in memoriam

 

 

we look out

on war

 

 in the blue sky

swirling fighters

reap death

 

us and them

 

children link

arms

force apart

hands

them and us

 

 

 

 

darkness

 

 

 

Beneath the humping bedclothes of another drunken Saturday night we are conceived in the dark. 

 

Born from black we gulp for our first breath and are blinded by the light. We are addicted to it. We cannot rest. The darkness must not enfold us.

 

We scurry into another neon night, searching in the windows for meaning. Scanned like a bar-code. Framed by the light. Anything to avoid the eternal darkness.

 

 

 

red is the colour

 

colours

speak a language

deeper than words

 

red tells torrid stories

 

blood

passion

death

temptation

 

 

 

 

 

 

the passage of time

  

silence

 

 

observation/reflection/enlightenment

 

 

 

 

 

 procession for hilary

 

interment

 

 

These pictures chart a healing process undertaken through photography.

 

'The Silence' is a mixed-media image constructed over a number of years using photography, collage and photo-copying techniques.

The man split in two is me. In between is a photograph of my father and my sister, Hilary. My father died aged forty eight of a massive heart attack. Hilary died aged eight. She pedalled her bike from behind a bus to cross the road. Her God-father, our family doctor, was waving at her. She never made it to the other side.

 

The tape across my mouth symbolises the silence that followed in the wake of these deaths. No-one explained anything to me. Not family, not friends, not my school, not anyone. I was left alone, a ten year old, in deafening silence as I tried to figure out things myself.

 

'Observation/reflection/enlightenment' is about coming to terms with death and then the subsequent birth of both a learning disabled son and a physically and learning disabled grandson.

 

All things pass. Eventually.

 

The photograph was taken on a Lomo, a little plastic film camera. I took it in a lift at work surrounded by reflected light.

 

'Procession for Hilary' is the only photograph in the series rendered in colour, and deliberately so. A Mexican mariachi celebration.

 

It's part in homage to Anton Corbyn's brilliant 'Atmosphere' video, part in homage to Peter Blake's sublime Parade collage work.

 

The final piece is 'Interment'. Is this the final resting place for the ashes of Hilary or just an eye on the ever unfolding universe?

 

in which death becomes her

transgressive

(trænzgrɛsɪv )

 

ADJECTIVE

 

Transgressive is used to describe actions that break a moral law or a rule of behavior.

 

[formal]

To write and publish this poem was a daring, transgressive act.

 

COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary.

 

Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers

 

What is beauty? We might find it in the face of a laughing child or in the sun-dappled landscape of a summer evening or in the cool symmetry of classical Georgian architecture. These are the warm, shimmering images which, day in day out, shape our experience and understanding of the world. They bring us comfort in uncertain times. We clutch them like amulets to ward off darkness as the predators circle outside and in.

 

But is there more to see? Transgressive art challenges us; it parses deeper meaning from the very things we consider taboo. There is purpose when it makes us feel uncomfortable.

Death is the ultimate modern taboo, sanitised and hidden from sight behind hospital screens. The end of all things we know in the seen world. We fear its arrival so we hide away, using our language as a blanket to shield us from the stark realities of its icy grip. She's passed, passed on or passed away, resting in peace, at eternal rest, asleep, departed, gone, lost, slipped away or simply given up the ghost. 

 

Worse still, sometimes we don't talk about it at all.

Whilst her ultimate demise lay some months away these photographs of my late mother explore the fear she held close throughout her troubled life. And beyond that, perhaps they suggest the possibility of peace to come. So, is it a transgression for us to gaze into her silent bedroom, to stand at the foot of her bed and sense profound beauty?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw my mother for the very last time just a few hours before her death. I was working in the north that day, accompanied on the journey by my wife. These final blurred, badly exposed shots were taken on a small plastic camera using the only reel of film I had with me, each turn of the sprocket cranking it closer and closer toward my mother's death.

By turns she was fearful, resigned, coherent, her mind chasing down distant corridors until at last she found sleep. She died during the night.

 

I visited my mother's house for the final time the day after her funeral. It had become increasingly bare over the years as she systematically hid or destroyed the painful memories.  There was no photograph of my late father. He died aged forty eight of a massive heart attack, alone in a Hertfordshire lay-by. My mother had expunged almost every trace of his existence long ago.

There was, however, one photo my mother treasured. It was of my sister, Hilary, a happy, smiling, ringlet-kissed child forever frozen in a tacky picture-frame. She died aged eight when her godfather, our family doctor, waved at her from the other side of the road. Hilary cycled out behind a bus and never made it to the other side.

 

The photo, which my mother had kept on her bedside table all these years, had disappeared. All that remained was an empty husk of a house and silence.  Endless, endless silence.