| Fri Feb 19 2010 |
Sylvain Margaine - Forbidden Places |
Letter to Sylvain Margaine
Now I am in receipt of and lost in your book “Forbidden Places”.
Indeed it is a journey. A journey I can take from my sofa. A journey I have already taken in my earlier life and a journey I shall undertake in the future.
I have to tell you how I first came across your project.
In London, in a small side-street off the Kings Road in Chelsea, in a small house from another time but vibrantly alive, is a unique independent book shop – John Sandoe Books.
Piled high over at least two floors and staircases are books on every subject imaginable. In there I find myself drawn to subjects I didn’t previously have any knowledge of or know I had any interest in. That is the purpose of such a place, a key for unlocking our curiosity.
I am rarely in London these days but I remain on their mailing list. It was in their last list that I found “Forbidden Places” entered as one of their favourite books of 2009.
I know I can trust their recommendations!
You begin at the Beelitz Sanatorium in Potsdam, Germany, a city I have visited in the past and performed in and a city I shall visit and perform in again later this year. I have however never knowingly seen the Beelitz Sanatorium. If time allows and if time has allowed it to remain, I shall visit this summer.
As I move through the book, the journey, most of the places are unfamiliar to me. Then suddenly I am somewhere so familiar to me I am rushed into a vortex of time and place.
CANE HILL ASYLUM
I was born and grew up in Croydon, South London. The latter part of my schooling was at Purley High School for Girls in Old Coulsdon, a short but steep walk from Cane Hill Asylum.
As part of our Social Studies class we had the option of “working” one class period a month or so at the local old folks home or Cane Hill. Most of the time I opted for Cane Hill.
The whole area around this part of Surrey was dotted with such institutions, built in the 19th century for the mentally ill of London. Whether they were built in what was then the lush countryside, far from the urban and suburban sprawl of London, for the benefit of the patients themselves or for their removal from the sight of society, I don’t know.
Netherne, St. Lawrences, Cane Hill were all places and names familiar to the residents of Surrey and were seeds in the wild imaginations of teenage boys and girls who were at the local schools. The haunting haunted gothic mansions high up on the hills or buried in the valleys. Horror stories of escaped psychopaths hunting down those of us who dared to skip school and spend our mornings and afternoons in the surrounding fields or the churchyard of the nearby beautiful ancient Chaldon Church, where further tales of Black Masses and sacrifices would be passed amongst us. Rumours of a certain Robert Jones, brother to a famous rock star, being an inmate.
I was a huge fan of David Bowie at the time, and to this day his albums, The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane remain amongst some of the most influential to me. Albums that contain so many links to his brother. At the time it all seemed just rumours….and the work of a great pioneering genius.
Tales of restricted areas where those so deranged had to be locked up, their food pushed to them with a stick through small hatches in metal doors. Patients who had to be bandaged and bound during full moons because they would attempt to eat themselves alive.
What I do know is that the patients I saw there were some of the most fragile, vulnerable and damaged people in our society and I know they taught me the now almost seemingly unnecessary virtue of compassion.
After leaving school and while trying to find my way into a life of writing and music, I took a job as a “Ward Assistant” at Cane Hill for a short time. Indeed there were restricted areas that ward assistants were not allowed to work in. What went on there, I never knew.
What I did discover there were the realities of lives wasted incarcerated in institutions….a young girl who became pregnant out of marriage….a young boy who in times of unbelievable poverty stole a loaf of bread…..individuals who showed just a little too much independence of spirit….Joe, who I had the privilege of coming to know in his 80s had been there since he was 13 years old.
Whilst I know for sure there were kind and compassionate people working at Cane Hill, I eventually chose to leave after witnessing mis-treatment and abuse of some of the patients. The demise of the “asylum”, in the true meaning of the word was already underway. However, I know I learnt more from my time spent there than all the time I spent at school.
On my album Hopeless Cases is the track Cane Hill
Here
Upon these ghostly shadows
Of men and women
There are no smiles
Singly
They mingle
With he greyness of the walls
And at strange angles
They travel on
To nowhere
Each a nucleus of sadness
And despair
Small
Or no conversation
Passes their cigarette stained lips
They sit
The lonely ones
Sitting eternally
In institutions
That have become their eyes
That have become their arms
Their legs
They are empty now
Just shells
Moving back and forth
Upon a shore
Of some uncharted beach
Up steep green hills
They linger
Like the darkest thoughts
That push themselves into your mind
You cannot question them
For they will not answer you
They are our deepest fears.
Outside its high walls, on the steep hills of its grounds, horses gently grazed the lush green grass in the summer sun.
Years later, closures, neglect, fires, planners, “developers” ……
At the time of writing I am no longer sure what remains. Maybe on my next visit to London I will visit the area.
How strange it is Sylvain that it takes my move to Belgium and a book by a Frenchman with a penchant for these haunting dreams of the past to take me back so far!
Moving on.
For now I will take these journeys, Canfranc etc etc from my sofa. As and when and if I make these physical journeys and discoveries I will take notes and experiences with me.
Thank you for opening these doors to our abandoned and forgotten heritage to me.
Warmest regards,
Anne Clark.
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Posted on Feb 19, 10 | 3:16 pm
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