Margins of the Mind:
A jovial and intense
Alastair Lee of Posing Productions had been texting me for a while
now. I knew that soon I would have to answer and be proactive to his
proposal. It wasn’t that I was apathetic, just knowing of the time,
effort and commitment needed to ‘extra’ in his new film ‘On
Sight’. Okay, to be honest, perhaps it was more than that. At my
most cynical I was the errant, historical guest, holding the life of
the young contender, the trad-lad who would succeed, fail or die
attached to me via knots and colours of choice. But I guess there’s
more than that. As the first ascensionist, I had been there, in a
four-hour negotiation with the rock, virtually on-sight after a quick
clean and the curious placing of a sawn-off peg. My musings were not
at all a physical response to my experience, my torn fingers told
that pain, hell no, but more esoteric and a passionate rage against
sport as a betrayal of all I consider to be of sanctity in the
landscape. However, Margins was not ‘trad’ or any other label to
me but an ingredient of doubt that opened doors to more abundant life
and informed my work as an image maker. Hit or miss. Al Hinks guest
appeared on his own journey via Pinnacle Arete and took the photo in
Welsh Rock, “getting a bit dark youth”.
The concept ‘on
sight’ was, in essence, to be applauded in this world of colour
coordinated workouts in synthetic prisons, but the reality would
surely be a prosaic, commercial enterprise no different to any other
that sells style and designer fashion and brave ‘extreme’ sporty
stuff to consumers. The deeper, more visionary, alternative
consciousness stands by and distills in a much darker place. Beware,
it is in danger. It must never be lost to the Oscars! However, I knew
of Al’s unequivocal talents, behind, within and beyond the camera,
and in a moment of my own, nebulous, daily routine of ‘blackening’
canvas, acquiesce with the man’s movie chi.
It had been twenty-four
years ago since my ascent of Margins of the Mind. I had forgotten the
moves but my psyche still remembered the reverie of the green world -
the bilberry and fern beneath me, breathing with the slimes of grubs,
worms and entities unknown and the very real prospect of joining them
as a tapestry of skin, vein and bones, torn apart and leaching
unguents over the horned-bed-rock that mocked my questioning.
Pause. A soliloquy –
‘I couldn’t find
the tiny slot that I remembered from the abseil. It evaded my frantic
searching. Surely to the right, shoulder height? Had I passed it? The
sawn-off was well below my feet – in fact I couldn’t even see
that. What is it with these routes that drift you into unexpected
germinations? Is the elusive RP1 placement symbolic of some other,
more major loss? It often seems that way, that, in situations like
this, there is indeed more to the moment than there appears to be. An
allegorical door opens…and the vital vision is not one of RP1
placements…it is of two ropes as two accusing lines, tempting me
off onto the gully rocks. Why does the gully beckon? Surely the
finishing holds are better placed to aspire to! But no, the moment
waits to linger…the gully, its green world just ‘so’, just
there…just so…alien to all this…this that I have invented…this
warped struggle’. …and one for the
crow
Neil Dickson was to
attempt an on-sight and I was to hold his ropes. In all those years
the route had only seen a top-roped, practiced ascent by cool
adventurer Nick Dixon. He thought it ‘nails’. Fine effort but bad
move. A route not top-roped on the first ascent should never suffer
the defeat of practice. The modern, politic, egalitarian ethics of
sports climbing, the physicality of movement on rock and the search
for beta and a move to be made is addictive and infectious. I think
it exhausts a raw vitality and at most warps our bond with the
planet. Welcome to mass-culture, adventure, Red Bull, trophies and
souvenirs? Practice makes perfect eh, is my glib response in a
perfect world? The Olympics are popular… Hell, accept it. Errrr no.
The day before my
ascent of Margins I climbed the second ascent of Master’s Wall
(funny enough Jerry, meandering right well below my errant bolt hole)
in the new sticky boots without stopping. Dave did the same. Not so
in pre-sticky, non-top-rope 1980 on a different project, in a
different lifetime, The Tormented Ejaculation.
Neil Dickson...footloose and fancy free on 'Margins'.
…the mental
preparation was becoming harder and harder. The so-called
psyching-up, a pain beyond reason. Out of the acquaintance grew more
and more fear. Gone the initial naiveté that had sparked off this
now terrifying enterprise. I knew the score and was unnerved by it…
I was sliding from the very start in ‘Canyon boots’. Friction was
minimal. I felt insecure. The rubbed-in resin was wearing off. I
placed an RP1 whilst dangerously pumped. I clipped in and was about
to place a No 2 when I was off. The RP ripped and I fell a long way
down the wall (Cartwheeling 70 feet by all accounts). A tiny stopper
held! Keith was momentarily stunned then calmly stated, “Oh, you’re
still alive… well, you’d better climb back up.” His amazing
insouciance was contagious. I climbed back up…’ …and
one for the crow
I had never envied
anyone holding ropes. I preferred the sharp deal…thrusting the
weapon in the right direction, and closing the gap…to an unknown
dialogue of doubt, knowing how absurd is the effort of order and
routine. Focus was never my strong point but the sharp deal enforced
it.
I met Neil, a smiling,
nonchalant, gangly youth and an enthusiastic Al in the
sulphurous-hell of Snowdon Mountain Railway station in ‘Beris. Neil
looked like a normal lad in his final year of a degree in economics,
or a scout leader applying for his first mortgage… and I accepted
that the looks and demeanour of a respected, ‘top trad climber’ of
the day may be deceiving to me. I caught myself thinking, here is a
nice lad, why is that so odd? Why shouldn’t he be? Indeed,
something had shifted. Al is psyched like a hungry vulture for his
new outdoor extremextravaganzadventure.
The wild and the innocent
“Will we fuck take
the tourist train”, was my regrettable exclamation as we burdened
ourselves upwards with Al’s trade tools. Twenty-four years ago, as
I desperately clung on in search of an RP1 placement, Neil had not
yet been born. As if from a surreal sketch I asked him where he had
been born. Llandudno he answered. I rambled on about what a great
scene Llandudno had been in the eighties, how Williams and Pollitt et
al had unleashed a pagan sexuality toll upon the Marine Drive toll
and the Parisella ice cream family in particular nailed hard, and how
bars and pubs and bouldering caves became sites of Dionysian worship.
“Yeah”, he
surprisingly remarked, “My Mum, Anne, used to hang around The
Bearded Clam bar in Llandudno.”
“Anne?” I said. “I
briefly went out with an Anne and regularly went into Pigeon Hole
Cave with her at low tide, looking for holes in pebbles that would
become indented into her buttocks like a mold”.
Al gasped, “fucking
hell JR, too much info man.”
I asked if she had
blond hair and had been about twenty-five? We all stopped on the
track, sweating under heavy loads like donkey’s awaiting a good
kicking.
“Fuck, yeah”, he
exclaimed!
“Fuck, Neil, I could
be your Dad”! At this point, Al dropped his baggage and collapsed
on all fours in hysterics, “What the fuck, fuck the film, I’ve
forgotten the bit on the way up where we stopped and took acid! Low
fucking tide dudes!” I gave Neil a knowing Fatherly look, checked
out his eyes and embraced him, “I am your father and will hold your
ropes.”
“Not too sure I can
do this”, sighed Neil smiling.
Hello again old friend. This time tied-in, wrapped tight-close to the fecund energies with which I had dialogue with on my ascent… like bowing before the trap, that which questioned what the hell I was doing there.
“…I am angry,
green fucks, I need to know”
“You know that
beauty would take your ribs for nest material, and these raw granite
hills would take your eye sockets to sprout future growth…”
“I am here because
there is no place left”
“Dying must your
species be” …and one for the crow
Neil was a stranger to
me but the two-stranded umbilical bond of cobalt and vermilion that
connected us across the span of granite, the mythical Final Judgement
Wall, was as ancient as the love between Paleolithic hunters,
spanning eras, closing the gap on the prey. The climb is serious
immediately and Neil was slow and methodical in approach. He worked
his way up strongly to a psychological impasse, climbing up and down
to his own meaningful dialogue. He almost came unstuck with a snappy,
but like a cat bouncing off an invisible wall, found himself back on
the rock. I offered helpful advice like, ‘yeah, just keep going up,
don’t look down, somewhere there’s a reach then keep going to the
belay’. After about four hours his fingers were bleeding and enough
was enough. The wall, as the great stone tool, was laid down to rest.
I was relieved to be back with slack ropes, playing with the colours
like Jackson Pollock, but without being filmed. Belaying on this
terrain was intense. Every inch, in and out of the sticht-plate was
crucial. The slack, the tension, the breathing between bodies, the
colour coordination, the reading and timing of moves and the
preparedness for a slip, all in sync to Neil’s specific character
of movement. It’s a rap for the day.
I was persuaded to
return after a month. Al wanted his film. Neil wanted his on-sight. I
wanted to paint - from the sounds I had recorded at Montsegur, the
last stronghold of the Cathari, the heretics, who were persecuted by
the Catholics during the Albigensian crusade; where the last
remaining initiates walked silently into the flames…letting go of
their ‘book of love’ into a book of lore…
Neil succeeded after
another four hours of negotiation. Al succeeded in producing his
film. I succeeded in holding my ‘seed’. (sic)
Author
Six years later, again
on-sight, the extremely bold and reticent Caff, thrusting his own
weapon, met with the same shapes, in the same place and was lucky not
to fall, as the wall, again, laid down its great, stone tool. He
returned in trainers to check it out but his prey had been wounded.
Only Caff himself knows what his subsequent ascent means…with the
earth, the stones, his breath. For certain, these super-technical
‘heads’ have more to battle with than just the rock. Their focus
and commitment is incomprehensible to me. In the anti-institutional
spirit of Edward Abbey, I feel like indulging in a graffiti campaign,
just to push some dirt back into the outdoor environment.
For me, adventure
starts in a dark seedy studio… surely having a laugh!
John Redhead: 2019
Photos: Alastair Lee
November 2016
St Laurent de Cerdans,
Catalunya Nord.
