I have a dear friend who is an anchorite. For those of you who don’t know what that is, here’s a basic and fairly inelegant Oxford Dictionary definition:
An anchorite is a person who withdraws from the world to live a solitary life of silence, prayer, and mortification. The word is used especially of one who lives in confined quarters (his or her ‘cell’).
Many people confuse anchorites with hermits, but the two are different at least one key way. An anchorite, such as my friend is, lives in solitude in the midst of community and still — paradoxically — participates in that community. Unlike a hermit’s cave, an anchorite’s enclosure includes small windows that allow her to interact with and communicate her experience to the outside world in limited and specific ways.
Unlike my friend, I am not a literal anchorite, but it does seem these days that I’m a bit of an intellectual/emotional one. Having spent my life to date following my curiousity here, there and everywhere, it seems that, at least for now, my intellectual and emotional and geographical focus has become as specific and bounded as the confines of an anchorite’s enclosure. And in modern times, those literal windows in a physical anchorage could just as easily be the windows of a phone or a laptop screen.
My obsession focus obsession re: Lennon/McCartney makes communicating with all of you through that virtual anchorage window a significant challenge. And thus, it makes sharing my Liverpool trips a significant challenge as well. Unlike past adventures where we could all share in the discovery of a new and broadly accessible experience, the most important parts of my Liverpool trips — the parts that make them special and emotional and resonant — are probably of no actual interest at all to most of you (yet. I expect that will change when I start sharing what I'm mostly working on).
But for now, I don’t expect you to care about the minor but (to me) fascinating mysteries I uncovered in the archives of the Museum of Liverpool, or the afternoon I spent talking with the fierce wisewoman protector of Penny Lane or the odd way in which it’s always my first glimpse of the #86 bus to Speke that makes me tear up at being back in Liverpool.
Passion is like that, I think. It’s as individual as a fingerprint, and most of what sets my heart aflutter these days is not (yet) going to set your heart aflutter. In this sense, passion is an isolating experience more than a unifying one. Passion is an invisible anchorage — an intimate enclosure filled with intense prayer and devotion and a limited window to the broader world.
All of which is to say, I know you want pictures and such. Let’s see what I can find that might be Of Interest.
The “Eyes of the Storm” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London was the specific reason for this trip. Paul McCartney recently re-discovered the photos he took during the height of Beatlemania in 1963-4, and has shared 250 of them in this exhibition and also in a gorgeous book.
The exhibition is of special significance in part because it’s the first time we’ve (literally) seen John through Paul’s eyes. The whole collection is largely a love letter from Paul to John, and my favorite photo is this one—
After seeing the exhibition in London, it was a train to Liverpool and that night, tickets to a candelight Beatles concert at the Liverpool Cathedral. This would have been a powerful experience regardless, but it was made all the more meaningful because the Liverpool Cathedral is both the place where Paul McCartney failed his audition for the choir and where he later debuted his first full-length classical piece, Liverpool Oratorio.
One would have to lack both heart and soul to experience Beatles music played by a string quartet in a candle-lit cathedral in Liverpool as anything other than deeply moving and transcendent. That's what this music was built for, and it was as magical as one would imagine it to be and a perfect way to begin.
One of the things I missed most in between trips was an afternoon at Calderstones Park, a 120-acre park that’s walking distance from both John and Paul’s childhood homes and a favourite place for them and their friends to hang out as young teenagers.
You know that relaxation technique where you’re meant to think about a peaceful place? Calderstones Park is what I think of these days.
Calderstones Park is the home of the Allerton Oak, thought to be the oldest tree in northern England and one of the oldest in Britain. You can see how well cared for and cherished it is by the many supports that keep it upright.
I also finally paid a formal visit to the Bombed-Out Cathedral in downtown Liverpool. The cathedral was destroyed by German bombers in World War II (Liverpool, because of its strategic importance as a major port, was the second most heavily-damaged city in the UK after London).
After the war, the people of Liverpool elected not to rebuild the cathedral, leaving it as a memorial to the civilians killed during the bombing raids. (In this story, perhaps you can start to see why I have fallen in love with Liverpool and its people.) Over the years, it’s become a literal temple to nature, defying our concepts of inside and outside, sacred and ordinary. Downtown Liverpool is a place of nearly 24/7 activity, but the Bombed-Out Catheral is consistently a place of serenity and peace.
There’s no way I’d pass up a ferry ‘cross the Mersey, though I never plan the timing of it. I visit the waterfront daily, due to my ongoing love affair with the Mersey River, and when I have time and the ferry’s at the dock, I grab a round trip ticket.
This time, it was at sunset…
Speaking of the Mersey River, you might remember I had a plan to spend two days walking the Mersey Way, which allegedly is a 35km trail along the river. I was very much looking forward to a more intimate and extended acquaintance with my beloved Mersey, but a closer look at the trail map showed that it only bordered the river for a about five kilometers.
Upon reflection, this doesn’t surprise me, because the Mersey is a seriously inaccessible river. The part that isn’t commercial is bordered by broad swaths of marshland on either side, which means that even when you’re technically “walking along” the Mersey, you’re usually so far away you often can’t get much more than a glimpse. In this way, the Mersey reminds me of Salome, dancing her dance of the seven veils and offering only occasional teasing glimpses of her beauty.
So in short, I spent half a day walking the part of the trail that got the closest to her banks and skipped the rest. It wasn’t enough, and there is one little bit a little further upriver that I’d like to walk as well that is very hard to get to without a private car. Next time.
I won’t bother you with the specifics of my research in the archives of the Museum of Liverpool, but I will tell you that it was just the way you might envision the archives of a major museum would be. I don’t have any photos because that’s not on, but imagine that final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark and you’ve basically got the picture.
Museum archives are mysterious places with their own set of rules, including strict protocols about what you can take in and how you’re allowed to interact with the material (always with gloves, never with ball point pens). The payoff is the privilege of getting to actually touch and handle the sorts of things that you only get to look at behind glass when they’re displayed in a museum.
It was definitely a highlight.
And now for a few Fab highlights that you might like to hear about. They are, after all, the reason for the season, as it were.
One of the things I love about Liverpool is that in addition to all the Big Stuff like St. Peter’s and the Cavern and Strawberry Fields, the Fabs’ presence is also casual. There’s a power and an iconic legacy in this street art that moves me more deeply than the official statues and plaques and museums.
There’s a brand-new mural on Penny Lane, and I love that it’s new since I was there last in March and that I’ve now been there just enough to notice the changes.
Oh btw… see the silver-haired man on the left walking the woman into the building? That’s Colin Hanton and in a better world, that name would take your breath away.
Colin was the Beatles’ original drummer, before they even became the Beatles. He was in the band the first time John and Paul performed onstage together. For a not-insigificant period of time, the band was “John, Paul, George and Colin.”
Colin was gracious enough to spend an entire afternoon with me answering my questions and telling me stories about what it was like to rehearse and perform with John, Paul and George when they were teenagers just learning to make music. In return for his extreme generosity, I gave him the gift of a gnome, and I’ll just leave that cryptic, for the fun of the mystery.
I also had the honour of seeing Colin perform live at the Liverpool Arena the prior night. The band members onstage with him are also significant, but we’re getting into anchorite territory here, so I’ll spare you the details and just say, this is who remains of John Lennon’s original band, the Quarry Men, which eventually became the Beatles.
I did other things, too, of course. Went to the Cavern a few times (here’s my memoir piece on my Cavern experience), spent an afternoon with my favourite people at St. Peter’s Church, dug into the files of the Walker Art Gallery, had lunch at the cafe at Strawberry Fields (some of the best food in Liverpool), and spent a lot of time just breathing in the air and trying to store it all up to make it last until the next time.
The trip ended with a half day in London, most of which I spent at the Abbey Road zebra crossing watching hapless tourists try to re-create the album cover in the midst of a busy intersection. I have Things To Say about Abbey Road, which is a complicated emotional situation for anyone who knows the full story behind that iconic album cover, but I’ll save those musings for a memoir chapter. For now, here’s my contribution to the Abbey Road Studios graffiti wall—
And finally, appropos of nothing other than that it’s amazing, here’s a sculpture near Paddington Station in London. Entitled The Wild Table of Love, it asks us to reconsider our arrogant human exceptionalism—
I’m homesick already. I wonder what Christmas in Liverpool would be like…
Thank you for walking this journey with me. ❤️
A reminder that you can comment here, just like on Facebook. Nothing is complicated/different unless you choose for it to be…
Finally, I’m happy to keep sharing my adventures here on the Red Abbess, but my heart is here…
