Caban: The Author on a recent trip back to another of his old stomping grounds.The Llanberis slate quarries.
Kill
them all, the land will know its own…
Beziers
1209. This title is drawn from the alleged orders given by Arnaud
Amaury, a Cistercian abbot and Pope Innocent’s legate, during the
first military action of the Albigensian crusade against the heretic
Cathari. When it became known that, in the throes of the bloody
carnage, it was impossible to tell a Catholic from a Cathari, he
ordered, ‘kill everyone, God will know his own’.
Liverpool
2019. My version of this infamous dictum comes from a recent visit to
this northern port. Its raw, tribal energy has always instilled a
vibrant feeling of ‘fuck off therapy’. Its healthy, socialist,
militant fist is in your face demanding attention; loud, messy, with
music at its core. It thrusts its weapon on the worldwide stage… I
love you, yeah, yeah yeah, and a million such
tunes with no sell by date. It is an expressive, inclusive city, and
when I lived here for seven years it was probably the most active
‘social forensic’ of my life. Musing on Heinrich Harrer’s seven
years in Tibet, I escaped via the Clywdian Hills of North Wales, not
to escape war but to avoid the slings and arrows of a tight chapel
attitude. I landed amongst parallel streets of red brick warehouses,
vomit-slid and piss-stained, and the groaning of life forms
intrigued. I adventured to a different, energetic drumbeat. Musicians
and artists are bred here, flock here, find freedom and inspiration
here, in a Liverpool reformed from three centuries of transatlantic
human trafficking, redolent with humiliation, degradation and
brutality. And the legacy of an oppressive regime is still manifest,
as hardship, hunger and blankets greet those in the doorways of a
shopping trip.
For a
northern town built on commerce, trade and slavery, it has held its
‘family’, its pool of life sacrosanct and, sure enough, you will
never walk alone here. The urban tribe is
one animal, acting with one tongue, like the festival dragon whose
long tail is held up by many; a red army, so to speak. All are
artists. Enrollment is free for all.
When I
lived and worked in a warehouse in the centre of the town, I wrote an
article called Music of Decline.
I refer to the studio warehouse as a precarious perch, a tree house,
an observation post and a hunter’s hideout.
‘The
communication is elemental, hyper, stricken with poverty. It’s
hypnotic. They fight and grope together deep inside neon-lit,
converted buildings. The bass sounds that escape to the outside are
indeed a jungle beat. Wood street, Fleet Street, warehoused and heavy
with light industry are transmuted from the Victorian Merchant era to
the primaeval hunt – raw and hypnotic’. …and
one for the crow
This
vision was new to me, but I guess if you were on safari seeking out
this ‘wilderness’, you would find it in every city in the world.
On the
second floor, large doors opened out onto a fairly empty Concert
Street and Fleet Street, still hanging in as a remnant of the
merchant era and within sly-piss-distance from busy Bold Street
shoppers. Opposite was a sweat-shop employing many girls on sewing
machines and underneath me an upholstery business and a cabinet
maker. Assorted businesses operated from Holmes Buildings: a web of
practice rooms for budding musicians, cake makers and craft persons.
I collected loose tea, spilt from the chests at the tea factory,
opposite a convent up the road, where the homeless and drunk sank
into the convent’s soup kitchen. No ships in sight. I dreamed as an
artist should, furiously alert to the threads of humanity.
Frankie,
the upholsterer was a broad, tough Scouse cookie. He had lost an eye
in a fight and would be quite happy to summon his mates with metal
plates in their heads to wipe out the growing number of ‘tossing
arty wankers’ in the street, if he so wished. I liked him and his
close, down to earth family ties. But he had his defensive, ‘manly’
moments in between cutting and sewing fabrics and stapling
furnishings that others could relax in. He only hit me once and
head-locked me another time over an argument about toilet roll…never
again has toilet roll been an issue in my life. Pete, the
cabinetmaker, had learned his craft during a harrowing ten years
spent in jail in Johannesburg. He’d been caught smuggling diamonds
across the border. When stressed about life’s grind, he would
recall his black mates who had all died, beaten to death in the same
jail, then just get on with it, rolling another number. Regardless of
his ‘enforced’, nurtured feel for wood, his main concern was
dealing hash. He wasn’t alone when 96 of his fellow supporters died
in the Hillsborough stadium disaster. Lesley, a gentle soul, was a
ceramicist working in the cellar, and when not totally bonged-out or
playing the whistle, made slip cast Art Deco forgeries. The building
was owned by a chap nicknamed Gollum, a dealer in antique furniture,
bric-a-brac and household clearance or whatever. He was a small
hunched man who walked with a slight limp, and always seemed to have
a hand outstretched ready to take cash or cheques. He was known to
deal in ‘dodgy’ items and large shipping containers arrived in
the middle of the night to be loaded, destined to sail on the same
old slavery route across to the Americas. So, as artist in residence,
and the only person actually living in the street with the rats and
pigeons, I was in good company with the gangsters of the inner city.
My
warehouse was the last epicenter of ‘down to earth’ working
practice before the town planning takeover of L1, advertised and
marketed as the new creative quarter. These days you may not find
much dereliction, nor much of its eager mate, the purple lilac
Buddleja, programmed to seek a damp neglect, hanging from cracks,
broken downspouts and rooftops. The street life had just started to
‘drip’ design and after seven years of dialogue with my own Dalai
Lama, I was out of place – clean up, dress up or fuck off. My
sketches writhed awkwardly and grotesquely around this style
conscious ambience… this comedy, this tragedy, this subterfuge born
from profit and fear?
‘…the
energy is pure escapism.
There
is no content apart from alcohol induced aggression and violence.
At 2am
the happy funky clubbers are baring and gnashing their teeth on the
threshold of a new era…’ and one for the crow
Creative
quarter? My tree house was converted into a bar for that new era.
This was 23 years ago and times have changed. Ryley was born in the
warehouse and is 23. I have changed. The ‘one-eyed Frankies’ have
had kids and operate businesses from more convenient premises out of
town. The warehouse has had a new cool, consumer make-over; but if
you read the red bricks, the slavery and slops remain. Concert Street
has changed into an open-air arena of almost Shakespearean
proportions. The concert too has changed and become more festival…
the street concert booms the new tunes and refreshments to the new
happy highway. Rejoice in the non-stop hedonism? I
love you yeah yeah yeah – and I’m not the only one.
Religion is still persecuting, killing and proselytising however.
Wars, terrorism and pollution are always topics of main news. Pope
Francis’s answer to the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest is
to send in married priests. Derek Hatton, the Trotskyite Militant
voice of the 80’s, back into politics, was then kicked out again
after speaking his mind over Israel’s obvious and horrendous
atrocities against the indigenous folk of Palestine. Freedom of
speech, more than ever, hides behind the design label of a corporate
voice. Greenpeace is still active but has been joined by a more
timely and radical troupe, Extinction Rebellion. It is with thoughts
and questions arising from my recent essay ‘What
to do’, concerning a harmed planet and the
violence of the day, that I visit the city. If there was ever a city
that could push a few tangents and clues into your skull, headlock
you with a few punchy jabs, the Pool of Life is it.
I walked
almost blindfold into the ‘concert’ and faced the familiar red
brick. Gone was the ventilation pipe that connected to the main sewer
under the street, the one we plugged a toilet into. I knew that
Waterstones the bookstore, had been converted into a bar. Fuckin
buzzin. I knew that my old café, Trading Places had gone along with
its random artworks on patched up walls. I remembered Isabelle’s
home-baked banoffi pie and the morning toast and marmalade after
slipping out of the studio, groggy and barefoot. Gone was the broken,
mended and shabby humanity, making ends meet but talking poetry, gone
the frayed misfits who ran it and the homeless, not out of place, who
would chance a free coffee and a chat, for me significant and of
world importance. It had a sense of place, on earth, above and beyond
what it seemed to offer at face value. Yes, it had become another
bar. Fuckin buzzin. The waste ground where I had my bonfires of
street rubbish: two more bars. Fuckin buzzin. The car park had gone:
high-rise above another bar. Fuckin buzzin. I had no sanctuaries
left. Neither had the grey wagtail. Designer wagging tails were on
the humans now and how they wag. How busy, how clean, how barren. I
was brought to a full stop. Was this the headlock I sought?
In 1995 I
wrote –
‘As I
am writing this, looking down on a battle of streets from my studio,
I am reminded of the pre-literate truth that finds its release in the
‘hunt’ every night. However, this pulsating of the Earth offers
no succor to the unsuspecting ‘mummers’ on the stage down below
who remain in blissful ignorance of the ancient sapience to which
they perform…’ and one for the crow
All
cultures need a release of treatment, a Mardi Gras, a festival, a
piss up, a get together, a rubbing of flesh, a peace pipe for a pause
and respite, an alternate headspace… the spectrum of humanity’s
“rules of the game”. The validating codes of a ceremony are here
usurped by hashtag trending. I wade through a collision, flicking
through pages of a Marvel comic, trying to grasp the familiar, the
eternal, to pick up a few gems and try and understand its place in
the psyche and on the map. This was one animal in loud voice,
seemingly on social media, finger-clicking for life’s affirmation
on Tinder and Facebook, for likes, for retweets, for selfies,
brainwashed by the buzzword topics of the day…Game of
Thrones…Women’s football…Billy Eilish … migrants…
shopping... Brexit… Boris Johnson… Trump. No doubt Extinction
Rebellion made a brief appearance of ridicule on the menu of this
month’s bar conversation, but this animal moved and shook to the
offers on sale in the city’s retail shops. Designer carrier bags
dazzled and flooded out from under seats like modern chains around
the ankles. But this is Liverpool, so rest assured there is an
indifferent street poet not far away, probably chained to a lamp
post, intuitively rhyming that mankind is ‘fuckin’ mad.
‘the
life and joy you so energetically seek does not exist, it is really a
blissful promise of death’. and one for the crow
So, facing
this ‘death’, this hidden creeping death, this death wanting more
and more of whatever this death needs, I go for a quick cortado
coffee behind ‘enemy-lines’ and make a shopping list of my
immediate wants. My coffee suffices. But even my coffee, is not a
coffee as such, it’s an experience of place, sounds, textures,
observations, insights and stimuli for the imagination…like my old
café of 23 years ago, of world importance and transcendence.
In
numerology, the number 23 is significant, often called the
angel 23, carrying messages of a divine
nature for optimism about your place in the universe. I will keep
that esoteric gem under my belt.
But for
the present it is very difficult to be optimistic having waded
through the Concert Street soap opera, where every street is like a
kids’ theme park, choked with ‘happy’ folk buying stuff,
pretending to be adults, herded and surveyed. It is heartbreakingly
obvious that this way of being is not sustainable either for
civilisation or the planet. When I see this total submission to the
soul of Mammon, to consumer slavery, orchestrated in the most evil
and concealed corporate manner, I see the end of the world. Part of
me wishes to hasten it on its way, for surely the health of the
planet will recognize its own….?
And then I
see the Toyota Hilux pickup, manned by Extinction Rebellion
activists. Civil disobedience has taken a new twist. They are
collecting consumers from the streets, admitting them to consumer
decompression units for therapy, education, deep-ecology and blue
planet retrieval. A better dream than a Jihadi, a religious consumer,
forcing his will, hell bent on eliminating that which is other…
Beziers was not a happy ending.
The
biggest problem facing humanity is how to replace this monster called
belief.
John
Redhead, Lous Manes, Coustouges, Catalunya Nord. July 2019
Llanberis Photos-JA
