Navel Gazing

Over the months I’ve been secretly rather gratified to see traffic on this blog go up. It’s helped to think there might be souls out there interested enough in my varied maunderings to look up Mopsus and read. When, all of a sudden, the stats underwent a colossal reduction – a 75% decline in pageviews over the night of 19th-20th May – I was surprised by how personally I took it. It was a bit like the occasion when I lost my Facebook profile. Likes and pageviews are, we tell ourselves, not an index of personal worth, but their obvious quantifiability gives us a little emotional blip which kids us into thinking it’s the real thing. It’s the existential equivalent of refined sugar, a tiny but very pleasurable sensual hit which bears little relationship to proper nutrition. 

My friend Karla works in the online industry and reckons the decline is simply due to a shift in Google’s search criteria. She told me with a sense of weariness, ‘keeping up with Google's search algorithms to ensure that content ranks well is the actual full time job of a number of my friends. The fact that this is a profession gives me existential angst if I think too hard about it, mind’. Ah, the gods of our new world. ‘It’s essentially just another branch of advertising - an industry which doesn't really do anything,’ commented Ms Formerly Aldgate, and we found ourselves boggling rather more at the woman who makes a living making up new hashtags for wedding couples to use on Twitter. Looking back through the stats, I observe that things really took off in October last year, curiously just when I began my couple of weeks' regular posting about my musical journey with PJ Harvey. The individual pages themselves didn’t receive unusual levels of activity, but that may belie the way people came across them.

Well, I could happily post about the Dorset songstress every day. A little while ago, for instance, an LA-based photographer snapped her outside a coffee shop, suggesting that she’s been staying at the apartment in the city she cutely refers to as her ‘holiday cottage’ before heading back to the UK for an engagement at Lancaster University which my friend there Dr PostGothic is unspeakably excited about, as well she might be. There you go. But you don’t want tittle-tattle like that, do you? No, you want self-doubt, angst, vestments, and damp holes in the ground. In so far as I care what anyone wants, he says unconvincingly.

Terror

A lot of churches have a memorial book of some kind. Ours at Swanvale Halt is particularly intended to help remember those whose ashes are buried in our Garden of Remembrance but there are other names in it - not many, only about thirty. This is partly because a lot of the time the book has to stay closed, and so it's not found its way into the consciousness of most people, and you've never been able to come into the church during the week and look at the names. It sits shut in its display case. 

You might wonder why, in turn, that is. It's because my predecessor decided, very generously, to have a display case made for the book precisely so it could be left open during the week without danger of defacement or theft. Unfortunately there was some mistake in the measurements and the book didn't actually fit in the case. Only in the Church of England, you might sigh, although it puts me in mind of other incidents like expensive satellites whizzing off uselessly into outer space because the programmers were measuring in centimetres and the engineers in inches. It happens.

Now we have a new Memorial Book, partly paid for by our ex-churchwarden. It looks gorgeous: it's massive and heavy and leather-bound and gold-tooled, and when open will fit snugly into the case in the north aisle of the church. But it needs the names copied into it from the old book. That's expensive. So, in a moment of weakness, I said I'd do it: I have calligraphy pens, I find it relaxing. Then we have new names added professionally.

The book has sat in the Rectory for weeks, silently reproachful. My reluctance to approach it hasn't been predominately for lack of time. Instead, the prospect of marking those dintless pages with my pens has become more terrifying the closer I approach to it. I cleaned out the pens. I drew a border line around the title page; I marked out the lettering in pencil. I waited.

And yesterday the book was marked. My heart was positively pounding. The result would, I suspect, make any proper calligrapher burst into tears. But it will answer, and now I have scant excuse for not pressing on.

Ta-Ta Tanz Macabre

It was via my friend Madame Morbidfrog on Facebook that I discovered my favourite London Goth club night, Tanz Macabre, is no more. DJ Faith, who ran it, posted:

I have spent some considerable time since the closure of Canal 125, looking for a new home for Tanz Macabre; one that meets the very specific criteria required for the night to continue on it's own unique path. I have investigated many venues but unfortunately have not been able to find one that 'ticked all of the boxes' within the set time frame. This, in combination with other lesser factors, has led me to make the decision to bring Tanz Macabre to a close. I have achieved more than I ever hoped for with the night and I think that the time is right to end on a high, without the fear or possibility of lowering standards or repetition.

Thank you to Lucia for being the 'Hostess With The Mostess', Ben for being my fellow resident Dj, Paul for being our very regular guest Dj and to all of those who came before him. I want to thank everyone who has worked with us behind the scenes or contributed to Tanz Macabre in any way and helped to make it London's longest running independent Gothic night.

Most importantly, I would like to especially thank everyone over the years who has attended, supported and joined with us for 'An Evening Of Terpsichorean Terror'! With seven venues over eleven years, it has been a combination of Ghost Train and Roller Coaster & I hope that you have enjoyed the ride. : )

I first found my way to Tanz in the middle of 2007. Once I and Dr Bones had called it a day, I decided to re-establish my links with the Goth world, mainly in order to have some social life beyond the ever-so-slightly cloying environment of the Church. After Mass at Lamford one Sunday I donned my pseudo-Victorian gear and caught the train to London. The venue was the Arts Theatre Club in Frith Street, Soho. You’d disappear down a staircase off a usually busy London street, into the Stygian depths – that was a proper Gothic experience, that was – have your hand stamped and emerge into the tiny space that somehow managed to cram in a bar, fireplace, piano (which I think I actually witnessed someone try to play once – sadly not Ms Death-and-Taxes who is actually quite an accomplished pianist) – a wee dancefloor and a couple of cushioned C-shaped seats around tables. On busy nights, moving round was something of a challenge, but it was always fun. That first night I was on my own, and knew I think nobody else there at all, and went back home relatively early too, but in that couple of hours surrounded by loud music and sable-clad revellers (and cake, it was clearly someone’s birthday) I could feel stress and unhappiness draining gradually away: to be somewhere I had no responsibilities, with nothing to do but look and listen, and disappear into the umbrageous surroundings.

Tanz was ideal for me, as it opened at 6pm and closed at 11, allowing time to catch the last train home – even when I moved further out to Swanvale Halt, it could be done if I parked the car at an intervening station. I could rush off straight after an evening service and have a good couple of hours there, and still arrive home at a time which was not entirely unreasonable: the same couldn’t be said for the Saturday evening clubs, as they tended not to get going much before midnight by which time I had to be gone.

As is often the way with such events, the Arts Theatre Club owners decided they wanted to refurbish the basement bar, and, while the Tanz organisers assured everyone that they expected their ousting was only temporary, somehow the club never went back. Instead it ended up on a boat moored off Embankment, which had a similarly quirky identity although – for me – never quite the charm of the elegant basement dive I’d got to know. I once took Cylene along and within 15 minutes we were heading back to Waterloo for a coffee as she’d turned dreadfully seasick. When Tanz moved again, it was to Canal 125 in Kings Cross. I and Ms Formerly Aldgate tried it out a couple of times, but while clambering up and down narrow staircases from one space to another offered an intriguing experience you couldn’t see who was coming and going and if you wanted to find who was about you’d have to pick up your drink and wander around. Far more importantly, Tanz not only had to shift venue but also time, to Friday night, which made it feel less special, more like a standard club night and less like the gentle come-down from the weekend the Sunday occasion had been. And of course my life shifted too, and I hadn’t been for ages. So although Faith mentions seven venues in his valediction, I can only recall three.

Running a club of any kind can be a thankless task and I was always tickled when Faith thanked me for coming even though he had very little idea who I was. Tanz – the Soho Tanz – will always be the Platonic ideal of the Goth club I will retain, gratefully, in my memory.

Difference in Perception

A reverse-charge message came to my mobile from my regular interlocutor Karly. I knew not to reply to this – the last time it cost me £4 – so I called her directly instead. ‘Father, can you call me a taxi? I’m at the church and need to get to my mum’s and haven’t got any credit on my phone’. I called the taxi company she suggested. ‘It’s not for me, but for a lady called Karly Talbot’, I said. ‘Ah, this is the same person we tried to pick up half an hour ago,’ said the man on the other end of the line. ‘She was supposed to be going to no.6 Larkspur Road. My driver waited around for ten minutes but couldn’t find her. I can send someone else, but she’ll have to pay for the first callout as well as the second.’ I related this information. ‘But I haven’t called a taxi today!’ Karly protested. It is not my habit to probe into people’s stories – I’ve learned it’s pointless – but just out of curiosity I couldn’t resist asking, ‘So how did the man at the taxi firm recognise your name straight away, and know where you wanted to go?’ ‘I don’t know. That’s scary!’ she answered. It’s not just scary, I thought, it’s bloody miraculous. There may be complex and involved explanations involving unknown third parties, but I didn’t have the energy to get into them. Of course I ended up taking her to her mum’s. 

The Crossroads of All Things

I say mass in a little side chapel of the church; there's about a dozen of us. I'm facing away from them, facing the cross. I pick up the paten and the chalice as usual. 'This is my body ... This is my blood'. But it's more than that. This is mangled and broken flesh, scattered blood among fragments of glass. It's all the blood shed from the first murder onwards, in one little silver cup. And I can hear sounds in my ears that almost drown out my own voice, even though I know the words better than I know anything else I ever say.

Jesus said the blood of all the murdered ‘from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary’ would come upon his generation. He meant that moment was the crux of all human history. As he was the one through whom all was created, so when he was nailed and killed it was the nailing and killing of all creation, and whenever his brothers and sisters suffered, or would ever suffer, so would he. ‘What you did to the least of these, you did also to me’.

And that means that every time I lift the chalice I lift all the pain of the world, past and future. Through him, I’m linked to all of it. I was warned about that, years ago, but I don’t always feel it. Which is just as well.

The View of the Young

Gatherings of Swanvale Halt Messy Church vary hugely from one occasion to the next. In March we had the highest numbers we'd drawn for two years and more; this month, we had the lowest attendance for two years, and the difference isn't marginal in absolute number terms. I wonder where everyone was.

It gave me a chance to speak to Megan, who is 13 and one of the very few young people who orbits around the church community. She was helping out on one of the craft tables, making spangly sequinned angels. Megan has been coming to the church with her family since she was small and naturally is questioning things a bit more as she gets older. She's taken communion a couple of times at Christmas and Easter, despite not being confirmed, so technically we ought to 'admit her to holy communion' which as far as I'm concerned just requires a conversation to make sure the communicant knows what it's about. 'I'm not sure I believe in God,' Megan said. 'I think there was a person called Jesus, but I look at things very logically and I'm not sure how all the rest of it fits'. Jesus is a start, I said.

I've tried to treat the handful of teens and near-teens we have at the church as a group, but the trouble is that they aren't. They go to different schools, they have a variety of different experiences, and there aren't enough of them seeing each other often enough to develop any sense of common identity. Even when they retain any sort of definite faith, the pull of bigger churches where they might find more young people like them is inexorable. It's hard for me to think my way into their situation, because when I was their age I couldn't abide other teenagers and sat in my room reading books.

Megan and I got on to gender stereotyping. She had two templates for her angels, one clearly supposed to be male and one female, with longer hair and a schematic skirt. Most of the children seemed to think angels are girls. The male figure doesn't appear to have any hair at all. 'They take the view that if you're bald you're male,' Megan told me. 'I asked, What if I lost my hair? and they said, You'd be a man.'

Folk Wisdom

Candlestub Clem sat on a chair in church next to the candle stand where he’d just lit a light for his poorly sister. ‘You know me, Father, you know I’m an alcoholic and all that, and yeah, I never went to university, but I lived in Cambridge for twenty years, and you spend all that time somewhere like that, and stuff has to rub off on you a bit, hasn’t it? If you keep your eyes and ears open. My gran used to say to me, take the cotton wool out of your ears and put it in your gob, and you might learn something. I talk to people about apartheid and stuff, and they don’t know who Steve Biko was. How can you not know about Steve Biko? I could tell you his cell number. People just don’t know, they don’t pay attention. It’s a crazy world we live in, it really is.’