When I came to Liverpool at the end of the 1970’s the city was full of spaces. Many of them were left over from the war. Whole swathes of the area south of the city centre were grassed wasteland as far as Paradise Street, and there were gaps between houses and shops. In the 60’s there had been efforts to fill up the bombed city with building but it often looked mean and utility, stylish but insufficient to establish a sense of place. For someone new to the city this was a given, how Liverpool was meant to be, part of its character. The locals certainly seemed to accept it, so I did too. It was in its way a source of inspiration.
There were parks, wonderful historic picturesque parks, with a special blend of melancholy and brio. There were squares, none really impressive or coherent but each with its own atmosphere – Falkner, Clayton, Williamson – and gardens – St Johns, the cathedral graveyard - and there was the River, its own kind of space and the great geographical definer of Liverpool, a water’s edge with a view of another water’s edge, and the Sea to put it all into perspective. All in all the city was a cheerful confusion of spaces with a large sky punctuated by various kinds of towers and a beacon. And so, we assumed, given the low level of development, it was likely to be for the foreseeable future.
Nearly 40 years later and you would be forgiven for thinking that a revolution had taken place - so much development! Most of the city centre spaces have been filled in with new buildings and those permanently temporary car-park spaces gone to hotels and shopping and flats. If the post-war demolitions had been careless and premature now the old goes down to make way for planned projects. Some of the old spaces have been refreshed and the forecourt of Lime Street Station, the approach to the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Pierhead, have a confidence and generosity they had lacked when first built. New spaces have been created – Concert Square, Victoria Square – and in the suburbs housing has edged into spare land, alongside retail parks and technology and manufacturing parks. The narrative goes that this is a happy ending, and the bad old days of waste-land and the city as a gap-toothed mouth are over.
To anyone who has tracked this narrative over forty years many things here do not ring true. Where to begin? The parks were neglected for a crucial two decades and many aspects of their historic glory were allowed to slip away. The new building infill is more often than not dull and bland, developers patois not authentic urban eloquence. The suburbs have been regenerated into soul-less tracts of smart and sometimes unaffordable residential units. The docks came back to life as enclaves of ownership and seclusion. A large proportion of the city centre business district consists of empty office space. There’s a big area north of the City Centre which a very big company proposes to develop as a mini city of glass and isolation, and the Council and its elected Mayor have adopted the mantra that all building is good, even if it’s led by private finance not municipal initiative and dedicated to the ambition of super-serving generations of students, while historic thoroughfares like Lime Street crumble beyond saving and parts of some parks are up for building development.
And so the rant could go on – the frustration and innate conservatism of the city’s commentators can be relied upon to fill out a chorus of dissent, without much help from artists and musicians. My aim here is to highlight how the peculiar diversity of Liverpool’s spaces still has the scope to inspire us all.
Not all spaces are great spaces. I lent some of my adolescent attention to a book, “New Lives New Landscapes”, by a wise landscape planner called Nan Fairbrother, whose practical wisdom on the subject of what we now call “placemaking” has informed my life-long interest in natural and created spaces. What Nan Fairbrother taught me is that it takes people to make a space, and there are better and worse ways of doing so.
Some spaces inspire because they are well-made, recently or in the past. Contentiously, I like the “new” Bluecoat garden as much as the “old” one (which was once new and may have caused controversy then). The Central Space of the newly-developed Central Library also captures my imagination, and the interior of the Metropolitan Cathedral lifts the spirits with its colour and shadow, height and variety as it must have done at its opening. Likewise the Concert Room at St Georges Hall and the view from the Beacon. And the interior of the tower of the Anglican Cathedral is as uniquely awesome as it always was.
For the rest, the less consciously-created spaces, it only takes a single predilection to make them special, a kind of topogrphical guilty pleasure. The awkward and the forlorn among spaces, the left-over, the neglected, the unmaintained, - all can have their fans, lovers, boon companions. Something of their difficulty as spaces matches an awkwardness in one of us, and they are loved. Edgelands, urban niches, liminal land, don’t feel lonely – there’s a fair chance someone cherishes you.
William Blake wrote,-
There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it: tis translucent & has many Angles
But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within
Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven
And elsewhere,-
There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find
This Moment & it multiply, & when it once is found
It Renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed
We are space-seeking missiles and our aim is true.
Some spaces we cannot dignify because we cannot get into them. That is the function of power in the land. Like wealth, space can be hoarded by the few against the many. An empty bank building, a closed bar, fenced-off gardens – these are the sites of battles for access and ownership - some battles we have won, some we have yet to win. Meanwhile more pubs close, and our social spaces are up for development. Where then for us, for our urban passagietta? Are we to be forced to retreat to the private and personal spaces – backyards, balconies – until the only space we can make our own is between our ears, with our headphones?
It will be and it will not be. It will not be as long as there are individuals to cherish spaces and express their awkward delights – individuals who are often artists, poets, musicians, performers. It will be in our headphones because the great space-changer is the mind and the quickest route to the deep mind is sound. Marry the experiences of music and space and you can transcend. Nothing the developers or demolitionists can do will deny you that transformative capability. Blake was right, - Oothoon’s Palace is there for the finding and every angle is a lovely heaven.
All this by way of introduction to the inspirations of the artists who have contributed to “Music For Empty Spaces”. Whether you listen to their music via the radio, or download it to play to yourself in the location of inspiration, or both, spare a moment to celebrate the role of musicians in this city. When they find their subject they can change everything and this, it has turned out, is one of their subjects. As long as Liverpool’s spaces are full of character and unique, so will be its music.
Roger Hill
There were parks, wonderful historic picturesque parks, with a special blend of melancholy and brio. There were squares, none really impressive or coherent but each with its own atmosphere – Falkner, Clayton, Williamson – and gardens – St Johns, the cathedral graveyard - and there was the River, its own kind of space and the great geographical definer of Liverpool, a water’s edge with a view of another water’s edge, and the Sea to put it all into perspective. All in all the city was a cheerful confusion of spaces with a large sky punctuated by various kinds of towers and a beacon. And so, we assumed, given the low level of development, it was likely to be for the foreseeable future.
Nearly 40 years later and you would be forgiven for thinking that a revolution had taken place - so much development! Most of the city centre spaces have been filled in with new buildings and those permanently temporary car-park spaces gone to hotels and shopping and flats. If the post-war demolitions had been careless and premature now the old goes down to make way for planned projects. Some of the old spaces have been refreshed and the forecourt of Lime Street Station, the approach to the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Pierhead, have a confidence and generosity they had lacked when first built. New spaces have been created – Concert Square, Victoria Square – and in the suburbs housing has edged into spare land, alongside retail parks and technology and manufacturing parks. The narrative goes that this is a happy ending, and the bad old days of waste-land and the city as a gap-toothed mouth are over.
To anyone who has tracked this narrative over forty years many things here do not ring true. Where to begin? The parks were neglected for a crucial two decades and many aspects of their historic glory were allowed to slip away. The new building infill is more often than not dull and bland, developers patois not authentic urban eloquence. The suburbs have been regenerated into soul-less tracts of smart and sometimes unaffordable residential units. The docks came back to life as enclaves of ownership and seclusion. A large proportion of the city centre business district consists of empty office space. There’s a big area north of the City Centre which a very big company proposes to develop as a mini city of glass and isolation, and the Council and its elected Mayor have adopted the mantra that all building is good, even if it’s led by private finance not municipal initiative and dedicated to the ambition of super-serving generations of students, while historic thoroughfares like Lime Street crumble beyond saving and parts of some parks are up for building development.
And so the rant could go on – the frustration and innate conservatism of the city’s commentators can be relied upon to fill out a chorus of dissent, without much help from artists and musicians. My aim here is to highlight how the peculiar diversity of Liverpool’s spaces still has the scope to inspire us all.
Not all spaces are great spaces. I lent some of my adolescent attention to a book, “New Lives New Landscapes”, by a wise landscape planner called Nan Fairbrother, whose practical wisdom on the subject of what we now call “placemaking” has informed my life-long interest in natural and created spaces. What Nan Fairbrother taught me is that it takes people to make a space, and there are better and worse ways of doing so.
Some spaces inspire because they are well-made, recently or in the past. Contentiously, I like the “new” Bluecoat garden as much as the “old” one (which was once new and may have caused controversy then). The Central Space of the newly-developed Central Library also captures my imagination, and the interior of the Metropolitan Cathedral lifts the spirits with its colour and shadow, height and variety as it must have done at its opening. Likewise the Concert Room at St Georges Hall and the view from the Beacon. And the interior of the tower of the Anglican Cathedral is as uniquely awesome as it always was.
For the rest, the less consciously-created spaces, it only takes a single predilection to make them special, a kind of topogrphical guilty pleasure. The awkward and the forlorn among spaces, the left-over, the neglected, the unmaintained, - all can have their fans, lovers, boon companions. Something of their difficulty as spaces matches an awkwardness in one of us, and they are loved. Edgelands, urban niches, liminal land, don’t feel lonely – there’s a fair chance someone cherishes you.
William Blake wrote,-
There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it: tis translucent & has many Angles
But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within
Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven
And elsewhere,-
There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find
This Moment & it multiply, & when it once is found
It Renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed
We are space-seeking missiles and our aim is true.
Some spaces we cannot dignify because we cannot get into them. That is the function of power in the land. Like wealth, space can be hoarded by the few against the many. An empty bank building, a closed bar, fenced-off gardens – these are the sites of battles for access and ownership - some battles we have won, some we have yet to win. Meanwhile more pubs close, and our social spaces are up for development. Where then for us, for our urban passagietta? Are we to be forced to retreat to the private and personal spaces – backyards, balconies – until the only space we can make our own is between our ears, with our headphones?
It will be and it will not be. It will not be as long as there are individuals to cherish spaces and express their awkward delights – individuals who are often artists, poets, musicians, performers. It will be in our headphones because the great space-changer is the mind and the quickest route to the deep mind is sound. Marry the experiences of music and space and you can transcend. Nothing the developers or demolitionists can do will deny you that transformative capability. Blake was right, - Oothoon’s Palace is there for the finding and every angle is a lovely heaven.
All this by way of introduction to the inspirations of the artists who have contributed to “Music For Empty Spaces”. Whether you listen to their music via the radio, or download it to play to yourself in the location of inspiration, or both, spare a moment to celebrate the role of musicians in this city. When they find their subject they can change everything and this, it has turned out, is one of their subjects. As long as Liverpool’s spaces are full of character and unique, so will be its music.
Roger Hill
