GATLEY, DEAD POETS & BEETHOVEN'S EMPEROR

Gatley

On my mother's side of the family there were the Lancastrian Valkries, a tight knit group of aunts in the north who were like a matriarchal mafia that supported the family in much the same way as the Corleones but with perhaps a little less of the testosterone.

I remember a few of them from my childhood, including great auntie Dorrie, great auntie Francis and great auntie Hilda. Francis seems more distant to my recollection now than Dorrie and Hilda, perhaps because she featured the least in my young life before she died when I would have been only six or seven and death was a relatively abstract notion. Dorrie survived a little longer before only Hilda remained of the great aunt contigent in the north. And so it was Hilda who made the biggest impression of all the Lancastrian Valkries on me back then.

I vividly remember visiting my great auntie Hilda's home in Gatley, Manchester where she lived in a most cinematic bungalow in Altrincham Road that combined the noirish atmosphere of David Lynch's Lost Highway with the cosiness of 1950's American suburbia, complete with a canary yellow and duck blue kitchen. There was even a sorbet pink colored bathroom that looked like something out of a Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedy from the early 1960's. In many ways, it was like travelling back to the past where even time itself seemed to slow right down. Each part of the house seemed to have its own separate dimension from the other where you could never be sure that the rest of the house even existed when you were alone in just one section of it.

The corridors of 60A Altringham Road were endless and even now I can imagine creating whole noirish sequences of terror just thinking of the place. And yet, auntie Hilda was sunshine in human form and countered any of the scariness of her home just by being who she was and that created a perfect equilibrium.

Auntie Hilda was a great advocate of the recliner and so as a young boy visiting her home in Gatley, I felt as if I'd arrived in Disneyland with the opportunity to remain suspended on these furniture equivalents of hovercrafts, albeit stationary ones. The living room was strikingly large and long. As we all sat in large, separate chairs there was a sense we were like an archipelago of islands with only the long couch by the television in the corner creating spatial cohesion for social connectedness.

I can also remember an ornate drinks cabinet where the sherries and Advocaat were kept and the unlocking of it with a long, thin key which paved the way for Hilda's ritual nightcap which was usually announced along with the chimes of the grandfather clock in the hallway.

There had been a spate of burgleries at 60a throughout the years, but Hilda seemed to shrug them all off with the non-attachment of a buddhist monk, showing no great concern of material loss which always impressed me greatly. Knowing the house had been infiltrated by thieves filled me with dread as a young boy as I would lie in the guest room at the front of the house listening out for footsteps outside the tightly drawn blinds of my window.

And one particular memory of Hilda's well maintained back garden still haunts me to this day: a stone owl, staring back at me through the open doors of the conservatory, which seemed to always follow me with its fixed stare. Years later, watching Twin Peaks as a young teenager, I remember being reminded of the ornamental owl as the feathered creatures featured heavily as a recurring motif in David Lynch's iconic series.

The stone owl in my great auntie Hilda's garden definitely wasn't what it seemed.

I've always found a music collection gives the clearest indication of a person's soul. Browsing through Hilda's cassette collection, including numerous recordings of Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, I had a feeling my great aunt was a fan of the finer things in life. Hilda was always whistling a happy tune with the perpetual joyfulness of a cock-eyed optimist and even to this day I wonder if I've ever met a happier soul than she. A great tapper of fingers against tables, Hilda always seemed to be in perpetual anticipation of some great news just around the corner. I sometimes wish I had just half of her joie de vivre, especially in the 21st century where optimism now appears to be forbidden.

Dead Poets & Beethoven's Emperor

But the one abiding memory that sticks out above all else from my visits to my great aunt's home in Gatley was a trip I made one night with my father and grandmother Barbara to watch Peter Weir's 1989 masterpiece, Dead Poets Society, in the most intimate of picture houses (Odeon?) not far from where Hilda lived. I remember particularly the seats of the old cinema were like cosy arm chairs and the warm, red interior of the cinema was noticeably womb-like. Maybe I'm over sentimentalising this, but in my few experiences of watching films in the north there seems an even greater sense of theatre about the experience. As for the actual film itself, it made an instantly profound impression on me. I especially loved the New England (shot in Delaware) atmosphere of crisp golden autumns and snow covered fields in winter where secret caves played host to young men enjoying poetry recitals throughout the movie. Listening to the Maurice Jarre soundtrack through the subsequent decades since, with its exquisite use of the hammered dulcimer, reminds me of the delicate introspection of autumn and winter with flickering candles and late night chats while the rest of the world is asleep which us creative spirits are so inclined to. Perhaps the spiritual essence of Dead Poets is a reminder of the primal connection that great art has with the human heart. I'm all for that.

I later learnt that my father had reservations about Mr Keating which I wasn't to fully understand until much later on in my life. As far as I gathered, he felt the maverick teacher was just as ideological, if not more, than the more austere and conservative teachers at Welton Academy and would end up being ultimately even more authoritarian than they. Perhaps, but I'm more inclined to believe Mr Keating would have more likely retreated further into his poetry books in his dotage far away from the madness of the culture wars. Regardless of reservations my father may have had himself watching the movie he did, however, whisper in my ear during the sublimely directed office scene between the tormented Neil and Mr Keating and said to me quietly, "Remind me to tell you who wrote the piece of music in this scene."

I was, of course, naturally curious about the music in question and greatly anticipated finding out who had indeed composed the sublime music I noticed trickling like cascading water in the background of the beautifully tender scene between the teacher and his student.

Stepping out of the cinema from the magical atmosphere of the Weir film into the late summer Manchester night, I felt as if I had understood some part of myself better as a consequence of watching the film. A realisation that perhaps this intuitive path of wonder and beauty I was stumbling along wasn't so unusual after all.

Headed back to 60A, I asked my Father who was it that had composed that piece of music in the iconic scene between teacher and pupil and he replied.

"Beethoven. The Emperor Concerto."

For some reason his pointing this out to me made as significant impression as the film itself. He had introduced me properly to Beethoven (or at least Beethoven outside of the fate motif of his 5th Symphony which every man and his dog knew) and somehow I now always associate the Emperor with the confluence of atmosphere and emotion from that night at the picture house. Even now playing Claudio Arrau's iconic recording with Colin Davis I can transport myself back to that exact moment in time.

And when we finally returned to Hilda's, I found a seamless continuity between the 1950's New England atmosphere of Dead Poets Society and her home in Gatley, seemingly forever paused in time.

Atmosphere in life, as in art, is everything and the evocation of it through poetry, music or cinema is a way of being reminded of those places like Gaston Bachelard once wrote in his essay - The Poetics of Space

“We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”