Staring into the Abyss on Crosby Beach

In the last couple of months before leaving Cheshire, there were a lot of goodbyes. In people’s homes, in coffee shops, in two universities and in church there were more goodbyes to be made than I’d realised. Whilst living in Crewe, it turned out I knew a lot of really nice people. By the time I’d done my round of goodbyes I was heartily wishing I’d done more helloing over the past few years. ‘Helloing’ isn’t a verb, of course, but in future I hope to get better at it anyway. It’s not a good state of affairs when you find yourself saying, ‘It’s a shame we haven’t seen each other in a couple of years but I thought I’d pop in to say goodbye.’ That’s like waking the sleeping patient to give them sleeping pills. Wake up! It’s time to go to sleep! Surely that is not what friendship is about.

As an escape from the trauma of packing and trying to sell a very reasonably priced and luxurious house (see Rightmove for further details), Tracey and I took a drive to Liverpool and ended up on Crosby Beach, home to Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place.’ This art installation consists of 100 cast-iron male figures stretched over a long stretch of beach. The figures are meant to be some kind of reflection on the relationship between humanity and nature. As time passes the wind, rain and sea are changing the appearance of the statues as, no doubt, would be the case with any of us who chose to stand naked on a Liverpool beach for a few years.

These middle-aged metal men are spread fairly evenly apart and whilst they are identifiably a group each has a solitary presence; each seems disconnected from the rest, unaware of others facing the same sea salt plight. I thought of the filmmaker Werner Herzog, who is always talking about staring into the abyss and I wondered if this was what these statues were doing. Standing on Crosby Beach, staring into the abyss or at least towards Birkenhead.

The scene was made particularly eerie by the fact that even as I joined them in their dispassionate stare into the abyss, some of the figures were gradually becoming submerged by the approaching tide. Most maintained their dignity whilst the waters consumed them but one had a seagull perched on his head. Anyone who has lived a life knows that keeping your dignity with a seagull on your head is a big ask.

I liked the Antony Gormley figures, but I wanted them to be freed from their isolation, to recognise their metallurgical mates, to abandon staring into the abyss in favour of discovering the meaning in each other. Others clearly are moved in a similar direction. Do a web search for images of these figures and many feature some kind of interaction between statue and human visitor. On a daily basis, these metal men are distracted from staring into the abyss by generous hugs, people dressing them in silly hats, trunks and other paraphernalia, silly jokes and kids digging holes around them – ‘Stop digging, he’ll fall over.’ Perhaps instead of staring into what cannot really be seen somewhere slightly out of view on the far horizon, it’s time for these figures to look around, to see and value what’s close to them right now. Maybe that’s true for all of us.



Picture by Gavin Edwards

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Letter

In October, 2011, I decided to stop being a Methodist. I grew up in the Methodist Church, as did my parents before me and their parents before them (although one of my grandfathers started out as an Anglican and as a child I was so Methodist that this seemed vaguely exotic). For fifteen years I worked on Methodist history, for over twenty years I was a Methodist local preacher, and I even had a stint as the director of a Methodist museum. All this made me pretty Methodist! Given all this, I am finding the process of change from Methodism to Unitarianism challenging. Of course, I am still me, and my thinking has not changed very much since I was leading worship in Methodist pulpits. Certainly the jokes haven't improved. My final Methodist service was a harvest festival in which I picked vegetables out of a box and said things like 'turnip' for church, 'squash' injustice and, most irreverently, 'peas' be with you. The last thing out of the box was a lettuce an
Read more

Strangers in a Strange Land

I have an interest in immigration history, fuelled to some extent by my own work on nineteenth century English immigrants in the United States and the role that religion played in their Americanization. Most people assume that the English fared well in America but being an immigrant from anywhere was always hard. John Hodgson was a farm labourer from Yorkshire, who moved to Wisconsin because he heard that land was cheap there. On Christmas Day 1856, he wrote to his relatives and friends 4,000 miles away in a spirit of utter dejection and loneliness, ending his epistle with the words, ‘P.S. You cannot tell how bad I want to see someone that I have seen before.' To some extent, John Hodgson’s suffering was a result of the harsh challenges of the Wisconsin frontier. He had never been so hot in his life, nor so cold and nothing in Yorkshire prepared him for rattlesnakes and mosquitoes. However, more significant was what he had left behind, particularly the people he missed. This inevit
Read more

Summer of the Dead: A Long Read!

O God our help in ages past Our hope for years to come Our shelter from the stormy blast And out eternal Home. Isaac Watts Depart ye cursed down to hell With howling fiends for ever dwell, ‘No more to see my face: ‘My gospel calls ye have withstood, ‘And trampled on my precious blood ‘And laughed at offered grace.’ From Hugh Bourne, A General Collection Of Hymns And Spiritual Songs For Camp Meetings, Revivals &C New Edition Revised & Improved , 1821. There is a story I have always liked, a complete work of fiction, about an old soldier who was asked on his one hundredth birthday what the secret of his longevity was. He said that it was many things but the most important was that every morning he ate a bowl of cornflakes on which he sprinkled a teaspoon of gunpowder. It didn't taste great but he felt it really cleaned out the tubes. Sadly, at the age of 102 the old soldier died and it was reported in the local newspaper tha
Read more