So, nearly a year since I blogged about these Leeds artists, I spent all of today with Dick, Dan and other members and friends of Imprint and Pointed Arrow, and a wealth of conversation, observation, storytelling and street-walking confirmed my deeply-felt instinct: that if you want to get re-excited about creatively engaging with the city from many angles, go to the artists. Some (by no means all of the) day's highlights:
Discussing journeying with the Pointed Arrow crew whose most recent production (they prefer 'journey' actually) was titled, The Cursed Bones of Leonard Le-bec and involved them in a journey along the South coast in search of the bones of this elusive pirate. This was bound to be an elusive search as Leonard Le-bec is an invention of theirs but it didn't stop people they met en-route affirming their story and adding embellishments of their own; nor did it stop the company members themselves digging up a few (metaphorical, metaphysical?) bones of their own as they discovered they were all coming from various directions to attempt this journey together.
Touring the astonishing Church of Saint John the Evangelist on New Briggate, with a commentary-by-headset designed by Imprint for a night event there last year, full of ghostly tales and very tall stories about the building and its occupants, past, present and undead. A jolly thrill.
Taking a walk by the canal basin with Dick, who is preparing with some trepidation for the forthcoming Imprint production, Nights on the Water, a series of evening trips as a unique floating circus, guaranteeing mystery and adventure on the hidden waterways of Leeds with a character called The Archduke Indigo. As if to affirm the spirit of edgy boatmanship in this place, we met two men steering their well-lived-in narrowboat at illegal speed into the lock, with their three little terriers slipping around fearfully-gleefully on top.
Gasping in awe at Temple Mills, Holbeck, a copy of an Egyptian fertility temple linked with Dana of the Ephesians and the god Horus who stands for a perpetuation of cycles. With impressive rapidity of thought Chris breathlessly connected 'the birthing thing' which this building represents with 'the greed/mammon thing' and the exploitation issues it has carried. Temple Mills is in the Leeds red-light zone. It's also a facade, because behind it is a very ordinary looking, currently derelict, set of mill buildings. And it stands on a very empty, liminal piece of scrubland, 'awaiting redevelopment'. All of which got us making further breathless connections about the values and spirits driving a city's urge to regenerate... how? why? for whom?
A masonic(?) plaque on the wall at St John's reads: SIC DEUS DILEXIT MUNDUM which Dick, on the ghost-night commentary cd, translates as GOD IS SICK OF US NOT LEAVING THE MUNDANE. Very funny. The dictionary translation is the possibly opposite-meaning GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD. Funny, I think we got a flavour of both of these perspectives in our interactions with Leeds today.
[Imprint and Pointed Arrow are involved in Leeds' Light Night events in October... I reckon it'll be well worth a night off my onward journey to get back here to see them]
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