Unsentimental Journey | Installation | 3rd on 3rd Gallery, Reg Lenna Centre, Jamestown, New York

 'Alas, alas that the ears of common men should love the modern but not love the old’ Po Chü-i

Back in early 2013 I revisited, for the first time in many years, the Williamson Art Gallery on the Wirral to try and get a recording of a Victorian polyphon that I remember being part of the gallery’s collection. When I finally located the machine in a part of the gallery, that was at that point inaccessible to visitors, I discovered that the disc in the machine was the exact same disc as I had remembered forty years previous. As a small child I had visited the Williamson on numerous occasions and experienced this haunting sound drifting across the galleries to meet my ears. The sound is a dreamy one yet somehow disquieting at the same time, once heard never forgotten. Across the years this particular tune has haunted not only my dreams but also the quieter, more reflective moments of my waking hours too. My memory of not just the place but also the time is imprinted on my brain, just like the puncture marks in the brass disc that plays the tune inside of the polyphon. It was many years before I learned what the tune was, the answer came late night via Radio 3 thru a version sung by New Age singer Enya. ‘I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls’ was a tune from a Threepenny Opera entitled ‘The Bohemian Girl’.   

Fugue I

‘Those who have passed on can reach us mostly easily if they can find thoughts and feelings directed towards them from the earth’

Life between Death and Rebirth. Rudolf Steiner

The early light of dawn is grey. The street lamps in the road ahead of me switch off as I make my way to work in the oppressive silence of the morning. The pathways through the housing estate are empty, most curtains are still drawn as daylight approaches. In the stillness of my immediate surrounding in the gardens, neatly trimmed hedges and carefully pruned trees and bushes, bear the all the signs of a safely neutered nature, I can hear the far off hiss of car tyres on asphalt as other people head out to meet the day. I put my headphones on [Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do] and walk a little faster past tidy gardens, bins lined up by gates like guards on sentry duty, driveways containing cars, and sometimes a caravan, in one case even a rack with a chained up canoe on it. For some even the milk has been delivered, and in some cases the birds have already had their fill and pecked through the odd silver top.

As I reach the end of the estate I enter the narrow alleyway that will take me onto the playing field and into the last five minutes of my journey to work. In my mind this is “The Lane to Port Lligat” [Salvidor Dali 1922-23] There is no similarity between the rubbish strewn entry and the lane of Dali’s painting, only a blossoming tree at the end of it which, even under the glowering sky of the early morning, makes me think of the luminosity of the trees and bushes of Dali’s painting. On the end of the field there is a mist at ground level.

My mind drifts back to a conversation from earlier on this morning that never actually happened.”I have to go, I’m sorry I can’t talk right now but my dad died this morning”, “I’m sorry to hear that Matt I won’t keep you…I’ll give you a call later ”There is click and I find myself listening to the tone of the dead receiver.

My alarm clock is ringing. I reach up from my bed to find the light switch as I try to wake up. The bed is a mattress laid out on a hastily assembled chipboard floor in an unconverted loft. Standing up straight is not possible and I have to avoid banging my head on the rafters, a bare 40watt bulb dangles above the floor area from the beam at the apex of the roof. I climb down the ladder into the hallway below and head downstairs to get ready for work. I haven’t heard from Matt in a long time.

I reach the end of the path across the playing field and my place of work is there in front of me. The smell of the bakery hangs in the air and the articulated lorry pulls out of the loading bay having being emptied of its contents. I see one off my colleagues rating a line of empty cages across the courtyard, putting them onto the lift to await the nest empty truck to take them away again. The unforgiving grey light of many early mornings casts a sickly pall across my life. The stench of the rubbish compactor assaults my nose the closer I get to the yard. I wrap up my headphones in my brows suede jacket as I enter the wrong way through the automatic doors, now turned off. I clock in for the day. [A real indication]

The day passes slowly and without event, and after a lunch spent with my book [Betty Blue- Philippe Djian, never seen the film though] I find myself knelt at the cheese counter, checking dates, stacking blocks and wishing that time would speed up.As i stand to pit an empty crate back on the pallet trolley I see my friend Ben whom I have not seen in a long time heading up the isle towards me. When he stops and says hello I ask him he is. The answer I could have not predicted. “I’m alright thanks although I can’t stop right now, I’m off to see Matt this afternoon as his died this morning.”I put in the regulation overcoat and return to the cold, damp, windowless atmosphere of the chiller. Yoghurts, cheeses, joints of gammon, bacon, cooked meats stacked low to the ceiling. Pipes and fittings covered in foam snake around the ceiling and corrugated metal floor, as always, is damp with moisture.There is a small pool of orange juice forming in the corner of a box marked Sunny Delight. I go and get the mop. Outside the confines of the chiller raised voices call instructions to each other above the din of the blade that slices through the meat destined for the shop floor. This afternoon seems hollow despite the fact i’m surrounded by people the world is muffled.Outside the day has brightened up considerably, inside things are much different. I leave the building at four o’ clock, music on [ Geneva- Best Regrets]and head for the bus that will take me into town.

On my brief journey to the Blackthorn Galleries, where I will spend the next few hours installing an exhibition due to open week, I can’t help but consider the strange circumstances of the day. Tape clicks off; I swap it for another one out of my bag [Ragged Glory] Having seen neither Matt nor Ben for quite some time my dream in the early hours this morning takes on a deeper significance, what is it that separates us from other people, if not time, distance or even death? I step off the bus into the warm sunshine of the early evening. The tree lined boulevard that runs between the new cinema and Hamilton Square seems to ripple, as the sun dances between the leaves of the trees.I head for my destination on Price Street.