Communique #5: When The World Falls Apart (05 2021)

This month’s pieces are inspired by a place where very few people go. Burnley Bank Hall is basically an abandoned recreation area – a football pitch and some outbuildings. On one level it’s like the life has been sucked out of it. On another there does seem to be an aura. It makes me want to create. To show it’s beauty. I wouldn’t say it’s a liminal space as such but it’s certainly on the margins. Is it any wonder that the people who mill there are the same? Dispossessed. This one goes out them and everyone else who finds themselves in the shadows. SAN End of May 2021

P.S. I’m not one for taking a lot of photos but I had quite a few left over this time, another two sets worth. Feel free to send me line if you would like to see them

THE THOUGHT PIECE: 

I’ve confessed this to quite a few people but writing about something is my idea of hell. I prefer to deal in random thought and then try and tame my slew of words. I’m just hopeless with structure and sense. This month’s photos were taken at Burnley Bank Hall on a very cold January day. I don’t think ‘outsiders’ need to know much about the place to get some idea that things often fall apart. You can tell by the debris. You can tell by the graffiti. Scrawled on one wall until recently was: “I HOPE YOU ALL DIE OF CANCER!” A zine friend once turned a photo I took of this into a postcard. I thought that was fitting in many ways. You can understand the frustration of dead end-ness. Of what people do to escape. And then how others condemn.

I suppose my question is whether we can distance ourselves completely or do we feel the need to expose the failings of society? Or, more broadly, talk about what it is to be working class. To feel neglected. To feel misrepresented. To become invisible. To exist as political experiment. How it has become a damning construct. We are sold this ideal (lie?) that we should get edukated, fuck and strive, and then settle down. Our backgrounds are something we need to escape. If we don’t then we are labelled as failure. We are fed terms like skilled and unskilled to define our worth. We pay little to those who are doing things which we feel are beneath us but which are actually beyond our capability. For me personally and my past, I want to write of a life spent dossing round arcades and places like this.

It seems strange but I feel happy there. It’s not a version of the town you often see. It’s hidden away. The more time I spend there the more I’m content to let the darkness come to the surface. Not in a gloomy way but much more transcendental. Show how it changes me. I wanted to try and get that across in the imagery. It always strikes me as the sort of place which may conjure both ghosts and magic. Like something from David Lynch film which could lead into dream world or nightmare. Obviously the reality is more melancholic. It’s a place of transiency. It’s a place where homeless people go to avoid the apathetic eyes of the street. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s a place where they feel safer. It’s a place that they’ll move on from eventually. Like all of us they’ll keep searching. Looking for answers, looking for tribe.

My mum thought she would find her tribe in the church. In penance, offering and aromatic incense. In restrictive aisles and timidly sung hymns. Maybe she did? At least for a while. But perhaps her later doubts are best left for another time? Or left completely in the past. I’m not sure what will happen with Burnley Bank Hall. Last time I went artificial barriers had been placed partially blocking the entrance. It remains as a link to past. Of Burnley’s past if not mine. Of the mines. I’m sure at some point it will be gentrified. Some smart executive will come draw diagrams and tell us that canal side living is the future. Charge a sky high price to live the dream. I’m not sure what will be lost? A wasteland? A catalyst? The truth? The place I go to feel grounded. The place I go to feel a million miles away.

Your themes: what we miss, what we imagine, what we regret. What is freedom? Liminal spaces, darkness, dream states, or anything else this inspires.

THE FREE WRITTEN PIECE: ‘The Time of Willing Genuflection (Saved Version)’

He wondered if they were even human?
Men clothed in nothing but bigotry
Did they not feel the conflict that was in him?
Did they not sense the hollowness in his contrition?
How he stumbled behind that grill
“I will try not to sin again”
He promised by lying again
Perhaps even they knew it was futile?
Knew that a hundred Hail Marys couldn’t save him
And that the dye had been cast
They knew the future was not theirs to give
Heaven had turned to rust and then into dust
Why did it take so long?
Not knowing any different?
Not knowing himself?
When the time came though he left them all behind
He knew he must absorb the darkness
Let it all in without regret
Let it in until he couldn’t breathe
Let it in to see if it changed him
What had he got to lose?
This world of crass artificiality
This world of bland uniformity
Nothing?
This thing called ‘belonging’
No, they were white washed tombs
Sickly sores full of evil intent
Men made of woe betide and strict regime
He mentally scrawled his raw response
“I WILL KILL YOUR MORBID MEMORIES!”
I will repeat a hundred times
And then, maybe one thousand more
I am human
I am sinner
I am awakened
There will be nothing at the end but enveloping chaos

Postscript: why ‘saved version’? Well I had deleted this piece before giving it a reprieve. I have spoken about this before in my blog but faith play a huge part in my work. This time though I just felt it was too caustic at first – let me say this again, I am not anti-church. It can be a huge comfort to many. In many ways faith played a huge part in shaping our lives. From the concept of limbo and mortal sin. To my mum feeling ostracised through no fault of her own. Unclean as a divorcee and unable to take communion. They offered us redemption and the promised land. However this came in the form of unrealistic expectations and a life of repression.

THE IMAGES: