Interstitial Musings

Sitting in the Corn Exchange (with its stacks of past memories, discussed below) Saturday lunchtime in the brief moments before the Playdays show started (oh, the exquisite balance between arriving with just enough time to get a jiggly child settled and rushing in late and flustered) and a similar small breather during the interval, I hit the calm of an interstice.

interstice:

[ad. L. interstiti-um space between, f. *interstit-, ppl. stem of intersistere, f. inter between + sistere to stand; cf. F. interstice (14th c.).]

1. a. An intervening space (usually, empty); esp. a relatively small or narrow space, between things or the parts of a body (freq. in pl., the minute spaces between the ultimate parts of matter); a narrow opening, chink, or crevice.

...

2. a. An intervening space of time; an interval between actions. Now rare.

From the OED. I rather disagree with that "Now rare" for the second definition..

I like interstices (following that second definition), most of them anyway. (I'd omit the time waiting in doctors', dentists', or hospital waiting rooms--and hairdressers'!)

There's a pleasure in being suspended out of the normal flow of things. Nothing to do. Nothing required. Time and space to wait and watch. Sometimes to anticipate.

Waiting for trains, or more especially for connections, falls into this interstitial mould. Except when delays and cancellations occur. Generally, there's the element of anticipation, on an outward journey, or reminiscence, on the return.

Theatre intervals are the best, though. It's partly because of a double removal from the quotidian. The interval is, after all, a gap in a performance which is taking place in the stead of "real life", a space in viewing rather than a space in doing. A space, moreover, in a time when you might well have suspended disbelief, experienced "magic", be anticipating a return to the same magical experience after the interval is over. And, if you stay in the auditorium, the interstice may well be dim, if not actually dark, maybe quite quiet, generally lacking in too many distractions. A good place for reflection.

Living in what I'm hoping is an interstice in my life (no occupation away from home for nearly a year), you'd think I had plenty of time for reflecting. But there are generally too many distractions. These opportunities to just sit don't come along that often. I thought, but came to no conclusion, but to a quietness--poised over the turmoil, out of it, yet remaining of it.

I was reminded of the closing line of a sonnet, The Hospital, by Patrick Kavanagh:

Snatch out of time the passionate transitory"

Heaped Associations

The first time I went into the Cambridge Corn Exchange... was either for the Chaucer paper or the Medieval Romance paper for the Part 2 English Tripos. Can't remember which paper I sat first. The Corn Exchange had just been refurbished and I do recall spending a lot of time admiring the brickwork, tiles and carvings in the walls (it always seemed to freak people out if you sat and stared at the ceiling and thought about things for a long time). Neither a good nor bad introduction to the place. (The refurbishments meant that it had been closed throughout my time as a student.) That was '88.

In '90, I went to see Total Recall there with a friend. (I'd gone back on my declaration never to set foot in Cambridge again--about 18 months after graduating.) I also went on a work outing to the Beer Festival (in the days before it migrated to the City Football Ground and then to Jesus Green) some time in that Summer (or that might have been '91--a quick recce of the souvenir glasses produces '88-ers [not of my doing], 01-ers [one of them mine] and 02-ers [not]). Each time I went in I experienced the feeling of returning to an examination hall, but in better circumstances. A slight flutter of nerves, which is odd really since I don't think I experienced any at the time of the exams.

It was a not entirely satisfactory place to watch a movie: if I remember rightly, we sat up in the balcony with the screen effectively forming a wall where the front, viewing edge, of the balcony ended. Claustrophobic. A little disconcerting for those of us with a fear of heights, since I could feel the drop beyond the screen, even if I couldn't see it.

It was a good venue for the Beer Festival. Too small, I guess, to fit it all in these days. Smoking, or non-smoking, policies are probably easier in an open air setting too. I liked the Beer Festival there.

Since then, a number of gigs (in roughly the right order)--Don MacLean; Jethro Tull; Loudon Wainwright III; Runrig; Marillion; Billy Bragg and the Blokes with The WaIfs; Pete Atkin and Clive James--in those periods where there was anything of interest on (there have been whole seasons where there was little or nothing to draw me there [the gap was so long, I didn't realize until years after it had happened that the Box Office had moved across the street]) and a couple of kiddy shows.

And the memories pile up, attached to various spots within the building. And outside.

And so, a brief personal tour.

Stand first in the open space to the right-hand side of the building. There the lunatic ghosts of the people who chose to sit both Chaucer and Medieval Romance (with the overlap in material and examiners) lurk. I got to recognize these people from the second of the papers (not from anything useful like classes or lectures beforehand!). Also the economists with whom we seemed to be sharing exam slots.

Enter through Door B and it's the Beer Festival. The clink of glasses can be heard up ahead. Two runs of long bars are arranged along the length of the stalls (cleared of seating, obviously). Pick up a glass and a programme and get drinking. Looks very different now. Would the beer have been there the first couple of occasions I was! No chance to really review the architecture. Nor the ceiling! Surprisingly.

Out the same way. In through the main entrance, past the bar, through Door A into the stalls. I've sat down here for gigs, stood for some (occasionally sat up in the gods whilst M sweated with the hordes below). Walk over the self-same spots where the desks were for the exams. I've seen some forgettable stuff (probably omitted from the list, above), some good stuff, and some stupendous things (like the Atkin/James evening or discovering The WaIfs). I think I tend to expect every visit to increase the layers, to add another event of significance. It's certainly true that the last two adult gigs both have added extra resonances. But the older echoes fade: the "exam nerves" are certainly less than they were!

(A further resonance is the tenuous family connection. This operates more strongly when I go to the Royal Exchange in Manchester. I believe, though I've not traced any evidence, that my great (or great-great) grandfather worked there.)

Why should this matter? This build up of memories with repeated visits to a, public, place. It's a small reflection of my experience of the city I've lived in almost my entire adult life. A city small enough that it's not impossible to have many events and associations pile up around a relatively small number of locations, so that memories jostle up against one another in a patchwork of experience in which each patch is multi-faceted. How do I view, for example, Clare Bridge ( pretty picture, part way down this page)? It is, in roughly the right order, at the very least, the place where:

I met a man I was told I'd never meet and who was, remarkably rapidly, of great significance in my life
my closest female friend and I used to stop late in the evening to bemoan our current (miserable/frustrated/unhappy, etc.) state(s)
our only really successful "official" wedding photograph was taken

I sometimes think I've just lived here too long. But moving on would mean in some senses abandoning all those memories. It's not a slate that can be wiped clean. There's no Refresh button and History to delete.

And, of course, there are other places with not just single crystalline defining associations, but layers. Hammersmith Bridge, for starters. (Is there a bridge theme emerging here? Probably. Or, more likely, a proximity to water theme?)

The Review of "Playdays Summertime Singalong"

There's so little art in the construction of a show aimed at pre-school children that I think I'll have a go at writing a program to generate a (could this be lucrative?) pile of the things with minimal human input.

It amused its target audience, though. Eyes that round I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't actually seen them. Add that memory of a small child's rapture to those associations.

I got to eat two ice creams too!