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A spider's web | photography/text: pablo luis gonzález |
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© Pablo Luis González 2004 Photographs can be used at no charge for non-commercial purposes, ie, community groups, students, schools, etc. To request an image or images email me with a description and location of the photograph(s), stating your proposed use of them. A JPEG file(s) at 300 dpi will be emailed back as soon as possible. No further copies can be made without the permission of the copyright holder. |
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5. "I used to live a few houses down from yours". He had receding hairline, and his hair was already going grey, as he approached me several years later after an exhibition of black and white photographs I held at the Take 5 Café, on the ground floor of Hull Central Library. I still am not sure where exactly he used to live, or to visualise him as the slightly awkward teenager he probably was, the dust of innumerable demolitions having fogged my memory. One family left for us, poor students, a nice comfy easy chair as they moved out. Most people were just gone overnight, lost. A porcelain hand wash basin was smashed. The blue motifs on white background disappeared in a myriad of fragments scattered all over the floor. I had not listened properly, not really, to the successive advice and warnings that my friends had given me to rescue it. A piece of Victoriana laid in bits on what remained of that bathroom, pondering on a glorious past built on pomposity and bones, already having become ash and dust. I had managed to rescue most of my possessions, even on one occasion snatching them from the hands of a couple of intruders, as I abandoned the house just ahead of the tidal of vandals preceding the demolition squads. 69 Argyle Street did exist for not much longer. The terracotta richness of the façades of former merchants' houses which had become cheap shops, the spinning of chips and numbers in a bingo hall, although this last assertion speaks aloud of my ignorance of what happens within such places, the mysteries shielded by yet more ubiquitous net curtains whispering on the windows of innumerable bed-sitters and semi-derelict flats: these were some of the contours that defined much of the geography of the environment I had moved into for a while. One evening the padlock that secured my motorcycle was removed and was left sitting on the saddle. The nod to the watching lads was acknowledged. Underage pregnancy, Catholic schools, a stand piano sitting on a bygone drawing room where scale after scale of notes would cascade out of young fingers, a motorcyclist cop riding almost every evening to see his young and pretty girlfriend further up the street, leaving during the early hours of the morning as the glass panes on the windows resonated in sympathy with the roaring sound of his machine's engine: breezes and storms that wheezed through Granville Street, ruffling families and houses alike. Bright red poppies riding high tall masts as silent figures of steel and wood sprang up on Queens Gardens, cushioned by the whispers and piercing cries of children playing, oblivious to the dark symbolism of it all with the innocence of years that have not come yet. Totemic splashes of yellow metal immersed in a silent conversation with unseen sculptural forms hiding, perhaps in arrogant disdain or because of the timidity resulting from untried volumes and spaces, behind the solid plain walls of the art college, reminiscent of an ancient tectonic structure. Outside, under the burning sun or the sharp abrazing sleet, towering meters commanded the lives of drivers for a brief moment, steps ticking closer and closer, ticket books in hand. I was eventually welcomed to my new flat by a cheerful Christmas tree dancing to the tune of the industrial rhythms of Wincolmlee, rejoicing on top of a tall and bored grain silo. Pablo Luis González / Hull: January 2004 Part 6 | Printer friendly | Don't Miss the Sun » Comment »
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