St Ives was full of memories - memories from the past and memories made for the future. We missed Shanty Baba's Sunday Ghost Walk, but we heard him perform his beautiful piece about the shifting times and tides of the town. I will never forget the Thursday night Frug at St Ives Arts Club, a place I had always wanted to visit. It exceeded all expectations thanks to the mix of artists, musicians, poets and players there. The Bootlegger DJ and his amazing collection of blues and psychedelic 45s, played on a customised record deck that featured mermaids and pirates. Natives of St Helen's connected in St Ives.Poetry was performed. Virginia Woolf's lighthouse could be seen from the upstairs window. Mere days before our visit the waves had crashed over the roof of the boat boarded building. Barbara Hepworth had danced on those floorboards, by the red velvet curtains. Who had babysat for the triplets that night?
Every view of the sea was an artist's impression. I watched old cine films from the 50s and 60s, shown in a church with a welcoming congregation, braving the torrential rain for a fund raising evening. Many in the audience recognised friends and family, local characters and events. Fisherman in shirts and suits, baiting their lines. Little girls in white dresses dancing round the Knill monument to a tune played by an ancient fiddler. One of them grew up to become the wife of the man sharing his father's old cine films.Streets of fisherman's cottages still had lines of washing strung across them. Cats thronged the quayside. It was poignant, a time past, alive in the present for those watching. Perhaps film really can steal your soul.I stood in Bernard Leach's pottery watching old film footage of him at work, his boots in the corner of the room next to me. Dead man's shoes.
We visited Barbara Hepworth's garden and studio, where her presence is palpable,not just in her work rooms, but in the simple single bed with its blue and white cotton bedspread, still made up in the summerhouse.There were postcards in a file, written by children who I am guessing must have visited with their schools. Arthur wrote in his newly acquired handwriting , after the heading 'Dear Barbara" - "I am sorry you are dead'. I know just how he feels, but the wonder of this liminal place on the cusp and threshold of so many worlds, sea and shoreline, past and present, land and sky, is that it's all still there just waiting to be recognised.
I was sorry to miss the Ghost Walk. It was a ghost walk in St Ives many years ago that inspired me to start mine in Bakewell, and that in turn helped me to do an MA in folklore and cultural tradition.The rest is history.
Tuesday 19 March 2013
Ghost walk in St Ives
St Ives was full of memories - memories from the past and memories made for the future. We missed Shanty Baba's Sunday Ghost Walk, but we heard him perform his beautiful piece about the shifting times and tides of the town. I will never forget the Thursday night Frug at St Ives Arts Club, a place I had always wanted to visit. It exceeded all expectations thanks to the mix of artists, musicians, poets and players there. The Bootlegger DJ and his amazing collection of blues and psychedelic 45s, played on a customised record deck that featured mermaids and pirates. Natives of St Helen's connected in St Ives.Poetry was performed. Virginia Woolf's lighthouse could be seen from the upstairs window. Mere days before our visit the waves had crashed over the roof of the boat boarded building. Barbara Hepworth had danced on those floorboards, by the red velvet curtains. Who had babysat for the triplets that night?
Every view of the sea was an artist's impression. I watched old cine films from the 50s and 60s, shown in a church with a welcoming congregation, braving the torrential rain for a fund raising evening. Many in the audience recognised friends and family, local characters and events. Fisherman in shirts and suits, baiting their lines. Little girls in white dresses dancing round the Knill monument to a tune played by an ancient fiddler. One of them grew up to become the wife of the man sharing his father's old cine films.Streets of fisherman's cottages still had lines of washing strung across them. Cats thronged the quayside. It was poignant, a time past, alive in the present for those watching. Perhaps film really can steal your soul.I stood in Bernard Leach's pottery watching old film footage of him at work, his boots in the corner of the room next to me. Dead man's shoes.
We visited Barbara Hepworth's garden and studio, where her presence is palpable,not just in her work rooms, but in the simple single bed with its blue and white cotton bedspread, still made up in the summerhouse.There were postcards in a file, written by children who I am guessing must have visited with their schools. Arthur wrote in his newly acquired handwriting , after the heading 'Dear Barbara" - "I am sorry you are dead'. I know just how he feels, but the wonder of this liminal place on the cusp and threshold of so many worlds, sea and shoreline, past and present, land and sky, is that it's all still there just waiting to be recognised.
I was sorry to miss the Ghost Walk. It was a ghost walk in St Ives many years ago that inspired me to start mine in Bakewell, and that in turn helped me to do an MA in folklore and cultural tradition.The rest is history.
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