The outside was definitely outside. Not next door. With no formal music education or experience of arranging music for other performers I couldn’t make a sideways step at the same level. But despite not being able to, I didn’t want to. I was looking for a third space, a mutable place which could take from fine art, musical and theatrical traditions but allow for uncurtailed play. This setting would hopefully be different from, but not necessarily less than, white cube performance art or conservatoire repertoire.
This images shows Bermondsey Abbey, which was a one of the largest Cluniac monasteries in Europe and a place of pilgrimage. It existed from 700 – 1540 (when the monasteries were dissolved by Henry the 8th). The long road connecting the river and the abbey is Bermondsey Street, which still exists today, with St Mary Magdalen Church sat where one corner of the abbey used to be. The abbey is built on an Island, Beornmund’s Island, (from which the area takes its name), amongst the surrounding marsh land riddled with tidal streams.
Traces of this community are visible all over Bermondsey, in topography, nomenclature and architecture. I adore the ritual of walking around this place, and the more I circle the river, the market, and Bermondsey Spa the more fascinated I become. There is a desire to sink under tarmac, trace the flow of tidal streams that run beneath. I’ve seen them burst through cracks and flow out into the street, like channels of desire. They can be buried, hidden, re-routed, but never stemmed.
I read a little about this place, and speculatively started to write.
