Memory Maps

English: The North Cuillin ridge from Portree.
English: The North Cuillin ridge from Portree. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is such a neat idea. I read about the concept of the memory map in our local weekly newspaper, the ‘West Highland Free Press’, last week.

West Highland Free Press logo
West Highland Free Press logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have never heard of anything like it before. I’m so taken with the idea that I wanted to share it with you and then I thought I’d give it a try – but using only words rather than words and drawing.

So what is a memory map? It’s a work of art primarily, but it can also be used to find your way around a place. Artist J Maizlish Mole recently produced one for Portree, the town where I live. To produce such a map, Mole spends time walking around a place such as a village or town. He’ll do it for hours and on several occasions. He’ll speak to locals and respond to landmarks and the landscape at a personal level. Then from memory he produces a, to scale, personally annotated map of his walks.  For example on the harbour section of the map of Portree, he has the note ‘helluva place for oil tanks’.

Portree
Portree (Photo credit: stevecadman)

Beside the main road into the town from the south he has noted at one point ‘many rabbits’. Other labels include, ‘extreme danger of sudden and violent death’ this is beside the cliffs; ‘grassy knoll’, scrubby knoll,’ huge supermarket,’ ‘graveyard spend eternity,’  ‘ghost trail’, ‘marvellous walk’, ‘scrubby clearing’, ‘boats to Raasay, Rona and round the bay’.

Skye coast
Skye coast (Photo credit: Paul Albertella)

Initially Mole had done only the map of Portree, Skye’s main town. But then Atlas Arts and Portree Area Community Trust commissioned another map – this time of the whole of Skye and its neighbouring island of Raasay. The maps will be displayed in the centre of Portree as public art – and print copies will be available from April. They will be Mole’s personal response to the experience of driving and walking round the islands. Emma Nicolson, director of Atlas Arts, was quoted in the West Highland free Press as saying that what Mole has created is a ‘love song to Skye’.

By coincidence, while I was out walking last Saturday, my mind wandered back nearly fifty years to my childhood street. As I walked I made a metal map of the area where I played, got shopping for my mum – or ‘got the messages’ as it was described in the local vernacular, and rode my bike.

Tenement in Marchmont, Edinburgh built in 1882.
Tenement in Marchmont, Edinburgh built in 1882. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I grew up in a typical Edinburgh tenement flat. There was me and my five wee sisters. It was a two bedroomed flat.  So we were outside a lot. There was no garden – but instead there was the drying green – where all the residents shared clothes drying space. Strictly speaking children weren’t allowed to play there. But of course we did. There were the ‘peever stones’ – that is a slabbed path where we played hopscotch. There was the ‘big wall’ which looked down to the ‘deep garden’ and from where, if you were brave enough to sit on top, you could see into Armstrong’s (the butcher) back shop and take in the gruesome sight of animal carcasses hanging on hooks. Then there was ‘over-the-wall’. This was a lower boundary wall that separated the drying green from the gardens at the back of the big Victorian houses in the next street. We would hop over ‘over-the-wall’ and play with the friendly – but definitely posher – private school kids.

English: Angel sculpture, Morningside Cemetery
English: Angel sculpture, Morningside Cemetery (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Out front was a busy street. Across the road was the local cemetery. Or ‘hide- and- seek land’. Its gates were directly opposite our front door and we were small enough to slip through the bars. We knew all the paths, headstones and statues and it was the perfect place for hiding. Up from the cemetery was the swing park which contained ‘the tree where John fell and broke his arm’ and the ‘swing which hit wee Lizzie on the head’. On the route from park to home was the spot where ‘the collie dog bit me as I cycled past’.

On the same side of the street as our flat were – ‘the ivy wall’, the newsagent, from where I did my paper round, Armstrong the butcher’s and the mysterious Masonic hall. Down from there was the cobbler’s – this was the ‘place I cleared my throat loudly to get the attention of the cobbler when I went to collect my dad’s shoes and he couldn’t see me over the high counter because I was so wee’. And then it was the hairdresser – where I had my first hairdo for the primary school ‘qualie’ (leavers) dance. On the corner was the bakers shop and across from that the grocer and greengrocer, the sweetshop – ‘the place whose existence means I have a mouth full of fillings’ – and ‘where the dead people go’  i.e.the undertaker.

Edinburgh City Hospital, Feb 1996
Edinburgh City Hospital, Feb 1996 (Photo credit: alljengi)

At the top of the street was the lunatic asylum – yes it was still called that in the sixties – and this was the only forbidden territory where we actually respected our parents instructions and never ventured near. And close by to there was the city’s fever hospital – which I would label on my memory map as the ‘place where my wee sister nearly died of bronchitis and where me and my granny sat outside on a bench while my parents kept vigil at the bedside’.

One day I might try to draw all that childhood street stuff out on a map. Maybe it’s something you could try and/or blog about. What would be the labels on your memory map? And where would be its location in time and space?

 

Atlas Arts exists to facilitate innovative arts projects in Skye and Lochalsh. It offers a platform for projects that are not fixed by or to a gallery.

Portree Area Community Trust aims to stimulate the economic, cultural and environmental regeneration of the Portree area in response to community-identified priorities.

I’m indebted to the report in February 1st 2013 edition of the West Highland Free Press for the information provided there that I have used in this post.

Shocking, funny and oh, so clever!

Eight Cuts Gallery Prize – Thomas Stolperer wins

As well as the Al-Aswad prize, Eight Cuts http://eightcuts.wordpress.com  also announced its Gallery Prize winner on the first of October. This award was open to EVERYTHING and in setting it up, Dan Holloway gave himself an almost impossible task when it came to deciding on the winner – as he said himself, it was like comparing apples and oranges. So do visit the site and see not just the winning entry, but also the others on the shortlist. I’ve already blogged about one of them – ‘ MUT@TUS’, the book by Joan Barbara Simon and I intend to blog about another of the shortlisters – Pereine Press –  at a later date.

But this post is about the winner – namely Thomas Stolperer’s blog http://stolperer.blogspot.com

Don’t visit the blog if you’re offended by ‘bad’ language, sexual references or are in any way up yourself.

Do visit if you want to be entertained, made to think, shocked out of complacency and don’t mind making an effort.

It’s an effort that will be awarded. Okay you might not get it at first – but like any ‘good’ art it repays revisiting and a willingness to be open and actively engaged. You may have to attune your reading brain to the long, no pausing for breath sentence (or lack of) structure – but don’t be put off.

Thomas Stolperer is an artist and a writer. His line drawings appear (deceptively) simple – almost childlike – they’re anything but. The art and the writing work together – you really couldn’t have one without the other – and boy, do they work!

The blog is shocking, clever, arch, cynical, subversive and FUNNY.

Just three examples:

The August 11th post – ‘Woman Looking in Mirror in Hotel’ –  a wry smile of self-recognition was my main reaction. We all do it – well me and her do – justify our existence, keep busy-busy and avoid thinking about the real, the shameful and the insecure, terrifying aspects of being human.

The August 23rd post – ‘Sneak Peek – Titles of Drawings of the Anthony Bourdain Finnish Project’ NOT for the prudish – but worth leaving your sensitivities to one side and retrieving them after reading.

The August 12th post – my favourite – ‘Small Slidable Plastic Tiles’. Apart from wanting one of these ‘nostalgic toy/game’ things custom-made with images of people in my own industry, this is just SO CLEVER and SO FUNNY. It’s a knowing, mocking – largely self-mocking – piece on the artist’s craving for recognition.

He’s not got the write up in Artforum that he claims to crave, but Thomas Stolperer is definitely a worthy and deserving winner of the above award.

Congratulations and Slàinte Mhath to him.

Go on take your own sneak peek…

‘The Dead Beat’ – Drums Out A Message of Life

‘The Dead Beat’ by Cody James is due to be published on November 1st 2010 by Eight Cuts Press. It is one of the first two books that the press is publishing. The other one being ‘Charcoal’ by Oli Johns – previously reviewed here.

I must admit to not liking the book at first.

Komeet Hale-Bopp; eigen foto
Image via Wikipedia

 

 It wasn’t the subject matter – Adam, the main character gives a first person recollection of his drug addicted life in San Francisco in 1997 – the year the Hale-Bopp comet appeared in our sky. He shared a house with three other addicts. Their lives are described in grim detail – shooting up, STDs, cold turkey and loveless, violent sex. All are powerful ingredients with the potential for a cracking (no pun intended) tale. I worked for many years with families whose lives were blighted by heroin, prostitution and HIV, so I wasn’t shocked by the details in the tales of the lives of drug addicts.

Neither was I shocked by the ‘bad’ language – I don’t believe in the concept – words are words – but if you overuse the ‘f’ word,  it loses its effect and it just becomes a verbal tic.

 However, I was irritated by the characters. I wanted to tell the main character to grow up and the three supporting characters seemed 2D and stereotypical. I was annoyed by the plethora of adverbs – especially the ones attached to almost every dialogue tag – the frantic signalling of emotions, the repetition, the use of upper case lettering. There was an awful lot of telling – lecturing almost – a feeling that the reader was being told some home truths.

 I didn’t think I’d be able to finish it. I put it away at the bottom of the pile.

The Dali Atomicus, photo by Philippe Halsman (...
Image via Wikipedia

But something about it nagged at me. I had the feeling I was missing something, that if I didn’t get it, it was maybe because I wasn’t trying hard enough. It reminded me of when I first saw the paintings of Salvador Dali way back in the 1970s, when I was a student. I hated them – my reaction was physical – I found them nauseating. Pictures like the one on the right really shook me up and scared me. But I was also fascinated by them and so went back to take another look and now consider them utterly incredible and beautiful. The slim little volume at the bottom of the reading heap seemed to exert a similar hold. It kept beckoning – so I went back to it.

And something strange happened when I started again. It was like I found the key – or maybe I just stopped being thick and prejudiced.

I believe Cody James knew exactly what she was doing when she bravely and brilliantly tore up the writing manual of received wisdom on what makes good literature. How else could she convey this counter-culture? How else could she draw these inarticulate, powerless individuals?

 Of course her characters are stereotypes, of course they talk in over-dramatic, hyper prose, of course they over-react and telegraph their every emotion. Of course their lives are passive, bleak and pointless. They’re JUNKIES – overgrown, overblown, self-obsessed adolescents – exhausted no-hopers – deadbeats. But Cody makes you care about them – see them in a ‘there but for the grace of fortune go I or my kids’ kind of light.

The comet doesn’t prove to be either omen or harbinger. As a symbol of change for Adam and his housemates, it’s as empty as their lives. But as a symbol of their lives it’s powerful – travelling in the dark a contradictory mix of cold and heat, of death and life.

I also realised that, as a reader, I was being 2D – blinded by the junkie label. As I saw the characters as Cody portrays them – really saw them – I began to see their humanity. Adam strives to get clean, to hold down a job, admits his sexual relationships are sick, in every sense. Xavi proves to be a character to care about, as do Sean and Lincoln – because, actually, they all care about each other.

The scene in the hospital where Adam and Lincoln are tacitly reconciled is beautifully written – the understatedness shows that Adam has changed – grown up a bit – and that the author is perfectly capable of conventional/ subtle when the occasion demands it. And if you still need reassuring that here is a remarkable writer whom a reader can trust – just look at the passage where Adam himself is hospitalised and ‘retching and wretched’ just wants to die.

And as for the ending – well if it’s gifted use of symbolism, metaphor and adverb-free writing you’re after, you’ll be well satisfied.

Image of comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp), taken on...
Image via Wikipedia

So approach with an open mind and a trusting heart – Cody James is a brave and unique writer – the book fizzes and burns as it lights up the cold dark – just like the comet – and I should have realised that from the start. 

  

  

 

‘The Dead Beat’ can be downloaded for $2.99 from http://eightcuts.wordpress.com or bought as a paperback after November 1st 2010. There are also a couple special editions left which you can pre-order from the website. Mine’s ordered.