GRAVESIDE AT BLOOMSDAY
A commentry of Bloomsday, Northampton, June 16 2006.
Printed in the Northants on Sunday newspaper, June 25, 2006
Kingsthorpe cemetery with a camera. The reason is justified, if not slightly
displaced: the documentation of an event in the cultural calendar of Northampton
for an ongoing short film series.
Actions are involuntarily altered in these places. Even though this isn’t
a typical visit, graveyard etiquette still applies.
Voices are lowered, footsteps softened, and senses heightened by the wall
of monotone visual noise.
Connotations of graveyards can’t be ignored as you take in the surroundings.
But this visit wasn’t about those associations; the fact that this
event was here is almost insignificant. Perhaps heightened senses are
required to get the most out of it.
Symbols cover everything in this place. Hands point the way, not skyward,
but onward, toward the stage. Stone doves inhabit headstones, depicting
re-birth, a passage to heaven, eternal life. Open books symbolise a life
story, a biography of the deceased, closed editions telling of an end
to the tale.
So what to make of the living symbol that was twenty or so literary patrons,
thespians, a coincidently placed rotting crow, and excerpts from James
Joyce’s Ulysses?
That symbol stands for Bloomsday: the global annual celebration of 16
June, 1904, when Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus carried out their famous
fictional journey through the city of Dublin, and the pages of Ulysses.
Northampton’s take on Bloomsday is held at the grave of Joyce’s
daughter, Lucia, who died in 1982 following an extensive residency at
St. Andrews psychiatric hospital, Northampton. Her plain headstone plays
host to an event of words and wit, whereon local literary figures and
performers act out and tell of both the life of the Joyces, and that day
in 1904.
A commentary on Ulysses, or of the Joyces would be misplaced. There’s
nothing that can be said about either that isn’t already known,
or can’t be found through your web browser. An attempt to analyse
the symbol of Bloomsday Northampton would be equally misplaced, as the
truth is, I’m just not sure if I get it.
I haven’t finished the book yet. I just haven’t got the staying
power. I’d wager neither have most of those who attended. But that
doesn’t matter.
Bloomsday isn’t just for those literary patrons. You don’t
need to decode Ulysses to ‘get it’.
As with all symbols, it’s open to interpretation. You’ll either
experience Bloomsday, and understand it for its intended purposes, or,
you’ll find another meaning to standing around in a cemetery on
a Friday night. Just as you’ll either see the stone dove as a sign
of eternal life, or simply a pleasing image that means the deceased ‘must
have liked birds’.
My interpretation was simple.
This event was about more than listening to Joyce’s words: through
cemetery-induced heightened senses it was an indirect insight into a Northampton
that we know is out there. It stood for a much bigger picture, of a largely
unknown local network of interesting people and events, both past and
present, which the film project will bring to light.