Audio article
The thing about ideas, says David Lynch, is that you don’t have one, then you do.1
In late November, 1974, the visionary auteur, Werner Herzog, set out from Munich to Paris, on foot, to the deathbed of his friend and mentor, the film critic, Lottie H. Eisner, convinced that in doing so, he could save her life. As it went, she did live, for some time, and Herzog’s quixotic diary of his three-week, five hundred mile pilgrimage was documented in often feverish and hallucinatory present tense in Of Walking In Ice (Vom Gehen im Eis), first published in 1978. He also wanted to be on his own for a bit, chronicling it all back to us, from the lucid edge, mirroring any one of his films.
I was speaking with the American critic and curator, Paul Holdengräber, who has interviewed Herzog on several occasions2. Paul assured me that Herzog would not think of himself as a Romantic, as I had inferred. Yet, his undertaking resonates somewhat with that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who, in 1777, rode out on horseback from Weimar, travelling a hundred miles (160.93 km) north to the forest of the Harz region, seeking a sign, or portent, following his sister’s death earlier in the year, whilst confronting himself, and his limits, with much inner wrangling.
Pilgrimages take many forms then. In Agnès Varda’s, feminist masterpiece, Vagabond (1985), the protagonist, Mona, (a sixteen-year-old unfiltered and unaffected Sandrine Bonnaire), is found frozen dead in a ditch in the opening scene, her body not yet decomposed. Varda then cleverly ‘pieces’ Mona back together in the rear-view mirror via a litany of characters, and non-actors, (some desirable, and some less so) that Mona encountered in her final weeks and days, prior to jacking in her job as a secretary in Paris and changing her name, determined not to be defined by the system fated for her and flaunting the mantra: “Je m’en fous – je bouge” – I don’t care – I move on.
Varda, often termed the “Grandmother of the French New Wave”, was experimenting with cinéma verité at this time and her faux documentary style (in which she would also come in and out of the frame) leant her films their idiosyncratic and yet ostensibly political vibe. Her debut, La Pointe Courte (1955), is just good because it is the result of a woman with ideas trying her hand at filmmaking without any formal training whatsoever. She did not know the rules to break them, fact.
Life bleeds into art, in that Vagabond was inspired by the story of a woman found frozen on a field which Varda had read about in the papers. She then went to talk to, and informally interview, a string of homeless people. She listened to their stories, and paid attention to them. In short, she made them feel heard. This care for the marginal and displaced puts me in mind of both John Berger’s A Seventh Man (with Jean Mohr) (1975) and Pig Earth (1979), the latter of which is his spirited trilogy on escaping the North London literary bourgeoisie (he had been writing for The New Statesman) and decamping in permanent exile to the French countryside, where he would remain, to live amongst, and with peasants, charting the eclipse of their life and rituals through his trademark, painterly attention to a sensual examination of the seasons, written in short and surrealistic verse, illuminating our common humanity, and what we have come to lose.
Vagabond translates in French as Sans Toit Ni Loi, “with neither shelter nor law”. In Mona is contained an impulsive, even feral, quality which compels people towards her, without them quite understanding why. Within the women she comes across, she inspires envy, comingling with fascination (her very essence, or élan vital makes them question their own, or lack of), or that which has been ironed out of them.
In one scene, an academic, Mme Landier (played by Macha Méril), picks Mona up and they drive around for a bit. Revolted by Mona’s bad smell but also drawn to her, class distinctions come to the fore. Mona’s more immediate, sensual, responses to the physical geography they wind through contrast with her own. There is an epiphany in the film in which Mme Landier gets electrocuted messing about with a poorly fitted lamp. Critics fielded something of the divine into it, suggesting this could have been Mona, waking Mme Landier up from the stupor of her unsatisfactory marriage. As Mona is ‘uncovered’ through the stories told about her, we are reminded that none of us are seen, or will come to be seen, in the same way by anyone we know.
There is one scene where she eats fish; it glistens on her lips. Her eroticism and untranslatability unnerve others. Her fate is sealed, as she wanders about the Languedoc Roussillon wine country, also in winter, at the mercy of the contingency and kindness (or otherwise) of strangers (she is raped). She takes payment for sex, sleeps on roadside verges, or where ever she can; loving her boyfriend, but maybe not enough, and believing that she can have out of capital - and her lot - when she clearly cannot.
Aside from the nomadic element, or vagabonding, what unites both Herzog and Mona is their unflinching individualism and internal lack of restraint, or heroism. Herzog’s mental state descends as he lives off milk and tangerines, his feet swollen and sore, breaking into shelters like a vagrant, and occupying the liminal thresholds of a major filmmaker gone rogue in the death frost of a German winter. Mona, deep down, must have been, scared. It takes risk and courage to get up and go, not knowing what will happen.
In September, 2023, I carried an amp on my back across Europe. A friend of mine asked why, prompting this post. But the problem with extrapolations post facto is that we are, at our best, an unreliable narrator. I have ideas as to why, of course, which I’ll outline below.
Guy Debord and The Situationists didn’t harp on about cities and public spaces being spaces for us to wander about in, and have contingent encounters, or dérives, for nothing. Theirs was a revolutionary method of urban wandering in groups designed to sabotage the boredom and ennui of the Spectacle, (which would be a nice idea today if we weren’t all glued to our screens). The dérive still holds credibility for a branch of academics, psychogeographers, and Sinclair-ites with the time and money (aka they bought a flat in London in the 70s/80s) to spend their days walking around the M25, clocking brutalist architecture and grass shoots, or peddling to Hastings on a pair of plastic swans). It remains though, that, as with improvisation, per se, unstructured, chance encounters encourage a type of concrete sociality which resists the atomisation of the neoliberal subject under advanced capitalism.
The Surrealists had already preceded Debord in epitomising the revolutionary imagination of touch, via such chance meetings upon the street, in André Breton’s cornerstone of Surrealism, the novel, and dream-like Nadja (1928). It opens with the question “Who am I?” and is shot through with disarming lines such as “beauty will be compulsive, or it will not be all”. (Although such beauty was at Nadja’s expense, who may well be an erotic figment of the Surrealist male imagination, and whose very existence the reader questions.)
I was sat in a cafe in Porto, with an album scheduled for release in two days. Anticipating the pending non-event, in which nothing would happen, I decided to undo that prospect. If listeners weren’t going to come to my music, I’d take it to them, which meant doing something IRL. As Jacques Attali writes, in Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1977) music has the potential to be a subversive act. Moreover, he cites: “[o]f the only worthwhile researchers: undisciplined ones" (Attali, 1985: 133).3
At Edinburgh airport, my rucksack weighed in at just over 13 kilos. This was gradually reduced to around 11 kilos, as I discarded non-essentials along the route, growing lighter.
Leaving Porto meant keeping the river on your left, and following a series of yellow arrows. The river would then turn into The Atlantic. For 12-14 days, I would walk 280 km, averaging 22-29 km a day, carrying an amp on my back, with no time for rest days. The act of simply getting up and going every morning, often heading out at 6:30 a.m. in the dark, waiting for the light to break open the sky, was straightforward and self-contained. Besides, after breaking my collarbone in November, last year, and doing a gig forty eight hours later, in which the footage reveals I was even standing on a chair, in dialogue with the drummer, at one point in the night—we can do anything if we really want it.
I found this sign in Ribeira, Porto, on one of the main thoroughfares. Just along from it was an Italian opera singer flaunting her reverb outside H&M, and three teenage girls singing and dancing and clapping for the cameras. Further along was a photographer with an antiquated pinhole camera, from which you could have your photo taken for ten euros. Across the bridge, over the River Douro, there was a bear playing electric guitar in 30 degrees heat.
The next morning I followed music to the cathedral, got my passport stamped, and then found myself wandering the narrow alleyways of Ribeira, with washing hanging out, plant pots, and cats, when I happened upon this public toilet, with a gratuity box, and no attendant. Inside, was washing up liquid in lieu of hand wash. I’m not sure why I am drawn to photographing stuff like this, but here.
In contrast, we’ve had a cold spell of late, and I’ve been hiding out under the quilt, watching films. I put on Jonathan Glazier’s hypnotic Under the Skin (2013): the disarming beauty and incongruity of Scarlett Johansson and her thousand yard stare, driving a white van down Argyle Street, with hidden cameras, luring these young Glaswegian lads back to her place, and no sooner unlocking the door, than walking them under a desirous sea of black oil, as they disrobe, their dicks rock hard, and ready to implode, to that killer soundtrack.
Then, there’s the sheer otherworldliness and primeval force of the Scottish landscape, with panning shots made uneasy by the faint engine of the motorcycle getting closer, and, as the film goes on, she’s slowly gaining empathy, lingering upon her reflection in the mirror: Is this me?—symbolising the sense of estrangement and deep-seated need for connection common to all of Michel Faber’s protagonists.
I stopped for a morning coffee next to this pharmacists. It was 29 degrees centigrade, and only half nine in the morning. The barista was having a panic attack at there being three of us in the queue. I later asked her if she was okay, and her friend translated for me, then wished me a bom caminho.
A photographer friend of mine who lives in Lisbon said I should come here for the light. I initially trained as a painter and still tend to think of ‘composition’ as a painter would. So, this is how I frame a photograph, in terms of what is falling in, or out, of the frame. (This tendency is clearly marked in how I composed the Liner Notes lyric booklet for Space Junk.)
I exit Lidl, on a roundabout, to concrete into glory, captured by the light falling upon the foliage outside these apartment blocks. And lone cats sat in windows.
I caught this singular rose in full bloom. Its gorgeous rouge offset against the discoloured walls.
YouTube suggests a podcast with Nick Cave in conversation with Krista Tippett.4 I’m listening and she’s asking him a specific question on ‘improvisation’. Cave explains that he and Warren will just go into the studio, mess about for a bit, get something to eat, and not really speak, then go back into the studio, adding that (between them): “it’s an act of love”.
I had a clear stretch of the ocean before me and a bright blue sky. All I knew was that I wanted to Bluetooth the tracks over The Atlantic, and why not? It was an image I had in mind that I lived out. I took the tripod and positioned it on a suitable rock, checking the frame. I then took the other phone and pressed play. Other pilgrims and passers-by recorded me on their phones, which prompted conversation later in the alburgues, and led to new followers. It was really the absurdity of my carrying the hardware that aroused curiosity. For those of you who have followed my posts on social, you might be aware that I did a similar durational performance in Venice last year, in which I performed a series of guerilla gigs and random dances in public space, disrupting the flow of tourism, in a city which is effectively a stage set.
Just north of the surf town of Esponsende, the coast is wild and untamed, and the beaches could have been the West Coast of the U.S.A. I did improvised dances to the instrumental “Glory Skin”, and to the Native American drum and chant inspired “Dream Catcher” in which I read aloud from an institutional spam inbox. I later uploaded them on my YouTube channel, which you can view/subscribe to here.
At points along the way were boards like this, littered with signatures and dates, a form of testimony. I didn’t have a marker on me so did my best with a ball point pen.
We found this gas station in Viladesuso, after spending the day with a Czech woman called Katerina, who I kept seeing on the route, (this happened). Inside, brazen, there was this cat. I have nothing else to say other than it appeared to be posing amidst the barbie regalia, candy and confectionary— savouring the limelight.
Just along from the gas station, we found this man blowing bubbles outside his caravan. The bubbles here were tinged pink with the evening light.
Sure I needed a rest stop, and having visions of ceremoniously dumping the amp in a verge, I booked myself in provisionally to stay another night at an alternative accommodation, but the next morning, I got up, and kept going. It gets compulsive.
Heading onwards towards the Spanish border, Katerina and I hooked up with two Irish men, Dan and Charlie, and a group of others. We had the wind in our faces all the way, and most of the route was exposed and directly on the water. The others stopped for the night in Viana do Castelo, yet we three carried on to Carreço. It was another killer 29 km, and the last 2 km went on forever. Charlie took my mind off it by streaming Merry Clayton’s infamous audition on “Gimme Shelter”. Clayton was pregnant at the time, and when Mick asked her to do it again, she thought, I’ll show you. And show them she did, there’s no other recording like it, if you haven’t heard it. Sheer electric. You can listen to the isolated vocal here. 5
As it went, the bar in the photo above wasn’t open. We were booked in separate accommodations so we showered and then planned on meeting up for dinner. There was one restaurant up the hill with set menus and the locals were having a family birthday party. It was the 29th September and the album had gone out into the ether that morning, so we drank to that.
The next day, and halfway along the route, at a small town (intriguingly called Arcade) I took a room with full board, and spent the afternoon sunbathing and swimming in the pool. I bought oranges.
That particular day had been a winding and uphill battle through forested regions. In addition to the muscle pain, I had blood blisters, strange heat rashes on my ankles, spreading to my calves, and water blisters from mosquito bites the size of coins on my thighs. A New Zealander, also doing the hike, said: “Whatever you’re doing, I think you should stop”. He was surprised to see me reach the alburgues before him each day. Regardless, these purple flowers were everywhere. They are called Morning Glory, or so I was told. We had just crossed over on the fully-booked morning boat from Caminha to Padron, and were now in Spain.
The cake you see below is typical of that which is free all over Spain when you buy a coffee. Imagine that in the U.K. The one below cost one euro 20 cents, which was about average.
I was in Vigo and thankfully booked in at a municipal alburgue for which the pilgrim’s credential is compulsory, as the route was very busy. These places are run by the government to cater specifically for pilgrims. On checking in, one gets given a protective cover for both the mattress and pillow, but no duvet. There was also a kitchen but it was ‘against regulations’ to use it, and there were no utensils to do so.
The night brought in an Olympic snorer on the bunk opposite. After tutting, sighing, and rolling over this way and that, for an hour or so, plotting my next move, I was delighted to have an accomplice in the form of a German girl in the adjacent bunk who got up, with a start, announcing: “I’m going to prod him”. I jumped down with glee because I too was going to prod him, and prod him we did, but nothing worked. In the end, she, her boyfriend, and I, went out to sleep on the open terrace. Others slept in the corridor.
We were right in the centre of Vigo’s old town, under the stars. I lay like a sardine on the thin protective sheet, with my leather jacket pinned around me. There was a faint wind. I was thinking of Georgia O’Keeffe sleeping on the roof at Ghost Ranch, in Santa Fe, which she regularly did. Around this time, she painted Ladder to the Moon (1958)6, an impossible painting, and possibly her only truly Surrealist work.
Porto – Santiago in 12 days Carrying an Amp on My Back, 28 September -10 October, 2023. Self, backpack, Blackstar amp.
Austin Kleon. David Lynch on getting ideas. Available at: https://austinkleon.com/2020/09/24/david-lynch-on-ideas/ [Accessed 20 March 2022].
Onassis Encounters (2019) Werner Herzog in conversation with Paul Holdengräber Available at: <https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/werner-herzog/>. [Accessed 15 November, 2019].
TEDx (2014) You are a simulation & physics can prove It: George Smoot at TEDxSalford.TEDx 12 February. Available at: <https://youtube.com/watch?v=Chfoo9NBEow>. [Accessed: 24 September 2020].
Attalli, J. (1985[1977]), Noise... The Political Economy of Music. Trans. Brian Massumi. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nick Cave. Loss, yearning, transcendence. On Being with Krista Tippett. Available at: <https://onbeing.org/programs/nick-cave-loss-yearning-transcendence/>. [Accessed 27 November, 2023].
“Gimme Shelter” isolated vocal by Merry Clayton. 2023. YouTube video, added by Sunset Sound Recorders [Online]. Available at https://youtu.be/njAuEGRthuw [Accessed 28 November 2023].
O’Keeffe, G. (1958). Ladder to the Moon. Available at: https://www.georgiaokeeffe.net/ladder-to-the-moon.jsp [Accessed 28 November 2023].