I
.
.
.
I remember
How the darkness doubled
.
.
.
.
Standing. In the dark, enveloped by a light rain on the quayside of the River Tyne. The opening lines of Television’s Marquee Moon are snaking through my head. It feels as if the song is seeping out into the city’s arteries. An energy circulating through the cobbled streets, overhead bridges and the reflecting river. Marquee Moon is an album that has always seemed to stand outside of time and yet evokes a strong sense of place. An almost cubist portrait of New York. Tonight it’s Newcastle that is being pulled into the gravity of the song.
The treacly purr of the Tyne does indeed double the darkness upon which two cathedrals of light are painted. The Sage Gateshead, a silver slug of undulating movement in daylight, shape-shifts into a trio of glass pyramids. Bricks of light etched upon the darkness. Its reflective doppelgänger is traced in the depths of the lipping water. All edges smoothed into Guggenheim-esque spirals of shimmering curves.
.
.
I recall
lightning struck itself
.
.
Further up the quayside, the Millenium Bridge indicates the route of travel over the river to where Tom Verlaine & Co will shortly take the stage for a very rare UK appearance. Once again the city appears to absorb and reflect back the enigmatic lyric. Lightning/lighting appearing to strike itself. An arc of rainbow colours – the illusion of movement a solid sphere – a Marquee Moon?
.
II
At the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University:
Pasmore’s description of the Apollo Pavillion as “an architecture and sculpture of purely abstract form through which to walk”.
.
III
The Merzbarn Wall
I recall being alerted by Diana J. Hale to Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbarn near Elterwater in the Lake District. Created in 1947 – 48 the Merzbarn was Kurt Schwitters’ final, and in his own estimation, ‘greatest’, piece of work.
The Hatton Gallery has on display, as a permanent installation, the Merzbarn Wall which was part of the original barn construction at Elterwater. The Wall was unfinished when Schwitters died in 1948 and in 1965, after lengthy discussions about the barn’s future, the Wall was given to Newcastle University who undertook its removal, restoration and preservation. The Merzbarn was based on Schwitter’s idea of collage, in which found items are incorporated into an art work. Schwitters applied a rough layer of decorator’s plaster and painted over various found objects, giving the three-dimensional collage an abstract quality. The items incorporated into the wall include:
A slate log splitter
A small metal window frame
The rose of a child’s watering can
Twigs
Part of the rim of a cartwheel
A china egg
A section of guttering
Part of an oval gold mirror frame
A metal grid
A rubber ball
Stones from Langdale Beck
Some Gentians – which have now disappeared
Asked what the Merzbarn Wall meant, Schwitters replied: “all it is, is form and colour, just form and colour”.
.
Merzbau – the creation of environments which use the forms and even debris from local places to create a new environment. Initially in the form of assemblages, Schwitters developed the human scale environments which he called Merzbau.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
IV
Kittiwakes on the Tyne
From March until August, Newcastle/Gateshead quayside becomes home to around 600 pairs of breeding Kittiwakes. Normally found on coastal cliffs, the Tyne Kittiwakes clearly prefer the narrow ledges of the Tyne bridges. The Kittiwake colony is the furthest inland anywhere in the world and makes Newcastle one of the few cities to have a seabird colony in its centre.
There are no Kittiwakes to be observed on this visit as they will be out soaring on Atlantic winds over the winter. Some will travel as far as Canada and Greenland. However, it is comforting to know that come Spring, they will once again hear the unheard pulse of the city guiding them back to their breeding grounds on the bridges of the Tyne.
.
V
The Bigg Market
A lonely carved stone huddles unceremoniously in the Bigg market. The elegance and grace of the craftsmanship still evident and contrasted against the utilitarian tardis of the neighbouring, municipal rubbish bin. The stone, in its displaced environment, is now likely to be a seated sanctuary for the nocturnal fag smokers taking a breather from Club Luna next door. A silent witness to the human stains from last nights excess dried hard against the pavement.
.
.
.
VI
A steampunk kind of city. A collision of multi-level curves and cobbles as retro-futuristic bridges cut across the sky.
.
.
.
.
VII
Saturday at 12.15pm
Under a shifting sky
a chorus of angels
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . – of the North
sing to the wind.
.
Cathedral bells
flood the city
sound spilling
around
Amen Corner.
.
.
VIII
.
Powered by steam: the tendrils that connect the local into webs of possibilities and extended horizons. Encounters with the other. Creating an expansive map.
.
.
IX
The curious case of the virtual building at Trinity Chare on 57 Quayside. Did this building once exist here? It would appear improbable.
.
.
Explore behind the facade of the spectacle:
.
.
.
X
Herbs in the City
Botany scrutinised at the bottom of walls
asphalt’s rust
imaginable palpation raises them to the dignity of
plants
emanated from the earth
to the condition of contention
– Raymond Queneau – from Hitting the Streets
.
XI
.
“Dare to be Free”
.
.
XII
Turning from the river, the narrow vennel (chare?) of Watergate frames Bessie Surtees House. All wobbly frames of black and white like a hand drawn illustration This was the scene on 18th December 1772 when a young, 17-year-old Bessie, daughter of a rich banker, climbed out of a window to elope with her lover to Scotland. It was considered such a major scandal at the time that people would come to stand and stare at the house.
I stand and stare at the house before learning of this story.
.
XIII
A shift of level. With a final look back to the river, a chinese box of stairwells unfold to lead up towards the (New) Castle Keep and the Black Gate.
.
So he resumed his walk, but the way proved long. For the street he was in … did not lead up to the Castle hill, it only made towards it and then, as if deliberately, turned aside, and though it did not lead away from the Castle it got no nearer to it either.
Franz Kafka The Castle
.
XIV
.
A very well-preserved ghost sign built into the brickwork. It can always seen on any train journey that passes through Newcastle.
The building is a is a rare surviving witness to the replacement of the horse by the motor car. Originally built in 1897 as a horse, carriage and cycle auction room it was essentially a showroom for horse-drawn carriages. By the 1920s the future prospects of horse-drawn transport were pretty bleak so the building was adapted to serve as one of the first motor car garages and dealerships. I subsequently find out that the building stands on top of, part of the buried remains, of Hadrian’s Wall.
Layered histories converse in the topography of place.
.
XV
A fixed departure train ticket means that time is running short so no time to look for a building that I have heard so much about: The Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle Upon Tyne or The Lit & Phil as it appears to be known locally. Serendipity intervenes and I stumble across the building very close to the station only to discover a one day book sale in progress. Twenty minutes to browse before the train leaves. I trust the space and know that the books will call out. They do. It all works and it’s a short walk to the station to catch the train.
.
.
XVI
As the train heads northwards, I nod to Coopers Motor Mart. No longer simply a sign from a train window but time stacked in layers as a material place which the act of walking has ‘made real’.
A trace of footsteps are left behind. One more scratch upon the city streets and a drift through one version of Newcastle is assembled in memory. A small fragment of fragments. The city, carried within.
≈
Merzbau – the creation of environments which use the forms and even debris from local places to create a new environment.
≈
Now Playing: Tom Verlaine – Warm and Cool
References
The Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle.
Kurt Schwitters and the Merzbarn Wall
The Wall, the harsh building of the Merzbarn
Murdo Eason - From Hill to Sea 