensuing months. At All Saints, Dewsbury in Yorkshire, this involved sounding one clangourous knell for every year since Christ’s birth, spaced at even intervals between the hours of 10 and 12 (and thus requiring precise calculation). This feat was known as Ringing or Tolling the Devil’s Knell, a long funereal watch which, in keeping with the inversions characteristic of the season, was cause for celebration. <br />
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Wassailing was (and still, to an extent, is) a means of ushering in the luck of the new year. The word derives from the old Anglo-Saxon greeting ‘waes haell’, or ‘good health’. The standard response (although not necessarily in Anglo-Saxon England) was ‘drinc haell!’, or ‘I’ll drink to that’, presumably accompanied by the raising of a goblet or drinking horn and the hearty quaffing of its contents. Wassailers, who were predominantly women, would travel from house to house singing their wassailing song and bearing their wooden wassailing bowl (sometimes decorated with ribbons and evergreen boughs). The bowl was full of spiced ale with variant combinations of roasted apples, toast, nutmegs, sugar, eggs and cream; a dubious concoction, half drink, half bread pudding, sometimes known as lamb’s wool. The householder accepting the offered libation and offering food or other gifts in return would bring luck into their homes for the approaching year. The luck of the house was of particular concern at this time, what with the retreat into the domestic space in the face of encroaching cold and darkness. <br />
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Wassail songs are a species of celebratory folksong all to their own. A typical and particularly well-known one (largely due to its collection by Ralph Vaughan Williams) comes from Gloucestershire and the opening verse gives the general flavour, as well as revealing the wassailers on the occasion of the song’s recording to be male:<br />
Wassail! Wassail! All over the town.<br />
Our bread it is white, our ale it is brown:<br />
Our bowl it is made of the Maplin tree, <br />
We be all good fellows who drink to thee. <br />
The renowned 17th century lawyer and scholar John Selden found the wassail ale very sour and grumbled about ‘wenches with wassells at New-Years-Tide’ who ‘present you with a cup and you must drink of the slabby stuff, but the meaning is, you must give them monies, ten times more than it is worth’. There was certainly an element of minor wealth redistribution to this and many midwinter traditions, and well-off men like Selden often found cause for complaint. Christmas might be a time of generosity and openness, but who were the deserving poor? And whey did they have to be so forward about claiming their share? Similar complaints were voiced about the annuities known as ‘boxes’ granted to tradesmen or those in the delivery trades on what came to be known as Boxing Day. The change of the day’s name from that of the first Christian martyr, St Stephen, to one marking what amounted to a holiday bonus charts a trajectory from the sacred to the secular and pecuniary which has been marked since well before the Victorian era. It was one reason why the parliamentarians banned Christmas. <br />
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This was an opportune season for the less well-off to earn a little extra in a time of scarcity and scant labour. They sold their entertainments, decorations and blessing (an possibly the cessation of their nuisance-making) whilst wielding the implicit threat of diminishing the luck of the house, or even of cursing the inhabitants on these spiritually charged days. The Scots, needless to say, were particularly good at the cursing part. A New Year song sung on South Uist whilst seeking hogmanay, or gifts, from local households had an extra verse in reserve should such generosity prove lacking:<br />
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The curse of God and the New Year be on you<br />
And the scath of the plaintive buzzard,<br />
Of the hen-harrier, of the raven, of the eagle,<br />
And the scath of the sneaking fox,<br />
The scath of the dog and cat be on you,<br />
Of the boar, of the badger and of the ghoul,<br />
Of the hipped bear and of the wild wolf,<br />
And the scath of the foul polecat.<br />
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That’s some heavy duty scathing.<br />
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Another wassailing tradition involved the blessing of an apple orchard. The wassail bowl was filled with cider, some of which was poured onto the roots of the greatest tree, the apple tree man. Trees were beaten with sticks and a regionally varying species of cacophony conducted via pots and pans, gunshots or ‘apple howling’. Was this driving out evil spirits lodged in the wood or waking the trees? Or was it simply for the visceral and slightly illicit joy of making a right racket to echo through the night air at such a dank and lifeless time? Pieces of toast soaked in the wassail cup’s contents were also hung from the branches or wedged into their forks; an offering for the robin, always a cheerful symbol of the season and a bird of good omen. A Somerset wassailing song praises the tireless creature: ‘a poor little robin sits up in a tree/And all day long so merrily sings he/A widdling and twiddling to keep himself warm,/And a little more cider will do us no harm…’ <br />
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Good luck and its opposite, ill-fortune, were attached to particular days. Christmas Eve, or Adam’s Day, was a day on which supernatural and demonic forces were in abeyance. Therefore, it was a good time for auguries and divinations (particularly as regarded fortunes in love), activities which might otherwise attract unwanted attention. Ghost stories have always been popular on Christmas Eve, a tradition extending into the TV age, with the glowing set replacing the suggestively flickering fire and bringing the chilling tales of MR James into warm living rooms. Perhaps there was a vestigial sense that this was a safe time for their telling. <br />
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If you were born on Christmas Day you would be blessed with a blindness towards ghosts and spirits. Holy Innocents Day on the 28th December, on the other hand, was a cursed date. Sometimes known by the vaguely unnerving name of Childermas, it marked the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod. It was considered unwise to begin any important task on this day; it would only come to ruin. Fishermen refused to go to sea, the washing went undone (you might be ‘washing away’ one of your kin) and it was generally best to do nothing and just sit it out. <br />
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The earthing of malignant magic seems to have spread to St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day) if the tradition of hunting the wren was anything to go by. Particularly prevalent in Ireland and Wales, this involved the ‘wren-boys’ setting traps in the early morning and then displaying their prize in a specially made and decorated cage in a laddish parade through the town or village. At any other time of the year this would have been the height of folly. The wren was sacred, the king of the birds, a crowning which ironically acknowledged its tiny stature. To kill it would have invited great ill-fortune into the foolhardy hunter’s life. <br />
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That it was permissible and safe at this time is indicative of the inversions of the natural and social order which were a feature of the season. This delight in turning the world upside down also manifested itself in the appointment of Lords of Misrule in wealthy, noble or royal households or university communities to oversee, with their retinues of mock courtiers, the reign of merry chaos which brought life to the dark days. The Lord (or his regional variants such as the midwinter sovereign or Abbot of Unreason) was a burlesque version of his master, with gaudily regal robes and a degree of pseudo-authority, right up to the ability to stage ‘executions’ on a prop gibbet. The masters of the household would affect to serve their staff during the ‘misrule’ of the temporary Lord, albeit to a limited ceremonial extent. <br />
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In ecclesiastical circles there was a similar tradition of appointing Boy Bishops for a period extending from St Nicholas’ Day on the 6th (the Turkish saint having a particular connection with children) and Holy Innocents Day on the 28th. The Boy Bishops would lead some aspects of the services in their specially tailored vestments and go on tours of the surrounding parishes. In Bristol, the Boy Bishop of St Nicholas Church and his retinue were invited to a lavish banquet on the saint’s day. The tradition continues or has been revived in some areas. The Boy Bishop’s tenure at Hereford Cathedral is particularly renowned, and forms a major plot element in Phil Rickman’s novel Midwinter of the Spirit, featuring the diocesan deliverance consultant (or exorcist) Merrily Watkins. The first Merrily Watkins novel, Wine of Angels, begins with a night-time orchard wassailing which ends disastrously. Rickman knows his calendrical rites and customs. <br />
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The inversion of the natural order is also a central component of mummer’s plays, or mumming. These are generally enacted on Boxing Day, New Year’s Day or Twelfth Night. They are fixed routines which are carried out with ritualistic solemnity, the stock cast of characters stepping forward like mechanical figures ratcheting forth from a town clock’s doors to introduce themselves and deliver their lines. ‘In steps I’ say the likes of St George (or another hero figure), his foe the Turk (or some other adversary reflecting contemporary antipathies), Bold Slasher, the quack doctor, a fool named Tosspot and occasionally a dragon or, trailing a whiff of sulphur, Beelzebub. Roland Hutton likens the latter, with his club and frying pan, to the Irish god The Daghdha. In parts of the Westcountry the play was introduced by Father Christmas, who stood outside of the rote action and had a little more leeway to extemporise a commentary. An element of guising (the donning of disguise) was also involved. Participants would blacken their faces, turn their jackets inside-out, bedeck themselves with ribbons or strips of newspaper and indulge in cross-dressing. The centre of the ‘drama’ (although the proceedings were studiously undramatic) was the combat leading to the death or dire injury of St George or his foe, who was resurrected by the concoctions brewed by the doctor. Their comically self-evident inefficacy hinted that magic rather than medicine was at work here. It was a resurrection myth in capsule form, an invocation of the dormant powers of life and a rite to bring fortune and abundance in the coming months. The mummers took the routing round the houses, bringing luck to those who rewarded them and finding their way by and by to the local inn. <br />
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In the North-East, mummery was accompanied by sword dances, although the mumming aspect gradually faded away. The sword dances, using flexible blades or sometimes lengths of wood, culminated in the formation of a locked pattern in the form of a pointed star (a significant form?) or rose. This was usually lowered around the head of one of the attendant fools or cross-dressing ‘bessies’, offering a mock sacrifice where once the death might have been all too real. <br />
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Another form of ritualised drama taken round the houses over the Christmas period involved the parading of a horse’s head on the end of a stick, with the bearer hidden beneath a covering sheet. These heads were wooden in the case of The White Mare of the Isle of Man or the Poor Old Horse of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. But the Mari Lwyd of Wales was the bleached skull of an actual horse, its eyes glassy marbles, its hair strands of coloured ribbon. It was a nightmarish apparition, and one which haunts M.John Harrison’s Viriconium and Light novels and stories. The Mari Lwyd also goes through the pantomime of death and resurrection, and its difficult not to see a symbolic enactment of the seasonal cycles. The Hooden Horse of North Kent is accompanied by a team including a mollie, or transvestite, and its is still paraded through the streets of Whitstable, its health assiduously maintained by the Ancient Order of Hoodeners. I like to imagine the long-term Whitstable resident Peter Cushing observing the ceremony, perhaps even taking part, leading the Hoodeners with a solemnly purposeful yet kind and compassionate Van Helsing gaze. <br />
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A celebration in time of darkness requires light, and fires were indeed started with due ceremony. If Christ was the light of the world (John 8:12), then the fixing of his date of birth at the Council of Tours in 567 also served to usurp the claims of others to bring light into the world. The Mithraic celebration of divine birth in the world also fell on the 25th December, as did that of the cult of the unconquered sun, or Sol Invictus, which the Emperor Aurelian established as an official state religion which lasted between 274-323. With the Roman Saturnalia and Pagan solstice festivals also occurring around this time, it was good sacred territory to tactically stake out and colonise. There is inevitably a sense, however, if not of Pagan roots showing through, then at least of a continuity of human experience and spiritual need. The warmth and conviviality engendered by a fire or flickering candle flame serve as a reminder that the summer sun will be reborn. <br />
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In Stonhaven, near Aberdeen, fireballs were swung in small cages at the end of long chains or ropes, forming small, whirling meteorite trails through the evening air. Allendale has its flaming tar barrels, lit as the old year turns into the new and worn like Arthur Brown hellfire bonnets. It’s an enthusiastically revived and maintained carnivalesque tradition celebrated in the Unthanks’ beautiful song Tar Barrel in Dale. In a variant of wassailing traditions found in the border counties of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, and similarly intended to bless the next year’s crop, twelve bonfires were lit in a circle on Twelfth Night, often with a larger central one – Old Meg as it was sometimes known. In Ross On Wye, an effigy was erected in the centre of the fires and burned. <br />
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Plough lights were kept burning in many parish churches, often glinting off the idle blades of the plough itself which was kept propped against the wall until Plough Monday. Candles also served to light the evergreens which were brought into the house – holly in the living room, ivy in the porch, and sometimes bay and broom as well. The ashen faggot was burned in Devon on Christmas Eve, a bundle of ash twigs which crackled and kindled one by one, marking the progress of the evening like an irregular clock. As each popped and hissed into flame, the onlookers would take the opportunity to stand up, loudly wish each other good cheer and pass around a large communal cup of cider. <br />
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The best known Christmas flame came from the yule log, however. It was a large log prepared over a lengthy period and giving off plentiful light as well as heat. It was to be lit from a piece of kindling saved from the pervious year’s log, and kept burning for Christmas Eve and Day to preserve the luck of the house. Richard Carpenter warmly depicts the yule log tradition in a Christmas episode of The Ghosts of Mottley Hall, although unfortunately the wood chosen is inhabited by an old elemental spirit which spreads discord and ill-humour through the house before being coaxed to its airy freedom. The word yule itself derives from the old Saxon, via Nordic languages: the Norse Jol, Swedish Jul and Danish Juul. These were words for the Scandinavian midwinter festival, suggesting further layers to the hybrid and ever-evolving native traditions. <br />
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The contemporary character of Christmas and midwinter festivities bears little resemblance to the old celebrations and observances. We have inherited wholesale the imports and reinventions of the Victorians, which themselves have been recast in hyper-commercialised late capitalist mould. The frenzy accompanying the season can sometimes seem to verge on the psychotic. But the genuine excitement many still feel indicates a certain continuity with the spirit our ancestors. There is a continuum of human experience, a need to find comfort and light in a time of darkness. Even with the pitiless and relentless glare of shopping centres providing the permanent, blazing illumination of a false sun, we are not fooled. We still need to be reassured that the true sun will return in radiant glory. The dying of the light is not permanent. There will be resurrection, new life, a new year with all that fortune may bring. <br />
So a jolly WASSAIL! to you all. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-11596956582978650342015-08-10T16:17:00.000+01:002015-08-10T16:20:16.945+01:00The DamnedHere's the full version of an introduction I gave to a screening of The Damned as part of a 12 Hour science fiction film festival at the <a href="http://www.bikeshedtheatre.co.uk/">Bike Shed Theatre</a> for <a href="http://www.phonic.fm/">Phonic fm</a>. I had to cut it drastically to fit it into the alloted 10 minute time slot, but still went hopelessly beyond the limit set. Sorry. Concision is an art I have yet to master. <br />
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My choice of film is The Damned, a 1963 film directed by Joseph Losey and produced by the Hammer film studios. I’ve chosen it partly because of its relative obscurity, which hopefully means I’m introducing you to something entirely new. It’s not very well known even within the Hammer film canon, and the studio found it difficult to distribute at the time. It was actually made and ready for release in 1961, but didn’t find its way into the cinemas until 1963, truncated and squashed into the lower half of a double bill, coupled with Maniac, one of Hammer’s post-Psycho thrillers. This delay and the wariness of exhibitors was in large part due to confusion over exactly what kind of film this was, and how it could best be marketed. Is it a science fiction film or is it a ‘youth gone wild’ rock n roll movie? Is it an exploitation quickie or a European arthouse meditation in the mould of the Antonioni and Bergman films then making such an impact on the continent. It’s interesting that its release coincided with the completion of Bergman’s Through A Glass Darkly trilogy and Antonioni’s trilogy of films with Monica Vitti, both of which deal with similar themes of existential angst and disorientation in the shadow of the bomb and the Freudian tangle of human relations. The use of bleak, empty coastal landscapes in L’Aventurra and Through A Glass Darkly provides a strong continuity of mood with The Damned and they even share a symbolic use of helicopters. <br />
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But The Damned is also very much a genre film, a Hammer film. James Carreras, one of the pater familiases of the Hammer family business, would have been horrified at the idea that he had sanctioned the making of an art movie. The Damned is an anomaly in the Hammer filmography, an experiment which was considered an unqualified failure by the studio, and one never to be repeated. Looking back some years later, James Carreras summed up the reasons for this in a mildly expressed assessment which nevertheless encapsulated the company’s unswerving, hardline commercial priorities. ‘It’s not our cup of tea at all. Losey is a very eminent director and he has a great following among critics, and the film, I’m sure, was a good film. But unfortunately, you know, we can only judge it on results. Did it get its money back? And the answer is no, it didn’t’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkY-eB_3HmnXXmgZCjuZ-c3UNpmoWkuAQJoCPpz919DuqmR043s8ZCoLEGi5W9perECpB0eHh94jm3g38qQV4JG_Z-lZajpIu-tS09pFrtmEget7rD8q0JRiWjh2uVCm3_GLdOI0aAPttC/s1600/joan+bike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkY-eB_3HmnXXmgZCjuZ-c3UNpmoWkuAQJoCPpz919DuqmR043s8ZCoLEGi5W9perECpB0eHh94jm3g38qQV4JG_Z-lZajpIu-tS09pFrtmEget7rD8q0JRiWjh2uVCm3_GLdOI0aAPttC/s400/joan+bike.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Joan leads the bikers through Weymouth</blockquote>The very ambiguity about the nature of the film and the porous nature of its generic boundaries, which made it so difficult to place, created confusion amongst critics and put cinemagoers off, are the very things which make it such a fascinating watch in retrospect. It might challenge perceived notions of what constitutes science fiction, but science fiction it most certainly is. But it is a lot more besides. I also chose this film because of its reflection of contemporary fears and anxieties. There was moral panic over youth gang violence. This was sometime after the Teddy Boy scares and the trashing of cinemas showing Rock Around the Clock and just before clashes between mods and rockers on the beaches of Clacton and Margate in 1964. But the press-fuelled alarm was still present, waiting for the next incident to lend it form. There was also a sense of national disorientation in the receding wake of the ebb of empire. The complex psychology of the film expresses the confused stupor of a country no longer certain of its place in the world, and failing to come to terms with its vastly diminished influence. The hugely emblematic humiliation of the Suez Crisis had unfolded five years before the film was made. It had made it painfully clear to the British establishment that America was now the dominant force in the politics of the Western world. This dominance was also extending to the cultural sphere. The newly affluent youth were turning to American popular culture to forge their identity, which was increasingly at odds with the old establishment values of the British Empire and even of the post-war spirit of welfare state collectivism. This was the beginning of the consumer age, of a new form of status anxiety. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBzvFS4Fo6nVwrD-usUJrjGjO1y0s9RwzwQqhvG5Z1_l7Ow5CtYeNPJV6h4jaxOzQrKlVg-gcTkH6CIbbLCePihAUvpX7_lPJwDGb4amMdxeiRtT7VOAlxiZmXJOl22_N4TwM9bWZOkORM/s1600/geiger+counter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBzvFS4Fo6nVwrD-usUJrjGjO1y0s9RwzwQqhvG5Z1_l7Ow5CtYeNPJV6h4jaxOzQrKlVg-gcTkH6CIbbLCePihAUvpX7_lPJwDGb4amMdxeiRtT7VOAlxiZmXJOl22_N4TwM9bWZOkORM/s400/geiger+counter.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The sound of invisible death - the click and crackle of the geiger counter</blockquote>There is also the pervasive sense of unease generated by the cold war and the threat of nuclear annihilation. This is where the science fiction element really comes into its own. Nuclear radiation had been a central staple of 50s science fiction cinema. Sometimes it was just a vaguely mumbled rationale for bringing on the giant monsters – Godzilla, ants in Them, an oversized spider in the self-explantory Tarantula. At other times it used to more subtle, metaphorical ends. The nebulous cloud which causes the protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man to begin his slow, lonely journey towards the microworld and into the infinities beyond. The pandora’s box in the delirious pulp noir Kiss Me Deadly. Hammer had made its own radiation picture, X the Unknown, a great little film which is punctuated throughout by the ominous popping crackle of Geiger counters, wands which effectively render death sonically visible. In The Damned, it is combined with another common science fiction theme of the time, that of the mutant child or children – part of a generation which potentially represent a new stage in human evolution. They are sometimes persecuted outsiders, spurned for their difference. At other times, they are a menacing threat. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYEgv_oIUVJIZ7jz0vWDXjPqv8LSkBAiI4FOND1ZQOQNpGi3n8xiU2WTpfFU-wxtoOUXZWpM0880nfpLkvUt6-OPqaz3Twrf1yIjUZOQc61i4otu1BUAvjaElPI3dtsOJLHXAUCygHq6f2/s1600/children+cave+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYEgv_oIUVJIZ7jz0vWDXjPqv8LSkBAiI4FOND1ZQOQNpGi3n8xiU2WTpfFU-wxtoOUXZWpM0880nfpLkvUt6-OPqaz3Twrf1yIjUZOQc61i4otu1BUAvjaElPI3dtsOJLHXAUCygHq6f2/s400/children+cave+2.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Children of the Grave - These are the damned</blockquote>In SF literature, examples include Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John (an early iteration from 1935), Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, Edgar Pangborn’s Davy, Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End and John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos and The Chrysalids. The latter two are particularly relevant here. The Chrysalids even ends with another helicopter arriving like a deus ex machina to bring the ‘different’ children to a new and more civilised settlement where they will no longer be persecuted. The Midwich Cuckoos was filmed as Village of the Damned in 1960, the year before The Damned. The children here are malevolent in intent, the offspring of aliens who have, by unspoken implication, impregnated the women of a sleepy English village. They are capable of forming a gestalt mind which gives them enormous telepathic and telekinetic powers. The children in The Chrysalids are mutants in a post-apocalyptic world which has reverted to a pre-technological level, with an accompanying resurgence of superstition and persecution. The signs of their difference must be hidden lest they fall victim to this new form of witch-hunt. The children in The Damned fall somewhere in between these two breeds. They are exploited and kept in darkness – denied enlightenment in a literal and figurative sense as they are imprisoned in their shelter beneath the cliffs. But they are, through no fault of their own, also deadly to those not like them. They carry the poison of radiation, and live in an environment uninhabitable to ‘normal’ human beings. This is the tragedy at the heart of the film. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEishIWLN0fJqzhuneMFY7-jbcQdl4Xxm8TXojvArnq2JfZCJgwfidWiE3gyeIKwvLmeYG5gAk1pVsZ3DmGARwTIvReM8f5dvrVfEWLarUv-azyStTtoOaHFt8W0y-r2e_eT3E3G_uatZixx/s1600/king+graveyard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEishIWLN0fJqzhuneMFY7-jbcQdl4Xxm8TXojvArnq2JfZCJgwfidWiE3gyeIKwvLmeYG5gAk1pVsZ3DmGARwTIvReM8f5dvrVfEWLarUv-azyStTtoOaHFt8W0y-r2e_eT3E3G_uatZixx/s400/king+graveyard.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Strange Angel - King in the graveyard of St George's Church, Portland</blockquote>I also chose this film because of its local setting. The locations here may be familiar to many of you. The Victorian seaside town of Weymouth and the cliffs and quarries of Portland Bill which loom above it. You can see Portland Bill from Exmouth or Dawlish on a clear day. There is a great deal of location shooting on The Damned (another reason why it was so expensive to make), and there are many incidental pleasures to be had. The steam train heaving up and down the quayside, the fashions of the extras and bypassers in the Weymouth town centre scenes, the general surreality of seeing familiar places incorporated into a fantastic fictional scenario. The 18th century Georgian church of St George’s is used to good effect, with Oliver Reed’s character King outlined leaning out from a memorial in the graveyard like some strange, demonic angel. The tombstones could be protruding from the bunker where the mutant children live, because their home is effectively a mausoleum; a cold modernist crypt to contrast with the clean classicism of the Georgian building above. The church is built from Portland stone, naturally enough, and there are also scenes set in the Portland quarries. These carry an ingrained symbolic weight, particularly when it comes to the climactic confrontations between establishment characters and the outsiders who have stumbled onto their activities. Portland stone has been used to build a good number of monumental buildings which represent different aspects of the Establishment, expressing entrenched and seemingly unassailable power. These include Buckingham Palace, the Palace of Westminster (the House of Lords and Commons), St Paul’s Cathedral and, going further back, The Tower of London. It was also used extensively in Exeter Cathedral. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv5WSR-n9_2G2J13ZYSVZFCWH5-KgjYZd_-uvi-77w68eo8CnB9jByYx3s11Q9zMGIRizQD2tERvj1P_eLIr0IQeUdkovMp937mOpOCk_azWZnPaxSCUFAQ4JUpZGTHA551C_4oxWfNh7/s1600/quayside+steam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv5WSR-n9_2G2J13ZYSVZFCWH5-KgjYZd_-uvi-77w68eo8CnB9jByYx3s11Q9zMGIRizQD2tERvj1P_eLIr0IQeUdkovMp937mOpOCk_azWZnPaxSCUFAQ4JUpZGTHA551C_4oxWfNh7/s400/quayside+steam.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Quayside steam</blockquote>Joseph Losey was a director who appeared to have a particularly European sensibility, along with an acute insight into the workings of the British establishment and class system. It’s surprising then to discover that he was a Midwestern boy, born in Wisconsin in 1909. It’s an origin he shares with Orson Welles, and like Welles he began his career in the theatre and ended up a Hollywood exile. In the era of Roosevelt’s New Deal he was involved in many radical productions in New York; radical in terms of their progressive, leftist politics and in terms of their experimentation. He also directed a large number of plays for the radio, again with a distinctly leftist slant. Perhaps the height of his theatrical career was a collaboration with Bertolt Brecht on the exiled German playwright’s Life of Galileo, which starred Charles Laughton. Losey’s first film, made in 1948, was a fable about difference and persecution called The Boy With Green Hair. It shares The Damned’s unambiguous anti-war stance. It could also be read as an anti-McCarthyite allegory. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0HvO4CNNpdoqlMMga9PGR4vr4nVXeFKCkKe4JIOLtWzXPKhX9zfuZlHvMIvfgKaIZ1K-Zzaev1S_H-Y4QpvAp3hhbZgOILPTfDs7APcI0lDZHU7NmpDo62lKEpEcX8WQ8fx9sgKxtm9FX/s1600/town+centre+bikes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0HvO4CNNpdoqlMMga9PGR4vr4nVXeFKCkKe4JIOLtWzXPKhX9zfuZlHvMIvfgKaIZ1K-Zzaev1S_H-Y4QpvAp3hhbZgOILPTfDs7APcI0lDZHU7NmpDo62lKEpEcX8WQ8fx9sgKxtm9FX/s400/town+centre+bikes.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Clocktower bikers</blockquote>As such, it was probably one of several factors leading to Losey being targeted by the McCarthy witch hunts in Hollywood. He was called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, but decided to remain in Europe, where he was working at the time and avoid the grimly farcical and hysterically conducted proceedings which would inevitably ensue. As a result, he was blacklisted by Hollywood and remained an exile for the rest of his life. Looking back, he was sanguine about his fate, however. In 1983, a year before his death, he reflected ‘for some reason interviewers are always saying that the experience has left me embittered and this just is not the case. In a way my being blacklisted was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it forced me to go to Europe to continue my career as a filmmaker. Otherwise I might have stayed on in Hollywood, merely making money instead of making pictures I wanted to make’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihwriWv1G9JQusmv5evbvhWlHC2PmOTiM13QXlczrFlIMhj7FokqZjwfiXey4596uHPOSJttJSFs2V8zSjQDHaK9BkTDgqTylorIEydBJ1m63WQEIels5P2yTC9E8gv8Md8q-qk7o5ax8K/s1600/king+clocktower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihwriWv1G9JQusmv5evbvhWlHC2PmOTiM13QXlczrFlIMhj7FokqZjwfiXey4596uHPOSJttJSFs2V8zSjQDHaK9BkTDgqTylorIEydBJ1m63WQEIels5P2yTC9E8gv8Md8q-qk7o5ax8K/s400/king+clocktower.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>King by the clocktower</blockquote>It also forced him to work within the bounds of genre pictures, and the tension between his coolly formal artistic temperament and the requirements of story and genre produced some memorable results. Before The Damned he has made several distinguished crime thrillers, including The Criminal, which starred Stanley Baker, one of his key actors. The Damned would have been much better served with Baker in the role of Simon. Losey was also slated to direct the Hammer SF picture X the Unknown. But the shadow cast by Hollywood in the wake of his blacklisting extruded its dark hand over the Atlantic through the agency of the film’s McCarthyite American star Dean Jagger, who objected to his participation. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_p9swo01lTryoTUo0L0uHeljBUULuRmcRNY9keQlN3GJQNBMh6zwRNjWr_nmsYsvz7jyT14CwMgNWeyvoLkdGoq2hmqmbVJgK1lVhfj5Wtwc_TJzLE_q3eOLeGilqQ0C2l6mKyQ5PcFLZ/s1600/modernist+interior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_p9swo01lTryoTUo0L0uHeljBUULuRmcRNY9keQlN3GJQNBMh6zwRNjWr_nmsYsvz7jyT14CwMgNWeyvoLkdGoq2hmqmbVJgK1lVhfj5Wtwc_TJzLE_q3eOLeGilqQ0C2l6mKyQ5PcFLZ/s400/modernist+interior.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Modernist cage</blockquote>Losey’s leftist, anti-establishment leanings and concern with form and structure come through very strongly in The Damned. It is a film which works through contrasts, parallels and comparisons. The generic clash is one striking aspect of its structure, with the SF elements only introduced some way into the story. The locations and sets are also distinctly different but throw each other into clear relief. The bleak, fragmented cliffscape of Portland Bill and the long, empty sweep of Chesil Beach beyond are contrasted with the faded, peeling, formerly elegant Victorian façade of Weymouth town centre and seafront. The once-confident architecture of Empire is set against jagged cliffs and outcrops littered with blasted blocks of quarried stone which could be a vista from a pre- or post-human world. This is, after all, the promontory which extends the furthest southerly pseudopod of land on what is known as the Jurassic coastline, which begins further west in Exmouth. It’s an expanse of stratified bedrock steeped in deep time. The cliffs are in turn contrasted with the stark, cold modernism of the interior world beneath the cliffs in which the children are kept. This is the brittle, spindly modernism of the 50s – Festival of Britain modernism. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY_FgS-AQKm3kRD558FeSFsYuFC4LGSpKYocZMxDyVDm9mb92ns4unTVSKkdI8C8EuUgmwDwTvm680npP5aKyOspoEAAdG7smuQ1XNwv7tXIGFIddrY7gOapbVbbHZY8kHwr1Fd-iD39dq/s1600/joan+and+sculpture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY_FgS-AQKm3kRD558FeSFsYuFC4LGSpKYocZMxDyVDm9mb92ns4unTVSKkdI8C8EuUgmwDwTvm680npP5aKyOspoEAAdG7smuQ1XNwv7tXIGFIddrY7gOapbVbbHZY8kHwr1Fd-iD39dq/s400/joan+and+sculpture.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Feeling the rock - sculpture emerging from the geological spirit of place</blockquote>The music also offers contrasts. James Bernard, whose strident scores for Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein and subsequent Hammer gothics did so much to define their mood, here produces something very different. A desolate, drifting, vaguely atonal flute melody which is reminiscent of the first of Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes or Gustav Holst’s brooding tone poem Egdon Heath. The latter comparison is particularly apposite given that Holst’s piece is an evocation of the bleak moorland which features in a number of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels and stories. Bernard’s restrained chamber music is contrasted with the brash rock ‘n roll song which blows it away when Losey’s roving camera takes us down into Weymouth. A rather tame, defanged piece in the Bill Haley mould, its lyrics nevertheless express the violence and menace which run throughout the film. Its inane melodic refrain is a recurrent motif, whistled by the bike gang as a kind signature tune and used as a call sign. The incongruous combination of jaunty ditty with the threat of violence is reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, in which Malcolm McDowell’s Alex breezes through Singin’ in the Rain as he and his gang set about a vicious round of destruction, assault and rape. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiql9DM4qQEPJvzmQxu71k9igPwETQQcJDrCEczI21-hQi0rFFdKMP-mZtuCnCVo7sJbtAyNG9WpymXNP3cR0oIBcZGsllP7JaiXlTNNxcRM0ReWCXaI01EPfs_1ZQ05OqSuUSocAsOWKPi/s1600/king+and+joan+arcade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiql9DM4qQEPJvzmQxu71k9igPwETQQcJDrCEczI21-hQi0rFFdKMP-mZtuCnCVo7sJbtAyNG9WpymXNP3cR0oIBcZGsllP7JaiXlTNNxcRM0ReWCXaI01EPfs_1ZQ05OqSuUSocAsOWKPi/s400/king+and+joan+arcade.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>King and Joan</blockquote>The psychosexual interaction of the characters and the linguistic power games they play anticipates Losey’s collaborations with Harold Pinter in the latter half of the 1960s. At the heart of the film, and driving its initial narrative thrust, is the semi-incestuous relationship between Oliver Reed’s King and Shirley Anne-Field’s Joan, an edgy depiction of unhealthy obsession and arrested development. The two female characters in the film, Joan and Freya, both have or have had relationships with older men in which an element of ownership is involved. The artist Freya rents a cottage owned by her ex-lover Bernard, the scientist running a secret project nearby. Joan is intitially picked up by Simon, the American tourist, who thinks she is a ‘tart’. He becomes our nominal ‘hero’, although his behaviour makes him a far from noble one. He evidently still thinks she’s a tart when he takes her off on his yacht, an obvious status symbol which attracts her with its promise of further riches and luxurious pleasures. She is expected to pay for the privilege of being onboard, and he roughly embraces her in what amounts to an assault. The men of power, the scientist who has joined the military establishment and the rich American who has retired from the insurance business, both assume a proprietorial position of ownership. This is a man’s world dominated by male wealth, self-assertion and violence. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmHj9c6YeSR3RaJJbcrP6Ny9hcdFQpWthJKl-5gnAJGRKeFRvXF-g4HmfeOfv53FKdfEpxpek6ipw8iNQAxdZxEWDVHBGOgfTFgV2fljUZz1Wv53KlWDWHM9zb6EH7K-pDyA0Nb40SlWZ/s1600/bernard+and+freya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmHj9c6YeSR3RaJJbcrP6Ny9hcdFQpWthJKl-5gnAJGRKeFRvXF-g4HmfeOfv53FKdfEpxpek6ipw8iNQAxdZxEWDVHBGOgfTFgV2fljUZz1Wv53KlWDWHM9zb6EH7K-pDyA0Nb40SlWZ/s400/bernard+and+freya.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Bernard and Freya - a faded intimacy</blockquote>Losey creates a multi-layered picture of British society, a series of refracting planes which demonstrate that its seemingly wildly disparate elements are in fact closely interconnected. This picture is encapsulated in the brilliant opening scene in which the camera glides up and around the clock tower, contrasting King and his gang with the memorial to King George III and drawing Simon, the American outsider, into their world – into England, in effect. King leads his gang, his ‘troops’, in mock military marches, and apes the chummy language and plummy accents of the establishment, satirising the breezy heroics and stiff-upper lipped stoicism of the war movies which filled the cinemas in the 1950s. King stands out from the rest of his leather-clad gang, wearing a stylish check jacket and swinging a tightly-furled umbrella with rigorous, square-bashing precision. He’s like a mod who has somehow found himself heading a band of rockers. The uniform of the gang who he marches through the streets echoes the uniforms of the military men in their secret, fenced-off base. Several times in the film, characters express their bewilderment at the seemingly mindless gang violence. ‘Why do they do it?’ they fret. It’s like the moment in The Wild One where Brando’s Johnny is asked ‘what are you rebelling against’, and he replies ‘what have you got?’ Losey shows how the gang violence is inextricably linked with the pervasive violence of society embodied in the military establishment. In the wake of the second world war it has now settled into the subterranean machinations of the cold war, its corrosive power still holding sway. The Edgecliff military base where Bernard’s secret project is housed has echoes of various secret military establishments in the West Country, most prominently Porton Down, home of the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment. Rumours and accusations of human experimentation were attached to Porton Down for years. And it was here in 1953 that a young 20 year old airman called Ronald Maddison died after being exposed to the nerve gas sarin. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfZT5ltgYb3fpdxLIX4KKNjWv4oaLOSEdyeJNTK2Y5kDUDgXEhhwgpkO1Xbqq_6_A0OXUwXkXKwnzYNheVz-76FNRzN_W3_dG5eC_ZmRjy8ipnu1cnOpAN0t79dRc9LYtJ4UZGmlsf5_UH/s1600/king+as+child.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfZT5ltgYb3fpdxLIX4KKNjWv4oaLOSEdyeJNTK2Y5kDUDgXEhhwgpkO1Xbqq_6_A0OXUwXkXKwnzYNheVz-76FNRzN_W3_dG5eC_ZmRjy8ipnu1cnOpAN0t79dRc9LYtJ4UZGmlsf5_UH/s400/king+as+child.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>King as frightened chiid</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwtaZIDa0-4Nx-rWDAKZHqnl3xyiRCQoIq5jNi1__viQwsH5s_D6ICxRNdTJAsfZeaQOBi9zSZn1IpXz1AHQDSqufA24lLddednKWVIvT-B68WI7WA4WEG_oLXxie8IJKcx3suoOYUHYao/s1600/henry+and+king.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwtaZIDa0-4Nx-rWDAKZHqnl3xyiRCQoIq5jNi1__viQwsH5s_D6ICxRNdTJAsfZeaQOBi9zSZn1IpXz1AHQDSqufA24lLddednKWVIvT-B68WI7WA4WEG_oLXxie8IJKcx3suoOYUHYao/s400/henry+and+king.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>King and Henry</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2ZjGfwZqeQnY_O5MlPADMEN2HrdmB05c7YUWL8-rQBdHNPVHYDkryVjx4sZ-7DOIesUhNAvhc2gkipD6zJxRDnNkBlPELb4hjruWpK-coSOpyk8bOqVHfCDx5UqSFeOBz0dYlq_SZcdOe/s1600/king+and+henry+driving.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2ZjGfwZqeQnY_O5MlPADMEN2HrdmB05c7YUWL8-rQBdHNPVHYDkryVjx4sZ-7DOIesUhNAvhc2gkipD6zJxRDnNkBlPELb4hjruWpK-coSOpyk8bOqVHfCDx5UqSFeOBz0dYlq_SZcdOe/s400/king+and+henry+driving.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The last ride</blockquote>King is like a child, aping what he sees around him, absorbing the violence which is in the air. He rejects the adult world and adult sexuality, and wants his sister to do the same. ‘It’s you and me against the world, Joanie’, he says. When he meets the children (recoiling with horror from the touch of their cold, dead flesh) one of them, Henry, forms a close bond with him. There’s a sense of fellow spirits connecting. Henry is a little boy lost, and we imagine that this was how King was when he was younger. Henry clings to King’s side, even when the latter tries to push him away. He insists on trying to escape with King at the end, telling him that he doesn’t want to go back since ‘none of the others really like me’. The scenes with them both are really very touching. King and Henry (King Henry?) are, for all of King’s violence, two innocents in the face of the tyrannical, depersonalised control of the military. King becomes something of an anti-hero, leading the children into destructive rebellion, trashing the joint like Teds ripping the seats out of a cinema where Rock Around the Clock is showing. His instability becomes manifest as the radiation sickness takes hold, and his underlying vulnerability becomes affectingly apparent. By the end, we understand something of his violence and rage, and desire to distance himself from the world. His final stand is a defiant fuck you to the British establishment. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGVBoExkoBfKOnzWJCkOUaIlNsDronfZ4R8J9RReNBSDI3OaMBFRZpkzgoslvDn_8Dc947a7ZC1z4H9ShNEgmtKzCR3nZmDxT427YabaIHFYBivcsnhdtda0VVhFnXmJyp0G3gqS1PXIlq/s1600/freya+and+biker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGVBoExkoBfKOnzWJCkOUaIlNsDronfZ4R8J9RReNBSDI3OaMBFRZpkzgoslvDn_8Dc947a7ZC1z4H9ShNEgmtKzCR3nZmDxT427YabaIHFYBivcsnhdtda0VVhFnXmJyp0G3gqS1PXIlq/s400/freya+and+biker.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Freya and Sid</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXSZvpcUB10HvmxDErE-LfyXFi66-cqc8NDhbmYnljkGuGMeiGijaUXXsG4CUbLDtzovMpN38649q0hahfWR0N3ftNNCAojMr3kwzr7k7Bc0a8wZ9pgY8SE17q24e0goGixtFg5XlB4rSg/s1600/freya+working+to+the+end.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXSZvpcUB10HvmxDErE-LfyXFi66-cqc8NDhbmYnljkGuGMeiGijaUXXsG4CUbLDtzovMpN38649q0hahfWR0N3ftNNCAojMr3kwzr7k7Bc0a8wZ9pgY8SE17q24e0goGixtFg5XlB4rSg/s400/freya+working+to+the+end.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Freya on the brink - working to the end</blockquote>If King is one of the film’s isolated outsiders, then Freya is another. She is the artist as natural outsider, and thereby perhaps a reflection of Losey’s own status. She is also an outsider in that she is a foreigner (again like Losey), her name that of a Nordic Goddess. At the end of the film she speaks of the children in almost mythic terms. She refers to Bernard’s plan ‘to set nine ice-cold children free in the ashes of the universe’. It’s as if she is talking about the Norse eschatology of Ragnarok, the final battle in which only nine gods will survive to live on in the blasted remains of the world. The nine children echo this mythic pattern. Freya lives almost literally on the edge, isolated in the cottage on the clifftop. In one highly symbolic scene, she and King wrestle at the very edge of the cliff. They are both on the brink, outside of society looking on from the borderlands. King is not stupid – his mimicry has wit and satirical bite. But his deeper feelings, his raging inner conflicts, remain unarticulated. Freya has her art, which can express both the personal and the universal, inner and outer landscapes. King, perhaps jealous of what he cannot speak, maliciously smashes a sculpture she has been working on. A potential communion of outsiders is broken at the same time. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOd3Ko98TrnOLrfXOP36Gl9WtH-qP-ESXX-zDPmuBq_JukyE_19AnLDmKU9QcBUNOZXJjhCobxvFK7O-LcRfmEOgBcy3GKDQJ-VgQvzelnLvj2vFIVaaD0lJLTkAXEth1n_XBEbv0jZ9fX/s1600/bernard+horse+head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOd3Ko98TrnOLrfXOP36Gl9WtH-qP-ESXX-zDPmuBq_JukyE_19AnLDmKU9QcBUNOZXJjhCobxvFK7O-LcRfmEOgBcy3GKDQJ-VgQvzelnLvj2vFIVaaD0lJLTkAXEth1n_XBEbv0jZ9fX/s400/bernard+horse+head.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Bernard with expressionist double (the night mare)</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtTne804fs6iO2UQEJxTnUJlcEyf0464oqHVaRx_kRsAGfZdg_RTz13BcwFzMzvzE6a_6WkQKygxc7WNFAv4VJiO8LAkbNO5JZ1YUxghzEZSf_sUwM95MCoZ0K_PUQbh7QS2wktsC2avi/s1600/bernard+scientist+power.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJtTne804fs6iO2UQEJxTnUJlcEyf0464oqHVaRx_kRsAGfZdg_RTz13BcwFzMzvzE6a_6WkQKygxc7WNFAv4VJiO8LAkbNO5JZ1YUxghzEZSf_sUwM95MCoZ0K_PUQbh7QS2wktsC2avi/s400/bernard+scientist+power.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Bernard as man of power - the scientist as God</blockquote>Bernard, the scientist, is another individual amongst the deindividuated, the uniformed and ranked. His name may be a nod to Nigel Kneale’s famous scientist character Quatermass, first name also Bernard (Kneale’s tribute to Bernard Lovell, the British scientist who set up the Jodrell Bank radio telescope). But unlike the doggedly anti-establishment Quatermass, this Bernard has allowed himself to be co-opted by the military, even if it is supposedly he who is in charge. Freya mocks him for this. She provides a voice of dissent, undermining the assumed authority of his newfound status. She tries to reconnect him with his soul. But she knows him well enough to realise that the attempt is ultimately futile. The air of melancholy and regret which suffuse their scenes together is an acknowledgement that they now inhabit separate worlds. And just as it means death to enter the vault of the children unprotected, so it is death to enter the professor’s world. He is in fact a figure of death. The major in his radiation suit is referred to as the Black Death by the children, but he is really just one of Death’s minions. The professor carries his own poison with him; A mental and ideological poison, born of despair but feeding on power. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitjndgJq6kzZ7BqtE_BZBLi3WdXf68rf8Lbd0r_7QKgHJ2r6RoczaI7PP0mw8PNzN4ckeWoJij3Y3a1mDRUAmKvyKR3hcp98MivhkcaAyX-oqGIT9_zpOWcVV8OQwY5M0Y1bIuiE7suXLh/s1600/indoctrination.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitjndgJq6kzZ7BqtE_BZBLi3WdXf68rf8Lbd0r_7QKgHJ2r6RoczaI7PP0mw8PNzN4ckeWoJij3Y3a1mDRUAmKvyKR3hcp98MivhkcaAyX-oqGIT9_zpOWcVV8OQwY5M0Y1bIuiE7suXLh/s400/indoctrination.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Indoctrination machines</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnXGG56lgxcTPCkC_aZP0N86yyVLF0opR2V8-vzPZyIrway08ZCdKH2dAVcuq2j-IpldEKEWp245vAWA5JYTgdN4hP8Fqcg5ojdMRaxIf6O_RmdAoM819hU0dY7iuB5Ggildr4wPgh8obV/s1600/lessons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnXGG56lgxcTPCkC_aZP0N86yyVLF0opR2V8-vzPZyIrway08ZCdKH2dAVcuq2j-IpldEKEWp245vAWA5JYTgdN4hP8Fqcg5ojdMRaxIf6O_RmdAoM819hU0dY7iuB5Ggildr4wPgh8obV/s400/lessons.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Remote learning</blockquote>‘Civilisation’ is contrasted with the ‘barbarism’ of youth culture, classical art with modern. The children, in their modernist bunker, are force-fed a classical diet of ‘culture’ to prepare them for the world to come. By implication, they will begin as the old generation left off, building a new Empire on the model of the old. The aristocratic Captain Gregory, played by the absurdly plummy-voiced James Villiers (a one-note performer if ever there was one), reads them the poem The Prisoner of Chillon by Byron. They are far too young for the poem, but it encapsulates something of their tragic fate:<br />
My hair is grey, but not with years, <br />
Nor grew it white <br />
In a single night, <br />
As men's have grown from sudden fears: <br />
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil, <br />
But rusted with a vile repose, <br />
For they have been a dungeon's spoil, <br />
And mine has been the fate of those <br />
To whom the goodly earth and air <br />
Are bann'd, and barr'd—forbidden fare.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDytOgJ9gmEdW-dgtkgTX0wo6d4cgV-4lCWK5UwnjyEtYKco5xqsTez1mM2_rHvK3YI5Gzvns-6fdVKmCR4KPHvfg7sBraI3ex1f0Nic2oY-Btzqgat5VS9IQlDMCZAZPvuxNXRAMz3S25/s1600/look+at+the+world.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDytOgJ9gmEdW-dgtkgTX0wo6d4cgV-4lCWK5UwnjyEtYKco5xqsTez1mM2_rHvK3YI5Gzvns-6fdVKmCR4KPHvfg7sBraI3ex1f0Nic2oY-Btzqgat5VS9IQlDMCZAZPvuxNXRAMz3S25/s400/look+at+the+world.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Looking at the world for the first time</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-PVqC2tBpn2PaYp6RlrKP1RB_-oxVZiKak1zGn9Qq1uaKsvAYS0B9G9yY-GCIlshTaV7Of4MeldXQNfMCXWkuI7__znz945Z-h8zTH89HgCgSBHVMIeHYl57FCQd75LwXiPKdvqVQSkl/s1600/flower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-PVqC2tBpn2PaYp6RlrKP1RB_-oxVZiKak1zGn9Qq1uaKsvAYS0B9G9yY-GCIlshTaV7Of4MeldXQNfMCXWkuI7__znz945Z-h8zTH89HgCgSBHVMIeHYl57FCQd75LwXiPKdvqVQSkl/s400/flower.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Looking at a flower as the monster approaches</blockquote>The scene in which the children briefly leave their cavernous prison for the light and air is powerfully moving. Joan looks after Mary, one of the little girls, and they sit on top of the cliff looking out over the seemingly endless expanse of the sea. ‘Take a look Mary’ Joan says, ‘that’s the world’. Mary is frightened by its sheer enormity, the lack of enclosing walls, so Joan suggests that she hold on to a small part of it and picks a flower for her. It’s at this point that one of the military men approaches in his radiation suit and tears Mary away from Joan’s arms, herding her, along with the rest of the children, back into their Portland pen. The violence of the establishment becomes brutally evident in the pitiless manner in which the soldiers go about their appointed task – men in frightening costumes brandishing guns. These are the Black Death night visitors emerging from the rocks to carry the children away in broad daylight; Nightmares in the waking sunlight, undeniably real. They are dehumanised by their radiation suits, which make them look like shambling, thuggish ogres, picking up small children as if they intend to eat them. This might appear to be a Hammer film without monsters. But they come out in an attacking horde in this climactic scene. They just happen to be human. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEOG1rK5nQzc2_m5S-9n3chT-nZ9T8ps0v0dDP2DtcZDOrj50qr2RvSwOHeP9QTW9oqsYtChDKpnZZry21eodwakbKNKXvPMRmBK6-m7Ef1tuq6lAVN26oySeKUZw0CDmOi8B9MRcp-4I/s1600/remote+viewing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEOG1rK5nQzc2_m5S-9n3chT-nZ9T8ps0v0dDP2DtcZDOrj50qr2RvSwOHeP9QTW9oqsYtChDKpnZZry21eodwakbKNKXvPMRmBK6-m7Ef1tuq6lAVN26oySeKUZw0CDmOi8B9MRcp-4I/s400/remote+viewing.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Remote viewing</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRY8BHc9LfgiZOsXkvoPlSXpRhlwfA327FNqUI7NrURN27fJ_k6Fx13j1U7DlDqTejQ8IxftzfTghatQynITTosIe8WDkBB1Vj1Xu4lQAaO5chXdakJBUgrA-mGj2Fp0bOGHfnG_T4n6we/s1600/watching.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRY8BHc9LfgiZOsXkvoPlSXpRhlwfA327FNqUI7NrURN27fJ_k6Fx13j1U7DlDqTejQ8IxftzfTghatQynITTosIe8WDkBB1Vj1Xu4lQAaO5chXdakJBUgrA-mGj2Fp0bOGHfnG_T4n6we/s400/watching.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Watching</blockquote>The film also depicts a world in which everybody is being watched. King watches over his Joanie, and his bikers become a lookout gang, whistling code signals to alert each other to the whereabouts of Simon and Joan. When King disappears, Sid (the most sympathetic of the bike gang, played by Kenneth Cope) takes it upon himself to continue the surveillance with his high-powered binoculars to find out where he’s got to. The military base is surrounded by watchdogs and guards. Freya is watched over by Bernard and his underlings in an attempt to shield her from dangerous (indeed fatal) knowledge, but also to monitor whether she has been exposed to that knowledge and thereby become a threat which needs to be dealt with. The children are watched by remote controlled surveillance cameras, and their only contact with the outside world is via a TV communication screen, on which the professor’s face looms with imposing largeness. Freya’s sculptures also watch and wait. Her angel standing on the cliff’s edge looking out to sea, where navy ships are moored; her bird perching in windowsills or crouching behind the professor’s shoulder. Finally, the helicopters are like technological realisations of Freya’s birds, smooth mechanoid hybrids of bird and fish and insect which hover over the outsiders, Simon and Joan, Freya and King, herding them towards their end. Helicopters were still a relatively novel technology at this time, and became a symbol of futurity, representing freedom (as in the Chrysalids) or an oppressive, harrying presence. The shadow cast by the helicopter at the end of Bergman’s Through A Glass Darkly provides the manifest outline of the spider god which the unstable Karin has been hallucinating during the film. In The Damned, the helicopters are another aspect of the depersonalised power of the establishment. Highly mobile surveillance machines which ensure that there is no longer any way of escaping the all-encompassing grip of authority, no matter how fast and wild you drive down the long, straight coast road. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOqxY365_CE3uB7pcFSh4fZ-dncNGK1v0x2SwySKHhLeT3SiYMG49hKSZQAIyobUb1ArZo8CYKo9M8MIzg_YcznMCYr3YnxqTdKEGtEkQLSalkHcAIw2cQmF0sEFAoQYP321tNajJQdwk4/s1600/captain+gregory+horse+head.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOqxY365_CE3uB7pcFSh4fZ-dncNGK1v0x2SwySKHhLeT3SiYMG49hKSZQAIyobUb1ArZo8CYKo9M8MIzg_YcznMCYr3YnxqTdKEGtEkQLSalkHcAIw2cQmF0sEFAoQYP321tNajJQdwk4/s400/captain+gregory+horse+head.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Captain Gregory - not an art lover</blockquote>The children are all terribly well-spoken. It’s as if they have absorbed the speech patterns of those who indoctrinate them. They are set against the deliberate and ritualised insolence and rough speech of the bikers, who do their best to get on the wick of establishment types like the Major, and succeed admirably. Captain Gregory, meanwhile, shows them the same patrician disdain and studied disinterest which he reserves for anything and everything. An acute awareness of class and the antagonism, resentment or deference which this creates is present at every level of society, on civvy street and in the military camp. Captain Gregory still exudes an aura of Imperial arrogance and entitlement. He may be lower in rank than Major Holland, but he assumes an air of inherent superiority. Any bully can push people around, he says, looking pointedly at the Major, but ‘a gentleman commands loyalty’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8trC1od-RlFvKJWHGwrwLL6rK6SLzcd1uPCtnhTqUSbQ1XRUWYtC_n8ULeYVYbXQ2h5EoIYdJeZqOaRzUqDtWuL8Sm6rtRFsJMUIToXIHeDvjbyteqMoXtR8YEKzrxaAtZPiSL_8_MQ7X/s1600/horse+head+sculpture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8trC1od-RlFvKJWHGwrwLL6rK6SLzcd1uPCtnhTqUSbQ1XRUWYtC_n8ULeYVYbXQ2h5EoIYdJeZqOaRzUqDtWuL8Sm6rtRFsJMUIToXIHeDvjbyteqMoXtR8YEKzrxaAtZPiSL_8_MQ7X/s400/horse+head+sculpture.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Return of Fuseli's Nightmare</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjICZlL-mcLvrR8LgifBAly7c9hUtdEgIrkAXjR32T_pKp_1cGU2tryWjso4zP0MS38xy84jUSYcloPovHvGM18ML9FWE2TNISy6FlqGGRcvddEkDwmPShyIQ12gnYZkQKc5qRP_qbG6HE3/s1600/king+sculpture+choke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjICZlL-mcLvrR8LgifBAly7c9hUtdEgIrkAXjR32T_pKp_1cGU2tryWjso4zP0MS38xy84jUSYcloPovHvGM18ML9FWE2TNISy6FlqGGRcvddEkDwmPShyIQ12gnYZkQKc5qRP_qbG6HE3/s400/king+sculpture+choke.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>King as art critic - attacking the manifestation of his self</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_i1Zwyv_ptkIV0E1ORCjKO3uZ-kpvx7_iOXOSva-VkBcS9jzmAX3UF25lmO4zrjn_p6ePrEHn7URLWvaUQIJ-_f_8EK-U8KRcL2t22ziJBSSvVQdiUwM_EQhd4k9Qxibdd7TqYCLYzFQt/s1600/king+sculpture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_i1Zwyv_ptkIV0E1ORCjKO3uZ-kpvx7_iOXOSva-VkBcS9jzmAX3UF25lmO4zrjn_p6ePrEHn7URLWvaUQIJ-_f_8EK-U8KRcL2t22ziJBSSvVQdiUwM_EQhd4k9Qxibdd7TqYCLYzFQt/s400/king+sculpture.jpg" /></a></div>On the cliffs above the children’s bunker, the sculptures produced by the artist Freya Neilsen offer a modernist, expressionistic perspective on the contemporary world. These sculptures were actually the work of the British artist <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dame-elisabeth-frink-1124">Elizabeth Frink</a>. Her birds, horse heads and human figures seem to emerge from the rubble of the quarry, fierce, half-formed beasts assembling themselves from the rocky material around them. Like the children, these creatures seem to be waiting for the post-apocalyptic world. Will this be the forbidding fauna which awaits them when they emerge from the cave? Frink was loosely associated with a group of artists known as the ‘geometry of fear’ sculptors, although they were really a generation older than her. The title comes from the influential art critic Herbert Read’s comments about the British exhibitors at the 1952 Venice Biennale. He wrote ‘these new images belong to the iconography of despair, or of defiance…Here are images of flight, of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas, of excoriated flesh, frustrated sex, the geometry of fear’. Frink’s hulking male figures, like chthonic trolls turned to stone, are filled with brutish, threatening power. King, Oliver Reed’s gang leader, hates them. He confronts her piece Warrior which she made in 1954, a nude male figure with helmet fused to head as if it is a natural extrusion of the skull, with revulsion and disgust. It angers him. Perhaps it offers too clear an insight into his own soul. Joan, on the other hand, seems to instinctively find something instinctively right about them, feeling a natural, almost sensual connection, enjoying work which is an expression of female creation and imagination. Frink's staring horse head, again made in 1954, looks like the fearful apparition appearing from the shadows at the side of the bed in Henri Fuseli’s famous painting and print The Nightmare. This is one of the most famous of horror images, in which a malevolent imp crouches on the chest of a restlessly sleeping woman and glowers out of the frame, as if it has just noticed our watching presence. Her heavy angel with its stunted wings is destined never to fly, but to remain rooted to the rocks, gazing out from the brink of the land over the empty expanse of the ocean. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0_z_sOrTSnPGY9qBFuh21rMKo65ZisZqxt1p6DIOOOcwYDFOZOoeqNHnb_tHgEnqkpEYMt_g11XwSKEMMHH1FdwvC4dbZRLGviN1IIbhGXGD159QB2T5mBCTha453Gr3dcuToaFNsiWgz/s1600/frink+bird+cafe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0_z_sOrTSnPGY9qBFuh21rMKo65ZisZqxt1p6DIOOOcwYDFOZOoeqNHnb_tHgEnqkpEYMt_g11XwSKEMMHH1FdwvC4dbZRLGviN1IIbhGXGD159QB2T5mBCTha453Gr3dcuToaFNsiWgz/s400/frink+bird+cafe.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Cafe raptor</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz4FTvJ9NVJidZsDRZRTMT-onmJJIKMmdsUASmvbCnyZOrpxHp4Ro0PgJxGTFOicKqClDzCm0mSlKiBgtBN63EFp2qOeryUrnqbV00RKH6R3DLKX-Gj2qWjq3U6Kk68__qRf-7ltvojSM0/s1600/bernard+bird+shadow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz4FTvJ9NVJidZsDRZRTMT-onmJJIKMmdsUASmvbCnyZOrpxHp4Ro0PgJxGTFOicKqClDzCm0mSlKiBgtBN63EFp2qOeryUrnqbV00RKH6R3DLKX-Gj2qWjq3U6Kk68__qRf-7ltvojSM0/s400/bernard+bird+shadow.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Bernard's familiar shadow</blockquote>The sculpture we see with the greatest frequency, however, is The Bird. It is referred to in the film as the graveyard bird, forging a link with King when he perches on one of the grave obelisks in the churchyard later on. This sharply predatory creature, tensed for a killing swoop, was an early work of Frink’s. The Tate bought it in 1952 whilst she was still at art college. This is the work of a young woman, then, further bringing out the generational gulf which runs like a seismic rift through the film. The bird is associated with Bernard, the scientist at the head of the secret project which is preparing the chosen children for a post-nuclear future. It almost acts as his twisted familiar spirit. It denotes the primal violence and predatory ruthlessness lurking beneath his civilised exterior. Its presence subtly undermines his rationalism and the carefully reasoned justifications he presents for his monstrous actions. We see it framed in the window of the seafront hotel café where he meets his military colleagues (his major and captain). Its shadow also arcs over his shoulder whilst he addresses the children over the remote communication system. Art expresses the truthful spirit which lies beneath the blandly constructed surface of civilised behaviour. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhawR8d2GL6CIqpvOYaQTwI4qEwbdlogHVjqHL5jjrjNfbfPnLX-8QekU1xSEOz-ICf-bWj2K5cua_iVNLT7KwueWZxg0zyxGwRHVx1GP5HMaZpi9mTT5r8g1dQbHXPo4klzypGeyKMDAT1/s1600/modernist+prints.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhawR8d2GL6CIqpvOYaQTwI4qEwbdlogHVjqHL5jjrjNfbfPnLX-8QekU1xSEOz-ICf-bWj2K5cua_iVNLT7KwueWZxg0zyxGwRHVx1GP5HMaZpi9mTT5r8g1dQbHXPo4klzypGeyKMDAT1/s400/modernist+prints.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Modernist prints</blockquote>Mention should finally be made of the cast. Oliver Reed is definitely the standout presence here. He brings a nervy intensity and incipient instability to his role, making of King a real character rather than a two-dimensional thug. He wins our sympathy in way that Malcolm Macdowell in A Clockwork Orange never does. Reed was one of Hammer’s repertory actors in the early 60s, and it was with the studio that his career really took off. After a minor part in The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll, he had his first major starring role in The Curse of the Werewolf. After that he was in the smuggling thriller Captain Clegg opposite Peter Cushing; the pirate movie The Pirates of Blood River opposite Christopher Lee (with rogueish eyepatch); the swashbuckler The Scarlet Blade; and the post-Pyscho suspense thriller Paranoiac. All of which shows the sheer range of pictures Hammer were making before they turned to specialising more exclusively on the gothic. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVFXXZ7euSMoaEOl2VGd_Bkh71t8ysntQ2u0bgpNn9EPBcSaNJqhyphenhyphen8JkunTgu03rVVblUZ5JDeNb-zcwJ4bbp2CTRUXsqUxOEiCCPXvmi2brV4tI0dOqMS9QZ6-8GN0H9MPWS7vZY_vu6k/s1600/violence+-+state+and+youth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVFXXZ7euSMoaEOl2VGd_Bkh71t8ysntQ2u0bgpNn9EPBcSaNJqhyphenhyphen8JkunTgu03rVVblUZ5JDeNb-zcwJ4bbp2CTRUXsqUxOEiCCPXvmi2brV4tI0dOqMS9QZ6-8GN0H9MPWS7vZY_vu6k/s400/violence+-+state+and+youth.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>State violence and youth violence - an uneven match</blockquote>Kenneth Cope, the biker who features most prominently in the story, will be familiar to many as the white-suited ghost detective in the 60s TV series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and also as a Corrie regular in that decade. He appeared in the 1981 Dr Who serial Warrior’s Gate, the final part of the e-space trilogy, a favourite of mine with its Cocteau references. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht4Uuf1u6ogHaNC1MECIqErQV5wHbpIAMHYKUO8KOrXXIvzYa9Be-DIwWBX-P-yxxv5t58hZp3pPfRZm5HSozSSV9NgVZNpazkpvybX6eiDomXPbUymbKThDP8T5WeBSqZqF3S8o7AF-pv/s1600/why.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht4Uuf1u6ogHaNC1MECIqErQV5wHbpIAMHYKUO8KOrXXIvzYa9Be-DIwWBX-P-yxxv5t58hZp3pPfRZm5HSozSSV9NgVZNpazkpvybX6eiDomXPbUymbKThDP8T5WeBSqZqF3S8o7AF-pv/s400/why.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Why? - Macdonald Carey</blockquote>Macdonald Carey, who plays Simon, nominally the hero, was one of a number of American actors Hammer shipped over to star in their early films, one eye firmly fixed on US box office potential. They couldn’t afford the latest stars, so tended to go for actors a little past their prime. Most notoriously, this included the casting of Brian Donlevy as Professor Quatermass, a choice which Nigel Kneale abhorred. Carey was best known in the movies for his roles in westerns. But he was better known in the States for his starring role in the long-running TV soap Days of Our Lives. <br />
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His May to September romance with Shirley Anne-Field’s character is one of the least convincing aspects of the film. But perhaps it is supposed to be – a jaundiced reflection on the artificiality of romance. Shirley Anne-Field was in a number of key British films of the new wave or kitchen-sink movement, including The Entertainer and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, and she also appeared in Alfie later in the 60s. Her role here is more reminiscent of her part in the 1960 film Beat Girl, however, whose US title Wild for Kicks tells us all we really need to know. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTBp9COH983nce9Ffv4duQ38AirLlLfpiXhYknTu7TJnMN3KIAR9y019FEC96K_Kk-BciLIwYgKuliU-Joi-rYv_n221h0mHe2LwQmrwsgbjUWdRGsAjbDNcS-yR6f8HSXaFEkTdF099E-/s1600/trashing+the+joint+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTBp9COH983nce9Ffv4duQ38AirLlLfpiXhYknTu7TJnMN3KIAR9y019FEC96K_Kk-BciLIwYgKuliU-Joi-rYv_n221h0mHe2LwQmrwsgbjUWdRGsAjbDNcS-yR6f8HSXaFEkTdF099E-/s400/trashing+the+joint+2.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Trashing the joint - the children's rebellion</blockquote>The marvellously named Viveca Lindfors, who plays the artist Freya, was a Swedish actor of stage and screen who moved to America after the war and appeared in a large number of films and TV shows over the next 6 decades. I know her from George Romero’s horror comic movie Creepshow, in which she plays the tipsy Aunt Bedelia, whose abusive husband comes back from the dead on the anniversary of his birthday to demand his cake. It ends up decorated with poor old Bedelia’s head. <br />
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One of the child actors, Nicholas Clay, pursued an acting career into adulthood and appeared in one of my favourite films. He played the noble, handsome but fatally human Sir Lancelot in John Boorman’s 1981 Arthurian fantasia Excalibur. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9aJqbpEQpYop-4gETMkp-mtH3s4AaB4ZGG0UXAwtH_UwY_zVINgDTQx5C3dOLzPp1IuGb8k-dZ0VATqR3OLkkExQ1jnjUjUEsD368gZd6e48wHYNiBTE-1pSBQFrAX7OiT3xD48bglxUi/s1600/major+and+biker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9aJqbpEQpYop-4gETMkp-mtH3s4AaB4ZGG0UXAwtH_UwY_zVINgDTQx5C3dOLzPp1IuGb8k-dZ0VATqR3OLkkExQ1jnjUjUEsD368gZd6e48wHYNiBTE-1pSBQFrAX7OiT3xD48bglxUi/s400/major+and+biker.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The Major and the Biker</blockquote>Douglas Gamley, who arranged the Black Leather Rock song, later jumped the Hammer ship and attached his colours to the rival company Amicus, where he produced some rather more distinguished scores. He worked on Asylum, Tales from the Crypt, And Now the Screaming Starts, The Vault of Horror, From Beyond the Grave and The Beast Must Die (from rock ‘n roll to blaxploitation wah-wah funk), as well as post-Amicus pictures The Land That Time Forgot and The Monster Club (the first horror movie I ever saw in the cinema). <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKzvspmloxyl3v3j4pmx-Tf9sWLSwX3d-beKR6jNXXIadyqyS9KU050VVBYQk1xmXC4317iprh0QfCef4pD-bRzRcstT80b50gYKmdt9Hb7xYhN5C1Rwq3hcgTlvO2Wr-qATW6vBBqFWU-/s1600/black+death.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKzvspmloxyl3v3j4pmx-Tf9sWLSwX3d-beKR6jNXXIadyqyS9KU050VVBYQk1xmXC4317iprh0QfCef4pD-bRzRcstT80b50gYKmdt9Hb7xYhN5C1Rwq3hcgTlvO2Wr-qATW6vBBqFWU-/s400/black+death.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The Black Death</blockquote>In 1963, the year of The Damned’s release, Joseph Losey teamed up with another of his key actors, Dirk Bogarde, and with the writer Harold Pinter. They made The Servant, the first of a number of pictures which would fully establish his reputation as an arthouse auteur, a central figure in 60s British cinema. The Servant was followed by The Accident in 1967 and the Dirkless The Go-Between in 1970, the last of his collaborations with Pinter. It has to be said, there were also a few stinkers along the way. His comic-strip adaptation Modesty Blaise, with Sir Dirk and Antonioni star Monica Vitti was generally considered a dismal failure, although its colourful pop art stylings still make it a visual pleasure to watch. Boom from 1968, with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor wearily going through their Tennessee Williams routine once more, has been chosen by trash director John Waters as one of the films to accompany his forthcoming season at the BFI Southbank. He describes it as ‘beyond bad, the other side of camp – a film so beautiful and awful there is only one word to describe it: perfect. If you don’t like this film, I hate you’. I wouldn’t go that far in describing The Damned. But I do hope you like it. <br />
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Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-49673530510141457242015-06-15T21:19:00.000+01:002015-06-20T19:24:47.122+01:00The Ashton AscensionPART THREE<br />
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Walking towards the Jacobean pulpit at the south end of the rood screen, we paused to look down at two memorial stones embedded in the aisle, its darkly grey, granite surface worn smooth by centuries of shuffling feet, some soled in patent leather, some bare and roughly calloused. Under us lay whatever remained of Peter Bauwlen and Hugo Cadbury, who died in 1653 and 1658 respectively. The hard surface was inscribed with crudely chiselled, tersely rigid letters, curves and cursives kept to a minimum. Some of the symbols looked almost runic in their stark, sticklike linearity, particulary on the Bauwlen stone, around which they created a decorative border, the centre left a stony void. A number of small letters were interposed between larger ones on the Cadbury stone, mistakes corrected as the stonemason spelled his way around the border, no doubt cursing his negligence. The ultimate effect was highly striking, however, even if amateurish in its artisanship. They both looked a good deal older than the carved dates indicated. <br />
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The Jacobean pulpit itself was a solid, boxlike affair with straight-panelled sides. They might have gone on to form an octagonal pen if the structure weren’t neatly constructed to fit into a nook in the wall. It would have looked rather like an oversized music-box, in fact. There was a sounding board on top, a flat, protruding ledge from which the preacher’s voice was intended to bounce, disseminating outwards to reverberate in the ears of the congregation. This emphasis on clarity and projection indicated the increased importance granted to the word and to the sermonising of the local minister in the post-Reformation world. The pulpit had moved out from the sacristy and the minister (priest no more, in name at least) now conducted the service from in front of the screen. The division between priesthood and laity was supposedly narrowed, the minister leading his flock directly, on a much more personal level. The sermon was a central part of the new service, an address during which the vicar could, if he was a skilled speaker, inspire and make intimate spiritual and social connection with the faces looking towards his corner speaker’s box. An iron bracket extended forward from the pulpit’s lip, the ledge on which the passionate preacher might lean to emphasise a point, adopt a pose of casual intimacy or get closer to his audience. The bracket would have held an hour glass, just to remind him not to get too carried away with the message. It was also a standard memento mori symbol. Make your point, for we none of us have too long in this place. <br />
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Behind the pulpit, a narrow arched entrance in the wall opened upon a set of steps, ascending in a steep spiral within a constricted, whitewashed well. We carefully crawled up this chalky, snail-like chamber, feet planted sidewise on the narrow precipices of the stone stairs. They soon unwound onto the top of the rood screen, stone turning into wood. Before the Reformation, there would have been a loft built on top of the screen in which lights could be lit and incense censers swung, and from which the choir could sing and decorations could be hung. It was another level of the medieval church’s multi-platform, multi-coloured, multi-sensory theatre. Now it was a creaking, dust-carpeted expanse of bare wooden boards which looked and sounded none too safe. An old loudspeaker with brown woven grill was placed aslant in the middle, a brown wire snaking across the length of the screentop from its blocky hardwood cabinet – a lengthy rat’s tail. This was the kind of hardy megalith which used to get heaved out for village fetes in the 1950s. Its top was a plateau strewn with an accumulated tilth of droppings (church mice presumably) and dead flies. A message was scrawled in fading biro on a piece of paper loosely attached with yellowed sellotape. It requested that the speaker not be moved from its current position. It looked like that instruction had been followed for a good many decades. <br />
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Treading creakily and cautiously along this wooden parapet, we peered down into the rear part of the church, the sacred chambers behind the screens. On the north wall of what appeared to be a largely empty chapel we could see shapes painted in a dull red tone, all gathered around the central divisions of a crucifix. The rood crucifix atop the screen also loomed large above us, its transverse beam cutting across the line of the sloping roof joists a few feet overhead. The Marys stood to either side, adding a female symmetry to the scene. From the rear, their wooden haloes looked like the discs of caps or berets, attached at a chic, acutely angled slant. We edged towards a precipice overlooking the aisles, like guards on a defensive gatepost dividing the sacred city of the chosen ones from the secular lands beyond. From up here, we could get a close look at the wooden statues. Something strange immediately caught our attention. Pendant from a loop of cord hung onto a nailhead in the centre of Christ’s pierced hand was a sharp, white shard. On closer inspection, it proved to be what we had suspected – yes, a sliver of bone, long and tapered, like a canine tooth, roots and all. Who had climbed up here to hang it from Christ’s wounded hand? And what was the nature of their offering? A charm to cure some debilitating illness? Or a token to commemorate the centenary of the Great War, strung from a statue itself erected in the war years in remembrance of one fallen on the fields of Flanders. It swayed gently in the currents of air playing around the church rafters, as if the hand to which it was attached was faintly stirring with vestigial spasms of reflexive muscular movement. Whatever its provenance, it possessed an eerie and slightly disconcerting power. We decided to descend, taking special care not to tumble down the steep, narrow-stepped stairs and barrel out in front of the trinity of decapitated saints. <br />
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Back on ground level, and on solid flagstones covering the memorialised dead, we walked to the screen doors which led to the wall painting we had glimpsed from above. A wooden latch on the back swivelled upward, as it must have done countless times over the centuries. The doors seemed reluctant to open for us, however. I in turn was reluctant to apply too much pressure, fearful lest the carved and painted medieval wood should crack and splinter at my blundering touch. But a slight shoulder budge proved sufficient. We walked through, crossing the border into the sacred, and were rewarded by the incredible panel paintings on the rear of the rood screen – a surface known as the parclose screen. These were granted a larger area than the rood saints, less compressed by Gothic arches and decorative traceries. There was some Reformation damage, mainly to the eyes (strike out the gaze! Destroy the vision!). But otherwise, they were remarkably intact. The large panels told the story of the incarnation, with annunciatory angels, heralding prophets and an apocryphal guest star role for Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, who also becomes pregnant, though previously barren. Mary herself is seen kneeling piously at a lectern with bible or prayerbook open before her, and later sitting beside Elizabeth, both contentedly cupping their hands around each other’s full-wombed bulges. <br />
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The figures are dressed in the fashions of the 15th or early 16th centuries, floppy, trailing caps and capacious tunics, belted and rippled with folds. Such extravagant us of fine cloth was a deliberately ostentatious indicator of wealth and status. The hands are set in varied and highly expressive gestures. These are storyteller’s hands, bringing the words of the miraculous tale to life. The contemporaneity of the panel figures made the story more immediate to the congregation; or at least to the few who were privileged to pass into this privileged space. Perhaps the finery they sport was intended to reflect the rich raiment of those who were allowed to cross the sacred border. This was once the Chudleigh chapel, so you would have to have been of a certain standing. The paintings strongly resemble comic book panels – the panels in this instance being wood rather than pulpy paper. Instead of speech bubbles, the characters bear unfurling scrolls and pennants on which the holy words are inscribed in a gothic script. The star-eyed figure who might be a portrait of a murdered monk lightly grasps a forked ribbon-end between fingertips and thumb. It flutters up and around him, s if possessed of a living agency, an innate impulse to reveal the Word which defines it. ‘Omnes resurgent in novissima tuba’, it proclaims. ‘All will rise up at the last trumpet’. The mild monk points to the paper weakly clutched in his right hand, as if to draw attention to his own eventual resurrection, to reassure himself of his place in Eternity. <br />
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Turning from this narrative sequence of panels, we look at the outlined remains of the 15th century wall painting. This is more condensed, all the symbolic information packed into the space surrounding the cross. The abstracted objects associated with the passion, which are often found carved on medieval bench ends or etched into stained glass, float around the central symbol of Christian faith like electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus. Of the original palette, only the umbrous red now survives. It was revealed when the Chudleigh memorial was removed from what was then the family chapel into the aisle. It’s a dim reminder that the whole church would once have saturated the eye with chromatic brilliance. All walls and surfaces would have been decorated, painted with patterns and biblical scenes, illuminated by light spectrally tinted from its passage through coloured glass. <br />
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We step through into the sacristy, and are penned in by wooden walls. Victorian angels look down on us from the corners of more wooden screens around the altar. They are gilded with light shafting through the clear, diamond paned arch of the south window, haloed by the blue and vermillion hemispheres of stained glass roundels behind the altar. Positioned halfway between the ground and the roof, they give the enclosed space a feeling of elevation, of being apart from material reality but not yet ascending to the celestial plane. An inbetween space, a hallway connecting separate states, body and spirit. <br />
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We leave the sacristy and the old chapel, pushing open the creaking oak doors, temporarily parting Mary from the Angel Gabriel. Taking a few steps up the northern aisle to the west end of the church, we pause to contemplate the Chudleigh memorial, whose removal had revealed the ruddy crucifixion. A large wooden board painted in funereal black with lettering shining out from the shadowy background, it is crowned with the family crest, flanked on either side by wild men. These are folkloric figures of the wildwood, tousle-headed and bushy-bearded, their modesty (or the modesty of the onlooker) sparsely preserved by shorts woven from branches and leaves. They carry gnarled clubs with them, which suggest a lineage deriving from Hercules, and also an affinity with the less modest Cerne Abbas giant, the priapic chalk hill figure in Dorset. They are free spirits, bound by the laws of the natural world with which they are inextricably enjoined, but not by the rules and conventions of human civilisation. In some ways, they are mythic progenitors of Rousseau’s noble savage, the outsider uncorrupted by the taint and compromise of society. Reversing the fall, they return to the garden, now overgrown to become forest. Some parallels might by drawn with the encampment of travellers currently residing in the Haldon forest. <br />
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Towards the bottom of the board, we find some of the traditional memento mori symbols, reminders of mortality and prompts to use our short earthly span to its fullest effect. A pair of scythes is crossed, the blades facing outwards as if they had been leaned carefully against a wall, their work done. Even the Reaper has to rest from time to time. On the opposite side to the scythes is an hourglass, pictorially rhyming with the timer which would have nestled in the iron bracket holder on the pulpit. Perhaps the congregation, watching the level of sand diminish with agonising slowness from the upper chamber, fell to contemplating their own inevitable end. At the base of the board, buried beneath the writing, is a skull, square-jawed and blockheaded, and with a few teeth missing – a distinctive detail which suggests specific portraiture. It is painted gold, a gilded death’s head which acts as a gatekeeper, a guide to the golden fields of eternal life. <br />
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The memorial is for George Chudleigh and his wife, Lady Mary Chudleigh. Both had significant connections with the Civil War. Mary’s father was Sir William Strode, a prominent figure in the opposition to King Charles. Sir William was at the heart of the parliamentary melee of 1629. The speaker was held down after refusing to read a resolution against the arbitrary imposition of warmongering taxation, and the rebel members ignored an order to leave the chamber. As a result, Sir William was sent to the Tower and imprisoned in various locations for the next 11 years, an absolutist period during which parliament was never assembled. His incarceration didn’t diminish his determination to stand up to the king. In 1642, he was one of the Five Members of parliament whose impeachment under accusation of high treason set the accelerating progress towards civil war in motion. When the king himself entered the chamber to make the arrests, only to discover the offending parties had absconded, forewarned and sheltered in the labyrinth of London, he realised that he was no longer in control in the capital. He left for Oxford soon afterwards, there to form his loyalist splinter parliament. Sir William Strode died in 1645 and was given a public, formal burial in Westminster Abbey. In the vindictive retributions following on from the Restoration in 1660, his body was exhumed, his monument now residing in St Mary’s Church, Plympton. <br />
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Sir George Chudleigh was directly involved in the progress of the Civil War in the local area. He was initially a Parliamentarian, a general in Cromwell’s army. However, his son James, also in the Parliamentarian army, was captured by Royalist forces in the early stages of the war. A man whose pragmatic realism outweighed any ideological principles, he immediately switched sides. It was a change of heart which he communicated with sufficient conviction to receive a commission as a colonel in the king’s army. Sporting a turned coat was eminently preferable to a sword in the guts, even if the colours didn’t quite suit. He was duly accused of treason by Cromwellian generals; a traitor, but a live traitor rather than a loyal dead man. His father, deciding that blood and family honour were more important than political allegiances, resigned his commission and joined James on the other side. It didn’t do either of them much good. James was killed in 1643. In 1645, General Fairfax led the New Model Army into the south west, occupying Topsham and lodging in Ottery St Mary for the bitter winter. When they pushed west again in early 1646 to pursue Royalist forces, they took over the manor of Ashton, a tactically commanding high spot on the Haldon ridge from which to prepare for a sweep down into the Teign Valley and north west to Torrington. It was here that a decisive battle would be fought, the pronounced victory for the Parliamentarians bringing the war in the south west, and in the country at large, towards its conclusion. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivZuKIS__UiTgXwXJjb3N31HsUIjmAwJs8J2C3A2HQ1HnMc_RCVQByOQmnl6PkyeyyLrz0avJxrtya692-R6ZIhvk78G3f0RERxnsrrRjN6yfqjDN2AMouWDrKSttaYTcDTe-E9grlSRtF/s1600/General_Thomas_Fairfax_%25281612-1671%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivZuKIS__UiTgXwXJjb3N31HsUIjmAwJs8J2C3A2HQ1HnMc_RCVQByOQmnl6PkyeyyLrz0avJxrtya692-R6ZIhvk78G3f0RERxnsrrRjN6yfqjDN2AMouWDrKSttaYTcDTe-E9grlSRtF/s400/General_Thomas_Fairfax_%25281612-1671%2529.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>General Fairfax</blockquote>It was a time for George Chudleigh to make himself scarce. The supposed bullet holes in the south porch door would have been created at this time, if at any. Truth to tell, they look a little too neat to have been made by the explosive impact of a musket ball, a burning pellet of iron liable to violently splinter bone or wood. But peering through the holes from the inside to the light on the hills beyond, I feel inclined towards the vagueness of romantic legend and local lore rather than the rigour of rational, reasoning. This felt like a place and a moment for imaginative fancy, not empirical deduction. That could come later. <br />
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It’s interesting to speculate what tensions might have arisen within the Chudleigh household. Lady Mary was the daughter of a notable Parliamentary hero, after all. The national divisions and local conflicts created by the Civil war may very well have been reproduced on a domestic scale within the marriage, voices raised in anger and argument within the Place Barton manor house down the hill from the church. Whatever dramas may have been played out in the home, however, Lady Mary performed her duty in perpetuating the Chudleigh lineage with heroic dedication and thoroughness, also managing an admirable symmetry and balance in her production of offspring. She had 9 sons and 9 daughters, as her memorial inscription proudly pronounces. <br />
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I wonder what a later Lady Mary to marry into the Chudleigh family might have made of this no doubt exhausting childbearing feat. This Mary Chudleigh was born in 1856, during the latter years of the interregnum, but was really a child of the Restoration. She consorted with various poets of the period, and wrote poetry and essays herself. Some of her writing has led to her being claimed as a proto-feminist. But as Angela Williams points out in her insightful piece on the Literary Places blog, it is important to bear in mind the conventions of the time, both literary and social. Witty dispute was fashionable within certain circles, and license could be taken in the knowledge that this was intellectual sport, not the kind of agitation for radical change which had been voiced across the land in the preceding decades. Nevertheless, there is a strong-willed and amusingly sardonic advocacy of female independence of mind in Lady Mary’s poetic dialogue of 1701, written as a terse rejoinder to a wedding sermon intoned by one John Spring in 1699 in which he declared that a woman should naturally be subject to their husband’s wishes within a marriage. It bears the thoroughgoing if somewhat unwieldy title ‘The Ladies Defence: or the Bride-Woman’s Counsellor Answered: A Poem In A Dialogue between Sir John Brute, Sir William Loevall, Melissa and a Parson’. Lady Mary, who died in 1710, doesn’t have a memorial in the church. David had brought along a copy of her best known poem, To the Ladies, however, and stood before the Chudleigh memorial to read it out. Her words rang round the spaces of the church, given substance by David’s soft Mancunian tones, and formed their own epigrammatic tribute: <br />
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Wife and servant are the same, <br />
But only differ in the name: <br />
For when that fatal knot is tied, <br />
Which nothing, nothing can divide: <br />
When she the word obey has said, <br />
And man by law supreme has made, <br />
Then all that’s kind is laid aside, <br />
And nothing left but state and pride: <br />
Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows, <br />
And all his innate rigour shows: <br />
Then but to look, to laugh, or speak, <br />
Will the nuptial contract break. <br />
Like mutes she signs alone must make, <br />
And never any freedom take: <br />
But still be governed by a nod, <br />
And fear her husband as a God: <br />
Him still must serve, him still obey, <br />
And nothing act, and nothing say, <br />
But what her haughty lord thinks fit, <br />
Who with the power, has all the wit. <br />
Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state, <br />
And all the fawning flatt’rers hate: <br />
Value your selves, and men despise, <br />
You must be proud, if you’ll be wise.<br />
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Having invoked the bright spirit of this singular member of the Chudleigh clan, it seemed an appropriate moment to take our leave of the aisles of Ashton. The sun was shining through the clear glass of the southern window, illuminating the medieval panels in the north. They glowed dully through the fogging grime of the ages, the trees in the graveyard beyond looking like further diamond framed outline etchings of green tracery. The light suggested that this would be an appropriate time to take a circuit of the church exterior, wandering amongst the graves. <br />
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The graveyard was in fact quite a compact acreage. On the north side, it accommodated itself to the slope of the hillside, whose steep declension we would soon be merrily sailing down. The stones on this side of the church were noticeably more wreathed and crowned by ivy, skirted by brambles, bracken and thickly clumped grass. This was, after all, the Devil’s side, the poor end and, more practically, the area in the shadow of the church’s stone mass. It was slightly more expansive than might be expected for such an undesirable post-mortem residential district. This was due to an extension of the boundaries effected in 1907. The lower part might therefore be thought of as the suburbs of the dead. <br />
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Amongst Celtic crosses, gothic arches and stone beds in the original neighbourhood, our eyes were drawn to a small, black iron cross of a Germanic cast. A central disc was bordered by arms and a crown which could have served as axe heads with a little sharpening. The name on the circle was Ada Alford, a monciker suited for a songbird of the Edwardian music halls. The dates weren’t included. They were obscured b springy tufts of grass at the base of the cross. I carefully parted them and peered closely to uncover evidence of Ada’s time on Earth, the period in which she lived. For a moment I read the inscription as stating that she’d died at 12 years of age, and a lump rose in my throat. Then the one resolved in my failing eyesight into a 4. Still not a full span, but at least she must have enjoyed something of the world. So Ada, with your humble iron cross in the shadow of the north side and of grander memorials, I hope your life afforded you pleasure and a measure of contentment. <br />
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Circling back to the south side, we walked into sunlight once more. David found a lichen covered twig and used it as a beater for the triangle he’d brought along, testing out the resonances of stone recesses and corner nooks. We knelt down to inspect lichen universes sprayed across the flat planes of gravestones, blossoming in orange, lime and purple globular clusters and nebulae. There were also wavy, intersecting kelp fronds of deep green moss and anemone-like fans and rosettes of lichen which were suggestive of undersea worlds, mites and ants transformed into crabs, shrimp and other scuttling and paddling crustaceans. We speculated on the linguistic connections between lichen and the word lych (as in lychgate), derived from the old English for the dead, lic. Lych ways, or corpse roads, such as the one leading across Dartmoor from Lydford to Postbridge, were the paths of the dead, routes along which bodies would be borne for burial. They were generally winding, avoiding a straight, linear route in order to confuse spirits who might be tempted to return and haunt the living. Lich was also a word coined by 20th century writers of the weird such as HP Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber and Clark Ashton Smith to refer to revenant corpses, often reanimated by magical means. The green-painted slopes of the lychgate roof were clustered with copses of tiny moss forests, a miniature landscape model of the wooded hills beyond the churchyard and village. Beneath, billowing hammocks of spiderweb spread their complex cat’s cradles across the eaves. They catch the low-angled rays of the late afternoon sun, the spidersilk glinting and shimmering.<br />
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We passed beneath them and descend the zigzagging stair, untethering our bikes from the noticeboard at the bottom. And off we went, sailing down the western slopes of the Haldons, past the big old medieval barn, now renovated and turned into something modern and fancy, a place for conferences and retreats rather than cattle and sheep. We also whooshed past the entrance to Place Barton, the former residence of the Chudleighs. Near the bottom of the hill, we paused at Lower Ashton. Essentially a pub and a post office and store, it was a reductio ad absurdum of a village, condensed into its essential form. David popped into the village store to replenish his supplies and pass the time of day, and then we pushed off, forgoing the temptations of the pleasant-looking inn. We crossed the river Teign via a medieval packhorse bridge, bracketed, angular nooks placed along its span to retreat into should a haywagon happen to be trailing over. They also provide excellent vantage points from which which to spot river birds. Some weeks later, I watched a young dipper bobbing about on a rock, making its first attempts at fishing solo. It seemed to be doing quite well, a promising start to its dipping life. <br />
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On the other side of the bridge, we immediately turned right onto a road which paralleled the course of the Teign, running upstream through the valley. It wasn’t a particularly busy road, but after the sleepy country lanes we’d been traversing, it seemed like a return to the busy rush of the modern world. It was only a mile or so before we found ourselves turning towards Doddiscombsleigh, however, retreating once more to the quiet old roads meandering their slow way around the folds of the hillsides. A clear moon, waxing towards fullness, now hovered pendulously over the treelined brow of Scanniclift Copse, rising above the Teign, which we had once more crossed (along with the derailed course of the old railway line). We were entering a magic lunar valley, our approach heralded by the coarse, rasping fanfares of rooks. Up and down the road undulated, with the moon a watchful orb above us, measuring our unhasty but steady progress. By the time we reached the village of Doddiscombsleigh, the light was failing, dusk beginning to extend its crepuscular tendrils. We made our way directly to the church, resisting the temptations of the Nobody Inn for now. <br />
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We approached the church up a narrow gravel path and walked through the unwalled graveyard. Heading into the porch and opening the door (which was of fairly modern vintage), the first thing we saw, facing us in the northern aisle window, was the figure of St Christopher, etched and outlined in stained glass. St Christopher was an icon imbued with great power for the medieval Christian. Not only was he the patron saint of travellers, looking after the weary wanderer, but a glimpse of his image would provide protection against death for the remainder of that day. Small wonder that representations of St Christopher were often placed opposite the entrance door in medieval churches, making this the first thing the congregation would see as they filed in. Here he was a bearded giant, the infant Christ like a tiny bird on his shoulder. His staff was a thick tree trunk, budding and shooting into life at the top. He looked like another version of the wild men we had seen on the Chudleigh memorial. <br />
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More sprouting greenery was to be found on a foliate head looking down from a capital on the westernmost column of the south aisle. A fascinating account by a local doctor outlined the possible symbolism and folkloric significance of this singular carving. It had a noticeable harelip, thought to be one of the Devil’s characteristics in a fearful, superstitious time when difference was demonised (and have things really changed so much?) The elongated leaves, with their serrated edges, are devil’s bit scabious. Together with its placement in the shadows furthest from the altar at the eastern end of the church (the side of solar rising) and the pointed, vulpine ears, this suggests that the carved foliate head is a representation of green-ish man or wildwood spirit as Devil. The Pagan figure demonised in this instance, rather than displaying a sense of continuity with the Christian symbolism of death and rebirth. <br />
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Another green man at the eastern end of the northern aisle balances out this figure, creating a pleasing sense of symmetry. It’s in the more traditional style, branches and leaves bursting out of the mouth as if from the stump of a felled tree – coppiced human heads. Green men have many moods, as if they metamorphose with the seasons; placidly grazing in bountiful springtime, ferociously predatory during winter scarcity. The specimen here tended more towards the latter end of the spectrum. There’s something feline about it too. A green man combined with one of the black cats of the moor. It also has a roguish Kirk Douglas dimple in its chin.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGwC46QXWBhLhDnMljWzm4xlIodRruPUiPF-Jazf0l9atPD9XLQeWhrqAS0qSZz28q8CEgHncz2xCnacyNwzmb5gB8bcZIcbKJCE6fXvA8hvJsI2OJlofjs9X75o3LBiUS0lMiVptOAbK/s1600/DSCN5080_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGwC46QXWBhLhDnMljWzm4xlIodRruPUiPF-Jazf0l9atPD9XLQeWhrqAS0qSZz28q8CEgHncz2xCnacyNwzmb5gB8bcZIcbKJCE6fXvA8hvJsI2OJlofjs9X75o3LBiUS0lMiVptOAbK/s400/DSCN5080_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRNRTQcMlSdCYHBGCNYg0Tey9Mj9wkI70zJqHZplfOv1tBOXr1ByqlGDGTMvPZhk-hKx5QY2c-bW5yqlLEwKLvMoubQit4kiTBz6eYyxKAQ5CnKvQy8sXwmipWUrmLjEdYejYC9cX_6OOH/s1600/baptism.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRNRTQcMlSdCYHBGCNYg0Tey9Mj9wkI70zJqHZplfOv1tBOXr1ByqlGDGTMvPZhk-hKx5QY2c-bW5yqlLEwKLvMoubQit4kiTBz6eYyxKAQ5CnKvQy8sXwmipWUrmLjEdYejYC9cX_6OOH/s400/baptism.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Baptism</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUN2_HOqMUsqfiv9h-HhSLGdw-LT_6bEQI6el8KXoUSHUAwBtGU4OHiym8G2eXOcPZGWL3AIs11hwOB0gFN1HwNkAUFWW3xCBNJZrsMt0-KU3Tb8P0laP5PL4rpKVU9aoDzufVqm3pjtE/s1600/extreme+unction.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUN2_HOqMUsqfiv9h-HhSLGdw-LT_6bEQI6el8KXoUSHUAwBtGU4OHiym8G2eXOcPZGWL3AIs11hwOB0gFN1HwNkAUFWW3xCBNJZrsMt0-KU3Tb8P0laP5PL4rpKVU9aoDzufVqm3pjtE/s400/extreme+unction.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Extreme Unction</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit1uVes1xo9zuf4iHaR9dK2gnSczPEFkdzbwdG1pIPQC-vdWSA7dVgLz0DNHh-57TYDAtMUuUteFuoH7PffzV51LQAwWMNoLR3uibSkIT2oRbJosbhupt_fpYLVb4_y2FFXa-9O9JIrVG3/s1600/penitence.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit1uVes1xo9zuf4iHaR9dK2gnSczPEFkdzbwdG1pIPQC-vdWSA7dVgLz0DNHh-57TYDAtMUuUteFuoH7PffzV51LQAwWMNoLR3uibSkIT2oRbJosbhupt_fpYLVb4_y2FFXa-9O9JIrVG3/s400/penitence.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Penitence</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKzsEcUOx4TVdlONjjQp7mLPaRR6qcdUsqZ_MOmC1lgaB4bZuRoDpBWRrdcEbFdOJGtEFk8dvor27_sGM8Bp0dZb9gnD30vwdvU6eznvOeMD_7oLD5jiBcwHNb0il8Elr_YYZV_E7Wtq-z/s1600/DSCN2610_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKzsEcUOx4TVdlONjjQp7mLPaRR6qcdUsqZ_MOmC1lgaB4bZuRoDpBWRrdcEbFdOJGtEFk8dvor27_sGM8Bp0dZb9gnD30vwdvU6eznvOeMD_7oLD5jiBcwHNb0il8Elr_YYZV_E7Wtq-z/s400/DSCN2610_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Edging to the side of this figure, we began to inspect the magnificent medieval stained glass which filled the arched windows of the north aisle and culminated in the thematic kaleidoscope of the seven sacraments window at the eastern end. These windows miraculously survived the shattering stones of the Reformation vandals. People need little license to indulge in the destructive pleasure of smashing glass, so it’s remarkable that they’ve survived intact into the present. Some suggest it’s because Doddiscombsleigh, tucked into the valley folds beneath the Haldon ridge, was so difficult to find that the agents of the reformed church and the later Puritan iconoclasts passed it by. The sacraments orbit the central figure of Christ, a Victorian stand-in for the absent medieval incarnation. He is the Son as sun, drawing all together throughout life’s progress, sacralising its stages of physical, social and spiritual development. Each moment is linked to his stellar body by scarlet streamers of blood which radiate from the five Passion wounds (hands, feet and heart); blood as light and lifeforce. Five lifelines for seven sacraments. The sacraments depicted cover birth (baptism), confirmation (the induction into the body of the church), the Eucharist (the ingestion of Christ’s body), penitence (forgiveness – the confession and absolution of sin), marriage (the union of man and woman and ensuing issue blessed by God), ordination (the continuation of the priestly line), and extreme unction (the last rites ushering the dying from life). The latter was placed immediately below the baptismal scene, the tracking gaze providing a cinematic dissolve from birth to death, the cry as air is first drawn into the lungs to the sigh as it is exhaled for the last time. It’s a juxtaposition carrying its own memento mori message as much as the laurel wreathed, toothless skull at the base of the 1697 memorial to John Babb. <br />
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The medieval faces are full of character, imbued with individual life by idiosyncratic details, the variations from the accepted ideal which make them feel real. A penitent’s overbite, the sharply carnivorous set of teeth bared by a priest or the snub nose of a woman keeping vigil by the side of the death bed (the same woman in the marriage panel watching over her dying husband?). Details catch our eye and draw us in for a closer look. The spreading fan of overlaid hands resting on the head of a baby as it is held over the baptismal font; the confirmation-bestowing priest holding a child which looks like a tiny, fragile doll, his fingers pincering its head as if about to snap off part of a gingerbread man. The hands of the couple being married are held together in a wavering grasp suggestive of anemones locking tentacles. I become particularly fascinated by the fashions of the time: the money purse hanging from the belt, the severely fringed hairstyles and, particularly, the shoes, which are rounded and highly practical, not in the least like the absurdly pointed and curled footwear of popular medieval imagery (although there is a more pointy pair elsewhere). <br />
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The window was restored in 1762, and one of the glaziers was so proud of his work that he inscribed his name in a pane of blue glass just above the bed of the dying man in the extreme unction scene. P Cole done this window March 1762 whom god preserve amen. The shaky scrawl could have been scratched out by the spidercrawl of one of the charcoal arachnid scribbles outlined against the coloured glass like more fine leaded work. No matter how closely I peered, I was unable to locate Cole’s inscription on this visit. It was only on a return journey some months later that I found this artistic signature on its cerulean shard, part expression of creative ownership, part selfless dedication to God. <br />
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We haven’t come at the best time to see them in all their illuminated glory. Their colours don’t pulse with the refracted radiance of the sunlight. But we can get some impression, and peer really closely at the details within individual panes: the watery bubbles, relics of the molten state; the finely drawn black lines of curling hair and folded fabric; and the patterning used in the background, some of which looks startlingly modern in its symmetrical rigour and the care with which colours are contrasted and composed. Stars and diamonds add stylised decorative elements. Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian would have approved and possibly drawn a few lessons. Modernity lurks luminous in the ancient artisanal crafts – the shock of the old. <br />
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The colours of the robes in which the saints of England, Scotland and Ireland (at this time still entirely separate nations) are wrapped are particulary beautiful. Andrew’s blue and St Patricks green and red. St George remains pasty and translucent, however, a true English saint, his armour waiting for the sun to make it gleam. Even the cross in his armoured breastplate lacks its customary scarlet. He thrusts his spear down into the maw of a dragon’s head which is similarly pallid, a white cave worm. The dragon is no mythically earthshaking mountain horde beast, more the size of a small alligator. St George’s attack seems almost bullying, just another royal hunt. His spear rips out of the side of the unfortunate beast’s head, its diamond head tip forming an extra ear. The heads of St Peter and St Michael are encased in bubbles which look like the sleek art deco dreams of belljar space helmets. They are von Daniken astronauts, medieval archangels and church fathers on the moon. St Christopher as patron saint of astral travellers. The representation of the Trinity as three crowned kings with suitable regal beards looks like something the saints might encounter on their space travels. They form a coagulated mass, a tripartite being, coronets fused to their heads. Their faces are pustulent with bubbling glass, and they are coloured a forthright shade of yellow. The lumpy custard kings, English mustard gods offering us benediction with upraised index and middle finger (except for the Holy Spirit which, being incorporeal, has no hands). <br />
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St Michael is depicted in his end of times role as weigher of souls, his feathered limbs particularly apparent. He holds a large set of scales in one great bowl of which a tiny human figure anxiously crouches. But what’s this? A devil of the classic pointy-eared, fork-tailed variety is reaching up to pull on the scales, tipping the balance in its favour to it can claim this human soul for its master in Hell. Let’s hope St Michael notices its impish intervention. Next to him, St Peter holds a huge key to a door which, if commensurate in size, must be of a truly vast expanse. Its handle end creates what looks like a decorative aperture in his stomach; the hole for a wind-up key, St Peter as clockwork simulacrum. His hair is particularly finely rendered. St Paul leans on the sword with which he was martyred and holds his head as if despairing at the state of all around him. We imagine him muttering a vexed ‘oy’. The hand is probably supposed to be shielding Paul’s eyes against the blinding Damascene vision of the resurrected Christ. It’s difficult not to impose a more comical interpretation, however. St John the Evangelist holds another chalice from which a serpent is uncoiling itself, which we can compare to the one we saw in Ashton. This glass monster, tiny though it might be, is a lot fiercer than the adorable black beastie on the Ashton rood screen. It has a golden head and wings (a miniature Quetzelcoatl), and a stringy tongue furling outwards from its open mouth produces an almost audible hiss of outrage. St John himself has a fine thatch of curly russet-coloured hair, sweeping back in a romantic Algernon Swinburne or Thomas Chatterton tangle. St James the Greater, the patron saint of pilgrims, makes his eternal way with the aid of a stout golden staff. His broad, floppy hat is designed to shade his face from the sun, which the burning corona of his halo resembles. A shell pinned to the folded back brim of the hat makes reference to the Santiago pilgrim route. Did any of the Doddiscombleigh congregation make that lengthy penitential peregrination, I wonder? Mary is here too, her robe an exquisite brocaded blue. She appears withdrawn, caught in an intensely inward moment. She doesn’t look like a figure who would reach out to those devoted to the Marian cult. <br />
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The symbolic embodiments of the four evangelists are here, too. The angel of St Matthew, looking rather stern and sulky; the winged lion of St Mark with its lobate tongue lolling out; the ox of St Luke, also with wings; and the more aerodynamically convincing eagle of St John. The angel has been bifurcated by black leaded lightning, the eagle’s glorious plumage is speckled by sooty deposits, and the ox has the cracked charcoal star of a dead spider above its folded wing. Droplets of thick glass beneath have a deep subaqua glow, pearlescent greens and turquoises giving the impression that we are looking through a porthole into oceanic waters. Another quirky creature can be found in the heraldic form of a two-headed black bird. It looks like a mutant cormorant, a friendly companion, possibly possessing the power of speech. Some of our Ashton saints return in the upper panels, too, still bearing their implements of torture. Here is laughing St Lawrence with his gridiron, St Stephen with his stones and St Blaise with his combing iron. The red, blue and green backdrops look like theatrical curtains for their restaged dramas. <br />
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The Victorian glass in the east window is inevitably overshadowed by the stunning medieval glass, but it is splendid in its own right. It depicts the angel in Christ’s tomb revealing his resurrection to the women who have come to attend to the body. The faces look very contemporary, and the angel could be one of Hitchcock’s cool blondes. There’s something of Grace Kelly in it. It’s arm is raised heavenward with a casual, matter of fact insouciance. The walls of the cave are layered in strata of purple and vermillion, and the ground beneath the women’s feet is carpeted with vividly rendered daisies, cornflowers, marigolds and irises. Colourful life blossoming in darkness, in the shadow of the tomb. <br />
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Doddiscombleigh also offered some fine carved medieval bench ends, including one featuring a cocky lad, a local bravo, perhaps. He is quite the peacock with his patterned cap, buttoned up shirt and broadly frilled collar. His shoulders are set at a swaggering angle, mouth curled in a 15th century Elvis sneer. Well uh-huh. He was centred in a circular frame, as if this were a magnified medallion. Some things never change. There’s something very photographic about this portrait, the carver producing a naturalistic pose which feels like a moment of passing life captured and preserved. There was also a shield bearing a heart pierced through by two crossed spearheads. This is one of the symbols of the Passion, a fuller selection of which we had seen in the medieval wall painting in Ashton. Passion symbols in the form of a pierced foot, hand and heart also featured in a small, much begrimed panel of stained glass in the upper section of one of the windows. Another carved wooden eagle looked beakily across at us from the lectern near the altar at the eastern end, watching our investigations with a warily assessing eye. <br />
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We left the church interior and walked out into the gathering gloom of dusk. House sparrows were noisily gathering in the ivy thickets entwining an old telegraph pole in the far corner of the graveyard (the local exchange for the underworld). It looked and sounded like the dead tree bole had come to life again, sprouting an odd blend of vine, twig and coloured wiring. The sparrow’s roosting told us that it is high time we repaired to the Nobody Inn. In the cosy nooks of this centuries old hostelry, we partook of the local ale and were regaled with the fascinating tales of its history – of the provenance of its remarkable selection of whiskies in the wartime posting of the landlord to the naval bases in the Scottish highlands. <br />
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It would have been all too easy to settle down for the night before the fireplace. But we still had to make our way back over the Haldons and down into Exeter. So off we set into the rainy night, fuelled by good ale and the residual warmth of the inn’s fire, aglow with the knowledge of a quest fulfilled. The clouds soon parted and our path was lit with soft moonlight, the woods around us haunted with owls and the furtive rustlings of night creatures. As we passed beneath the pylon lines, a crackling electric border of sorts, we looked up and saw mighty Orion glinting coldly in the dark distance. He continued the hill-spanning stride of the iron pylon giants upwards into stellar regions. Soon after, we crested the ridge of the Haldons, passing the white tower (its radiance now occluded) and looked down onto the bleared lights of Exeter way down below. We were leaving the timeless realm of the mythic and descending into the modern world once more. The Ashton Ascension was complete, it was time to return, our spirits refreshed and happy.<br />
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Begin your Ascension here:<br />
<a href="http://sparksinelectricaljelly.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-ashton-ascension.html">PART ONE</a><br />
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And continue here:<br />
<a href="http://sparksinelectricaljelly.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-ashton-ascension.html">PART TWO</a><br />
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In memory of HélèneJez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-68937857547454437112015-06-10T21:54:00.000+01:002015-06-10T21:54:21.500+01:00Calendar Customs II: Merry May<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaFWselm8HA5YK9GidqHYLf6uPF1vZMBbo0zXaIFjMdMVY6nLk4m6W8Mw6eSznVRt0Px-Gde37Kl_35Ik97hyphenhyphenXM3K27glmucAkG7EBSFPfHkTjB0D8H27lztm9NOcbr5uzAct6sOT2h60_/s1600/DSCN6075_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaFWselm8HA5YK9GidqHYLf6uPF1vZMBbo0zXaIFjMdMVY6nLk4m6W8Mw6eSznVRt0Px-Gde37Kl_35Ik97hyphenhyphenXM3K27glmucAkG7EBSFPfHkTjB0D8H27lztm9NOcbr5uzAct6sOT2h60_/s400/DSCN6075_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
The first <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/product/folklore-tapes-calendar-customs-vol-i-fore-hallowe-en">Calendar Customs</a> collection from the <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/">Folklore Tapes</a> folks focussed on Halloween. It sought to unearth the layers of tradition and vernacular observance which have been largely displaced by the gothic horror pageantry which now characterises All Hallow’s Eve. For the <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/product/folklore-tapes-calendar-customs-vol-ii-merry-may">second volume</a>, they have spun the seasonal and calendrical globe to its obverse face, the light rather than the shadow side, and celebrate May and its merrie rites. Halloween, or Samhain in the old Celtic calendar, marked the setting of the sun, the diminishment of its fires as winter’s dark set in. May Day rejoices in its resurgence, the rebirth of the light which heralds summer’s suffusing warmth and easeful languor. <br />
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As with the first release, the music creates sound pictures of specific festivities or rituals, or more general springtime atmospheres. Appropriately enough, given the invocations of ancient traditions contained within, it is presented in a format which is, by the modern measure of accelerated time, an ancient relic in itself – the cassette tape. It is packaged with the care and imaginative use of graphic design which Folklore Tapes pride themselves in providing. The inscribed cover is a mutable symbol which could be interpreted in any number of ways: the top of a maypole; an British dreamcatcher; a diagrammatic, time-lapsed aerial view of the weaving dance around a maypole; a handmirror reflecting the fresh vitality of youthful blossoming; or an abstracted focal lens fixing the season’s vigorous moment of awakening. Or all of the above. Both the cassette and the box in which it is housed come in a light shade of pink, the colour with which the edges of some May blossoms are blushed. A small length of maypole ribbon is included, a gift whose handling summons something of the spirit of bright revelry which is the abiding mood of Mayday. Mine is a lovely emerald green, the proliferating colour of spring’s explosion of thrusting, unfurling growth. A small, photocopied booklet offers notes setting each track in context, giving clues as to the soundworld the artist has created. Its rough, handmade quality adds to the impression that the box set is a personal gift, an artefact which has been put together with minimal resources and a deliberate rejection of digital sophistication, but which as a result has a real, individual touch bearing the authentic imprint of the artists involved. Oh, there’s also an essay on May customs and cultural history by some bloke called Jez Winship. It’s alright, but he does go on a bit. He gets his Shakespeare wrong too. It should be ‘How am I, thou painted maypole?’, not ‘though painted maypole?’. Honestly! I suppose he’s only human, though. <br />
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The tape (or, more likely, the accompanying digital download) begins with the comfortingly familiar chimes of a domestic clock, with its household echo of Big Ben’s city tolling translated from the big smoke to a country cottage. Its clockwork carillon calls out from the mantelpiece to rouse the sleepy to wakefulness in the middle of the night, to begin the day long May celebrations at midnight. Time to venture out into the woods and fetch in the branches of may. Carl Turney and Brian Campbell, usually operating behind the surgical masks of <a href="http://www.clinicvoot.org/">Clinic</a>, here set up their Lost Tapes Record Club to present this manufactured anthropological field recording, Alan Lomaxes of inner space. Tramping bass and processional percussion combine with reverse tape night calls and splashy harpsichord dabs, the latter adding a 60s psychedelic touch. The processing and electronic backdrop lend a bleary-eyed haziness to the sound, a dreamers’ parade. The second section of this three part piece (a mini prog concept trilogy) introduces the dawn birdsong chorus, and a sense of calmness and peace pervades. Soft variations on the old medieval round Summer Is Icumen In are played in fluting tones which sound at times like the exhalations of a mellotron, with its slight, breathy delay. Counterpoint voices emulate the intertwining calls of the birds as human and avian worlds combine, the birdsong recordings continuing to burble away in the background. It summons the spirit of a Vaughan Williams or Delius idyll, paradise gardens or larks ascending. With the day blooming into post-dawn life and light, the May rituals come into their full flowering. The third part of the piece brings in the springy, lo-fi thumps of tambour and marching drum. Electronic sounds spiral and wiz over the elemental rhythm, darting and bounding like fizzing will-o-the-wisps caroming in Brownian motion around the May paraders. It’s the background buzz of nature’s busy noise, the humming drone and dense sonic weave of summer after winter’s silence, order and pattern emerging from apparent chaos. Human voices join in the chorus, in their own simple, limited fashion. <br />
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The <a href="https://funz.bandcamp.com/album/the-blue-funz">Blue Funz</a> offer a two part piece evoking Beltane rituals on the Isle of Mull; Need-Fire and Milking Cows Through Cake we are bluntly informed, without any further explanation forthcoming. The sound picture gives us a fairly clear idea as to what is going on, however. We begin with the crackle of fire, like cellophane sweet wrappers being crinkled and rustled. Cow bells clank and jangle, carrying an eerie echo, as if heard through mist. A gentler, lulling female voice sings a soothing, slightly distracted melody in the background, leading the bovine herd onward. Glinting thumb piano or celeste plinks add to the aura of magical suspension. May Eve is a time for lighting bonfires, like All Hallow’s Eve, or Samhain, its shadowy counterpart. The veil between worlds grows thin during these temporal interstices, and protective measures must be taken against maleficent incursions from elsewhere. Thus, cattle are driven through the purifying gates of twinned bonfires as they are led out to pasture. The Need (or Neid) fire is lit from and ember nurtured from the previous year’s fire. A slightly sinister chant is introduced, hinting at spirit worlds a dream or errant fancy away from our fleeting perceptions. A bowed instrument like a sarangi sounds scraped, overtone burnished notes like the clarion calls of an otherworldly horn. But where do they come from, and whence do they lead us? <br />
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The second section shifts to an interior resonance, bringing us into the cowshed. The sounds of cows lowing, and the pizzling squish of milking, accompanied by pumping, machine-like percussion, gives us a clear picture of what is going on. Choral synth sighs lightly float around the space, producing an ambience of placid bovine contentment. Tinkling notes could be the splash of milk into containing vats (whether through holed cakes or not) or a continuation of the magical tingle felt outside. Apparently there is only one dairy herd on the Isle of Mull. The unpasteurised cheese produced from the happy cows is reputedly exquisite. <br />
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<a href="http://ariannechurchman.tumblr.com/">Arianne Churchman</a>’s Minehead Hobby Horse builds a sound picture of a North Devon tradition which has become rather overshadowed by the renown of the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss a little further west along the coastline. It begins with the sound of a spectral, radiophonic sea (like the sound the BBC’s electronic workshop produced for Samuel Beckett’s Embers). A finger tapping drum rhythm beats out a procession. Processional drums are a recurrent motif running through this Calendar Customs release, along with the sound of birdsong. A reedy accordion wheezes into life, building up the bare bones of a folk tune; a sketch for a song we already know, even if we’ve never heard it before. A wooden clacking and clopping is a reproduction (or perhaps an actual recording) of the erratic, circling progress of the horse and its snapping, toothless jaws. Shouts of ‘hooray’ come from the horse’s milling entourage of outriders. The piece pauses halfway through, accordion set down for a moment, to allow for a count-up (‘one-hooray, two-hooray’ etc). It’s almost like a belated intro. We can imagine leaping morris dancers or some special and jealously guarded Minehead hobby horse moves coinciding with each celebratory cry. <br />
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<a href="http://www.robstjohn.co.uk/">Rob St John</a>’s Bringing in the May returns us to the Delius idyll, spring as a blessed time of re-awakening. A slow showering of piano notes could be the aural depiction of May blossom slowly drifting to the ground, or shivering in a gentle breeze. Sweetly bowed overtone notes in the background create the impression of refracted light glinting through branches. What sounds like a viola adds limning colour to the piano. The circling, downward spiralling arpeggios are like the peals of distant bells. A piping flute, wavering like a whistling kettle, brings in a slightly off-kilter element. The flute is another characteristic sound threading through this compilation. It is the traditional instrument for evoking pastoral moods and the melodic outpourings of songbirds. Its recurrence in this context underlines the central principle behind May Day celebrations, that of going out into the fields and woodlands and renewing a direct sense of connection with the natural world. Let’s all sing like the birds. Rob St John’s repeated piano figure could also be a Messiaen-like imitation of birdsong. Towards the end it shifts up a couple of octaves, a raising of the spirits as our May communion fills us with a feeling of lightness and joy. <br />
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<a href="http://ianhumberstone.co.uk/">Ian Humberstone</a>’s The Hunting of the Earl of Rone is a soundpicture of a particular May tradition carried out in Combe Martin on the North Devon coast, an observance which blends seasonal ritual with local historical pageantry. We hear a hubbub of festive voices and a braying horn calling the gathered hordes together to set off on the hunt. A hunt for human prey in this instance – shades of the Hounds of Zaroff. We are led on once more by processional drums, and the swaying tune of an accordion (an easily portable backpack of an instrument). A flanged electric guitar takes up the melody, ramping the folk up into psych territory. Pattering percussion produces the impression of a slightly chaotic pursuit. I don’t give much for the Earl’s chances. <br />
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Mary and David’s (that's <a href="http://www.davidchattonbarker.com/">David Chatton Barker</a>, I presume) Wish Before Sunrise concerns the tradition of bathing the face in May dew, the belief being that it would lend the complexion a pearlescent glow for the rest of the month. Mary and David use small sounds to create an atmospheric evocation of this observance. It begins with tambourine and drum – the drum once more suggesting a procession going out into the fields. Recorder pipes away, leading us on a merry morning dance. Sprayed zither chords sprinkle us with cold droplets of dew, and the metallic bowing of strings (or of a cymbal’s edge?) suggest hands dipped in cold water, scooping up a cold palmful of May moisture to lave the face. The gleaming plink of plucked strings could be spilt drops splashing back down. Crystalline chime shimmer catches the diamond glint of light on dewdrops. The susurration of whispering voices invoke personal prayers to nature spirits. They are followed by bright, scintillating sounds, glissando glimmer and pulsating oscillations. The bright gleam of singing wineglasses or Tibetan bowls and the warm radiance of a resounding gong. All of which create the impression of a complexion brightening into a healthy, translucent glow. <br />
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Rite of the Maypole: An Unruly Procession is the latest concrete sound collage by <a href="https://childrenofalice.bandcamp.com/">Children of Alice</a>, the post-<a href="http://futurecrayon.blogspot.co.uk/">Broadcast</a> trio featuring James Cargill and ex-bandmate Roj Stevens alongside Julian House, Broadcast’s graphic designer, collaborator under his Focus Group guise and co-founder of the Ghost Box label. Children of Alice very much continue the experiments first formulated on the <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Broadcast-And-Focus-Group-Investigate-Witch-Cults-Of-The-Radio-Age/master/191133">Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age</a> LP. Rapid transitions and cinematic jump cuts create a kaleidoscopic sound collage akin to the fractured form of an experimental film. You can imagine the visual analogue to the sounds, with superimpositions and sudden edits, animated interjections and scratched frames, solarised footage and saturated colours producing an effect of heightened reality. The approach is not far removed from that taken by Richard Philpott in his 1989 film The Flora Faddy Furry Dance Day, included on the BFI Here’s A Health to the Barley Mow DVD of folkloric films. Philpott attempted to use film’s ability to collapse time to create connections between the modern-day celebrations in Helston, Cornwall and a more ancient worldview and symbolism. Images of the labyrinth are flashed up to forge a subconscious link with the dancers as they spiral through the narrow streets of the town. <br />
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Children of Alice’s procession is unruly partly in its similar disregard for temporal convention, its disregard for direct continuity and fascination with the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate elements. These create subconscious connections which subtly rewire the brain – truly psychedelic music. It begins with drums, tambourines and birdsong again. These are soon processed into fluid, psyched-out patterns, however. Bells toll, but odd reverb is applied so that their attack is blunted, their directional provenance rendered oblique and nebulous. This is music which attempts to blur the rigid framework not just of time but also of space. Birdsongs are concreted, which doesn’t make them strange as much as emphasise and work with their inherent strangeness. Birdsong is best approximated through electronic means, since their soundworld often feels closely analogous to electronic music (just listen to the remarkable call of a bird of paradise). It’s no surprise that imitative birds such as starlings have found it so easy to add the sounds of mobile phones and car alarms to their repertoire.<br />
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The interjection of a laughing female voice hints at the licentious aspect of May Day revels, the lustiness which so vexed Puritan critics in the 16th and 17th centuries. The voice forms a direct connection with the birdsong which has preceded it, calls which are a mix of territorial assertion and mating cry. The ‘unruliness’ of May license brings the human world closer to that of nature, to the seasonal awakening it feels instinctively drawn towards. An opening door and the jingle of keys seems to indicate a passage into another time and place, another scene. A wavering oscillation sounds a vaguely futuristic alarm call, which could also be heard as the whooping and stridulation of frogs and insects. A trundling, springing rhythm creates a slightly comical, cartoonish sense of movement through a boggy landscape, with bubbling and burbling sounds suggesting a squelchy passage. The revving of a motorbike engine acts as punctuation, and perhaps also references The Owl Service. Its title music also used a mixture of instrumental and concrète sound and employed startling collisions of sonic materials – including a motorbike engine. <br />
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Children of Alice seem to incorporate, knowingly or not, all the elements of the Calendar Customs May compilation. Next in this extraordinarily condensed, multilayered work we hear piping sounds, the pastoral flute once more. It is subject to reverse masking and other manipulations, but it still bears its established associations. Two step drum beats once more mark out a procession, and the combination with the drawn-out, curving cries of electronic estuary birds (more meetings of human and avian worlds) suggests that we may be in the midst of the ‘Obby ‘Oss celebrations in Padstow, our senses synaesthetised by a combination of ale, crowd psychology, sunshine and repetitive music. An echoed cluster of xylophone notes perhaps marks a brief, refreshing shower, as well as providing another moment of transition. Glassy sounds resemble those produced by Les Sculptures Sonores for the 70s BBC children’s programme Picture Box. More childhood memories are stirred as a cheerfully creaking, ratcheting duo bring to mind the Froglets from The Clangers. Another jump cut and we are in the middle of a village festival, bass and drum patterns reminiscent of those found on Broadcast’s Tender Buttons LP creating an impression of bustling crowds. Car sirens, bikes and shouting voices bring us into the soundworld of the public information film – time for the Advisory Circle to intervene with an admonitory message, perhaps. There is another switch to an interior resonance, and the chaos dies down. What sounds like an amplified autoharp (of the kind Trish Keenan used to play during Broadcast gigs) is slowly strummed. Its upward glissando conjures warming flames in the fireplace of a village inn. A slowly tapped drum relaxes the rhythms of the day, winding down as evening progresses. And so to bed. <br />
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<a href="http://www.sammcloughlin.com/">Sam McLoughlin</a>’s I Want to Sing Like the Birds Sing, Not Worrying About Who Hears or What They Think is as good as its wordy wish. It begins with a shimmering, celestial synth drone, the clear air of a crisply blue-skied morning. Harmonium and pattered finger drums add their more earthbound voices before birdsong recordings are once more introduced. Sam then begins his duet, piping with untutored instinctiveness on a wooden flute. The sound becomes denser as more flutes are layered on top, until a joyfully cacophonous chorus has filled the spectrum. Chinking mug percussion is added, lending further urgency to this frenzied attempt at transformation, to enter a birdlike state of unconscious grace – to become the song. The drone drops out at some point, the early morning shimmer clarifying into day as the dawn chorus amasses more and more voices. The piping ceases to allow space for a firmly plucked zither arpeggio. It’s like a free jazz big band dropping out to make way for a featured soloist. John Coltrane’s Ascension, for example. The celestial drone returns and the manic piping builds up mass and momentum once more, swanee whistles adding a particularly antic note (free jazz swanee whistle, now there’s a thought). The recordings of birdsong carry on underneath, like a play along tutor. This is how it should be done. It sounds a hell of a lot of fun. Do try this at home. <br />
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Malcolm Benzie rounds things off in low-key fashion with Hawthorne. Birdsong recordings play in the background one more time (this not surprising for someone who plays in a band called Eagleowl). A low-fi drum machine sets up a relaxed rhythm over which bass and guitar gently sway. Benzie’s vocals, easing back in the mix, are pleasingly mellifluous, with a light Scottish inflection. The repeated refrain offers a descriptive paean to the hawthorn bloom, sung as if addressed to the flowering bushes themselves as the may is gathered in. It’s a morning song, soft and blurry with waking. A hymn of sorts. It all ends with the birds, a final fluted note pitch-shifted down until the sound is switched off. It’s a perfect way to end, to disperse the conference of birds and bid farewell to Merry May. But what a fine survey it has proved to be. What calendrical quadrant will the Folklore Tapes family alight on next, I wonder? What further curious customs and arcane observances will they uncover? We will have to wait and see. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-14371212812522444622015-06-03T00:16:00.000+01:002015-06-15T21:22:10.412+01:00The Ashton AscensionPART TWO<br />
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The white-washed porch was edged with stone benches, so we were able to perch and munch. The entrance arch framed a pastoral view worthy once more of Samuel Palmer, rounded hills rising to an arcing, cloud-grazed ridge with a cluster of sheep positioned with picturesque precision to provide horizon cut-outs. Bird song suffused the spring air, a complex foreground sound mesh against which the background blether of sheep added a less sonorous ground. On the moss-blanketed mound stretching out before the headboard of a gravestone, a small violet was illuminated in a beam of sunlight, a vivid pulse of life in this tree-shaded corner. <br />
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The porch itself showed traces of previous occupancy by martins, swifts or swallows, ghosts of their darting silhouettes flitting and weaving flight paths across the peripheries of inner vision. Above us, a monster of a spider lurked in the shadows of the eaves, tense with potential lightning-swift energy. Its unfazed quiescence was made possible by the migration of the swallows at summer’s end. It would no doubt be more circumspect upon their return, retreating to the darker recesses, scuttling with irritation and muttering through their mandibles. We posed no such threat as we ruminated upon our sandwiches, however. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg0akYIfseN3Z7KHEfJDao9jrjdLM4iTGRqyXNiXmG72YpERxL-8s5WGus5gRv8LAR0sNEMlRxP8GFfUU703OzGaSrB4PK06QTLWDzYpVRf11rXhCy2KPXEnGL93q7FeMFYKBRmOXyEsfT/s1600/DSCN5280_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg0akYIfseN3Z7KHEfJDao9jrjdLM4iTGRqyXNiXmG72YpERxL-8s5WGus5gRv8LAR0sNEMlRxP8GFfUU703OzGaSrB4PK06QTLWDzYpVRf11rXhCy2KPXEnGL93q7FeMFYKBRmOXyEsfT/s400/DSCN5280_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiFBuZFpvSOQThZ9kJTXn04YNrgXQrFDOdWkC_T7iFAkMkZkYEU1qE4TndL77OStRaT3pUH8VJWqib07t9KMTpa_VQSTdz7P6gZpsvHCj7iT1JlwjJe1TJ5tdUhzvRSk3IDvZIVT8zHCZC/s1600/DSCN5287.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiFBuZFpvSOQThZ9kJTXn04YNrgXQrFDOdWkC_T7iFAkMkZkYEU1qE4TndL77OStRaT3pUH8VJWqib07t9KMTpa_VQSTdz7P6gZpsvHCj7iT1JlwjJe1TJ5tdUhzvRSk3IDvZIVT8zHCZC/s400/DSCN5287.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Oak door bullet hole bleeding light</blockquote>From our stone picnic bench, a granite shelf which must have given hard repose to countless bottoms over the centuries, we were able to inspect the large 15th century oak door, studded with a regular, rusted constellation of diamond-headed iron nails. The field-pattern of nails was disrupted by several neat, round holes, through which we could peer into the interior. Local legend has it that these are bullet holes dating from the Civil War. General Fairfax had led the New Model Army out of Ottery St Mary towards the beginning of 1646, marching them up the Haldon ridge and capturing the manor of Ashton. It was a commanding outpost from which to survey the terrain to the west, a last stubborn stronghold of Royalist power. Descending into the Teign Valley and onward across North Devon and into Cornwall, he would pursue those remaining loyal to the king with fierce determination, bringing the war to its conclusion and clearing the way for the parliamentary interregnum. Peering through from some angles, these tiny portholes circle fragments of stained glass. The bullet holes bleed coloured light. <br />
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The door into the south porch is imposing and invites a firm knock upon its solid oak face with the hefty iron ring which serves as its handle. Eerily, upon listening back to his recordings at a later date, David discovered a loud series of phantom knocks and thuds imposing themselves over our rambling lunchtime conversation. A disembodied attempt to drown out our discourse? Everyone’s a critic, even in the spirit world. The modern entrance to the church was around the corner, anyway, so we were denied the pleasure of heaving the mighty portal open with what I imagine would be a long, rustily antique groan, a sound pregnant with thrilling anticipation. <br />
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We entered instead through a more modest door in the western tower, equipped with an electronic release system which rejected the charms of antiquity in favour of the security of modern technology. Inside, a circular frame of flattened iron hung above our heads, a trailing chain snaking down from it, ready to rattle with a gothic clatter of shivering links. Presumably designed to corral the bellropes, its rusting, skeletal form nevertheless carried the dark charge of some Piranesian dungeon, particularly as our eyes were still adjusting to the dim light of the church interior. With a pleasing touch of Magritte-like surrealism, there was also a battered old street lantern in the tower entrance – the light of the world brought inside, weathered and extinguished. Where once hissing gas might have ignited into flickering illumination behind smoke-smudged glass, a small cluster of spent night lights was now clustered around the serpent-headed form of a desk lamp. The lantern added to the sense of the tower as a transitional space, a gatehouse which ushered us into the nave and the church proper. <br />
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The first object which drew our attention was the font, a solid octagonal block of Beer stone carved with heraldic symbols, the fortunes and privileges of high birth openly acknowledged. Levering up the hefty wooden cover, we noticed sturdy iron brackets sunk into the stone rim. These were witch locks, designed to protect the blessed water in the lead-lined font bowl from theft for use in charms, potions or for darker ritual purposes. Purposes which may well have existed only in the fearful and superstitious minds of villagers and ecclesiastical officials. Witch locks on fonts were ubiquitous in the pre-Reformation era. But their removal was specifically stipulated during the reign of Edward VI, the period when the Reformation’s revolutionary programme of cultural transformation was most vigorously pursued. That dictate was ignored in Ashton, however. Whether this indicates a particular fear of witchcraft being practised in this densely forested area is a matter of speculation and twilight fancy. <br />
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From the back of the nave we gained a broad prospect of the church interior. The eye was immediately drawn to the wooden screen which spanned the breadth of the building, an elaborately carved and colourfully painted barrier spreading from wall to wall. This was the rood screen, and unlike the one in Dunchideock, it was palpably redolent of the pre-Reformation era. The word rood, with its roots in old English, means crucifix, the representation of Christ on the cross. The rood screen was the base for the prominent roods which would have been a feature in almost all churches, drawing the upward gaze of the congregation, an object of power to concentrate the mind and focus the spirit whilst the mysteries of the sacramental rites were enacted behind the screen. They were a prime target for iconoclasm and were, without exception, consigned to the bonfires of the Reformation. A modern rood does surmount the screen, however, giving us some idea of how it might once have struck those entering the church. This one was carved by Herbert Read’s Exeter firm in 1915 and presented in painfully fresh memory of the death of one William Woodfall Melville, a barrister-at-law, on the fields of Flanders in May of that year. It really testifies to all local men who died in the war, however, irrespective of their social standing. <br />
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We approach the screen and squat down to inspect the paintings on the panels at its base, framed with gothic tracery in red, green and gold. The light is not good. Another storm is passing overhead and the skies have darkened dramatically outside. Our attempts to locate a light switch only succeeded in activating the dim, orange glow of some antique heaters. The saints and church fathers who line up before us are thus a little shadowy, perceived through the dark glass of time. At some point during our intense, closely peering scrutiny, however, the storm passes, sunlight streams through the windows and the saints come to illuminated life. Some of the blessed company gathered here are familiar, others are far more obscure, occupying seldom explored regions of the sanctified territories. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7IWeDbc3LnsHXXTQlLJ_R101yKGmb4AnFzPp9B9Z_HJoUQYPsboRS3xgZQWJrKGnFNWrgDaW-2gB_QjiGeu3-LkXfl8iTJgfSjvZzoDMxOQ5cLKJzz3MWmGvHIYqyPDpY75kXf60jTiOJ/s1600/st+george+%2528left%2529+Mary+Magdalen+right_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7IWeDbc3LnsHXXTQlLJ_R101yKGmb4AnFzPp9B9Z_HJoUQYPsboRS3xgZQWJrKGnFNWrgDaW-2gB_QjiGeu3-LkXfl8iTJgfSjvZzoDMxOQ5cLKJzz3MWmGvHIYqyPDpY75kXf60jTiOJ/s400/st+george+%2528left%2529+Mary+Magdalen+right_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St George, with neighbour Mary Magdalene</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfe_VfbK6CjWoKIQjHhuzgq2HyjSxJlsrfnrnRM2WCrF6Xjhwed5dvtRdXOkI3fm8V9CCjS5ifGQIsrnOcEwN0IEDPleoTMJJ5jW5jXq5dlrtlGIMVC9xfsYq5UlwO6vIxRApDQYVajiFE/s1600/St+Michael+the+archangel_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfe_VfbK6CjWoKIQjHhuzgq2HyjSxJlsrfnrnRM2WCrF6Xjhwed5dvtRdXOkI3fm8V9CCjS5ifGQIsrnOcEwN0IEDPleoTMJJ5jW5jXq5dlrtlGIMVC9xfsYq5UlwO6vIxRApDQYVajiFE/s400/St+Michael+the+archangel_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Michael the Archangel</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjar1cexfDNaaJOR-_gbPzkGmk24fb4gbHMVlgAKFzgoySUbIECCX5eqwcjl0YlktxDPIsdwPtGwOXaMzCbO2R8XSnv1V-9txAIGjuvlTMdqjH-6puYK4sRwL6Lv9Kwf5DnWuMqsjzNxIHw/s1600/st+michael+archangel_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjar1cexfDNaaJOR-_gbPzkGmk24fb4gbHMVlgAKFzgoySUbIECCX5eqwcjl0YlktxDPIsdwPtGwOXaMzCbO2R8XSnv1V-9txAIGjuvlTMdqjH-6puYK4sRwL6Lv9Kwf5DnWuMqsjzNxIHw/s400/st+michael+archangel_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPGFxpfD7IdF8cDt6lgRzTI6pUe2mBjNc_ryza_2gEOySS1apo08st3JrBL4e0FWJvkFvvDxzLN1Xrclc8LbWovfr_SaFr6W1jBTAl_qJcMp1Etyvw1fXdqNacK9cLgwRSScb5SgkCLTFG/s1600/st+michael%2527s+dragon_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPGFxpfD7IdF8cDt6lgRzTI6pUe2mBjNc_ryza_2gEOySS1apo08st3JrBL4e0FWJvkFvvDxzLN1Xrclc8LbWovfr_SaFr6W1jBTAl_qJcMp1Etyvw1fXdqNacK9cLgwRSScb5SgkCLTFG/s400/st+michael%2527s+dragon_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Michael slays the 'dragon' (as it looks up at him with eager, puppyish eyes</blockquote>The dragon-killers are both present, thrusting their spears downward into the roaring maws of the devilish beasts at their feet. St George in his glinting armour, forged and hammered according to the latest 15th century fashions, is shining, immaculately dandified knighthood personified, striking the perfect action pose. St Michael, his feathered limbs giving him a hybrid avian appearance (the celestial birdman) is the archangel who leads the forces of God against Satanic armies in the final battle. He replicates St George’s pinioning downward death strike, silencing the silvered insinuations of Satan’s serpentine tongue for once and all. Scholars versed in the finer details of the medieval bestiary may question why this dragon of Revelation has but two limbs, however. They might point out that this would classify it as a wyvern rather than a dragon. They might very well be correct. St Michael has slain the wrong beast, and Satan has flown free, long, demonically triumphant laughter receding in his wake. A lesson in the value of in-depth and precisely defined knowledge. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn6ntsq0jDmoIziRRtxJB1hf9ftEQuDMVjO4VzzU6tYhpX01yVaq67dQA8BeIcZod9iaAUsMX12nCCkx18RFVKACWFQcbbP0U2UHKdh1OvjC9mTyBK_J1u6CNn2p3tckxNx4DCmGKwqKyv/s1600/St+Mark_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn6ntsq0jDmoIziRRtxJB1hf9ftEQuDMVjO4VzzU6tYhpX01yVaq67dQA8BeIcZod9iaAUsMX12nCCkx18RFVKACWFQcbbP0U2UHKdh1OvjC9mTyBK_J1u6CNn2p3tckxNx4DCmGKwqKyv/s400/St+Mark_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Mark</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqCQI-xDBnOFfOWHA9zFPywc1KKQobmYRK0nNNpfVkE7CLvpeOUEvAeHsCBymFaPZgrIjElMbV02wJfpPcEG_bbA03iFKgLtvmLzc17GMglXFbWqlGFvmoy5Q9hewepjMwTxKvotKR-Q2m/s1600/st+mark%2527s+homonculus_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqCQI-xDBnOFfOWHA9zFPywc1KKQobmYRK0nNNpfVkE7CLvpeOUEvAeHsCBymFaPZgrIjElMbV02wJfpPcEG_bbA03iFKgLtvmLzc17GMglXFbWqlGFvmoy5Q9hewepjMwTxKvotKR-Q2m/s400/st+mark%2527s+homonculus_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Mark's homonculus</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-PSIglyDlF9pTP3kyK-nXq16UBQa7pBdqY6nNiMJAe0uwYMUYsTSQZ8NOge51P1PAsbJTzqxfvqIwpM1JB-pLjeOvj-yj6LM5iX7X9o-SJp2FGESVCnRPyKw34HmobNHSseX8RmiMD8V/s1600/St+John.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-PSIglyDlF9pTP3kyK-nXq16UBQa7pBdqY6nNiMJAe0uwYMUYsTSQZ8NOge51P1PAsbJTzqxfvqIwpM1JB-pLjeOvj-yj6LM5iX7X9o-SJp2FGESVCnRPyKw34HmobNHSseX8RmiMD8V/s400/St+John.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St John's poison serpent</blockquote>Other wild beasts rest at the feet of saints, docile and tamed. The evangelist St Mark has what must be his customary symbolic representation, the lion, at his side. However, it has the semblance of a squat, impish demon, reminiscent of the puggish homunculus in Henri Fuseli’s classic Gothic painting The Nightmare. Its mane of spiky, Bart Simpson hair gives it a punk urchin look – a street demon. It’s as if its head, crowned with a flickering beacon of fire, offers a mocking preview of the torments of hell to which it will gleefully drag the souls of the damned. St John is often represented holding a chalice from which a serpent is uncoiling, like a wisping trail of foul vapour. This is a depiction of a legend in which he is handed a poisoned cup of wine, his blessing causing the deadly venom to be transformed into a snake which immediately wavers away. The wee black beastie here looks rather sweet, a mini, coal-dusted dragon which St John seems to be stroking as if it were a pet he carried around in its own goblet nest. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-WuXAk1hAR5KC_rgeZ8flWJpGkxnJBAbZw9p4F4EGZ6Nvq6GjmvkODr6_s5Q_8_zGEALPRUsoV-znfgGH3PwC21kxBTL7JyR0iRSLFMNo8IX8FaPOqtu8hAOhDSSR-oEpGBCf70e1U-56/s1600/St+Anthony%252C+St+Ursula%252C+St+Leodegar%252C+St+Apollonia_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-WuXAk1hAR5KC_rgeZ8flWJpGkxnJBAbZw9p4F4EGZ6Nvq6GjmvkODr6_s5Q_8_zGEALPRUsoV-znfgGH3PwC21kxBTL7JyR0iRSLFMNo8IX8FaPOqtu8hAOhDSSR-oEpGBCf70e1U-56/s400/St+Anthony%252C+St+Ursula%252C+St+Leodegar%252C+St+Apollonia_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Anthony (left), with St Ursula, St Leodegar and St Apollonia</blockquote>St Anthony is accompanied by his faithful pig, a bristling, tusked boar of the kind which might have been found roaming wild in the forests of the Haldons. Anthony was one of the first of the desert fathers, ascetic Anchorite monks who turned their backs on civilisation and lit out for the wilderness. Anthony’s temptations and torments at the hands, claws and beaks of a menagerie of fantastic, demonic creatures form the basis of a number of feverishly imagined works of art created over the centuries. These range from the symbolic embodiment by Flemish and German artists such as Bosch and Grűnewald of the anguish piercing their plague-ridden times, to the violent unconscious dream scenes of the surrealists, who found such subject matter irresistible. Max Ernst graphically tore the agonised holy man apart, whilst Dali confronted him with a parade of temptations mounted on the backs of elephants teetering on absurdly spindly, telescopically jointed insect legs. St Anthony’s original encounter with his porcine companion was less then friendly. The Devil descended upon his desert cave in aggressively swinish form. But Anthony withstood its Satanic assault, using his sanctified powers, honed through years of ascetic contemplation and self-denial, to purge the creature of its unholy infestation and leave it innocent and untainted once more. The Anthonine order was subsequently associated with pigs from its inception. St Anthony himself is the patron saint of pigs and pig farmers. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CxfV8dGfvdrdOTjrNN2K9hOI9ScqtIxkgQcUhET3t3jxDbnusl1XXOVVg5MobAiNUhzPILjDN3o9ciDtY2jAV8XlYZ-kwPrIBX-JjBxKrZ0x8JVI-9FGku5sR0rxscsiGbbnKwfQR3KN/s1600/Mary_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CxfV8dGfvdrdOTjrNN2K9hOI9ScqtIxkgQcUhET3t3jxDbnusl1XXOVVg5MobAiNUhzPILjDN3o9ciDtY2jAV8XlYZ-kwPrIBX-JjBxKrZ0x8JVI-9FGku5sR0rxscsiGbbnKwfQR3KN/s400/Mary_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
The Holy Mother is here, curvaceous and sensual, with full red lips and a satisfied, even satiated look upon her face. She has long, luscious tresses of golden hair, circled with the crown which declares her Queen of Heaven. She is very much the Goddess figure, bringer of fertility and fortune. A plump, happy Jesus sits sprightly upon her knee, a big baby and growing bigger by the minute. In this painting, the source of his strength and spiritual insight seems evident, the roots of Christianity in pre-monotheistic traditions, the female divine, made manifest. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwaQoYT16oxl6t9U50yAA3VneKP5ImDgBzcL7MGwwyjk6Scu6a0x0TVLna2YgUop4BUysqyq6ex09vHipOC8Gwz605PrjY1B6_c60xtMb5swi9mGLxBUt0robzT9TxwCz_Hviyi-_m-_2l/s1600/St+Leonard%252C+A+Sybil%252C+St+Stephen%252C+St+Sidwell.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwaQoYT16oxl6t9U50yAA3VneKP5ImDgBzcL7MGwwyjk6Scu6a0x0TVLna2YgUop4BUysqyq6ex09vHipOC8Gwz605PrjY1B6_c60xtMb5swi9mGLxBUt0robzT9TxwCz_Hviyi-_m-_2l/s400/St+Leonard%252C+A+Sybil%252C+St+Stephen%252C+St+Sidwell.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>From left: St Leonard, A Sibyl (female prophet), St Stepen, St Sidwell</blockquote>A good number of the figures here achieved sanctification through martyrdom. This is sometimes symbolised by the bearing of a palm frond, held aloft like an absurdly ostentatious quill pen. Such is the case here with St Stephen, often considered to be the first Christian martyr. He was condemned by the Jewish authorities in c.34AD for blaspheming - loudly, repeatedly and unrepentantly. The sentence, death by stoning, was carried out with immediate effect, Stephen carrying on with his tirade until he was bloodied and bruised into silence. The three stones he carries, as neatly rounded as cannon or dough balls, are presented as a polite illustration of the means of his execution. These rocks were used to shatter my skull, he seems to be saying, but look, I’m alright now. They never even grazed my spirit. <br />
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Many screen saints (the precursors of screen icons to come) proudly bear the instruments of their martyrdom, often presented with an exaggeration intended to foreground their suffering and emphasise its magnitude. They revel in a strange form of stoic heroism based on passive endurance and a refusal to recant the tenets of faith in the face of excruciation and death. The uniform serenity of their expressions and the contemptuous ease with which they hold up their weighty weapons and implements of torture indicates their triumph over their brief earthly agonies, their enjoyment of bliss in the eternal lands. Having endured terrible pain, they are now stronger than ever. <br />
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The seemingly morbid preoccupation with the details of torture and death offered (and still does offer) symbolic hope for those suffering lesser pain, fear or anxiety on the earthly plane. The legends of the saints, repeated with storytelling relish until miracles escalated and baroque embellishments flourished, were exemplary tales of people from backgrounds both ordinary and privileged whose piety and suffering had elevated them beyond the mundane world into the realm of the mythic. Like bodhisattvas, their compassion for the suffering of others led them to act as intercessory figures between earth and heaven, the human and divine worlds. A sympathetic magic is at work here – sympathetic in all senses of the word. The means of martyrdom provides a direct line of connection with related pain or misfortune via a system of patronage which became increasingly formalised and codified over the centuries. You would pray to a certain saint for relief, knowing that they had gone through far worse than you and emerged as creatures of immortal power. They would have both personal knowledge and understanding of your suffering and the means to diminish or dispel it. Through and associative logic which seems grimly ironic or ghoulishly funny to the modern sensibility, the martyred saint could be appealed to for prosperity or good fortune in a particular endeavour or livelihood related to the means of martyrdom.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5Rvl-IHdNW6HRQ0p82UpVDYRt9TVyDqjJg0XB1atW4dlaQpw9089wjl8Rz51420daaT_czPVqEwlDEZYFWlJZ6KNjqnIisgNOVfCRjcH_HlaD3Vp-ZWg_3wVNP_dgLCIRLDflEOfxws6/s1600/St+Blaise_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY5Rvl-IHdNW6HRQ0p82UpVDYRt9TVyDqjJg0XB1atW4dlaQpw9089wjl8Rz51420daaT_czPVqEwlDEZYFWlJZ6KNjqnIisgNOVfCRjcH_HlaD3Vp-ZWg_3wVNP_dgLCIRLDflEOfxws6/s400/St+Blaise_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Blaise</blockquote>Here we have St Blaise holding the iron comb with which she was raked before being beheaded. As a result, she became the patron saint of wool combers. St Lawrence of Rome wryly displays a toasting fork, as if he’s just about to demonstrate a recipe. He was tortured on a gridiron heated from below by a blazing bed of coals, and is thus the patron saint of cooks, chefs and coal miners. He is also reported to have uttered a quip in the midst of his sizzling agonies; something along the lines of ‘I’m done on this side – you can turn me over’ (wasn’t this included in a Dave Allen sketch?) Such coolness in the face of searing heat added comedians to his portfolio of saintly patronage. Fools or jesters might pray to him for a good reception at court, or latterly, stand-up comedians for courage to face a tough crowd. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmNGTt_XMeQmfvumo5qsorWOSVe_YDMPRtuw2rfT75qoB8xmCwKOuCY43Wpb1LHwIbb0e-M25aE60-jtuRI2izIST9CR7u36XN9Tm8nbU6RNqviwZ9PX1xYApiBC7uCr8DOn75imgJNt82/s1600/St+Leodegar%252C+St+Apollonia_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmNGTt_XMeQmfvumo5qsorWOSVe_YDMPRtuw2rfT75qoB8xmCwKOuCY43Wpb1LHwIbb0e-M25aE60-jtuRI2izIST9CR7u36XN9Tm8nbU6RNqviwZ9PX1xYApiBC7uCr8DOn75imgJNt82/s400/St+Leodegar%252C+St+Apollonia_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Apollonia, with St Leodegar to her left (he merely had his tongue cut out and his eyes gouged from their sockets)</blockquote>St Apollonia of Alexandria had her teeth smashed or pulled out before she leapt into the fire which had been prepared for her immolation. She grasps a pair of pliers hugely outsized for tooth extraction. A molar which could have been wrenched from the gums of a giant is pinched in its jaws. Apollonia presents it with a slightly sardonic air, as if mocking those who tried to break her. There you go, have that one. The tooth is triumphantly held up as if it were a trophy, a suitably solid symbol of physical suffering transcended by the power of eternal spirit. Apollonia’s image is particularly prevalent in Devon. There was evidently something about her story which struck a chord with the rural populace. She is, of course, the patron saint of dentists, and the person to pray to if you have a toothache. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2t2tCAiW_ruZ3faf3nqewMxoA4uHnUJ6_LRXyqiqBT05O_dZaB5IC1rebxD5p7GiAYODyaC6Xc0N7jIjQup4mUOpmgbztUkn7aAUO8jLGlls-eJjuSAomCzpCxlFR-gvfcg4wU3JtPNFu/s1600/St+Catherine+of+Alexandria_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2t2tCAiW_ruZ3faf3nqewMxoA4uHnUJ6_LRXyqiqBT05O_dZaB5IC1rebxD5p7GiAYODyaC6Xc0N7jIjQup4mUOpmgbztUkn7aAUO8jLGlls-eJjuSAomCzpCxlFR-gvfcg4wU3JtPNFu/s400/St+Catherine+of+Alexandria_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Catherine of Alexandria</blockquote>St Catherine of Alexandria is a 4th century virgin martyr (a bride of Christ) who is famously associated with the device upon which she was to be tortured – a spiked wheel across which victims’ bodies were laid, their limbs, splayed out across the interstices, smashed and broken by hammer blows. The Catherine’s Wheel is a spinning firework, its spitting jets of flame approximating to the barbs on the wheel’s rim. It also transforms the wheel into a solar symbol, throwing off burning flares, lending Catherine the aspect of a sun deity. The wheel is not represented in the Ashton icon of Catherine. Instead she leans on a hefty sword with a curved cleaver of a blade. Evidently concerned with accuracy and fidelity to the letter of the lore, the Ashton artist has decided to depict the actual instrument of Catherine’s martyrdom. When she was placed upon the wheel, it miraculously shattered, injuring several of the gawping bystanders who lusted after vicarious thrills. And so she was simply and swiftly beheaded. As, presumable, was the wheelmaker. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgarWXTFMo72bT9R6rYgFQ1rECbhPvmpHklvNRLbhsLD1_mH52QZsjS0ofEapyGKNgwNfDpoB7vzNqmte5gQV65gG6Y5bMaKWtzDe1bbCRto0MFPqJ5mLhc8UKi1r3reYx4imIM5a_QMd44/s1600/St+Anthony%252C+St+Ursula_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgarWXTFMo72bT9R6rYgFQ1rECbhPvmpHklvNRLbhsLD1_mH52QZsjS0ofEapyGKNgwNfDpoB7vzNqmte5gQV65gG6Y5bMaKWtzDe1bbCRto0MFPqJ5mLhc8UKi1r3reYx4imIM5a_QMd44/s400/St+Anthony%252C+St+Ursula_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Ursula, with St Anthony (and pig) to her left</blockquote>St Ursula, another 4th century virgin martyr hymned by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, grasps one of the arrows with which she was shot. She had set out on a pilgrimage to Rome prior to her dynastic marriage to Conan Meriadoc of Armorica. A largely forgotten figure in his own right, his names resonate in modern ears through their union of the barbaric and mythologically syncreticj fantasy worlds of Robert E Howard and JRR Tolkien. Ursula’s myth partakes of the exaggerations of the Celtic tall tale telling tradition, in which superhuman feats and grandness of scale were used to induce wide-eyed wonderment, a sense that the known, everyday world could unfold and expand to encompass the extraordinary, the plane of the heroic on which everything was bigger, bolder and more emphatic. So, Ursula was accompanied by 11,000 virgin handmaidens, the storyteller relates. The party was ambushed by Hunnish tribes in the territories of Germania and every single one of the handmaidens was beheaded. Ursula was spared this fate, her execution prosecuted by the arrows of German archers. Archers with long, long bows if the size of the arrows presented here were to be taken literally. But as we should now realise, we are in the realm of myth and symbolism, and literalism offers a misguided pespective on the matter (or the arrow) in hand. Needless to say, Ursula is the patron saint of arches, and of fletchers. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXDz-9SlLmbjtV_YCQLAUgZsi9ntXbJLZy4L_XW4EcIBMmL0i_cX4uXEPh1Z7_Vu9cvo7vWkklvX2JaxX0ZWKgnck-fJKTKScadAyUhxUfRhbo3eoVkL-3CgkJX84KKBdpXa3aEaZ1nHpf/s1600/St+Sidwell+%25282%2529_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXDz-9SlLmbjtV_YCQLAUgZsi9ntXbJLZy4L_XW4EcIBMmL0i_cX4uXEPh1Z7_Vu9cvo7vWkklvX2JaxX0ZWKgnck-fJKTKScadAyUhxUfRhbo3eoVkL-3CgkJX84KKBdpXa3aEaZ1nHpf/s400/St+Sidwell+%25282%2529_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Sidwell</blockquote>Ursula’s father was King Dionotus of Dumnonia, the Celtic kingdom of the South West inhabited by the Dumnonii tribe. The Roman name for Exeter was Isca Dumnoniorum, the river of the Dumnonians (in other words, the Exe). So whilst she is generally associated with Northern Europe, and Germany in particular (the grand church of St Ursula is located in Cologne), she is in fact a local figure. Other neighbourhood saints are also gathered here, a martyrs reunion. It was easier to identify with a holy figure whose story was rooted in the local landscape. Particularly notable is the 8th century saint Sidwell, who stands with her scythe planted at her side, its blade arcing out like a battle pennant. St Sidwell gave her name to an area just beyond the East gate of the old city wall of Exeter. She was the daughter of a Welsh lord, Perphir from Penychen, and is also known by the variously translated names of Sativola, Sadfyl and Sidwella. Not specifically a Christian martyr, she fell foul of the jealousies of a wicked stepmother in classic fairytale fashion. This stepmother, Freda, paid a reaper three gold coins to murder Sidwella out in the fields. Sidwella was remowned for her generosity and kindness of spirit, and her resultant popularity inflamed Freda’s jealousy until it was a burning rash of raw hatred. She played on Sidwella’s generosity, inveigling her into taking the reaper’s lunch out to him in the fields. Here, her head was harvested with a swish of the keen-edged blade. For a symbolically significant three nights, a shaft of moonlight spotlit the site of the murder, where body and head lay amongst the cornrows. On the fourth night, the body arose, picked up its head and carried it to the place where it wished to be buried; the site upon which St Sidwell’s church was built. Where the severed head had thudded to the ground, the fresh waters of a spring bubbled up. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJiojk7frIqCvTJGo0J6PodQukmoTEUJkZ-3fpl_amz0eZHkEXkWGCGh5TWX28zAvMZxqE5B6zLgz4YqrzHOYMtydxCrEqCNJ0yNhT0-9KXFilX_BU3gMd92Ab7iwie4vTkwVR2NpsveN/s1600/St+Lawrence%252C+St+Sebastian%252C+St+Urith_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpJiojk7frIqCvTJGo0J6PodQukmoTEUJkZ-3fpl_amz0eZHkEXkWGCGh5TWX28zAvMZxqE5B6zLgz4YqrzHOYMtydxCrEqCNJ0yNhT0-9KXFilX_BU3gMd92Ab7iwie4vTkwVR2NpsveN/s400/St+Lawrence%252C+St+Sebastian%252C+St+Urith_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Urith redecapitated, along with St Lawrence and St Sebastian</blockquote>It’s a legend which combines the Celtic cult of the head, believed to be the repository of human spirit and power, and the reverence granted to springs and the holy wells built around them. Ingmar Bergman’s filming of a variant of this mythic pattern in The Virgin Spring bears witness to its widespread dispersal across Northern Europe. There are numerous incarnations of the beheaded Celtic saint who is associated with wells or miraculous springs across the South West. Another figure very similar to St Sidwell can be found a little further to the south in the screen’s saintly cast list, also stood in a relaxed pose with scythe planted upright by her side. The panel on which her head was painted has been removed at some point in time, perhaps during the Reformation. She has been twice decapitated. She is, in all likelihood (unless Sidwella has been doubled), St Urith, Iweryddd or Erth along other linguistic pathways. She was the victim of another wicked stepmother, a character whose malign depiction might represent a repudiation of any residual remnants of female-centred culture and spiritual authority. Her story is very similar to Sidwella’s in its essentials, one interesting difference being that she is decapitated by female haymakers. Where the drops of blood splashed down from her severed head, the tiny flowers of scarlet pimpernels bloomed. The blood is the life, the fertilising water bringing fecundity and a prosperous harvest. There is an obvious connection between these saints and the old harvest myths of seasonal death and rebirth, of reaping, gathering and sowing. Urith’s divine ancestors are Persephone, Isis and Aqhat, Blodeuwedd and Baal. She represents the continuity between the regional observance of Christianity and the cultures and observances which preceded it, the undammed subterranean stream of undifferentiated myth and story. And she is one amongst many. <br />
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The Ashton screen is notable for the high proportion of female saints and sibyls in its static parade. This reflected a real need for a feminine facet to be incorporated into a patriarchal monotheistic religion. The aspect of the female divine, the Goddess of birth, renewal and abiding endurance and strength (as well as destruction and division) could not be suppressed and emerged in these coded incarnations. It might seem that the emphasis on suffering and torturous death presents a wholly negative image of femininity. But the visual representation of the women here is strong and calmly self-possessed. They have transcended suffering and proven more powerful and enduring than their brutish tormentors, who sought to wither their spirit and eradicate their affective presence in the world forever. As they still do. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHcjIWfYaJ_CNK5RYlmcVqo-iZaJgWpclz1aEz2UgH-kVTHXeoCTiWKIq82cb3y2vBZTui_9e3Ji9hgI-ZyJX16cp6-QSGrS-cCxg1GtNMtsgrwMLIQmlsUaDzbh2Q7xBraTPoKsEyx1X9/s1600/St+Sebastian.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHcjIWfYaJ_CNK5RYlmcVqo-iZaJgWpclz1aEz2UgH-kVTHXeoCTiWKIq82cb3y2vBZTui_9e3Ji9hgI-ZyJX16cp6-QSGrS-cCxg1GtNMtsgrwMLIQmlsUaDzbh2Q7xBraTPoKsEyx1X9/s400/St+Sebastian.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>St Sebastian</blockquote>One of the martyr saints most frequently represented in Western art is Saint Sebastian. He is here, towards the southern end of the screen. Unlike his neighbouring saints, he is painted in the midst of his martyrdom. He has always been the object of a certain masochistic sensuality, his arrow-pierced body a focus for sublimated desire, gay or otherwise. It’s a pictorial tradition which Derek Jarman adapted as the basis for his debut feature film Sebastiane (1976). The Ashton artist has taken care to clearly trace plumes of blood spuming from the six wounds created by the arrows embedded in the saint’s torso. Sebastian’s body is set in a relaxed, almost languorous pose, however, stretching sensually rather than knotting in twisted agony. Perhaps his face is transfigured with ecstasies of pain alchemised into transports of joy. We will never know, since the panel on which his head was painted has been removed. It’s not clear whether this decapitation was carried out during the long century of the Reformation or was merely due to subsequent deterioration. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyGAo4Ik5uQACUgvh8MaAXhs8v6P9DZR7ECDRA8KkDHfdf5m-bRdOoxSFuwu9xdfi_WRVpxBvP6tmCE2TniqTptwJNVklk7IzTieM_n2tesjVRQWfuNIQa3wc_Z7Dw7k8P-ZHHyvxnXdW-/s1600/sibyl_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyGAo4Ik5uQACUgvh8MaAXhs8v6P9DZR7ECDRA8KkDHfdf5m-bRdOoxSFuwu9xdfi_WRVpxBvP6tmCE2TniqTptwJNVklk7IzTieM_n2tesjVRQWfuNIQa3wc_Z7Dw7k8P-ZHHyvxnXdW-/s400/sibyl_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Scarred Sibyl, prophetic vision unimpaired</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVmBbOTomZb3ayqwnvVkVGXmVC4U6T_E8VZHVFi-IXVJyYSea-zOEZMB1ZVKPXnSC1PU23sLOA_po9Xb4m4kaCsYXaZvtFEM0URlgYJED6UEGLFqjrUbrEjDUzviIvFw5u3p6a31i8Byxf/s1600/scarred+st+helena+2_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVmBbOTomZb3ayqwnvVkVGXmVC4U6T_E8VZHVFi-IXVJyYSea-zOEZMB1ZVKPXnSC1PU23sLOA_po9Xb4m4kaCsYXaZvtFEM0URlgYJED6UEGLFqjrUbrEjDUzviIvFw5u3p6a31i8Byxf/s400/scarred+st+helena+2_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Scarred St Helena</blockquote>Many other saints have suffered much more evident damage from the chisels and knives of Reformation iconoclasts, however; secondary violence visited upon them to supplement the suffering of their original martyrdom. The paint could easily have been scraped off, as it was in many churches throughout the country. Or the screen could simply have been torn down and burned. Instead, the zealous vandals, intent on propagandising for the new creed, left the bodies of the saints unmolested. They concentrated their attacks on the faces. Eyes were gouged out, mouths slashed and scored. It was a very deliberate attempt to rob the images of their artistic impact, their ability to communicate with the supplicants who gazed at them. The calm regard of the saints established a direct connection with the viewer, a sense of personal communion with an embodied incarnation imbued with supernatural power. This was anathema to church reformers, an example of arrant popery and Catholic idol worship. The scarring of the face, blinding and making dumb the tutelary saints, destroys the ability to communicate. At the same time, it leaves the body present as a disfigured reminder of what has been roughly cast aside. The blind icons carry with them and implicit threat of violence towards those resisting the new order, to any who might think they can perpetuate old observances. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6xa3TM_vIjwl7_OT9oEB3wR_NXzaRo8bxeQ3t42EZHEJiKlBIHnlIj9Oky19_ezi8tG9pmPjg1OnGNEfq0ptfpXr-aaT8cgVr9hTFkFHcIw9eaLzAS8fX8B3r_b_4icivko1Bsz1-CTV6/s1600/scarred+st+catherine_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6xa3TM_vIjwl7_OT9oEB3wR_NXzaRo8bxeQ3t42EZHEJiKlBIHnlIj9Oky19_ezi8tG9pmPjg1OnGNEfq0ptfpXr-aaT8cgVr9hTFkFHcIw9eaLzAS8fX8B3r_b_4icivko1Bsz1-CTV6/s400/scarred+st+catherine_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxp9Ib7XDo8LvhBFgqdg9SPMUp8rR0oGZZEzOizzkMhM80xBaj2KLn3UcVJhqajAfcmX2dbf-RGQ2IZkzHGCg9BNVEt5hqCq8xk3k9q2zMH6IIXm-K5UBPVG0tna-NxGYUq4dcvzVi_PA/s1600/scarred+st+catherine+%25282%2529_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxp9Ib7XDo8LvhBFgqdg9SPMUp8rR0oGZZEzOizzkMhM80xBaj2KLn3UcVJhqajAfcmX2dbf-RGQ2IZkzHGCg9BNVEt5hqCq8xk3k9q2zMH6IIXm-K5UBPVG0tna-NxGYUq4dcvzVi_PA/s400/scarred+st+catherine+%25282%2529_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Scarred St Catherine</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioNj4DkaGavaGuYtWjcTH5CLFU3Xdhg5xUXoLIso9LQYVgYTNXFKGargodrkRJrMrm39ZTH7wJTQWfpADwufmbHmzYuSxs0FPSF8ijUNdbZDe4Ql242K_eBQTsAtlABVq6E7_shLLw7YHg/s1600/scarred+st+sidwell_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioNj4DkaGavaGuYtWjcTH5CLFU3Xdhg5xUXoLIso9LQYVgYTNXFKGargodrkRJrMrm39ZTH7wJTQWfpADwufmbHmzYuSxs0FPSF8ijUNdbZDe4Ql242K_eBQTsAtlABVq6E7_shLLw7YHg/s400/scarred+st+sidwell_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzlG_C58UOCBExOjyHsh7fXy5uDfOBxxXp5IhuYpeXIFrtxd8-rdMANOJZHIIwMGGm8O4uIA8dj0dZUPH6mSO82k_TN7iIOjTCGRRm4Ll7-dZ94c-sOS6v5wlXXult_ejaG9zpc-ZcvUK2/s1600/scarred+st+sidwell+2_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzlG_C58UOCBExOjyHsh7fXy5uDfOBxxXp5IhuYpeXIFrtxd8-rdMANOJZHIIwMGGm8O4uIA8dj0dZUPH6mSO82k_TN7iIOjTCGRRm4Ll7-dZ94c-sOS6v5wlXXult_ejaG9zpc-ZcvUK2/s400/scarred+st+sidwell+2_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Scarred St Sidwell</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEsexqvWH2KqVJuT3Li9kW6MfiXAmWLJPS3gniZiAbeP-JbLtvDnF05mwLb48VIV44xGG3jhQrUd4YOZE4wtqxT3vTw26ehxic33dx8Ud1xdxHXK1kLjROEFc6rcWDefcdyMdfdpGvLAj_/s1600/scarred+st+stephen_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEsexqvWH2KqVJuT3Li9kW6MfiXAmWLJPS3gniZiAbeP-JbLtvDnF05mwLb48VIV44xGG3jhQrUd4YOZE4wtqxT3vTw26ehxic33dx8Ud1xdxHXK1kLjROEFc6rcWDefcdyMdfdpGvLAj_/s400/scarred+st+stephen_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE-1NYN1EP926ws2Ygn2Y-KZHMGOPi3gGdTkPRKoeSgfHZp3czARYFi6713XVKVD8gITyk6Ply_SFOQ4QGjw2jTeFKseu3iNIGGeovDD7GxYCADJiPDkibhF_MM3PsdybnlAYN3jGcHHS7/s1600/scarred+st+stephen+1_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE-1NYN1EP926ws2Ygn2Y-KZHMGOPi3gGdTkPRKoeSgfHZp3czARYFi6713XVKVD8gITyk6Ply_SFOQ4QGjw2jTeFKseu3iNIGGeovDD7GxYCADJiPDkibhF_MM3PsdybnlAYN3jGcHHS7/s400/scarred+st+stephen+1_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Scarred St Leonard</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil_uI945GrE8QxT7KQLTGaH-lq6Dm6GH_BqKRiV3_JgV4Ran5yauC3qHEU6HTVILIiEGGxqVDOC2N785Al0hUYnTGQQ86TFJxgSOiHZ8x2bUZstDfI-cIQ_mBbPHZutz5dOxGFk80iYbKM/s1600/scarred+st+blaise+1_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil_uI945GrE8QxT7KQLTGaH-lq6Dm6GH_BqKRiV3_JgV4Ran5yauC3qHEU6HTVILIiEGGxqVDOC2N785Al0hUYnTGQQ86TFJxgSOiHZ8x2bUZstDfI-cIQ_mBbPHZutz5dOxGFk80iYbKM/s400/scarred+st+blaise+1_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDhmBwkvaJuk1jZ9qGSQKVGPjb7aMNDyK2x8RjEPAkseyA3X_xFO69dTskyTsKsFs9UcgLLzLUyhmjXfqX2ecK9Ip9txrvgdRYx0RJ_qeh9jfA98lQfz4WUxGv7I_Jy9zzcuHq9g1abwd/s1600/scarred+st+blaise+2_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDhmBwkvaJuk1jZ9qGSQKVGPjb7aMNDyK2x8RjEPAkseyA3X_xFO69dTskyTsKsFs9UcgLLzLUyhmjXfqX2ecK9Ip9txrvgdRYx0RJ_qeh9jfA98lQfz4WUxGv7I_Jy9zzcuHq9g1abwd/s400/scarred+st+blaise+2_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Scarred St Blaise</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggstXTYL4PFJXCcqbKzQxQOjY_nhZ0NTpX_SQtogUFiYTyKwv_oxUylFa2KcSkDIOyMmezVrZD8QNrKEBQoBZUsTWOiZ_9Y8KQYuOs4JctQPfsuEnOR2DVg_AniCaNNMLOq1exf_45peA8/s1600/St+thomas+of+canterbury_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggstXTYL4PFJXCcqbKzQxQOjY_nhZ0NTpX_SQtogUFiYTyKwv_oxUylFa2KcSkDIOyMmezVrZD8QNrKEBQoBZUsTWOiZ_9Y8KQYuOs4JctQPfsuEnOR2DVg_AniCaNNMLOq1exf_45peA8/s400/St+thomas+of+canterbury_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsPRd-TS1_6pvZXHXPemMEqywP325_sNlg9v5ySgTWENyQSpjkNpMnFXAaSX1hnCpqHUq48VMJxg5w98q6m2AROai7aVdE-gVrYd-hquWA2MYQzc7hQd0YptnASUrgM7m3zF5w7Gy7fFsm/s1600/scarred+st+thomas+of+canterbury_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsPRd-TS1_6pvZXHXPemMEqywP325_sNlg9v5ySgTWENyQSpjkNpMnFXAaSX1hnCpqHUq48VMJxg5w98q6m2AROai7aVdE-gVrYd-hquWA2MYQzc7hQd0YptnASUrgM7m3zF5w7Gy7fFsm/s400/scarred+st+thomas+of+canterbury_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Scarred St Thomas of Canterbury</blockquote>The seismic shock and massive ideological disruption of the Reformation can be seen and almost physically felt with powerful, hair-raising immediacy in the knife scars and chiselled pits mapping the faces. The intense, violent emotions of the times are still palpable in these savage marks. You can almost hear the curses and effortful grunts of the iconoclasts, the jarring scrape and stabbing knocks of tools on wood, their constructive use turned to destructive ends. A faint resonance of the violent acts of centuries long passed still hums in the still spaces of the church around the rood screen. St Catherine has been given an eye patch, a panel covering her lost orb; St Sidwell’s face is terribly pockmarked, as if eaten away by plague; St Leonard’s mouth has been drilled through, leaving him with a darkened ‘o’, a pursed moue of permanent startlement; his ear has been torn off too, so that he might not hear the pleas of his supplicants; St Blaise has been similarly assailed, and looks like he is whistling or singing an aria; St Thomas of Canterbury has suffered the most terrible damage, perhaps on account of the mitre he wears and the archbishop’s cross he grips. A figure of authority to vent your rage upon. His nose and lower jaw have been sheared off, and together with his hollowed out eyes leave him with a porcine profile. He resembles some of the sketches the artist Henry Tonks made of First World War soldiers who had received terrible facial injuries at the front and had been sent to hospital for corrective surgery. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nvNzsuBhUfUxtTxx4il4Aj1toX7QX2_PHI0_x4YT0TM5QdILW3qv1Uvv7oWyIEWV24TAkE_ZnVzE7bmmJ3FiexzDQ3HdY6CTpqXQf8TAAYaR5hkjA5rc0_3VBevCZt9RV3pxcV6OM3fM/s1600/scarred+mary+2_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nvNzsuBhUfUxtTxx4il4Aj1toX7QX2_PHI0_x4YT0TM5QdILW3qv1Uvv7oWyIEWV24TAkE_ZnVzE7bmmJ3FiexzDQ3HdY6CTpqXQf8TAAYaR5hkjA5rc0_3VBevCZt9RV3pxcV6OM3fM/s400/scarred+mary+2_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>The tracks of Mary's tears</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzHK23VAB5ow7r62z-G-kNKxWy8Ihw7BHQ77827VL1tW5QUxiPbhfGAhh1_x9K4xS2GkwNCJ8VUzXiHjJB_93bmGXGaoiBrcPPLO5JB8aF0-0yJr8Hn3ufpxONZDDRk_P3dOWSTEJnyRA/s1600/Scarred+angel+gabriel.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzHK23VAB5ow7r62z-G-kNKxWy8Ihw7BHQ77827VL1tW5QUxiPbhfGAhh1_x9K4xS2GkwNCJ8VUzXiHjJB_93bmGXGaoiBrcPPLO5JB8aF0-0yJr8Hn3ufpxONZDDRk_P3dOWSTEJnyRA/s400/Scarred+angel+gabriel.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiJVnWQIP-tk6DaDMLy9APE65VoBH9WMkLfJSdLxM8zTVZaQgI15gE6Ji6_WNHlcnx2DSq6f8qU5ZcYGN3Am_W3fQ0jBwuOoUPeWaPZ8IteX56qilaAY8EJa7cDW8qdppX5swvBogtACQr/s1600/scarred+gabriel+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiJVnWQIP-tk6DaDMLy9APE65VoBH9WMkLfJSdLxM8zTVZaQgI15gE6Ji6_WNHlcnx2DSq6f8qU5ZcYGN3Am_W3fQ0jBwuOoUPeWaPZ8IteX56qilaAY8EJa7cDW8qdppX5swvBogtACQr/s400/scarred+gabriel+2.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Milk-eyed angel - Gabriel</blockquote>Even Mary has not been spared. Her image on the rear, parclose side of the screen has had its eyes scratched out, as if she too had joined the ranks of the martyrs. A downward score of the knife has drawn the tracks of a tear. The annunciatory angel Gabriel’s pitted sockets have been filled in with white wax, making her eyes look as if they have nictating, cat-like lids. Two tonsured heads, reputedly portraits of monks who had been murdered nearby, were similarly disfigured. One has his eyes starred, lines radiating outwards. They seem to make manifest an expanded vision in a dimension invisible to the naked eye, like the trails of subatomic particles photographed in a cloud chamber; a penetrating higher perception reaching beyond ordinary sight. The Reformation iconoclast slasher has inadvertently lent this particular figure a coruscating aura of extra-sensor power. There are lighthouse beams of vision which could fill the soul with intense, ecstatic illumination or scour it with pitiless, actinic glare. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZEIvby8YaMfuypdNnvlU77Zm3eAYlm8x3PE6h2Uh86hC5lKbLNDeDqJpLBOzgRmlYVS5aztYRMEPWMCgEOx5F_ylv5ypdptTFb_URR8mHyoQt2SG6dV0YR6HoNackwvwuRedLDPWPnbm/s1600/star+eye1_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZEIvby8YaMfuypdNnvlU77Zm3eAYlm8x3PE6h2Uh86hC5lKbLNDeDqJpLBOzgRmlYVS5aztYRMEPWMCgEOx5F_ylv5ypdptTFb_URR8mHyoQt2SG6dV0YR6HoNackwvwuRedLDPWPnbm/s400/star+eye1_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Star Eyes</blockquote><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7wf6wvW43LtXtQyUXZMgcDgK2y8hbeonmHXXECK9ISwuAQU2ins9cGmmOsByBrFmj0Ioh_QZxpXICW_v2gmV5XHgKsonNV2xwskMkZ6sWPO0xpuN2LqGapYWvQfpJDVz9cj4YxSphH49A/s1600/star+eye3_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7wf6wvW43LtXtQyUXZMgcDgK2y8hbeonmHXXECK9ISwuAQU2ins9cGmmOsByBrFmj0Ioh_QZxpXICW_v2gmV5XHgKsonNV2xwskMkZ6sWPO0xpuN2LqGapYWvQfpJDVz9cj4YxSphH49A/s400/star+eye3_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJouY4IeKwax1UgG96UkHb-asNQCmj2m_0NQmlYrzQG2R9iIX-yT9efundDGVsusFFAf6odYEJ7XJ-G90NazKpgZ78z7jO5wwV36waxrYelJSJcDQS-jKICmBZjMGtdgmYTYrxnYiAX80/s1600/star+eye4_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJouY4IeKwax1UgG96UkHb-asNQCmj2m_0NQmlYrzQG2R9iIX-yT9efundDGVsusFFAf6odYEJ7XJ-G90NazKpgZ78z7jO5wwV36waxrYelJSJcDQS-jKICmBZjMGtdgmYTYrxnYiAX80/s400/star+eye4_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Visionary sight</blockquote>We rise up from our kneeling scrutiny of the panel painted saints and find ourselves confronted with the imposingly massive bible whose blocky weight is borne by the woodcarved wings of an eagle lectern. The eagle’s folkloric powers include the ability to gaze unblinkingly into the blazing light of the sun. It thus became a symbolic conduit of divine wisdom and illumination and was chosen in the medieval period a the ideal beast to bear the weight of the Word and act as intercessor between celestial and earthly regions. The open pages are covered with a small square of aged patterned cloth in silk brocade, its colours faded but still rather beautiful. We lift and gently fold it to see what passage it conceals. The last reading appears to have been from the Book of Ezdras, an esoteric and apocryphal backwater of the bible. Certainly not one familiar to me. Much of the page is taken up with recitations of names, which are filled with potent, poetic richness and round syllabic rhythm. Nebucodonosor, Rathmus and Semallius the scribe, King Artaxerxes and Tebelius, Mithridates and Beeltethmus the storyteller. I feel compelled to read them aloud, and the unfamiliar syllables, no doubt horribly mangled and mispronounced, sound like a summoning. I wonder what strange services are held here, what strange form of religion might have evolved in this remote church in which the pre-Reformation centuries still seem co-existent with the present. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTwhyphenhypheniswZoBHvAoUB9u27QloIqPHlUWxVa-FIpASrxtGIC6w-CYlqe8tIUD-NZsN8RxX1AJhuqRyIgzaEH8jQll9_7SHU5Fss7gh_m2IeAa0pnQn0eKbA2vxk4Hjme2Tlhom1gY96sVuhS/s1600/DSCN5398_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTwhyphenhypheniswZoBHvAoUB9u27QloIqPHlUWxVa-FIpASrxtGIC6w-CYlqe8tIUD-NZsN8RxX1AJhuqRyIgzaEH8jQll9_7SHU5Fss7gh_m2IeAa0pnQn0eKbA2vxk4Hjme2Tlhom1gY96sVuhS/s400/DSCN5398_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Having bookmarked the page with the only thing which came to hand, a Kendal mintcake wrapper, we essay a bit of bibliomancy, closing our eyes and flicking through the pages before stabbing at a passage with a decisive forefinger. We are not disappointed with the resultant readings. They are both proper Old Testament, full of violent portent and bloody retribution. Mine, from the Wisdom of Solomon, speaks of ‘a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains. These things made them to swoon for fear’. David’s prophetically pronounced ‘behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion and lift up himself as a young lion. He shall not lie down until he eats of the prey and drinks the blood of the slain’. We quietly return the pages to their original passage and respectfully smooth the cloth back over the powerful words. The eagle looks with a stern and piercingly sharp-beaked regard over the nave, its rigidly fixed, concentrated stare admonishing us for ever taking such matters lightly. <br />
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Your Ascension begins here:<br />
<a href="http://sparksinelectricaljelly.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-ashton-ascension.html">PART ONE</a><br />
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And descends here:<br />
<a href="http://sparksinelectricaljelly.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-ashton-ascension_15.html">PART THREE</a><br />
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Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-77636226276999739822015-05-29T22:44:00.001+01:002015-05-30T01:16:38.503+01:00The Merry Month of MayThis is the unedited version of an essay which appeared in abbreviated form in the excellent <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/">Folklore Tapes</a> <a href="http://www.folkloretapes.co.uk/product/folklore-tapes-calendar-customs-vol-ii-merry-may">Calendar Customs II</a> Box Set. <br />
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May Day is one of the turning points of the year, the moment when the transformations of the seasons’ cycles are ritually observed and celebrated. The Eve of May displays an obverse face to Halloween’s soot-blackened mask, fixed on the diametrically opposite arc of the slowly-spinning annular globe. Both have origins in the Celtic pastoral (or livestock farming) year and the solar festivals which lent it formal division. Samhain marked its end (and the end of the year as a whole) on the last day of October; Beltane its new May beginning. Samhain heralded the months of darkness, Beltane opened the door to summer. Fires were lit on both occasions, to invoke the sun and anticipate or celebrate its return. After Samhain, the fires would retreat inside, much diminished, to be tended in the hearth. Beltane saw them coming outdoors again, stoked into blazing conflagrations to reflect the solar rising. Samhain saw cattle being led into winter shelter. Beltane was the time for them to be led back out to pasture. On both occasions, they would be driven through twin bonfires. This fiery passage offered protection against the supernatural forces whose power surged at these interzonal periods, when corporeal and spirit worlds were in close proximity, like the Earth and Moon at perigee. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnYyskaUCruNFWxGNlDgjvlcrVblFE4va706YbYUTAzf3TgRqvqAyMEtHvv9mVYl5PU57RyDQYWpw9irZ4vc7CORcd2qZqhN_IsDIr8aalWtnpLW56GaNa0ijqkDtldE80HvDfwI-X6lbt/s1600/rackham+titania+and+oberon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnYyskaUCruNFWxGNlDgjvlcrVblFE4va706YbYUTAzf3TgRqvqAyMEtHvv9mVYl5PU57RyDQYWpw9irZ4vc7CORcd2qZqhN_IsDIr8aalWtnpLW56GaNa0ijqkDtldE80HvDfwI-X6lbt/s400/rackham+titania+and+oberon.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, from Arthur Rackham's illustrations for A Midsummer Night's Dream</blockquote>Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream dramatises this interpenetration of parallel worlds, blending fantasies of antiquity and British otherworld folklore with the formal dance of Tudor pageantry. At the same time, it allegorises the confusing intoxication of love and desire, the awakening of which is another key element of May Day revels. Whilst the title would seem to fix the date, there are various references to May Day which suggest that the play’s nocturnal entanglements take place on May Eve, and that May Day ritual, revel and romance is on everybody’s mind. Lysander speaks of ‘the wood, a league without the town – where I did meet once with Helena to do observance to a morn of May’. The enraged Hermia spits out ‘How am I, thou painted maypole? Speak! I am not so low but that my nails can reach unto thine eyes’. And Theseus speculates ‘no doubt they rose up early to observe the rite of May’. The interaction of human and faerie worlds, with the appearance of Shakespeare’s versions of Puck (also referred to as Robin Goodfellow and Hobgoblin) and the King and Queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, certainly points to May Eve as the more appropriate frame for the night’s dramas. This unanchored calendrical vagueness creates a moondappled superimposition of festive periods which blurs and transcends the rigidly linear grid of time; a grid which is dissolved and dispersed like drifting fog in the eternal lands of dream. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0HOtTMA9e5Q-7RVLqXpHo_bcyRflXkP7SmGfolwXvIi270drSLvI3awbYYeJHn127t0rMKRBF4eg0RTSc1aqDxLmK9tWc0ykeVnqt1QByhVSqs0ScRDMJswwol6vd5DM9NoGlfAWkwC-/s1600/rackham+midsummer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0HOtTMA9e5Q-7RVLqXpHo_bcyRflXkP7SmGfolwXvIi270drSLvI3awbYYeJHn127t0rMKRBF4eg0RTSc1aqDxLmK9tWc0ykeVnqt1QByhVSqs0ScRDMJswwol6vd5DM9NoGlfAWkwC-/s400/rackham+midsummer.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Arthur Rackham illustration for A Midsummer Night's Dream</blockquote>Human beings also sought immunisation from devilry or the wicked caprices of the fairy folk by jumping through the sacred flames they had driven their cattle between. The pungent woodsmoke purged them of whatever pheremones attracted the attentions of hungry spirit world denizens. Sacrifices of cattle or sheep considered less prime stock would be offered as propitiation. The word Beltane comprises two separate elements forged into one festive name. Bel means shining or lucky, and tane fire. So, Beltane offered the talismanic blessing of fire and the promise of the sun’s renewed beneficence, the return of the light. <br />
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Superstitions surrounding May Eve, May Day and the ensuing days at the start of the month persisted well into the medieval period, and even into the post-Reformation era. Fairies might steal or sour milk, or witches spell maleficent harm on the herd. In Northern Europe, May Eve was Walpurgisnacht, the Eve of the sanctified Saxon abbess Walpurga. It was a night when witches were thought to swarm in the skies, flying across the fields and heading to the high places such as the Brocken peak in the Harz Mountains for their Sabbat communion with the Devil, and creating opportunistic mischief and malevolent damage in their wake. Something of the dread attending this night on the continent was translated into the British idiom. The belief The beginning of May was associated with bad luck, and it was considered an unwise act of generosity to pass on fire from the home hearth on May Eve or May Day. The fire was analogous to the kindly donor’s spirit, and could be used to gain mastery over it. Thus, anyone requesting a flame to spark their own fire on or around the first of May might find themselves accused of intent towards witchery. Better to remain shivering by the cold grate than arouse such suspicions. Hares caught in pasture fields on May Day, darting between the hooves of the cattle, would be hunted and killed. They might be witches in transmuted form (werehares?), milksnatchers or livestock blighters. Rowan or elder boughs would offer some protection against supernatural forces, and fairies could be charmed or at least distracted for a vital moment by tying colourful ribbons to hawthorn branches.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_DlPBuPviMy4TUC6S3hubhF41rZz_EjWIB0PfdxTXqY9Q8C3UyOBMOlrUC4lshCD0PRK0iRvAYF3x6j5OW1dum8ixR3OCH6kVmz6ysCQNhzxlzUacpeJtHVGSDHkS2H5__IzFacBPzw2y/s1600/haxan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_DlPBuPviMy4TUC6S3hubhF41rZz_EjWIB0PfdxTXqY9Q8C3UyOBMOlrUC4lshCD0PRK0iRvAYF3x6j5OW1dum8ixR3OCH6kVmz6ysCQNhzxlzUacpeJtHVGSDHkS2H5__IzFacBPzw2y/s400/haxan.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Walpurgisnacht flight from Danish director Benjamin Christensen's 1922 film Haxan:Witchcraft Through the Ages</blockquote>Echoes of Beltane fire rituals can be detected in various May Day games and customs. The sun’s radiance is condensed in the spirit-raising glow of yellow primroses and marsh marigolds (‘the herb of Beltane’) woven into garlands to be hung about the village or town. In parts of Scotland, bannock cakes were cooked in May Day fires, buns with knob-knuckled crowns like a boulder-strewn moorland landscape. One of the cakes would be divided and a piece smudged with charcoal from the fire. The unfortunate who drew this tainted treat from basket or bonnet would be execrated as the ‘carline’ or scapegoat for the following year, spurned and made mock of. A distant memory of human sacrifice on the bone-fire? Probably not. There’s no evidence for such specific seasonal practices beyond Roman anti-Celtic propaganda. It could be a deeply uncomfortable social and psychological experience for the victim, nevertheless, a form of licensed bullying which united the rest of the community. At some point a presumably intoxicated individual noticed, as he bounded after it, how well his fumbled cake bounced down a hillside, and the tradition of bannock rolling was born; a pointless, vaguely idiotic pastime devoid of any symbolic, sacred or ritualistic import which was largely an excuse to pelt down a grassy slope. Like many pointless, vaguely idiotic pastimes it was, and still is hugely enjoyable. <br />
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May Day festivities are above all about getting out of doors and inhaling the first breath of summer; throwing the early morning windows wide and heading for the woodlands and meadows with a light skip in the step. The opening lines of many a folk song attest to this spirit: ‘O as I rose up one May morning/One May morning so early (Seventeen Come Sunday); ‘One morning in the month of May/As from my cot I strayed/Just at the dawning of the day’ (The Spotted Cow); ‘As I walked out one midsummer’s morning/To a-view the fields and to take the air’ (Banks of Sweet Primroses); When I was a-walking one morning in May/To hear the birds whistle and nightingales play (Green Bushes); ‘Now it was on a summer’s day in the merry month of May/I was strolling around my grandfather’s farm’ (The Ball of Yarn). Etc. etc.<br />
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These opening lines are usually followed by an encounter with a charming maid, or by the lament of a maid waylaid by a charming rogue – essentially two conflicting perspectives on the same subject, conquest and defeat. For May was a time when the sap was rising and the first steps of the summer courtship dances were tripped. The comic romantic complications of A Midsummer Night’s Dream make formal play with such lusty woodland assignations. May folk songs are full of bawdy, nudge nudge innuendos and euphemisms, designed to raise gusts of knowingly ribald if not outright filthy laughter down at the local village inn. Analogies are drawn between seasonal farming labours and the fulfilment of desire, connecting the natural cycles of the year with those of the human heart. So Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy is observed by an enamoured maid ‘ploughing his furrow deep and low/Breaking the clods to pieces, some barley for to sow’; the search for a ‘charming maid’s’ Spotted Cow provides an excuse for a day of sport and play ‘down in yonder bourne’, a pleasurable encounter with the promise of further hunts for the straying and in all-probability non-existant creature heralded by the coded cry ‘ye gentle swain I’ve lost my spotted cow’; The Ball of Yarn plays lascivious metaphorical variations on the farmboy’s desire to wind up a country maid’s ‘little ball of yarn’. The Sussex-dwelling Copper Family song Pleasant Month of May (collected in Bob Copper’s book A Song for Every Season) depicts the sweaty labour of haymaking before the arrival of a travelling piper at sundown and the commencement of festive merriment. The final verse conjures images of bucolic bliss and pastoral amours inseparable from the lay of the land and its tending:<br />
‘We called for a dance and we tripp-ed it along,/We danced all round the haycocks till the rising of the sun./When the sun did shine such a glorious light and the harmless birds did sing,/Each lad took his lass in his hand and went back to his haymaking’. <br />
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Sometimes traditional May songs are simply evocations of the early summer ambience, with no double-meanings attached. Such is By the Green Grove, another Copper song, which is a simple and affecting paean to the heartswelling beauty of birdsong in the Sussex countryside. ‘No music, no songster can with them compare’. There are darker presentiments of harvests to come to be found in the memoirs of Bob Copper, too. In his reminiscences of May haymaking, he recalls that ‘the quiet of the field would by invaded by a gang of six or eight men arriving carrying their scythes across their shoulders’. The shadow of the reaper is present even in the merry morning of May, the time of renewal and rebirth. Et in Arcadia ego. <br />
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The license associated with May Day inevitably roused the ire of Protestant critics, constant complaint against the state of things inherent in their very name. The Puritan John Stubbes is highly amusing to read for the intense passages of fevered ranting his broiling indignation stews. With variable statistics plucked from the overheated undercroft of his brain, he rages in his 1583 screed The Anatomie of Abuses that ‘I have heard it credibly reported…by men of great gravity, credit, and reputation, that of forty, threescore, or a hundred maids, going to the wood overnight, there have scarcely the third part of them return home undefiled. These be the fruits which these cursed pastimes bring forth’. He would no doubt also have disapproved of the vanity of a later tradition, that of bathing the face in May morning dew to lend the complexion a magical glow for the rest of the month and banish troublesome freckles. Samuel Pepys records in his diary that his wife indulged in this hopeful custom, and he rather touchingly worries about her safety being abroad in the early hours. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gzyaU301LBuJy-I9lnPO6BzFGO4m4YiIHlqMuw8RhmDeLcLtw7xfRE6qx682Kmhm9esFJciAJHmCWFaQI0XX4tYfT5rZHNg1od8ncHFPGzKM8i9oCyGNFCzNkv5kKpVlrtSLSaRP5a8I/s1600/may+padstow+decoration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gzyaU301LBuJy-I9lnPO6BzFGO4m4YiIHlqMuw8RhmDeLcLtw7xfRE6qx682Kmhm9esFJciAJHmCWFaQI0XX4tYfT5rZHNg1od8ncHFPGzKM8i9oCyGNFCzNkv5kKpVlrtSLSaRP5a8I/s400/may+padstow+decoration.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Bringing in the May to the streets of Padstow</blockquote>The custom most widely associated with May Day was the bringing in of the May. Boughs of blossoming hawthorn would be cut down and brought back from meadow’s edge and woodland and strewn or hung about town or village, some woven into garlands, others left as they were found. The spiritually refreshing experience of going out into the fields and communing with the natural world in the renewal of its blossoming and unfurling was an integral and profound part of this seasonal ritual. Hawthorn was generally favoured, but there were regional variations. The Cornish tended towards sycamore, whilst the Welsh often opted for birch. Whatever the arboreal species, however, it was given the designation ‘May’. The Elizabethan tailor turned writer John Stow describes the bringing in of the May with beautiful simplicity and clarity in his 1598 book Survey of London: ‘On May Day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walk into the greenwoods, there to rejoice their spirit with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of the birds’. Bringing in the May, or going-a-maying, was a way of connecting the settled, built environment or human habitation with the cyclical patterns of growth beyond its bounds. Wild nature in all its bounteous flowering was brought into the heart of the ordered domain of civilisation where it had been tamed or banished altogether. Something of the spirit felt by those who had gone out into the fields on a May morning was thereby given emblematic form. Some kind of symbolic exchange was effected. Man ventured out into Nature, and Nature entered into the habitations of Man. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl8-aKoJkD1X-66QNvfrllhORtV_VYfwg1aJE_Sp4gDxabOqOWU2y7N1TZNkZgNviDdQ2o-VKyv609p9PWhnjspgndHLD4Lo-pD4bBMxz4ilseMsz_gMvQ_5-YTQkKPhPHEbKxFzTFLySv/s1600/padstow+maypole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl8-aKoJkD1X-66QNvfrllhORtV_VYfwg1aJE_Sp4gDxabOqOWU2y7N1TZNkZgNviDdQ2o-VKyv609p9PWhnjspgndHLD4Lo-pD4bBMxz4ilseMsz_gMvQ_5-YTQkKPhPHEbKxFzTFLySv/s400/padstow+maypole.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The Padstow maypole</blockquote>Maypoles were also erected in villages, towns and cities. Young trees were cut down from neighbouring woodlands (not always with the permission of the landowner) and hauled by teams of men and oxen into the appointed green or square where they were heaved up and made fast. The towering wooden columns would be painted with colourful stripes or other patterns and hung about with ribbons, boughs and garlands. It became the focal point for local festivities, for dancing, whether in a wheeling, handlocked circle or in more abandoned, weaving approaches and evasions. A maypole could remain in place for many years until it began to rot away at its base and require replacement. Sometimes it would crash to the ground before such removals were effected. There were maypoles of great longevity and renown in London. In the early 17th century, an immense one stood for a good few years at Cornhill in front of the church of St Andrew, whose spire it exceeded in height. The church became known as St Andrew Undershaft as a result. Another stood in The Strand in Elizabethan times before being felled in 1644, the victim of a Puritan ban on maypoles instigated in that year. A giant 134 foot pole was resurrected on the same spot in 1661, the Royal Crest at its tip marking it as a prominent celebratory symbol of the Restoration. It stood on the site of St Mary le-Bow into the early years of the 18th century. A substitute pole, taken down in 1718, was purchased by Sir Isaac Newton. He used it to prop up the great 123 foot telescope which had been installed in Wanstead Park in Essex the previous year. A perfect amalgam of folkloric traditions, possibly reaching back into the ancient past, and the new science, with its distant optic gaze focussed on the future. Nigel Kneale would have made something out of such a richly symbolic conjunction. It reminds me of his placement of a radio telescope besides a stone circle in his 1979 Quatermass series. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlefNhIaQE0RF86xwt8zHATN2u_3YQBkQnHTOS87PDGwgLymGkdV_HI5k973doXcLIPQLXLG5rtKAgTXK-Dj7kyLK2Y4kikHC7vuJHFBAc96YGB03-kdI6kP7dXTDfrhyphenhyphenxa_H3Z-lwPuxa/s1600/daemons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlefNhIaQE0RF86xwt8zHATN2u_3YQBkQnHTOS87PDGwgLymGkdV_HI5k973doXcLIPQLXLG5rtKAgTXK-Dj7kyLK2Y4kikHC7vuJHFBAc96YGB03-kdI6kP7dXTDfrhyphenhyphenxa_H3Z-lwPuxa/s400/daemons.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Jo and the Doctor join in the Maypole revels at the end of the 1971 Doctor Who serial The Daemons. Yates and the Brigadier retire for a pint</blockquote><br />
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The reliably rancorous Philip Stubbes looked upon such practises with seething horror, of course, voiced in his unceasingly virulent strain of invective. ‘They go some into the woods and groves, some to another, where they spend all night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return bringing with them birch boughs, and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withal. And no marvel, for there is a great Lord present amongst them, as superintendant and lord over their pastimes and sports: namely, Satan Prince of Hell. But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is the may-pole, which they bring home with great veneration…twenty, or forty yoke of oxen…draw home this may-pole (this stinking idol rather)’. Stubbes describes how, once the villagers or townspeople have reared up and decorated the pole, ‘then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it, as the heathen people did, at the dedication of their idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself’. Escalating his hyperbolic disgust to a climactic pitch, he damns the May merrymakers utterly: ‘Assuredly, I think neither Jews nor Turks, Saracens, nor Pagans, nor any other people how wicked, or barbarous soever, have ever used such devilish exercises as these: nay, they would have been ashamed once to have named them, much less to have used them’. <br />
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The May Day revels of late medieval and Tudor England which Stubbes so vocally despised incorporated all manner of May games. Morris dancing (‘the devil’s dance withal’ – Stubbes) featured frequently during its 16th century craze and for a period thereafter, and there might be pipers and harpers, drummers and fools to fuel the festivities with music, capers and general jollity. Mummers plays were sometimes staged, the performers disguised, which gave them a certain license to mock the high and mighty. Parades were peopled by stock figures of British folklore, religious devotion and popular legend: George and the Dragon, regional saints, Jack-in-the-Greens, Giants, Devils and St Michael, also with dragon in tow (the Devil in final Revelation battle form, ready for the slaying). Robin Hood and his greenwood band of righteous outsiders were particularly popular, and would often go around from door to door raising money (not necessarily for the Parish poor, either). Plays relating the familiar tales of daring feats and defiant gestures became widespread in the later medieval period. The first recorded example took place in Exeter in 1427, but they became and integral part of Tudor May Day celebrations in the years leading up to the cultural and historical earthquake of the Reformation. Maid Marian was a relatively late addition to the canon, appearing in the 15th century, possibly imported from French Romances and ballads such as Adam de la Halle’s late 13th century musical play Jeu de Robin et Marion (recorded in the 1970s by David Munrow and his Early Music Consort). Robin has been interpreted at various times as a spirit of the greenwood, a green or wild man figure symbolic of vegetal death and resurrection, a seasonal king whose sacrifice would ensure the return of the sun and the fertility of the crops (a favoured theme of JG Frazier put forward in The Golden Bough, his capacious survey of comparitive myth and religion), the high priest of a coven or a historically-based, rebellious anti-hero fighting the power. Marian and Robin are also sometimes seen as the Queen and King of May; Marian the embodiment of Spring, a Persephone or Flora figure, Robin her knightly green consort. Like all figures who slip out of the mundane world and into the mutable realm of myth he was, in other words, all things to all men. <br />
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Robin and Marian’s assumption of the roles of King and Queen are indicative of a more general play with inversion and transformation within the context of May Games. In a variation of the Christmas tradition of electing Lords of Misrule, mock-kings or lords were often crowned or ennobled for the day and presided over the celebrations. In the Scottish districts of Borthwick, Haddington, Peebles and Linlithgow an Abbot of Unreason was ordinated to give his anti-clerical blessing to the wild indulgences of the day. There was a strong element of mischief making, and echo of the licensed knavery of Hallow’s Eve, and of the Puckish trickery of fairy world denizens so active at these intersticial times. Guisers, cocky chancers (latterly geezers) in disguise, prowled the streets planning and enacting pranks on the suspecting victim who, on this day, was powerless to seek recourse. The 19th century Lancastrian radical Samuel Bamford recalls the occurrence of ‘mischeif-neet’ on May 1st in Early Days, his 1849 memoir of his early life in Middleton, Manchester and Salford. Tokens from the fields would be left by young men on the doorsteps of neighbours (mainly female) as symbolic assessments of character, whether cruel and spiteful or complimentary and amorous: ‘a gorse bush indicated a woman notoriously immodest; and a holly bush, one loved in secret; a tup’s horn intimated that man or woman was faithless to marriage; a branch of sapling, truth in love; and a sprig of birch, a pretty girl’. A similarly laddish blend of horniness and spite was enacted across the country in the Cambridge fenlands. Here, sloe blossom was for the favoured and blackthorn for those considered loose, elder for those judged insufficiently well turned out and nettles for those the boys thought had a sharp tongue (no doubt directed at their clumsy advances). <br />
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Masks and costumes provided the opportunity for the wearer to get away with all manner of mischief, taking on new identities which allowed for a distancing from the everyday social self. Transvestism was rife, men seizing the chance to put on dresses and wigs and paint their bearded faces. There were Morris ‘Mollies’, and May Marians in Robin Hood plays generally embodied by men in drag presenting their exaggerated, grotesque versions of femininity. Taking hybrid human and animal form was also prevalent on this day of transformations. Stag, bull or ram horns or heads might be borne. But such cross-species mummery and guising was most widely manifested in the migration of the hobby horse across the country. It was a costume which came in a variety of shapes and sizes, from draped frames which entirely enveloped the human occupant to ‘Hooden Horses’ from which the upper torso of the ‘rider’ emerged, to poles with clacking heads (and in some cases stripped and garlanded horse skulls) affixed to their upheld tips. <br />
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The most renowned hobby horse (or Obby Oss as it is idiomatically known) is undoubtedly the one which is led out of its paddock in the back of the Golden Lion inn and onto the streets of Padstow every year. It comprises a large hoop tightly covered with shiny black oilkskin which drapes around in a loose circling skirt. The disc is like a black anti-sun, glistening with photo-negative inversion; or an occult moon, a remnant of the dark days goaded through the summer-garlanded streets one more time before being shut away for the year. Stylised features on the flat plane of its broad face (intriguingly reminiscent of the designs found on traditional African ceremonial masks) heighten its disconcertingly alien quality. It is more like the product of a sleek biomechanical future than a horse, a 1970s Dr Who monster in swaying, revolving motion. It is guided, led and driven by ‘Teasers’ who try to keep its attention by drawing it into a ducking and swirling dance. The unpredictability of its movements might find it suddenly swivelling to turn its blank-eyed disc-visage on nervous onlooker, however, throwing back a distorted shadow reflection, seen as through a glass darkly. Its inky depths are akin to the Elizabethan alchemist and occult philosopher Dr Dee’s obsidian shewstone, the spirit mirror whose polished black surface he tried to see through to communicate with angels (or demons?) in another dimension. Who knows what one might see if one gazes too long into the depthless yet potentially bottomless void of the Oss’s ‘face’, especially with the intoxicating effect of the freely-flowing ale and the pounding beats and hypnotically repeated refrains of the Padstow Obby Oss song deranging the senses. But it passes swiftly on before anyone can get truly lost. The black, flashing form glints against the blue (with any luck) of the sky and the white and red of the Padstonians’ costumes. <br />
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The ceremony and its preparations were captured by folklorist and recorder Alan Lomax and cameraman George Pickow in their 1953 film Oss Oss Wee Oss (the cajoling cry of the onlooking townsfolk), included on the BFI collection of folkloric footage Here’s a Health to the Barley Mow. They preface their dramatised document with the assertion that ‘this strange dance is a modern remnant of an ancient springtime rite in which primitive man rejoiced in the renewed fertility of the land’, adopting the romantic fancies of the mid-century which actively sought to unearth ancient Pagan roots in any and all seasonal observances. Traditions are open to, and indeed require re-interpretation, remodelling and above all reinvigoration, otherwise they eventually ossify (if you’ll pardon the pun in this instance) and crumble into dust, to be blown away by the forgetful winds of the progressing years. So let’s join Lomax and Pickow in this fulfilling fancy, so long as we don’t mistake supposition for historical fact – no matter how intuitively ‘right’ it feels. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKyDz7fE7vdAe1IVH0ibh5e1BfvGNSV_4sqxRsIC-g7bQQYrSbAUhlPOfkM8qp3cAvqu2QxmBurlAONdu9angikLGL0SD0_Z64enPcJfU0YOLOGHaottsM5hX8RzkuKzjY9iY55iwHfmp0/s1600/helston+morris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKyDz7fE7vdAe1IVH0ibh5e1BfvGNSV_4sqxRsIC-g7bQQYrSbAUhlPOfkM8qp3cAvqu2QxmBurlAONdu9angikLGL0SD0_Z64enPcJfU0YOLOGHaottsM5hX8RzkuKzjY9iY55iwHfmp0/s400/helston+morris.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Helston May Morris dancers</blockquote>You’ll also come across The Flora Faddy Furry Dance Day in the BFI collection, Richard Philpott’s impressionistic record of another famous Cornish May Day festival, the Helston Furry Dance. Furry here could be a corruption of the Cornish feur, meaning holy day. The Floral Dance could be in honour of Flora, the Roman Goddess of flowers, or her local equivalent. The town is certainly resplendently decked out with green boughs and flowered garlands, and the Helston Town Band heroically plays the Floral Dance throughout the day as an accompaniment to a rather sedate series of parading, genteely pirhouetting dances which wend their way through the narrow nexus of the town centre’s winding streets. Philpott’s 1989 film (which feels more like it was made in the 70s) uses cross-editing, montage and intercut woodcuts and silhouettes of labyrinths, dragons and maypoles in an attempt to convey a sense of continuity with older traditions, sacred processions and universal archetypes. Like Lomax and Pickow, he claims the Furry Dance for ‘an ancient pre-Christian spring ritual’. Or perhaps he is simply trying to exorcise the twinkling spectre of Terry Wogan and his dispiritingly popular 1978 version. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginsZc8OhSoT680DJANNLRojMAMy2eW7RRGMiuHi6RZZHG8gh2l759ED0WUJwkKPlqzZsNZMSROYy6lTUSpDnWd99fMdoSEy7amO8IveM_GRQWfv3vMHZDmoOr7QzvNX27M9Qvf71jRtEm/s1600/cruickshank.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginsZc8OhSoT680DJANNLRojMAMy2eW7RRGMiuHi6RZZHG8gh2l759ED0WUJwkKPlqzZsNZMSROYy6lTUSpDnWd99fMdoSEy7amO8IveM_GRQWfv3vMHZDmoOr7QzvNX27M9Qvf71jRtEm/s400/cruickshank.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>George Cruickshank's cartoon of a London May Day parade</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvsS_t8RG8C7S86eyxx5o2Yu0ZAB_V_R3R9bZiPV5Gj2vMICJ-EZQpi3lDJQFla3SSDeFgvQ14vtIDfXE1fs87m4Aii9kE7CpYak1L7FRqbuupr6uThe8iluy-VJPOJwZNY-kZpiW2_lWu/s1600/milkmaids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvsS_t8RG8C7S86eyxx5o2Yu0ZAB_V_R3R9bZiPV5Gj2vMICJ-EZQpi3lDJQFla3SSDeFgvQ14vtIDfXE1fs87m4Aii9kE7CpYak1L7FRqbuupr6uThe8iluy-VJPOJwZNY-kZpiW2_lWu/s400/milkmaids.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The Milkmaid's Parade</blockquote>EP Thompson, in his classic 1963 history The Making of the English Working Class, notes that the rapidly expanding urbanisation brought about by the industrial revolution did not mean the dying out of old seasonal rituals and customs. Just as new towns grew over old rural settlements and villages were absorbed by the spreading boundaries of cities to become suburbs, so there was a continuity of celebratory tradition. May rituals brought the rhythms of the now-distanced natural world into the smog-darkened centres of the industrialised cities. In London, urban milkmaids who delivered supplies of the whitestuff danced through the streets, initially with a milk pail balanced on their head like an inverted metal bonnet. This basic set-up was steadily elaborated over the seasons, an element of competition undoubtedly coming into play. In the end, piled helmets of polished silver were precariously balanced on platters garlanded with flowers, the whole ensemble thrillingly threatening to tumble to the pavement in a clattering disaster if perfect deportment was not maintained. It was a celebration of the first significant milk yield, and a reminder that even in the crawling heart of the metropolis, from which nature was increasingly smoke-blotted and walled out, people were still reliant on the turning seasons and the bounty they produced. To such an end, garlands were thrown into the Thames to acknowledge the watery conduit along which this bounty was carried into the city. <br />
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As if to mock the new-found ostentation of the milkmaids, ‘bunters’ dressed in rags would follow in their wake, parodying a now-established tradition. These women were of a lesser social standing, rag pickers or, as some whispered, ladies of ill repute. Class distinctions and their attendant snobberies infected even these celebratory occasions, noticeably more so once they had migrated to the city. What would once have been inter-village rivalries were now concentrated into more condensed and divisive centres of population. Sweeps also joined in the parades, whose money-raising opportunities were invaluable to them at this time. Whilst everyone else was greeting the lengthening days and warming sun with joy in their hearts, the sweeps were fretting at the upcoming loss of trade as hearth fires were gradually extinguished. Their presence became more and more prominent, and they introduced the startling figure of the Jack-in-the-Green to proceedings. Again, this was a prideful and competitive elaboration of initially simple leaf and blossom garlanded bonnets. As if the Jacks were undergoing a gradual vegetal growth, they got annually more expansive. Eventually, the sweep disappeared beneath a huge conical frame covered in greenery and flowers, and giant Jack was seen to walk with a swaying gait through the streets of London, guided by his ‘bogies’. These attendants were often the children whose chimney crawling labours were ended by progressive legislation in the late 19th century. <br />
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May Day traditions have always been subject to appropriations, revivals and revisionism. Many of the customs we associate with it are largely Victorian fabrications, attempts to escape from the pressures and inequities of industry and empire into a Merrie England fantasy of a simple, gilded past when everyone knew their place and all was pageantry, chivalry and happily purposeful agricultural labour. The term merry England was popularised in the early nineteenth century by the essayist William Hazlitt (who referred to its ‘rustic gambols’) and in particular by Walter Scott, whose 1808 poem Marmion referred to a time when ‘England was merry England’. Scott’s immense popularity in the 19th century did much to fuel the Victorian passion for medieval revivalism. Victorian worthies refashioned the old May Day rites, flensing them of their carnality and wild, celebratory communal spirit and reducing them to children’s games and carefully staged worker’s pastimes. They bequeathed us the much-diminished maypole with its trailing, coloured ribbons grasped by glumly skipping boys and girls, and the election of young May Queens for the year, condemned to sit shivering on floats for an interminable duration. Their resurrection of Morris Dancing, which had long since fallen out of fashion, was a singularly pallid ghost of its formerly rambunctious self. Even our old friend Philip Stubbes would have found it hard to work up a head of indignation over their polite village fete prancing. <br />
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The manufacturing and manipulation of a dream of England’s glory was not new, however. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I had participated in May Games which evoked visions of a medieval golden age. Elizabeth attended formal May celebrations at Greenwich Palace in 1558, the first year of her reign, and witnessed a pageant whose no doubt trembling and fearful cast included Morris Dancers, St George and the Dragon, a giant, drummers, the ‘nine worthies of Christendom’, Robin Hood, Little John, Maid Marian and Friar Tuck. John Stow, in his A Survey of London, is one of several writers who record Henry VIII’s May Daying outing (on this occasion setting out from Greenwich Palace) with Catherine of Aragon to the woods on Shooters Hill. Here they picnicked beneath the trees and were entertained by their host, Robyn Hood, with displays of archery. Both monarchs made conscious use of the popular May Day customs, associating themselves with the golden age neverland such pageantry summoned up. In a sense they became magical king and queen of May, roles as chimerical as the mock monarchs they displaced with self-mythologised projections of the authentic article. Alan Moore recognises this Tudor version of Merrie England dreaming as a Disney construct in The Unearthing, his psychogeographical Shooters Hill reverie of history, myth and place and their interaction with an individual human consciousness, spiralling outward from an intimate portrait of his friend Steve Moore, the late comic strip writer. He writes ‘out a-maying with one of his Catherines, Henry VIII attends a Robin Hood fair, Shooters Hill as Medieval theme park, and meets players dressed as Robin, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Bashful, Goofy’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEro4Ku3funHnCewpCZGpDEU_v5aQLGTXGcjKicurZCKA9ZQMEmQs-FKMDBDlkZZ5f92NE9PdF-3MgeJ1YD3dr_Wiay3BvS-B5h-IV9i8m0Xtp0Ld011rS-Z9TDIpCQ74lH-g1YQ5Z2vf9/s1600/Fowlers+Troop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEro4Ku3funHnCewpCZGpDEU_v5aQLGTXGcjKicurZCKA9ZQMEmQs-FKMDBDlkZZ5f92NE9PdF-3MgeJ1YD3dr_Wiay3BvS-B5h-IV9i8m0Xtp0Ld011rS-Z9TDIpCQ74lH-g1YQ5Z2vf9/s400/Fowlers+Troop.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Thankful Sturdee's 1906 photograph of Fowler's Deptford Troop with attendant Jack-in-the-Green</blockquote>Traditions have been re-invented for the modern age too, with the resurgence of a composite Paganism patched together in the latter half of the twentieth century playing a vital role. The London Jack-in-the-Green walks again, bringing a shimmying rustle of spring greenery and floral colourflash to the grey steel and glass canyons of the city. Its rebirth came about through the discovery of a 1906 photo of the old Jack by Thankful Sturdee (a strong and blessed name if ever there was one), its faded black and white image brought to vibrantly technicolored life. The milkmaids balance their silverware again, and the sweeps have returned to Rochester with a 7 foot Jack in tow. Beltane is now marked in the city, too, with a Pagan Pride parade making its way through Bloomsbury, an aptly named district to beat the bounds of. The spirit of Virginia Woolf looks down on them with amused benediction, I’m sure. Her final novel, Between the Acts, is all about the staging of a village pageant of British history and culture, and the continuity, renewal and convergence between the universal and the individual which it represents. Woolf’s story is partly about how there is no real distinction between the pageant and the incidental activities and incidents which take place around it – between the acts or during them. It’s all part of the great human parade. Issues of ‘authenticity’ or authorship seem beside the point in the light of this great communal connection, the sense of history’s vast acreage encompassed within an afternoon, or a flickering instant of flashing consciousness. The Pagan parade, with its inventive costumes and joyful sense of celebration, partakes of this spirit. <br />
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May Day rituals have repeatedly been the object of suppression and political appropriation over the centuries. A 1555 Act in Scotland banned the appointment of mock bishops and the participation in May Games. A political act which perhaps betokened a fear of mocking satire undermining authority. May Games were also banned in Kent in the wake of the 1554 rebellion led by Sir Thomas Wyatt, whose ragtag Kentish troops had reached as far as Southwark. The Puritans banned maypoles and the revels which took place around them, and their erection became an act of anti-Parliamentarian defiance. The restored Stuart monarchy lost no time in allying themselves to a renewal of the May Games, as we have seen from the royal crowning of the Strand maypole. May revels were even shifted to the end of the month to mark Charles II’s birthday on the 29th May, which was conveniently also the day on which he rode into London in 1660, restoring monarchical rule to the land. Oak boughs replaced May blossom as the dominant symbol of the day, memorialising the instantly storied occasion on which the king had hidden in an oak tree to evade Parliamentarian troops. It was a calculated act of propagandistic self-mythologisation, an equation of the king with the national tree, and with the renewal and rebirth of the spirit of the greenwood (although if JG Frazer’s theories are to be given credence, this could of course be an unfortunate analogy). Royal Oak Day became an officially decreed holiday for a while, although observance of it rapidly tailed off as the Stuart monarchs squandered the public’s affections. There are echoes of it still in Oak Apple Day in Wiltshire and Garland Day in Castleton, and indeed in the Bank Holiday which comes towards the end of May. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7IzaGnWp7KnL7qGFqrnUpfZxwPqBG9ariEI9kYjviIY4hRJOkADPWHa-gwBJHFdsHWnqfzR6wyPcJLhXKM7AxkEEv9S8FDBNy-bNc_iRljIOMbsYXaCReeCFoahFgQGESQOu6E5Bzw6Nl/s1600/DSCN7702_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7IzaGnWp7KnL7qGFqrnUpfZxwPqBG9ariEI9kYjviIY4hRJOkADPWHa-gwBJHFdsHWnqfzR6wyPcJLhXKM7AxkEEv9S8FDBNy-bNc_iRljIOMbsYXaCReeCFoahFgQGESQOu6E5Bzw6Nl/s400/DSCN7702_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>May Blossom and Oak Leaf - Opposing symbols at the poles of the month</blockquote>This is at the other end of the month from May Day Bank Holiday, and if the link with Charles II and the restored monarchy is granted, at the opposite end of the political spectrum. With elections of mock monarchs, bishops of unreason and the welcoming of Robin Hood to preside over the festivities, May Day always had a strongly anti-authoritarian side. This was why the authorities felt the need periodically to exert their control over it. In 1890, the International Socialist movement (the Second International) chose May Day as the occasion for an international strike in support of the struggle in America to establish an 8 hour working day. It was subsequently formally declared as International Workers Day, an annual celebration of solidarity and united purpose. The romantic Merrie England associations of English utopian socialists in the William Morris, Arts and Crafts mould can be seen in Walter Crane’s poster The Worker’s May-Pole, his ‘offering for May-Day 1894’. The may-pole is given female embodiment, arms held out like spreading branches, a circling garland of flowers below. She loosely bears a ribbon in the open palms of her hands as if it had been draped across her statuesque form by one of the surrounding celebrants. On it is blazoned the ideological trinity Socialization, Solidarity, Humanity. The ribbons extending from the may-pole Goddess’ dress are grasped by happy and healthy Arts and Crafts peasants who dance around this figure of bounty and utopian promise. The ribbons are also imprinted with slogans and ideals such as ‘Eight Hours’, ‘Leisure for All’, ‘Abolition of Privilege’, ‘The Land for the People’, and ‘No Starving Children in the Board Schools’ (echoes of Dickens’ Dotheboys Hall). Further banners held aloft in the background read ‘The Hope of Labour is the Welfare of the World’ and ‘Neither Riches nor Poverty’. The next year, Crane produced A Garland for May Day 1895, held up by a bare-footed Arts and Crafts Goddess, and would about with further slogans, including one which reads ‘The Land for the People – Merrie England’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisbWaG2uSWv8wjJNeSlqtwJgYcwzBMOS7e01tpBt6kuVsNlIUtoHeOXzXXArhnpa61hSmD5vWqttoRBeY_nDbPLKe4hv29B5lH1otX02xvkLvL41BYac4DHzJsl8vPKeofmcNuVWwtTcdC/s1600/workers+maypole+crane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisbWaG2uSWv8wjJNeSlqtwJgYcwzBMOS7e01tpBt6kuVsNlIUtoHeOXzXXArhnpa61hSmD5vWqttoRBeY_nDbPLKe4hv29B5lH1otX02xvkLvL41BYac4DHzJsl8vPKeofmcNuVWwtTcdC/s400/workers+maypole+crane.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Walter Crane's Workers' Maypole</blockquote>This politicisation of May Day has proved a recurrent irritant over the years. During the Cold War, the International Workers Day descended into a grim opportunity for the Soviet Union and its cowed Eastern Bloc dominions to roll out their latest armaments for a rumbling, earthshaking parade, missiles and tank snouts cocked at the sky like half-erected maypoles. Robin Hood and his merry greenwood band were replaced by Khruschev and his Red iron generals. In Britain, the Conservatives are always grumbling about May Day, latterday Stubbeses whose focus has shifted from moral indignation to the raising of the shibboleths of a quiescent socialism which still rankles with them even as it fades into a historical memory. Proposals to impose a Margaret Thatcher Day on the late August Bank Holiday proved as divisive as the Royal Oak Day celebrating the Restoration soon became. <br />
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May Day is ours, even as seasonal patterns and political power bases shift around us. It is to be decorated with boughs and garlands not flags of allegiance; an anticipation of haymaking not a commemoration of Thatcher; a day for dancing around the maypole, nor for marching in ranks behind sky-pointing missiles; rejoicing in the restoration of the sun, not of the monarchy. So let us all come together in merrie communion, feast, drink and dance, and sing the old Padstow song once more:<br />
Unite and unite and let us all unite, <br />
For summer is a-come unto day<br />
And whither we are going we will all unite,<br />
In the merry morning of May. <br />
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<br />
Bibliography:<br />
<br />
Clifford, Sue & King, Angela (eds.) England in Particular<br />
Steve Roud – The English Year; A Month-by-Month Guide to The Nation’s Customs and Festivals from May Day to Mischief Night<br />
Nick Groom – The Seasons<br />
Sara Hannant – Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids: A Journey Through the English Ritual Year<br />
Roland Hutton - Pagan Britain<br />
Roland Hutton – The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain<br />
Roland Hutton – The Rise and Fall of Merrie England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700<br />
Asa Briggs – A Social History of England<br />
E.P.Thompson – The Making of the English Working Classes<br />
Rodney Castleden – The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts<br />
Iain Sinclair (ed.) – London: City of Disappearances (inc.Alan Moore – Unearthing)<br />
Steve Roud & Julia Bishop (eds) – The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs<br />
Alexandra Harris – Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper<br />
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (14th Edition)<br />
Bob Copper – A Song for Every Season<br />
William Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream<br />
BFI DVD – Here’s A Health to the Barley Mow<br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-35923287401254727552015-04-30T16:33:00.000+01:002015-05-20T23:44:55.710+01:00Chris Watson at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizwNwKqmrY97i9V7upHfMAQZS6H2aOZ3L5H-9Snvs-TU1DKUU2nvY4BJF9S_pkfQ1wMaXVGA6oVS8WW9f4reeulVBRKyDDJy-uw8XfF8MJvwrev597fKOpRfHJQWxLXT18yYjhHL_i0mpv/s1600/chris-watson-recording-at-exminster-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizwNwKqmrY97i9V7upHfMAQZS6H2aOZ3L5H-9Snvs-TU1DKUU2nvY4BJF9S_pkfQ1wMaXVGA6oVS8WW9f4reeulVBRKyDDJy-uw8XfF8MJvwrev597fKOpRfHJQWxLXT18yYjhHL_i0mpv/s400/chris-watson-recording-at-exminster-1.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Sound recordist and musician <a href="http://www.chriswatson.net/">Chris Watson</a> was in conversation at the <a href="http://www.rammuseum.org.uk/">Royal Albert Memorial Museum</a> with RSPB communications officer for the South West Tony Whitehead last night. Perhaps the differentiation between the two endeavours is a false one, however. In response to a question about the influence of his natural sound recordings on his music, Watson replied that he made no distinction between them. He has spoken before about the microphone being his instrument, and a highly versatile and adaptable one at that. Musicians and composers have long attempted to mimic or summon up the sounds of nature, from the shrill marsh bird cries of Japanese shakuhachi players through Beethoven’s programmatic traversal of the countryside in the Pastoral Symphony to Messiaen’s transliteration of avian song .Perhaps electronic musicians have come closest to evoking the complex and profoundly inhuman soundworld of melodic birdsong clusters, the seethe and chitter of insects and the compression and echoing boom of subaquatic depths. Watson mentioned his own indebtedness to Pierre Schaeffer and his musique concrete descendants. He fondly recalled his own early childhood recordings with a portable reel to reel tape machine given as a present by prescient parents. He fixed a microphone to the seed-strewn bird table in the garden, set the reels in motion and retreated inside to see what hungry visitors he might sonically capture with his new magnetic magic box. It was one of those moments, epiphanic in recollection, when a lifetime of vocational creativity is seeded. Bird seeded in this instance. <br />
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Watson, a son of the People’s Republic of Sheffield now resident in Newcastle, spent a decade of discovery and experiment in Cabaret Voltaire with Stephen Mallinder and Richard Kirk from 1971-1981, pre- to post-punk, only recording in the latter years of that fertile period. Working in his attic, a space which was half artist’s garrett, half mad scientist’s lab, the trio played freely with sound, seldom producing anything resembling conventional pop or rock. If they did, it was by accident and would be swiftly discarded. Watson built his own equipment, exhibiting an inventiveness and ingenuity, as well as a readiness to make lateral use of the materials to hand, which would stand him in good stead for the challenges of his future career. He laboured over cut-ups and tape loops, guided his oscillator through undulating frequencies and transformed his organ playing through heavy processing until it sounded less like its instrumental self, more like a generator of sound swarms. He was delighted with the development of synthesisers, and the way that ‘non-musicians’ like Brian Eno used them, and bought an EMS AKS in the latter half of the 70s. It was this which he used on the debut Cabaret Voltaire LP Mix-UP, released in 1979. Watson left the group in 1981, shortly after a visit to the Top of the Pops studios to witness another band performing. Horrified at a vision of what might be, he left to pursue other interests. He did briefly continue his tape and concrete explorations with The Hafler Trio, however, a proliferating project initiated and masterminded by Andrew M.McKenzie and only occasionally and incidentally attaining the status of an actual trio. <br />
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Watson joined Tyne Tees Television as a sound recordist and then returned to that epiphanic childhood moment and worked for the RSPB, recording the sounds of birds and their environments. As he pointed out in his discussion with Tony Whitehead, the production of RSPB films was an invaluable apprenticeship for him and many others who went on to make wildlife films for the BBC. Watson himself is now a highly esteemed wildlife recordist, and has worked on innumerable programmes, including the all-important Attenbouroughs. He mentioned what a privilege it was to work with Sir David, describing him as ‘the perfect travelling companion’. These programmes have given him the opportunity to immerse himself in a hugely diverse range of environments and build up a cumulative sound picture which effectively encompasses much of the globe. <br />
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The detail and texture of sound are very important to him, as is the way in which it is heard. He is mildly disdainful of the compression and diminution of sound transmitted through TV speakers or stereo headphones. He prefers installations in which surround sound set-ups can come nearer to approximating natural sound as it is perceived in situ. The upstairs gallery to the rear of the museum allowed for a wide speaker spectrum, with a bass cone in the middle emitting low frequency rumble. This was ideal for the subsonic sounds of elephants, a harrumph whose vibrations affected the diaphragm as much as the eardrum. Watson pointed out that the fundamental, the root note, was below the range of human perception, so what we were hearing were the harmonics arrayed above it. Close-up recordings of a cheetah purr were similarly deep and resonant, solid waves of physically palpable sound which weren’t so far off from Sunn ((o)) drone power chords. Watson spoke of the musicality of this sound, and of others. There is something very Cageian about his refusal to demarcate between music and the sounds of the natural world. Close listening reveals the musicality inherent in a whole spectrum of living sounds. He also emphasised the intelligence of various animals, exhibiting a respect for life and a scepticism about the primacy of humanity and its assumed position at the head of the great chain of being. Orcas and Vultures seemed to particularly draw his admiration. <br />
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We were treated to a dizzying panoply of natural sounds, from the tiniest shrimps to the mightiest whales. The blue whale recording was not his own, he confessed. It remains his holy grail, a more benign Ahab quest to capture an awe-inspiring call capable of sounding out hundreds of miles of subaquatic space. The whale call truly tested the capacity of the speakers, its submarine frequencies a bone-shuddering groan until pitch-shifted upwards into a more audible range. It still made the chants of Tibetan monks sound like soprano squeaks, though. Watson argues, naturally enough, for the sound picture of a natural environment being as important as the visual aspect. It can be more stimulating to the imagination, and create more of a sense of being vitally present. Sound recording can almost be akin to magic in the way that it transports us to worlds which would otherwise be wholly inaccessible to our senses. We shrink to earwig on insect kingdoms and grow invisible to listen to animals which would shy from the merest hint of human presence. One of Watson’s most remarkable recordings was made by attaching contact mics. to the inside of a zebra’s rib-cage, killed the previous night and already lion-chewed and stripped of its prime cuts. Watson had rehearsed such a set-up on a post-Christmas turkey carcass, rejected by his seasonally satiated family. He recorded the metallic skraw of starlings which soon descended to devour the flesh and pick the bird’s bones clean. The vultures had spotted the zebra’s corpse from way up high and surrounded it, checking out the locale. Watson observed them and noted that they were highly aware that there was something unusual about this piece of carrion, even though he had done his best to conceal his wires and mics. Again, he emphasised the wily intelligence of these wary creatures. It took them some five hours before they eventually set to, beginning their thorough clean-up operation. By this time the unfortunate zebra was engulfed in a dark nebula of flies. The recording floats on the swarming drone of their incessant zzzzzzhhhhhh. Watson suggested that vultures were exactly as you’d expect them to sound – like scimitar slashes of guitar feedback. He was right. It was a remarkable sound, intoxicating yet slightly nauseating at the same time. You could almost sense the overpowering stench of death in your nostrils, an understandable synaesthetic response. Watson took this recording on one of his school visits once, using it to begin his presentation. ‘This is the last sound you would hear before you died, if you were a zebra’, he told the assembly of rapt children. He wasn’t invited back, he ruefully noted. But the kids loved it. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDJ-13CkjO1SB1mQtaOGL50OZU2SzxDQ0eccDzvW-P1W5DXwa90z-mc35U8UJMwragTaggjWxJD4EqAaG97yO2dBLEJ4dyU5_nfwR0owIUun7uRFDoA212JUpwQ9IjYg-b2IdP7edG5JT/s1600/chris-watson-in-conversation-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDJ-13CkjO1SB1mQtaOGL50OZU2SzxDQ0eccDzvW-P1W5DXwa90z-mc35U8UJMwragTaggjWxJD4EqAaG97yO2dBLEJ4dyU5_nfwR0owIUun7uRFDoA212JUpwQ9IjYg-b2IdP7edG5JT/s400/chris-watson-in-conversation-5.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Chris Watson and Tony Whitehead on the Exe Estuary</blockquote>Other sounds were called for by Tony Whitehead and members of the audience, Watson suggesting that it was becoming like a request show. The brief grunt of a cod even received an encore. It sounded like the swinging doors in Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. There was a haddock chorus from a fjord near Bergen, the ambient hum of midshipman fish, the sonic attack of a pistol shrimp, made with its oversized claw, and the grate and scrape of grazing limpets, recorded at high tide in Batten Bay, Plymouth. The tuned percussion of a capercaillie recorded in Scotland apparently attracted the attentions of Bjork, who was so entranced by its inherent musical qualities that she got in touch with Watson and asked if she could use it in a piece of her own. She has since attended one of Watson’s sound recording workshops in Iceland. He joked that she was a useful contact given her facility with a four wheel drive in the remoter wilds of her native country. <br />
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Watson and Whitehead both have an abiding concern with the issue of noise pollution in the modern world and the psychological impact this has on people’s lives. Watson noted that the recordings of starlings he had made 30 years ago, in which they imitated the sounds they heard around them, would be wholly different today. It was a sound picture which acted as a memorial to a world whose sonic character has changed rapidly over the intervening period. He mentioned the activism of Gordon Hempton in America, an ‘acoustic ecologist’ who is attempting to create a notional sanctuary comprising one <a href="http://onesquareinch.org/">square inch of silence</a> in Olympic National Park, Washington State. Watson played his recordings of Orcas in the waters beneath the North Polar ice, emphasising the extent to which they lived in a world of sound; practically in terms of their echo location clicks and socially in terms of their keening calls and cries. He then played a recording in which the combine grind of the approaching icebreaking ship Odin could be heard loudly approaching from some 100 miles in the distance distance. Such noise pollution must have a devastating effect on such aurally sensitive creatures, he pointed out. It has been suggested that loud sonar beacons placed in the oceans to guide submarines have resulted in the mass beachings of dolphins and whales, driven out of their usual territories by this invasive noise. Watson talked of the almost transcendental experience of standing outside Scott’s hut in the Antarctic and reflecting upon the fact that in this quietest of spots he was experiencing a soundworld unchanged since the ill-fated expedition some century before. It was an experience unthinkable in most other regions of the world. <br />
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Watson is concerned with the loss of the ability to really listen. He is disdainful of the blanket use of music in wildlife documentaries. Sound recordings would be much more involving for the viewer, who would then also become a more active listener. I wholeheartedly agree on this point. The use of sweeping string themes, combined with swooping helicopter or crane shots, amounts to a bullying emotional manipulation, akin to being grasped by the lapels, shaken up a bit and yelled at to ‘feel some awe and shed a tear at the spectacle of it all, goddamn you’. Music, humorous or sentimental, also encourages a relentless anthropomorphism which detracts from a true appreciation of the otherness of non-human species. His own observance of quietude included conducting the interview in his socks. As he explained in an interview in The Wire some years back, in which an interviewer made the same observation, he doesn’t ‘like clomping around’. Whitehead shares his interest in quietude. Quietness not as an absence of sound, as both were quick to point out. That would be a highly, well, disquieting experience, an indicator of the absence of life. But quietness in the sense of an environment in which the true spatial depth and density of sound can be appreciated, the individual elements differentiated and their variation over time appreciated. Whitehead has invited sound artists from around the world to send their recordings of quiet environments to him, and he has released some of them on his <a href="http://veryquietrecords.bandcamp.com/">Very Quiet Records</a> label. They range from the island of Jogashima in Japan to Jean-Baptiste Masson’s recordings of the South African bush at midnight, Kalmara Xinsekt’s night sounds in the Amazonian rainforests to Joe Stevens’ birping of spawning Dorset frogs. Together, they form an invaluable soundpicture of the quietude still to be found in the world. <br />
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Chris Watson was a hugely personable speaker, conveying his enthusiasm for sound with quiet authority. His memories and sound-illustrated anecdotes were ably facilitated by the informal and also highly informed Tony Whitehead. A marvellous evening, in the true sense of the word. Chris was here in conjunction with the sound installation currently running in the museum’s back entrance area. The sound picture here shifts from the coastal ebb and flow of the tide through the kelp beds of Maer Rocks, Exmouth, the song of cirl buntings, skylarks and greenfinches in the RSPB managed farmland atop Labrador Bay near Shaldon, Dartford warblers and tree pipits on the Aylesbeare pebblebeds and finally to the oak woodlands of Yarner Wood, dense with the calls of song thrushes, cuckoos, willow warblers, wrens, tawny owls and carrion crows. It’s a fine piece, a sonic journey which takes us seamlessly through four different environments. A little sound bleeding from the geology section below introduces a bit of ambient drone from time to time, but it’s not overly intrusive. Some might argue that it actually adds a further dimension to the experience, although I suspect Watson wouldn’t be amongst them. Natural sound is rich with its own musicality, he would point out, and needs no distracting attempts at enhancement. The sound picture will change with the seasons, offering us pictures for ears from 7 more sites, presumably including those deadly pistol shrimps from Plymouth. CRACK. So go along to the museum, stand by the balcony at the top of the stairs, close your eyes and conjure up your own pictures in sound. In this light filled interior atrium, you will soon be lost in your own interior world. <br />
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Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-33394985631773054362015-04-05T01:59:00.000+01:002015-06-15T21:23:40.996+01:00The Ashton AscensionPART ONE<br />
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The early days of March signal the first tenative stirrings of Spring, a turning time of the year when the bite of winter lingers but begins to cede its supremacy. It was a propitious moment to set off on a quest, a pilgrimage of sorts to discover the mysterious magic of pre-Reformation medieval and Tudor worlds as preserved in three local country churches. We would also be confronted with the jarring juxtaposition of the sacred and the secular, of heavenly and earthly power competing for attention. We would excavate stratified layers of history, occasionally catching a fading echo of some ancient archetypal myth figure, a fleeting peripheral flicker from the imagination of our pre-Christian forbears, still resonating in the carved stone arcades fashioned by medieval church masons. We would struggle up mighty slopes, bow our heads before driving hail and return through owl-haunted darkness. But with hope in our hearts and the shining white tower of the Haldon Belvedere to guide us, we would never give up. <br />
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First we needed fuel, however, and made our rendezvous in the warm and welcoming confines of Café 36 in St Thomas, west of the Exe and beyond the old city walls of Exeter. I, guiding vicar for the day, naturally drank tea. My friend and travelling companion David Chatton-Barker, instigator of the expedition under the aegis of the Folklore Tapes Tramping and Loring series of sonic investigations, washed down his bacon buttie with a cup of coffee. I regarded his hearty repast with a jealous eye. But I had forgotten my wallet, leaving with a paltry pocketful of change. A shorting of what is usually a reflex action upon leaving the flat, it was the first of a series of incidents which imposed an allegorical narrative upon the journey. I was the pilgrim travelling without means of support, trusting in the generosity of providence. We were both fools on bicycle steeds, venturing into the warren of Victorian terraced streets mazing their way to the village of Alphington. It was a bright morning thus far, and we set off at a relaxed and convivial pace. To the west, over the ridge of the Haldon Hills which were our destination, a solid wall of darkness divided the sky, its gloom-doomy front advancing with the steady pace of inexorable fate. <br />
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The hail hit as we approached the iron gates of Pincet Gardens, the words proudly wrought in black and gold Art Nouveau lettering. The gatehouse of these elegant Edwardian pleasure gardens, with their wisteria walk, rose beds and croquet lawn, provided sanctuary from the elements, as it once had for the groundsman, a figure from a publicly-spirited age long-dispensed with. The sheltering arch, and by symbolic extension of Victorian and Edwardian civic rectitude, allowed for the testing of sound levels and the consultation of maps. My Ordnance Survey map of Exeter and its surrounds dated from the inter-war period, the nerve network of local railway lines taking the place of the thick, wormy, blue arteries of motorways to come. It seemed appropriate that we should resort to such dated cartographic means to guide us. We were, in some ways, following in the footsteps or cycle tracks of inter-war British artists and writers like John Piper, Myfanwy Evans (later Piper) and Geoffrey Grigson, who had found inspiration from the medieval art they discovered in old country churches. Figures and faces carved in stone or from wood which appeared to them as immediate and modern as any of Picasso’s work derived from the art of ancient non-Western cultures. <br />
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Passing through the old village of Alphington, with its prospect over the city below, we left the boundaries of Exeter and turned onto an old country road which soon carried us over the Autobahn thrum of the A30. It was a crossing which felt significant, putting the functional roar of hurrying modernity behind us and leading us to older roads; lanes whose sparse usage allowed for ridges of hardy, tufted grass to draw a thick dividing line along their length, a rural version of the central reservation. In the village of Shillingford St George, we paused at a junction marked by an old stone cross, and crouched below the overarching beech tree, hunched against a fresh onslaught of hail. The small, frozen white pellets bombarded the moss landscape atop the flat plateaux of the cross’ arms like tiny meteorites crashing onto remote granite-bedded moorland. The right arm of the cross pointed to a lane which cut across the hillside, and we followed its transverse directions as if it were a signpost, which it may well have been. The dark mass of the hail cloud lumbered east over Exeter and the sky’s blue was all the more cerulean in contrast. There on the hill was the white tower, a radiant beacon capping the horizon of the Haldon Ridge rising above us. Haloed in a baroque nimbus of cumulus cloud, it drew us onward, a destination both symbolic and real. Once we reached this tower, the long, hard climb would be over and we could sail down the other side of the ridge to Ashton on the upper slopes of the Haldons. <br />
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As if to wake us from nebulous, cloudy dreaming and remind us that the tower was still some steep distance away, David’s faithful old steed Victor chose this moment to limp to a halt, its chain slipping off under the strain of steady ascent and firmly wedging itself between gear wheels. The venerable old bike was on its last legs, or spokes, and this was very likely to be one final, epic excursion before it was laid to rest. But it appeared as if the journey might prove too arduous for its aging frame after all. Desperate efforts to lever the chain out with a pitifully inadequate spanner were all in vain. It bent as if made from pliable plastic. Fingers were cut on gear teeth and blood mixed with oil, but even this sacrifice failed to release the chain. The shining tower was beginning to look like a taunting mirage, an elusive dream which would remain forever beyond our grasp. Even a sturdy old bronze key was unable to dislodge the stubborn links. Victor was mulish – he wasn’t going anywhere. <br />
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It was at this point that a Land Rover drove up and turned into the drive of the farmhouse outside of which the recalcitrant old bike was upended. David ran in to request aid and returned with a hefty steel spanner. Proper job! The chain was forced out and reset, the farmer profusely thanked, and we were on our way again. Victor was treated with the respect due to his frail seniority and led gently up any significant inclines, of which there were plenty to come. Reaching the end of the winding hillside lane, we arrived at a crossroads, a symbolic point which really marked the obstacle we had just overcome. The four-armed signpost pointed eastwards to Exeter, the direction in which we would have disconsolately limped had our serendipitous benefactor not happened along. But we now headed west, enjoying a brief descent, freewheeling and cheering, before the inevitable push to the heights of the neck-craning horizon. <br />
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Some distance up the hill, Victor now being pushed up the steadily increasing incline, we took a diversion to the north, following a short lane as it wound down into a sheltered dell. Here the red sandstone church of Dunchideock nestled, adjacent to the monkish quadrangle of a cluster of old farm buildings. We parked the bikes and prepared to walk through the small, unwalled graveyard to the church porch, eager to enter our first church of the day. It was at this point that David began patting pockets and rummaging through his bag with an escalating air of quiet desperation. The painful realisation dawned that his keys had been left lying in the road where Victor had experienced his breakdown. There was nothing for it but to go back and pick them up, hoping they would still be sprawling, keys akimbo, in the central spread, untwisted or flattened by the trundling passage of tractors. So it was downhill and up and turn south at the crossroads. And there they were. But a post van was rapidly approaching, filling up the lane with its purposeful progress and looking unlikely to take kindly to a cyclist dithering in its path. I swiftly stooped and snatched up the keys, pressing myself and my bike into the hedge to allow the envoy of the Royal Mail to pass. We would see him in the distance on several occasions during our journey, his van a small corpuscle pulsing along the hillside roads, a vital force yet, the lifeblood of the countryside. He was almost like a tutelary spirit, a background presence ready to intervene at opportune moments. <br />
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Another obstacle to the quest had been overcome. The third symbolic mishap, the loss of the key. Firstly, I had come out without any money, reminding us of the pilgrim’s need to rely on the generosity of the world and its inhabitants. Secondly, the venerable Victor had become lame, requiring stretches of the journey to be made on foot. This necessitated a slowing of the pace, a slight alteration of the schedule, and led to a more contemplative state of mind .The journey is a fundamental component of the quest, the time in which significant encounters take place and vital lessons are learned. This incident served to remind us of this, the meeting with the farmer being an example of the world providing in our time of need. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to reach your destination, you may find that in your speed to arrive you lose your sense of purpose. The loss of the keys made me retrace our path and notice the storm clouds sweeping over Exeter, slanted hail connecting cloud and earth like smudged pencil shading. The tower above was still illuminated, however, a castle in the clouds, and the hail passed us by. The keys, once retrieved, seemed to represent a symbolic blessing. The way is now open to you, they said. <br />
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I returned to Dunchideock church. A richly rolling nameplace, a pleasure to ennunciate. It’s name, in the old Celtic language, meant the wooded fort. The high places of the Haldon ridge had long been seen as an advantageous site to set up camp. They were now crowned by a white tower which had more recent and far-reaching military connotations, as we were about to discover. It set its gaze far eastwards, but also inward to the mysteries of the human heart. <br />
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I found David wandering around the graveyard, recording its atmospheres and ambient sounds. As often proves the case, the stone garden, planted with the dead, was full of life. Graveyards are often oases of nature, residual respect for sanctified resting places leaving them largely undisturbed. The flat granite and slate planes of gravestones also provide a highly amenable environment for hillocks of moss and the slow-spreading, symbiotic stains of lichens. If the dates on the graves have been erased by weather and time, they can be aged by the extent of the lichenous growth across their surface – the arcane science of lichenometry. There are some splendid specimens in the Dunchideock graveyard; efflorescent orange suns, pale green planetary discs and vermillion nebulae. Whole lichen universes expand across the grey stone, life blooming in a wholly different dimension, a long, slow, silent millennial explosion.<br />
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Mosses also thrive on the stone surfaces, finding root in the clefts formed by the stonemason’s chisel as he carved out memorial words. These are now traced in green lettering, a moist, green language. These growths also spread across the tomb flatlands, arms extending in ecstatic nebular outreach. Elsewhere, ivy eagerly grasps the corners of the tabletop tombs which invite convivial day of the dead feasting. They crawl onto their flat surfaces and crack open exit doors for their inhabitants whilst shielding their names with thickly twined knots of woody vine, allowing them the blessed relief of anonymity. <br />
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The north side of the graveyard was sparsely inhabited. The sun-warmed south side of the graveyard has always been considered more favoured ground. The shadowy north side is more sinister, more prone to intrusions from elsewhere – the Devil’s side. Those buried there might be considered unfit to keep company with the respectable southerners. Those whose lives had been tainted by scandal, who had committed crimes which had not been forgotten, or sorrowful suicides sufficiently beloved in the locality to be granted hallowed rest. Or, of course, those who were simply too poor to gain access to holier ground. <br />
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At the base of the stone arch framing one of the windows on the north side, the carved heads of a monk and nun looked out over the graveyard. Their faces were filled with grace and benediction, red lichen lending them a flush of rubicund life. They had the appearance of graveyard guardians, their calm, assured regard enough to stare down all but the most malevolent and powerful demons. To the north, the darkness was gathering itself together once more and advancing towards. The bright suncreated stark, Manichean contrasts between light and shadow. It was time to seek shelter – sanctuary if you will. <br />
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The interior of the church was neat and compact, a very tidy and well-ordered space. Not that there weren’t a few church spiders in residence, shading in the coiled curlicue at the tip of a crozier or lacing their webs through the wooden vines of the decorated rood screen. The red brick of the exterior was continued inside. Aisle columns were built from local red sandstone, chromatically consonant with the ruddy cast of the surrounding soil. The columns are rough and particulate, compacted amalgams of pebbly matter. It looks like the space around them could have been excavated from the Haldon hillside itself, leaving its bones exposed. That this is a sacralised quarry raised from its subterranean pit. <br />
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The rood screen separating nave from sacristy, the worldly and quotidian from the holy and eternal, looks Victorian. It’s a reflection of the 19th century desire to reach back to a pre-industrial past, retreating into a dream medievalism, conjuring up a simpler world which, of course, never really existed. It does in fact date from the 15th century, but was extensively restored by Herbert Read in 1893. Read had set up business in Exeter as a church conservator and craftsman in 1888, so this was a relatively early job for him. He also carved the wooden pulpit, its facets inhabited by fiercely bearded representations of the missionaries of the early church in Britain: St Columba, St Augustine, St Boniface and St Petrock. They are framed by trailing greenery in which birds alertly perch, plucking succulent grapes and snapping up climbing snails. <br />
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It’s hard not to notice the sizeable marble monument which takes up a large part of the north aisle wall. The wordy white tablet is capped with the black outline of an obelisk at the top of which a medallion-framed relief portrait of its subject is embedded, like an oversized pocket memento of a loved one. A war drum lies on the tomb, its beating silenced, a cessation akin in this case to the termination of the heart’s lifebeat. This is the memorial to Major General Stringer Lawrence, who died in 1775. Sometimes referred to as ‘the Father of the Indian Army’, he was the commander of the East India Company troops (a clear indication of the commercial imperatives behind Empire). His military exploits were instrumental in establishing the British presence in India – of building an Empire in the East. The language on the tomb is unabashed in its imperial pride, celebrating victory and conquest and proclaiming Stringer Lawrence as a saviour ‘born to command, to conquer, and to spare,/As mercy mild, yet terrible, as war’ in the words of Hannah More’s epitaph. <br />
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The memorial was funded by Sir Robert Palk, the Governor of Madras and at one time paymaster to the Indian Army. Stringer Lawrence lived with Palk for the last 6 years of his life in the nearby Haldon House. Hannah More writes ‘in vain this frail memorial friendship rears,/His dearest monument’s an army’s tears’. She could well have been referring to Palk, though. He clearly bore a great love for the old soldier. Not only did he name his son Lawrence, with the Major General acting as his godfather, but he raised a further, even grander monument in the form of the white tower on the hill. Few now recognise it as Lawrence Castle, but such was it designated, dedicated to Palk’s dear friend when the building was completed in 1788. It stands as much as a testament to one man’s love for another as it does to the Major General’s prowess in battle. With such knowledge, the tower becomes something else. A symbol of desolation, isolation, of unassuageable sorrow. Something has gone out of the world, something which you loved above all else, and it’s never coming back. <br />
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A small plaque on the south wall facing the Stringer Lawrence memorial bears much quieter and less triumphal witness to a parishioner who died on the fields of Flanders in the First World War. Similar records can be found in or near almost every parish church in the country. They particularise the terrible, blank magnitude of wartime mortality statistics, rooting them in specific place, in the family names engraved in the graveyard library. The gravestone chapters of lived local history, of generational lineage are brought to a sudden, violent halt. Unwritten pages are torn out of the book of life and cast to the wind. <br />
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The imperial atmosphere generated by Stringer Lawrence’s memorial seems to permeate the rest of the church. The 15th century roof bosses are arrayed in a brightly painted cavalcade of heads and masks, beasts and mythical creatures. A Turk with luxuriant black moustache focuses his bright, sharp gaze down on our craning heads. A crescent is affixed to the brow of his turbaned headdress. Adjacent to him is a lion’s head with a corona of gold mane. Its eyes are wild almonds and a sugary red tongue lolls pantingly out. It resembles stylised Chinese or Indian iconography more than the Christian artistic styles of Western Europe in the late medieval period. The colours are gaudy and gay, boldly carnivalesque, the roof a noisy parade of disparate, wildly contrasting participants. Here are three fish linked in a tail-biting Trinity circle, a plushly red triangular shield their sensual centre. A raw, phallic extrusion, seemingly emerging from the fish’s scales, tentatively probes this sacred ground. Around thethe fishes, golden fruits are slashed open to reveal scarlet flesh. The whole is an amalgam of Western animal symbolism and Indian Shiva lingam, a universal hymn to abundance and generation. <br />
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More symbolism comes in the traditional form of the Green Man. Or is it a foliate head? One such here seems to be a Green Man in profile (‘just carve my best side’), a branch emerging from the side of the mouth to wrap around its head in an oval foliate portrait frame. Its large, exaggeratedly upswerving nose gives it a jesterish look. The gold leaves could almost be bells on its softly pointed hat. The sky blue, red and gold colours make it a creature air, blood and sun as much as wood, leaf and earth. Another foliate face is the flowering bud at the heart of a spiral of light green vine and gold leaf. I am the true vine – a powerful symbol of the uncoiling spring of life’s seasonal cycle. <br />
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The circling vines are echoed in the whimple headdresses which frame the female heads which are present in some number. These are Hollywood Technicolor representations of medieval femininity. But given that they actually date from the late medieval period, the usual grumbles about authenticity are made redundant. This female presence in the church, and the rainbow rejection of grey sobriety the gay boss figures present in general, acts as a welcome counterbalance to the martial, male memorial, with its priapically erect obelisk reaching up to the roof (but not quite reaching its lofty heights). <br />
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This celebratory, polychromatic spirit even spreads to a memento mori skull at the base of a 1697 memorial to one Marthae Bryant. The bony visage is given an gleaming gold gilding, eye sockets glowing with corporeal redness, as if the fires of life were still burning somewhere within. The missing teeth in the jaw hinted at a verisimilitude reproduced with disturbing precision. <br />
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David had not been idle whilst I was on my key-retrieving side quest. He had discovered an old harmonium in a quiet corner of the Lady Chapel and had set to working its wooden pedals and filling the church with creaking, reedy chords and arpeggios – sounding out its sandstone corners and wooden arches and recording the results. The upper E note was fixed in permanent depression, as if someone had become addicted to its keening drone, lost in the expanding clouds of overtones. As David produced a few more chords in my presence, I could almost hear the faint ghost voices of Nico and Ivor Cutler (a very odd duet) drifting in from the aether beyond. <br />
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It was a hypnotic sound. But we couldn’t allow ourselves to drift too long into harmonium reverie. We still had to reach the heights of the white tower, Robert Palk’s shining declaration of pure love and heartbroken loss for his Major General. We emerged to blue skies, the dark sweep of the storm front menacing Exeter safely below us to the east. Onward and upward, we traversed the short lane dipping into the rounded cleft of the valley fold in which Dunchideock nestled and rejoined the road climbing steeply to the summit of the Haldon ridge. In deference to the venerable Victor, this was a walk and push stretch, companionable conversation interspersed with huffing and puffing and other assorted exhalations. Finally, we attained the summit, and were rewarded with stunning views across the Teign Valley to the tor-knubbed horizon of Dartmoor. <br />
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The road traced the spine of the ridge, and we followed its blessedly flat track until we reached our turning, the sign pointing to the downward slope leading to Doddiscombsleigh and Ashton. The white tower was immediately above us, pristinely outlined against luminous blue sky. A plane contrail etched its cloudy line across the outlines of winter branches. We debated about taking a short detour and exploring it, but decided that it would serve us better as a symbol, a tower of fable. The fact that it was now behind us indicated that we had reached the goal to which it had guided us, acting as an everpresent beacon. ‘To the tower and to the ravens’ as Sandy sang, although we had to make do with crows. We had made the ascent, and the route to Ashton was now open to a joyful freewheeling glide. <br />
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The valleys before us, with their folds and wooded slopes, curving streams and sheep-flocked fields, were enveloped in a dreamy afternoon haze softly obscure distances suggestive of nebulous Samuel Palmer Edens. We paused under the power lines strung between the grasping iron arms of pylons which strode in receding formation across the hillside, coniferous plantations magically parting to permit their progress. Their hum and crackle formed the droning ground over which birdsong, a crow of a cock and the passing sigh of a single car were laid – a rich rural mix. There was even a bit of stereo panning as a surge or stutter in the electron flow sent the electric drone pulsing behind us and then ahead before resuming its steady OHM drone. I felt like joining in, adding human overtone harmonies to the technological oscillations. This would sound great mixed with the harmonium respirations, I thought. A blend of exterior and exterior drone atmosphere, the electronic combined with the organic, wood with wire. <br />
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Passing beneath the pylon wires was like crossing some kind of threshold. Shortly thereafter, we entered an avenue of dark evergreen trees, and the Ashton sign appeared at the side of the road. The descent into the village was an exhilarating whoosh, the church tower suddenly appearing above thatched, whitewashed cottages. We parked our bikes at the foot of the church wall and climbed the steep, uneven steps which wound around to the lychgate rising greenly above us. We had arrived at Ashton, the main church on our itinerary. Our quest was reaching its fruition. It was time to pause for a well-earned sandwich in the porch, followed by a celebratory segment of Kendal Mint Cake. Hell, let’s make it two. <br />
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Your Ascension continues here:<br />
<a href="http://sparksinelectricaljelly.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-ashton-ascension.html">PART TWO</a><br />
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And finally descends here:<br />
<a href="http://sparksinelectricaljelly.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-ashton-ascension_15.html">PART THREE</a><br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-64327425815574100212015-02-24T23:46:00.000+00:002015-02-25T00:14:11.746+00:00The Holcombe Rogus Time Traveller<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnukoqQ19pa9CW5i7CGgals4zYYqRcB4CDBxTizManeTovWhB8OdgDkz8-aUa1s1qfwJ33xFhgYOlrn5srmVcAa5YV1qV-v99t6cvjLitrl9-oBqIu0tT5KbhSqIve7IiDSTjUxdj_ZhOZ/s1600/DSCN3295_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnukoqQ19pa9CW5i7CGgals4zYYqRcB4CDBxTizManeTovWhB8OdgDkz8-aUa1s1qfwJ33xFhgYOlrn5srmVcAa5YV1qV-v99t6cvjLitrl9-oBqIu0tT5KbhSqIve7IiDSTjUxdj_ZhOZ/s400/DSCN3295_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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It was a freezing January morning when I lifted my bike off the train at Tiverton Parkway station and wheeled it down the ramp into the carpark. The station is nowhere near Tiverton (it’s actually just outside Sampford Peverell), but it is near the Great Western canal which winds its way across mid-Devon from Tiverton in the West to Greenham and the River Tone in the East (it used to continue as far as Taunton). A telling proximity, given that the coming of the railways meant that the canal never extended its watery vein from Bristol to English Channel as originally planned. It was eastwards that I was bound, to the village of Holcombe Rogus just a short, winding turn of a country road from the Great Western’s terminal tunnel. I pedalled off, crunching the ice glazing puddles and sending the silhouettes of crows flapping into the sky from the skeletal branches of their winter roosts. The path alongside the canal immediately passes beneath a concrete road bridge carrying the busy A361 traffic. It’s a bleakly functional signifier of the decline of the railways, which is why you can no longer get anywhere in mid-Devon (Tiverton included) by train. <br />
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The canal is frozen over, lengths of anchored reed emerging from the pale blue plane of its surface and forming acutely angled peaks. The reflections of these sharply outlined reed strokes combine to create rectilinear groupings of wonky rhomboids. Nature’s formalist abstract compositions. I lose myself in their strangely perfect patterns for a while, but then an electric blue peripheral eyeflash and I immediately look up to see a kingfisher dart in a frictionless glide over the icy channel. I follow its flight in staggered cycle stints, from bullrush perches to branch overlooks to weir post plinths. In the colour drained winter landscape it is a tiny splash of vivid orange and blue life, a mesmerising will-o-the-wisp drawing me inexorably onward. At times it levitates into the air above unfrozen stretches of the canal, hovering blurrily before plummeting with mercurial suddenness into the icy waters. Its beauty is at times quite breathtaking, and I am entranced for a lengthier period than I had bargained for, or had factored into my admittedly extremely loose and largely notional schedule. <br />
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On the other side of the canal, I pass a perfect pastoral scene, sheep grazing beside an oak tree spreading bare branches before a small chapel in the middle of a field the size of a large garden. Had it been a burnished autumn day, it could have been a composition from a Samuel Palmer painting, the Darenth Valley superimposed over the rolling plains of mid-Devon. The building was Ayshford Chapel, dating from the 15th century and attached to the medieval seat of the Ayshford family, a manor which was recorded in the Domesday Book. 16th and 17th century monuments to successive generations of Ayshfords can be found in the church at Burlescombe nearby. From the latter part of the 17th century onward, manor house became farmhouse and, by the looks of it, remains so to this day. The location of a chapel in a farm field occupied by a placidly grazing flock of sheep suggests an obvious symbolism of the sort the more pious Pre-Raphaelites would have used unhesitatingly. It was also an incongruous and delightful sight to happen upon. <br />
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There were techno pastoral vistas to be viewed from the towpath, too, as the canal was paralleled by the striding giant frames of pylons. Crackling lines were held up by upraised, ceramic insulator-braceleted arms sloping from hunched, vorticist shoulders, strung in slackly undulant lines from one giant to the other. They crossed the canal and marched off over the gentle rise of the slope beyond, marking out distance with dwindling perspective as they approached the horizon. Blue reflections in half-frozen water contrasted with the quills of bulrushes on the bankside, coiled and pendant tubes of insulators the hollowed out forms of the erect, solid seed heads, chocolate brown and cigar-shaped. Passing under the power lines, I paused to tune into the harsh electron drone, the white heat overtone hum of modernity. I’m travelling back to the pre-modern age, alongside an early modern industrial transport network. I’ll soon arrive in a time when technologies of the electric (now digital) age, long since taken for granted, would have been considered miraculous, magical and quite possibly the work of the Devil. <br />
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The canal now ends just beyond the twin nooks of old limekilns, entering a dark, narrow tunnel of the sort to produce claustrophobic nightmares, or inspire a ghost story by LTC Rolt or Robert Aickman (both founders of the Inland Waterways Association in the post-war period). Pushing my bike up the slope to the bridge above, I travel the short distance along a contour winding country road to the village of Holcombe Rogus. The church is at the further end of the street which gently winds up between tidy cottages, raising its square, crenellated, copper weather vane-crested tower above them all. It is bordered by the imposing façade of Holcombe Court, a 16th century Tudor house built by Sir Roger Bluett, and inhabited by the Bluett family until they sold the estate in 1858. We will discover a good many Bluett’s inside the church, and will find the divisions so unequivocally demarcated by the manorial walls looming above the humbler dwellings of the villagers below will be replicated in its sanctified but far from unworldly space. The venerable Nikolaus Pevsner says of Holcombe Court that ‘its entrance front is the most spectacular example of the Tudor style in Devon’. The gates are connected to an intercom with attached number code pad, a clear signal for the uninvited to clear off. I take a quick photograph and then briskly retreat before the current incumbents release the hounds. <br />
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Walking up the path to the church, the present started to seem more attenuated, the sense of still suspension engendered by the clear winter chill intensifying the effect. The mud and lack of preservation gloss allowed for a true sense of the surroundings inhabited by our medieval forebears, much more so than many buildings which have been cleaned up, fenced around and littered with signage and presented to us as prime cuts of our heritage. A sturdily buttressed, roughly-bricked building bordered the narrow approach, lying long, heavy and squat. This was once the church house, the hall where the villagers would gather for meetings, church ales and seasonal revels. Festivities would no doubt spill out into the surrounding streets and even into the graveyard and the nave of the church, its public space. The high west wall of the graveyard is also the wall of the Tudor manor house, and its roofs and chimneys rise ostentatiously above its top edge. A door in the wall gave direct personal access to the churchyard for the Bluett family, a private passage and short processional leading to the south porch. <br />
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I enter the porch and turn the iron ring on the oak door upward. The latch inside lifts with a decisive thunk and I push the door open, the creek of iron hinges echoing around the still interior. There is always a slight thrill upon finding an old church open, and knowing that you will now be able to explore its layers of history, to become attuned to its hushed ambience and subtle resonances. These must be haunted spaces to inhabit at night, with only a flickering candle to hold back the murmuring darkness. <br />
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I wander along the aisles of the nave, head craned upward so that it’s a wonder I don’t run slam bang into a pillar or crack my shin on a bench end. It’s not long before I spot my first Green Man, carved on the capital of one of the 15th century stone columns. A two-faced head in peasant’s hood, its features an uncommon portrait of a common villager, folds itself around a corner. Its Janus gaze takes in the unscrolled landscape of historical time and untold visions of far futurity, finding no distinctions between them. The head’s dumbly gaping mouth spews forth plaited oak shoots decorated with acorn cups both empty and full, which garland the columnar circumference. This symbolic figure of the woodlands, emblem of vegetative renewal, has proliferated within the church, manifesting itself on the trunks of several columns. <br />
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One Green Man has leaflike ears and a mild porcine face, hawthorn-like branches and leaves issuing from its gullet. Another capital is carved with a fourfold Green Man, one face for each corner. Their varying moods and visages seem to reflect the shifting tempers of the seasons. One stares blankly with gummy vacancy, hardly there at all. Another looks ferociously out with sharp-eyed, sharp-toothed hunger. And another has a bovine mien, ears devilishly pointed but with the blunt, squared-off teeth of the herbivorous ruminant. A fourth face, thoughtful and human, a wreath of hair crowning the ridges of a bony forehead, looks down on the benches below, the eyes alert and intelligent. They are all tethered together by ropes of ivy which shoots forth from generative mouths, the sprouting language of the greenwood. <br />
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That other perennial inhabitants of medieval churches, the memento mori skull, is also present in bony profusion. Church’s are death-haunted spaces, full of memorials to those who have passed through and beyond. Here is Death etched in slate on the floor, ebony features smoothed by centuries of soles. He wears a wreath, the Emperor of his own domain, and one eye socket has a tiny grain of red lodged in it. He crowns one of the Bluett memorials, kingly pate bounded by a crown, although sans the crown of his teeth, his hollow gaze focussed on an unearthly distance beyond the heraldic eagle and squirrel perching on milky helmets before him. He is at the root of another Bluett tomb, cracked open like one of the squirrel’s nuts. And he is carried by the ghost effigies of the Bluett children like some dark-lit Hallow’s Eve punkie. He is everywhere, inescapable. You cannot evade him whichever route through the aisles you take. <br />
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Low winter light pours in through the windows at the east end of the church. It illuminates the marble globes fixed into smooth craters in the gray, lunar stone of the reredos, the screen behind the altar. It looks like they might long ago have worn the dishes of those craters through repeated rolling rotations. The red, black and grey patterning of the spheres resembles the plateaus, rifts, oceans, deserts and mountain ranges of planetary surfaces, the warmly reflective glow hinting at habitable worlds. <br />
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I ascend the narrow spiral of stairs which used to lead the dizzy climber to the rood screen dividing nave from chancel, secular from sacred, the public from the priesthood. It’s no longer there, the steps ending in empty space, a small rectangle of hardwood acting as a token barrier. The colourfully patterned organ pipes rise in swelling and ebbing graphs, physically charting the relative masses of sound, the volumes of air which will be displaced. I imagine a protean organ chord suddenly erupting from the arrayed pipes, tumbling me back down the stairs in a Peanuts roll. I could potentially jump from the narrow top stair on which I perch, feet placed toe to ankle in a sideways alignment, and land on the roof of the organ, sending up a thick billow of age-old dust like a volcanic ashcloud. But I suspect my dashing leap, Phantom of the Opera theatrics on a parochial scale, would result in my crashing straight through the ceiling leaving me trapped within the belly of the musical beast. <br />
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From the precarious vantage point of the top stair, you can get a close view of the stained glass angels in the upper tracery of the East window arches. Created in 1892, they are Arts and Crafts creatures. But they also look curiously like comic book characters from the 1970s, or golden haired rockers from an album cover by Jim Fitzpatrick. The Victorian artists may have left out extraneous detail which wouldn’t have been visible to the congregation below, but the resultant simplification of form apparent from closer quarters results in a surprising modernity. These are timeless angels. A thread of spidersilk spans one of the angelic panes, anchoring a spun which gently trembles with its seething black cargo. Soon the face of the angel will be occluded by a crawling arachnid shadow of tiny scuttling dots. <br />
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Another pane has a two-dimensional cookie-cutter strip in the form of a clover leaf intertwining with a triangle in a puzzling Escher embrace. The three lobes of the clover the leaf and the three points of the triangle are perhaps symbolic of the Trinity, a linking of the divine symmetry of nature with the ideal geometries born of the rational mind. <br />
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I turn to descend the spiralling stair once more. Halfway down, I pause to look through the diamond lozenges of the centuries old windows. They are frosted with a fine cracquelure of scratches, cracks and webs which seem to have fused the surface, all spotted and coloured with dots and blots of lichen and mold. The windows frame the gravestones, manor house wall, church house and trees, freezing them in a blue-green light. It resembles the gelid tint of the icebound canal. The world outside is lent the semblance of worn and abraded antiquity. It’s as if the speed of light has grown sluggish in its passage through this obscuring glass, and I am looking out at a scene from some indeterminate period of the past. Will I witness a stern figure in Puritan black walk determinedly up to the churchyard gate? Or church ale revellers in medieval tunics stumble out of the church house? I turn from such reveries and tread the last few downward steps to re-enter the main body of the church. <br />
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I cross to the North side of the chancel where a screen brought from St Peter’s in Tiverton in 1854 now encloses the Bluett family chapel. The screens proclaim this as a private space, the Bluetts exercising manorial rights even in death. It contains the elaborate tombs of two generations of the family. Richard Bluett and his Mary Chichester are dressed in sober black, their heads resting on the pleated plates of their capacious ruffs. Richard died in 1616, some years after Mary. His effigy rests on its side, propped up on an elbow, and looks down on the recumbent form of his wife below. His eyes are clear, and the brown-irised pupils shift their gaze sideways to focus upon her face. Mary’s eyes are turned upward, and are glazed with the sightless film of death, focussed on nothing visible in this world. Richard’s lips are full and ruddy, still flushed with life; Mary’s are thin, drawn and pale within her drained marble features. Two panels of text above the couple proclaim her virtues in gold lettering, declaring that ‘a modest matron here doth lye/A mirror of her kind’, being ‘Godly, chaste and hospitable’. <br />
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The subsequent generation, Sir John Bluett (d.1634) and Elizabeth Portman opt for more formal tomb attire and poses and restrict themselves to monochrome marble. He is encased in armour, with a frilly lace collar adding a courtly touch and making it clear that the protective plating is purely ceremonial. His face has suffered some minor damage over the years, however; and a crack across the bridge of the nose and from the mouth to the cheek (the latter appearing as if it has been partially disguised by the growth of a moustache) are suggestive of duelling scars or war wounds. Lady Elizabeth has on her finest dress, with expansively puffed out sleeves making the point that she doesn’t expect to be doing any practical work. They both stare blankly upward at the ceiling of their funerary fourposter, their heads resting on tasselled pillows of stone, hands pressed stiffly together and raised in permanent prayer. At their feet, loyal heraldic beasts keep eternal guard. Elizabeth has a small house dog curled up by her pointed slippers, ready to yap ferociously at any potential desecrators. Sir John has a bushy-tailed squirrel nibbling on a nut clutched in its tiny paws. It’s a creature which also perches atop the heraldic helm crowning the tomb. A perplexing and potentially comical choice. But perhaps the squirrel’s storing up of its nuts represents a pragmatic conflation of the worldly husbandry of wealth with the promise of spiritual fulfilment in the life hereafter. Heaven is a place where you have an endless supply of nuts. The squirrel is, of course, of the red variety, its transatlantic grey hoodlum brethren yet to have been introduced to take over the whole park bench feeding racket in the 20th century. <br />
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At the side of the cold stone bed, the Bluett children obediently line up in an orderly rank. They were all daughters (and thus none could inherit the estate) and they float spectrally in palled marble, gowns sweeping the floor. Some carry flowers, some have hands pressed in prayer, others carry skulls before them. These are the unlucky ones, these bony tokens memento mori of their own early passing, outlived by their parents. I briefly became fascinated by the views of a varying array of intricately twined topknots visible from behind, a rare insight into the details of period hairdressing. <br />
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Both pairs of Bluetts are overlooked by the vague presences of Putti, disembodied infant heads fluttering about with the aid of wings attached to their neck stumps. They look like they they’ve alighted for the briefest moment and, easily distracted, will flit off elsewhere at any instant. On my way out of the chapel, I notice a slab tombstone on the floor memorialising another Bluett along with his wife, Kerenhappuch. What a name! And she lived to the age of 94, dying in 1759. A fine innings, seeing out significant social and constitutional changes, and no doubt aided by the medical advances of the 18th century age of reason. <br />
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Adjoining the Bluett memorial chapel is the Bluett Pew, the living taking their place alongside the dead. It’s a clear statement of continued lineage, of power and wealth (and spiritual capital) inherited and maintained into the present generation and beyond. The tall screens boxing off seats reserved for the Bluetts and guests resemble the rood screen which divided the congregation in the nave from the sacred rituals performed by the priesthood in the sacristy. But here, the division is between titled landowner and commoner. Perhaps a better analogy, then, one devoid of sacred connotations, would be a private box at the theatre or opera. The screen, carved in the early 17th eentury Jacobean period, is topped by 15 oval medallions, each a small theatrical proscenium framing scenes from the early books of the Bible – the Pentateuch. The stars arcing across the borders suggest a bounding firmament containing this earthly stage with in its circling embrace. It’s rather like Shakespeare’s wooden O from the prologue of Henry V, both the Globe theatre and the world at large which it strives to represent on its stage. <br />
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The sequence of narrative tableaux within the medallions is full of vivid life. The carved figures are simplified, but are all the more potently present for it. Eve in particular, who features in three scenes (the temptation, the expulsion from Eden and the raising of the first children, Cain and Abel) is filled with primal power and spirit. She looks timeless, both ancient and new, not rooted in any particular style of the period in which she was fashioned. Suckling the younger child, Abel, she as the look of a mother Goddess figure, an icon of fertility rooted to the landscape in which she sits, and which she also blesses with her fecundity. She is haloed by dusty cobwebs, canopies gilded by silvery sunlight – Our Lady of the Spiders. <br />
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In the temptation scene, Eve reaches up to pick a second fruit to hand to Adam who stands on the other side of the dividing bole of the Tree of Knowledge. She faces us full on, a frontal boldness which makes her the focus of the composition, the active subject. The serpent is knotted in the crown of the tree above, its head hanging down like the questing tip of a parasitic vine. The whole, and Eve in particular, is reminiscent of Gauguin’s treatment of the same subject (in painting and woodcarving). The same direct, elemental quality he found in the art of the South Sea Islands is present here in an English village church. In the expulsion from Eden carving, the angel border guard hastens Adam and Eve on their way with what looks like a well-aimed Chaplinesque boot up the bare backside. Adam pushes Eve ahead of him with a shove to the head, a violent gesture which makes it clear who will bear the blame for this exile and fall. Or is he perhaps simply preventing her from looking back at the paradise garden which they are leaving behind forever. <br />
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Behind them, a palm tree raises a feathery headdress. Trees feature in a number of the carvings, partly as a means of dividing the scene into separate sections. The also act as central props to ensure structural stability. The various stylised specimens range from fluting, tapered columns to the arching trunk of the burning bush (coiled with ivy and tipped with deciduous leaves) and a smoothly-barked, bulbous-based baobab besides which Moses stands. His head is parallel with the top branches, as if he were a towering giant. <br />
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The knotted, worming line of the serpent recurs too. Snakes writhe away from the burning bush and drape themselves in the tree beneath which Adam and Eve raise their children (the lurking poison which will enter Cain’s heart). Moses sets up a copper effigy of a snake as a protective talisman for his people, the sight of which inures them to the deadly effect of the fiery serpents which God has set on them as a punishment for doubting him.<br />
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Some of the figures are wearing the clothing of Tudor times, an anachronism which serves to bring an immediacy to the stories being related. Adam is a gentleman farmer in early 17th eentury ruff and tunic, ploughing the fields whilst a stormy-faced Cain beats the oxen with a stick. The mysterious giant in the first medallion sports Tudor headgear with a feather rakishly attached. Balaam, meanwhile, has something of the look of a Turk about him, complete with broad, bushy moustache. Two later carvings, made in 1858 during a restoration, and depicting Israelite spies returning from Canaan with a huge bunch of grapes and the bearing of the Arc of the Covenant by armed guards, are more open to the possibilities and pleasures of historical fantasia. <br />
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There is much here of the violence and retribution spattering the Old Testament. Cain’s murder of Abel, the primal fratricide which introduces death and murder into the world, is shown in all its brutal, bludgeoning savagery. Balaam’s encounter with the warrior angel which bars his way is pregnant with suspended actions and imminent bloodshed. The angel draws its sword in readiness to kill the disobedient messenger, its scything wings emphasising its muscular power. Balaam in turn beats his donkey, who turns aside from the heavenly assassin to whose presence his master is blind, thus saving his ungrateful hide. Moses raises his dagger to slaughter his son, Isaac, in a sacrifice demanded by God. His killing arm is physically restrained by an angel which leans into the world from the starry border. Moses sits above a thicket of pikes, spears and halberds bristling beyond a battlefield tent. His arms are held up by his brother Aaron and companion Hur. As long as these arms remain upraised (in a gesture of prayer and praise), the battle will go in favour of the Israelites, and Joshua, their military chief, will defeat their enemy, the Amelekites, ‘with the edge of a sword’. <br />
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Another medallion depicts a giant figure (Goliath?) striding towards a richly garbed man with a wine jug at his belt leading an ox (a sacrificial offering, perhaps). The giant holds a sword on which a severed head is impaled like a cocktail nugget. His shield bearing arm is flung out behind him and would appear to have knocked a fool to the ground. This subservient figure tumbles in his wake, grovelling body hunched in a compact, serpentine squiggle. The snake this time takes human form. <br />
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The preponderance of scenes from the life of Moses can perhaps be seen as an illustration of the rectitude of authority and power. Those who oppose Moses oppose God, and they are punished accordingly. The assertion of the divine right of kings was still extant at the time the carvings were created. There was a related sense, propagated by those whom it served, that the social order was ordained by heavenly decree. The tableaux depicting Moses bringing down the tablets from Mount Sinai and chastising the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf; of his remote direction of the course of a battle; and of his protection of his people through the creation of a magical talisman (the copper snake – an acceptable idol). All were illustrations of the rightness of authority, and the wisdom of following the appointed leader. These medallions face outwards from the seats of the Bluetts, the local face of authority and landowing power. They gave something of visual interest for the congregation of commoners to contemplate, to look up to. The establishment of authority and power is also evident in the scene in which Melchisedcck, a king and priest of Salem, pays due homage to Abraham in the victorious wake of a number of battles, and receives a grant of land in return. <br />
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Whatever political message or subliminal lessons might be encoded in the choice of biblical stories and their placement above an enclosure reserved fro the local landowning aristocracy, the carvings themselves are beautifully crafted, the figures full of life and character. I turn from my contemplation of them, neck a little sore from craning upwards, and head for the door. On my way out, I notice another stone-carved figure on a capital at the back of the nave. This one looks as though he might be a king, trimly bearded and crowned .Who could he be? Few of the Tudors sported beards, and he is certainly too gaunt to be the lustily full-faced Henry VIII. An earlier medieval monarch, perhaps. I also notice the Victorian stained glass in the rear window, which depicts the visitation of the three kings and the shepherds to the infant Christ in his stable crib. One of the shepherd’s, ostentatiously robed in purple fur, has bought his bagpipes along and is giving them a full, Dizzy-cheeked blast. I can’t help feeling this is a poor choice of instrument with which to lull a newborn baby. <br />
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I pick up the pen to sign the visitors’ book, and realise that my fingers are too frozen to grasp it firmly. The stone vault of the church is like one great refrigerator. I write my appreciative comments in a palsied script. Outside, the sunlight is approaching its golden hour glory, and I spend a few minutes wandering amongst the graves, their shadows sharp and clearcut. A couple of neat tussocks of moss top the flat plateau of one headstone, their green humps contrasting pleasingly with the smooth, granitic grey – a miniature moorland landscape. As the hedgerows and hilltop copses begin to make intricately brachiated silhouettes against the sky, I realise that it is time to move on. I pass by the church house, now casting its shadow over the muddy path to the church, and push off onto the country road which will lead me to the canal path, and thence once more to the age of future present. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-7386875427471905922015-02-11T20:53:00.001+00:002015-02-11T20:53:03.368+00:00Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination at the British LibraryPART TWO<br />
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Charles Dickens is the perfect figure to usher us into the Victorian world, and into the dark, narrow and crowded streets of the rapidly expanding, noisily industrial capital. A clip of the recent BBC adaptation of Bleak House, with Gillian Anderson as a ghostly Lady Dedlock, shows us the scene in which Jo the crossing sweeper takes her to the gates of the paupers’ cemetery. The bones lie on the surface in some parts, and Jo remarks of the man she is searching for (known only as ‘Nemo’ at this point) that ‘they put him wery nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to get it in. I could unkiver it, with my broom, if the gate was open’. He then excitedly points out a rat, which runs into the ground to feast. This depiction of the bodies of the dead protruding from their shallow graves, seen through the eyes of a streetchild for whom it is wholly unremarkable, is a grim Gothic touch which Dickens drew from factual observation. Victorian London was, for many, a Gothic city, but one marked by poverty and squalor rather than elegantly decaying castles and crypts. A staggered pile of booklets on display were a reminder of the part published format of the book, episodically issued in 1852. The public would devour the story in monthly instalments, eager to discover what happened next. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdhMSJj6odi4jNMWLW7cJlewFwtZZxM7Hf0zKirEHiXzFvSTERm64WCxtM5p6vUeGMt7XpLd68tQ2i7-JPa1P39bA5b1N3YBMIaqtEizbcx9fwMLtuwAYf2_UqQSAZsbyn3Tp4Z8hxMq-c/s1600/lady+dedlock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdhMSJj6odi4jNMWLW7cJlewFwtZZxM7Hf0zKirEHiXzFvSTERm64WCxtM5p6vUeGMt7XpLd68tQ2i7-JPa1P39bA5b1N3YBMIaqtEizbcx9fwMLtuwAYf2_UqQSAZsbyn3Tp4Z8hxMq-c/s400/lady+dedlock.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Woman in Black - Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House</blockquote>Gothic had become a flavour or shade which could be added to the kind of multilayered work of which Dickens was a master. It might be associated with a a particular character, plot strand or setting. It was a transferable style which could be employed in a variety of contexts. Dickens wrote a number of ghost stories as well, including The Signalman, an enduring classic of the subgenre, and the collaborative collection The Haunted House, whose framing story (written by Dickens) introducing separate tales anticipates the Amicus portmanteau films of the 1960s and 70s. It was a form which would become increasingly popular as the Victorian period progressed. It was an era much preoccupied with mortality and the memorialisation of the dead. The great necropolises which were built on the outskirts of the rapidly expanding urban centres were themselves like miniature cities of the dead. They would prove ideal Gothic locations, particularly as the years added attractive layers of gentle ruination and ivy entanglement. For Dickens, the Gothic could also encompass an element of social comment or psychological portraiture. The graveyard in Bleak House is disturbing for its exposure of appalling poverty as much as the rat-gnawed bones of the dead. Lady Dedlock drifting blankly through Chesney Wold and Miss Havisham presiding over the cobweb-strewn Satis House in Great Expectations are both spectres prematurely haunting their decaying homes. They are portraits of mental and moral paralysis. <br />
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For Dickens, the true Gothic locale was not a remote, ruined abbey or centuries old castle but the dark alleys and dilapidated houses of London. Its gaslit Gothic atmosphere is perfectly captured in the engravings Gustav Doré produced for the book London, A Pilgrimage, a journalistic record of travels through the city which highlighted the huge gulf between the rich and poor. Plates depicting the rookery of Bluegate Fields, the night-time pavement sellers of Harrow Alley in Houndsditch, the ragged wraiths working in the Lambeth gasworks and the mazes of back to back terraces in the sooty shadow of arcing railway viaducts are densely shaded with an almost palpable darkness. <br />
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The Gothic followed in the wake of mass migrations from field to factory and relocated to the city. Urban Gothic was formed in the choking fogs of London; fogs like those described in the opening scenes of Bleak House, in which Dickens imagined the possibility of encountering ‘a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill’. The primeval swamp seeps through into the streets of the modern city. Urban Gothic bred its own monsters and mythologies which were promulgated in the rough pages of the Penny Dreadfuls and Penny Bloods. These episodic works featured sensational cover illustrations which dramatically depicted scenes of horror and bloodshed. Precursors of the EC comics of the 50s, their potential effect on the minds of the masses who read them occasionally troubled the moral guardians of Victoria’s realm. But they generally fell so far below the literary lighthouse beam that they escaped any real censure. The dreadfuls introduced the likes of Varney the Vampire, with his impulsive thirst for blood; Sweeney Todd, the demon barber and fresh meat merchant; and Spring Heeled Jack, a proto-supervillain who could effortlessly leap over the rooftops of London, and who gradually morphed into an enigmatic superhero in the Batman mould. A copy of The Mysteries of London by George WM Reynolds was also on display, explicitly inviting the reader imagine their city as a labyrinth of hidden terrors, lurking and ready to spring. The prolific Reynolds also wrote an early werewolf tale with his 1846-7 series Wagner the Were-Wolf. Some of Dave McKean’s original full-colour illustrations for the Batman story Arkham Asylum were displayed as an example of a modern version of the urban Gothic of the Penny Dreadfuls. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFty3bT9SEDV3BUG12qLag_79q0oBlZtU7v7-EqmQ9hzJVPe79OTXbsvatsRdZyup54c-1uKOpoT29KkAu9veQvapd6lnBIuKSVN4hKgCpdq-Sdk8zFg7wscG8RVp9n00yMy3FLWtc0O89/s1600/poe+wilson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFty3bT9SEDV3BUG12qLag_79q0oBlZtU7v7-EqmQ9hzJVPe79OTXbsvatsRdZyup54c-1uKOpoT29KkAu9veQvapd6lnBIuKSVN4hKgCpdq-Sdk8zFg7wscG8RVp9n00yMy3FLWtc0O89/s400/poe+wilson.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Harry Clarke's illustration for Poe's William Wilson</blockquote>Edgar Allan Poe was a central (perhaps THE central) figure in mid-19th century Gothic literature, and his morbid sensibility spread like an enervating virus, distilling fever dreams from the unconscious underworld of a motley spectrum of writers and artists, from French Decadents through Edwardian illustrators of children’s books to subversive Surrealists. One of Poe’s letters was on display, allowing us to inspect his neat handwriting and feel a sense of communion with the man who wrote it. Truth to tell, it doesn’t provide a very edifying portrait. Addressed to Fanny Osgood, one of a series of women with whom he became obsessed in his short lifetime, and whose patronage and hospitality he frequently called upon, its fulsome and fawning praise of her literary efforts is embarrassingly transparent in its bid for her favour. Poe’s influence on the late Victorian and Edwardian imagination is clearly visible in the illustrations from various editions of his work. On display here were Edmund Dulac’s plate for The Raven, Harry Clarke’s for William Wilson, Arthur Rackham’s for The Oval Portrait and John Buckland Wright’s woodcut for The Tell-Tale Heart. Presiding over this gloomy Poe corner was the magisterial voice of James Mason, narrating the expressionistic 1953 animated interpretation of The Tell-Tale Heart, with designs by Warner Bros. background artist Paul Julian, who would, appropriately enough, go on to work with Roger Corman. Mason explains his actions in a patient and scrupulously rational manner: ‘it was his eye, yes, that eye. His eye, staring, milky white film. The eye, everywhere in everything. Of course I had to get rid of the eye’. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieKgee4c57Waq5gxofeby1RJeaWacrXumLb05tuhGIMxaKeGBcDpAJlZmstCjVCk8v0WrYsFzM1GPUgVDE5Z05FuJN_elbBj2tqDFEeD_DHjBcXrx5gIf0Q-pQaRsJDDn3mPJ5jh-j_3I_/s1600/the-mask-of-the-red-death_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieKgee4c57Waq5gxofeby1RJeaWacrXumLb05tuhGIMxaKeGBcDpAJlZmstCjVCk8v0WrYsFzM1GPUgVDE5Z05FuJN_elbBj2tqDFEeD_DHjBcXrx5gIf0Q-pQaRsJDDn3mPJ5jh-j_3I_/s400/the-mask-of-the-red-death_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Aubrey Beardsley's illustration for The Masque of the Red Death</blockquote>Poe’s work certainly informed the Yellow Book Decadance of the fin de siecle period, the dying days of the Victorian period. A copy of the Yellow Book was on display here. And indeed its cover was an exquisite shade of yellow, an instantly distinctive object to be seen with tucked under your arm, connoting an all-embracing aesthetic worldview. One of Aubrey Beardsley’s Poe illustrations was also on display, a depiction of a scene from The Masque of the Red Death, full of leering, deformed grotesques and limp, opiated beauties. Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray was presented as the emblematic story from this movement, a self-reflexive myth for, and about, its participants. It’s a mythic encapsulation of the cost of the pursuit of excess and all-consuming sensual indulgence cast in Gothic form. The figurative is made manifest and hidden away in the attic. Wilde was the public spokesman for the Aesthetic movement (French-style Decadence in all but name). His elegant dandyism and elevation of the passing witticism into an exquisitely crafted artform promoted the idea of art as an all-encompassing worldview, affecting mannerisms and modes of dress as much as any actual creative artefact which might be produced in time remaining. This was a philosophy which would resonate throughout the 20th century, finding expression in the theatricality of latter day Goths as well as the self-reflective (or obsessed) art of the likes of Gilbert and George and a number of the YBAs. Indeed, there were some works by the Chapman Brothers later in the exhibition. Wilde’s own penchant for the Gothic, as well as his conflation of life and art, were displayed in the calling cards he had printed after he emerged from Reading Gaol. He cloaked himself in the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth, adopted from Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer. Wilde thereby cast himself as the cursed exile who had made an ill-advised pact with the Devil and is now fated to tread a lonely, immortal path through the world. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQt0Cfuje3wg3fF1ndhWG2jcDJ6_pNqwTW6eGZEw0HJdSwgShD5sk6Tegc1V8cvg5TC8G7pat_Ivgh5bflwj5wQQZG4HyQx7qZTe5OEe2toAm5SlfxilCBbQcPGxJIdtf1DBKDYkdR28xW/s1600/Richard_Mansfield_Jekyll_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQt0Cfuje3wg3fF1ndhWG2jcDJ6_pNqwTW6eGZEw0HJdSwgShD5sk6Tegc1V8cvg5TC8G7pat_Ivgh5bflwj5wQQZG4HyQx7qZTe5OEe2toAm5SlfxilCBbQcPGxJIdtf1DBKDYkdR28xW/s400/Richard_Mansfield_Jekyll_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>Richard Mansfield as Jekyll...and Hyde</blockquote>Another key work of the late Victorian period was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, originally published in 1886 as a Shilling Shocker (a complete work as opposed to the Penny Dreadful’s serialisations – hence the slightly inflated price and altered alliteration). Stevenson’s story is a subtly suggestive study of the duality inherent in the human psyche, its terrors remaining relatively subdued. It was the hugely successful theatrical production of 1887, written by JR Sullivan and starring Richard Mansfield in the twinned title role(s), which changed the tone of the story, and set the pattern for future adaptations. The bifurcation into ‘good’ and ‘evil’ selves, or rather selves which suppressed the desire for sensual pleasure and gave it full, destructive reign. Jekyll and Hyde became another myth of fin-de-siecle Decadence, a companion piece to The Picture of Dorian Gray. Richard Mansfield’s performance was particularly noted for its remarkable transformation scene, aided by theatrical lighting and make-up. A photograph displayed here gives us an idea of the thrills which the Victorian theatregoers would have experienced. Using the developing room magic or double exposure, we see the upright Dr Jekyll, face a saintly picture of benevolent intentions, transformed into the hunched, bestial figure of Hyde, hands clawed and poised to grab whatever they can grab a hold of. Hyde really does appear to be a shadow self in this photograph, a parthenogenetic homunculus tearing itself free from its noble progenitor. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht0Dqmpk9IcxgpcMULEuUYSMQtXaIUlkL8re5gITlhyphenhyphend7TMsx87QxeFxPf-sOCv4p5SaA5i2fqKZjt5zY-hUMyHlEHhKWXAhy0KIa8RU3vNccPjphCMfurZdbIPWSzBOMoQBBJ5PzHrWxY/s1600/from+hell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht0Dqmpk9IcxgpcMULEuUYSMQtXaIUlkL8re5gITlhyphenhyphend7TMsx87QxeFxPf-sOCv4p5SaA5i2fqKZjt5zY-hUMyHlEHhKWXAhy0KIa8RU3vNccPjphCMfurZdbIPWSzBOMoQBBJ5PzHrWxY/s400/from+hell.jpg" /></a></div><br />
The theatrical production of Jekyll and Hyde, which Stevenson professed to hate, was running at the time that the Jack the Ripper murders began to impinge on the public consciousness in 1888. The two became superimposed in the minds of many, Jack and Edward Hyde becoming mirrored selves. Theatrical fiction and factual speculation percolated together to form the beginnings of the potent myth which distilled the dark essence of late Victorian London. The city of terrible night, its narrow Whitechapel streets filled with the stench of poverty and despair. One of the most startling exhibits was a work of fiction purporting to be fact; another example of the fakery which seems to play such a prominent part in the history of Gothic (and which lives on in ‘found footage’ horror movies). A letter written in red ink boasting of murderous exploits and promising more horrors to come is signed Yours Truly Jack the Ripper (‘Don’t mind me giving the trade name’). Undoubtedly a hoax, it has nevertheless accumulated a certain amount of legendary cachet, being the first of a welter of such fevered missives, stoked by sensationalist newspaper reportage. Alan Moore, in his kaleidoscopic Ripper epic From Hell, has two journalists from the Daily Star compose the letter in a Wapping flat, giving the public a fiend whose luridly outlined exploits they can gorge themselves on (in the page of The Star, of course). <br />
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Robert Bloch’s story Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper draws on the letter’s signature, and imagines Jack as an immortal who surfaces in various eras to commit his ritualistic killings, which serve to keep him alive. The subsequent pairing in Harlan Ellison’s 1967 Dangerous Visions anthology of Bloch’s A Toy for Juliette and Ellison’s own A Prowler In the City At the Edge of the World takes as its basis the way in which ‘Jack’ was transformed into an almost supernatural figure, an elusive trickster constantly eluding his pursuers with mocking ease. He was an inheritor of the powers of Spring Heeled Jack, and a precursor of the regrettable archetype of the superhuman serial killer in modern culture. Harlan Ellison reduces him to a pathetic puppet of greater, more debased forces at the end of his story, a conclusion which has considerable moral and allegorical force, and once more addresses the role of the media in creating and feeding an appetite for such atrocities. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0QZtpxPlltPIrnlXo6fCLQSTrX9_7NuiAcEzuDt2UCzRugZKM1Ra8BbxjextdKXjt9Mf8l0MLrRWfpzKEAJTF_DOcSVI1F6VHSOoRkpqWrIDbBw0r1IfShnZ19Rg2ea6mutIRVYQSgj5/s1600/lodger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0QZtpxPlltPIrnlXo6fCLQSTrX9_7NuiAcEzuDt2UCzRugZKM1Ra8BbxjextdKXjt9Mf8l0MLrRWfpzKEAJTF_DOcSVI1F6VHSOoRkpqWrIDbBw0r1IfShnZ19Rg2ea6mutIRVYQSgj5/s400/lodger.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Laird Cregar in the 1944 version of The Lodger</blockquote>The Ripper murders, as filtered through Jekyll and Hyde and proto-tabloid journalism, gave rise to Belloc Lowndes’ 1911 novel The Lodger. The entrance of Ivor Novello’s titular character in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1926 film version, face disguised beneath the mummifying wrap of a scarf , ragged wisps of illuminated fog dissipating behind him, is an electrifying expressionistic rendering of the mystery and fear fuelling the ever-expanding Ripper mythos. Actually, the 1944 version of The Lodger, with a mesmerising performance by Laird Cregar at its heart, better evokes the social gulfs within Victorian society which the Ripper murders so horrifically exposed. It’s also interesting to note the narrowing gap between literary source and cinematic adaptation. Only 38 years separate The Lodger from the Ripper murders and Richard Mansfield’s theatrical transformation into Hyde (and 32 from the 1920 John Barrymore film), the cinema from the music hall, the gas lamp from the electric light, the horse drawn Hackney cab from the motor car. They really do seem worlds apart. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvMNKt2kfysfmkjot0dtG4InUzrjcml3-4HGfL1v2k_T_wIUYb8dV1pmxd9btv_uC2uAujVmhq17eYavkdAqBQzfpSGqQfVPxfqhoje1ZLbmb27AZ6_slLIhMlr7AX1So6fIxluJ3S6IOv/s1600/dracula-first-edition2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvMNKt2kfysfmkjot0dtG4InUzrjcml3-4HGfL1v2k_T_wIUYb8dV1pmxd9btv_uC2uAujVmhq17eYavkdAqBQzfpSGqQfVPxfqhoje1ZLbmb27AZ6_slLIhMlr7AX1So6fIxluJ3S6IOv/s400/dracula-first-edition2.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>First edition of Dracula in fin-de-siecle yellow book covers</blockquote>The final work from the late Victorian period explored here is of such moment that it merited a whole room to itself. The visitor was obliged to make a detour from their natural winding progression through the exhibition’s dimly lit corridors, turning into this sealed off sepulchre which immediately felt like a sacred space. Indeed, so caught up was I in the cultural current leading me eagerly on from one thematic display to another that it wasn’t until I’d reached the end and exited into the light of the British Library’s lofty atrium that I paused and thought ‘hang on, there was something missing there’. Retracing my steps, I discovered the hidden sanctum which I’d initially passed by. The book in question is, of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, first published in 1897. Its influence on the horror genre and on popular culture in general is pervasive and profound, and anything in this compacted space could offer a partial survey at best. The literary exhibits were particularly fascinating. There was a pleasing congruity to the inclusion of some of the books which Stoker consulted in the British Library whilst researching the background of his story. Perhaps some of them were even the same copies. <br />
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Of particular significance was a book written by William Wilkinson, Esq., ‘Late British Consul Resident at Bukarest’, which blended colonial memoir, history lesson and traveller’s tales, and was given the fustily prosaic title An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldovia: With Various Political Observations Relating to Them. Stoker initially read this not at the British Library but in the subscription library in Whitby, the seaside town on the Yorkshire coast where he was staying for his summer holidays in 1890. The historical passages make reference to King Ladislas of Hungary forming an alliance with the Wallachian Voivode Dracula in 1444 to fight the Turks. It was in Whitby, therefore, that Stoker found the name for his vampire lord, although he would transform him from a prince (voivode) into a count. There was no such noble rank in Wallachia in the 15th century, but the baleful influence of Lord Byron together with the antics of his acolytes on the European continent had created an indelible impression. Vampires and Gothic villains in general had become strongly associated with dissipated Western European aristocrats. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0AxEdbJmY5oAlFanOFqqVwqzpBT4s_HzxHpcqDmshjPSifY3nTSEw3p42TVYmVai_wgzT9IxQZCSaTtfjkXZxRhsz71kFRp-BhK9GU_1kDTZUVb6Y8kn90XzAjcOqAlmSJVeXGZQ28Giv/s1600/dracula.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0AxEdbJmY5oAlFanOFqqVwqzpBT4s_HzxHpcqDmshjPSifY3nTSEw3p42TVYmVai_wgzT9IxQZCSaTtfjkXZxRhsz71kFRp-BhK9GU_1kDTZUVb6Y8kn90XzAjcOqAlmSJVeXGZQ28Giv/s400/dracula.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>The illustration included in the 1901 edition of Dracula</blockquote>Stoker followed the established convention by ennobling his title character, even though he envisaged him as a stout military figure with a thick Central Eastern European moustache. This explicitly described appearance (roughly reproduced in the illustration in 1901 edition) would seldom be acknowledged in subsequent adaptations. Wilkinson also notes that Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. This could connote evil, although it could also use refer to the folk devil as a trickster figure. As such, it could be used in a complimentary sense as a badge of bravery or ingenuity in warfare or matters of state. Wallachia was also entirely separate from Transylvania, but such cavils are irrelevant. Dracula is not a historical novel, and the local colour and geographical detail Stoker derived from Wilkinson’s book and other accounts of the area provided a richly mysterious and haunted backdrop for Jonathan Harker’s arduous journey to Dracula’s castle and the final pursuit through the Transylvanian landscape. The mountainous and thickly forested world which he conjured up from his reading room travels was shrouded in fogs of superstition and venerable custom. Journeying there was akin to falling back in time to a pre-industrial era, leaving behind the nascent modernity of the late Victorian period in which electric lighting was already beginning to banish the shadows and returning to the Middle Ages. It was a reiteration of the Gothic’s abiding delight in resurrecting the spectres of primitive (and imaginary) histories which contrasted with the comforts of the present. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsvFhxHhbM5Gzrx2C0lO4E7IFSmeA-Ms-O_BtCB_cuJ4SbkYARs9VyTo70wmiJ847MYzJ6cIGxckR-7tyIXijmm1lulMxGdAf-CnD-YIpiRp0w8BYJ5l9rcFE4fcqfGtvI-kYRF4M5VEF0/s1600/DSCN7083_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsvFhxHhbM5Gzrx2C0lO4E7IFSmeA-Ms-O_BtCB_cuJ4SbkYARs9VyTo70wmiJ847MYzJ6cIGxckR-7tyIXijmm1lulMxGdAf-CnD-YIpiRp0w8BYJ5l9rcFE4fcqfGtvI-kYRF4M5VEF0/s400/DSCN7083_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_osU73IQSGqSaOF6KDfwmiMgTHQU67eBvlpttnxSllm-sjy5heD4MC8H6LjPdfgP3fj8hU1FeOWeW8f43_RVFCorr_VqUucxmfp1-IUwHdtYu4ZkiJmlvTcUglSUXPQyu4KflPlBEexKh/s1600/DSCN7086_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_osU73IQSGqSaOF6KDfwmiMgTHQU67eBvlpttnxSllm-sjy5heD4MC8H6LjPdfgP3fj8hU1FeOWeW8f43_RVFCorr_VqUucxmfp1-IUwHdtYu4ZkiJmlvTcUglSUXPQyu4KflPlBEexKh/s400/DSCN7086_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>The demons of Lewtrenchard</blockquote>Another book which Stoker consulted, Charles Boner’s Transylvania: Its Products and its People, contained fold-out maps (one of which was spread out here) which facilitated imaginary exploration, mental expeditions into the Carpathian Mountains via the Borgo Pass. Also on display was the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Were-Wolves, a collection of legend and lore which provided the inspiration for the wolves Dracula heralds as ‘the children of night’, and for his own transformation into a great hound which leaps onto the shore of Whitby from the deck of the wrecked Demeter. Baring-Gould was the parson of Lewtrenchard church, nestled in the shady valleys west of Dartmoor. In addition to collecting local folklore and folk music, he was a dedicated antiquarian, endeavouring to save the church furnishings and decorations of the Gothic period which other Victorian clergymen were busy discarding and destroying. His small church is a treasure house packed with objects rescued from diverse parts, restored and refitted. And hidden on the side of the pulpit facing the east wall are a pair of grinning demons carved from wood by the Pinwill sisters, Esther and Violet, in imitation of medieval originals. They would certainly not have looked out of place in Dracula’s castle. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPbQamObshfEuPkZ7s0oH3FYf9y1-lwrCXWWeNU2hjwEoFxykXEw4Zud4JJ0vdhwtbRNF3sZpFTKHe5pL1P0lD6twpn1icTMHkZJr3ZeEKNQDf0sBlrh0IUdActqtWNc5sGaAE4tt5ND6/s1600/DSCN7085_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKPbQamObshfEuPkZ7s0oH3FYf9y1-lwrCXWWeNU2hjwEoFxykXEw4Zud4JJ0vdhwtbRNF3sZpFTKHe5pL1P0lD6twpn1icTMHkZJr3ZeEKNQDf0sBlrh0IUdActqtWNc5sGaAE4tt5ND6/s400/DSCN7085_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3V1743dQ1eqQAHhYPYjmxp8PNNs8iQxzTT8rgDJHq4IyJhRM1noB8HYPEyYHSCf4F_kSP4HEiBv8ZZpzYLZXzLSVGgMz8WgV0ewgZD2CYTEP0xXsPuOcxXeW3LgDD1utQ1rsO4SDYjc2/s1600/DSCN7139_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM3V1743dQ1eqQAHhYPYjmxp8PNNs8iQxzTT8rgDJHq4IyJhRM1noB8HYPEyYHSCf4F_kSP4HEiBv8ZZpzYLZXzLSVGgMz8WgV0ewgZD2CYTEP0xXsPuOcxXeW3LgDD1utQ1rsO4SDYjc2/s400/DSCN7139_01.JPG" /></a></div><blockquote>More demons lodging in Lewtrenchard - call for the Rev. Sabine-Gould, demon hunter</blockquote>Also included here was a manuscript Stoker wrote for a theatrical version of his novel. Scrappily assembled, with passages cut and pasted from the printed page, this was evidently dashed off with great haste. It was an exercise to establish theatrical copyright and prevent others from hijacking his ideas, distorting them and profiting from the thinly veiled results. Perhaps he had the success of JR Sullivan and Richard Mansfield’s Jekyll and Hyde in mind. It also suggested that Stoker was highly conscious of the fact that Dracula was a work which had the potential for broad popular appeal. The script formed the basis for a theatrical reading at the Lyceum Theatre in 1897, staged concurrently with the novel’s publication. Present in the select audience was Henry Irving, the actor-manager for whom Stoker acted as personal assistant and factotum in all things. Irving was an imposing figure, an archetypally demanding and egotistic theatrical, and a dominant force in Stoker’s life, source of both reverence and fear. Some have claimed him as a model for Dracula. Its certainly likely that some of his characteristics found there way into the portrayal of the commanding count. His approval or even mild encouragement was vital for Stoker; but all he received after the show was brusque brush-off. The self-absorbed Irving had no time to dispense the words of praise he demanded and required for himself. <br />
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Projected onto the back room of the Dracula room were scenes from the finale of FW Murnau’s 1922 film Nosferatu, expressionist shadows taking on a life of their own, extending grasping claws ahead of the rodent-toothed creature casting them. Stoker’s worries about the unauthorised appropriation of his material seems to have been justified, since the German company who produced the picture, Prana Films, had made no effort to seek approval for their adaptation. The widowed Florence Stoker’s attempts to gain recompense merely resulted in the company going bust. In order to discourage further such incidences, she managed to get a court order requiring all copies to be destroyed. Fortunately, this celluloid auto-da-fé wasn’t altogether thorough in its execution, and surviving prints resurfaced in later years. As a result, we can still enjoy what has become established as an enduring classic of German expressionism and cinematic Gothic. Stoker’s character and vampiric lore would soon spread with the exponential infectiousness of a blood-borne virus, putting it well beyond any possibility of containment. <br />
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The exhibits here briefly sampled the cultural shadow cast by Dracula over the long decades of the 20th century. His looming presence was in some ways a counter-reaction to the forces of modernism and rapid technological progress; a renewed example of the Gothic finding inspiration and escape in a time of social transformation through the resurrection of the past. The character as Stoker envisaged him was eager to embrace the possibilities afforded by new technologies and economic channels. That was the reason for his move to England. But this is one of a number of the novel’s aspects (including his Eastern European military bearing) which have been abandoned in successive cinematic incarnations. Christopher Lee’s repeated pleas to the Hammer hierarchy to return to the book as a direct source fell on deaf ears. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjySluHkrj7S8pW60YC1ybV8kY81EPieXbbya_soYMih5hI_tbPJxyGMullthu9WpK0OLszLCfZdpc19o-Exp7jzLUyybrontzwyVgq0B7-WjiMRONIh1amNHYNJsRZshGMrmnYyRWXKVRN/s1600/vampire.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjySluHkrj7S8pW60YC1ybV8kY81EPieXbbya_soYMih5hI_tbPJxyGMullthu9WpK0OLszLCfZdpc19o-Exp7jzLUyybrontzwyVgq0B7-WjiMRONIh1amNHYNJsRZshGMrmnYyRWXKVRN/s400/vampire.jpeg" /></a></div><blockquote>Vampire - Edvard Munch</blockquote>The female vampire had already found its way into the broader European literary and artistic stream as a symbolic character. In Baudelaire’s poem The Vampire it stands as a very French metaphor for the destructive nature of love, and the fear of the devouring woman. It was also a stock pre-Freudian fever dream figure in Symbolist art, an image to set alongside the many personifications of Death in chill Nordic and Baltic landscapes. Edvard Munch’s Vampire, aka Love and Pain (1894), could almost be an illustration for Baudelaire’s bitterly misogynistic poem. Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Vampire was a rather surprising inclusion in the exhibition, serving as a representation of these literary adoptions, and another version of the vampire as belle dame sans merci. Appropriately enough, it was written in 1897, the year of Dracula’s publication. He’s certainly not somebody you’d associate with such Decadent company. But then he’s a writer to whom many misconceptions have become attached over the years. The printed poem was accompanied by an illustration by Philip ‘son of Sir Edward’ Burne-Jones, an explicitly erotic tableau which bears some relation to Fuseli’s Nightmare. It was this image which gave birth to the poem in Kipling’s imagination, an example of visual art exerting a direct influence upon literature. <br />
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Edward Gorey’s Dracula toy theatre brought his mordant drawings to marvellous pop-up life, and demonstrated the broadening appeal of the whole mythos. The sets are actually models for the stage designs he produced for the 1977 Broadway production of Dracula. His lugubriously amusing figures prove eminently suitable to the novel’s characters and scenarios. A slight element of mockery is appropriate given their familiarity at this stage, but is obviated by the beauty and care with which they are drawn. And his Dracula has a moustache! A lovely artefact for Gothic children to exercise their morbid imaginations upon – the cardboard Lucy Westenra’s head can easily be stuck back on with sellotape. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDBy6YldXS74zYwIknEDMoOajD8ddBD6cEwt_bEiDp6D7aGb4weXp5_XHi7MUXBg4rlYKAneH7YnqZWcTJwJSJBxNvTR2dykPjgSFjaY63TvnrTB1XikS0kHW5cbRRxoCOyPPjdnguuFm/s1600/count.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDBy6YldXS74zYwIknEDMoOajD8ddBD6cEwt_bEiDp6D7aGb4weXp5_XHi7MUXBg4rlYKAneH7YnqZWcTJwJSJBxNvTR2dykPjgSFjaY63TvnrTB1XikS0kHW5cbRRxoCOyPPjdnguuFm/s400/count.jpg" /></a></div><br />
It’s but a few short steps from here to Sesame Street’s delightfully numerate Count, the vegetarian vampire duck of Cosgrove-Hall’s Count Duckula and the vampire grandpas and uncles-next-door of The Munsters and Alan Moore’s Bojeffries Saga The latter features the wonderfully weird Uncle Festus Zlüdotny, whose spluttered speech-bubble utterances are rendered in the undecipherable symbols of a mysterious yet somehow inherently violent alphabet. A vampire slaying kit, with tools and substances covering most recommended means of undead extermination, was on display in its own standalone cabinet, its components housed in a neatly portable valise whose compartments concertinaed out with ingenious pragmatism. It had no apparent provenance, and its presence was therefore rather anomalous, but fun nevertheless. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHerxicR1EsgLfofpLLjN1YNXJR1hu0IUyv_9T60ABM3Q-Mv8LrbsRDGir65ocFTw-YyR8LAfb3QQH8db0XFYVobARH5hj-A66mZ27tYoL9xzIidC3QQXq3-R-u15P8M0OQpqBQjG9-GF/s1600/scars+of+dracula.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHerxicR1EsgLfofpLLjN1YNXJR1hu0IUyv_9T60ABM3Q-Mv8LrbsRDGir65ocFTw-YyR8LAfb3QQH8db0XFYVobARH5hj-A66mZ27tYoL9xzIidC3QQXq3-R-u15P8M0OQpqBQjG9-GF/s400/scars+of+dracula.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Christopher Lee endures the Scars of Dracula</blockquote>A design for Frank Langella’s Count in John Badham’s 1979 film of Dracula suggested future developments of the character, and of the vampire in general, as a romantic figure. The animalistic bloodsucking and viral furtherance of the undead plague were increasingly relegated to the background, incidental details eclipsed by the old fashioned seductions of the irresistible Heathcliff anti-hero. Alas, there was nothing here to match the display of Christopher Lee’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness costume in the BFI’s Gothic display a couple of years ago. Hammer was represented (and represented it simply HAD to be, of course) by more of Scott MacGregor’s set designs, this time for Scars of Dracula. Indisputably the nadir of Hammer’s Dracula cycle, and quite possibly of its Gothic output at large, the designs indicate just how far the studio (and director Roy Ward Baker) was prepared to go in its determination to keep up with contemporary trends and add new elements of explicit gore. In the bedroom set, a bloody corpse sprawls across the four-poster, severed body parts scattered to the side along with the saws and knives which have been used in this clumsy dissection. The echoes of the grim finale of Witchfinder General are all too evident. Perhaps thankfully, this scenario was never realised in the completed film. Christopher Lee’s Dracula merely leaps into the chamber and stabs Anoushka Hempel’s vampire seductress with a knife whose rubbery flexibility is all too plain. It’s a gratuitous scene which is as risible as it is illogical and inexplicable. MacGregor’s set for the castle roof is an atmospheric Gothic arena, a stage for dramatic confrontations. Sadly, the final realisation fell far short of his vision, the greatly reduced budgets of the 60s and 70s more than usually evident. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeR3ZgC8jzgGDEiuuRCjErkr05BhVA8RPg-Ku4LWRzK3iqLotf18Mlfxx3K5o_sJCatvAgM6poxdUc3mu9L6bei7u1-wQ0xFyc559svrOgkSPOyytuFxGZTu2auxbLn0V2gI_8NrPUhk3K/s1600/R-2227956-1271197470.jpeg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeR3ZgC8jzgGDEiuuRCjErkr05BhVA8RPg-Ku4LWRzK3iqLotf18Mlfxx3K5o_sJCatvAgM6poxdUc3mu9L6bei7u1-wQ0xFyc559svrOgkSPOyytuFxGZTu2auxbLn0V2gI_8NrPUhk3K/s400/R-2227956-1271197470.jpeg.jpg" /></a></div>As with Frankenstein, Dracula made it through to the vinyl age too. Displayed here was the cover of the Studio2Stereo LP Dracula with Christopher Lee, a compilation of Hammer soundtracks. A real treat, this one, with James Bernard’s stirring score for the original Hammer Dracula set in context by Lee’s narration. It also features cues from Bernard’s score for She, as well as contemporary composer John McCabe’s music for the 1972 psycho-thriller Fear in the Night, Harry Robinson’s lushly romantic themes from The Vampire Lovers and extracts from David Whittaker’s score for the stylish Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, wittily scripted by the late Brian Clemens. The 70s provenance of the LP was clear from its use of a promo still from Dracula AD 1972 on the cover, Christopher Lee tucking into the jugular of poor old Caroline Munro. <br />
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Leaving the Dracula room, we also take our leave of the 19th century, and enter a new era in which the medium of cinema, with its large, darkened palaces, would prove a perfect site for the expansion of the shadow worlds of the Gothic. But those shadows often originated and drew their raw sustenance from the archetypal monsters, human and otherwise, which emerged from the gaslight illuminated fogs of the Victorian imagination. <br />
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Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-33503710895384335842015-02-04T11:52:00.000+00:002015-02-04T11:52:40.498+00:00Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination at The British LibraryPART ONE<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwoxlH5aAknlC0jYWhJm9FYMT-RL5o675u7S6a9CWceUs8sg1fvfE-E_BLGh8WEE15ya1nOjra1COOQ69bKCYFp_TeNgKKQR4YtXvQCq4u2taJ-YENh8v2Ca-qSU4MQP6dryZLTZdukPoS/s1600/gothic643.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwoxlH5aAknlC0jYWhJm9FYMT-RL5o675u7S6a9CWceUs8sg1fvfE-E_BLGh8WEE15ya1nOjra1COOQ69bKCYFp_TeNgKKQR4YtXvQCq4u2taJ-YENh8v2Ca-qSU4MQP6dryZLTZdukPoS/s400/gothic643.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://www.bl.uk/">The British Library</a> exhibition Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination began, appropriately enough, with a descent. After a brief introductory film in which four explorers of diverse Gothic realms (Neil Gaiman, Sarah Waters, Ben Wheatley and Mark Daneilewski) outlined the shadowy territory we were about to stumble blindly into, we walked down a set of stairs and entered a gloomy, crypt-like space. The ‘rooms’ we passed through were separated by draped veils of funereal black which shivered in currents of a spectral wind with no evident point of origin (yes, it was the air conditioning, but let’s not break the mood here). Darkness prevailed. It was all is it should have been; as it was fated to have been. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhadMNdOECbWxTs9vMFtYN6vHxIh3TZBnuZOQ6fci1JabpCZf13Hh2xrCLuInFsdjqgO0h8XlStU9LnRdqoVUiVX3nXAieqn-_73hDsfH_Mgja4vAi2EMMXEnJ7V0aXTUBeq-NQ8PPlc7pN/s1600/svankmajer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhadMNdOECbWxTs9vMFtYN6vHxIh3TZBnuZOQ6fci1JabpCZf13Hh2xrCLuInFsdjqgO0h8XlStU9LnRdqoVUiVX3nXAieqn-_73hDsfH_Mgja4vAi2EMMXEnJ7V0aXTUBeq-NQ8PPlc7pN/s400/svankmajer.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Surrealist Gothic - Jan Svankmajer's The Castle of Otranto</blockquote>The first room concerned itself almost exclusively with Horace Walpole, his antecedents, friends and those he went on to influence. He was portrayed as an origin figure for Gothic literature and its subsequent cultural offshoots. Most notably, this was due to his anonymous self-publication in 1764 of the novel The Castle of Otranto, which established many of the staples of Gothic fiction to come: the incursions of the supernatural, the medieval castle with its secret vaults, the revivification of buried histories and ancient curses, the menaced and imperilled heroine and the general air of barely suppressed hysteria. It may be a story seldom read today, but its influence can be felt through its still proliferating lineage. The Czech animator, filmmaker and artist Jan Svankmajer paid homage to it in his short 1979 condensation of the novel, which was shown in the upper entrance room. Period illustrations come to animated life as a book’s pages are riffled by an invisible hand. The framing device for the film has a historian and literary archaeologist claim to have discovered the real Castle of Otranto at Otrhany, near Nachod in the Czech Republic. It is this which Walpole used as the basis for his fictional locale, he claims. As well as suggesting a rediscovery of a half-forgotten text, it’s a clever way of having the Gothic world of imaginary derangement infect and invade what is presented as rational documentary realism. Svankmajer is a contemporary inheritor of the surrealist sensibility, and as such his co-option of the Castle of Otranto is an acknowledgement of the prominence of Walpole and the Gothic in general within the surrealist canon, its curated cabinet of curiosities. A 1765 edition of the novel was displayed in the exhibiton, with Walpole, safely assured of the novel’s success, identifying himself as the author. It now bears the subtitle ‘a Gothic story’. Thus the genre was coined. <br />
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The exhibition took care to point out Walpole’s own influences, making it evident that The Castle of Otranto didn’t appear magically formed from a pure and untrammelled imagination. Shakespeare’s ghosts and supernatural beings offer a clearly defined precedent (if such a description is apposite for such immaterial manifestations and half-glimpsed sprites). Walpole’s 1728 copy of The Merchant of Venice was included here, as was Henry Fuseli’s highly dramatic and very physical rendering of the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father in a 1796 engraving. A 1529 edition of Malory’s La Morte d’Arthur and a 1617 edition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene further outlined the appeal of antiquity and of a dream medievalism, a fantasy of the past replete with quests and allegorical stories, strange landscapes inhabited by demons and monsters waiting to devour souls which strayed from the righteous path. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4sWDQuowFnpQN0QXcdhU5J8BA0AAbKZ5sytrIafARtNzTleV2l-qfOnn3eoPjhLXmL7qe9KGJXE8pLeV0idc2LZhuMDvdu3yQ5Xzl8tstkU-pW4TJXt9mkLnYQyz940AnJ1szKiyHHUka/s1600/strawberry+hill+johann+muntz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4sWDQuowFnpQN0QXcdhU5J8BA0AAbKZ5sytrIafARtNzTleV2l-qfOnn3eoPjhLXmL7qe9KGJXE8pLeV0idc2LZhuMDvdu3yQ5Xzl8tstkU-pW4TJXt9mkLnYQyz940AnJ1szKiyHHUka/s400/strawberry+hill+johann+muntz.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Johann Muntz's print of Strawberry Hill</blockquote>Walpole’s fashioning of his own private Gothic domain at Strawberry Hill on the winding banks of the Thames below Twickenham from 1747 onwards was an attempt at realising this fantasy world in solid, architectural form. He was thus the progenitor of Gothic revival architecture in addition to recasting it in a new literary form. Some of the original plans for the house’s elaborate Gothicisation were included, serving to emphasise its general air of studied artifice. It was pointed out the Walpole intended his home to be a showpiece from the outset, charging visitors for admission once it was completed. It was a series of theatrical sets which the imagination was prompted to fill with shadowy figures and strange happenings. The spirit of Strawberry Hill, the experience of inhabiting the living dream of a self-created Gothic fantasy, inspired the writing of The Castle of Otranto. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRQLw4c4xlfDyZeg4G2Aewh3z5vRJ2mkt9VlxFgT6qoN00TqykZamGGJcOQpAwqlf2tc_jq14mm3B3fNEh2CpR7AepLli2mW3Qjj0f_IHAx9lsjmyu-pfyqS9zHuhmikDmNaagl8sxuKVm/s1600/chatterton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRQLw4c4xlfDyZeg4G2Aewh3z5vRJ2mkt9VlxFgT6qoN00TqykZamGGJcOQpAwqlf2tc_jq14mm3B3fNEh2CpR7AepLli2mW3Qjj0f_IHAx9lsjmyu-pfyqS9zHuhmikDmNaagl8sxuKVm/s400/chatterton.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Chatterton by Henry Wallis (1856)</blockquote>Walpole initially published the novel anonymously, claiming that it was a translation made by one William Marshal of a work originally written by an Italian with the florid name of Onuphrio Muralto and printed in 1529. This may partly have been a device designed to shield him from any adverse reaction to the story’s sensational aspects. But once more, Walpole set the trend for the literary work as ‘discovered’ manuscript. Included here were two of the best known 18th century forgeries: James Macpherson’s ‘translation’ of Fingal, an early Gaelic epic by an ancient poet known as Ossian; and the ‘discovery’ of a number of manuscripts by 15th century Bristolian poet Thomas Rowley by the teenage would-be poet Thomas Chatterton, best known today as an exquisite corpse in Henry Wallis’ Pre-Raphaelite painting of 1856. Chatterton’s doctored manuscripts were on display, pasted into a large scrapbook. The crude attempts to make them appear timeworn and antiquated, with brown staining liberally splashed across the vellum he acquired from the attorney’s office in which he worked, now appear charmingly amateurish. That people were prepared to accept them as genuine is testament to the 18th century intoxication with antiquity, the intense desire to commune with voices from the past. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg_yG3dEwlEQfCBNtE0c9dPN8q5rCXDzIkxwjkz-uDDJsxxzrXAkLu6tqFcoyo9Vi_88R9GTNyptqs8n2TL2-n_g3BRaMdxx48akU4i8rehwebt9Vwe3mnZPhUay-k0U-RH7hoMNz2QeyB/s1600/reliquary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg_yG3dEwlEQfCBNtE0c9dPN8q5rCXDzIkxwjkz-uDDJsxxzrXAkLu6tqFcoyo9Vi_88R9GTNyptqs8n2TL2-n_g3BRaMdxx48akU4i8rehwebt9Vwe3mnZPhUay-k0U-RH7hoMNz2QeyB/s400/reliquary.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Walpole's Becket Reliquary</blockquote>Walpole found fulfilment of this desire through his dedicated antiquarianism. He collected objects from centuries past, both in England and on his journeys through Europe, and filled up every niche and corner of Strawberry Hill with his diverse finds. A particularly beautiful 13th century enamelled reliquary chest dedicated to Thomas Becket was included in the exhibition, housed in a glass cabinet in the middle of the room which enhanced its sacrosanct air. This was an object to be circled and gazed at from all angles, but not touched. A certain distance was maintained, as it would have been for pilgrims centuries ago. It must have been thrilling for Walpole to be able to pick it up whenever the fancy took him, to open the small, hinged lid and peer reverently inside, imagining what it once contained. Alongside the reliquary was a book by his friend George Vertue, a catalogue of the antiquities he drew up whilst staying at Strawberry Hill, opened to show the page on which a colour study of the adjacent object was printed. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhopCHMoaa1lUI4uwejam4t1FVxUB7tVEbgmFH3rDr-D-_T0gol2MSlk_9lN5x4y2bxRY5DaCPJVg7YOdkWzCqrIWoUvcUxHQMgbgx47Bw0UrhA-nb-3f4SegniK6DTxoUWH9pWuoB0Ykwo/s1600/dee's%2Bmirror.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhopCHMoaa1lUI4uwejam4t1FVxUB7tVEbgmFH3rDr-D-_T0gol2MSlk_9lN5x4y2bxRY5DaCPJVg7YOdkWzCqrIWoUvcUxHQMgbgx47Bw0UrhA-nb-3f4SegniK6DTxoUWH9pWuoB0Ykwo/s400/dee's%2Bmirror.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>John Dee's 'shew stone'</blockquote>Most intriguing, however, was another artefact which Walpole owned, one which, whilst looking fairly unprepossessing, was imbued with great power and mystery. This was John Dee’s spirit mirror. On loan from the British Museum, it is a smooth, flat disc of polished obsidian, darkly and depthlessly reflective. The accompanying tooled leather case bears a handwritten label by Walpole indicating the nature of its content. Walpole bought the mirror in 1777, and it was used by Dee in the late 16th century. But it originally found its way over to Europe from what is now Mexico, part of the plunder of the Conquistadors in the 1520s and 30s. Dee was obviously aware of its provenance as a mirror for divination and conjuration used by the Mexica priests. Dee himself was a magician, mathmetician, alchemist, cartographer and court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth, all disciplines which were regarded as part of an undivided body of knowledge. A fascinating character, he has proved irresistible to a number of writers and artists, and appears prominently in Derek Jarman’s film Jubilee, John Crowley’s Aegypt sequence of novels, Alan Moore’s Promethea comics, Peter Ackroyd’s The House of Dr Dee, Michael Moorcock’s Gloriana and Gustav Meyrink’s The Angel of the West Window. Dee became acquainted with a young man called Edward Kelley, who claimed to commune with angels. Dee spent an increasing amount of his time attempting to make such a communication himself, with Kelley as intercessory bridge. The black reflecting mirror, or ‘shew stone’, was supposedly given to him by an angel and gave him access (via Kelley) to dimensions normally inaccessible to human vision. Whether or not you give any of this the slightest credence (and the question of whether the stone was ever in Dee’s possession is open to debate) there is a thrill in seeing this myth-infused occult object which such a fascinating historical figure firmly believed opened up higher planes of knowledge and existence, and allowed him to make contact with the beings who possessed and inhabited them. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOlGvSfXRplHO5HYbARo-bnQ_JMzj3sn2IYKAn76IK5maDnzvLsPboBNBf6E0ZWWKBsy3Ygwqf4DyUGTQYZtZGV-uiHv9mpr4NUy3qrr06Q968luAn9I4EeNCuzYZxxuwOoVvHjPmyMk61/s1600/night+thoughts+colour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOlGvSfXRplHO5HYbARo-bnQ_JMzj3sn2IYKAn76IK5maDnzvLsPboBNBf6E0ZWWKBsy3Ygwqf4DyUGTQYZtZGV-uiHv9mpr4NUy3qrr06Q968luAn9I4EeNCuzYZxxuwOoVvHjPmyMk61/s400/night+thoughts+colour.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Edward Young's Night Thoughts illustrated by William Blake</blockquote>Walpole’s shared schooldays and later acquaintance with Thomas Gray also forges a connection between him and the so-called graveyard poets. This short-lived branch of English poetry, epitomised by Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) and Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742), gave expression to the morbid musings of young men who wandered around graveyards contemplating mortality, their own and others. The graveyard became the Gothic locus of a strange, inverted form of romanticism, pale, drawn and half in love with Death. The cold idyll of the graveyard, drained of bright colour save for the odd bunch of fading blooms and the red of the poisonous berries on the yew tree, would provide the trysting place for Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley. They would rendezvous by the grave of Mary’s mother in St Pancras churchyard. Neil Gaimain’s novel The Graveyard Book (which features later in the exhibition) also uses the graveyard as a romantic locale within the fenced and gated bounds of which the tale of a young boy’s growth to maturity takes place. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjepjVCCHJZFLOokHFcOYy17dx0q2dfiqtJ74AkOqJq5uUG1eCfzrVSQL3eL-zwyVGMVjvOlzMnjH7lZP243JIzfDannrphoqUTQNWBtP-4GGQnIiTGP6WptcgGjaNPniYRFuif4ZhyMZVz/s1600/vala.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjepjVCCHJZFLOokHFcOYy17dx0q2dfiqtJ74AkOqJq5uUG1eCfzrVSQL3eL-zwyVGMVjvOlzMnjH7lZP243JIzfDannrphoqUTQNWBtP-4GGQnIiTGP6WptcgGjaNPniYRFuif4ZhyMZVz/s400/vala.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>William Blake's Vala or The Four Zoaz</blockquote>A 1797 edition of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts was illustrated by William Blake, who wrapped his angels, demons and tormented sleepers around a central pane containing the text. Pages of this book, which was only ever partially published, were on display here. It was a troubled commission, and only a fraction of the watercolours Blake produced as sketches for later engravings finished in final printed form. He retained many of the proofs which remained unused and began writing his own poem in the blank, squared-off spaces intended for Young’s words. The night journey undertaken by the figures he had drawn influenced the dark prophecies and troubled invective in Vala, or The Four Zoas, written shortly after the altercation with a soldier in the Sussex village of Felpham which had almost led to his trial for sedition. Never published in his lifetime, it was rediscovered in 1889, surfacing in a fin-de-siecle period the mood of which suited its intensely expressed visions of doom and apocalyptic fire. The pages exhibited here showed that the Gothic was capable of inspiring and encompassing extraordinary visionary height, and even more profound depths. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yzL2oczA-2MsFPhzgGslnTkEh2BIZd9dbZggvIMfW6zog0emLX0076UNkV5MU6gtn8EjNnYtH5a_I7oPw37R-pW7JKdBGN_xS2czPMf3KJi1-lStQDjmiJOiyrpITcVYMMhmSG3U-RuQ/s1600/fonthill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yzL2oczA-2MsFPhzgGslnTkEh2BIZd9dbZggvIMfW6zog0emLX0076UNkV5MU6gtn8EjNnYtH5a_I7oPw37R-pW7JKdBGN_xS2czPMf3KJi1-lStQDjmiJOiyrpITcVYMMhmSG3U-RuQ/s400/fonthill.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Fonthill Abbey - the ultimate Gothic folly</blockquote>As the Gothic form developed, so it expanded to explore and colonise new areas, testing the boundaries of aesthetic, social and even physical tolerance by pursuing new extremes. There was an architectural model of William Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey on display which has long outlasted the extravagant fantasy for which it served as a template. Fonthill was designed to be the ultimate Gothic dwelling, leaving Strawberry Hill in its extensive shadow in terms of its scale and obsessive detail. It proved a hubristic structure, however, built without the accumulated knowledge of the medieval masons. The gargantuan spire, now a fairly obvious symbol of overweening male ego rather than a physical manifestation of heavenly aspiration, was from the beginning an unstable structure, which collapsed several times. Beckford eventually gave up on his expensive dream and built a structure which, perhaps in wry recognition of the true nature of Fonthill, resembled a folly; the tower which still raises its finger on the hills above Bath. Beckford’s novel Vathek (1786), a copy of which was on display in the exhibition, took the Gothic into the realms of the Arabian Nights fantasy. The ‘exoticism’ that this form afforded, its distance from the norms of Western civilisation and from familiar narratives and settings, allowed for new extremes of cruelty, violence and depravity. Naturally, the notoriety which ensued did nothing to harm the success of the book. <br />
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The exhibition notes made the observation that the levels of sex and violence in Gothic novels increased markedly in the wake of the French Revolution and the bloody Terror into which it descended in the 1790s. Matthew Lewis’ The Monk was the prime example offered here, which also throws in a good deal of anti-clericalism for good measure. The horrors of the Inquisition and the Counter-Reformation became another staple of Gothic fiction, memorably featuring in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum (another subject of a Jan Svankmajer film). The figure of the depraved or pitiless monk, a terrifying cowled and faceless presence possessed of unassailable power and authority, took its place amongst the repertory of Gothic characters. The English Reformation cast a long shadow, and Catholic institutions and rituals could still be relied upon to elicit a shudder if cast in a suitably sinister light. <br />
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German Gothic novels, which drew on a rich heritage of folklore connected with mountains and dense forests, were renowned (or notorious) for being even more graphic than their English counterparts. They were briefly in fashion towards the end of the 18th century. In Jane Austen’s parody of Gothic literature, Northanger Abbey (1818), the heroine is offered a list of seven novels to read after she has finished Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents. Some are German, whilst others ape the Germanic style. They are all, however, perfectly ‘horrid’, she is assured. They have therefore come to be known as the Northanger Horrid Novels, and all turn out to have been real, published works. Austen evidently had in-depth knowledge of contemporary Gothic. Editions of these obscure works were laid open side-by-side in a central display cabinet so that we might glimpse something of their appalling nature. The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysterious Warning (1796), subtitled A German Tale (as the former may as well have been too) were both by the English novelist Eliza Parsons. The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) by Eleanor Sleath was another German tale written by an English writer, whilst Clermont (1798) was by the Irish writer Regina Maria Roche. The Midnight Bell (1798) by Dutch author Francis Latham not only claimed to be ‘A German Story’ in its subtitle, but also to be ‘Founded On Incidents in Real Life’. The final two novels were the genuine article, even if they claimed not to be. The Horrid Mysteries (1796), or ‘A Story From the German Of The Marquis Of Grosse’ was actually a translation of the novel Der Genius by Carl Grosse. The Necromancer or The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) by Ludwig Flammenberg sounds particularly intriguing (and particularly German). Disappointingly, the splendidly named Flammenberg turns out to be another pseudonym, a florid mask for more mundanely monickered Carl Friedrich Kahlert. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpxSrDpxL8nOFotG6xeW2sS2Vkg-HyZM-N3CcpTgTYNUreI9nwZs81esrz3T0g1N0PoG8NNZKQwCaybzY3e7topzn-Elx_Y8BPGuJbSHgxafHFcoZh9NBdF00Ywk2UkoQzyUzZuE38vdyo/s1600/fuseli-the-nightmare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpxSrDpxL8nOFotG6xeW2sS2Vkg-HyZM-N3CcpTgTYNUreI9nwZs81esrz3T0g1N0PoG8NNZKQwCaybzY3e7topzn-Elx_Y8BPGuJbSHgxafHFcoZh9NBdF00Ywk2UkoQzyUzZuE38vdyo/s400/fuseli-the-nightmare.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Henry Fuseli - The Nightmare (1781)</blockquote>Henry Fuseli was Swiss rather than German, and a long-term resident of the British Isles. There remained something Germanic about the fantastical, grotesque nature of much of his work, however. In 1781 he painted The Nightmare, a print of which was exhibited here. It remains one of the definitive images of the Gothic imagination, and was hugely popular at the time, reproduced in many subsequent engravings. The demonic imp crouching on the chest of the uncomfortably sprawled, restlessly sleeping woman and the marble-eyed, phantom horse materialising from the shadows have been the subject of much pastiche and parody over the years. This powerfully physical representation of a dream state is viewed with disturbing objectivity from a viewpoint exterior to the dreamer, as if these were real demonic beings inducing night terrors in the unknowing sleeper. The sideways stare of the homunculus, meeting the gaze of the picture’s viewer, makes it feel as if we have come across a scene we should not have borne witness to. It is a tableau of temporary suspension, full of the potential for sudden and very rapid subsequent action. The poster for Ken Russell’s 1986 film Gothic, his and writer Stephen Volk’s version of the events of that famously stormy night at the Villa Diodati (which we’ll come to in a moment), restages The Nightmare for a cinematic tableau. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWaKM6wRUPjKVNBVgWyCZ1rjs6jAP6SB8CmDaYFJ62JxBVcrUXOfHMEtl_-RgswL59utTIDmsxDdhZ9zaAkwbj22BO1TTkfjq-A-kGYZ73kdxAsRbPOAHoF1Fv8M7Pw4_KIi334O2vfrtS/s1600/frankenstein+holst.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWaKM6wRUPjKVNBVgWyCZ1rjs6jAP6SB8CmDaYFJ62JxBVcrUXOfHMEtl_-RgswL59utTIDmsxDdhZ9zaAkwbj22BO1TTkfjq-A-kGYZ73kdxAsRbPOAHoF1Fv8M7Pw4_KIi334O2vfrtS/s400/frankenstein+holst.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Theodor von Holst's frontispiece illustration for an 1831 edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein</blockquote>The Nightmare is a bridge into the Romantic era. The exhibition notes suggested that the Romantic artists largely diverged from Gothic themes. However, there were exceptions; manuscripts of Coleridge’s Christabel (a forerunner of Poe’s poetry) and Wordsworth’s The Vale of Esthwaite were included to show that they did sometimes descend into the shadows. And it was from the milieu of the Romantic movement that a work would emerge which would profoundly influence the direction which Gothic would take and form the ground from which new generic hybrids would sprout and flourish. Not the least of these would be science fiction, which Brian Aldiss defines, in Billion/Trillion Year Spree, as being ‘characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode’. The work in question is, of course, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Included here was an 1831 edition with illustrations by Theodor von Holst. His depiction of the monster bears a resemblance to William Blake’s The Ghost of a Flea. The title page print depicts with stark simplicity the horror Frankenstein feels towards his creation, and his abandonment of the bewildered newborn man, who sprawls like a loose-limbed puppet in the laboratory. <br />
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Shelley’s revised manuscript for the 1831 edition was on display, handwritten on blue paper. Also present was a letter written by Lord Byron, protesting that no impropriety had taken place during that storm-wracked evening at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva where he had played host to Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, his physician John Polidori and Clair Clairmont, his mistress of the moment. Given his reputation, and such protest was liable merely to stoke further salacious speculation, and he would probably have been better advised to hold his silence. That evening, Byron had been reading ghost stories aloud as the storm rumbled and flashed outside (and German ghost stories at that!) He also read lines from Coleridge’s Christabel, which sent the unhinged Shelley fleeing from the room with a wild shriek. The reading led on to the suggestion that everyone should write their own horror story to complement the fearsome atmosphere of the night beyond. This challenge, instantly mythologised by all parties present, resulted in the first outline of Frankenstein. Mary Godwin (soon to be Shelley), who had already lost a child of her own, and whose mother had died as a result of her own delivery into the world, came up with the idea of the blasphemous birth of a new, monstrous man through the generative, galvanic powers of science; powers which wholly excluded motherhood and female agency. <br />
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Frankenstein functions as a gateway into the world of modern Gothic, largely via the numerous cinematic variations which have evolved from the central idea. The clip of Bride of Frankenstein playing on a loop was really our first glimpse of Gothic as the major stylistic component of the horror genre as it developed in the twentieth century. Frankenstein’s creation evolved (or devolved) from the tormented haunter of the wilderness, the self-educated outsider abandoned by his father, into Boris Karloff’s innocent, shambling brute, both pitiful and terrifying. Frankenstein provides us with our first classic horror monster. The novel opens a nocturnal window onto the twentieth century, giving us a brief prospect of the encroaching shadows of Gothic horror whose tendrils would extend into every aspect of popular culture. There was a copy of the 1967 Brunswick LP An Evening With Boris Karloff and his Friends, contained soundtrack clips from the great Universal monster movies introduced by the now elderly actor. Also on display were some of Scott MacGregor’s set designs for the late Hammer film Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974). This served as a self-reflective and melancholic conclusion to the studio’s series of Frankenstein pictures, almost invariably starring Peter Cushing as a particularly amoral Doctor, which had been so central to their output. Along with the Dracula films, they were instrumental in building their reputation as purveyors of quality Gothic to the masses. MacGregor’s designs are sketches for a dream film which could no longer be realised with Hammer’s dwindling resources in the bleak years of the mid-70s. Interestingly, Frankenstein and his creation have been conspicuously absent from recent revivals and revisitations of the Gothic canon. The single shambling monster has been largely supplanted by hordes of shuffling, moaning zombies. Maybe it is time for the creature to rise from the slab once more. <br />
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Frankenstein was the progenitor of many literary forms and ideas. But it can also be seen as an endpoint in terms of ‘pure’ Gothic fiction, if indeed there is a beast of such pedigree. Its Romantic sensibility and use of landscapes giddy with sublime terror (alpine peaks and Arctic wildernesses) as exteriorised expressions of interior states mark it apart from the more generic Gothic novel. The spectres of 18th and early 19th century Gothic arose from the historical past (real or fabled). Frankenstein’s monster, on the other hand, is created through the application of scientific rationalism, Henry Frankenstein himself the modern Prometheus who fashion his own relentless Nemesis. And so, we leave the 18th and early 19th century Gothic rooms and pass through the doorway into the period which has surpassed them in terms of furnishing the modern imagination with its ‘classic’ Gothic props – the Victorian age. And naturally, the writer who ushers us into this fogbound, gaslit world is Charles Dickens. <br />
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Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-6364406283822953122014-12-29T21:13:00.000+00:002014-12-29T21:13:09.208+00:00Hunting The Demons of Ashcombe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWm7k8eIRwpJa7oO0YpfmybniaDEvP6e80LyHzS493QTLNhGF9sv_XRzaQ5glgwuy9DqnX83yBXHmg65yoROqe0tb8duKUDbpJSZVN13AsNnQ4QsHZLVjlcJElsrwd81G6yf_P0JfcQ7VN/s1600/DSCN0047_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWm7k8eIRwpJa7oO0YpfmybniaDEvP6e80LyHzS493QTLNhGF9sv_XRzaQ5glgwuy9DqnX83yBXHmg65yoROqe0tb8duKUDbpJSZVN13AsNnQ4QsHZLVjlcJElsrwd81G6yf_P0JfcQ7VN/s400/DSCN0047_01.JPG" /></a></div><br />
It was on a sharp, blue-skied autumn day that I set out to hunt down the demons of Ashcombe. I’d seen pictures of the strange, distorted faces carved into the dark oak of 17th century bench ends in Todd Gray’s fine book on the subject, Devon’s Ancient Bench Ends. These were like nothing else I’d come across in my explorations of old Devon churches. They were emanations from the shadowy undergrowth of the rural imagination, monsters from the night side, the impenetrable gloom of the surrounding forest depths. They seemed to display no evident religious symbolism. Demons tended to be relegated to the exterior of churches, reminders of the evils from which the interior would provide sanctuary. But here they have invaded the space of the nave, settling themselves down right beside the congregation. This demanded closer inspection. But they proved frustratingly elusive. On my first visit I found the church locked, even though it was remote and unlikely to attract the attentions of all but the most dedicated and well-informed vandal. I returned on a Sunday, but discovered that services were few and far between, parcelled out between several other small churches in the parish. Perhaps this journey would prove more fruitful. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, a sense of immanence which augured well (or maybe ill). <br />
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The road to Ashcombe from Dawlish wound along the side of a valley, following the rippling contours of the gently folded hills. The hedgerows were rich with bright berries and late blooms. Bees sucked on pin-headed stamen clusters which looked like they were dipped in sugary sherbet. A fiery ball of robin’s pincushion tangled itself wirily around a pink-thorned rose bush, dewdrops caught in its threads and glinting with jewelled sunlight luminescence. A kestrel hovered over an open field, wings arched back in tense suspension, perfectly poised to plummet onto its pinpointed prey. Look out down below! Buzzards circle lazily on invisible currents, landing on bare, blasted branches and adding hunched, slightly sulky silhouettes to the tree’s skeletal outline. Raptor cries screech across the echoing valley. This is an edgeless landscape, defined by its curving horizons and sinuous roads. Woodland copses cresting undulant fields warp beneath contrasting cloud masses. Abstract compositions are drawn by tractors and harvesters, tramlines and long wavelengths etched through dry wheat. They are like energy patterns, circling in concentric ripples around the metal trees of pylons. Pylons, with their geometric grids, break up the non-linearity of the landscape. Only human constructs are linear here: Gates, greenhouses (there is a rose growing farm down by the river in the valley) and telegraph poles. <br />
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Arriving at the edge of the hamlet of Ashcombe, the prospect of the 12th century church tower, elevated by the rise of the slope on which it is planted, is framed by trees, chimneys and a telegraph pole. The pole sprouts a solid junction box and the brown ceramic discs of insulators, which are strung from the sky-raking wires like sleek mushroom caps. The Norman tower is ancient, but the telegraph technology it is juxtaposed with also looks outmoded, redolent of a redundant post-war moment. An old church filled with strange carvings and the crackling energies of 50s technology; this could be the setting for a Nigel Kneale TV drama in which the supernatural is confronted with the modern apparatus of scientific rationalism. <br />
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The church lies on the lower slopes of a steep hill which marks the southern end of the Haldon ridge. It’s a forested spine of land which extends a fair few miles, a rainshadow divider separating the Exe Valley from the Teign Valley and the rise of the moor beyond. Ashcombe is tucked into a fold in the lee of the range. It catches the sun on its path from the east, but the shadows can fall quickly and prematurely as the Haldons impose their looming gloom. It’s a short but sharply inclined trudge upwards from the trough of the bell-curve the road traces through the Ashcombe dell to the church’s hunched stone outline which broods above it. The graveyard is mounded up like the rounded back of a surfacing leviathan. Tilting crosses and gravestone arches stand out starkly against the sky, their dark contrast already beginning to dispel the brightness of the afternoon, to whisper intimations of a more chill atmosphere. <br />
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But there is brightness and life in the graveyard still. The efflorescing fruits of a tree produce vulgar, blushing pinks and glisteningly succulent oranges, nature’s vivid colour contrast to sombre grey stone. Violets cluster in the leaning shadow of granite slabs. Moss and lichen bloom across flat stone planes, forming their own expanding universes. Snails add their slimy script to etched lines, a spiral punctuation mark emphasising the letter or word where they take their fastened rest. Some find shelter in the sharp-angled armpit of a cross. Berries sprayed across a hardy shrub throw hard buttons of primary red against neutral granite, blood on fossilised bone. <br />
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The church is locked. Frustrated, I rattle the door a few times, as if this will do any good. I walk back down to the lychgate, its paint peeling in flakes of dark green, harmonising with the shedding of autumn tumbling all around it. Looking at the notices for hints as to when the next service might find it open and filled with sound and light. A postcard with faded felt-tip writing, half-hidden by other pinned pieces of paper, is just about legible. It tells me that there is a key held in the yellow cottage at the bottom of the hill for any who wish to explore the church. A large black dog greets me there, letting me know that somebody is in, whilst not exactly encouraging me to make myself known to them. The woman who answers is friendly and trusting, however, handing me the key without hesitation. She apologises for the state of the interior. Renovation work is being carried out, and she inhaled some dust when she was last in there. As a result, she has not been well enough to clear away the harvest festival decorations and offerings. I sympathise but wonder if I will be similarly infected. How old is this ‘dust’? From what part of the church has it been excavated or disturbed? But I have come this far. I must not falter in my resolve. <br />
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Disappointingly, the key is an ordinary front door variety rather than the large black iron affair I had hoped for. It fitted into a small yale lock inserted above the large hole which would have required an object ten times its size. The latch lifts with a pleasingly firm clack when I turn the circular iron door handle, however, and the heavy door creaks open. I walk through into the hushed interior, the outside world immediately receding, distanced by the airlock of the porch. The first thing I notice is the font, whose wooden cover is woven with strands of corn, grass and hedgerow berries. All are now withered and dessicated, their decorative arrangement falling into desuetude and disrepair. A heady scent of apples fills the church, overripe and on the verge of rotting fermentation. A neglected harvest offering left to mark the passing of autumn’s fecund riches and the advent of winter’s barren scarcity. <br />
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A green man with an amiable, placid face, broad and flat and topped with pointed porcine ears, looks out on the font from a capital atop a pillar at the back of the nave. Over the altar rail a golden foliate head peers down on the apples, grain and vegetables presented on the border of the sacred space of the sacristy. It is at the conjunction of roof joists painted a vibrant black, green, red and gold; a strange echo of Jamaican national colours in this rural English church. The joists also connect with what looks like a lion’s head wrapped in a turban. The Lion of Judah? More lions jut nobly from the arm rests of an oak throne beside the altar, the nub of their manes designed for a palm to rest at ease on, to stroke the woody nap of the tamed beasts’ head. On the back of the chair, two pot-bellied cherubs stand atop piles of rock or coal and bend beneath baskets of the same strapped to their backs. It’s a heavy load for such diminutive creatures to bear – child labour, essentially. A perky lectern eagle looks brightly out to the nave, its alert gaze surveying the three ranks of benches filling the space. It dates from the time of Elizabeth I and its noble, benevolent visage, beak crinkling into a knowing smile, bears the wisdom of the centuries, just as its back has borne the weight of the Word, the opened book. <br />
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The restoration and repair work being carried out in the church is made evident by the scaffolding at the back of the north aisle. The organ by the entrance in the north aisle is shrouded in a curtain of smoky plastic. The pipes are visible as spectral formations, seen as if through a billowing fog. I imagine the music they would make, muffled and diffuse, sounds drifting through from a dimly perceived distance. The window in the south transept has been boarded over, the direct southerly sun streaming around the edges in sharp-edged, haloing spears of light. <br />
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That same low, dazzling late Autumn light lends mocking haloes to the St Nectan demons. They rest on the bench ends like wicked Chads, or wedge themselves into the corner angles. With their lolling tongues, sharp-edged grins, curving tusks and pointed ears, they are like anti-cherubs, exuding abandoned glee at their own grotesque natures. One has serpentine wings, its flapping lips parted in a rubbery, toothless groan. Hooded, sunken eyes stare out with blank, pupil-less depth. Its neckline is a ragged gouge, as if the head had been crudely torn off by a savage force. A close cousin of this creature retains two teeth, protruding loosely and squarely from its upper lip (which looks as if it has the jellied consistency of a rock pool anemone), inverted echoes of the tombstones outside. If anything, the teeth make it look even worse than its gummy kin. A moaning spectre wraps its thin, vaporous face around the scrolled top of a bench end. It is impaled on the spearheads of Gothic arches. An arc of tongue darts out of the gaping, downturned mouth. It looks a little like the ghostly alien which made a regular appearance in the final end title of the original Star Trek series. <br />
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A squashed head seems to labouring under dense local gravity, and gurns around its two prominent teeth. A squirrel and a lizard nuzzle against it, whether familiars or tormentors it’s not wholly clear. Almond-eyed serpents spiral up the side of the bench, living, writhing vines. The distinction between human and animal becomes blurred with many of the figures here. There is a head which is part human, part…cat? It certainly has a cat’s alert, radar ears and long, flat nose. And its tongue hangs in the way that cat’s tongues do when they get distracted in the middle of a preen. But it also has wings scrolling back behind it (feathered or scaled rather than furred). Flying cats? It doesn’t bear thinking about. A head with two arms emerging from its base appears to be crawling, advancing with a crablike scuttle. The upper face is like a chitinous mask fixed above mouth and chin. It resembles a devolved form of humanity, or a Moreauvian experiment in vivisected hybridisation. Halfway to the crablike creatures of HG Wells’ terminal beach in The Time Machine, it is retreating back to the ocean. It also brings to mind the spider-head from John Carpenter’s version of The Thing. <br />
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A goofy, big-nosed simpleton looks up with dull, sleepy eyes sunken in lazy folds of flesh, its face pockmarked by woodworm. Its mouth hangs vacantly open in a buck-toothed, slack-jawed yokel half-smile, thick ox’s tongue rolled out beneath three slab-like pegs. Two peasants lean out from opposite sides of a bench end, their soft craniums moulded, squeezed and straightened into corner points. Their chins rest in cupped hands. One leers lasciviously, the other seems to be yawning, or perhaps he is boorishly bellowing some choice insult. Or maybe he just has really bad toothache, and is yelling in pain. <br />
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Two more corner figures come in the form of toothless angels (angels of the angles). They are round-cheeked and bullet-headed, celestial beings of a very Earthly cast, incarnations of ordinary local folk. Their faces are the theatrical happy/sad masks with the upward and downward curve of the mouth reflecting the comic and tragic poles of experience. The ‘sad’ angel’s eyes bug out with worry, and a night cap hints at early hours anxiety and circling, sleepless thoughts. The ‘happy’ angel looks at ease beneath relaxed, thickset brows. Its smile looks a little self-satisfied, a little self-satisfied, a little secretive, wolfish. A little….evil. Between the two angels rests a swinish demon, not showing the least concern at their proximity. Indeed, it is the angels which appear the more affected by its presence; the one fearfully so, the other sensing the possibilities an alliance might offer, the potential for power and personal worldly influence. <br />
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Another demon roosts nearby. This one is a creature of appetite, omnivorous and ravenous. It is bat-winged and tusked, with four-clawed hands ready to clutch at unwary prey. Its cross-eyed gaze by no means suggests limited vision and its tongue lolls out with panting hunger. In the far corner of the church, another serpent winds up the side of a bench-end, its pointed head nearly reaching the top. It is lightly dusted with plaster, a white powder like ash or the finest fall of snow (or some of that bee sherbet). <br />
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My first instinct is to wipe it clean. But no. On no account must I touch any of these creatures. What manner of dreadful curse might be unleashed I fear even to contemplate (perhaps the holder of the key might enlighten me). I’ve read my M.R.James. I know that the curious must be cautious, lest their studies uncover things best left to the darkness of ignorance. I have no wish to share the experiences of Archdeacon Haynes in The Stalls of Barchester. He feels the oaken carving of a cat on a choir stall come to life beneath his hand (‘I was startled by what seemed a softness, a feeling as of rather rough and coarse fur, and a sudden movement, as if the creature were twisting round its head to bite me’), and that of a cowled, deathly monk changes so that ‘the wood seemed to become chilly and soft as if made of wet linen’. I have observed from a safe distance and made no contact whatsoever. I feel assured that no terrifying, malevolent spirits will be made manifest from the ancient wood, released to haunt and torment me like the unfortunate archdeacon. I leave the shadows of the church behind, along with whatever might inhabit them, the scent of autumn decay and damp, sifting plaster and walk out into the light, to the sound of birdsong in the graveyard. <br />
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I lock the door behind me. And that flicker of darkness flapping out from the tower? A trick of the light, an illusory spectre of the peripheral vision. The dry, snickering whisper in the air above my left shoulder? Nothing but a breath of wind through the leaves. I hasten my step and swiftly close the graveyard gate behind me, striding down the hill to return the key to its guardian in the cottage in the pit of the valley with a brisk word of thanks. And then I jump onto my bike and cycle out of Ashcombe with much haste before the light begins to fail. The demons recede behind me, remaining on their benches, locked into the time-polished wooden expressions and poses of the centuries. The chittering noises, the half-perceived feeling of shadowing presence, the sweet, rotting odour and the occasional brush of something flitting past – they are all in my head, I know. I must remain strong. I must. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-69557833384003249792014-12-11T22:28:00.001+00:002014-12-11T22:28:44.933+00:00Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAaXe37xHA1sZVzws1IZXFtkaxLm2BNmT65HNMdYQ6qPmpfpwa6LMemm7XKfppnxDwULSDZ1k5GoZ0-39bVpCM7QBYzStaKCs1Ed0YriDq605ZUpin8qx880j1UQkl7MPDyOkUsbim_RRB/s1600/Gravenhurst_S2_22_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAaXe37xHA1sZVzws1IZXFtkaxLm2BNmT65HNMdYQ6qPmpfpwa6LMemm7XKfppnxDwULSDZ1k5GoZ0-39bVpCM7QBYzStaKCs1Ed0YriDq605ZUpin8qx880j1UQkl7MPDyOkUsbim_RRB/s400/Gravenhurst_S2_22_1.jpg" /></a></div><br />
It was tremendously sad to learn of the passing of Nick Talbot, who died on 4th December at the desperately premature age of 37. Talbot had been the creative force behind the group Gravenhurst for 12 years, ever since their first LP Internal Travels, released in 2002. Indeed, Gravenhurst was, at various points, a veil for solo projects and performances. Talbot’s hushed voice, assured guitar fingerpicking and ear for affecting melody made the more intimate solo aspects of his work quietly compelling, drawing the listener into dark places and states of mind, but always tempered with compassion, pity and even empathetic identification. The more haunting and haunted aspects of the folk repertoire were an influence, as were the folk artists of the 60s and 70s. There are definite echoes of Nick Drake’s solid fingerstyle playing to the circling patterns of Circadian on the Ghost in Daylight album, for example, and his more dextrous accompaniments recall Bert Jansch and John Renbourne, in or out of Pentangle. There’s something of a folk air to the name, too. It’s an imaginary English place fashioned from a real village. Whilst Gravenhurst songs often have a contemporary urban setting, there’s always a hint of older patterns coming through the grubby surfaces, ancient and mysterious landscapes underlying the cracked concrete surfaces, thrice told tales recurring once more. <br />
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Gravenhurst could also create a driving sound as a trio or quartet, with the occasional guitar explosion providing the cathartic release of ecstatic noise. There was s subtle sound design applied to both the stark acoustic and fleshed out electric incarnations of Gravenhurst. Talbot had been inspired by the likes of Flying Saucer Attack and Third Eye Foundation when he moved to Bristol in the 90s, drawn to the richness and depth of their drone-based sounds. Many of his own productions surround the songs with shimmering haloes of organ drone and flickering spectres of electro-acoustic sound. They can be heard to great effect on Fitzrovia, which is backed by the moaning ghosts and echoing rush of the forgotten histories and buried rivers (‘Wandle, Falcon, Effra, Ravensbourne’) the song summons up. This, together with a feel for dynamic pacing which gives some of the longer numbers a sense of narrative development, lends his music a certain cinematic air. There were the occasional instrumental pieces, too. This seemed to be a direction he was moving in on the last album, The Ghost in Daylight. Carousel and Islands are particular lovely ambient miniatures, the latter dedicated to the Broadcast singer Trish Keenan. I first saw Gravenhurst when they supported Broadcast back in 2006. <br />
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Lyrically, Talbot was always attracted to dark matter. A recurrent theme was the seed of violence inherent in humanity, ‘the velvet cell within men’. In an early song from Flashlight Seasons, I Turn My Face to the Forest Floor, he wrote ‘you’re only a stone’s throw from all the violence you buried years ago’. It’s a line which forms the basis for a significant portion of his future output. This violence exists on a personal level, but also expands outwards into society and into the political arena. It reflects the balance of power at all levels. So, in Black Holes in the Sand, he sings ‘I held the hand that threw the stone that killed the bird that woke the city’. A circle of culpability and indirect agency which insists on a moral dimension to the most seemingly inconsequential of actions. The Foundry on the 2012 album The Ghost in Daylight makes the connection between violent impulses on a personal level and the violence of fascism and other political doctrines of forceful control explicit. ‘A uniform changes something inside’ Talbot writes, ‘and you won’t know when evil comes, evil looks just like anyone’. Anyone is capable of it, ‘the man with the match could be anybody’. This concern with violence also manifests itself in one aspect of Talbot’s writing which I find troubling: his portraits of murderers and serial killers. The serial killer as a modern day mythological figure and recurrent motif of horror and detective fiction is a cultural phenomenon which I find particularly depressing. Talbot’s disturbingly allusive songs are generally indirect and focus on the inner state of the characters he creates. In some respects, they are contemporary manifestations of old, death-haunted folk songs. Although Talbot’s approach is the opposite to the extrovert melodrama of Nick Cave’s murder ballads – his songs hint at hidden stories rather than explicitly relating them in an unfolding narrative. It’s significant that the only time he does do this it turns out to be a cover version – Husker Du’s Diane. <br />
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These songs also intersect with another abiding thematic concern, the distance between people and the retreat into states of disconnection and isolated inner solitude. Another early song from Flashlight Seasons, The Ice Tree, sets the mood: ‘we try to connect with the people outside, they pass through our slumber like trains in the night’. A feeling of numbness and emotional damage blurs the psyches of Talbot’s subjects. They stumble through the world like bewildered ghosts. In She Dances, the dancer thinks ‘I need new clothes, new skin; a mind I can bear to live in’. Another character (in Animals) reflects upon the revellers of an English Saturday night and muses ‘I wish I could be like them and I try/but I find it more rewarding to walk along the river/picturing my body discarded in the water’. Clearly there’s a good deal of self-loathing going on here, which can develop into an unhealthy way of defining identity, of creating confining prisons for the soul. This is fully expressed in the short lyric of the lengthy Song From Under the Arches: ‘I’ve seen bad things in bad places/What did I learn?/Wallow in grime/Tonight we’ll drink the sewers dry/We can’t function outside of these dreams of suicide’. Relationships are also seen as traps, with romance a self-deluding compulsion which causes people to keep dancing around one another when any feeling has long since dissipated. <br />
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Talbot’s view of love may have been jaundiced, but he remained a romantic, albeit a dark-hued one. ‘The universal dance/The black romance’ as he puts it in Nicole is one whose steps he rehearsed over and again. He rakes over the cold ashes of love rather than stoking its initial heat, dwelling on the sadness of its diminishment and the bitterness of its betrayal. Again, a shrinking into the cold cage of the disconnected self is often the cause of death for romance. As he writes in The Ice Tree ‘I caress where my lover once lay by my side before I turned inwards and forced her to fly’. <br />
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Talbot was also a romantic in his use of romantic language and mysterious imagery drawn from the natural world. Pine forests, rivers and seas, snow, ice and fire, stars and moon are all used to evocative symbolic effect. These depict real, figurative and inner landscapes, the latter suggested by the title of the first Gravenhurst album, Inner Traveller. Natural landscapes are contrasted with decaying cityscapes, the expansiveness of the former serving to highlight the claustrophobic confinement of the latter. In Grand Union Canal, for example, he writes ‘while you are waiting for me by a copper blue sea/I am fading away in this room’. He conjures city atmospheres with a beautiful economy of effect worth of his literary hero Iain Sinclair. I particularly like ‘black spine Northern Line, feeds on money and time’ from Hourglass. It seems to paint the city itself as a predatory beast, a devouring underground serpent. Seasons and their atmospheres are also invoked, winter and autumn in particular. The winter chill is the natural mood for a Gravenhurst song, and we find it in the opening lines of The Foundry in which ‘two wolves chase a whitetail through the snow’, as well as in songs such as Fog Round the Figurehead (a marvellously imagistic title), Winter Moon and The Ice Tree. The idea of buried or sunken ruins, artefacts or histories is also one which fascinated Talbot. There are the ‘cities beneath the sea/in deserted towns and burial mounds’ and ‘buried in sand/an ancient talisman touched by a thousand hands’, as well as the ‘lost event(s) consigned to history’ in Fitzrovia, the secret stories of the city. These lost worlds or frozen landscapes equate with the subterranean caverns of the unconscious, the unexplored territories of the self. <br />
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It might sound as if the tenor of Talbot’s music is relentlessly and oppressively downbeat. Whilst it’s difficult to deny this charge given the evidence cited above, there are counterbalancing forces. They lyrical quality of the language raises the tone above turgid misery-mongering. The sheer beauty of much of the music and the light delicacy of Talbot’s voice (like a less wavering Robert Wyatt), which is shot through with compassion, sympathy and even pity, makes the subject matter easier to bear, and casts it in a different light. A commensurately harsh musical setting would indeed make it oppressive, the kind of thing which would only appeal to people who feel that music should be harrowing and extreme, an aural endurance test. And there are chinks of light which shine through, too. They are all the more pronounced and precious for their scarcity. Talbot rejected shallow triumphs, glittering prizes and facile, baseless positivism. What hope does emerge is hard-earned and thereby genuine and strong. <br />
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There is a non-denominational religious aspect to all of this; a yearning for an authentic way of being free of the traps of violence, false emotion and material desire. Something beyond ‘the emptiness of the prize’. He is seeking ‘the Ghost of St Paul, still missing’, as he put in the song on The Ghost in Daylight. Perhaps there are hints of it in older forms, in the mysterious folk rituals which he summons up so well in songs like Flowers in Her Hair. The unmasking of the Spring Queen, the metamorphosis of veneration into abomination, marks a passing of something from the world, a desacralisation. ‘And when the flowers died they saw through the disguise/and all the townsfolk circled her/with prayers and tar and feathers/and fire’. And later, in The Ghost of St Paul, ‘slowly the smell of her fades/as blossoms wither away’. The sense of the world as sacred, and of that sacredness as being essentially feminine, incarnated in the form of the Goddess, is supplanted by a worldview dominated by the male violence Talbot dissects. A violent power which itself dissects (and murders) anything threatening its authority or potency. The eponymous authority figures in Hollow Men ensure that the status quo is maintained, and that there can be no rebirth of the Goddess, of sacrosanct female power: ‘her name is known, her name is known,/cut her up, cut her out,/crush her before she finds it’. <br />
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Talbots landscapes are haunted by the hunted. From the whitetails chased by two black wolves in The Foundry through the ‘dog loose in the woods’ where there’s ‘a fox tied to a tree’ in Flowers In Her Hair to the knowledge that ‘they will come for me/with searchlights streaming through the cedar trees’ in Song Among the Pine. But there’s still a hint of something which was once there, and may one day be rediscovered and resurrected. The key line in Ghost of St Paul dedicates the song to those who refuse to give up hope, who continue the quest and resist the controls of those who would corral their spirit: ‘here’s to the brave/to all those resisting’. <br />
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Some of Talbot’s influences were revealed through his choices of covers. He went back to the roots of the expansive, noisy drift of fellow Bristolians Flying Saucer Attack and Third Eye Foundation by taking the psych pop of The Kinks’ See My Friends and extending its two chord drone to the horizon. Husker Du have already been mentioned, but there is a general translation of the brutal realism and anti-romanticism of hardcore into a more melancholic English idiom. The cover of Fairport Convention’s Farewell, Farewell demonstrates a real affinity with Richard Thompson’s bleak but compassionate songwriting. The spectral winds ghosting around guitar and voice suggest final words of parting, perhaps delivered from somewhere beyond. It’s a truly haunting interpretation. A version of Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren also captures the haunted, yearning quality of its briny drift with unadorned simplicity. Talbot also sang The Beatles’ Only A Northern Song on a Mojo collection of Yellow Submarine covers. It was a choice which indicated he might have shared George Harrison’s disdain for music biz practices. He also expressed a great admiration for Ian Curtis’ writing, his pared down but resonant phrasing. <br />
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Talbot was a writer as well as a musician, and literary influences show through in much of his work. Hollow Men alludes to TS Eliot, whose Waste Land also permeates Gravenhurst’s entropic landscapes. William Burroughs, an early inspiration, is acknowledged in the title of the LP The Western Lands. The cover itself has a rather bookish graphic design. Talbot also wrote for the online magazine The Quietus, and interviewed a number of writers for its pages. He was a keen student of philosophy, and his interview with John Gray makes fascinating and revealing reading. Gray opposed the rationalist/humanist fundamentalism of Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling in his books Straw Dogs and The Silence of Animals. He offered a different interpretation of religion which acknowledges its value and usefulness as a mythological template for understanding the complexities of human behaviour and experience. In his introduction to the interview, Talbot indicates his sympathy for Gray’s views and his dislike for the wholesale attacks on religious belief launched by Dawkins and Grayling, whilst declaring his own atheist standpoint. He wrote ‘to the many atheists who found the Dawkins camp’s rabid proselytising not only smug but tinged with an oddly religious fervour, the prospect of an intellectual heavyweight tearing up the very foundations of the rationalist position was a beautiful thing’. It shines a further light on, and adds more complex shading to the yearning for the sacred, for deeper connection in the Gravenhurst lyrics. <br />
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Talbot’s interview with Alan Moore reveals further literary influences: both Moore himself and the London writings of Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. Talbot published a few issues of a comic called Ultraskull, written by himself and a small coterie of collaborators. Avowedly amateurish, thoroughly cynical and deliberately offensive, it was an uncensored outpouring which recast Gravenhurst preoccupations in the form of deep black humour. It was occasionally funny, frequently sick, sometimes both – a nihilistic blast. Talbot was a particular admirer of Sinclair’s language, viewing its concentrated folding of word pictures, allusions and metaphors as something to aspire to. The conversation with Moore also turns to HP Lovecraft, which points to another inspiration, a source for those subterranean cities and ‘black holes in the sand’. Talbot was a horror fan in general, and ghosts and spectres flit through his work over the years. The luminous string arrangement at the end of The Prize is provided by the Algernon Blackwood Memorial Ensemble. <br />
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In fact, <a href="http://youtu.be/U4n5NG3VgAg">The Prize</a> is a grand song to go out on. If the sentiments of the lyric insist upon the emptiness of the prize, be that romantic fulfilment or the promises of shiny consumer enticements, the glorious coda offers something far more uplifting. The strings swell and pulsate, building and building until the voice of the guitar explodes into roaring harmony, elevating everything with an ecstatic chordal riff. It’s such a celebratory sound, not empty at all. Perhaps that the message left for us. Music is where we find direct connection. In a cold world, this is the warm, beating heart of it all. The real Prize. God bless and may you find peace. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-291458390092094112014-12-06T00:04:00.001+00:002014-12-06T00:04:43.456+00:00Walk On: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff - 40 Years of Art Walking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSRUt3dD4zDyVV5cjjWIgPOj3f_sOslpaxLbEIBWWKRhgb5408hHVwRsY9hz5C58L8jJQSUUa5uek1DMP1mLLwaOR1j4IsxjTIHW1ntGg2DbTab9JNgKtX9WNYzDXNBiSmWFtoF_iUTFyl/s1600/walkonplymouthslide.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSRUt3dD4zDyVV5cjjWIgPOj3f_sOslpaxLbEIBWWKRhgb5408hHVwRsY9hz5C58L8jJQSUUa5uek1DMP1mLLwaOR1j4IsxjTIHW1ntGg2DbTab9JNgKtX9WNYzDXNBiSmWFtoF_iUTFyl/s400/walkonplymouthslide.png" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://walkonplymouth.org/">Walk On</a> is a major exhibition loosely themed around the act of wandering and the art it has inspired over the past 5 or so decades. It is distributed around various venues in Plymouth, allowing the spectator to become a participant by tracing their own routes across the city. Indeed, the city itself can become a backdrop if you take part in one of the walks coinciding with the show, or if you borrow Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Walk Book and follow their recorded instructions. The everyday can be transformed, the art prompting you to perceive familiar surroundings from a different angle, making them new and surprising or rendering them strange and alienating. The title Walk On suggests a continuum of work, a distinct path beaten through the tangled and tortuous landscape of modern art. It also suggests a certain indifference to contemporary trends, a lighting out for territories beyond, travelling along tracks branching off from the from the urban Artworld heartlands. The exhibitors here might not consciously be participating in a shared movement or drawing on each other’s work. But there’s evidently something inherently attractive to the artist about walking, getting out into the world. It’s an act which implies a broadening of perspective and an exposure to the unexpected, the unplanned. Walking pursued for its own end can also be a solitary endeavour and positions the artist as an observer, a stranger passing through and recording what she sees. Making the walk itself a subject questions the very basis of art. How does the artist represent what he sees? How to convey the many impressions which impinge upon the sensorium, how to map the totality of experience, or even the smallest part of it. Part of the fascination of the exhibition lies in the variety of means and modes used to translate direct observation into some kind of representational form. <br />
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The first two artists the visitor encounters in the part of the exhibition housed in the museum (the largest of the venues) are Hamish Fulton and Richard Long, who studied together at St Martin’s College of Art in London. It’s the perfect starting point, locating the origins of walking art in the 1960s, a decade which was defined artistically by a spirit of experimentalism and adventure; a wilful breaking away from established traditions. One obvious way of doing this was to move beyond the confines of the gallery space to create works in and from the landscape. Hamish Fulton conducted and early walk in 1967 with fellow students, shuffling along in a cluster from St Martin’s to their chosen destination a short distance away in Soho. It marked a conscious step away from premises where art was officially ‘done’, moving slowly into the chaos of the city and taking time to observe its passing parade. The route was retraced for the 40th anniversary of the event; walking as remembering and reflecting upon time and change. The representation of this walk takes the form of a poster advertising something which has already taken place. Details of time and place are laid out in a clear, bold graphic style, and there is a photo of the original walkers, which also acts as a snapshot of a London moment, with the styles and period details telling the story of the era. It could almost be a flyer for a band that’s recently passed through, yet to be torn down and pasted over with the latest thing. <br />
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From local beginnings, Fulton’s path radiated outwards, embracing the whole world. Investigations of the backyard expanded into epic explorations of far flung wilds. From college to the city, from the city to the country beyond its borders, and from that country to other countries, other continents. Just walk on. Eventually he attempted the ultimate ‘walk’: a climb up Everest. This is also presented in a bold graphic style, this time principally in the form of the bright, colourful Tibetan flag, which is placed centrally in the composition. It turns the walk into a political act, a crossing of boundaries and a refusal to recognise their invisible imperatives. <br />
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31 Walks is the first of the maps in the exhibition. They take many forms, artists playing with the idea of the map as a diagrammatic representation of landscape, and as a guide to navigating your way through the land; the map as a way of planning journeys or of making them in the imagination, mental travel through inner space. Fulton’s map shows the British and European landmasses as white blanks given shape by the sky blue of the surrounding seas. His walks over the decades are traced with thin, winding lines, intersecting capillaries with arrows indicating the direction of flow. The text compressed into the top right corner (over the unwalked Nordic countries) reads ‘walking coast to coast/coast to river/river to coast/river to river’. Britain in particular is condensed into a watery island, a land defined by what is not land. Imagistic word lists are another means to summon up the impressions of a journey. Fulton reverses the dictum that a picture is worth a thousand words. The repetition and varied placement of the two words ‘river’ and ‘coast’ with their accompanying associations with complex line and expansive border create their own rhythm of motion and connective pattern. The value of the work is in the direct experience as far as Fulton is concerned. ‘A walked line, unlike a drawn line, can never be erased’ he writes in one of the works here. And elsewhere, ‘the artwork cannot represent the experience of a walk’. It can only be alluded to through symbols – words, flags and maps. Beneath the 31 Walks map are printed the words ‘walking into the distance beyond imagination’. Fulton disappears into the all-encompassing haze of oceanic blue. We can only follow him so far, picking up on the traces he leaves behind him. <br />
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Fulton takes the art of walking into head-scratching metaphysical zones in which the nature of representation becomes an inseparable part of the work. We will never get to experience the walk, the work itself (although there is a chance to join one of his walks during the exhibition), only the attempt to express something of its essence. It’s a reflection upon the nature of art in general. Richard Long isn’t quite as reductive as his contemporary. Although an early work does pare down the tracks of his Dartmoor walks to a few minimal lines and circles, symbols charting his own territory with no co-ordinates provided to help give the outsider an idea of the topography covered. Long is also more inclined to make his mark on the landscape (and make a record of that marking) as is evinced by England 1968 and A Line In The Himalayas 1975. The linearity of the track ‘drawn’ across the field through walking repeatedly back and forth and the neatly arrayed, lightly coloured row of stones forming a runway to the distant mountain peak are clear indications of human presence and organising thought in the non-linear surroundings of the natural world. <br />
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Long uses maps as record and ‘proof’ of his walks as well as for the visual pleasure they afford. If a map is a two-dimensional diagram of a three dimensional space, then Long takes it to the next dimension as well. One of the works displayed here, A Square of Ground 1966, is a small tabletop landscape, a hilltop draining into a stream which traces folded contours as it runs down into the valley. This miniaturised topography, which resembles a geological model, implies a similar miniaturisation of any human figure (including Long himself) within it. It’s a pocket version of the sublime, with observers (us) peering down from above like towering gods. <br />
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Long also uses natural materials gathered on his walks, something which Fulton pointedly never does. In this exhibition, he has created two circles from blocks and wedges of stone, laid out on the gallery floor like fragmented wheels. This construction of a work composed of elemental materials in the centre of a ‘refined’ space creates a sense of dislocation, of worlds colliding. The congruent arrangement of raw materials redolent of stark, remote sites, circles which the visitor has to walk around as they make their way through the gallery, summons up a ritualistic atmosphere. It’s entirely appropriate that an exhibition in the neighbouring room displays materials recently found in a Bronze Age burial mound at Whitehorse Hill on Dartmoor. <br />
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A good many of the artists in the Walk On exhibition take their cues from Fulton and Long, adapting or updating them according to their own particular experience or intention. Maps are a recurrent feature. Chris Drury’s High Desert Wind superimposes a map of Ladakh on a cross-section of the human heart. It contrasts the spiritual with the corporeal, outer with inner landscapes. Symbolising the yearning for travel and adventure, self-discovery and enlightenment, it is a map of the human heart. Jeremy Wood’s White Horse Hill is a relief map made from cardboard which bursts out from the frame in ridges and contoured rosettes. Its protruding dimensions were drawn from GPS tracking signals. The ancient chalk downland landscape and the marks which man has made upon it (the Uffington White Horse) are thus contrasted with modern satellite technologies. These are technologies which create a distance from the landscapes and places which were once sacred, as the powerful lines of the chalk horse indicate. <br />
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Sarah Cullen displays several drawings whose abstract patterns were created using a simple yet ingenious low-tech home-made device. She carries a case on her walks within which a pencil is suspended and weighted over a sheet of paper. The swaying and jogging of the case beneath its handle is translated into the inscribing movement of the pencil. It becomes an index of the effort, changes of direction, ascents and descents involved in the walk, all recorded in the relative densities and vectors of the lines and curves made on the page, the areas which they fill more fully and those which are more sparsely shaded. <br />
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There are tabletop landscapes, miniature geological features or built-up maps. Brian Thompson, like Jeremy Wood, uses GPS technology to create layered sculptures whose shapes are determined by the tracked outlines of his walks. These outlines are incrementally enlarged, with the final form resembling a stalagmite mountain outcropping. These accretions equate with the formation of the landscape over time, but also with the intimate interconnection of landscape and memory. Again, the surface skimming devices of modern satellite technology are used to express something more ancient and deeply rooted. <br />
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Tracy Hanna’s Hill Walker shines a spotlight on pristine conical mountain of mounded plaster dust. Set within a dimly lit cubicle, it casts a sharp shadow in its wake. The mountain has a dark, penumbral side, the hidden reverse of its brightly illuminated face. Projected onto the slope we see the tiny silhouette of a figure trudging up its steep incline. It never quite reaches the top, fading away to reappear at the base again and begin the ascent once more. Tragi-comic, heroic and ridiculous, this mini-drama – a pocket-sized epic – reflects the British love of the noble failure, as enshrined in the mythologised stories of Scott and Mallory. It’s also a light-hearted embodiment of the human spirit for exploration and adventure or, in more nebulously spiritual terms, its constant aspiration towards some higher state. It’s also just great fun. <br />
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Some artists develop personal systems through which they visually codify the impressions gathered on their walks. James Hugonin’s Binary Rhythm takes the colours he has noted during this walks through the Northumbrian landscape and arranges them in grids of tiny squres. The result is a tiled wall, a sampler of the rich variety and infinite contrasts of nature’s palette. Rachel Clewlow records the landmarks passed on her urban walks in a small notebook. The information is laid out with obsessive neatness and symmetry on the page, the writing tiny but perfectly spaced. This information is translated onto the canvas, appearing as a visual analogue through the application of a codifying system. The results are reminiscent of spectral read-outs, Venn diagrams and bar charts (and the colour paintings of Bridget Riley) but have an abstract visual beauty all their own. It’s only through close inspection that you can see the framework they are built on – the artistic x & y axes for the visualised memory graph. <br />
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Some artists create a strong narrative structure to give form and meaning to their wandering. Sophie Calle’s photographs are intimate snapshots of her 1980 travels to Venice, capturing mysterious details which imply some personal significance hidden from us. These are put into context by the accompanying text, a first person narration which resembles the inner monologues of a Raymond Chandler PI. Calle decided to follow a stranger she had met briefly in Paris. Her attempts to track him down in Venice, where he had told her was going on a trip, build up a feeling of suspense, and the developing story of obsession and identity crisis resembles a Hitchcock film. The self-conscious manner of its telling is also like a Jean Luc Godard take on the detective genre – Calle as Anna Karina. Calle’s obsessive pursuit drives her to adapt different disguises, becoming a character in her own self-willed drama. Her random quest also makes her a stranger in an unknown city, and the story conveys a feeling of alienation, of being adrift in unknown territory. Maps are also supplied, attempts at providing evidence for way may very well be one big sustained work of fiction. <br />
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Walking also lends itself to game-playing, the setting of rules and limitations and the direction of human action and behaviour. Tim Knowles’ Kielder Forest Walk finds him rigorously following a straight line plotted through a dense coniferous plantation. It’s a fool’s journey through a dark land, pointless but not without aim. The unedited 8 hour HD film of his hapless endeavour is only ever likely to be seen in short extracts. A POV perspective of a man in a protective mask plunging relentlessly on through dim, uniform woodlands is only going to hold the attention of even the most determined viewer for a limited period. It’s the sheer single bloody mindedness with which the walk was carried out which makes it admirable in its own perverse way. The artist did it because he could and said he would, and that’s that. <br />
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There are others who walk the line, figuratively following in the footsteps of Richard Long. Carey Young directly quotes Long in one of her Body Techniques series of works. She created a line on the rubble strewn outskirts of Dubai, which she then walked along dressed in a grey business suit. She almost seems to merge with her surroundings, as if she had arisen from this wasteground. The glass towers clustering in ever-growing profusion behind her suggest that she is enacting a modern mythological drama, one which marks an ending as well the emergence of a new world. The mark made on this landscape won’t be subject to the gradual erosion of natural forces but will almost instantly be erased by the accelerated temporal demands of global finance. <br />
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Catherine Yass’ High Wire sets up a scenario in which walking the line is imperative, a matter of life and death. She filmed the high-wire walker Didier Pasquette crossing a line strung between high-rise blocks on the Red Road estate in Glasgow. The vertiginous experience of the walk is heightened by the use of a POV perspective gained by attaching a camera to Pasquette’s head. The tentative crossing, with long-distance shots taking in the estate and the horizon beyond, symbolises the post-war ideals of high-rise, high-density living, and the decline of the utopian dream which saw the Red Road monoliths erected. The wire-walker must sustain a concentrated balancing-act. If he succeeds, he walks amongst the clouds. If he fails, he falls fast and far onto the hard reality of the concrete world below. The towers have now been demolished, the dream reduced to rubble and then cleared away, dispelled as if it never existed. <br />
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Marina Abramovic walked the wavering and in parts semi-erased line of the Great Wall of China in 1988. She started at one end, her partner Ulay at the other. Their meeting in the middle marked the end of their collaboration and of their romantic involvement. It’s not as cold and clinical as it sounds. The original intention had been that they would marry upon meeting. But the complex arrangements and negotiations required to set up the walk took years, and personal circumstances changed in that time. The symbolic heart of the action was thereby turned on its head. An immense symbol of political power and dominance was also transformed into the backdrop for an epic personal drama. There are six photographs of the walk displayed here, each with small drawings of diagrammatic figures scribbled 6 years later placed beneath. These are star doodles from someone who has now attained art celebrity status. They resemble pieces of retrospective graffiti scrawled on the wall. A personal iconography spelling out the affirmation ‘Marina woz ere’. <br />
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Bruce Nauman walks the lines of a square in ‘Walking’, taking ungainly backward pigeon steps and making walking look like suspended falling. His video focuses on the most basic of movements, but sets them a little off kilter, making them seem effortful. The masking tape path laid out on the floor looks like a crude practice grid, the walker some alien being just learning how to inhabit a human body. It’s not quite got it right yet. <br />
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Francis Alys’ short film Guards records an event in which he created a set of rules for a troop of Coldstream Guards. They enter the square mile of the City of London singly from different directions. When they meet their comrades they begin forming into ranks and march in step. Groups gradually agglomerate and coalesce, the sound of their heavy, tramping shoes increasing in volume and intensity. The aim is to form an 8x8 square. When this is achieved, their instructions are to march to the nearest bridge over the Thames. The film acts as an exploration of the City’s empty weekend alleys and byways. They are sounded out by the explosive ricocheting of the soldiers’ one-two steps. The inherent oddity of the deserted streets is heightened by the anomalous presence of these anachronistically colourful troops. Individually, they appear lost, as if they had just woken up to find themselves in this unfamiliar setting. A battalion from an Imperial past teleported to a concrete future, left to wander dazedly through the maze of the Barbican. They seem touchingly human in these first stages of bewilderment, peering around corners or finding in comfort in sitting and combing their busbies. As soon as they encounter their fellows, however, stereotypical behaviours snap into place, and exaggerated marching steps turn them in to programmed components in a greater whole. There’s something almost lemming-like about their final passage to the river. When the square breaks up, its destination having been reached, the individual components of the marching machine once more disperse, as aimless and lost as they were at the beginning now that their purpose has been fulfilled. There are many dimensions to this playful but gripping work. On a purely visual level, the vivid red of the soldiers’s uniforms provides a pleasing contrast to the prevailing grey of the City buildings. There’s something here of the old Busby Berkeley routines, with their choreographed direction of bodies in synchronised motion shot from above. A stiff , deindividuated dance devoid of all personal expression. Guardsmen with strong nationalistic associations marching through the financial district can’t help but carry symbolic overtones. Are they here to restore order and impose control over a system which has descended into chaos? To drive out predatory jackals and instate a new set of values? The sight and sound of soldiers marching through the old streets of London makes us reflect upon how fortunate we have been not to have experienced such violent disruptions in the recent past. The martial rhythms drum up ghost echoes of alternative histories, time streams superimposed for a brief visionary instant.<br />
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Guards takes some of its footage from CCTV cameras, and this emblem of modern surveillance and paranoia features in a number of works. Alys uses it again in Nightwatch, another short film. We watch the nocturnal wanderings of a fox through the empty halls and corridors of the National Portrait Gallery via these remote viewing eyes. The fox sniffs at plinths, walks the length of benches, crawls under cabinets and leaps up onto a table where it curls up to go to sleep. All under the blank regard of the serried ranks of Tudor and Stuart worthies who hang lifelessly on the wall. Like Guards, Nightwatch gains much of its power from placing its subject in an alien environment. The contrast here is between a creature renowned, in an urban context, for scavenging (the ragamuffin urchin of the city’s fauna) and the refined setting it is set loose in. The figures it moves amongst are the kinds of people who would have hunted it down in their day. But they are now immobile, fixed in their immortal aspects. The fox is a brush-tailed blur of restless motion in the still hush of the museum after dark, following whatever trails it is picking up on the parquet flooring. There’s a certain tension as to whether it will knock a bust from its pedestal or piss on a portrait of the queen. The fox’s folkloric role as trickster and wily outsider gives an extra resonance to the film. <br />
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Some artists order the memories of their travels through the traditional holiday means of the slide show or the collection of mementoes. Atul Bhalla’s Yamuna Walk shows a series of pictures of a walk along the banks of a river which passes through New Delhi. This progression of images and the contrasts they throw up portrays the different aspects of the river, the co-existence of seemingly incompatible qualities. It is sacred, and industrial and agricultural resource, a workplace, a site of grandiose and politically charged engineering works, and a dumping ground. A list of words at the end are like captions which have floated free from the scenes they were intended to explain. This stream of words trigger recollections of the images which have passed before us. It’s an associative flow which sums up the bewildering chaos of the landscape Bhalla depicts in all its decay and fecundity. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG22_xZ4jUD-wqDWBzzZKt3EsKLwikk7VP2lqmj9dCfuFe4CQqMUG2_YdcvxVhvC4xOM0RNZg66M09EPg0TnMcPl2mJndFBklXBXd9O8Zs_CQqwaLyI85yIfaSFfbLaaw_JIN_40auIgu_/s1600/2000+Saint+Etienne+-+How+We+Used+To+Live.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG22_xZ4jUD-wqDWBzzZKt3EsKLwikk7VP2lqmj9dCfuFe4CQqMUG2_YdcvxVhvC4xOM0RNZg66M09EPg0TnMcPl2mJndFBklXBXd9O8Zs_CQqwaLyI85yIfaSFfbLaaw_JIN_40auIgu_/s400/2000+Saint+Etienne+-+How+We+Used+To+Live.jpeg" /></a></div><blockquote>Julian Opie's cover for Saint Etienne's How We Used to Live</blockquote>Juian Opie’s Summer is based on a walk through the countryside in France. The artist took a regular series of photographs which became the basis for a slowly progressing slide show of paintings. Opie’s landscapes are characteristically simplified, reduced to outline forms filled with undifferentiated colour and with little distinguishing detail within. It is an edgeless Arcadia painted in shades of green, and with the images fading gently into one another, we glide through it with frictionless ease. The soft murmuration of ambient music accompanies our dreamy drift. Objects have a blurry lack of definition. We can recognise trees, but any finer species distinction is impossible. Rounded rectangles looming before us could be haystacks or they could be standing stones. It’s almost like a journey through a Batsford book cover. This is a landscape in which nothing can hurt, and everything is perceived through an anaesthetised veil. It also reminded me of some of the lovely covers Opie did for Saint Etienne at the time of their Sound of Water album. <br />
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Alex Finlay’s The Road North: The 53 Stations documents a journey through Scotland he made with his travelling companion Ken Cockburn. Their progress is memorialised by a collection of whisky miniatures, each a distillation of place and associated feeling. These feelings, records of a moment (the moment after knocking back the local malt) are expressed in the form of compact verses or epigrams, written on labels and attached to the bottles. They pay homage to the haiku written by Basho during his journey on the Narrow Road to the Deep North. One reads, for example, ‘approaching the bridge my fingers can’t help feeling for change’. The bottles may also be a nod to the many inns depicted in Hiroshige’s woodblock print series 53 Stations on the Tokaido Road, which often have landladies positioned outside almost forcibly dragging passing travellers into their establishments. <br />
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The lure of the northern wilds is felt by many artists. Richard Long and Hamish Fulton both headed for the Himalayas. Iceland is also a popular destination. Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson went on a ten-day walk through the north of the island. A series of pictures on a concertinaed length of card is like one of the fold-out postcards you used to be able to get if you had more to say than would fit on just the one side. The title, Home, suggests that it might indeed be something to send back from far flung regions. The pictures depict cairns, markers and also perhaps memorials. They could represent guiding posts, reassuring the traveller that they aer on the right track; or reminders of the lost, those who wandered from the path and never found it again. They are ambiguous and silent forms, tightly packed and self-contained, enshrouded in icy mist. <br />
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Dan Holdsworth also travelled to Iceland, and his lightbox image is like a huge projected slide. It is blown up to a scale intended to convey something of the sublime nature of the chill volcanic landscape. The eye is drawn into its mysterious depths, and you almost feel as if you could drift into it. The negative inversion of light and dark amplifies the uncanny spirit of the place, lending it an unworldly ambience. The soft illumination suffusing the glass plate from an obscure source behind serves to deepen the unfathomable shadows, radiating a dark light. <br />
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The words Walk On conjure the lyrical invocations of Rogers and Hammerstein and Neil Young in the songs You’ll Never Walk Alone and Walk On. The one anthemic and prayerful, the other resigned and dismissive of critical carping. They both confront the obstacles and disappointments of life, recognise the inevitability of change and determine to persist whatever happens. Walking is an act of hope, of openness to the unfolding of new experiences and encounters. The artists here embrace it in a variety of ways, displaying a great breadth imagination and vision. So walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone. You’ll never walk alone. <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7024294187880201878.post-57825193380138371002014-11-30T00:20:00.001+00:002014-11-30T00:37:17.903+00:00Bloody Homage: The Hammer of Dr Valentine, Terrors of the Théâtre Diabolique and the Enduring Appeal of Hammer and Amicus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGbRXo8GKg69WgkV-7OiE8DVTqdlCQ8CG8RSd46TzofPnqebhSyXyf4-sybN2zyM9q0ypRNgdhILT_SL5a03evpoopm4xSnNVcyZsLxlSoG2QNwhNA5HJLc2t1epYFy8KsSAkoIDdWkW6r/s1600/thodv-hbb-cover-full-wrap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGbRXo8GKg69WgkV-7OiE8DVTqdlCQ8CG8RSd46TzofPnqebhSyXyf4-sybN2zyM9q0ypRNgdhILT_SL5a03evpoopm4xSnNVcyZsLxlSoG2QNwhNA5HJLc2t1epYFy8KsSAkoIDdWkW6r/s400/thodv-hbb-cover-full-wrap.jpg" /></a></div><br />
The golden age of British horror movies continues to exert a fascination over successive generations of fans. The films of the late 50s through to the mid-70s belong to a distinct period of post-war popular culture, a pre-corporate era in which small companies could produce and market movies which were relatively small in scale but highly distinguished in quality. It was also a time in which maverick Soho producers at the lower end of the market could knock off cheap exploitation pictures which occasionally (very occasionally) resulted in the revelation of a fresh and exciting new talent, creating something which transcended the formula its backers were flagrantly trying to copy. The horror cinema of this era bears so little relation to contemporary manifestations of the genre, with their emphasis on prolonged physical pain and the dogged pursuit of new extremes, that they seem to come from a far more distant time, beyond living memory. Their values can seem impossibly outmoded, but in this marked difference lies part of their charm. The best of the pictures from this time offer a great deal more than the nostalgic appeal of period quaintness, however. They were made with great care and craftsmanship, featured actors of real class (the oft-twinned names of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee being the stellar examples) and a wonderful array of character performers, and were often possessed of a full-blooded romanticism which formed a continuation of British traditions both cinematic (Powell and Pressburger and Gainsborough), literary and artistic. The Hammer and Amicus studios were the most notable homes from which they emerged. And they were homes, with a family feel to what they produced, a house style which you could depend upon. It’s a seemingly contradictory thing to say about the productions of a genre intended to inspire terror, but a real warmth and affection for their films and those involved in the making of them has developed over the years. Two new books pay homage to them in the form of reference-steeped fiction, and serve as testament to this enduring appeal. <br />
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<a href="http://spectralpress.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/the-hammer-of-dr-valentine-news/">The Hammer of Dr Valentine</a> by <a href="http://www.johnlprobert.com/site/1.asp">John Llewellyn Probert</a>, published by <a href="http://spectralpress.wordpress.com/">Spectral Press</a>, is a sequel to <a href="http://www.johnlprobert.com/site/new_page_85.asp">The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine</a>, which won the British Fantasy Award for best novella at the 2013 World Fantasy Convention. That first encounter with the diabolically resourceful physician, bent on avenging the death of his daughter, drew very consciously on the films of Vincent Price. The models for the absurdly elaborate deaths meted out to the medical staff deemed responsible for allowing his daughter to die are lifted from Price’s films, Valentine adapting them according to circumstance. The narrative structure and blackly comic tone is lifted from Theatre of Blood and the Dr Phibes movies in particular. They were distinguished by lusciously contrived camp, the horror (and they were surprisingly vicious at times) alleviated by knowingly exaggerated and patently ridiculous excess. Dr Valentine emulates ham thesp Edward Lionheart in Theatre of Blood in his adoption of role-playing disguises, his propensity for gloating moral lectures and his relish for bad puns and mordant quips as agonising at the torments he inflicts upon his victims. These victims are invariably loathsome and wholly undeserving of sympathy, thus allowing us to enjoy the spectacle of their exquisitely plotted and executed demises. <br />
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The Hammer of Dr Valentine shifts the focus from Vincent Price and onto the extensive output of the Hammer studios. The Doctor is back and this time choosing as the subjects for his art of death the tabloid sleazemongers and hack bestseller writers who distorted the true nature of his previous escapades. As an aesthete of decadent derangement, this distortion of his carefully constructed narrative or revenge is unforgivable. Thus they are picked off one by one, eliminated by the monster they helped to foster and becoming fodder for more of their kind. Still sticking assiduously with the template of Theatre of Blood and Dr Phibes, even though nominally now on Hammer territory, the Doctor is provided with a young and loyal female assistant, his co-star and siren in the deadly skits he contrives. Also following the pattern, the forces of the law always plod a few paces behind. The returning DCI Jeffrey Longdon is left cursing impotently at his minions, the morbid chorus of DIs Martinus, Graves and Wentworth, as he comes across the latest implausible murder scene. He’s less the stoical Peter Jeffries of the Phibes movies, more the irascible, cynical and petulant Donald Pleasance in Death Line. There’s a less morally compromised character on the roster of potential victims, John Spalding, the equivalent of Joseph Cotton in The Abominable Dr Phibes or Ian Hendry in Theatre of Blood. If anyone is likely to survive and bring the Doctor’s murderous mystery play to a close it will be him. He is also effectively the ‘savant’ of the scenario, the character with the specialised knowledge necessary to defeat the monster. He is no Van Helsing, but his knowledge of the variety of Van Helsings on screen may prove of use. As a film critic he is acquainted with the whole range of Hammer films and thereby with the modus operandi of the supervillain he and the police force face. But will this cinephile learning arm them sufficiently to defeat such a mercurial, elusive foe. <br />
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Hammer fans will have a huge amount of fun spotting the films whose deaths Dr Valentine goes to such lengths to reproduce. They’re not necessarily the obvious ones, either. Probert digs deep into the Hammer back catalogue and comes up with some surprising and effective choices. He may just lead you to dust off films you’d put to one side as inessential. Fear In The Night or The Reptile, for instance. Valentine is in some ways a superfan himself, dressing the part and paying his own form of tribute with appropriate bucketloads of Kensington gore. Probert makes no bones about his own love of the studio’s output. Well, most of it anyway. He reserves a pronounced disdain for the 70s psycho Peter Pan drama Straight On ‘til Morning, with the new Hammer star of the time Shane Bryant and an uncomfortable Rita Tushingham (her unease palpable in the commentary she provides for the dvd release). His objects to what he perceives as its failed pretensions towards arthouse status. I find things of interest in it. It seems to be a swinging sixties film infected with the growing disillusionment of the seventies. The Knack or Smashing Time in which the bright pop art backdrops have faded to grey, the zany antics wound down into entropic stasis; the Peter Pan fantasy of carefree youth is no longer sustainable, and the attempt to prolong it induces psychotic breakdown. But no, it ultimately fails to deliver on the promise of such a scenario, and descends into another of Hammer’s tiresome psycho derivatives. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuithpi7w8HDQknBsIp9OtvIaHPaR2W2okFwjL6V2q6IHPmF7v_QAlr6Hy-w8q95uSx0vMQWF3iqaDT2_InEdPupS_edG2Z_7svWAx9wHfSXUA7Zddp5sKAxe3hsoVnP2FTQyadSMzOtQP/s1600/house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuithpi7w8HDQknBsIp9OtvIaHPaR2W2okFwjL6V2q6IHPmF7v_QAlr6Hy-w8q95uSx0vMQWF3iqaDT2_InEdPupS_edG2Z_7svWAx9wHfSXUA7Zddp5sKAxe3hsoVnP2FTQyadSMzOtQP/s400/house.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Prominent citation of sources during the opening credits for The House That Dripped Blood</blockquote>In an extensive afterword, Probert provides a film by film key to the story’s cinematic reference points. There’s a lovely image in the book of the police incident room map, lines of red wool radiating out from the crime scenes to join with small reproductions of the relevant Hammer film posters. The afterword is Probert’s explanatory counterpart to this chart. It is charmingly autobiographical, and his remembrances of first encounters with various films will chime with many readers, prompting their own misty reminiscences. I particularly liked his recollection of watching Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed on HTV Cymru, unconvincingly dubbed into Welsh. Amicus gets a look in via the reference to Lotte Eisner’s The Haunted Screen, the classic study of German expressionist horror. It is prominently placed on a desk and lingered over by the camera at the start of The House That Dripped Blood. <br />
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We also get to visit Dr Terror’s Haunted Cornish Funfair, which combines Dr Terror’s House of Horror’s with the fairground setting of Torture Garden. A new entertainment venture for Peter Cushing’s tarot reader, perhaps. The rides include Dr Blood’s Coffin and Crucible of Terror, references to two Cornish set films of surpassing dullness (Zennor standing in for ‘Porthcarron’ and Perranporth for any Cornish folk out there). ‘These local things were never up to much’, one character muses, ‘so they could give the Crucible of Terror a miss’. It’s an amusingly offhand critical dismissal. Probert’s story is full of such pleasing details and, like its illustrious sources, serves up shudders of fear and laughter in equal and well-balance measures. We also get to visit one of the ultimate locations for 60s and 70s British horror: Oakley Court, a neo-gothic mansion by the Thames in Berkshire (conveniently close to Hammer’s Bray Studios). It provided the backdrop to several Hammer films, transported to Cornwall for The Reptile and Plague of Zombies and middle Europe for Brides of Dracula. Amicus used it for one of their few all-out gothics, And Now The Screaming Starts, and it was put to atmospheric use in Vampyres. Intriguingly, a parting reference to Don’t Look Now suggests that the demented Dr V may yet return – but moving into the arthouse and using Nic Roeg films as his sick source material. We can only wait with fearful anticipation. <br />
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<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/dan-barratt/theatre-diabolique-colour-paperback-illo/paperback/product-21872278.html">Terrors of the Théâtre Diabolique</a> is an anthology edited by Dan Barratt and John Davies. It is graced with an urbane introduction by David Warner, who played an unfortunate character in the Amicus film From Beyond the Grave, a devilish cover by Simon A.Brett and illustrations by Paul Griffin. Profits from the sales of the book, whether in physical form or as a downloadable pdf, are going to <a href="https://www.justgiving.com/theatre-diabolique">MIND</a>, a particularly worthy charity. Not least amongst the services it offers is enlightening the public about the nature of mental illness, thus dispelling the bogies summoned up in Amicus’ film Asylum; an absurdly melodramatic view of the ‘mad’ as devious and dangerously unpredictable which is still surprisingly prevalent. The inspiration here is the series of portmanteau horror films made by Amicus from the mid 60s through through to the mid 70s. Or the early 80s if you care to include The Monster Club, which I rather think I do, largely out of blurry nostalgia. Alright, so Amicus had folded by then, but it was produced by Milton Subotsky and is an Amicus film in all but name. It was the first horror film I saw in the cinema. I was thrilled at the prospect of watching an Amicus picture on the big screen, having become familiar with the likes of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, From Beyond the Grave and Asylum via Saturday night horror double bills on the BBC. <br />
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Dan Barratt shares my affection for the Amicus portmanteau films and has fashioned a contemporary version in the form of a short story collection. He supplies the framing narrative himself, inviting others to provide the creepy vignettes he sets up. The opening scenes are written with a cinematic sweep, taking the point of view of a swallow gliding down towards a seaside town. This affords us long and medium distance establishing shots, followed up by exterior close-ups of the Victorian gothic details of a crumbling theatre of dark varieties. Following a near escape from a local cat, the swallow conducts a swift (sic) aerial survey of the interior before coming to a rest at a high vantage point, from which it can watch events unfolding below. The choice of a swallow might be a little nod to Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince. The swallow as symbol of selfless sacrifice provides an ironic contrast to the self-absorbed outlooks of the characters who people the stories in the collection. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6faaG-cBAvP7x-eF45w6ztEqHSa__7FMOr9CWFq7icDYzAd1LjTzUiaLcQVltSE2hKunjVxvuVJs4gF7uawLu09WbXWoUz0UOrFgtu5t3zdFlT5DGNpObMJMgK2rYsuwDzdWAFvHGwhxx/s1600/DrTerrorsHouseOfHorrors_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6faaG-cBAvP7x-eF45w6ztEqHSa__7FMOr9CWFq7icDYzAd1LjTzUiaLcQVltSE2hKunjVxvuVJs4gF7uawLu09WbXWoUz0UOrFgtu5t3zdFlT5DGNpObMJMgK2rYsuwDzdWAFvHGwhxx/s400/DrTerrorsHouseOfHorrors_400.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>You're all dead already - end of story</blockquote>The protagonists in Amicus films are by and large unsympathetic: selfish, mean-spirited, venal, cold-hearted and frequently coldly murderous. They tend to find themselves gathered together in some unwelcoming venue (a crypt, a vault) or linked by a common locale they all visit (a strange shop, a house which changes hands with suspicious regularity). There is a guide or host who welcomes them, generally with a highly portentous, sepulchral air. He then proceeds to tell them their secret stories, reading their fates, which invariably involve a distinct element of finality. Having pronounced their collective doom, he then reveals the shocking truth, which brings the film to an end. This tends to be a reminder that they’re all dead already and will be, or have for some time been spending an eternity in hell. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd8Jj4i3sVM6wtP6JuBsaPX0bdQEJKP0AR4j0OTYbNoTdyJAdr2vJHZRz4BUjS__SYEmoODb4OPotpZeSsSE-OC0NDO5lShDzQqtNvsNhjoaGZX9e361MKDfJCMVH3EMNZvM6IQWgVL4Lb/s1600/cushing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd8Jj4i3sVM6wtP6JuBsaPX0bdQEJKP0AR4j0OTYbNoTdyJAdr2vJHZRz4BUjS__SYEmoODb4OPotpZeSsSE-OC0NDO5lShDzQqtNvsNhjoaGZX9e361MKDfJCMVH3EMNZvM6IQWgVL4Lb/s400/cushing.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Peter Cushing's mild-mannered shopkeeper in From Beyond the Grave - just don't shortchange him</blockquote>There’s certainly a strong current of judgement contained within the stories of the Amicus portmanteaus. Poetic justice is meted out with cackling relish, often rounded off with a summary quip from our guide. I always loved Peter Cushing’s parting words to Ian Carmichael in From Beyond the Grave. Carmichael had just surreptitiously swapped price tags on two antique snuff boxes, buying the more expensive one for a considerably reduced price as a result. In this uncanny shop, hidden away in a forgotten city alleyway in which the Victorian era seems to live on, it is, however, extremely, indeed fatally unwise to cheat the proprietor. ‘I hope you enjoy snuffing it sir’, he says, a pitiless note underlying his amiable, mild-mannered demeanour. He clamps his pipe in his mouth, turns and shuffles off with a certain air of weary disappointment at being confronted yet again with human weakness and greed. The moral comeuppance visited upon richly deserving characters betrays the influence of the notorious EC comics of the 50s. These had a notably satirical undercurrent, drawing (and inking) a picture of contemporary America as a moral vacuum which belied the comfortable self-satisfaction of the Eisenhower era. Vengeance was often carried out at the clawed, earth-encrusted hands of rotting revenants, leering corpses returning from the grave to right wrongs with much rending and tearing of flesh. They were anti-superheroes of a sort, emerging from the earth rather than descending from the skies, draped in ragged shrouds rather than colourful capes. A suppurating Justice League of America for the downtrodden and betrayed. Needless to say, they failed to win the approval of the moral majority. The Amicus films didn’t really share the barbed satirical element of the EC comics, although there was a certain undermining of 70s consumerism and class divisions, the relentless pursuit of wealth and the idealisation of the spotless suburban household. There weren’t many rotting corpses clawing their way out of the grave either. One memorable exception was the tale of Arthur Grimsdyke, a highly effective episode featuring a performance of heartrending pathos from Peter Cushing. We cheer him on when he returns from the dead to make literal the figurative heartlessness of his proto-yuppie tormentor. That story was told in Tales from the Crypt, one of two films directly adapted from EC comics. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhFVnb707sauyMrrutp7PiATejeJMJQ4189f_Go1MuyV3LvsKh4uzSAcM_gmsFZvbEs6F2Eiu-LHE1YcNPCiTW-9YAg_Rg697C5S1kKK2pF1PKa12q6zAS8GZcHiKxIoOf_JNFop7OlSRP/s1600/grimsdyke+returns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhFVnb707sauyMrrutp7PiATejeJMJQ4189f_Go1MuyV3LvsKh4uzSAcM_gmsFZvbEs6F2Eiu-LHE1YcNPCiTW-9YAg_Rg697C5S1kKK2pF1PKa12q6zAS8GZcHiKxIoOf_JNFop7OlSRP/s400/grimsdyke+returns.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Grimsdyke returns in Tales From The Crypt</blockquote>There’s definitely a strong element of moral comeuppance to the tales told in the Théâtre Diabolique as well. We have our guide here, too. A cowled figure who ushers his ‘guests’ through a tour of the dilapidated Victorian house of varieties, leading them into the subterranean vaults lying beneath the stage. There are conscious echoes of Amicus films throughout, as you would expect from a homage. The touring party pass various dusty objects in storage rooms which hint at stories untold, or perhaps ones we’ve seen before: an ‘ornate mirror’ reminds us of the possessed glass in From Beyond the Grave; ‘a child’s doll’ the toy which Christopher Lee snatches from the hand of the little girl he believes to be a witch in The House That Dripped Blood; ‘some scattered illustrated pages’ are perhaps drawn by Tom Baker’s artist in Vault of Horror, whose portrait subjects suffered damage commensurate with that inflicted upon their images. Others are less familiar, although ‘a large, ominous pendulum blade’ and ‘a human sized ape suit’ might have strayed in from the Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe pictures The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death. Similarly, a ‘spiralling metal staircase’ which ‘groaned and swayed alarmingly’ may have been relocated from Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, as memorably visualised in Robert Wise’s The Haunting. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUt7RE_CFLbJrdcZaJibVM1w6kqzzuF4VrwkO4ALFWrgvFmid8caEA2BuRcyFnxnqXltKvcDMrWw1LP5FxVcEkd0t2a4lNCTF3MhxCxT-xtSNwjyk9QeEtW2yfs9UMRUEGodg9NYsJ5zWj/s1600/house-that-dripped-blood-ingrid-pitt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUt7RE_CFLbJrdcZaJibVM1w6kqzzuF4VrwkO4ALFWrgvFmid8caEA2BuRcyFnxnqXltKvcDMrWw1LP5FxVcEkd0t2a4lNCTF3MhxCxT-xtSNwjyk9QeEtW2yfs9UMRUEGodg9NYsJ5zWj/s400/house-that-dripped-blood-ingrid-pitt.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Ingrid Pitt in a publicity still for The House That Dripped Blood</blockquote>As for the stories themselves, they fit the Amicus mould in that they share a contemporary setting. No moonlit gothic castles wreathed in mist here. Amicus briskly dispensed with the gothic staples in their first portmanteau picture, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, which featured werewolves, vampires, a crawling hand (the beast with five fingers), voodoo curses and, er, a swiftly spreading variety of intelligent, carnivorous weed (menacing poor old Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman). They turned up from time to time, but in a joky context. Vampires bared their teeth with an accompanying nod and wink in Vault of Horror (tucking into rare or medium clots in an exclusive restaurant) and in The House That Dripped Blood (supplying a splendid and much reproduced still of Ingrid Pitt hissing through elongated incisors if nothing else). They no doubt realised that they couldn’t beat Hammer at their own game, and so set their cruel tales in 70s living rooms, bedrooms and lounges (and basements). The horrors often extended to the décor. <br />
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JR Southall’s House Sitting is a variant of the malevolent house tale. A building which feeds off the fears and painful buried memories of those who stray into its field of baleful influence. Ghosts of the mind are awakened, personal hauntings set into spectral motion. Southall’s tale harks back to The House That Dripped Blood, with its desirable Victorian detached house from which tenants are despatched with disdainful frequency. It also echoes the evil architecture of Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, with its uncanny feel for the hidden weaknesses of its inhabitants. The Day Martin Anderson Lost It is a latterday tale of Walter Mitty daydreaming. This is extreme Mitty, however, with fantasies of psychotic violence directed against a hated call-centre boss superceding the whimsical escapism of Thurber’s character. In railing against corporate workplaces with their empty managerial mantras, it voices frustrations which we can all identify with to some extent. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBAQCFvOodLWd-siELl7_PLW6IyJdzz-APfM0yAkt__Gm2BzgGSm68cm6XD19tjMkBNCFQfAbQg6g_GRGzbHOC6nALx0rnFLzNSLD82191Vr956Ara5F4bJ3vdUvBUFeszv6b_0wwi1J5/s1600/warner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBAQCFvOodLWd-siELl7_PLW6IyJdzz-APfM0yAkt__Gm2BzgGSm68cm6XD19tjMkBNCFQfAbQg6g_GRGzbHOC6nALx0rnFLzNSLD82191Vr956Ara5F4bJ3vdUvBUFeszv6b_0wwi1J5/s400/warner.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>David Warner looking decidedly unwell in From Beyond the Grave</blockquote>Tony Eccles’ The Finding is a haunted house tale whose supernatural manifestations centre upon a mirror with uncanny properties. It’s the kind of mirror whose depths contain a little more than a simple inverted reflection presented to those standing in front of it. It brings to mind the David Warner episode in From Beyond the Grave, one of the more disturbing of the Amicus stories, not least because of Warner’s quietly intense performance. It follows its protagonist into the depths of a psychotic breakdown, his murderous actions prompted and directed by a figure in the mirror he bought from Peter Cushing’s shadowy emporium. He didn’t pay enough cash, either. A haunted mirror also appears in the honourable ancestor of the Amicus portmanteaus, the 1945 Ealing picture Dead of Night. Eccles’ story also plays with the confusion of the real and the imaginary, the border between rational perception and emotionally clouded hallucination. This ambiguity provided the basis for a few Amicus stories. There was the ‘Dominick’ episode of The House That Dripped Blood, in which a murderous character from writer Denholm Elliott’s novel seems to have come to life. And in Asylum, Charlotte Rampling dreams up an imaginary friend (Britt Ekland) who indulges in all the wild things she is far too timid and anxious to do herself. <br />
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Simon A Brett’s The Artist’s Medium concerns a very special pen which, when mixed with bodily fluids (their specific provenance doesn’t seem overly important) becomes imbued with the power to alter in reality that which it draws on the blank page. Used unwittingly in a state of post-coital reflection or in a fit of drunken rage in the wake of a bitter break-up, the results prove grimly ironic. They are punning deaths in the Amicus mould, figures of speech or symbolic representations rendered literal, with liberal splashes of gore to bring it up to date. The Vault of Horror story with Tom Baker as an artist who discovers his power to affect reality through his painted representations is a classic reference point here. Tom misuses his powers, but comes a cropper when a workman knocks over a bottle of white spirit onto his self-portrait, causing features to blur and run – a Francis Bacon meat face for real. <br />
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Lee Rawlings’ By Rook or By Crook (the agonising Amicus pun contained in the title) is kitchen sink psycho horror combined with the Freudian supernatural of The Birds. The dynastic rivalry between father and son is also a clash between the pragmatic Yorkshireman’s bluntly fiscal worldview and the more aesthetic outlook of his adopted offspring. The age old imperative to displace the father, enshrined in the modern age by Freud, is given a nicely ritualistic air by the stark, ancient landscape in which the story takes place. Jon Arnold’s The Golden Ghouls (another painful pun) draws on the new extreme strands of cinema, and on the body horror which has been a significant generic strand since the 80s. His story is simplicity itself. Two lively old ladies in an old people’s home who still entertain libidinous thoughts are charmed into drinking an elixir of youth. It’s a homeopathic remedy whose sub-microscopic elements are demons from hell. They are duly possessed and their puppeteered bodies are made to dance to the devil’s tune in a strict modern tempo. Arnold takes the satire of the EC comics and some of the Amicus stories to delirious new levels (or depths). His story seems driven by a pervasive disgust at and cynicism about the modern world, and exhibits a visceral horror of old age. The wholesale assault on venality, consumerism and the empty, possessive carnality which accompanies it is unbalanced and more than a little hysterical. Arnold certainly holds nothing back in his detailing of the ladies’ orgiastic rampage. It’s like a mini-Salo, portraying contemporary society in terms of readymade circles of hell. The in your face unpleasantness could almost be construed as rude riposte to the relatively refined horrors of Amicus and Hammer, a mark of how far we have come (or fallen). Milton Subotsky, an old school horror aficionado (as witness the books displayed at the start of The House That Dripped Blood, borrowed from his own collection) would not have countenanced its like. I certainly don’t have the stomach for it, which is why I tend to avoid most modern manifestations of horror. A matter of taste (and age), I suppose. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCcft3Wn6L_Bht388tNAXSXKtwtAhFhWZkxiXe6qvcL7mOBp71c_se3OhjGqL3aJgY3zFGOtCFaPsyxWYrC9TE7ELmE9R-LiTFumXXy_BIMKc1ddENyvMU_XL3SmqatbokUP6tGPFWVpq0/s1600/who's%2Bnext.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCcft3Wn6L_Bht388tNAXSXKtwtAhFhWZkxiXe6qvcL7mOBp71c_se3OhjGqL3aJgY3zFGOtCFaPsyxWYrC9TE7ELmE9R-LiTFumXXy_BIMKc1ddENyvMU_XL3SmqatbokUP6tGPFWVpq0/s400/who's%2Bnext.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote>Who's next? Could it be YOU?</blockquote>The finale, bringing us out of the theatre once more, creates an explosive eruption of Lovecraftian delirium which Amicus could never have dreamed of staging on their meagre budgets. They tried consigning a soul to a fiery pit of damnation at the end of Vault of Horror, but their ambition outstripped their means, and the effect was frankly embarrassing. Dan Barratt gives a grandiose climax which encompasses and then surpasses the default Hammer way of ending things by bringing the house down, and usually burning it the ground as well. A quiet coda offers a version of the typical Amicus ending in which the guide or proprietor turns to the new visitors, customers or lost souls. Who will be next to enter my domain – could it be you? Here we are introduced to a modern incarnation of the popularly loathed social type, the sort who many would gladly see receiving their just dues. For our age, it is a banker. It rounds things of with a pleasing circularity, ending on the kind of wryly humorous note which characterised the Amicus films. A reminder not to take any of it too seriously. The curtain falls. But which side are you left on? Who is that cackling dryly in the shadows? Why has it all gone so dark? Where has everybody gone? Hallo? <br />
Jez Winshiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02785738751849434806noreply@blogger.com0