Music Monday: Coil - Lost Rivers of London

An oldie from 1996, one of the great evocative London pyschogeographical tracks from Coil (RIP Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance). With the exception of the opening and closing 'drown myself' lines, the words come from  Hubert Montague Crackanthorpe's Vignettes (1896), actually from several pieces in that short book.

'I'm gonna drown myself in London's lost rivers
I will walk down to the rain

I have sat there and seen the winter days finish their short-spanned lives; and all the globes of light — crimson, emerald, and pallid yellow — start, one by one, out of the russet fog that creeps up the river. But I like the place best on these hot summer nights, when the sky hangs thick with stifled colour, and the stars shine small and shyly. Then the pulse of the city is hushed, and the scales of the water flicker golden and oily under the watching regiment of lamps.

The bridge clasps its gaunt arms tight from bank to bank, and the shuffle of a retreating figure sounds loud and alone in the quiet. There, if you wait long enough, you will hear the long wail of the siren, that seems to tell of the anguish of London till a train hurries to throttle its dying note, roaring and rushing, thundering and blazing through the night, tossing its white crests of smoke, charging across the bridge into the dark country beyond.

In the wan, lingering light of the winter afternoon, the parks stood all deserted, sluggishly drowsing, so it seemed, with their spacious distances muffled in greyness: colourless, fabulous, blurred. One by one, through the damp misty air, looked the tall, stark, lifeless elms. Overhead there lowered a turbid sky, heavy-charged with an unclean yellow, and amid their ugly patches of dank and rotting bracken, a little mare picked her way noiselessly. The rumour of life seemed hushed. There was only the vague listless rhythm of the creaking saddle.

The daylight faded. A shroud of ghostly mist enveloped the earth, and up from the vaporous distance crept slowly the evening darkness. A sullen glow throbs overhead: golden will-o'-the-wisps are threading their shadowy ribbons above golden trees, and the dull, distant rumour of feverish London waits on the still night air. The lights of Hyde Park Corner blaze like some monster, gilded constellation, shaming the dingy stars. And across the east, there flares a sky-sign, a gaudy crimson arabesque. And all the air hangs draped in the mysterious sumptuous splendour of a murky London night.

I'm gonna drown myself in the lost rivers of London
I am gonna drown myself in the lost rivers of London'

Crackanthorpe (1870–1896) was born in London and drowned in the Seine in Paris. His 'Vignettes : a miniature journal of whim and sentiment' (1896) also feature a Christmas Day 'Reverie' which express a rather snooty sentiments about the residents of what is now SE5:

''I dreamed of an age grown strangely picturesque -  of the rich enfeebled by monotonous ease; of the shivering poor clamouring nightly for justice; of a helpless democracy, vast revolt of the ill- informed; of priests striving to be rational; of sentimental moralists protecting iniquity; of sybaritic saints; of complacent and pompous politicians; of doctors hurrying the degeneration of the race; of artists discarding possibilities for limitations; of pressmen befooling a pretentious public; of critics refining upon the 'busman's methods; of inhabitants of Camberwell chattering of culture. And I dreamed of this great, dreamy London of ours; of her myriad fleeting moods; of the charm of her portentous provinciality; and I awoke all a-glad and hungering for life'.

See previously: Coil in Clink Street SE1

London: City of Resurrections and other Machen wisdom

You can never have too many London quotes by Arthur Machen (1863-1947), he had a great appreciation for the mysteries to be found in wandering the streets of the city. Here's a few favourites:

'Villiers had emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem in every quarter and every hour.  Villiers prided himself as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more serious employment.  Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula:  “London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than that, it is the city of Resurrections" (The Great God Pan, 1894).

'I searched for Mrs. Beaumont in the dark waters of the life of London... assuming, as I had to assume, that her record was not of the cleanest, it would be pretty certain that at some previous time she must have moved in circles not quite so refined as her present ones. If you see mud at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom. I went to the bottom. I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful' (The Great God Pan, 1894).

'London in September is hard to leave. Doré could not have designed anything more wonderful and mystic than Oxford Street as I saw it the other evening; the sunset flaming, the blue haze transmuting the plain street into a road 'far in the spiritual city'' (The Shining Pyramid, 1895)

'And it is utterly true that he who cannot find wonder, mystery, awe, the sense of a new world and an undiscovered realm in the places by the Gray's Inn Road will never find those secrets elsewhere, not in the heart of Africa, not in the fabled cities of Tibet. 'The matter of our work is everywhere present', wrote the old alchemists, and that is the truth. All the wonders lie within a stone's throw of King's Cross Station" (Things Near and Far, 1923)

OK I would have preferred 'All the wonders lie within a stone's throw of New Cross station' but the same principle applies!

See also: Arthur Machen: South London 'Behind the Scenes of the Universe'

Deptford X 2012

I'm out of town for the first week of Deptford X, but suffice it to say that there's a lot to see and do at this year's contemporary art festival - full programme here.

Couple of events I am sad to be missing, but you don't have to:

Walking In The Footsteps Of Deptford’s Jack In The Green
Wednesday 1st Aug 11am - 4pm, starting out at Utrophia in Deptford High Street.

'David Aylward’s Rediscovered Urban Rituals, Ancient and Modern, Real and Imagined, Present this event. A talk, walk and the making of a collaborative improvised soundtrack to a experimental film that was produced to illustrate a mayday in Deptford 2006. No musical experience needed, although feel free to bring any small instruments. You may like to bring comfortable footwear'

Three-sided football tournament- Deptford Psychogeographical Association 
Saturday 4 August, 11 am in Fordham Park, New Cross

'Three-sided football (3SF) is a variation of football with three teams playing on a hexagonal pitch. It was devised by the Danish artist Asger Jorn to explain his notion of triolectics, a refinement of the Marxian concept of dialectics. Jorn wrote several essays during the late 1950s and early 1960s elucidating the concept but, as he admitted himself, struggled to define his concept using the written word. By providing the example of three-sided football, Jorn felt he was better able to give meaning to the flavour and texture of the triolectical method.

While it is not known whether Jorn ever participated in a real game of three-sided football, a number of games have been played and recorded by psychogeographical groups over the last twenty years. Some of the participants in these early experiments came together in 2011 to found a Deptford Three-Sided Football Club, and games have been held bi-monthly during 2012 to develop the tactics and strategies of the game.

The three-sided football tournament proposed by the club for Deptford X is intended to bring together creative protagonists from both the local area and across Europe who are interested in exploring the interaction between sport, art and non-linear game theory'.

There have been a number of three-sided games played recently in the local area, including in Deptford Park and on Goldsmiths green in March (the latter part of a project linking Millwall's community scheme with Goldsmiths MA in Art & Politics students). The games's situationist origins are interesting, but you don't have to worry about them, it is actually just fun to play a game where the winning team is the one that concedes the least goals (not the one that scores the most). More details at Deptford Three-Sided Football Club.