UNDERPASS I | Reflections by Underpass Mag

UNDERPASS

‘Reflections’ BENJAMIN DAVID KNIGHT / NED SAMUEL / CHARLIE METHVEN / BRIAN CAVANAUGH // ISSY MITCHELL / BUDDLEIA MASEN / JACK RICE / JAMES BARRETT / BEN JACKSON / CANDICE NEMBHARD / ELLEY BLUE // MIA MAGARIAN / BLYTHE ZAROZINIA AIMSON / ANNA WALL / LEO TEMPLE / THOMAS ROSOSCHANSKY / JAMES MACHELL / ROSALIE GARDNER / SCOTT WALKER CUNNINGHAM / ALEKSANDRA SZYMCZYK // UNDERPASS MAG / NORWICH, UK.

EDITOR’S NOTE When I arrived at university, it would be safe to say I

I felt the arts community was often downplayed or

was scared beyond belief. I’ve always been anxious

treated as a niche past time. However, after many

when it came to new endeavours; but bridging the

discussions, meetings and showcases, I believe there

gap between adolescence and adulthood was a bigger

was a growing respect being cultivated for it. Art

jump than I had previously envisioned. When I came

and life are one in the same and it would be a shame

into contact with new slangs, new music and

to ignore the great developments in the scene that

ultimately new people, I was amazed at the projects

are right under our noses. (Shoutout to Meat Bingo).

people immersed themselves in with vigorous

I’d like to therefore think Underpass serves as small

passion. Admittedly, I was slightly envious, but largely

community, championing and pioneering the small

I was in awe that people were taking the initiative to

collectives that are working in the city. I am ever so

craft and live out their own dream experiences. With

grateful to those who have supported from the

slightly green eyes, toward the beginning of summer

beginning and to those that have joined along the

2014, I pledged with a good friend of mine, that I’d

way. Without want of being overly kind, I am proud

undertake a project that served as a sort of

and honoured to be involved in such an undertaking.

Underground Railroad network; bringing these

Whether this be the one and only, or one of many;

different worlds together. Thus, Underpass was born.

here’s to the dream of making the first chain in a larger network.

CANDICE NEMBHARD

PROSE

// THE OTHER PLACE I started sailing during the between-years of my life, there was nothing for me on the land but disappointment and the withered things that were once beautiful, and my gaze turned to the promises of the

ocean. Imagine, I thought, the possibilities that lie in wait past a hazy horizon; a world wholly different to that known by man – the world itself turned on its head. Nothing that could spoil the blue, as it was too far for massive iron structures to enshroud. I leapt at the first opportunity to get onto a boat and embarked quickly, without thought but with an abundance of feeling.

I’d never been taught how to steer, and I hadn’t the slightest clue how to navigate.

_“I was drowning. The boat had been struck, and I’d gone over – I didn’t know what was around me. It was in my ears and eyes.” “You were lucky to be alive,” he tells me. That’s what they’ve all said since I came back. It’s all they want to say to me. “You’d swallowed a lot of water before they found you washed up. Is there anything else you remember?” “No, I washed up somewhere else before they found me. The other place.” He leans it and presses together his fingers until his pen hangs loosely from the arch and ticks away slowly. “The other place?” There’s a look of bemusement and pity in his eyes that he hides with the professionally feigned interest. “With the vines and the man, and the fruit. Before I came back and they found me.” He leans back again and I almost catch a smirk. “Hallucinations are common in survivors of drowning. You had lost consciousness long before you were found, and are likely to have a disoriented perception of reality surrounding the incident.” “I know what happened to me.” It was louder than I hoped, but it severs the rest of his lecture before he continues telling me my own madness. But then he leans in again, with a grimace and furrowed brow; fingers knotted together. “Okay,” he says, slowly. “Tell me about the other place.”_ only one? […]

BENJAMIN KNIGHT

// VARIOUS DISTORTIONS in the bathroom mirror my face doesn’t look like how I’d think it does there’s bags under my eyes what looks like cheekbones forming cut and blotched and scarred skin and the eternal stubble I remember noticing my face wasn’t ugly when I was drunk in someone else’s toilet the Fosters seemed to flow endlessly I think I was fifteen then ‘oh shit look at me’ I remember when the acne came on all of a sudden then the luminous pinkness then so many scars and lumps they’re not so bad now there’s no more pills my favourite time to look at myself, much as I do it anyway is when someone thinks I look good and it’s evident in the way they talk and act I can never believe it long but it’s still nice my favourite place to see myself is in the cold glass of the bus stop after dark I can’t see my own eyes just bits of face, contours, shadows mixed in with the condensation or the drops of rain

NED SAMUEL

// FALSE TEETH When I was ten, I took a tooth out at the library. An enamel bust gave up on its strained relationship with some rope/the ceiling; the tooth made a break for it. From somewhere beyond the curtain of dust that had fallen across the library foyer, I heard Mrs Croaker, a friend of my mother’s, saying something about an ear lobe in her tea. Then comes a clear memory (possibly mixed up with re-runs of The Wizard of Oz) of a puddle of enamel spreading across the flagstones of the library foyer. I also remember spotting, unwillingly anagrammed across the sludge, a few rather shaken up survivors of the legend “ROBERT ASHBURNE: OUR GREATEST MAN OF LETTERS”. The “OUR” in the inscription on what had been Henbury’s most valued and valuable sculpture probably belongs to all speakers of English, indeed all of humanity. Ashburne, as we all know, is the most profound, most revered, most influential artist in all human history. A confession: whether due to laziness, or busyness, or certain traumatic early experiences (see above), I never got around to reading a word of Ashburne’s work. A prediction: I never will. When I took up this prestigious academic position earlier this year, I decided it was really time to finally get my teeth into Ashburne. In my new office, dislodged sculptural tooth eyeing me constantly from a shelf, I read Jonathan Noble’s Ashburne, which made impressive use of the scant confirmed facts to spin an exciting autobiography of the great man. Reading Tom Cooke’s Passion for Ashburne!, I found the sort of introduction I would have loved in my formative years, while Bernard Nightingale’s Ashburnt made me regret that I did not have a lifetime of reading Ashburne to look back on. I found S.O. Davis’ classic The Works and Life Of Mr Robert

Ashburne, reprinted in a modern typeface for the 21st century, as electrifying as I’d been told I would. I also enjoyed watching Peter Prada on how Ashburne is in our very DNA in Bob’s Our Uncle, a truly moving piece of television. Having carved some way into the forest of work on Ashburne, I knew it was time to turn my sights on Ashburne’s

work. I returned, naturally, to the library – not Henbury Hall, this time, but our university’s seemingly infinite shelves. But I could catch no whiff of the great man’s corpus. I searched every bookshop I came across: again, nothing. A certain publisher divulged to me in confidence that his imprint’s new edition of Ashburne’s complete works has had to remove the work itself, to make room for certain vital modern notes and appendices. I am forced to hypothesize that Ashburne’s ashes have gone out. By some monumental oversight, we have let the great man’s work fall out of print, and out of the world. All we have left, it seems, are the infinite hall of mirrors that provide imperfect reflections of and on his work. That, and a single enamel tooth. An extended account of my discoveries will be published in a monograph later this year.

CHARLIE METHVEN

// WHEN I WAS YOUNGER

The world was a beautiful place when I was younger. Alive, pure. Dusk mingled with the endless green, the leaves vibrant in their sway. I often think of that. Remember the mountain smell, the warmth of rising excitement

watching the sky turn from fading orange to the slightest violet. Surely there is a place, perhaps in the waking moments of our creation, when color dripped into being, where the violet is eternal. The dim light illuminating

just enough for that cool, cool wave of purple to flourish, invading the scope of vision. But that place is not here. The violet has and always will darken, such as nostalgic memories of youth serve only as a welcomed escape, for a few short breaths, before poisoning the spirit, the yearning for yesteryear becoming too much. Or vanishing all together. These brief lapses, blissful, beautiful, are a danger, for the return to reality is suddenly abrupt. Yet, I die for the violet.

BRIAN CAVANAUGH

art

// SPLIT

split and detached, splayed out to think, legs hitched up, back breaking, tears// I cried last time round, at the point of no return, but this time it was fluid, pleasure distilled// until it broke// the emblem of an unplanned future caught just where it hurts// expecting, hoping, to not be expecting// you fool, it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t happen at this point in your month.

ISSY MITCHELL

// ALIGNED

BUDDLEIA MASEN

// Reflections OCTOBER 2014

JACK RICE

// SUMMER

Summer 2014. Taken on a Nikon FM2, 35mm.

JAMES BARRETT

// A GENERAL SENSE

BEN JACKSON

// MANTRA

There is a passion in words and music,

Harness its influence and repeat:

Last year I was beautiful within Last year I was beautiful within Last year I was beautiful within Last year I was beautiful within

that settles in the dust of your skin.

CANDICE NEMBHARD

//ISLAND

ELLEY BLUE

POETRY

// Haikus Mocking me, right till We kiss, then you stop laughing I feel like I've won.

No words for you yet, You're a poem in progress I don't want to end.

Oh shit: your grandad

That night was not worth

As I grab for the covers

The journey to Hertfordshire -

He tells you well done

Twenty fucking quid!

Mum was right, again

You cocky fucker

You shouldn't sleep with your

I would tell you so myself

friends

But this fucking gag

Mum was right, again 'Go to the toilets,

We're friends, friends who play

then give me your underwear.'

I did a good job

Never liked that thong.

Hotel room, whip in my hand

With double-ended dildos And talk about boys

Being your mistress Finally we fuck

A pub in Soho

I exorcise a demon

You felt like my first

No more mystery

Thought I loved you for a while

The bouncer winks at me, 'That wasn't the ladies''.

But then I got bored Your Northern chuckle

Reciting Shakespeare

Sunset spliffs, Jimi Hendrix

Oh poor Rosanna.

Laughing as we fucked

You wanted monogamy,

In bed - you're more pretentious Than all these haikus

You got a threesome. I know it's shallow But you really did have the

You turned out to be

Most enormous cock

Less Before Sunrise and more New Yorker on speed.

MIA MAGARIAN

// Big Lights i Vision blurred, so close to the mirror I can touch my own nose.

ii I think my pupils are so big they bleed out into the whites of my eyes.

BLYTHE ZAROZINIA AIMSON

// MOTHER Oh, my Mother, I am appalled by your loss. Weep My Mother, as you lay me down with my sister by My side. Two Urns to be emptied And filled again. Weep like a Greek, my Mother, Spread my ashes to the sea, see thy beloved Son among the waves once more and weep. Waves rise and boil becoming red in The sun down, precious Drops fall, nailing the dusk into a painted sky, Inviting us; join me, as I turn, sleeping To comfort my Mother in her decay; She on whom the tempest fell all day. Come night, forsake her not, comfort my Mother. But Mother, the urns must be returned, replaced And forsaken anew. My sister and I Must be buried side by side upon the formulaic sea. See now, the wave resurrects, reflecting In its ochre glow, the sun. Setting now, darkness comes. I heard you calling 'Son' I replied 'Oh my Grandmother, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a braver woman than I'.

ANNA WALL

// PORTRAIT OF MY ROOM IN THE EVENING

The red light in my room has changed everything.

The red light in my room has changed everything .

The ladies of the night line themselves; his true Penelope was Older Women and to a statue, in the red light, she will always be married of which

The ladies of the day are deep veined with sensible wrinkles and thin lips and a statue, in the red light, leaves her with-childwith-shadow.

I have forgone to think and brink myself at the window open leaking light, hysterical. I have forgone to deliver Silences soliloquise and lose their light in words.

from the red light, the taffeta flesh and the baby slides out as a car goes by;

LEO TEMPLE

// NOSTALGIA Sweet harmonious Altercations lovingly Crafted in banter and stress.

Unawareness steered Through easy winds Of joyous comfort Amidst the ones I cherished.

I had everything And I knew nothing.

Now I know everything, And I am nothing.

THOMAS ROSOSCHANSKY

// IN PRAISE OF GARWAIN AND THE ARTHURIAN COURT

A closed mouth catches no flies – The knight of woeful countenance Carved in my mind is the ill seduction

Of Dolores in purple. What magazine

Should guide my hand to more righteous

Conquest? A magazine of virtue. Bah.

How then to draw my pentangle? Dolores,

A grand cathedral, my body: These are the

Components of an instant. Dolores is variable

But the cathedral is in constant renovation.

Oh that her walls should be made of colour

And direction. Then Dolores may not find

My spider web so fast and sting so gentle.

Broken were the ideals of Sir Lancelot

As he fuelled the red storm. ‘What paper

To keep thee alight? The parable of

Isabelle sleeps in a distant cave of

blue

Stone. What kiss to wake her? A

mark

Of insoluble love. Yes. But dour

furies shall

Crucify the knight that falters. Lions,

leopards

And she-wolves: beasts that

masticate uneasy

Prey. How happy I would be to

ensnare my

Love in azure gemstone. Her gentle

head

Would persist in heavenly prison

and her

Dreams of bliss might stay removed

and clean.

It took a green axe to purge Gawain

of his Irish

Sin. What better than blood to

cleanse soil that

Is rotten? Confessions. No. Else the

sickness is unto

Death and there can be no full reprieve. Dorian Gray,

Ulysses.

Don Quixote, Emma Bovary: figures

purple?’

For the sake of a wandering thirst. I

Nay. How then to keep Dolores in Broken meat and eyes bullied: the vile

Components of our brave new world.

Oh what a relief to breath the air of time

Older than earth. The wind would

cast through sin gaze at history

In a maelstrom of stills. All is

disturbed by the tender

Flick of pale feet, the wispy residue of an honest smile,

And the longing to feel sunrise,

clothed in golden hair.

not blow

And Dolores might change her periwinkle.

JAMES MACHELL

// INTERESTING TIMES when my father calls, it's 2am and the house is silent // iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m alone and looking at the mirror opposite the window there are no streetlights here, it lets the darkness in // and he tells me he just got back from some new-age lecture

this chick from california, she was saying someday // this spiritual curtain is just going to drop and that someday, because of the internet and the cloud // we'll be able to speak telepathically and be totally connected

i half-listen, examining the hickeys i got last night with the near-black eyes he gave me // touching my neck and grasping the phone with his fingers

eventually we exhaust all small talk, like we always do // and then he says what he always does

you know, i'm a disappointment // but you're gonna come to so much more you're gonna write, or do whatever // and people are gonna know you

i know you look like me, and think like me // but someday you're gonna break outta here just like your mom my hair is dark in this mirror, my skin his shade of olive // my left and leading hand holds the phone to my ear as he speaks

i'm thinking of 'the chinese curse', you know //may you live in interesting times' i'm gonna say, and i'm sure you'll agree // i think they're the times you're living in now

i look to myself, my face // my roman nose and abyssal eyes i open my thumped-red mouth to reply, but nothing come // and i see myself blink

ROSALIE GARDENER

// Two in a Tunnel Across wet grey rails Slides the felt belly train, And through wide, tinted teeth I look on damp, bucolic country, Until air swallows the colors, As we plunge into an earthy mouth, And I appear Against the lengthy glass blackness. My blue eyes are familiar As I stare with tired skin. I look for fairy tales in my face Beneath an inexperienced beard: The bristly chin, the briar patch sides, And blonde thistle lip tangled up in pink hills余 Soft soil infiltrated By abrasive, hairy age. Just before dark dissolves to colors, Before the face vanishes away, I wipe my sight against the glass, And look into a mirror: Blue eyes, empty, unfamiliar

SCOTT WALKER CUNNINGHAM

// LOOK a sleepy reflection in a public bathroom

but it only takes looking away for everything to start

with ferdydurke and molly soda making out in the back of my head

flowing/overflowing/spilling/moving and everyone will have

i look at the reflection in the mirror i see her hair

to be felt by everybody else

the tone of her skin/her neck/her blue eyes

more than anything addicted to

i notice they’re exactly the same colour as my blue jeans

desperately searching for our own

i look at her

reflection in the soul of the other

her desolate blue eyes without expression i feel her heavy face

even if that soul

at that point it seems like our existence has no

(or it’s absurd misinterpretation)

defined and stable hierarchy. we suddenly

was doing nothing apart from pushing

stopped, me and her, a reflection

us into a more narrow corridor

in the mirror

i don’t look

ALEKSANDRA SZYMCZYK