Sunny day spent editing this illuminating video of a trek across Northampton with Iain Sinclair to the home of Alan Moore. How do I cut anything from this footage? Feels like a crime.
Screening of Unearthing Alan Moore at Swedenborg House, 23rd May. Extended YouTube version shortly afterwards.
Saturday saw a magical event in Brompton Cemetery Chapel as people gathered to celebrate the posthumous publication by Strange Attractor Press of Steve Moore’s book, Selene: The Moon Goddess and the Cave Oracle, “an examination of the origins, dream-explorations and mystical practices centred on the Greek deity Selene.”
Alan Moore
screening of South London psychic circuit with Iain Sinclair – directed by John Rogers
The event started with a screening of my film with Iain Sinclair where we walked Steve Moore’s ‘psychic circuit’ around Shooters Hill, a landscape he mythologised in his novel, Somnium. Then Alan Moore read from his essay, Unearthing (the inspiration for the film I made with Iain Sinclair). Andrew O’Neill recounted how, grieving after Steve Moore’s death in 2014, he went wild camping in Epping Forest and encountered a vision of Steve on a horse and cart with Selene by his side. John Higgs talked about the scene in Steve’s Shooters Hill home following the discovery of his body, a scene he had described years before in one of his dream journals.
Brompton Cemetery Chapel
Alan Moore, Andrew O’Neill, Mark Pilkington, and John Higgs
Brompton Cemetery
Endymion’s Dream was produced by Strange Attractor in association with the London Month of the Dead and hosted by Mark Pilkington.
Just under a year after the premiere of our film, London Overground, Iain Sinclair mentioned joining him out on the road again with my camera. This time he was walking a section of Watling Street, the Roman road said to have much older origins, in the company of the great film-maker Andrew Kötting, from Canterbury to London. I joined them one morning along Shooters Hill Road in South London where they were accompanied by artist Anne Caron-Delion. This first walk followed the road to Westminster (another branch goes across London Bridge to the City) – passing over Blackheath, through Deptford (the ‘deep ford’), New Cross, Peckham, Elephant and Castle, along the way.
Enroute Iain had mentioned a second passage that related to Watling Street but branching off from Shooters Hill to take in the Shrewsbury burial mound and follow cult author Steve Moore’s ‘psychic circuit’ down to Woolwich. This brings Alan Moore into the story and led to a second walk. Steve Moore had been Alan Moore’s mentor, teaching him both the arts of magick and comic book writing. Alan had celebrated Steve’s territory of Shooters Hill in an essay published in London, City of Disappearances, entitled Unearthing. This seemed like the perfect title to appropriate as the title for the film.
The film that I made from the two walks ‘on and off’ Watling Street with Iain Sinclair was premiered at an event at Kino-Teatr in St Leonards-on-Sea last October, where Andrew Kötting also premiered his film of the whole walk, A WALK BACK TO THE LAST LONDON BY WAY OF WATLING STREET.
The event was called, Lights Out for the Last London: Down Watling Street with Iain Sinclair, Andrew Kotting and John Rogers.
“To pull away from its gravity, he sets off on a Watling Street pilgrimage with long term collaborators (and filmmakers) Andrew Kötting and John Rogers.
Their adventures, told through differing and contradictory memories, become a live performance, a conversation, a film of record.
The collision at Kino-Teatr in St Leonards is a unique coming together for the three walkers. Anything could happen.”
The video above captures the discussion with Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting after the screenings.
“All this is about place and about intersections of place, people, collisions, collaborations, the whole thing”, adds Iain Sinclair referencing The House of the Last London where this fascinating conversation took place.
A sketch map by Brian Catling hanging amongst various images from a 1974 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, Albion Island Vortex, featuring Catling, Iain Sinclair, and Renchi Bicknell, provides the original link between Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore. They talk about how fellow writer Neil Gaiman had sent Alan Moore a copy of Sinclair’s early self-published book Lud Heat which Alan found hugely inspiring. Lud Heat drew Alan Moore into the world of London mythologies at the point when he was starting work on From Hell.
Lud Heat map – Iain Sinclair and Brian Catling
“You could unpack an awful lot of From Hell from these lines on this drawing” – he says gesturing to the map.
Iain Sinclair explains how he’d sketched out the map on a napkin in a pub and handed it to the artist Brian Catling to turn it into a proper drawing – the one that hangs on the wall in Whitechapel. It’s a map that not only inspired Alan Moore but a whole generation of psychogeographers.
The conversation takes so many twists and turns through various stages of their careers, delving into their practices and inspirations, recalling previous expeditions and excursions, happenings and events. Iain talks about the recent walk we did from Shooters Hill to Woolwich that will form part of a film we’re making about Watling Street. They also preview the poetry event they would perform that evening in Lambeth alongside Catling and Allen Fisher. It was a real joy to behold and capture in this video.
Down to Brighton to see Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore speaking at an event in the Brighton Festival Spiegeltent celebrating the amazing history of Watling Street, a road so old, as John Higgs told us, that it may even predate humans, being carved out by migrating animals.
Iain Sinclair recounted his walk along the section of Watling Street from Dover to Westminster, with the footage shot by Andrew Kotting and myself projected on the screen behind. He talked of the mysteries of Shooters Hill, Andrew’s constant banter that on one occasion led to missing the last room at a Travelodge and having to sleep on the floor of a disabled toilet. He told the story of walking to Mortlake with Alan Moore to visit the home of John Dee, Moore arriving at his house with a bag laden with esoteric books.
After a musical interlude Alan Moore took to the stage and gave a long and beautiful riff on a conversation with a scientist (I think) who’d explained the probability that we are living in a computer simulation. Alan’s own intervention on this theory was both funny, enlightening and poignant linking it back to explaining to some people in Milton Keynes how he could be their God as he had worked on the building of Milton Keynes. He also gave a brilliant explanation on the meaning and importance of psychogeography, how you can create your own epic mythology for where you live and your own place in that world. It was one of those evenings that makes you feel differently about the world around you, mind expanded, horizons widened.
Afterwards I went and ate fish and chips on the beach and pondered Alan Moore’s idea that perhaps we live the same life over and over again instead of merely ceasing to exist after death – this, he posited, was a good reason to fill your life with great moments. With this in mind I bought two cans of Adnams Southwold Bitter to drink on the train back to London.