Tearing the city at the seams #13 - Malta's Hal Saflieni Hypogeum

Attempting to wrestle psychologically with the concept of ancient time and of prehistory is a quandary that we are seldom faced with day-to-day and yet when we are, the only genuine emotion is one of intoxicating reverie and incomprehension.

An underground necropolis over 5000 years old

So it was, that on my recent holiday to Malta – the stone of an island skipped across the surface of the Med between Europe and Africa – I found myself inside possibly the most awe-inspiring man-made structure I’ve yet been fortunate enough to visit.

The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is a subterranean necropolis, a series of levelled chambers and passages hewn out of the hill-top limestone rock of Paolo, dating back to between 3600 and 3000 BC. It was believed to have been constructed at the behest of some kind of pagan civilisation who used the chambers as a repository for the bodies of their ancestors and loved ones. It has been estimated that as many as 7000 bodies were interred there. But this was more than just an underground burial site; it appeared to have represented a spiritual epicentre for the worshipping of mortality, immortality, death and sacrifice.

Visiting the Hypogeum is itself a challenge; only 80 people are admitted per day, 10 at a time, with places selling out long in advance and the entry fee reflecting the exclusivity. These protective measures have been enforced to limit the carbon dioxide damage to the limestone, and light levels are controlled to prevent the spread of algae.

Edging your way through the narrow chambers, the notion that you are passing through a monument so old that it predates the Egyptian pyramids (surely the emblems of ancient history in the common consciousness) by around 500 years, is both mind-boggling and jarring, in a sense that the sheer weight of time embedded there acts as a magnifying lens which brings into sharp focus the profound insignificance of your own existence.

Equally astonishing is the antiquated construction techniques and their sophistry; baffling not just in that they were built at all, but rather their resilience in being conserved so well over millennia, withstanding seismic activity and a myriad conflicts throughout Malta’s turbulent history.

The ‘Main Hall’, positioned some 10 metres below ground, is perhaps the most beguiling feature. It is believed to have been used as a place for ritual sacrifices or other ‘performances’, with its carved trilithons and corbelled ceiling that were constructed as a below-ground replication of the above ground temples which now stand in a far more degraded state. Not only this, but the hall was intended to incorporate a ‘fish bowl’ effect, giving the impression of its dimensions expanding out in size from a fixed point.

The discovery of the Hypogeum in itself is also rather intriguing. In 1902, workers constructing a new set of houses stumbled upon the top level, causing irreparable damage in the process. The discovery was not made public straight away, in fact they actually attempted to cover it up before a full archaeological investigation was instigated several years later. My speculations on this are that the accidental finding must have come as a most unwelcome and unplanned hindrance for the house builders who perhaps saw it as a fatal derailing of their work project and subsequently tried to quell any rising public interest until it could be hushed up no longer.

What struck me most was in trying to comprehend the scale of the unassailable and single-minded spiritual conviction that must have had a hold on these people in compelling them forwards with the construction. To meticulously carve out such intricate niches and alcoves using tools as rudimentary as flint or antler bone, with next-to-no natural light, and to pass on this sacred task through generations and over centuries is most inspiring, and, arguably, utterly unparalleled in our 21st century western civilisation.

Compounding the mystery still further is the fact that any work attended to the Hypogeum, along with any significance attached to it, abruptly ended without explanation around the time of 2400 BC. The theories behind this – as well as the ending of all temple building across Malta – are contested; but is most commonly attributed to a plague or pestilence or invasion from external forces.

These are all viable scenarios but I can’t help but wonder whether the reality might have been a reflection of an altogether more complex shifting in the societal sands of the day. History denotes that when sufficient pressure is exerted, societies contort and subvert their natural course very drastically; shedding the skin of former traditions and allowing a whole new set of rules and convictions to apply.

Could the sudden abandoning of this prehistoric pagan religion be due to the forces of demographics; of younger generations collectively subverting from the orthodox order of things and finding their own way forward? Or, perhaps some event took place which precipitated a wholesale rejection of the old faith, under the influence of some despotic shaman or messiah-like prophet who heralded the arrival of an irresistible and alternative way of life?

In any case, shuffling through the catacombs of prehistoric man got me thinking about what types of monuments humans might reverentially pore over in awe and amazement thousands of years from now. Structures that are recognised as holding a pivotal and crucial place in our civilisation; shrines to the collective imagination and ingrained belief systems of the masses.

Perhaps, future humans will be teeming with questions as to the precise nature of these uniform and homogeneous structures, their forms so rigid and ubiquitous, the repetitive patterns of their geographical coordinates across the urban landscape. As we marvel at the mystery and intrigue of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum and what possible significance it could have held for those ancient civilians; so too might a future race of people wonder at the symbolic meaning behind the terms ‘Tesco Express’….

On Writing a Novel

If you would like a free electronic copy of 'Digital' simply send me a request message.

This summer I managed to complete my first novel 'Digital'. Its completion, after almost 2-and-a-half years of biding my time in thoughts and around 7 months of reeling it in, leaves me with a chorus of disparate views about what this achievement means in any real terms, and what potential it has going forth from the jetty of my creative imagination into the turbulent sea of the publishing world.

Set at an undisclosed point in the near future, 'Digital' depicts a nightmarish dystopian society in which cyberspace and internet technologies have assumed an autocratic predominance. It is the story of one man’s initial acceptance of and coalition with this world, before circumstances provoke a sense of creeping discontent and a pivotal moral dilemma, the repercussions of which eventually lead to him spiralling into madness.

It is a novel that pre-empts the means by which humans have subverted their natural tendencies – for privacy, intimacy, social interaction – to exist in this virtualised hyper-reality. It examines how, in the face of limitless information and simulacra, conventional morality has been sublimated and basic humanity eroded.

Admittedly, it is a bleak and pessimistic prophecy of the near future, but the further into the work I progressed, the more external events seemed to lend it an odd credence. Initially, I had judged my notion of a neuroprosthetic lens being affixed over everyone's eye, allowing cognitive processing of online data over reality, to be too fanciful and far-fetched. Midway through writing, Google Glass was unveiled and I felt a real sense of vindication, that this was indeed a major step along the road to inevitable implantation of cyber technologies.

The pervading sense of foreboding regarding the abstract faceless online conglomerates and web providers was leant further legitimacy by the NSA/Edward Snowden revelations, that demonstrate the heavy losses to the concept of the Internet as a truly universal democracy, free from overt corporate infringement, however benevolent the facade.

Many of the changes in human behaviour that future in the book are capable of being seen today. The extent to which people are subservient to digital technologies, and exhibit almost compulsive obsessive tendencies in their engagement with them. Before long, any time that is not spent online in some guise or other will be deemed wasted time. The proliferation of explicit and uncensored material; the fact that anyone can view hardcore pornography within a few seconds of entering a search request, all of this will, and can be seen already, to be altering human perceptions. My claim that child pornography will have become passé is not altogether too elaborate when you consider recent reports of under-16s creating sexual imagery using their own easily-accessible and abundant technology.

The fact is, as I consistently claim when talking about these issues, the Internet, social media and other digital technologies have only been widely present since the mid-90s, their dominance has sky-rocketed since then and shows no signs whatsoever of abating or altering trajectory. This has to, in some marked way, effect human behaviour and individual psychologies in terms of how to relate to each other as well as ourselves. There is no precedent for this change, but it is happening.

Some may argue against my view of humans becoming less sociable in the wake of these developments. I would say that humans will only become less social in a physical sense. It is human nature to be social towards one another, I am not arguing against that; instead I believe that the forms and platforms on which we socialise may very well evolve irrevocably. Surely, it is far more sociable to be communicating with innumerable people from disparate geographic locations all at once, rather than be limited to the arcane tradition of face-to-face physical interaction with one or a small group of people? To test this notion, ask yourself how many times you have been in a social situation where the other person hasn't been able to resist checking a digital gadget of one kind or another?

When attempting to write any kind of dystopian fiction or present a vision of some alternate society, the writer is inevitably strait-jacketed by the legacy of Orwell and ‘1984’; in fact so dominant is his imprint on the sub-genre that it almost embodies the character of Big Brother looming over the writer’s shoulder and keeping a stringent eye on the page. Having finished the novel though, a friend of mine commented that it seemed to him more redolent of the other parent novel of dystopia, Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. Having just re-read Huxley’s book again for the first time since the age of 17, this is a view with which I would have to concur.

As opposed to ‘1984’, Huxley’s vision of a utopian society in which sex and state-prescribed drugs (or soma) are encouraged instead of repressed, and the idea of privacy and secrecy has been mired in taboo and ostracism. Citizens are kept docile by the synthetic and artificial nature of their environment and control systems; in a way that much more accurately foretells the wish fulfilment and limitless distracting quotients of my ‘cyber nightmare’ society.

In terms of other dystopian literary influences on ‘Digital’, it is Yevgeny Zemyatin’s ‘We’ that is perhaps more of a direct ancestor, or E.M. Forster’s novella ‘The Machine Stops’, a remarkably prescient work that in 1928 depicted a ‘book of the machine’ containing unlimited knowledge, instructions against every possible contingency, and leaves everyone isolated from another in private cells.

Technically, this isn’t the first novel I’ve written. I wrote my first ‘Doves Will Rust’ during a year spent in Manchester from 2009 to 2010, which was, to all intents and purposes, an immature and inferior blueprint for ‘Digital’. Nonetheless, it was a critically important exercise in endurance and perspicacity; the disciplining of oneself to see such a project through to completion. Naturally, my 20-year-old self thought it was the defining book of our time; and just as naturally, given its demonstrably amateurish prose, the publisher’s rejection slips came in as reliably as utility bills.

All of this reflection brings me to ponder the actual achievement of writing a novel and what merit is warrants in the early 21st century. Since finishing ‘Digital’, I have noticed a palpable lack of some sentient form from my consciousness, of course attributable to not having to subconsciously ruminate about it for the first time in 2 or 3 years. Naturally, I’m now starting to cultivate the field of imagination ready for my next novel, although god knows when I will again start up the heavy machinery of application and routine.

On a more general level, is the written novel even a viable or worthwhile art form any longer in the 21st century? If the developments that I describe are realised – the diminishing of attentive faculties and interest in an imaginative narrative or story; the repackaging and rebranding of pre-existing works of literature, music, film, etc. – then that would tend to indicate that it is not. And yet, I don’t think all hope is quite lost. Despite experiential evidence to the contrary, reports suggest that reading is still a popular pastime; book sales (physical as well as electronic) are still strong. But the publishing industry is currently entering, very slowly and cautiously, the rough waters of piracy and threat to business model stability, that drowned the music industry so quickly and irreversibly. It remains to be seen whether it will similarly flounder or instead remain buoyant in a new and perhaps stronger model for the future of literature.

Cultural societies have always looked to writers as the commentators on the zeitgeist, as social provocateurs and documentarians of the prevailing mood of the times; and despite 21st century society leaning at increasingly drastic angles towards the world of celebrity to pacify this need, I see no reason why writers shouldn’t in some way still uphold their responsibility to this end going forwards.

To conclude on a personal level; the notion of having completed a novel, a piece of art in a sense, is a profoundly satisfying one. The novel is something that has endured for centuries, the practice of storytelling has done since the dawn of man; and though it may be only a singular grain on the shore of man’s creative endeavour and achievement, it is my contribution nonetheless.

Culture - August

Books Read:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 'The Devils (Demons)'
Will Self - 'Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe' (short stories)
Ernest Hemingway - 'Death in the Afternoon' (non-fiction)

The first half of August was dominated by the reading of Dostoyevsky's 'The Devils', a mammoth political melodrama depicting the various ideologies, factions and personalities that together serve as a kind of prophecy for the Russian Revolution. Over 700-pages the wealth of character portraits is substantial and yet if it was sometimes hard work, Dostoyevsky's unique rendering of the machinations and deceit at the heart of the anarchist group plotting to kick-start a revolt was always engrossing. Particularly joyful was the sense of resentment burning from the page directed at the Russian author Turgenev, with whom Dostoyevsky had feuded and subsequently decided to lambast.

I had hoped that 'Death in the Afternoon' would be a fascinating insight into the culture and psychology of the practice of bull fighting, and in many ways it served that purpose, despite Hemingway's characteristic rambling prose style and laboured exploration of marginal details. Certainly I learned an awful lot about the tremendous bravery, precision and skill that a matador must possess; the strategy and processes of a fight; and found Hemingway's insights into the morality of the tradition compelling. However, I felt it to be overly protracted and far too rambling in form to really match up to my expectations.

Films Watched:

'Rec 2' (Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaz)
'Finding Nemo' (Andrew Stanton)
'The Third Part of the Night' (Andrezj Zulawski)
'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa' (Declan Lowney) (at the Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton)
'Mr Smith goes to Washington' (Frank Capra)
'Eastern Promises' (David Cronenberg)

Not being particularly au fait with Alan Partridge, going to see his inflation onto the big screen was always going to have its pros and cons. The pros in that, being merely an amused onlooker to the 'cult of Alan', I was able to go in with considerably lower expectations that one of the devout followers. The cons, however, being that I couldn't shirk the nagging feeling that they were getting a whole lot more out of it than I was, as though it were a film-length private joke.

That said, despite the somewhat tenuous plot line, I found it consistently entertaining; not matching up to the peaks of other recent film incarnations of TV shows (such as 'In the Loop' or 'The Inbetweeners Movie'), but more than doing itself justice.

'Eastern Promises' was more of a let-down, certainly one of the most turgid and uninspired films I've seen for a while. I could perhaps have been more forgiving had I not been expecting so much from director David Cronenberg, the mastermind behind such gems as 'Scanners', 'The Dead Zone' and 'Videodrome'.

At the other end of the spectrum, ‘Mr Smith goes to Washington’ was a delight, a fine example of the ‘golden age’ when Hollywood was capable of churning out such timeless cinematic classics. James Stewart, in his first major starring role, is as exemplary as he would consistently be from then on. He plays Senator Smith, who has his optimistic wide eyes rubbed raw with the corruption and dirt of Congressional politics. This is a must-see for anyone with even the most cursory of interests in political processes, and remains as accurate a representation of power systems in 2013 as it was in 1939.

Albums Played:

Television - 'Marquee Moon'
Miles Davis - 'Kind of Blue'
Brian Eno - 'Ambient 1: Music for Airports'
Apparat - 'Walls'
White Lies - 'BIG TV'
Crocodiles - 'Crimes of Passion'
The Violet May - 'Strange Lives (EP)'
Disappears - 'Era'

This month I enjoyed rediscovering a handful of albums I'd neglected for a while. Television's 'Marquee Moon' is a truly seminal post-punk record to which recent indie epigones such as The Libertines, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and a thousand unnameable others owe a tremendous debt. Listening to the fabulous interweaving guitar lines and the fantastical lyrics ('I saw the darkness double / I saw lightning strike itself'), on the ten-minute title track you almost get a sense that it owes as much to progressive rock as to the punk movement that was more in vogue at the time.

The Violet May are a band from Sheffield who I first saw play to around 60 people in Manchester's Night & Day bar. at the time I thought they were magnificent, with a raw urgency and, in frontman Chris McClure, a sheer sense of attitude that is seldom seen in fledgling bands. In my semi-drunken state I thought I was witnessing 'the next big thing'. Now 2 or 3 years later I find myself lamenting their unrealised potential. Frontman McClure has been replaced with a decent-enough imitator, but for some reason the 6 songs on this new EP fail to ignite in quite the same way as their earlier output. It sounds prescriptive and safe, as though the edges have all been sanded down and the swagger diluted into something perhaps more marketable but, to my ears, ultimately less promising.

The new Crocodiles album is both psychedelic and adrenalised; one of the best things I've heard so far this year. As was the new album 'Era' by noise-rock band Disappears. Sadly though, the third album by White Lies appears to demonstrate their waning inspiration and appeal. First album was great, second album was average, this is just quite dismal. A shame.


Gigs Attended:

Prom 41: Borodin, Glazunov, Gubaidulina & Mussorgsky (at the Royal Albert Hall, London)