This is Hugo – he’s a friend of a friend, who owns a little night spot in Hackney that’s not really a night spot but actually where he lives! He puts on parties and exhibitions from time to time to help pay the rent.
He was a great guy. I had hoped to put a night on with him, but it all came to nothing in the end, as these things often do.
His place was amazing. You can only see a small portion of it here, but behind the camera is a large open space, the walls adorned similarly to the walls you can see in this image. Speakers, wires, cables … all manner of brick-a-brack. There was also a stage where bands could perform.
Being there reminded me of my favourite Jeff Wall image:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of “Spiritus Mundi”
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
– William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”