Jesse Hilson is a writer and artist living in the Catskills in New York State. His work has been published in venues like Hobart, X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Apocalypse Confidential, Expat Press, and others. He has published two novels, Blood Trip and The Tattletales; a short story collection, The Calendar Factory; and a poetry collection, Handcuffing the Venus De Milo. He can be found on Instagram at @platelet60 and he runs a free Substack newsletter called Chlorophyll & Hemoglobin.
John Waters by Nicolas Russell, Austin, Texas, January 1976.
For so many of us malcontents, the riotous 1981 book Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste by cult filmmaker extraordinaire John Waters represents a sacred text. (I would have first bought it in the late 1980s as a university student, and it’s been a profound cultural touchstone ever since). In the chapter entitled “Sort-of-famous” the peoples’ pervert writes “I know you’re supposed to name-drop in these kinds of books, so here goes: People I Always Wanted to Meet, Did, and Wasn’t Disappointed …” and proceeds to list the likes of Andy Warhol, David Lynch, William S Burroughs and Douglas Sirk. But most tantalizingly for me, he recalls encountering …
“… Nico, my favourite singer, who was so out of it when I met her that she asked, “Have I ever been here before?” (I had to tell her I really had no idea).”
I yearned to know more about this historic meeting between cinema’s Sleaze King and the heroin-ravaged Marlene Dietrich of punk. Flash-forward to December 2010: I interviewed Waters for the sadly long-defunct art and culture magazine Nude in December 2010 when he was in London promoting his book Role Models, so I finally had the opportunity to get him to elaborate on his encounter with Nico.
So here it is: when John Waters Met Nico…
Graham Russell: Tell me about the time you met Nico.
John Waters: Nico … I met her when she played in Baltimore. Well, (before that) I saw her play with The Velvet Underground at The Dom on St Marks Place (in New York) with The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I have the poster still. But I met her much later when she had her solo career, which I loved. She was a total heroin addict. Did you ever read that book The End? (The 1992 book is a jaundiced and not exactly objective account by her former keyboardist James Young). It’s so hilarious. It was that – although it wasn’t that, that was later when she was touring England. She played at this disco, and I went. And people went, but not a lot, it wasn’t full. And she was heavy and dressed all in black with reddish dark hair, and she did her (he makes guttural moaning noise). Afterwards I said, “It’s nice to meet you, I wish you’d play at my funeral”, and she said (mimics doom-laden Germanic voice), “When are you going to die?” I told her, “You should have played at The Peoples Temple; you would’ve been great when everyone was killing themselves!” Then she said, “Where can I get some heroin?” I said, “I don’t know.” I don’t take heroin, so I don’t know. But even if I did, I wasn’t copping for Nico!
“But that was basically it. But I’ll always remember her, and I love Nico. I remember when she died, when she fell off the bicycle (in 1988). Every summer my friend Dennis and I, we play Nico music on the day she died (18 July). I saw that documentary Nico-Icon (Susanne Ofteringer, 1995), which was great. It’s a shame: she was mad about being pretty! She was sick of being pretty, being a model. And I remember her when she was in La Dolce Vita (1960), even before. Nico … great singer; and even The Velvet Underground hated having her. And her music can really get on your nerves. You have to be in the mood. Sometimes it gets on my nerves. You have to be in the mood to listen to it. To put on a whole day of Nico can be … my favourite song of Nico ever, and I only have it on a tape that someone made, it’s a bootleg. Did you ever hear her sing “New York, New York”? It’s great! I wish she’d done a whole album of show tunes! Like “Hello Dolly” or “The Sound of Music”! (Mimics Nico singing “Hello Dolly”).
Like the Shangri-Las song, Graham Russell is good-bad, but not evil. He’s a trash culture obsessive, occasional DJ (Cockabilly – London’s first and to date, only gay rockabilly night), and promoter of the Lobotomy Room film club (devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People) at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston. As a sporadic freelance journalist, over the years he’s contributed to everything from punk zines (MAXIMUMROCKNROLL, Flipside, Razorcake) to The Guardian and Interview magazine and interviewed the likes of John Waters, Marianne Faithfull, Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins and Jayne County.
A young Nico in Berlin, photographed by Herbert Tobias.
Nico Restored
I. Because Nico could not foresee the danger ahead. She was not careful, she was a child. Above her Hell’s Sun moved blackly—How far away? Shall I touch it?– Like some shiny wet ink spot, or a stuck wet leaf.
II. Before her journey back Nico slept and slept and dreams: back then it was all right. Back then it was a wall of black crickets and her baby sitter’s ventriloquil voice. As she slept It watched over her, and loved her in Its brief, iron-lung heart. It did not want to let her go, but knew, but knew. It did not think of itself as lost, it did not think of itself at all. It just was. It just wanted.
III. Nico did not think of herself as lost she did not think of herself at all. She just was. She just wanted. Christa wanted. It has changed, she thinks. Nico’s Nico. Come for Nico. She just wanted the image of her lost face. Herself. For a moment Nico could not imagine Nico, nor recall the green of green, the hum of wires, the flash of fires, the sound of sound had come apart
IV. It has changed. She was nowhere. Her heart. Inside her. Christa wanted gravity. The thing that was not flat watched her from behind a red cliff. When she laid her white hand across her red heart Its mouth opened. Her ears could not catch her own dripping sound. She said her name to hear it, the sound When It moved Its knotted head It pushed Itself out of gravity.
V. Nico says: When I stand on the roof of the opera it’s amazing I don’t fly off. Nico sits atop a red cliff, atop an expanse of red sand. As red as far as the eye can see. She is red, too, from the sand, mixing with her sweat. She takes off her sweater, and tosses it aside. She takes off her shoes, and lies back. She touches her body. It has changed. Her body is red. Afterwards she leans forward to shake her hair until grains of sand fall out like thunder.
VI. Nico marvels that although she has not eaten she is not hungry. It has fed her food while she slept, careful to remove each and every crumb from her face with tweezers. It has spent an eternity using its tweezers to move mountains, grain by grain. It does not want Nico to escape, but It does not know how to stop her. The thing it does best is observe. It does not know how to stop things. Back then it was all right.
VII. Back then, Nico, thinks, it was all right. It finally comes for Nico while she sleeps, curled in the sand. It cleans her face, grain by grain, not even touching her skin. It spread its wings over her to measure her size. It considers its sack full of potions. It worries she is dead and leans close in to her face. It loves her so gently. Take me back to back then.
VIII. The marble index of a mind forever. Christa wanted. To free her mind, because it was caught. I wouldn’t want a different variety, thinks Nico.
Nico thinks in shapes more and more. Round and Square. Truth or Dare
are not shapes.
Not sound. Not gravity. The Absolute Zero.
Nico’s mind is a shape that comes to free her mind, because it was caught with Its claws and retraces her footprints she just wanted to free her mind, because it was caught with Its claws retraces her footprints squares and triangles, circles and cones.
Her own shape, the pattern of sunlight just wanted to free her mind, because it was caught with Its red mountain claws and triangular imagination, circles and cones.
Fright and dread, fear and bones, Wehrmacht dreams. Her own but a King.
Come for Nico. But a King. Come for Nico.
Her very own body in the night, beneath the Ibiza sheets, the shape her hands make. The real Nico, more real than real, her old self
a Sleeping Beauty for some fierce Prince but It is not a Prince. Shape, the pattern of moonlight upon more and more, the hospital floor.
Her very own body in the night beneath the light, the shape the world makes.
The real Nico, more Nico than Nico, her old self a Sleeping Beauty for some fierce Prince.
But It is not a Prince. Come for Nico, no fangy King beneath the sheets the shape her hands make.
The real Nico, more real than real, her old self a Sleeping Beauty for some fierce Prince.
She just wanted to free her mind to be the hunting thing with claws of shade. Where It went, Nico wonders, and retraces her footprints. Sleeping and murder. Squares and triangles.
Fright and dread, fear and bones. Her own melodic shape, the pattern of moonlight upon the institutional floor. Her very own body in the night beneath the white cold sheets, the red triangulated claws of Greek thought.
The real Nico, more real than real, her old self but this thing–this It–is not a Prince. Rather a King. Come for Nico.
Sleeping Beauty for some fierce Prince. But this thing—this It—is not a Prince rather a Devil. come for Nico.
She just wanted to free her mind, because it was a trick and retraces her footprints squares and triangles, circles and cones. She just was. She just wanted. Christa wanted.
Her own shape, the pattern of moonlight upon the hospital floor. Her very own Nico in the night, beneath the sheets she just wanted to free her mind, because It was caught with Its Trick and retraces her footprints, Squares and Triangles circles and cones fright and dread fear and bones. Her own shape Red-sanded body and mountain side her cold linoleum floor. Her very own body in the night come for Nico.
IX Back then it was all right. Take me back.
Come for Nico.
Nicholas Rombes is author of the novels The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing (Two Dollar Radio), The Rachel Condition (CLASH Books), and Lisa 2, v 2.0 (Calamari Archives). He co-edits TIMECODES (Bloomsbury), a film book series dedicated to slow criticism and is author of 10/40/70 (Zer0 Books). He’s an English prof. in Detroit, Michigan.
My name is Nico. It has always been Nico. It felt like a good name when I tried it on. My mother named me after a singer most people my age don’t even know. On most days it sounds like a boy’s name, though on some days, usually a Sunday morning, it sounds like a girl’s name, but I’m definitely not a girl. My name sounding like a girl’s name doesn’t bother me anymore. It used to, like when I was a kid, hey faggot, how come you got a girl’s name, but not anymore. There aren’t very many Nicos, maybe a barber once in one of those ghetto barbershops where everyone is tripping over themselves to look cool, a skin fade kid with a Wahl in one hand and a girl’s digits in the other, grey sweatpants and black Vans and a drooping eyelid that’s somehow endearing, I’m stealing glances of him while in the chair waiting for the next call, hoping he’s the one, the double quicksilver echoing my reflection in a thousand shop windows, I’ll be your mirror, and when you have an unusual name like mine you always pay attention to others you share it with, like when you notice all the cars just like your car, my mother’s favorite song, Sunday morning, a song father approved of, when my days were laid out for me, my life simple because everything was preplanned, I didn’t have to think of what to wear, what to say, deciding if I was a boy or a girl, the fate of the nation trapped in the web of my lattice fingers. I pull on my threadbare brown corduroy pants and a green cardigan mother found at Goodwill for 12.99, so today I will be a boy.
James Nulick is the author of several highly acclaimed novels including Plastic Soul, The Moon Down to Earth, and Valencia. He is working on a new novel.
Misha Honcharenko is a Ukrainian writer based in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Their debut novel, Trap Unfolds Me Greedily, was published by Sissy Anarchy in 2024, following their first poetry collection, Skin of Nocturnal Apple (Pilot Press, 2023). Their work has been featured in Vogue Ukraine, Erotic Review, i-D, AnOther, Tank, Worms, Manchester Review, and minor literature[s].
Still from the film Athanor (1972) by Philippe Garrel
In the dark room at night, the walls enameled black, so dawn arrives as a violation, she smokes. She smokes without conviction, almost without need, but then deeply as if to prove something to herself. Flicks the butt into the grate of the ruined fireplace, heaped with little cartons, each cigarette emptied and smoked, each added to a mountain. A plate of ashes. She makes sure, twice, that her cigarette is extinguished before she does this. Philippe scolded her. Ari found one smoldering and rubbed it out on the floor. How could Philippe be angry? When they moved from the Montparnasse Hotel into this apartment, he gutted the place, tore out the twentieth century and some of the nineteenth too. Gone: gas, electricity, hot water, heater, lighting, furniture, carpets. A penitentiary but there are no locks.
She yearns to go back to New York though nothing good comes to or from there. The not-good is familiar. She needs that now with her mother dead. Can still smell the air’s heavy scent in the room where she knelt before the empty bed and cried. She hadn’t wanted it to be like that and knew her aunt Helma blamed her for not visiting the last two years of her mother’s life. It had always been hard, then became impossible. The immobility she feels now, lying in bed undead, waiting for light to come in the room and peepshow the mess. Philippe shifts beside her, groans. They are covered by his overcoat which doubles as mattress and bedding, sleeping partly on it, partly on the floor, the faint smell of piss. Ari makes sounds across the room, asleep or awake, she can’t tell. She’s never alone lately but never accompanied either. Everything has fallen to repetition. They score, they get high, they have no money, no need for food after they’ve fed, only to make certain the boy eats, he must eat. Then they go to museums or wander the docks, up and down the same streets of Paris. Was it last week or the one before—prior has no hold here, all is prior but there is no history, only the past—that she saw someone, a London person from New York, who startled at her appearance and said what did you do to your hair. The blonde dyed crimson, bluntly cut. You like it, she responded, nearly leering, surfacing from the not-slumber, suddenly awake on the street in the face of that collaged ghoul made of the spare parts, all mean, all pushing, all saying her songs weren’t good, she needs a manager, she needs to be blonde again, she needs better clothes, not these ugly robes and caftans Philippe sewed himself for the film. The film! They hate it, just the idea of it. A woman and a man and a child in the desert, shot across three—Sinai, Death Valley, and Iceland. All blend together to her. She knew they weren’t one. Each had its own qualities and peculiarities, but like people, places were mostly the same. You met one or two and you’d met all of them. The man on the street, upset or disappointed by her appearance, had scurried off, back to his little life, perhaps some lunch in a café. The thought made her feel ill.
She would get back to New York and show them, she would book some gigs. She practices the harmonium every day now and she has new songs. The best she’s done, she’s sure, or thinks she’s sure, but can already see the faces of Danny and Paul and others who will tell her what is wrong with them, not knowing they are about her mother, Jim, the deserts, Brian’s death. Misadventure by accidental drowning, the coroner’s report stated. She knows no accidents and no misadventures. Dark spirits, yes. A man goes for a swim and never surfaces as himself again. A woman in a bar, her face cut, a fury and a glass thrown and stitches. The voices of New York, seeing Lou in a rehearsal space, having to flee, first to New Jersey, then the country. Shows canceled. Back to this room. Can she ever escape this room. Will she look over and find Ari is now a man and Philippe is dead or nearly, and they will still get up and find dope and not eat and wander the streets and walk the docks and pretend to see new things, pretend they are attuned to things other people don’t register. And the people don’t but they do see two junkies and a child and worry for the child and maybe they will do something about it or call someone to do something about it. Maybe they will make a problem, make her become a problem. Then what, when someone appears to ask about the child and she doesn’t even have blonde charm now, or good skin. Cheekbones still but hollow not haughty. This is why Ari must be a man. It is better for twenty years to pass this morning, the hour before dawn or is it. The black night and room seem to have changed a bit, added a bit. Not the usual things she sees on these mornings. Not the nights Philippe taught her to liquefy and use the needle, not broth and Coca-Colas in the palace, not the circle of fire in the desert and the boy unable to cross it to his father, not all the words she wrote only moments before she spoke them to the camera, the way time slid in and out of view in those long shots, hours stretching, and one day no longer waiting for Philippe to yell cut, just riding, swaying slightly on the horse’s back, the sound dropped out, and the sky grown dark but never like the room or the nights here. A vast star-punched ongoingness. Her mother’s bed in the sand, Ari the boy hungry always hungry, Pierre Clémenti naked and ranting lines, a pleasant body, good cock, eyes like Brian’s, Jim passing in his car not recognizing her, a box of books beside him, then the news of his death later that night, the long line, the drone she had found she could follow and it would vary, it would create the sound she craved, defeat. No one else heard it. They heard failure. Defeat is not failure. It isn’t surrender. There is no grace or wisdom or beauty in it. Defeat holds itself. A friend at last. She wants another cigarette. She can make out the outline of the pack. Dawn but not yet light. One more cigarette before the day again.
Nate Lippens is the author of My Dead Book, Ripcord, and two forthcoming novels, Box Office Poison, co-written with Matthew Kinlin, and Bastards.
The Closet (1966) was Nico’s first film with cadaverous Pop Art visionary Andy Warhol and thus represents her cinematic unveiling as a Warhol Superstar. It would be a fruitful relationship. As the Factory’s inscrutable Garbo / Dietrich equivalent she would star in several more Warhol films (most famously Chelsea Girls (1966)) while also featuring as chanteuse for Warhol’s proto-punk “house band” The Velvet Underground.
The Closet’s “plot” is absurdist and minimal: a couple living in a closet kill the time (they make small talk, split a sandwich, share a cigarette, kvetch about their cramped surroundings) and contemplate leaving but never do.
For the first few moments the camera is focused on the exterior of the shut closet door in grainy black and white as we hear only their voices (audible but muffled; in fact the sound remains muffled for the rest of the film, poor sound quality being a stylistic trademark of Warhol’s films at the time). Creeping horror that the entire 66-minute film will stay like this is averted when the door belatedly does open and we are finally permitted to see Nico and leading man Randy Bourscheidt (a cute, preppy art student-type) seated inside the closet surrounded by hangers, ties, clothes, etc. While the couple talk or sit in silence, Warhol’s camera either sits totally stationary or prowls restlessly and randomly.
The film is unscripted: instead, we get an improvised, wandering conversation between the duo who have obviously been instructed to ad-lib for the 66-minute duration. Most Warhol Superstars were amphetamine-fuelled, garrulous motormouths and exhibitionists; Nico and Bourscheidt are atypically more reticent. Both seem shy and hesitant, and their conversation is often stilted but characterized by a genuine sweetness on both parts. Some viewers have deciphered the hint of a physical attraction between them which is complicated by the pretty, long-lashed and collegiate-looking Bourscheidt’s apparent homosexuality (The expression “coming out of the closet” was already in use in the 1960s and could be a relevant coded meaning to the film’s title).
Certainly Bourscheidt seems dazzled by Nico, which is understandable: The Closet presents her at the height of her flaxen-haired beauty. It also reveals the complexity of her persona. The performers in Warhol films are essentially playing themselves, so The Closet is a snapshot of Nico the woman at this particular point in her life rather than an actress performing a role. She looks like a statuesque Nordic Amazon but is wispily spoken, reserved and uncertain rather than intimidating or forbidding — her sweetness dispels the cliché of Nico as ice maiden. And her voice – routinely described as guttural or “Germanic” – is infinitely softer than you expect.
As an avant-garde filmmaker Warhol withholds most of the conventional pleasures audiences expect from films (narrative, character development, editing, technical proficiency , etc) but with his Superstars in lead roles he does provide one of the enduring attractions of film-watching: scrutinizing beautiful people. So, while “nothing happens” in The Closet, we do get to appreciate the physical attractiveness and hip wardrobes of both Nico and Bourscheidt at great length. Nico wears what was then her signature look: an androgynous white pantsuit, turtleneck sweater and boots combo that would be the pride of any Mod boy, feminized by a curtain of long blonde hair.
Nico would have been in her late twenties by the time of The Closet, and Bourscheidt (at a guess) between 19 and 21. She speaks to him in tones that shuttle between maternal concern and big sister-ly teasing. Both seem vaguely embarrassed and self-conscious on screen, but unlike Bourscheidt Nico possesses the poised armour of sophistication: by 1965 she travelled the world as an in-demand fashion model, spoke several languages, acted in films like La Dolce Vita (1959) and Strip-Tease (1963) in Europe, was the mother of a young son, and had started her singing career.
In addition to this hauteur, Nico utilizes her experience as a seasoned model: she is clearly un-phased by the camera’s roaming gaze and is skilled at graceful self-presentation. She has a neat trick of looking down moodily so that her long blonde bangs obscure most of her face and then suddenly looking up and tilting her head, dramatically revealing sculpted cheekbones, Bardot lips and sweeping false eyelashes.
“Are you afraid of me?” Nico suddenly asks Bourscheidt towards the end of their awkward filmic encounter. He looks startled and doesn’t know how to reply. “I’m not trying to embarrass you!” she assures.
At the film’s conclusion Bourscheidt teasingly asks Nico if she’s forgotten his name. Indeed, she has, and tries to cover by asking him, “Is it Romeo?” He says no and she answers, “Why not?” He asks if she wants him to be Romeo and should he get down on one knee. She replies, “Oh, no. You be Juliet and I’ll be Romeo.”
Like the Shangri-Las song, Graham Russell is good-bad, but not evil. He’s a trash culture obsessive, occasional DJ (Cockabilly – London’s first and to date, only gay rockabilly night), and promoter of the Lobotomy Room film club (devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People) at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston. As a sporadic freelance journalist, over the years he’s contributed to everything from punk zines (MAXIMUMROCKNROLL, Flipside, Razorcake) to The Guardian and Interview magazine and interviewed the likes of John Waters, Marianne Faithfull, Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins and Jayne County.
Burning House Press are excited to welcome Matthew Kinlin as the fifth BHP guest editor of our return series of special editions! As of today Matt will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the month of December.
Submissions are open from today 1st December – and will remain open until 21st DECEMBER.
Matt’s theme for the month is as follows
My Heart Is Empty: Responses to The Life and Work of Nico
Matthew Kinlin lives and writes in Glasgow. His published workst include Teenage Hallucination (Orbis Tertius Press, 2021); Curse Red, Curse Blue, Curse Green (Sweat Drenched Press, 2021); The Glass Abattoir (D.F.L. Lit, 2023); Songs of Xanthina (Broken Sleep Books, 2023); Psycho Viridian (Broken Sleep Books, 2024) and So Tender a Killer (Filthy Loot, 2025). Instagram: @obscene_mirror.
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Submission Guidelines
All submissions should be sent as attachments to guesteditorbhp@gmail.com
Please state the theme and form of your submission in the subject of the email. For example: NICO/POETRY
Poetry and Fiction
For poetry submissions, submit no more than three of your best poems. Short stories should be limited to 1,500 words or (preferably) less. We encourage flash fiction submissions, no more than three at a time. Send these in as a .doc or .docx file, along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.
Art Submit hi-res images of your works (drawings, paintings, illustrations, collages, photography, etc) with descriptions of the work (Title, Year, Medium, etc) in the body of the email. Files should be in .JPEG unless they are GIFs or videos, and should not exceed 2MB in size for each work. File names should correspond with the work titles. Video submissions can be uploaded onto Youtube or Vimeo for feature on our website. Send these submissions along with a short third-person bio, and (optional) photograph of yourself.
Virtual Reality/ 3D Artworks
For VR Submissions, please submit no more than three (3) individual artworks. For Tilt Brush works, please upload your artwork to Google Poly (https://poly.google.com/), and mark it as ‘public’ (‘remixable’ is at your own preference). A VR/3D artwork can also be submitted as a video export navigating through the artwork. If you prefer this method, please upload your finished video file to YouTube or Vimeo and provide a URL. With either format, please provide a 150 word artist’s statement.
Non-fiction Non-fiction submissions (essays, reviews, commentary, interviews, etc) should be no more than 1, 500 words and sent as a .doc or .docx file along with your third-person bio/and optional photograph.
Submissions are open until 21st December – and will reopen again on 1st January 2026/for new theme/new editor/s.
BHP online is now in the capable hands of the amazing Matthew Kinlin – friends, arsonistas, send our December 2025 guest editor your magic!
Driving from Edinburgh to Cairnryan, still in a state of dulled lucidity, unable to fully grasp the enormity of the journey. Once boarded, sounds, smells and motion wake me. I notice the dissipating sleep inertia while cruising. I observe how coastlines move along the ferry. Waves delineate the present, allude to the past and possibly a future. In my mind, I draw the shores with cliffs and hills, inlets and rivers flowing. Sketch the clouds too.
Some ancestors endeavoured the same voyage. Probably many times. Perilous on occasion. From Argyle to Antrim. Settling. My family’s history, a fragmented genealogy, has recently become more important to me. I’ve managed to connect dots, milestones and major events.
Forefathers joined rebellions and fought for hope. Romantically perhaps, I wish valorous and chivalrous men engaged in battles to protect the vulnerable and those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. But I know these forefathers — particularly the first ones who crossed from Normandy to lead the charge at Hastings — were mercenaries. Medieval warriors for coin who later became part of more rewarding and legitimate causes. Fights for freedom. Something I like to mention with pride.
Thinking of those many descendants and generations through centuries of being and remaining unsettled. Stories to make sense of my own existence.
The crossing is smooth. Too short for elaborate meanderings. As I never used this ferry crossing before, ruminating through history appeals, is pertinent. Locations as markers of my mariner heritage: Loch Ryan, Carrickfergus and Whiteabbey. An ancient maritime route. Connecting Scotland and Ireland, trading and exchanging stories, for centuries.
Docking in Belfast comes as an interruption. Like the ancestors, who feel so discernible now, this is a brief stay. Layover, a pause. I walk and my antecedents walk with me. Unsteady and slow, vague and opaque. But they are there. Here.
. . .
Reaching Ireland feels like an achievement, culmination of many attempts and struggles. There’s a sense of accomplishment. Finality or not. So…I tell myself this won’t be the last time. Self-reassurance feels like cheating life. And death. Perhaps I have always been a cheat, an imposter — a syndrome that has plagued me since early teens.
I see opportunity for new experiences, even repeats, as a welcome sign, a bonus, a rewarding gift for my own persistence and perseverance. An inherited determination that has possibly prolonged my life, or slightly plateaued the progression of symptoms and appears to have altered the course of expectations, both from the clinicians perspective and our (family and me) own.
“Life expectancy is six to nine years for most. Some get twelve.” It says so on the website, in the leaflets. Nine years in, I sincerely believe I have more than three years left in me. A calculation I have never expressed, never shared. An aspirational awareness.
When the new neurologist affirms the diagnosis — Corticobasal Degenerative Syndrome — he immediately adds ‘atypical’ with a gentle smile, referring to an uncharacteristically slower decline than expected. I return his smile. As if we bond in a complicity to deceive the expected. Gratitude, an element of self deprecation and a desire to cheat the norm. He tells me there’s no certitude, no predictability or any clinical factors to provide a reliable prognosis. But he knows the numbers as well as I do. He too, understands time. And he knows it’s irreversible and incurable, degenerative. Curtains are closing, slowly yet very surely. He knows, he alludes to it and he gives me another, now even more compassionate smile. I like his manner, his tone and expressions, his clarity, his twinkle. A shimmer like tiny stars on dark curtains.
Some use the word gift, as if a benevolent creature rewards me. I accept it all: my condition, the illness, the lack of clarity and certainty of prognosis, the inability to obtain assurance. There’s defiance and acceptance. I resist limitations while embracing an increasingly disabled life.
I no longer drive myself. I miss it. The car, the independence, possibilities and destinations. Actually, I no longer have the ability to do much myself. Beyond some thinking. And even that is difficult. For more than three quarters of the hours of the day, I struggle with everything. 75 per cent of the time I exist in near to full obscurity. I live in the vicinity of perpetual fog, my life floating around mist banks. Fog formations over bodies of water with me on a boat without mast or sail, no oars nor anchors. To me this mist, the fog, appears monochrome, as rudimentary woven linen and lace. Écru. Raw and untreated. Weirdly tangible. Veils, retaining some elegance and delicacy, rather than heavy ruby theatrical curtains. They open a few hours each day when I feel freed, am allowed to wonder and be lucid.
Definitely happy. Really happy. Childishly happy.
Despite that, some hours later, I am always ushered back to my veiled sense. An uncertain existence, where all true consciousness evaporates, just leaving some cloud-like space I fill with unknown. Unknowns. Plural.
Repetitive oscillatory motions, erratic pendulum patterns. Yet, I am truly happy.
Embarking on this road trip, I emphatically exclaimed it — “I am the happiest I have ever been.” — unsure if anyone would believe me. And maybe it did sound unreal, not credible, callous even. Surely, key events in my life Have rendered me happier. No! Maybe this is a different connotation of happiness, or as I see it, another realm, a new dimension.
An end-of-life prolepsis, ahead of time. An early fictionalised version, or view, with sea horizon clarity on a bright day. Translucent and floating above aquamarine, turquoise, cyan and seafoam. Tangible glee, near-delirious high spirits I can hold in my hand as tanzanite, reminding me of trichroic properties. Appearances of sea blues, sunset violet, with lavender tones, hints of tangerine, blood orange and burgundy.
It is not contentment, not merely gratification, neither fulfilment nor a feeling of comfort. It is an elevated joy, elation and the discovery of tingling delight. Even a somewhat tantalising notion of new found jouissance, discovery of late life ecstasy. Rather apt, timely. My own renaissance.
As physical excruciating pain has a hold over me, like a threatening hang-man standing on a scaffold not too far away, smiling. Agony always is an ugly face.
When I mention joy and happiness, others often find it impossible to imagine. Maybe because of my facial expression, at times anguished, when muscles jerk and spasm and my entire body is assaulted by torrents of aches.
Or maybe because of the finality. What appears contradictory makes it even more special for me.
The north to south drive crisscrossing counties and sceneries is not so much a reminder of previous returns home, but a refreshing perspective of an amazing varied tapestry of places and meanings. New, old, new, old. Non-linear meaning, circular mapping, a cartographer’s wild dance and rites of spring. Around a fire with flames reaching up as if to colour the night sky yellow to amber. Past autumn, in a brightness of winter. Anticipation of renewal.
Closer to home, it is more recognisable.
Memory-lane is flanked by old copper beach trees whose drooping branches appear to prepare for weeping. Nature’s anticipation of sadness and a reminder of cycles. Limbs surrender. This is not my dolorous time. Not yet. Desolation emerges in shapes from crystalline and fluid to sharply outlined and clear. Coloured or black. Sorrow hangs on branches as a substitute for once vibrant leaves. They all fell and are heaped along the path to form floating ephemeral dams and ditches, they’re soft-walling the roadside but it’ll only take the lightest breeze to displace them. I like the lightheartedness of that thought. Any glumness I might have carried on my shoulders floats away. Anticipatory melancholy instead of deepest darkest grief, is what I note about this lane.
Sweetest melancholy. Pensive and pending in this moment. Slow yet still rhythmic. Poetic and impressionistic vibrant.
While I look at the sky, we’re driving slowly towards the river, swollen as if the banks are no longer able to contain the landscape, flooding the cartographers precision with new impressions. I settle for seeing clouds simply move. Different boundaries. New horizons. Not for me. Or not for long for me. Again, I wonder if cloudscapes, seascapes and landscapes, those I happily contoured or traveled through for decades, are as inviting to generations following the imprints. In sand or dust or ash.
This visit is about letting go. Like clouds. Or feathers of smoke from the wood and peat fire that invites me to sit down. Perhaps have a drink. Smile. Or not. Yes, smile.
Smile…
. . .
In 2013, Bo Mandeville moved from Ireland to North Wales to run the National Writers’ Centre. After less than two years in the post, he had to retire due to a neurodegenerative disorder. Over the years, his multidisciplinary practice has taken him from Ireland and Belgium to France, Netherlands, Germany and the United States. His work spans cultural anthropology, film-making, writing and creating (mainly) anonymous, ephemeral land art. He set up and directed several multidisciplinary arts projects and festivals, curated film events and was a board member of an EU Film Festival organisation. Bo has scripted several film projects, produced and co-directed documentary films and gave talks about film at events and colleges.
Memorial to Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte. All photos by Marcel Krueger.
The border is the maddest line on the map, the most fluid, unnatural and dangerous. Tomasz Różycki, from Trial by Fire
On the 3rd of November, 1730, Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte, then 26 years of age, was led from his arrest cell on the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin and, under guard and by carriage, transported to the fortress of Küstrin and his death.
Katte had been an intimate friend of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick, who had been constantly abused by his father Frederick William I. In August 1730, the prince planned to desert the court and go to England. He wrote to Katte informing him of his intent to abscond and that Katte was to join him in The Hague. But in his haste the prince did not add Berlin to the address, and a diligent Prussian postmaster delivered the letter to another Lieutenant Katte who in turn reported its contents to the king.
The response of the father was to beat his son up, so badly that a member of the court had to step in to prevent the king from killing the prince. Frederick was then sent to the fortress of Küstrin under arrest, and the king ordered Katte’s unit to court martial the lieutenant. They did and sentenced him to life. The king was not happy, and asked the court to come together as: “They should administer justice and not gloss over it. The court martial should reconvene and rule differently.” They nevertheless upheld their sentence, and in the end it was the king alone who sent Katte to his death.
I am 295 years late to his execution. My journey from Berlin does not take me to death, yet, but as so often when travelling in Germany, to calamity and ruin. Leaving from Berlin-Lichtenberg, once one of the main stations of the GDR, in the early morning, I take a small regional train past the brown and green fields and forests of Brandenburg into the floodplain of the Oder, the Oderbruch. Autumn frost lingers on the forest paths and in the shadows of the railway embankment. This must be among my favourite things in the world: travelling by train on a glorious autumn morning, to look at the ruins of the past. My journey to the death of Katte is, after all, not only a Prussian pilgrimage but also one across the layers of the recent history of Europe and its leftovers.
The line I’m travelling on, now a branch line connecting the smaller towns and villages of Brandenburg with the capital, was once part of the Prussian Ostbahn, the eastern railway of the German Empire. From 1867 on it connected Berlin with the far reaches of the Reich, the province of East Prussia and its capital Königsberg, Kaliningrad in Russia today. From Berlin you could reach Königsberg via express in six hours and 38 minutes, and it was here that the successors of Katte in the Prussian army transported men and guns east, in 1914 and 1939. Double V’s of flocks of geese on the way to their winter quarters cross the blue autumn sky above my train chugging east, and I wonder if Katte saw similar things from his carriage, and if he thought about a future he would never see.
The empire is gone now, but its legacies remain. On the old station building at Seelow-Gusow the distance marker to the capital (Berlin 63 kilometres) is still intact, but the one indicating Küstrin has been chipped away, as if the authorities of the GDR did not want to remind their citizens of a town lost. During the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin and the western Allies had agreed that Poland would be given former German territories: the southern half of the province of East Prussia and the provinces of Pomerania and Silesia. The German population was forcefully expelled and the areas repopulated with Poles expelled from the Kresy regions in the east of the country, which were in turn divided between Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. Over five million Germans were forced to move west, and over three million Poles forced to follow them, all leaving their homes behind. The river Oder became the new border between Germany and Poland.
Ponds and creeks are increasingly visible from the train, and then we arrive at the Oder proper. The stream here is not a single border river with high banks, but more meandering, older, untamed. My train crosses at the confluence of the Oder and Wartha rivers, and rolls over two long bridges crossing both rivers and the low-lying marshlands between, before it comes to a halt in Kostrzyn nad Odrą in Poland, German Küstrin before 1945.
Kostrzyn nad Odrą is a newer settlement however, expanded from a former German suburb. In front of the train station there are signs indicating Stare Miasto, the old town. In many other towns across Poland, that means the medieval centre, places of cobblestones, cozy pubs, Christmas markets and buskers. In Kostrzyn however it means an absence. I walk towards the rivers again, cross the shiny new bridge for cars and pedestrians across the Warta and reach what was the border crossing until Poland joined the Schengen area in 2007. There’s a hotel, a McDonald’s, a gas station and one of the ubiquitous Polenmärkte, a market where Germans from Berlin and Brandenburg came — and sometimes still come — to buy cheap booze and cigarettes and get a haircut. Behind the hotel is the old town, or to be precise the lack of it.
Because of its position between the rivers, the Prussian authorities had decided to build a fortress here in the 16th century, which had grown into a sprawling red brick edifice with massive bastions when Katte and Frederick arrived. Following the unification of Germany in 1871 it was expanded again and became a mixture of civil and military architecture, with impressive merchant houses lining the cobbled streets along which trams clanked and the new middle class of the German Empire strolled. All of this existed until March 1945, when the Red Army defeated Wehrmacht defenders here in a brutal battle in which over 3000 men perished. When the smoke cleared, Küstrin lay in ruins. Over 90 percent of the old town and the fortress were destroyed. But unlike many other towns it was not rebuilt as the new Polish authorities preferred to develop the settlement nearby, its bricks instead shipped to Warsaw as building material.
The overgrown ruins of Kostrzyn.
The overgrown ruins of Kostrzyn.
Today, what’s left of the old town is overgrown, trails and open spaces indicate where streets and squares used to be, sometimes still lined with curb stones in front of houses long gone or a few meters of cobbles poking out between the grass. New street signs in German and Polish point nowhere. Some of the Prussian bastions have been rebuilt and house a museum, but even on a sunny Saturday I have the former fortress almost for myself. There is a couple walking their dog, and a man in military fatigues is flying a drone over the ruins, but other than that it’s just me and the German ghosts.
I reach the rebuilt Brandenburg Bastion. Here, in the morning hours of November 6, 1730, Hans Hermann von Katte was led and forced to kneel, while his friend was made to watch on the orders of the king. According to some sources, Frederick shouted in French to Katte: “Please forgive me dear Katte, in God’s name, forgive me.” Katte called back: “There is nothing to forgive, I die for you with joy in my heart!” Frederick then fainted. Katte was allowed to say a prayer and then beheaded by sword, his body covered with a black cloth but left under Frederick’s window all night.
Katte’s friend never escaped the clutches of his father. Frederick remained imprisoned for another two years, and then joined to Prussian army. He would later acquire the moniker ‘the Great’ after fulfilling his father’s dream of a Prussian empire. While he married he remained childless, his court was almost exclusively male, and he is buried with his favourite dogs on the grounds of his castle of Sanssouci.
. . .
In the walls of the bastion sits a memorial plaque to Katte next to a passage to a small harbour by the banks of the Oder. The inscription reads, in German and Polish: Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte, born 1704 in Berlin, beheaded 1730 in Küstrin as escape agent of the Crown Prince Frederick. I step down through the gate, and a quintessential European panorama presents itself to me: red brick and catastrophes by the banks of a tranquil border river under a blue autumn sky.
As I walk back I look at Katte’s plaque again, and realise that someone had added two words in German to the frame in black marker. The memorial now reads: Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte, born 1704 in Berlin, beheaded 1730 in Küstrin as lover and escape agent of the Crown Prince Frederick.
. . .
Marcel Krueger is a German-Irish writer and translator living in Berlin. Through family history he explores the tragedies of Europe in the 20th century and what these mean for memory and identity today, especially focusing on Ireland, Germany and Poland. His essays have been published in The Guardian, Notes from Poland, 3:AM, Paper Visual Art, CNN Travel, New Eastern Europe, Przekrój, and The Irish Times, amongst others. Marcel is the co-editor of Elsewhere: A Journal of Place, and has published five non-fiction books in English and German, among them Berlin: A Literary Guide for Travellers (written together with Paul Sullivan, 2016) and Babushka’s Journey: The Dark Road to Stalin’s Wartime Camps (2018).
over seventy windblown years tied to the mast, patience has eluded me leaving me to hum along the shrillest siren call in grating irritation struggling to find or develop a minimal measure of discernment to catch my breath, one breath between the healing itch the mending pain and the vicious nag of wounding aches might say my suspicious mind dove for a dark, silty bottom and found the drain unclogging gratitude or trust to sluice and flush a pressured dram of bittersweet relief
. . .
David Rodriguez is a 71-year-old prodigal son trapped in a Ground Hog Day loop. The thought that all the scribblings of my circuitous, rambling life will either end up in the dumpster or belong to a posterity I will never see has been keeping me up at night lately.
The North Shore, Blackpool. All photos by Stefan Svennson.
Every year, in the last week of June, the mills, engine rooms, and coal mines in Oldham closed down, and an exodus followed. My great-grandparents, George and Alice (both born in 1867), dressed to the nines, would board the ‘Wakes Week Special’ at the station and head for Shangri-La. The railway served as a steam-powered conveyor belt that shifted human assemblies from the factory floor to a manufactured seaside resort I had the best of reasons to return to Blackpool. It was a joke of a place where you could let rip, lose yourself and fall in love. It was my seaside heritage and had become synonymous with northern soul.
The West Coast express from Euston was packed with jovial passengers, many bursting with stories, but even before Watford Junction, I was in the zone, oblivious to my surroundings, absorbed totally in forcing sonic madeleines up to the surface. The first to return was the voice of my father, “Look, son, can you see it, there, faraway beyond Crow Wood?” From the same vantage spot on Billinge Marilyn looking out to where the skyline met the Irish Sea we had seen an island of unearthly beauty covered with trees. Once he was certain I had spotted the thin vertical silhouette that he said was the Eiffel Tower, he started to parrot, “There’s a famous seaside town called Blackpool, that’s noted for fresh air and fun, and Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom went there with young Albert, their son. “
I eventually arrived with my bucket and spade at the advanced age of eight and a half. Outside the Fun House on the South Shore, an automaton with large, round eyes, bright red lips, and a disconcerting gaze sat inside a glass cabinet. A crown was resting on its frizzy hair and a sad Pierrot sat on its lap. As it rocked on its throne, it emitted a deranged cackle that I felt compelled to imitate and which, like a nursery rhyme, would become indelible. At the Winter Gardens, I had been mesmerised by a magician in his tailcoat and white bow tie called the Amazing Yoxani who was bound, placed in a bag, and then locked in a large trunk by a female assistant. The heavy curtain fell, and when it rose moments later, there he was, bowing and smiling at the audience. He then bounded over to the trunk, unlocked it, and liberated his female assistant. I knew it was a trick, but it didn’t matter but it felt very real. Cinematic flashbacks of the wooden hut for lost children at the entrance of Pleasure Beach, the pennies that never fell from the shelves in the amusement arcade, sheets of spray spilling onto the promenade and the drawn curtains of the fortune tellers’ kiosks flooded in as the train approached Warrington. In the menagerie at the Tower, I listened to a recording of Stanley Holloway reciting his monologue of Albert and the Lion. Dressed in his Sunday best, young Ramsbottom had stuck a stick with a horse’s head handle into Wallace, the lion’s ear and paid for it with his life. My father had frightened me by telling me it was a true story.
My paternal grandparents, Ben (born 1892), a machine fitter and Doris (born 1899), had also gone to Blackpool by train from Oldham during wakes week. Granny once told me that when the Tower and the gleaming sands came into view through the carriage window , the atmosphere changed. The starchiness vanished, and the excited holidaymakers burst out singing, passing round bags of sweets. She also told me of a rainy day on the promenade when she had watched with astonishment as a group of miners she recognised from Wood Park Colliery had passed her jigging with joy.
I changed trains at Preston and on the last short leg through the flat and characterless Fylde plain a man sitting opposite me asked me if I was off to see the ‘Lights’. When I told him I was going dancing, he replied, “You’ve got the right place, pal, they even dance in the street.” Blackpool North had an end-of-the-line feel. Its platforms were deserted, and its surroundings resembled a sanitary landfill. Inside the station, there was a large concourse with no seats that served as a holding area beyond the automatic ticket barriers. Two long queues of passengers snaked round its perimeter. A gaggle of officious station foremen guarded the platforms to ensure orderly boarding for the trains to Lime Street and Manchester Airport. Outside the station, there was a connecting underpass to the tram interchange. Head down, I hurried past a group of inert heroin addicts and a man wrapped in a layer of homemade lard, clutching a can of ale. Behind me, I heard the low hum of a modern tram gliding towards the shore. Talbot Road felt edgy, cut off and run down with swathes of arrested brownfield development. Even in the town centre, there was a moribund low season feel. The many multi-storey car parks and spacious lots were almost empty and the few people in the street seemed in a hurry to get home
In a few minutes, I reached the Golden Mile . The priapic Tower was lit in indium blue, and the Prom bathed in electric sunshine. There were many live shows and music venues on the strip. At the entrance to the North Pier a middle-aged woman where I bought some sticks of rock called me ‘sweetheart’ in a cheery Lancashire brogue. The illumination and movement had lifted my spirit. Someone had written in chalk on the pavement, Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present. It was a sin to be unhappy in Blackpool. The Scots and Scouse hordes were walking the walk, and there was a hen party from Yorkshire. I could hear the sea booming in the dark dusk. Ocean Boulevard, The Esplanade and the Atlantic were the set for our shared illusion. Dray horses with jingling bells were clip-clopping towards Central Pier pulling pink Cinderella carriages sprinkled with tinsel
There was already a line of old souls outside the Tower Ballroom, intent on securing tables close to the dance floor. I walked towards Pleasure Beach, hoping to hear the bellowing mechanical laugh of the ‘King of Fun’, but all I could reconnect with was uptown Motown and Stax music coming from the crowded bars. The scaffolding of the roller coasters resembled glittering lattices in the darkness. Their cars, full of screaming late-night riders crawled up the steep inclines before shooting comet-like through a starless sky. The Blue Waves, The Windmill and The Sands were derelict, but there were still plenty of pet-welcoming boarding houses advertising Free Showers. The Sea Front Camelot Tea Rooms, which I felt I remembered from seventy years ago, was offering every permutation of the Full English breakfast.
When I returned to the Tower, the queue had been replaced by a strong smell of vinegar and fried onions. I looked up at its archways, stained glass windows and the vertiginous criss-cross lattice of iron and steel. I showed my ‘Togetherness’ wristband to the smiling doorman and climbed the stairs to Circus Walkway. As I rounded the first corner, I was hit by the sound of Frankie Beverly belting out If That’s What You Wanted. I started to mouth the lyrics with the same autonomic reflexes that compelled me to mimic heading a ball every time I watched a corner kick:
Ha! Since I’ve been left here, darling, I’ve been walking into closed doors, call yeah! I needn’t tell you how much I love you, but I just can’t take it no more, ah yeah!
The final three in the Dance Championship, Tower Ballroom, Blackpool.
The ballroom on Level 3 was rococo with Victorian knobs on. It was adorned with columns, arches, cherubs, friezes and balconies. A large crystal chandelier hung from the sliding roof. An invocation to the dance written by William Shakespeare, “Bid me discourse; I will enchant thine ear”, written for Venus in her seduction of Adonis, was emblazoned on the top of the proscenium arch. Below the stage, the Mighty Wurlitzer used to orchestrate the quickstep, tango and waltzes lay dormant for the weekend. The disc jockey, Richard Searling was tucked unobtrusively between two large LED video screens whose purpose was to magnify and project the spinning discs. The music was rawer and looser than Motown but had the same mono, four on the floor backbeat. Every record had a hook line that was repeated over and over and the beat was kept heavy. I imagined the clanking and grinding of engines, the honking of forklifts and the rhythmical high-pitched clatter of looms on the mill floor. A fervent, supercharged excitement rose from the ballroom’s sprung wooden dancefloor. The dancers’ intricate backward swerves, dervish spins, Soul Train turns, backdrops, swallow dives, and somersaults of the dancers reminded me of the amphetamine-driven rats I had studied in the speed laboratory. The music seemed timeless. Soon I was floating out on the floor, feeling the syncopated horns and strings, galvanising my thinning muscles. I was still the old modernist, making moves I didn’t know I still had in me. I owned the music, kept the faith and was not too old to dream.
The stars of the northern soul scene were black American artists, almost unknown to the general public and a handful of blue-eyed white singers like Frankie Valli, Timi Yuro and Dean Paris. The disc jockeys were unfussy magicians who constructed an illuminated reality from pieces of plastic and were able to create an illusory willing suspension of belief . Most of the favourite tracks were obscure flops from the sixties and seventies with furious melodies, heavy syncopation and powerful vocals. Years of communal connoisseurship had led to an impeccable quality control. As the hours passed, listening to the music, I fell into a trance. There were moments when I was carried back to the Abracadabra magic show with a white rabbit materialising from an empty top hat and a bunch of scarves rising in defiance of gravity. The music became a healing force that loved me back.
Around midnight on the second day, I climbed up to the sweeping upper balcony and looked down, scouring the floor for the Dopamine Dancer and for David, the Boy Miracle from Stirling, who had been brought back to life after a brainstorm by a northern soul tape. The stomping was spontaneous, improvised and high energy. There was no leader, everyone was free to express themselves in their own way but a strong sense of etiquette existed on the floor. Each dancer reacted to those in closest proximity and avoided getting too close by steering an instinctive course, which returned them to their own spot sometimes marked by a pool of sweat. Everyone was committed to having the best night ever. Fifty five years after it began northern soul was now being kept alive by the children and grandchildren of the pioneers from the iconic venues like the Torch, the Highland Room, The Casino, The Catacombs, the Pier, the Ritz and the 100 Club, Some renegades from the funk and disco scene who had belatedly found the holy grail and a few visitors from the Japanese, Australian and Canadian scenes injected new blood. Some of the old soulies were now too unwell to dance but still got high on the music, and there was still plenty of fast footwork in evidence from bald elderly men in Fred Perry shirts, vests and baggy trousers and glowing women of a certain age with long circle skirts and lightweight tops. The motion was soulful, passionate and beautiful to watch. First, I spotted David in a white shirt sitting with friends in ‘ Scotch Corner’ close to the stage on the left in front of the record stalls. Then I picked out Anne, the Dopamine Dancer freed from the shackles of Parkinson’s disease, dancing in the middle of the ballroom. Music had released her handbrake and she could dance all night
From Left to Right: David, Anne, A. J. Lees and Richard Searling, on the stage at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, November 8, 2025.
On Sunday afternoon, I took a tram back to the station with my heartbeat still turned up and wreathed in a glow of animation. A burly man with a loud voice told me it was a free ride then warned me to transfer my wallet to my back pocket. As my train pulled out of Blackpool North. I felt that I had become truer to myself. The invigorating make-believe world of northern soul was a portal to authenticity. It brought home that the high bogus of scientific fraud, doctored clinical trials and the sale of counterfeit medicine had dragged me down. Some technological titans who believed in the infallibility of machines were trying to reduce medicine to a measurement and I had read about unaccountable customer-friendly chatbots that encouraged the suicidal to kill themselves. Moving to the music had helped me rebuild and resynchronise. The trip to Soul Town told me I needed to take more time out to dance on the edge of volcanoes and spend time watching the sunbeams flirt with the shadows. I would continue to respect data, but I must never lose my delight in magic and faith in God
Footnote: In 1923 Blackpool football club founded in 1887 adopted a distinctive tangerine shirt with its team wearing it for the first time in a 2-2 draw against Oldham Athletic. I associate tangerine with warmth, high energy, adventure and cheerfulness.
. . .
A.J. Lees is a Professor of Neurology at the National Hospital, Queen Square and University College London. , He pioneered the use of apomorphine for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and has received international acclaim for his expertise in the treatment of abnormal movement disorders. He is also an original member of the Highly Cited Researchers ISI database. Born in St Helens Merseyside, he qualified in medicine at the Royal London Hospital Medical College, Whitechapel in 1970 and received his training in neurology at L’Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Paris and University College London Hospitals. His book Mentored by a Madman, The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill and New York Review of Books) published in 2016 explains the unlikely association between his neurological career and the author of Naked Lunch. His latest book Open the Door to your Heart describes the importance of dance music in his own life and in the restoration of function in some of his patients.
In March 2020, I needed a break and booked the Caledonian Sleeper Train from London to the Scottish Highlands. But, on the third and last day, walking on a wintery hillside, I overstepped and found myself face-down with a broken leg. The overnight journey back to London became an endurance test of jagging pain. I didn’t sleep. Instead, I spent much of the 12-hour journey videoing out the conveniently placed window in my sleeping compartment.
I considered a voice-over for this improvised video, but opted instead for a piano soundtrack, a piece that I had recently improvised. Of course, making this work, I was reminded of John Grierson’s iconic 1936 film, Night Mail, which was shot on the same night-time journey.
. . .
Since the 1980s Nick Stewart has created a diverse body of exhibitions and publications in, drawing, performance, video and photography. He has published two books and, more recently, completed his first feature length film. A wide range of interests and research informs his work but the question of place and national identity in the context of Ireland is of particular concern to him. Nick has been the recipient of numerous awards, residencies and commissions including, The Canada Council, The British Council, The British Film Institute and the Royal Festival Hall in London. He has exhibited widely in the UK, Ireland, Canada, USA, Europe, India and Vietnam.
All this started on a lonely bench at Frustration Station.
There I was, sitting, with a crushing sense of defeat, of failure, and a nagging urge to engage in some kind of creative process again. My life had unravelled slowly but predictably so, over the past few years. 2020 was the last straw.
I used to dream up shows, and stage them at festivals, fringe theaters, and clubs.
Exit – Irreverent Sideshows. Enter – Irrelevant Slideshows.
Working in 2D was not my thing but I was left with no better options. I started playing around with a series of photographs I had taken of two friends taking down an exhibition. I had documented their ‘performance’ — their gestures, interactions, and movements — against the white walls of the gallery.
I don’t usually print the photos I shoot but this time I did. All of them, and more than one copy of each. I propped them up against the wall at the edge of my chaotic desk.
Waiting? Maybe.
I wandered down a path without any sense (nor care) of where I was going. No purpose, no intention, no destination — a random walk in the dark. I let my pen run over the images, then added brush strokes to some, before reprinting them, then more of the same. Over and over.
After a couple of months, I was on a roll, reworking the same photographs again and again, experimenting with collage, color, different inks and paints, re-photographing, and re-printing, adding more ink and paint. I was like a child throwing toys around a sandbox and loving it.
In spring 2025, almost a year after I had shot the original photographs, I stopped for a moment and looked. I said ‘Hi’ to my new friends. I was ready to dance, to transform the photographs more purposefully, and bend them gently along a curve of intention.
I’m not planning to leave this dance floor any time soon. I might even change the music, learn some new moves.
. . .
anna f.’s background is in architecture and predominantly in theatre. She’s the founder and director of the performance group Irreverent Sideshows and recently started the visual arts project Irrelevant Slideshows. She lives in London.
I hold the memories delicately in my fingers wherever I go.
. . .
March 29, 2024, in New Orleans, Louisiana: things at the tattoo shop hadn’t panned out. Business was mind-numbingly slow, and the owner of the shop I was working at decided to let everyone go and use the shop as his own private studio.
I felt relieved, more than anything. I have a deep love for tattooing, but I didn’t feel that working at a shop was what I needed at that moment in time. It was a time in which I was deeply avoidant of anything that could lock me down. I had a gnawing need to move with agility. Any direction, any time. I was shirking structure, seeking something beyond it. I knew I was looking for something, but I didn’t know what it was. I was only sure that I hadn’t found it, yet. In the meantime: my world was wide open.
That day, I collected the last of my things from the tattoo shop. I finished the illustrations I had been working on for some friends’ puppet show. I cut my hair. I drew on long-winged eyeliner, stood in front of the mirror in my room, and looked myself in the eyes. I said: “I want something to happen.”
I had alcoholic Monster energy in my fridge that I’d been keeping for an auspicious moment. The Beast Unleashed – Mean Green. I took it.
I went out.
Someone who was just a distant friend at the time was organizing a punk show in a local liquor store parking lot. It was my understanding that the store loved it when punks put on shows there: it was great for business. I love a punk show, I especially love a punk show in a weird location, so I have to go. The friend I’d made plans to go with canceled last minute. Her ex was there, staring daggers into my back. Talking to my friend Vex, they said, “It seems you’re doing a lot of Closure Things.” I agreed.
Some friends I knew to varying degrees, including my roommates at the time, were putting on a renegade show afterwards. Freak rave with noise interludes. The location, given by hotline, was in a large abandoned lot in a weird part of town- this dead nowhere zone nestled between an overpass and a mostly-abandoned residential neighborhood that had been plagued by strings of misfortune.
I pulled up a dark dirt road in my silver Subaru Legacy and parked. A brightly-painted Ford Ranger pulled up nearby. Two figures hopped out. One, Guinevere, a friend, the writer of the puppet show I had been making illustrations for. Two, Lucian, someone from out of town, who I had met briefly a few days before.
“Oh hey, we were just talking about you,” Guinevere called out.
I was surprised: “Talking shit, I hope!”
We wandered into the weeds, then deeper down a scraggly tunnel of bushes and small trees, the path lined with occasional glow sticks. On the other side of the tunnel: a decaying corrugated metal warehouse.
The spot and surrounding neighborhood had been scoped out long before the event, but the day of the show a huge overturned bus had suddenly appeared in the middle of the building. It seemed like the abandoned warehouse was also someone’s chop shop for scrapping stolen vehicles. Music and visual gear was set up atop the engineless bus. We all climbed on and around the looted vehicle, spun on a freely rotating wheel aloft, jumped through windows above to windows below.
After a while, the novelty wore off, and the undertone of conflict between various coupled friends was becoming ever-more perceptible, so I made my escape to a fire pit outside.
Monster finally cracked open, I found myself talking to Lucian from out of town. We talked a long time about travel, brutalist architecture, and other things that slip my mind now. He said he’d just bought a boat in Martinique, an island in the Caribbean I had never heard of. He didn’t live anywhere. New Orleans was only a stopover on the way to his new boat, bought sight unseen with a broken motor. He seemed confident he could fix it. I believed him. I thought, how cool, I’m sure he’ll have a great time.
Just then, a strange man with a can of beer swayed over to the fire. He was wearing black and white vertically striped pants and looked like oogle beetlejuice. I had never seen this man before in my life. He interrupted the conversation I was having with L. “Excuse me…excuse me, can I just ask you something?” He was looking at me.
“Can I just ask you… what do you see in this guy?” He pointed at Lucian.
He must think I’m dating him or something, I thought. He had no idea this was the first time I’d ever had a real conversation with Lucian, who was pretty much a stranger to me. I thought, the only way to get out of this is to say something funny.
I said, “It’s because he has a boat.”
Oogle beetlejuice laughed. “Oh, so you’re a boat digger, huh?” He thought for a moment. “I guess being a boat digger is more honorable than being a gold digger, since you still have to be on the boat.” We laughed.
At some point oogle beetlejuice made his exit, and it was then that Lucian invited me to sail with him on his boat as crew. He was going to sail in the Caribbean — indeterminate end.
For a long time, I felt like I’d been doing nothing but closing doors. I was unemployed, my life before me was virtually vacant. No plans. I had been waiting for something to happen. I wanted something to happen. Was this it? I didn’t know anything about sailing. I’d never been on a sailboat before, never had an opportunity. But I’d wanted to. I’d wanted it the way one wants an improbable dream: You just want. Your wanting creates a shape. And you think, it’s impossible, and it sinks down. The dream was so deep in my subconscious I could barely feel it rising to the surface.
I said, “Maybe.”
I remember him walking away from the fire, into the darkness, waving noncommittally. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.
I would.
I went to sea with him and it changed me. Four months later, I returned to New Orleans.
. . .
The strangest thing about traveling for a long time is the return. Your descent back into your old life and old patterns feels like a direct confrontation with your past self. All of the choices you’ve made in your life up until your departure seem tinged with sharper edges, yet you feel removed from it. Strangely objective, an outsider in your own life.
You find yourself in your own room — but it feels like it belongs to a person that no longer exists. It is jarring, suddenly to feel a vast gap between you and your older self, a gap you didn’t expect to exist. Around you, people and places loosely gather in similar structure. Most act like everything is the same. You have an urge to explain, to properly convey your experience but words fall flat. How can you explain that you feel your insides have re-arranged themselves? Inside of you is filled with glittering metals that you will walk around with, always now.
. . .
Lake Sleep is an artist living in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her art finds form in ink and watercolor illustration, printmaking, tattoo, and digital fragments scattered around the web. Through her work, she pulls at the fragile seams between technology and nature, the tame and the untame, the real and the unreal.
The first time I walked a city without direction was in Florence. Before that trip each day was regimented by parents—a designated set of sites to visit, walking through the streets was a chore between destinations rather than a reason to travel. This time I was fifteen; I made my case that I wanted to go back to a gallery to draw some of the statues, and on the way there I got deliberately lost. It is an intentional form of being lost, formed by noticing buildings or landmarks or quirks of the way two streets intersect into an impossibly narrow corner of a house that begin to build up a map of a place in your head. Medieval cities, souk cities, old towns are all particularly good for this. Ideally this is an act that should be done alone without headphones or distractions, but there is pleasure in doing it with someone you love to share in the ornamentation given to houses, the peculiar shape of that window, the way this street links two parts of the city you might have visited via a different route and then the contours of the place become connected. It is also worth doing the same path at night, but that is not always possible, it depends on who you are. I am very envious of those who feel safe to do so alone.
In Bolivia, high up in the Andean mountain town of Cochabamba, the Spanish phonetic translation of its Quechua name, Quchapampa, or ‘lake plain’, my friend and I were told explicitly not to walk around the city alone. Another person, a man no less, had been beaten up when out for a morning run. To escape being chaperoned was a release, and my habit of wandering down side streets only got me into minor trouble with our host mother, but without this I would never have seen the southern cross from the top of a children’s slide in a playground at night or stumbled upon the embassy quarter with the manicured lawns that were so different from the rest of the city. I looked up the Quechua name for the correct spelling and the city looks different now, with sleek light rail services instead of the converted minibuses decorated with rugs and tinsel that I remember. My memories of the route from where we stayed to the outskirts to the orphanage might be only a shadow now, confined to my memory of walking and recognising the advertisement that was put up that indicated where we would have to ask the minibus driver to stop so we could run across a four-lane road to get to work.
I have repeated these walks in almost every place I have visited, from Hà Nội to Lisbon. London is a special case, a set of villages of sorts that I can navigate around like fruiting mushrooms emerging from the myceliae of the underground system, distinct but not truly linked in my mind. Something strange happens when I live in a place: the urge to wander is all but lost. During lockdown I found an area of the city in which I had lived for over a decade for the first time, as though being forced to stay in place gave me the permission to deviate from the boring routes that I stuck to so rigidly. It was an island, formed over a reclaimed rubbish dump. In autumn the trees are heavy with apples, in winter you can see muntjac deer through the bare branches, breath steaming into the mist. 18th century pottery and old scientific glassware can be picked up when the ground is soft, and in summer there are trees to climb and one spot where you can slip into the river to swim. Take another route, another turn, and you are in a metal processing plant, all noise and smells of oil and burning. This is not an essay about psychogeography or being a flâneur, it is a question of what about settling somewhere is it that resists what is otherwise one of life’s great pleasures.
One of my earliest memories is of walking the mizmaze at the top of a local hill. You pass the plague pits and beech trees before ascending the chalk-based soil that produces scrubby grass and strange orchids. In front of a copse of copper beeches is an old turf maze, but that name is wrong. There are no wanderings and wrong turnings here, the route curls around itself from the entrance to the centre and back out, all it requires is patience and to put one foot in front of the other. I have walked it in winter so thick with frost that the grass appears as a ghost and drunk in summer when the scents of rock rose and thyme mix with bonfire smoke. The turf is cut so as when you begin you put one step in the narrow furrow and the next pace just ahead, it is too small for you not to move forward with each footstep unless you run out of path to tread. There is a peace in walking this mizmaze, an hypnotic action in the movement that compels you to complete the circuit until you walk out of the parallel exit to the entrance and the spell breaks. I have never dared to step through or across the turf to exit more quickly, to do so would feel wrong on a level I cannot articulate.
Perhaps we build our own mizmazes for our hometowns? This journey, this shop, this route between places we need to go, this side of the street to walk down? This does not feel like a spell, however, more as though one is placed on a track that is so practiced that looking around ceases to be of any interest. Yet to deviate from the known routes feels stupid, almost embarrassing. This is not to say that routine is uniformly bad; it is a requirement of becoming a local in a pub or café, which can open up a place where you reside into a place where you live and are known.
After the pandemic I moved to a different town and I despised it. I found it cramped and ugly, and my walks were restricted to going into the town (through an unlit alley, down a residential street that floods when it rains, turn right past the fish shop and across the bridge), to the station (turn right just after the bridge), and around the small park behind my block of flats (enter across a wooden bridge past the teenagers and their dog, walk eight times around the circular loop of tarmac past the unused outdoor exercise machines and the playground with men drinking from plastic two litre cider bottles on a bench, go back via the teenagers). The more I repeated these routes the more I hated the place I had moved. The stench of the canal, the soggy leaves underfoot in winter slippery and hateful, the dark passages I had to navigate to leave my flat.
Eight months after I had moved in I felt furious with everything, most of all with myself. I set out in the opposite direction from the unlit alley and walked aimlessly. An underpass called to me, so I took my time seeing the graffiti, some illustrating a cartoon of the history of the area, half covered up with tags and original art. A manor house that had been converted into a school, then a railway bridge that opened up onto fields with grazing cows and horses, a rock processing plant with large lorries ferrying gravel out, and then a reservoir that fed a river with a set of invitingly large stepping stones. The sound of the water led me to the wrong side of an underpass that opened up into a park that I hadn’t known linked up to the main canal that runs through the town. Walking through the woodland and spiralling back, the single route took me back home.
This will never be my final hometown, but I feel an affection for it in the way I do towards the city where I was born; its ugliness and architectural surprises. Down the residential street one house has a Victorian door and beautifully moulded brickwork that gives texture and beauty to an otherwise uninteresting house. One of the houses by the river is a palimpsest of workhouse and glass conservatories jutting over the water, and just off the main square a bust of Shakespeare stares, weather beaten and softened with pigeon shit, over a town that once was cared for enough to have people decorate it.
. . .
Sylvia Warren is a writer and academic editor. Their work has been featured in Open Pen, Minor Literature[s], the Brick Lane Short Story Anthology, and more. They consider AI an affront to the joyous act of creation but refuse to stop using em-dashes. They enjoy writing, the sea, and sketching the architecture of pubs over a pint.
Every year I’m taken there the air the light the sight of leaves drifting past without a care I’m driving in the Rockies in my old Plymouth Valiant a shade of bronze you don’t much see anymore colour of stubble fields at sundown I’m barely 23, endless Christmas trees line the highway now it’s the mountain peaks the sun is tinging pink I think I even sing (I wouldn’t put it past me) Neil Young’s Comes a time when you’re driftin’ Comes a time when you settle down – Okay, what’s this side of the road a herd of elk just standing there watching five in total the reason I recall is I write it down when I get there the cabin I’ve secured
for winter and right on cue like a movie I pull up just when it’s not dark yet but getting’ there now that song also takes me there to that door the smell of firewood stacked by the door I watch the kettle while it boils I open my notebook on the kitchen table by a window with green curtains and lo and behold I find a candle meant for emergency but at 23 who waits for that you see a candle you light it I write September 1978 on the first page
No, hold on, it’s not a notebook it’s a school scribbler dime store type, Hilroy, map of Canada on the cover timetable on the back and bottom left: 30 days hath September April June and November I write what comes to me how people in the past wrote it snowed all day baked so many loaves of bread as if it needs to be said “Saw five elk on the way here” and leave the unpacking for tomorrow
but when tomorrow comes I don’t unpack too busy sitting in the sounds of silence a woodpecker tapping in a nearby tree maybe I imagined that but I know this much is true: I set my Smith Corona on that kitchen table by the window, the green curtains and I tap too all day long tap tap tap tap into the next night and all the days and nights after that Who knows where those words are now they’re long gone but not the sound they made landing on the page not the smell of firewood by the cabin door the leaves gathering on the window ledge the candle going out I probably slowed the Valiant down when I saw the elk I’m willing to bet I did you never know if they are going to stay or if they will wander
. . .
Working from the small mountain town of Nelson, BC, Canada, Kelly Rebar has written for theatre, film, and television. After a long hiatus, she recently returned to playwriting and created two one-woman shows, both written in verse and scored with music. She also works with photographic images, old and new, and writes short poems.
The dust on the road Rotting leaves on a cold autumn morning The faint scent of hasty intimacy hours earlier The dogs are nervous tonight There’s blood on the wind
Floodstained thaumaturge Pyrolatrous and atavistic Smudging our faces with ash from bridges burnt
I’m following a blood trail My ego has been freebleeding All over the place again
Shamanic nights under a bright full moon Snow in the deep forest Moose tracks in the frozen bog Hematite rocks the colour of red ochre Spells of protection in the night I met a strange god One that no man has ever named
. . .
Myrmalmens ballade [IV/24]
I found God at a gas station in Nissedal Now I’m siphoning gas here in Niflheim There’s a radio tower on the heath Amongst the cows with their GPS trackers
My mind is a swamp Where the air is thick with things That are out to drink my blood
I’ve got a new best friend The red forest ant, Formica rufa Is it all in my mind or are they all Moving with strange synchronicity
. . .
Purple Prozac [VIII-X/24]
Chafing on my chakras Inflammations in my legs Stains on my soul And I’m standing over here Trying to laugh it off Saying pretty please, Pleiades
With your New Moon Theory And my dharmatology Trying to figure out Where all these gulls go to die I’ve got a bad back From looking over my shoulder
The smell of rotten petunias In autumn grey streets I love your geometry Even when you taste like dead dreams
If love is solitude gone bad Then I’m sitting here fermenting With your pyrolatrous autumn colours Alight in the early evening sun
The man I’ve become has no reason To be ashamed of the boy I once was You laid me down among the lupines Placed a cigarette in my hand
Landscapes of IKEAs And your crepuscular smell I’m standing in the middle Of the wrong side of the road Trying to snap a picture For our interdimensional trophy room
Wake me if you wanna smash You said, fell asleep And ran a fever all night
. . .
Born and raised in northern Germany and emigrated to southern Norway in his late 20s to take care of his child, Alexis Karlsen‘s work spans three languages and reflects the life experience of a disillusioned underdog drifter. Alienation, death, restlessness, substance abuse, sexuality, and the unquenchable thirst for love are recurring motives in his writing. Karlsen’s background is in social ecology, and his German-language novel Am Ende des Fadens, which touches on themes of magical realism, is nearing completion after 13 years of work. He can be found on Mastodon: @brisling@merveilles.town.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 