Nicholas Hedges

Art, Writing and Research

X

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It was whilst I was cycling home from the studio this morning that the idea first came to me. I was thinking about the two paintings on which I am currently working, both of which are based on the landscape around Hafodyrynys, Wales (the village in which my Grandmother grew up) and one of which I intend to show, veiled, at the Mine the Mountain exhibition in October.
The paintings themselves were going quite well, but remembering the original idea behind them, I realised that there was something missing. The original idea was that these paintings, or rather the final selected painting would be based on both the death of my great-great-uncle, Jonah Rogers who was killed in action in the Second Battle of Ypres on May 8th 1915 and my birthday, May 8th 1971. The title of the piece was provisionally May 8th, but as is often the case, the painting has led me away from this. That isn’t to say the subject has been lost completely; I still want to think about Jonah, but how do I show him in the painting? How do I show the ambiguity between existence and nonexistence/death?
The answer came as I thought about names and some of the documents I have obtained through researching my family tree. Almost without exception, none of my ancestors from Wales at this time could read or write and all of them signed their name (or rather, indicated their presence) with an ‘x’. The ‘x’ therefore becomes a sign of a presence, but one which is anonymous.

Of course the ‘x’ is usually accompanied by the line; ‘the mark of…’ (as above) but without that, the human becomes relegated to this nondescript, anonymous sign (one could argue of course that we are all, in our names, reduced to signs, but the ability to write allows us to transfer to the page – and therefore leave to posterity – much more than just the name by which we are known). The act of making that mark instead of writing one’s name is also very significant. It levels all those who make it; it renders everyone the same – at least in the eyes of history. One could say that the greatest leveller of all is death and that the ‘x’ becomes the mark of death; presence is defined by absence.

We know much of what happened in the past through the written word although there are of course many other sources in which it’s also revealed; paintings, artworks, newspaper stories, oral histories/stories, fingerprints, photographs and so on, but for the most part, we know about the past through what we read. I have written about the limits of the written word before in relation to the work I did on ‘The Gate’, but looking at it again in relation to these paintings and to my previous work/research, there is something very poignant about these anonymous signatures; I can’t help but think of the names we see on memorials, carved into walls and so on. Imagine if they simply read ‘x’… For many who died in the Great War and whose bodies were either never found, names have been lost and an ‘x’ is perhaps all one could write on their behalf.

In relation to the landscape, ‘x’ has different connotations; on maps it marks a spot – it denotes the presence of something, a thing which is present and yet absent – hidden away from sight and mind like buried treasure. Marking the canvas with an ‘x’ would give the painting the meaning I was looking for; the presence of someone absent; the reduction of everyone in time to complete obscurity. Furthermore, taking what I wrote in the paragraph above, ‘x’ marks the last resting place of all those (including my great-great-uncle) whose bodies were never found.

X

The paintings are still in the early stages but there was instantly something about the marks which appealed. In some respects I saw them (those in the sky) as angels which given the nature of the work seemed relevant. They also reminded me of the stars one sometimes finds painted on the ceilings of cathedrals or in mediaeval manuscripts. But those ‘on the ground’ called to mind something else, something which given Jonah Rogers’ fate gave the paintings another dimension; first the shape reminded me of the deckchairs I made for the Residue exhibition (The Smell of an English Summer 1916 (Fresh Cut Grass))..

The Smell of an English Summer 1916 (Fresh Cut Grass)

…and secondly, the x-shape defences one sees on wartime photographs such as those of the Normandy landings below…

Lists and Bill Viola

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Whilst writing up some notes on making lists as a strategy, I thought again of the Bill Viola quote I mentioned in the last entry. The following is taken from what I wrote concerning lists, starting with an extract from one of the first lists I made during my residency at OVADA:

engine purrs
yellow clothes
hiss
reverse warning sounds
food
pie ‘n’ pint
Leffe
thumbs up
zebra crossing
fat stomach
boarded windows

This I then turned into a ‘prose’ version:

An engine purrs. A woman with yellow clothes walks towards me. The hiss of a bus’s brakes, and then its reverse warning sounds, telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard food is advertised; a pie ‘n’ pint. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a thumbs up as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a fat stomach walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows.

The idea of single words, or ‘hightlights’ reminds me of Bill Viola’s quote regarding our lives as a single moment.

“We have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or ‘highlights’.”

The individual words are highlights, extrapolated from (or in this instance built into) a piece of prose (the ‘same moment’).

A Hollow Square

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Thinking about the Hollow Square further, I thought of Gloucester Green – which is of course a square – and of my previous ideas regarding the contrast between the square at night and during the day. During the day, it might be said to be full, and at night, quite empty. The square too (Broken Hayes) was used to drill soldiers during the civil war, so it has a military history. The idea of empty (hollow) squares

Diaries, Lists and Haiku

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Last night I watched Chris Marker’s film ‘Sans Soleil’ or ‘Sunless’, and having watched it, downloaded the text from the film. There was one passage in particular which interested me which was as follows:

“He spoke to me of Sei Shonagon, a lady in waiting to Princess Sadako at the beginning of the 11th century, in the Heian period. Do we ever know where history is really made? Rulers ruled and used complicated strategies to fight one another. Real power was in the hands of a family of hereditary regents; the emperor’s court had become nothing more than a place of intrigues and intellectual games. But by learning to draw a sort of melancholy comfort from the contemplation of the tiniest things this small group of idlers left a mark on Japanese sensibility much deeper than the mediocre thundering of the politicians. Shonagon had a passion for lists: the list of ‘elegant things,’ ‘distressing things,’ or even of ‘things not worth doing.’ One day she got the idea of drawing up a list of ‘things that quicken the heart.’ Not a bad criterion I realize when I’m filming; I bow to the economic miracle, but what I want to show you are the neighborhood celebrations.”

As part of my residency at OVADA, I spent a long time compiling lists of things I’d seen on a particular walk around the city centre and so this extract intrigued me because of my own efforts in the art of list making. There is something about the mundane that is more telling in respect to the bigger picture of the past than anything one might find in the pages of a history book.
The beginning of the film deals with this very fact:

“I’m just back from Hokkaido, the Northern Island. Rich and hurried Japanese take the plane, others take the ferry: waiting, immobility, snatches of sleep. Curiously all of that makes me think of a past or future war: night trains, air raids, fallout shelters, small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life. He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time. Those memories whose only function it being to leave behind nothing but memories. He wrote: I’ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me. On this trip I’ve tracked it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter. At dawn we’ll be in Tokyo.”

As one might guess from the extract above, the film had a predominantly Japanese theme, and I was reminded of the Haiku I wrote last year. Most of them were, on reflection, not particularly good, but there were a few which took me almost instantly back to the time they were written. I could remember everything about the time they were written and, more importantly, why they were written.Here are just a few.

In a vague garden
In the morning’s smallest light
The first bird’s singing

Insomniac bird
Sings though we should never know
This dark melody

The moon was a blur
On a long lost photograph
A timeless second

The cat spies the birds
While they look down from above
And I watch them all

Secrets of the deep
Are whispered by the Snowdrop
Missing its flower

Just for a moment
I swapped places with a cat
Sitting on the wall

Incongruous field
A horse without a rider
Stands like a shadow

The painted subway
A crow hovers on the wind
I think of angels

The tall girder-cross
Lone man sits in a cafe
She can’t stand his kiss

The sudden trees have
Grown before the constant gates
The violent field

I was listening to a discussion programme on ‘Diaries’ and in particular, what makes a good diary. I, like many people have tried keeping a diary or journal and actually managed to sustain one for about 10 years, between 1989 and 1999. Much of it, is of course of no interest to anyone else but me, and even then, the greater part of the entries are a little mundane (and not mundane in a good way – as described above). What was agreed, during the conversation, was that what makes a diary interesting is not what the author thinks, but rather what they see. It is again the small details which help to build the bigger picture of the time. Of course, this is by no means a rule, and there are many exceptions where the good and the great have opened their hearts and inspired nothing less than awe. But these are exceptions.

Turning back to Haiku, I read the following in a book (On Love and Barley) on the great Haiku poet, Basho (1644-1694) :

“So the poet presents an observation of a natural, often commonplace event, in plainest diction, without verbal trickery. The effect is one of spareness, yet the reader is aware of a microcosm related to transcendent unity. A moment, crystallised, distilled, snatched from time’s flow, and that is enough. All suggestion and implication, the haiku event is held precious because, in part, it demands the reader’s participation: without a sensitive audience it would appear unimpressive. Haiku’s great popularity is only partly due to its avoidance of the forbidding obscurities found in other kinds of verse: more important, it is likely to give the reader a glimpse of hitherto unrecognised depths in the self.”

There are two lines in the above which interest me the most. Firstly, the reference to a commonplace event, and secondly, the suggestion that the poems demand the reader’s participation. It is by sharing a moment that we become a part of that time which has long since passed.

The following is one of Basho’s haiku as printed in the book:

Old pond
leap-splash-
a frog.

In terms of taking us back to a moment, the three lines above do just that. It isn’t necessarily that we see the pond, see the frog, the poet, but rather that we experience a second or so of the seventeenth century as if it were happening now.

Opening

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After five weeks, the Residue exhibition opened this evening, and, all in all, I was very pleased with how things turned out. (Click here for more photos from my installation).

The overall installation worked well as a whole, and the individual pieces in their own right, yet what was interesting about this installation was how the works changed and evolved once they were installed. For example, the cups (below) began to leak…

Clearly these cups are not designed to hold liquids for any length of time, and in particular the amount of water that was in each of them. So, my girlfriend Monika and I spent time removing water and in fact, as Monika said, the cups had more meaning with their varying amounts of liquid than when completely full; there was something more individual about them. And the fact they were leaking, becoming thin and ultimately disintegrating, was very apt in respect of my other works on mortality and memorialising. These ‘individuals’ (which the cups represent) are at different rates of time falling apart, at which point I remove them to the earth beneath the deckchairs (below).

This dialogue between the two works was, and is, very interesting. The earth beneath the deckchairs, which is actually compost, has always been a symbol of death – the final resting place into which mortal remains dissolve, so the fact there is now this dialogue between the two works accentuates aspect. Of course, those viewing the two works will have to be made aware of this fact, and the point of how much to explain to one’s audience comes once more to the fore.

Since the opening I have decided to re-write the information sheet I had made available to people and to edit down the blog to about twelve pages which can then be put on the wall, after all it is as much a piece of work as the works themselves. Putting it in a folder and leaving it on the table is all well and good, and indeed valuable, but displaying it this way makes it something of an accessory to the work when it is, as I’ve said, more important than that.

The Final Week

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The final week before the exhibition opens and new ideas are presenting themselves. I wanted to do something with the dismantled typewriter and so I took the letters and the ribbon and printed the title on some paper ‘The War to End All Wars’.

What I liked about the result was how the red of the ribbon was smudged beneath the writing, giving the impression of blood. The unevenness too reminded me of some text-based work I did following a visit to Auschwitz and I wondered whether I could reprise this work. However, there would have to be differences. The dismantled typewriter, as a piece, has the title, as above, ‘The War to End All Wars’. Clearly we know that this wasn’t the case and that there have been hundreds of wars fought since 1918. Giving the typewriter such a title makes it a metaphor for the First World War (I originally arrived at the idea thinking about the names of all the dead being recorded on just such a machine) and so, as the First World War wasn’t the last, so the typewriter must be shown to still work somehow. Using the letters and the ribbon does this, but if the result is on paper, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the typewriter has been dismantled i.e. it could have been made before it was taken apart. Printing directly onto the wall however does make this connection; after all it is obviously impossible to type with a working typewriter onto a wall, this can only be done if the machine is in pieces. The First World War may be over, but man has continued to fight nevertheless.

Day16

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Having moved things around for another show this evening, I put the canvas behind the deckchairs and found that I much preferred the way it looked, not so much on an aesthetic level but as regards the way it conveyed its meaning. On the floor, the words were – due to the fact the paint was drying – not so much difficult to read as of a very different quality to those written earlier. These earlier words had almost been inscribed into the paint, whereas those added more recently have been written onto the paint’s surface. This graphite of the pencil onto of the graphite of the canvas is itself interesting, but is served better by a vertical placement (see below).

It is difficult to tell from the photograph alone, but the material quality of the canvas surface is also more visible in this position. There is as well the practical aspect of the move in that it frees up more floor space so as to allow people to stand back and take in the works as a whole.

A Memory Place

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Given that my walking around the same part of Oxford has over the last few weeks engrained the streets, buildings, objects and structures in my mind, I realised that I am some way towards creating a memory place – a place with which to explore those mnemonic arts practised by the Ancient Greeks. I have decided therefore to try and memorise a passage from a book. I will divide it up, and use relevant ‘objects’ to act as ‘triggers,’ placing them at various points along the route which I will then recall as I ‘walk’ in my mind.

The passage I will try and recall will be taken from the Polish writer, Bruno Schulz’s story, ‘The Street of Crocodiles’, which I have chosen in part because he was himself a victim of Nazi brutality, shot in the street by a Gestapo officer in 1942.

A part of the extract is as follows:

“But where the ground extended into a low-lying isthmus and dropped into the shadow of the back wall of a deserted soda factory, it became grimmer, overgrown and wild with neglect, untidy, fierce with thistles, bristling with nettles, covered with a rash of weeds, until, at the very end of the walls, in an open rectangular bay, it lost all moderation and became insane… It was there that I saw him first and for the only time in my life, at a noon hour crazy with heat. It was at a moment when time, demented and wild breaks away from the treadmill of events and like an escaping vagabond, runs shouting across the fields. Then the summer grows out of control, spreads at all points over space with a wild impetus, doubling and trebling itself into an unknown, lunatic dimension.”

Such a beautiful description of summer months calls to mind many summers which I myself have known, and, knowing how the author met his end makes the passage all the more poignant. This prose, although a fiction, is borne out of reality, an amalgam of memories which the author must’ve had of summers in the past, and as with the work I’m making with deckchairs, these memories call to mind happier times in the light of terrible adversity, contrasts which give us the chance, by filling in the gaps with our own memories, of ‘getting to know’ or at least understand a little better, individuals – such as Bruno Schulz – who suffered so terribly.

Gaps

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“Possibly the most startling thing about our individual existence is that it is continuous… We have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives the impression of a life of discrete parts, periods or sections, of certain times or ‘highlights’…

If things are perceived as discrete parts or elements they can be rearranged. Gaps become more interesting as places of shadow…”

Bill Viola, ‘Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House‘

Whilst flicking though my research journal this evening, I happened upon the above quote which I first read several months ago. I was startled by what I read, particularly in light of what I wrote yesterday (‘From Dinosaurs to Human Beings’). This continuous existence which Viola speaks of, could be said to be that same existence of which we and all our ancestors are a part, and to memory and sleep as creators of ‘discrete parts’ or ‘highlights’ we might add ‘death’.

These discrete elements can be rearranged, and in doing so, gaps will inevitably appear (I’ve discovered as much through the process of walking and making notes of objects etc.) and it is these gaps, these shadows which I have been working with and in which I am most interested.

Day 15

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Another walk and subsequently, more work on the ‘Palimpsest’ and ‘Hollow Squares’. I started painting the paper cups (for ‘The Light of the Moon’) as well and coating them in graphite, the results of which (below) were quite interesting.

I like the messiness of them – the finger marks inside. They look as if they’ve been dusted for fingerprints, as if we’ve been searching for the individuals who held them and consumed their contents. They are each a fragment of the past, which we can fill (with water), so as to ‘fill the gap’, and thereby see (as per the title) the moon reflected inside, finding the bigger picture (the moon which covers the earth).

There is something interesting too, in the nature of their ‘throw away’ existence. The fact that – as Dogen Zenji says – the light of the moon can be contained within a single bowl of water (or in the case of this work, disposable paper cups) could itself be a metaphor for our own mortality – the bowls, the paper cups become, in effect, like our own eyes.

From Dinosaurs to Human Beings

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After yesterday’s viewing, I began to think about the works I’ve produced so far on this residency and what it is that links them; not that there should be a link – I just know that there is one. Despite the differences, there is an underlying theme which unites the drawings, the text pieces, the deckchairs and the paintings. So what is it?

In answering this I have started to think about… dinosaurs. Not something which first springs to mind when looking at my work and if I mention Jurassic Park, then it might seem that I’m losing the plot altogether, but there is a sequence in this film which is relevant to my work.

In the film, the visitors to the Park are shown an animated film, which explains how the Park’s scientists created the dinosaurs. DNA, they explain, is extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber and where there are gaps in the code sequence, so the gaps are filled with the DNA of frogs; the past is in effect brought back to life with fragments of the past and parts of the modern, living world. This ‘filling in the gaps’ is exactly what I have done throughout my life when trying to imagine the past, particularly the past of the city in which I live.

As well as reading about and drawing dinosaurs, I also as a child, liked to create and map worlds; countries which I would build from fragments of the world around me; forests, mountains and plains – unspoilt landscapes. And in these worlds there would exist towns and cities, created from ‘the best bits’ of those I had visited.

These invented worlds became, as I grew up, the ‘invented’ or imagined landscapes of Oxford’s past; landscapes that were – just as they still are – created from fragments, parts of the past which are still extant in the city; old buildings, walls, objects and so on. Between these structures, these fragments, I would fill the gaps, with my own imagination, with thoughts derived from my own experience. The city’s past and the past in general, as it exists within my mind, is then, to use the metaphor of cloning in Jurassic Park, a cloned dinosaur. The extant buildings, structures and objects within museums, are like the mosquitoes trapped inside the amber. They are broken strands of DNA. All that is required is for me to fill the gaps, and this I can do with my own DNA. I am in effect, the frog.

This metaphor is interesting in that DNA patterns are, of course, unique to everyone. My DNA is different to everybody else’s as there’s is to mine. Therefore, using my imagination to plug in the gaps of the past, means that the ‘past’ will comprise large parts of my own experience; my dinosaur will contain elements of my own being. (See ‘Postcard 1906’). But although my DNA is unique, it is nonetheless derived from my own past, elements have been passed down by my ancestors from time immemorial. The code which makes me who I am, comprises parts of people I know now (parents and grandmothers), people I knew (grandfathers and great-grandmother) and people lost to the past altogether (great-great grandparents and so on). What interests me about this, is that, through stating above how ‘my dinosaur will contain elements of my own being’ I can now see that ‘my dinosaur’ will contain elements of my own being, which is itself comprised of elements of hundreds – thousands – of people, the majority of whom I will of course never know and who have been dead for centuries. I like to think therefore, that ‘my dinosaur’ and my imagination aren’t entirely unique.

This leads me to look at paths – not the route I walk around the castle, or those recorded by my GPS receiver (although these are entirely relevant) but to the paths taken by my ancestors so that I might be brought into being. The chances of any of us being who we are is practically nil. In order for me to be born, I had to be conceived at the exact time I was conceived, any difference in time – even a split second – and I wouldn’t be me. Also, everything leading up to that moment had to be exactly as it was; anything done differently by my parents, no matter how small, how seemingly irrelevant, any deviation from the path and I would not be me. This is extraordinary enough (whenever I see old photographs of members of my family, I think that if it was taken a second sooner or later, I would not be here) but when one considers this is the same for my entire family tree, again, all the way back to time immemorial, then one realises how, to quote Eric Idle in ‘Monty Python’s Meaning of Life’, ‘incredibly unlikely is your [my] birth’. We are all impossibly unlikely. The chances of all our ancestors walking the exact paths through their lives which they walked is almost nil.

Therefore, my walks, my mapping, my identifying (seemingly irrelevant) objects, my recording them, my palimpsests, are all linked. Memorialising objects (disposable or otherwise), snatches of conversation and so on, inscribing them on a slab, shows how vital these fragments are to future generations and to me in terms of my own past. But how does this fit in with my work on Auschwitz-Birkenau, death camps and World War I?

These ‘arenas’ of death were constructions (although the carnage of a battlefield was often random, the battles themselves were always planned, ‘constructed’ for the purpose) in stark contrast to the rather arbitrary paths our ancestors took so that we might each be born. Death in these places was designed, it was planned, particularly with regards to the horrors of the death camps and by looking at these places, by visiting them, by looking at the seemingly irrelevant, everyday objects left behind, we can fill in the gaps, each using our own existence to imagine the lives and the deaths of others. We understand what it means to be human, the near impossibility of birth and the absolute certainty of death.
Imagining a group of a several hundred people walking to their deaths, whether down a path to the gas chambers, or on a road to the Front, we can easily imagine the route; we can in places walk the route today. But imagining the paths walked by thousands of people through time, to bring each of the victims into being is almost impossible: I say almost impossible, but, as I’ve written above regarding each of our births, it’s possible in the end.

Looking at death therefore is to to look at life and its inestimable value, whoever we are and wherever we live. It is to understand what it means to be human and to cherish the lives of others.

Days 13 and 14

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Spent much of the day (day 13) walking and painting paper cups. I did make a few attempts at reading through and recording the prose versions of the walks but I wasn’t happy with the results. I also played around with data, downloaded from my new GPS receiver: very exciting. I surveyed the route of my walk around the castle but twice lost satellite reception in Bulwarks Lane which is a bit frustrating. Anyway, all quite amazing really, especially viewing the data on Google Earth and, via GPS Visualizer on Google Maps too (even if it goes a little wayward once in the city centre).

That was yesterday. Today (day 14) I showed the work so far as part of the Research and Development module, itself a part of my MA. The response to the work was a mix of muted and positive, but as always I was intrigued by which pieces made the most impact. As with last semester, it was my drawings which most people identified with, followed I would say by the text pieces. The word ‘memorialising,’ was also used which is very apt for that which I am doing.

The key now is to start pulling all the facets of my work together, to make a whole, not by forcing a common theme, but by seeing why I have made these various pieces and discovering exactly what unites them.

Day 12

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Today I walked the second walk in this series and made the following list of additional words:

engines roar
siren
cigarette
sightseeing bus
sunglasses
man in a suit
refuse sacks
red man
pushchair
spire
glass dome
Chinese characters
look both ways
dead end
green wheelie bin
barrier
family walk
girl with a trolley
mound
rucksack
loud music
car screeches
camera
parking tickets
small windows
tree
old railings
flag flutters
sound of a bin moved
shutters
padlock
bookshop
shopping bags
three ducks
bricks and old stones
new flats
rainbow flag
bicycle racks
chefs
traffic warden
worn out face
20 zone
absent baskets
pigeon descends
except cycles
pink bag
net curtain
palm trees
E1
smell of cooking
E2
library
engine
headphones
old sock
bus ticket
traffic cone
flat cap
red waistcoat
crossing sound
green sweet
broken bottle
mound
dropped chips
running water
dog shit
man walks through a green door
red flowers
coke can
libya libya
corner
black door
plastic coffee lid
old brick wall
thick trunk
metal boxes
corn exchange
knitted jumper
cordon around a tree
green dome
push to open
pigeon
market office
fans
With the new lists, I have written the words up on paper in ‘squares’, and in the example below, those words from the first walk which were not relevant in the second walk have been rubbed out. Of course, as with most things, the presence of the word, or the object is never fully removed; although it may not have been visible on the walk in a physical sense, it still existed a part of my memory.


I’ve made a similar work with the prose version of the list of words. Here is the prose version of the first walk:

and here the words and attached sentences have been removed.

As well as this method of constructing what one might term a ‘document of experience’, I have also used the typed versions as a means of recording. Following the second walk, I removed from the prose, all the words which I erased from the first list but left the surrounding words of their relevant sentences intact. Into the gaps I then inserted sections of prose from the second walk.
Everything leaves a mark somehow and whereby in the pencilled versions of the prose I can erase the pencil and still leave a trace, I cannot do the same with an electronic document. Leaving the rest of the sentence intact therefore works in the same way as the trace of rubbed out words. If someone is seen in a street one day, they inevitably leave a trace, somehow, and, when they are no longer visible in that place, this trace might still be seen.
The following prose is that of walks 1 and 2 combined, as described above:

An engine purrs. A woman with The engines of the buses roar. walks towards me. The Somewhere in town a siren is sounding. of a bus’s brakes, and then its A man walks towards me with a cigarette in his mouth. He hasn’t lit it yet. A sightseeing bus turns around, ready to begin its tour. telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard is advertised; a. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a A woman checks her sunglasses while behind her a man in a suit walks aimlessly as if he’s not long woken up. as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a On the edge of the pavement, a heap of refuse sacks are left waiting to be collected walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows. A young man with a The red man is lit so I wait to cross. I look around. saunters down the road while a A woman pushes a pushchair and from amongst the rooftops a spire points to the sky. at the traffic lights. I see people with I notice a glass dome, I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed it before. making their way to the train station. The lights are red, then red and amber and the traffic moves. On the window ahead of me are written some Chinese characters and on the road, a sign cautions everyone to look both ways. are on patrol. A bus called the Having crossed the road and walked a little, a signs says dead end and down that dead end stands a green wheelie bin. drives past and a man gives his daughter a A barrier is down at the exit of the car park beside which a group of people are out for a family walk. There are two trees on this side of the street. I hear come from a car, while up ahead, a cuts the pavement in two. Up another road, in the distance, a man crouches. I walk past an iron gate and on some railings see a French flag – a poster advertising a market. A wedding party stands on the pavement. The A young girl with a trolley stands at the side of the road dominated by the mound. just before I reach the road and so I wait a while. On the lamppost, a sticker with 404 has been stuck on. I look up the empty street towards the city centre. A couple carry identical A man with a rucksack walks with a group of others; girlfriends and children. happy with their purchases. I cross the road and see A car stops at the junction, loud music pouring from its open window. The car screeches out. littering the pavement. One of the wedding guests talks about sales. Ahead is the castle tower. A Walking down the road I notice a camera hidden away like a big eye watching everything. hangs on a bollard and nearby lies a discarded blanket. Up ahead, a A car is parked with four parking tickets tucked beneath its windscreen wipers. I look; a takes my attention for some reason. On the pavement, old confetti appears stuck down. There’s a row of empty cycle racks. The street is quiet, a and I hear. A man wearing walks towards me. Round the corner, the I notice the small windows of the houses here and a tree which grows near the old railings by the river. Some are painted a different colour to the rest – just a few of them.. and ahead I see an arch over the entrance to a courtyard. Birdsong is mixed with the gentle sound of water. A flag flutters above the tower. and a group of To my right I hear the sound of a bin moved across the floor. A shop window has metal shutters pulled down and a padlock is coiled around the railings like a snake. Along the road is a bookshop. talk as they walk past. Dirty water gathers at the weir. On the road, a cordon contains sand, paving slabs and gravel. There’s litter too. Above me, the ancient windows of the tower look out. A lifebuoy waits for an emergency while the Two men carry shopping bags and down on the river, three ducks negotiate the litter in the water. on the water. A and I hear 118 is written on a sign. I don’t look at the rest of it. Below the bridge is a drowned bicycle and a submerged traffic cone. There are some old plastic bags snared in the branches. I walk beside the old walls. On the pavement is the stain of a splash just where the weeds grow and where petals gather like the paper confetti. Little Derick’s doin ok – a scrawled message on a hoarding says. I wonder who he is. A A building here is a mix of bricks and old stones, On the opposite side some new flats are being built. From a building opposite – a pub – a rainbow flag hangs. In the yards of a block of flats are some bicycle racks. Two chefs take a break for a chat while up ahead a traffic warden chats with someone less fortunate. A man in a luminous jacket with a worn out face looks out for litter. A sign says 20 zone. and on the wall of a building I’m made aware of CCTV. An arrow points towards another road while up ahead, the concrete monster looms large. Hooks on the front of a building wait for absent baskets of flowers. appears on his bike and we engage in A pigeon descends with a flap. mainly about the weather. Posters look tatty beside that ugly building – all bricks and shadow. A man with A sign says except cycles. on his arm waits while A woman carries a pink bag and behind a net curtain in a restaurant window a man sits, as if he is hiding from something. is erected nearby. Are they going to knock the ugly stuff down? I wish they would. A Here palm trees grow. E1 bus stop. Here the smell of cooking hangs in the air. E2 bus stop and a sign for the library. bobs on the opposite side of the street but on my side it’s all bird shit. A The sound of an engine – not heard by the man wearing headphones. An old sock lays incongruously on the pavement; where is the other one I wonder? scuttles across the path, in amongst the cigarette ends. E3 says a sign at one of the bus stops. Ahead I see the steps I’ll walk up. A strong shadow cuts across and in the distance I hear A bus ticket blows past and over the road I see the steps near which a traffic cone has been unceremoniously left. An old man with a flat cap walks past and opposite, waiting to cross the road is a man with a red waistcoat. Then comes the crossing sound. We walk across. – a wedding perhaps? Green lights but I cross anyway, there’s no traffic. A bottle of I walk up the steps and see a green sweet and further down a broken bottle. There’s a The mound rises up behind the walls while on the ground are some dropped chips from the night before. has been left by the steps. waiting for a visitor, but above it a roll of barbed wire warns against intrusion. A satellite dish sits silently on the wall of another house and above it, a green spire shoots like some massive flower. Here it’s I can hear the sound of running water. and On the pavement is a pile of dog shit. I pass lampposts no.2 and no.3 and see ivy clambering over the wall like a thief. Up ahead a man walks through a green door above which, tumbling on the wall are some red flowers. A coke can sits at the edge of the pavement and on a step someone has written the words libya libya; why I don’t know. Up ahead is a corner. There’s a black door and in the middle of the pavement a plastic coffee lid. Below the gutter runs, as if unsure of its path. Lamppost no.4. Like the ivy, a plastic sheet escapes over another wall. I see an old step over the lost gutter which now goes nowhere. Ahead is a half-painted bollard. A There’s an old brick wall above which the thick trunk of a vine twists and turns. has been left on a car parked on double-yellow lines. The driver’s seat is decorated with a Three metal boxes are stacked at the alley way to the street at the end of which is the corn exchange. Here is lamppost and a gathering of. says one of them. I notice an just as the smell of fills the air; someone is cleaning. Ahead is a litter bin past which a man pulls a. I pass a red door then a blue door, a bicycle and a pillar box. On the pavement is a A boy with a knitted jumper walks with his parents. Up ahead, a cordon has been placed around a tree and above the roof tops is a green dome. I round the corner and see two people Push to open says a sign. There are a few A pigeon wanders aimlessly. On the pavement is a load of spilled. There are French flags again. The market’s here. A girl in walks towards me and I walk past a stall selling and on towards a which snakes its way down one side of the square. A man in a luminous jacket walks past me. An engine purrs. Ahead, three telephone boxes wait for conversation, but for the moment, there’s just the sound of Here is the market office and back where the buses leave a number of fans are whirring.

I am also interested in the visual interpretation of memory, i.e. what it is that we remember. Of course it may be different for different people, but whenever I think of a part of the walk and think about what I am seeing, I realise that the image is a very vague interpretation of reality. Below is a drawing which is a drawing of my entire walk, drawn with my eyes closed so as to focus my mind on the memory image, from the left of the page to the right. The image below is my ‘memory’ of the first walk.

After the second walk, I rubbed the entire image out, leaving a trace of the original drawing on the paper. Over this I then drew my ‘memory’ of the second walk (below) and will repeat this process throughout the duration of my walking this particular route.

These examples are all in effect palimpsests: whereby even though I have erased words and images, traces of them can still be seen on the page, just as traces of the past can still be found everywhere throughout the city – the past is never fully effaced.

Day 11

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I’ve been looking at my work so far and have started to think about what I will have to show and how I will show it.

“The Smell of an English Summer 1916 (Fresh Cut Grass)”
Deckchairs and Graphite
This piece takes the memory of a thing (in this case, lazy summer’s days before the outbreak of World War One) and using objects to symbolise this thing (e.g. deckchairs), reinterpret the objects so that they come to represent something new (the horrors of war, the hopeless wish for peace).

“Broken Hayes”
Oil, Pencil and Graphite on Canvas
This canvas will be covered with words written on each of the walks that I’ll make over the coming days, and where the words are crossed out on successive walks, so they’ll be rubbed out on the canvas, much like the names on old tombstones, smoothed over by feet. This link with feet, fits with the walks themselves.

The title ‘Broken Hayes’ is the old name for Gloucester Green and describes a place which, in a sense, no longer exists, although, like the ghostly dwellings on John Gwynn’s survey (1772) it’s ‘footprint’ is still visible in the boundaries of the Green. Many of the items rubbed out on the canvas no longer exist in the places where I ‘found’ them; they are, in name only memories, just like Broken Hayes, yet like the physical aspect of that place, they still exist.

“The Light of the Moon “
Found Disposable Cups, Graphite and Water
This will be an installation of paper cups found in the city centre. The contents of each have all been consumed by tourists and residents alike; people who now might be spread throughout the globe. This fits with Dogen Zenji’s quote: “The light of the moon covers the earth, yet it can be contained in a single bowl of water.”

Also, the act of looking in bins to make this installation has been interesting in that when I’m walking through town, I’m sure that no-one is looking; I’m just a part of the mass of people. Yet when I start rummaging through bins, I feel as if everyone is looking at me – I feel like an individual, a ‘single bowl of water.’
I’ve also started the walks again now that I know what I’m looking to do. I’m following the same route, the first words of which are as follows:

engine purrs
yellow clothes
hiss
reverse warning sounds
food
pie ‘n’ pint
Leffe
thumbs up
zebra crossing
fat stomach
boarded windows
hooded top
red car waits
suitcases
red
red and amber
two police officers
Jericho voyager
piggy back ride
two trees
tinny music
diagonal shadow
man crouches
iron gate
French flag
wedding party
green man disappears
404
empty street
shopping bags
new confetti
castle tower
child’s coat
discarded blanket
child cries
letterbox
old confetti
empty cycle tracks
gate slams
footsteps
sandals
sun shines on houses
arch
birdsong
gentle sound of water
a bird calls
Russians
dirty water
weir
sand
paving slabs
gravel
litter
ancient windows
lifebuoy
sun sparkles
car turns right
a distant siren
118
drowned bicycle
submerged traffic cone
plastic bags
old walls
the stain of a splash
weeds
petals
little Derick’s doin ok
car starts
CCTV
arrow
concrete monster
an old acquaintance
conversation
posters
bricks
plaster cast
scaffolding
balloon
bird shit
pigeon
cigarette ends
e3
steps
strong shadow
church bells
green lights
Leffe beer
doorbell
barbed wire
satellite dish
green spire
traffic noise
birdsong
no.2
no.3
ivy
gutter
no.4
plastic sheet
step over the gutter
half-painted
parking ticket
dragon
no.8
red bins
mixed glass only
arch in the wall
disinfectant
litter bin
suitcase
red door
blue door
bicycle
pillar box
plastic bottle
checking a map
confused faces
popcorn
French flags
pink sandals
ham
long queue
luminous jacket
engine purrs
telephone boxes
laughter

The prose version:

An engine purrs. A woman with yellow clothes walks towards me. The hiss of a bus’s brakes, and then its reverse warning sounds, telling of its departure. Outside the pub on a blackboard food is advertised; a pie ‘n’ pint. Leffe is also served here. A man gives a thumbs up as I cross the zebra crossing. A man with a fat stomach walks towards and then past me. Ahead, on the opposite side of the street, a shop and a restaurant stand empty with boarded windows. A young man with a hooded top saunters down the road while a red car waits at the traffic lights. I see people with suitcases making their way to the train station. The lights are red, then red and amber and the traffic moves. Two police officers are on patrol. A bus called the Jericho voyager drives past and a man gives his daughter a piggy back ride. There are two trees on this side of the street. I hear tinny music come from a car, while up ahead, a diagonal shadow cuts the pavement in two. Up another road, in the distance, a man crouches. I walk past an iron gate and on some railings see a French flag – a poster advertising a market. A wedding party stands on the pavement. The green man disappears just before I reach the road and so I wait a while. On the lamppost, a sticker with 404 has been stuck on. I look up the empty street towards the city centre. A couple carry identical shopping bags, happy with their purchases. I cross the road and see new confetti littering the pavement. One of the wedding guests talks about sales. Ahead is the castle tower. A child’s lost coat hangs on a bollard and nearby lies a discarded blanket. Up ahead, a child cries. I look; a letterbox takes my attention for some reason. On the pavement, old confetti appears stuck down. There’s a row of empty cycle tracks. The street is quiet, a gate slams and I hear footsteps. A man wearing sandals walks towards me. Round the corner, the sun shines on houses and ahead I see an arch over the entrance to a courtyard. Birdsong is mixed with the gentle sound of water. A bird calls and a group of Russians talk as they walk past. Dirty water gathers at the weir. On the road, a cordon contains sand, paving slabs and gravel. There’s litter too. Above me, the ancient windows of the tower look out. A lifebuoy waits for an emergency while the sun sparkles on the water. A car turns right and I hear a distant siren 118 is written on a sign. I don’t look at the rest of it. Below the bridge is a drowned bicycle and a submerged traffic cone. There are some old plastic bags snared in the branches. I walk beside the old walls. On the pavement is the stain of a splash just where the weeds grow and where petals gather like the paper confetti. Little Derick’s doin ok – a scrawled message on a hoarding says. I wonder who he is. A car starts and on the wall of a building I’m made aware of CCTV. An arrow points towards another road while up ahead, the concrete monster looms large. An old acquaintance appears on his bike and we engage in conversation, mainly about the weather. Posters look tatty beside that ugly building – all bricks and shadow. A man with plaster cast on his arm waits while scaffolding is erected nearby. Are they going to knock the ugly stuff down? I wish they would. A balloon bobs on the opposite side of the street but on my side it’s all bird shit. A pigeon scuttles across the path, in amongst the cigarette ends. E3 says a sign at one of the bus stops. Ahead I see the steps I’ll walk up. A strong shadow cuts across and in the distance I hear church bells – a wedding perhaps? Green lights but I cross anyway, there’s no traffic. A bottle of Leffe beer has been left by the steps. There’s a doorbell waiting for a visitor, but above it a roll of barbed wire warns against intrusion. A satellite dish sits silently on the wall of another house and above it, a green spire shoots like some massive flower. Here it’s traffic noise and birdsong. I pass lampposts no.2 and no.3 and see ivy clambering over the wall like a thief. Below the gutter runs, as if unsure of its path. Lamppost no.4. Like the ivy, a plastic sheet escapes over another wall. I see an old step over the lost gutter which now goes nowhere. Ahead is a half-painted bollard. A parking ticket has been left on a car parked on double-yellow lines. The driver’s seat is decorated with a dragon. Here is lamppost no.8 and a gathering of red bins. Mixed glass only says one of them. I notice an arch in the wall just as the smell of disinfectant fills the air; someone is cleaning. Ahead is a litter bin past which a man pulls a suitcase. I pass a red door then a blue door, a bicycle and a pillar box. On the pavement is a plastic bottle. I round the corner and see two people checking a map. There are a few confused faces. On the pavement is a load of spilled popcorn. There are French flags again. The market’s here. A girl in pink sandals walks towards me and I walk past a stall selling ham and on towards a long queue which snakes its way down one side of the square. A man in a luminous jacket walks past me. An engine purrs. Ahead, three telephone boxes wait for conversation, but for the moment, there’s just the sound of laughter.

Palimpsests

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With the prose version of the text, when I removed the words removed from the original list, I was left, not surprisingly, with many sentences which were incongruous, which no longer made sense. Reading through these and thinking about this project as a whole, I realised that these texts are like palimpsests, whereby words are removed but traces still remain, e.g. the words on either side of the removed words. This fits in with the fact I’m working within and writing about an area which is itself a palimpsest – an urban palimpsest, an area which has seen huge changes, but in which parts of the past are still present, albeit quite incongruous.

Perhaps it would be an idea for these lists and prose passages to be written up in pencil, and then words rubbed out, giving the work the look and feel of a genuine palimpsest.

Day 9

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I received the canvas today and so made a start on priming it.

I also walked my new route and made a list of objects, sounds etc. The full list is as follows:

voices
a siren burst
the sun
engine starts
Leffe
zebra crossing
fat stomach
boarded windows
remnants of posters
black cloak
yellow glasses
sweet smoke
quiet street
red bus
missing letters
pencilled ‘e’
water collected in cobbles
roar of a plane
red lights
cool breeze
weeping willows
a wedding
green mound
old woman
shopping trolley
red man
heart-shaped balloon
Guinness Time
green man
fingers point
pull pull
paper cup
old confetti
cigarette butts
a siren
the sun
a flag hangs
empty racks
wheelie bins
man on a phone
doorbells
dirty water
washing hangs
a broom
plastic bottle
weir
stone tower
scaffold
dead pigeon
sun sparkles
water sounds
lifebuoy
warning!
man with walking stick
drowned bicycle
the stain of a splash
the sound of a coat
scraping tools
a barrier
a signpost
bright sun
people talk
birds twitter
footsteps
CCTV
arrow
ornate gate
traffic cones
roar of bus
music
concrete
shadow
a woman sits
tables and chairs
an empty glass
sun on plastic wrapper
trees
tinted windows
engine ticks over
bus shelter
old people queue
two yellow markers
the sound of a crossing
footsteps
blue plastic bag
graffiti
blue peeling door
sound of a child
green door
carrying shopping
man leaves door
a lamppost peers
old stone walls
plastic bag tumbles
libya libya
lamppost no.6
gutter
half-painted
weeds
hazard lights
painting a window
locks for nothing
purple trousers
a suitcase pulled
footsteps in sand
a taxi
a sapling
arrivals
fruit-boxes
music
soiled blanket
a sink
a mop
checking phone
checking leaflet
bottle top

This evening I read and recorded all the words as an MP3 file. It reminded me to some extent of the extract I published in yesterday’s entry, concerning the reading of the ‘battalion roll-call’, where ‘name after name went unanswered; each silence, another man wounded, missing or dead.’ Tomorrow, armed with this list of words, I will walk the route again, and photograph as much of what is on this original list as possible. Obviously certain things won’t be there any more, certain words on the ‘roll call’ will go ‘unanswered’. The signified objects of other words however will still be in existence, but there will be less, and these missing words will, in a way, act as metaphors for the missing men who did not answer their names in the ‘hollow square.’

I took these words and made them into one paragraph:

voices a siren burst the sun engine starts Leffe zebra crossing fat stomach boarded windows remnants of posters black cloak yellow glasses sweet smoke quiet street red bus missing letters pencilled ‘e’ water collected in cobbles roar of a plane red lights cool breeze weeping willows a wedding green mound old woman shopping trolley red man heart-shaped balloon Guinness Time green man fingers point pull pull paper cup old confetti cigarette butts a siren the sun a flag hangs empty racks wheelie bins man on a phone doorbells dirty water washing hangs a broom plastic bottle weir stone tower scaffold dead pigeon sun sparkles water sounds lifebuoy warning! man with walking stick drowned bicycle the stain of a splash the sound of a coat scraping tools a barrier a signpost bright sun people talk birds twitter footsteps CCTV arrow ornate gate traffic cones roar of bus music concrete shadow a woman sits tables and chairs an empty glass sun on plastic wrapper trees tinted windows engine ticks over bus shelter old people queue two yellow markers the sound of a crossing footsteps blue plastic bag graffiti blue peeling door sound of a child green door carrying shopping man leaves door a lamppost peers old stone walls plastic bag tumbles libya libya lamppost no.6 gutter half-painted weeds hazard lights painting a window locks for nothing purple trousers a suitcase pulled footsteps in sand a taxi a sapling arrivals fruit-boxes music soiled blanket a sink a mop checking phone checking leaflet bottle top

And then to reconstruct the walk, I joined in the gaps with more words drawn from what I remember of the afternoon.

There are voices and then a siren burst cuts through the air, just like the sun. An engine starts and in the window of the pub I see a sign for Leffe beer. I make my way to the zebra crossing and cross the road. A man with a fat stomach walks towards me. Ahead, I see the boarded windows and on them the remnants of posters pasted on and pulled off. A woman in a black cloak wearing yellow glasses walks past me and in her wake I smell the scent of sweet smoke. The quiet street is not normally like this. A red bus pulls in and restores normality. Walking past the boarded up restaurant I see the missing letters of its name. Someone has drawn around them – a pencilled ‘e’ sticks out. To my left is a road with water collected in cobbles and above me I hear the roar of a plane. The red lights stop the traffic and the cool breeze moves the weeping willows in the distance. I see a wedding party move on down the road. To my left is the green mound past which and old woman pushes her shopping trolley. The red man tells me to wait and in the distance I see a heart-shaped balloon bobbing above those who have been to the wedding. A sign on another pub reads Guinness Time and now the red man becomes a green man and I walk over the road. Fingers point, two women look at something, I don’t know what it is. To my left, up some stairs are two doors. The words pull pull invite me up the steps. I carry on walking and pick up a paper cup. On the road are remnants of old confetti and cigarette butts. I hear a siren and the sun makes its presence felt. On top of the tower, a flag hangs – there is no wind. The empty racks wait for bikes and the wheelie bins wait for rubbish. A man on a phone stands ahead of me. I walk past him and see a panel of doorbells. The river is full of dirty water and in a garden, washing hangs and a broom is propped against the wall. In the dirty river a plastic bottle is collected with other muck and litter around the weir above which the stone tower stands, surrounded in part by a scaffold. A dead pigeon lies beneath the bridge and beside it the sun sparkles. The water sounds as it pours through the weir, a lifebuoy is stored on the pavement just in case. There’s a warning! sign. A man with walking stick stands on the bridge and looks down into the water. A drowned bicycle shimmers beneath the water and on the pavement the stain of a splash colours the faded tar. A young boy walks past and the sound of a coat, one made of waterproof material is the only one for a while. Then I hear scraping tools and through a doorway leading to a yard I see a man cleaning his tools. There’s a barrier to my right and up ahead a signpost pointing somewhere. A bright sun lights up the pavement and people talk – three of them. The birds twitter unseen and footsteps ricochet around me. A CCTV signs warns me I’m being watched and a white arrow on a blue background points in another direction. A beautiful, old ornate gate stands incongruously as the traffic cones warn me of the traffic. The roar of bus after bus does not drown the music coming from above me. To my right is the concrete hulk of a building which casts a great shadow over everything. Within it, a woman sits and on the opposite side of the road a number of tables and chairs on which remains an empty glass are positioned. Here the sun on plastic wrapper make a star as trees stand lining the road. Tinted windows forbid the sun and behind me an engine ticks over. There’s a bus shelter and old people queue for their journey home. In the pavement, like gravestones, two yellow markers stand. I hear the sound of a crossing and footsteps cross from one side to the other. Near the steps is a blue plastic bag and on the walls plenty of graffiti. A blue peeling door needs a lick of paint and the sound of a child comes behind me. Up ahead on the right is a green door. A woman carrying shopping walks towards me just as a man leaves door. I notice how a lamppost peers ahead of me, looking at the old stone walls past which a small plastic bag tumbles. Someone has written libya libya on a step. Ahead is lamppost no.6 and from a wall a piece of a gutter protrudes. Two bollards, ones half-painted block the traffic. The weeds grow wherever they can and hazard lights flash on a lorry. A man is painting a window and locks for nothing remain locked around the cycle stands. A boy walks towards me in purple trousers. Another man walks with a suitcase pulled behind him. There are footsteps in sand which is sprinkled on the pavements. There’s a taxi and in its cage, a sapling. The arrivals bag a cab and fruit-boxes are piled high. There’s music and in a small yard a soiled blanket. I walk past an open door and inside I see a sink and a mop. A woman is checking phone and an elderly couple are checking leaflet. There’s a bottle top on the pavement.

A Single Death is a Tragedy

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On my way into OVADA this morning, I saw the tragic sight of a young man lying dead in the road. Evidently he’d been the victim of a traffic accident, a cyclist. What had happened isn’t clear, but it seems he was in collision with a dustbin lorry. Covered by a sheet, his feet sticking out from underneath, he lay in the road as paramedics and policemen stood around him. I have never seen a dead body before, and the sight was one both shocking and very, very sad. After these last months, working with themes such as life and death, and in particular the deaths of hundreds upon thousands of people, it was only at that moment, on seeing this poor man, that I saw just what death was. ‘A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic’ – how very true this is.

As I left the scene and made my way to the gallery, everything around me seemed heightened; colours, sounds – life in general. The everyday was for a moment rather otherworldly. People still smiled, shops were open for business, buses left the bus station. The sun shone, buildings all around remained standing: life carried on as normal, just as it always does. I suppose, this morning, I saw mortality for the first time – that, and the resilience of the city.

It was later in the day, that I became aware of something else: eternity. Just as imagining the deaths of millions of people is – to say the least – difficult, so contemplating eternity is quite impossible. However, I have always considered that the only way to contemplate the mass deaths of the Holocaust or the carnage of the battlefields of World War One, is to find the individuals caught up in the horror. In effect, one must try and break things down into smaller pieces. The same could be said of eternity, the infinite, and as I walked around town this afternoon, I was aware of the time that had passed since this morning’s tragic events, the minutes and the hours – the first minutes and hours of the dead man’s eternal rest.

The Unknown Soldier

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“The Post Office Rifles and the 6th Battalion – ‘the Cast-Iron Sixth – in turn would then pass through their lines to continue the advance to the next objectives on the downward slope of the ridge, the ‘Cough Drop,’ also known as ‘Leicester Square’, and the ‘Starfish Line’. The London Irish and the Poplar and Stepney Rifles were to lead the advance to the west of High Wood, before being succeeded by the 19th and 20th Battalions. ‘The postmen from quiet little hamlets or clerks who had spent their lives hitherto in snug offices, talked about these future regimental mortuaries with the homely names with astonishing calmness…'”

What struck me about this quote from Neil Hanson’s book, was how soldiers used the names of well known and familiar places, to name those places which were not only unfamiliar, but also terrifying, often places of horror and death on a scale which could never be imagined within those more familiar places back home. Trenches were named in a similar fashion: Oxford Circus, Oxford Street, George Street, Broad Street and so on.

“By day, the screams and groans of the wounded and dying had been drowned by the deafening clamour of the battle. At nightfall, though still counterpointed by the rumble of the guns, their pitiful cries and please for help could be hear echoing through the shattered wood…”

This quote reiterates how this war was a war of sounds; how men could be reduced to tears and much worse by sounds; those of the incessant shells or the solitary man crying in a dark wood.

“‘The reading of the battalion roll-call must have broken the hearts of all who heard it – ‘a hollow square of jaded, muddy figures… A strong voice… calls one name after another from a Roll lit by a fluttering candle, shaded by the hand of one of the remaining Sergeant Majors.’ Name after name went unanswered; each silence, another man wounded, missing or dead.'”

This very poignant passage reminded me of some text-based work I did whilst investigating the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. These text-based pieces started as free-written prose and through a process of increasing the spacing between the letters changed to become squares where the words were reduced to a scattering of letters. As soon as I read the words ‘a hollow square’ I thought at once of those.

The Unknown Soldier

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“The Post Office Rifles and the 6th Battalion – ‘the Cast-Iron Sixth – in turn would then pass through their lines to continue the advance to the next objectives on the downward slope of the ridge, the ‘Cough Drop,’ also known as ‘Leicester Square’, and the ‘Starfish Line’. The London Irish and the Poplar and Stepney Rifles were to lead the advance to the west of High Wood, before being succeeded by the 19th and 20th Battalions. ‘The postmen from quiet little hamlets or clerks who had spent their lives hitherto in snug offices, talked about these future regimental mortuaries with the homely names with astonishing calmness…'”

“By day, the screams and groans of the wounded and dying had been drowned by the deafening clamour of the battle. At nightfall, though still counterpointed by the rumble of the guns, their pitiful cries and please for help could be hear echoing through the shattered wood…”

“‘The reading of the battalion roll-call must have broken the hearts of all who heard it – ‘a hollow square of jaded, muddy figures… A strong voice… calls one name after another from a Roll lit by a fluttering candle, shaded by the hand of one of the remaining Sergeant Majors.’ Name after name went unanswered; each silence, another man wounded, missing or dead.'”

Day 8

by

Having consulted two maps (one a Google map, the other David Loggan’s map of 1675), I finally planned a new route for my ‘walking work’ which is as follows:

Gloucester Green
Chain Alley
George Street
Worcester Street
Tidmarsh Lane
St. Thomas’ Street
Paradise Street
Castle Street
Bulwarks Lane
George Street
Gloucester Place
Gloucester Green

Below are some photographs of the route of the walk:

More photographs of this route can be seen on my Flickr pages. This isn’t an area I know that well – I’m not sure if I’ve ever walked the entire length of Paradise Street – and yet afterwards, when I looked at David Loggan’s map of 1675, it all seemed very familiar. I was surprised at how much was left after the upheaval of redevelopment, particularly when standing near St. George’s tower, near the junction of St. Thomas’ and Paradise Streets. Now, looking at John Gwynn’s surveys, I could make much more sense of the Oxford of 1772.

© Nicholas Hedges 2006-20

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