Category: oldblog

Polopolis

Far, far away from Velocester, if you take the road east from Spindlemarch (with thanks to and ), you come to…

Polopolis

The invisible city of Polopolis is half way, by most compasses, between here and Cathay. It has always been a place for meeting – cultures delicately touch one another there as the moon kisses the water on its river, known by the same name as the city’s marketplace, ‘Il Milione’. Leaders meet there, too, to discuss their affairs of state, knowing that this is a place of the moment and the record books will not judge them here – and that Il Milione will carry their words away if they regret them. So long are these moments that much of the city is populated by these leaders’ descendants.

There are no record books in Polopolis, then: all is talk, and all history is oral. History is made most intensely at Il Milione, the marketplace, where thousands gather every day to trade, negotiate, accuse, reconcile or befriend. There, over there, are lost twins reunited after years at the opposite edges of the city (there are no gates, of course), smiling to discover their wives and children have completely different names; to their right, a carpet maker shows off his craftsmanship, so finely woven in so many colours one cannot tell where each thread begins or ends.

Polopolis has three quarters, known as Niccolo, Maffeo and Marco, though no two estate agents can agree on where exactly their boundaries lie: that fine apartment building you see, with roof tiles the colour of the sky, is championed by one as being in ‘Maffeo borders’, and another ‘where Niccolo and Marco meet’.

Il Milione itself is not one broad channel, but an endless series of bifurcations and rejoinings, sometimes ducking under the houses and at others flaunting itself in ornamental lakes; everywhere there are bridges, and each has its resident mathematician, frowning the long weary hours away as she contemplates the shortest route from one place to another. “We both step and do not step in the same rivers” is the old philosopher’s inscription on the perfect masonry of the arch above the city hall.

I have been to Polopolis myself, and sometimes it feels as if I never left.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman 5

Stripped of charm

Genealogy is always a double-edged sword. Within minutes of being entertained to find that one set of my great-great-great-grandparents ran a canalside pub in Middlesex… I discovered that it’s now a strip joint next to an industrial estate.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

Clare as mud

Last year I observed that I don’t often read the same author one book after another – the exception was Iain Sinclair (see here and here). He’s the exception again. Hot on the heels of Edge of the Orison I’ve felt compelled to read Rodinsky’s Room (co-written with Rachel Lichtenstein).

The first follows John Clare’s ‘journey out of Essex’ – ie his fugue from an asylum at High Beach in 1841, walking penniless, driven by lost (and unregainable) love, the 80 miles to his village north of Peterborough. I can’t remember feeling so inspired and gripped by a book in recent times, such that I’ve fixed anyone who’ll listen (or won’t) with an ancient mariner’s stare and proceeded to prate about it. Sinclair’s form, for me at least, gets ever better with each new non-fiction book he writes – while his fiction (though I probably will tackle Dining on Stones when I have the stomach) gets more unwieldy and unfathomable.

The Clare book is self-indulgent at times, especially with a fruitless quest revolving around his wife’s genealogy, but I loved it throughout nonetheless – the usual blend of coruscating sideswipes at modern blandness, fused with elegiac tones and swathed in his psychogeographic obsession with making connections: Sinclair is the real Dirk Gently.

I’m still in media res with the Rodinsky book – more on that some time soon.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

Villa knell

I cycled to Charlbury and back today as practice for the London to Brighton (albeit only half the distance). The highlight, apart from much glorious countryside, and seeing a hare closer than ever before, was North Leigh Roman Villa. Very well preserved foundations, many still with hypocaust intact – and the most astonishing mosaic, preserved in a locked shed, but with window views. It’s enormous. The site is a beautiful, tranquil place, which I had all to myself in the grey drizzle, and I almost feel guilty for telling anyone about it.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

Rolling rightly

I’ve perhaps been unfair to Oxfordshire at times – I’m not hugely drawn to flat landscapes, but of course Oxon isn’t all flat. Last night H and I went for a marvellous, and very restorative, cycle through what for me is ‘proper’ countryside, rolling, woody and clucking. There was more than just clucking: as well as muntjacs, we saw a herd of alpacas and, best of all, a fleet of piglets came running across their field to see us.

A week or so ago M and I went to the Rollrights, too – another inevitably uplifting megalithic site, largely unspoilt, surrounded by cow parsley and views.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

Strange pilgrims

H and I went to Walsingham a couple of weeks ago. I found it fascinating as a theological voyeur. The whole place turns on a series of fictions.

These began in the 11th century, when a Norman lady claimed to have a vision of the Virgin Mary – ever after known as Our Lady of Walsingham – and endowed a priory as a result. The truth is that at the time, there were no viable sites for humble Brits to go on pilgrimage (and weren’t until a troublesome priest in Canterbury was despatched). It was simply a marketing exercise by the church – which clearly worked brilliantly until Henry VIII sent Cromwell’s Dissolving Formula across the country.

Next stop is 1896, when a Catholic woman, Charlotte Boyd, bought the ruined 14th century Slipper Chapel and restored it, and suggested a pilgrimage to visit Our Lady (OLW) in her new home.

Jump now to the 1920s and 30s, when Anglican vicar Alfred Hope Patten secured land to build an *Anglican* shrine. It’s an extraordinary place – typical 1930s architecture, and beautifully done, though also startlingly mawkish.

While building it, they found a mediaeval well, which has since been used (along with rumours of healing properties) to bolster the sacred credibility of the site.

I suppose I’d be hard pressed to say what I would regard as an *unconstructed* site for pilgrimage, but Walsingham doesn’t even have some bones. Now legions of rotund sexagenarians travel from far and wide, all in fealty to an 11th century illusion.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

I was there

A trip to the Design Museum, for the splendid You Are Here exhibition. A festival for geekish poring. Along with the inevitable Tube map delights, highlights for me included:
– Adrian Frutiger’s Symbols and Signs – Explorations foldout chart
– The works of Richard Saul Wurman, Otto Neurath (hurrah! my old chum Basic English) and Annegrete Moelhave
– John Adams’ 1679 map of road distances between UK towns and villages
– Joseph Priestley’s invention of “charts of biography”
– the unlabelled maps comparing metro networks across the world

Much Googling to be done, frankly, and much else of interest besides, but:
(a) no catalogue!!
(b) as J pointed out, er, didn’t the design of the exhibition (not to mention the dreadful Design Museum website as H has already observed) somewhat let down the premise. A major missed opportunity, given that the structure of the exhibition itself was so blurred.

I also discovered the works of Edward Tufte, which I shall be tracking down, especially his essay about PowerPoint being the death of reason, a long-cherished philosophy of mine.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

Credo non credo

I’ve decided that the time has come to explore and explain something, if only for myself.

On occasion I’ve described myself, both glibly and half-seriously, as a ‘High Church pagan atheist’.

High Church
I grew up in a fairly standard CofE environment (one parent a staunch believer, the other a staunch unbeliever) and am pretty familiar with it still. I love old churches and their atmosphere, and sometimes the CofE seems like a sanctaury of sanity for its broadmindedness and Englishness. It never fails to amaze me that our culture has embraced Christianity at all, sometimes, and I always get a weird feeling when I see serried ranks of old ladies chanting about ‘Gilead’ or ‘Nazareth’ or ‘Bethel’ and so on. What these dry, middle eastern places mean to our verdant culture is a mystery to me – but I’m getting ahead of myself – but there’s a comfort in repetition, at least. I’ve no time for evangelical churches, on both philosophical and aesthetic grounds. If it’s gotta be church, it’s gotta be highish (though, er, not Catholic, thanks). I think the sonorous mystique of some Latin, a whiff of incense and a tone of seriousness have a lot to offer the soul.

pagan
If I were to believe in anything, the genius loci wins hands down for me. I think churches offer a contemplative balm which is truly valuable, but nothing compares to a walk in the woods or a stride across a moor or a leap across a stream or the surge of a hill. I’m absolutely with Wordsworth here: One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Our culture here is rooted in paganism, which in some sense feeds materialism, which is both good and bad – the middle eastern death cult of Christianity has been here for a long time, but has never really grabbed the nation’s soul, I think. Our churches inhabit sacred sites of yore, our Christmases hijack Yule. I bet more people have Christmas trees than go to church.

atheist
I can’t really bring myself to believe in any non-material consciousness. God in all His glorious manifestations reeks of us, not of heaven. He should shave with Ockham’s razor. And much as I love the idea of nymphs and fauns and dryads and fairies and elves, they too remain in the ideosphere for me. If you want an explanation of the world, rationalism is the only way forward.

High Church pagan atheist
But an explanation of the world isn’t the only thing we want. We want comfort, a sense of connectedness, of pattern and of meaning. I think the answer to this is metaphor, and life would be hideously impoverished without it. God is a metaphor (a ‘comforting fiction’ or ‘foma’, as Kurt Vonnegut has it) which is useful to many, many people. Greek gods and Druidic spirits are metaphors, too, to explain our own behaviour or the environment we find ourselves in. In many ways, I find polytheistic or pantheistic theologies a lot more sensible than the one-stop-shop of monotheism. But they are all different ways of telling stories through the long dark teatime of the soul. I think Don Cupitt’s take on Christianity is the right one, although I would never call myself a Christian: while I believe it offers people powerful metaphors, I think other views offer better metaphors.

And don’t get me started on Buddhism.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

Darned dogooder

I’ve been a fond reader of Utne for some time now, though occasionally I pass it by on account of the twee folksiness it can slip into. But there’s always something interesting. And I was pleased, while in the States, to pick up a copy of Cosmo Dogood’s Urban Almanac from the same stable. I like the idea of this: our lives are so citybound that we need to find an awareness of nature from within the metropolis rather than necessarily expecting to escape from it. Here in Oxford I have Port Meadow only yards away: but try stargazing there, and it’s compromised by the sky being orange.

The almanac has all kinds of daft lore in it, and lots of celebratory ideas. Again, there’s a bit of twee new agey stuff, but it’s a good idea, and one in harmony with a lot of things that Common Ground are into. In fact, I may tell them about it. (I’ve just discovered the latest site connected to them is a celebration of corrugated iron buildings!

Oh for more time to dwell on this sort of stuff, but I’ll *try*.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman

The Museum of Jurassic Technology

I’m not sure that LA is really my kind of place – but but but. It has the MJT (though the website can hardly do justice).

Think Sir John Soane’s museum on those candelit Tuesday nights. Think Dennis Severs’ house (though I *still* haven’t actually been there…). Now forget all that and think Borges and Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Think Voynich. Think Serafini. Now forget all that and bloody well get on a plane to LA.

The MJT is too good to describe, but suffice it to say it is an incredibly atmospheric coup de theatre, a satire on all museums, a confounding of epistemology, an aesthetic delight, and it’s next to a carpet warehouse.

This is definitely the best ‘museum’ I’ve ever been to, and I wish I had the money to set up something similar but different in Oxford. Give me a few million, someone, and I won’t let you down.

Posted on by Andrew Chapman