Just being here is glorious: two thoughts on refuge

Where do I go from here? from Geoff Broadway on Vimeo.

I've found the news and the reactions to it has been making me mute recently. Not unreactingly mute, but wanting, needing, to add silence more than sound, at least in public. (I am 50% introvert, 50% extrovert, but much of the energy of the outside world is decidedly unappealing right now.)

I've been thinking about two things today though, which I feel like sharing. One is a work by the artist Geoff Broadway, made when he was Artist-in-Residence at Durham Cathedral in 2001, called Where Do I Go From Here? It was a really powerful piece which you can see on Geoff's website or above. I wrote an essay for the brochure at the time - which I can't find right now, although I did find an extract online, which I'll share here, to give you a flavour of Geoff's work and my response to it. The issues are those we face today. They are not purely contemporary issues. David Cameron is to  blame only for his own feebleness and lack of compassion. The problem goes much further. Anywhere, here are a few words from 2001.

Two sample headlines from the front pages of the Daily Express during the last few days: 'ASYLUM: WE ARE BEING INVADED', and 'REFUGEES: FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES'. I didn't read any further...

...Far from creating art in a protected cloister at Durham Cathedral, Geoff Broadway has found himself reinventing the residency as something if not on the front line, then at least somewhere in the war zone, with himself a kind of the war artist or reporter gathering and manipulating stories and

images. Stemming from his discovery of a 12th Century Knocker which could be used to request sanctuary for up to 40 days, (no one was refused, all had to give up their own clothes and stay within rooms at the Cathedral) he has looked outwards from the Durham Peninsula at one of the most pressing changes in local life since the closure of the pits: the dispersal to the North East of a growing number of asylum seekers and refugees from some of the many troubled parts of the world: Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Bosnia, Croatia. The week after an Iraqi Kurd had been murdered in Glasgow, and after reading those headlines, listening to a rough cut of the voices heard in this exhibition was a sobering, humbling and uncomfortable experience. I suspect it will be likewise for those visiting this exhibition...

...These are people whose land has been taken from them, and who are expressing themselves in a foreign tongue. Their comments thus become fascinatingly paradoxical: at once naïve in their expression, and thus 'sincere', the haltingness of the English adding extra layers of poignancy (perhaps unwanted layers), but also artificial and constructed in a way mother-tongue testimony might not be. Although the individuals here speak passionately, bitterness is only apparent in one or two: those whose English is most impressive. It is as if the control of language allows for this expression, this emotion; as if a more rudimentary facility somehow keeps those negative emotions in check, or merely from being expressed or heard. Of course, much of the testimony betrays the wordless fear and loss that night and silence bring. Broadway's installation, poised on the cusp of dark and light, silence and confession or testimony, is an eloquent evocation of the hope and despair implicit in the double-edged concept of refuge...

. ...This is a highly wrought piece of work, despite the rawness of the tales which can be heard. It is concerned with the creation of beauty, with, therefore an aesthetic of pleasure and sensuality rather than a simplistically mimetic one of dislocation and anguish. This seeming contradiction bothers Broadway, makes him uneasy about exploiting people who are now his friends, but he is ultimately not prepared, as an artist, to give up striving for harmony within the experiences shared with him. He does this by putting aside straight realism or documentary for something more exploratory, juxtaposing words and images within a contemplative setting which demands both physical and emotional commitment from the audience.

Much of our reaction to the 'problem' of asylum seekers stems from an ignorance which this work may do a little to combat. Its chances of doing that rest, I think, not on the testimony of the voices you will hear, affecting as that is, but on your willingness to kneel or crouch low enough to let stories be whispered into your ear in the dark, and to look at the sea and the sand and the sky projected upon the water, and your ability to imagine that this is both a mirror (refocus: you can see yourself, and the night sky of exile behind you) and a wishing well. This contemplation is your only place of refuge, of appeal. This is not a sensationalist work, or a liberal work appealing for special treatment, it is essentially a tool of compassion, of feeling with, made for feeling with. This is the sense in which Broadway's nervousness about his own political agenda is resolved, and what makes this a truly suitable work to emerge from a residency at Durham Cathedral. If the World Heritage Site of which the Cathedral is the centre means anything it must surely include a link back to the traditions of shelter, succour and compassion which Broadway identified in the Cathedral's Sanctuary Knocker. The North East must, whether it relishes the prospect or not, find ways in which to continue this tradition in the 21st century, rather than similarly ancient strains of ignorant intolerance."

The second thing I was thinking of was the 8th of the Dunno Elegies in How I Learned to Sing, which is 'set' on Hartington Road in Stockton, a place where many refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants have lived in recent decades. It says anything I want to say right now.

Dunno Elegy 8 

Hartington Road, Stockton-on-Tees

‘Just being here is glorious’ Rilke

If terror is the first thing to marrow our bones

when we see these green hills filter the sky

what next? What comes after fear’s surf breaks

on the tiny pebbles of the everyday?

One foot in front of the other until

you have forgotten that you are not normal.

A letter on a doormat. A dishcloth in the sink.

Cleaning windows on the seventh floor.

Hassan from Iraq, Apollo from the Congo,

Farooq from Sri Lanka, Betty the Afghani,

Honey who would not speak or smile,

place their feet where the Roman empire trod,

the land of Hadrian and the land of angels,

to sing of our  heartening normality,

our placidness and hospitality.

Buttoning up a child’s coat in a wet playground,

toggles the shape of ducks bright against the quilt,

they sing. Listening in their yards to playtime

they sing of home and home and the spaces between.

They chat over coffee to the spirits of family

who do not understand where they have arrived,

who walk through markets confused and adrift

wondering how this light makes familiar shapes

look and feel so different, so distant.

The rain goes through them like a melody

fills the house when they sing in the evenings,

folksongs from their other home, lifting them

like high winds lift tiles to put them down

gently, in the same spot, the same pattern.

All that was solid has melted into haircuts

strange and terrible, misshapen boots,

questions to be answered. But survival

means this becomes home, a place where angels

don’t care if you are coming or going.

You walk through the same rain as angels,

perform your own ceremonies of thanks.