The Slate (Fuck the Movie
Industry)
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| Quarrymen hung in an old slate hut |
I swear there are elements of
cosmic collision happening on enormous personal vibrations- events that are so
entangled that the outcomes sometimes seem like they are fired straight into
your person by design. There seems
to be little point for an average thinker like myself asking, why? The answer
almost always is what you want it to be and therefore, objectively
useless. The following paragraphs
acknowledge all the flaws in this author’s rickety galleon floating in its
universe of cack, quagmire and beauty.
There is a place in north
Wales that I have always had a chesty affinity for- the Dinorwic slate quarries
above the village of Llanberis and (crucially to these events) just outside the
border of Snowdonia national park- ‘One of Britain’s breathing spaces’. Since first going to these quarries to
climb on the slate, I have sensed the negative space where the mountain once
was like an invisible weight. I
have touched the rusted chains and machinery and sensed the lives, lived and
killed of men who worked in radical conditions. For me, Britain’s breathing space most definitely extends
throughout the quarries and while you breathe the air, seasoned by the damp,
the grey, the rust, the tunnels, the devastation, you breathe in the heritage
of souls who lived and died in these vast holes.
And so it was, living abroad
I booked a trip back to north Wales for a visit in June. I found images of quarrymen from the
early part of the twentieth century from which I made stencils to install in
the quarries. My idea was not to
make a big splash, but to place the images with reverence, unobtrusively where
they might be seen by the observant, the lucky or the adventurous. I spent many hours becoming acquainted
with the features of the quarrymen while cutting the stencils. Fuck me, I could even be related to one
of them! My mind drifted around
the quarries while I worked and I thought of one area in particular, a hole
known to climbers as, the Lost World.
This was my favourite place in Dinorwic- a place accessed by some
adventure with rusted ladders to a hole known as Mordor and then a tunnel
leading to Lost World itself and the most humid of quarry bottoms. Spagnuhm moss, huge ferns and
rhododendrons enjoyed decades of growth beneath imposing walls of purple grey
angles, streaked with wine stains and stabbed with rotting orange ironmongery,
hanging from its sides like decayed attack. Which was how I found the place on my recky hike.
A slate hut, obscured by lush
greenery until really quite close, had over the years been maintained and
somewhat weather proofed, becoming an aloof shelter for the discerning
visitor. Behind its glossy red
door, redundant machinery stood silent- an exhibition of the past while the
evidence of modern communion- candles, half full camping gas cylinders, a broom
suggested the ongoing use for overnight visits.
I pressed on, considering sites to paint and it was on the
way out, back on the public footpath where I saw a sign, informing users of the
path that the quarries would be closed to the public three days hence, for
filming of a Warner Bros. movie.
I returned two days later to
install the paintings and began in Lost World. The first image I did was on a piece of slate which I
positioned inside the hut. I
considered the ghosts of the men I was painting-did they work in this very
hole? Was this bad ju-ju? Or good? My motivations were sound. I judged tribute.
I placed a few more paintings in Lost World and Mordor. And sprinkled a few throughout other
areas of the quarries, visible only to people off the main drag. I did however leave one in full view- a
thin rectangle of slate propped up in the slag, just above the public footpath. How long would it last, this un-secured
and easily moved piece? I threw some venomous hex unto it, should some cock
sucking oppurtunist take possession.
I laid it good sail though, too.
Just in case a local, whose connections reach far into the quarries
nabbed it to put on the mantelshelf next to the clock.
Two weeks later my sister and
I came to the quarries for a hike about to check out the work. Hollywood had been and gone. Sure enough the piece near the path had
been and gone too- probably in
some movie-twat’s London bathroom.
Resigned, we made our way to Lost World. Emerging from the tunnel anticipating the lush prehistoric
greenery, my perception was thrown awry by the absence of it. Quite stunned, I refocused and panned
around the quarry. I saw total
destruction of the quarry floor from massive rock fall. The chaos of dry destroying angry
slate boulders laid waste to life and heritage beneath it. The hut had been crushed beyond use and
appreciation, its legacy now void.
In the time between
installing the work and coming back to witness the destruction, there had been
some rain, but no significant weather event. The only abnormality was the closure of the quarries for
filming. Don’t tell me those
fuckers didn’t blow up the quarry. For a fucking Tarzan movie.
The quarries belong to First
Hydro and the local authority and are not quite in Snowdonia National
park. This likely means no one
will raise a stink. I guess the heritage of the area, of the local people is
just not as valuable as an explosion for some bloated and forgettable Warner
Bros. movie.
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| Lost World |
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| Quarryman in Lost World |
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| The piece in the Lost World hut. Now destroyed. |
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| Quarryman blowing the blasting bugle. The tunnel to Lost World is the black area, lower left. |
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| Lost World prior to destruction. |
