Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar - T.S. Eliot
The Hollow Men
And watch them fade out And watch them fade out And watch them fade out...- PJ Harvey
The Wheel
Now young faces grow sad and old and hearts of fire grow cold We swore blood brothers against the wind I'm ready to grow young again - Bruce Springsteen
No Surrender
To tie up this blog and posts I would like to take some time to reflect on the thoughts touched on. You will have noticed quotes from three separate sources at the start of each post. I chose those three because I relate to them highly on a personal level and because of this I found that they described my feelings towards these places perfectly. They served as a gateway to my inner thoughts on not just the buildings but the people and the stories that go with these places. TS Eliot summed up how these abandoned places appeared to people and how they can be scary not just in aesthetic but in the feelings that they give off. PJ Harvey in her lyrics as well as her collaboration with Seamus Murphy gives more of a mysterious feel, more of a forward approach to the spaces themselves, about how they fade, and how nature ultimately reclaims them. Bruce Springsteen's words were more direct. To me, his words spoke of the faces that were related to these places. His words focused on the hearts and the feelings that these places represented to people that were connected to them. Each source brought different aspects to the blog and for me helped me get into a mindset to reflect on these places and what they made me think of. Hopefully, they add something for the reader as well.
In this blog, I wanted to highlight contrasts in the environment that abandonment takes place in. This is why we have two posts on the city of Glasgow and their high rise flats which housed a large number of people. This is then contradicted by posts about my hometown in what can be described as rural Scotland. For me what comes to mind at first when I think of abandoned places is I straight away picture some old buildings forgotten in the shadows of some town or city. But as seen in Glasgow and Invergordon abandonment can be easily seen and obvious in some cases while in others it can remain hidden for years like the Inchindown oil tanks. There is also a contrast in time frames as well with the oil tank farm in Invergordon and Inchindown being left untouched for years. While in Glasgow we only have the flats being left for a short space of time before the buildings are destroyed.
Perhaps the fundamental point I would like to make here in this post and the blog is that things are never really destroyed. For sure these places look set to return to the weeds and some have already been knocked down but are they really gone? I feel that after writing this that perhaps nothing can be truly destroyed because these places live on in our memories and our hearts. Whether they are bad memories or good they are still memories that exist within us and we can revisit them anytime we want. The same is true of the world of music. When musicians pass away off course it is sad but are they really gone? I think they live on whenever we play their records or hear their music. The same can be said of these places in that they never really leave instead they grow old in the same way we do. And we can visit them whenever we want. Whether through our memories or in person. Perhaps in this lies the reason that I wanted to write about these places and the people that are linked with them.
References
T.S.Eliot. The Hollow Men. All Poetry: https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men
PJ Harvey. The Wheel. From "The Hope Six Demolition Project" Album. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ReW0jJkag8
Bruce Springsteen. No Surrender. From "Born In The USA" Album. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD3DdskaPhs
