23.3.05
Megalithomania!
appeared first on the psychogeography mailinglist
John Michell is a courtly old gentleman with white hair, suit and creases. He is the first speaker on, in some other dimension, but
reality takes a spin and the metro lets him down. Later, Saj will ask him whether he holds with leys and sacred spots in London. Michell will hesitate, until a mention of Brian Barritt's Notting Hill Triangle sends him into a spin on London Fields and Tantra. The boys get on.
First on, as it turns out, is the human interest - a talk on the people's right to visit the stones when they please, with fair service paid to the Battle of the Beanfields, and poor Wally - who was the first in recent years to squat stonehenge and paid for it dearly with a mind rotted away by antipsychotics in a state- sanctioned stay at a mental hospital.
Then, John Michell, now on really and properly. With many up-close and aerial slides, he expounds on the straight lines and the circles linking the stones around stonehenge. He has slides of map neatly marked with degree lines and latitude and longitude in a spidery script with a proper ink pen. I don't know what he is talking about but I like the pictures and it's good to have a hobby. Suzanne the activist lady from some druid order later says it's important for men to specialise - this is when Raga points out there was only one woman speaker. Suzanne doesn't believe in people nicking each others' roles. I do think men are much better at cataloguing stuff and drawing straight lines precisely over circles.
We go outside for a fag and find Donal. He has been up all night with a mysterious bout of insomnia. He feels better for having come down. It seems to me like everyone here has shared friends plus at least one other friend there that the others don't know, so there is a lot of chatting to random people all day.
Conway Hall is so inviting. It has been the centre of the Ethical Society in South London since the 1930s. The Talking Stick pagan society apparently still holds talks in the pub round the corner, although the society has cheesily changed its name to Secret Chiefs.
The stones of the hall hold the traces of a million excellent meetings from the shambolic to the rocking. You can hang in the gantries or pay attention on the ground floor. When your eyes drift up from the speaker you can read 'to thine own self be true'. Going to a Conway Hall event is like holding a reunion at the school you always wanted to attend. The fag breaks are as educational as the talks..."
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Megalithomania!
