The Memorials of Glasgow

A few weeks ago I went to Glasgow.

On our first day we walked to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, pushing through a grey morning in a city that wore it like an old jumper as the rain flickered happily in the air.

I’d never heard of the Glasgow Boys– a group of anti-establishment painters, active in the late 1800s– but an exhibition of their work provided me with a whistle stop tour. Many of the pieces felt tailor made for a sentimental softie such as myself, with sensitive evocations of impossible rural scenes, whispered on to the canvases. They made me think of Thomas Hardy, another favourite of mine who conjured up an imagined past and set about defending it from corruption with vigour.

But the painting that struck me the most was not an idyllic landscape but a portrait. Emerging from a dark sea of paint, that barely hints at a room, is the bright face of Old Tom Morris, who leans on a wooden table and raises a dainty glass to us. The placard tells us that Tom Morris is a ‘local character’ who the artist, S.J. Peploe, painted multiple times. I think the term local character is brilliantly provocative– it animates the mischief and vitality that Peploe had encased in Tom’s frozen expression.

I think the incredible lightness of his portrayal is not only an attempt to reflect his nature but also a philosophical point being made by the artist. Tom represents the veracity of (then-) modern life that fascinated and inspired many of the Glasgow Boys and he is presented as the antidote to the artifice of academic painting of the time. In the wake of his smile, we feel the warmth of chatter down the local and the joy of our friends’ idiosyncrasies. It is a memorial not only to Old Tom Morris, but to the weightlessness afforded by sincerity and the sharp crunch of gravel on the walk home.

With this in mind, as I walked away from Tom’s radiance, I was reminded of a more recent phenomenon that seeks out an unfiltered reality. On TikTok and YouTube and Instagram there are thousands of videos of people featuring ‘ordinary’, often vulnerable, individuals as the basis of their content. Most recently, I have seen videos of street photographers approaching homeless people to take their portrait.

On the one hand, it can seem fairly harmless, or even positive. We can cut through the sanctimonious, hateful bullshit of the media and the widespread ignorance of the social internet and be placed face-(to-screen)-to-face with a person, rather than a contrived and deliberately divisive caricature. They are made real for those who might otherwise dismiss them as an inconvenient and distant artefact. Their humanity is insisted upon and their dehumanisation made much harder– though some people, no doubt, continue to try their best.

But they also become an object for the creator and a tool that ultimately tells a story that they have no control over; a convenience, a fable. A lot of the time accompanying captions and comments show just how easily the individual can sink below the surface of platitudes and life lessons like ‘never judge a book…’ and ‘we are all one human race’. Is it really imbuing someone with dignity to broadcast their life for another’s gain, even if it is under the guise of ‘art’ or ‘creation’? Sometime the artists themselves can see their intended narrative spiral out of control.

An even more contentious version of the same phenomenon is the filming of homeless people being given money or food by the creator. Again, it can be useful to highlight good deeds and humanise a marginalised group, but can we truly be comfortable as an unsuspecting bystander is immortalised, and consumed into a memorial to the harsh realities of our society.

Granted, the question of how Old Tom Morris would feel about being painted if he had know he would be hanging on the walls of the Kelvingrove as a kind of zany embodiment of provincial life seems a bit inconsequential. But for the modern subjects, who are captured in the much more immediate mediums of photography and video, it seems like a very pertinent consideration to make.

The next day we went to see some more literal memorials. The Glasgow Necropolis is a strange place, if I’m honest. The paths wind breathlessly up a hill, lined with dull stones in a multitude of greys. This is the antithesis of Old Tom Morris saluting the passing museum guests. This is a performance, a most silent and still song and dance.

See the tallest column and largest name and think of me, not as I was or ever could be.

There is no truth to discover, really, because we’re forced to accept their story as it is carved before us. The cloud of sorrow barely dampens the shrill ring of wealth that echoes around the extravagant tombs and statues. But the artifice is also fragile. Another group walks a few feet behind us and laughs at some apparent contradiction chiseled into the stone. Like our painting in reverse, the humanity seeps through the facade. Suddenly the desperation is all around, the human tragedy of monuments built to assert the agency of the dead makes the faces of statues cry.

Memorials are for the living, and those who once lived. More is revealed in the way we react to them than to the things themselves or, obviously, by the people and things they memorialise. Each sacred thing takes a piece of each person who spends a while with it, and that is it’s power.

As we left and headed down toward the cathedral, we walked past a headstone torn in half down the middle like Styrofoam. I felt the sting of sadness and shook my head, as though for them but really for me.

Ultimately, we end up as the interpretations of those we surround ourselves with and those who choose to surround us. It is empowering and debilitating all at once but the contradiction persists at a kind of equilibrium. We should give care to our interpretations, and be sceptical of the lenses through which others are portrayed.

–

From a crowded wall at Kelvingrove

Old Tom Morris beams

Towards the muted audience

Those eyes seem glad to see.

–

“Here you see the everyman

I’ve caught and brought to view.

The meting of his dignity

I will entrust to you.”

–

This is Old Tom’s legacy:

One thump of beating heart.

So, did he know the consequence

Of this shallow part

You wrote for him, then silenced

His laugh with tender strokes,

And turned his face to playing ground

For reflection-seeking folks.

–

That is not Tom Morris,

Who’s collapsing into view.

Tom just holds a mirror up

And takes a piece of you.

What’s in a name?

The one they tucked away quietly,

With the lightness of a leaf

On a callous autumn breeze.

–

Oh, just the little grains of life

That once rattled and pierced the air

With impossible vitality

Before settling with the rest.

–

All tied up

In those fragile words

Is just the fragile vision

Of countless days spent.

–

Before— from time to time—

When rolling past the gates,

I’d peer over the chasm

Towards unfettered youth.

–

Here’s comes the nostalgist;

Prodding the memory,

Checking the pulse

Before we both flatline.

–

As the casing cracks,

Wear curator’s gloves

And extract the severed legacy

To place behind tempered glass.

–

I clutch these artefacts

That crumble slowly

Under the weight of years

And years to come.

–

But the new words

On those monuments

Reduces, by one,

My enchanted hoard.

The View From The Galaxy Bridge

Yesterday I tried to set on paper, something of a place

where I would walk when I was younger,

One that now– looking back– seemed so full of wonder and delight.

A bridge, enclosed in windows that looped

all the way ’round and sprung high from the side of a town centre car park.

The heavy steps of mum and dad would shake the floor

and start the tingling in my feet. You were held above a nameless street

as cars and people moved beneath you.

It led to the cinema, with high ceilings

and the mingling smells of treats trapped in the carpet.

The films, of course, were a treat as well,

but on the way back you’d walk across the bridge– a space

between the world you’d just inhabited

and the car ride home again. And there– with the blood

still rushing back to your feet– the thought

floated in the dusty air that maybe it was all real

and that– as you sat fixed in your seat– the world outside

was changing too. And I miss the spring

in those hopeful strides– past the inviting depths of

the school night dusk where you can live

your new-learnt truths.

I can’t go there now, and perhaps its best that I can’t

because I don’t think I really miss the place;

I’m only chasing the enchanting glow

that’s drifting further into the haze. And the more I try

to pull it into view, the edges get softened by my clumsy

hands and failing wits.

But I still cup the flames of that feeling

of crossing the Galaxy bridge.

In The Shadows

“Hello.”

We stand in the shadow of a handshake–

That most strange salutation of an outstretched, peaceful hand.

That with which we poke and grasp our way through this hazardous coil,

With our arms outstretched before us like inquisitive children.

As though to say: “What is a friend,

If not someone with whom you would trade the many relics of a day lived

And gladly fight each microscopic battle that ensues.”

All for the reassuring clasp of skin upon embattled skin.

But here we stand in its chill absence.

It is painfully implied,

As it dances on that barrier held between us with the power of will.

It mocks the calculating mind with its impossible, prohibited simplicity.

–

“Hello x”

Our new lovers are taunted by apparitions on small screens.

The walls of their rooms, dark in those illicit hours of romance,

Are danced upon by the haunting shadow of a kiss,

Which might yet lead to nought.

I know we can talk,

But what weight is conveyed by the pressing,

Of skin on tender skin.

–

“Hello.”

Upon returning home, a mother and child cannot unite,

Until she scrubs the passengers from her longing arms–

Those unthinking specs, who enjoy the touch that they deprive.

The shadow of an embrace lingers in the doorway–

An awkward guest–

And hovers where patient children sit.

Just wait– let me renounce these words and cool the sting

Of distance, through the touch of skin on tender skin.

A game of chess

For them it’s like a game of chess;

Two blokes try their bloody best

To win the squares of Britain’s board,

Under which our hope is stored.

–

But behind each silent, stoic pawn

Is hungry nurse or child born

In poverty, used in games,

Played to the hum of distant pain.

–

Though some may play with heart on sleeve,

Riding like knight or cavalry,

The ever cunning tablemate

Trots round the board with no mistake.

–

As when you’re watching from afar,

And you’re not the piece with which they charge,

You tend to have a clearer view

Of how the rules might bend for you.

–

‘Our guy won! Your guy lost!’

‘Our Bobby Fischer sees Boris off!’*

They can shake hands, their wounds are healed

While others sweep their battlefield.

–

So sure, this is a game of chess;

We cheer for those that we like best.

But remember those in ‘cheaper’ seats

Are crushed by passing kings and queens.

–

*a reference to Boris Spassky, a Russian chess grandmaster who lost to American Bobby Fischer in 1972