Notre Dame of France, Leicester Square

I think about Co Dependency and Christianity as I cycle to work across the parks, mainly in the rain. After a really horrible row with exh and an evening of tears and wine and good advice from a mum who spent a year in a refuge I grumpily get the co dependency books back out. It seems I need to accept my part in my problems. Though I believe I do mainly, I just need to guard the boundaries. The ride is beautiful: nosing the bike infront of Buckingham Palace, along the bottom of the damp dark green of Green Park, under Wellington Arch, up the steady incline of Hyde Park, past the barracks, alongside the lake, over the road, past the gallery and beneath the canopy of old trees. Dogs like cartoon characters in dog walker packs, all ears and eyebrows stretched taut on leads, then wet deck chairs blown inside out, billowed pregnant in the wind. At the brim of the hill The Round Pond is almost part of the sky, a grey disc of reflected cloud with swans and geese flapping their wings in a slow feathered cancan under the unseasonable gloom. Tourists at the gates of Kensington Palace, where the tide of cellophane flowers lapped when Diana died talk in hushed voices of where they were when she died ( in a teepee in New Mexico with shagging lesbians if you want to know.) Princess Diana is almost the patron saint of CD I think, all those unsuitable men, the middle of the night bedside hospital visits, the unhappy childhood, the open wound of that savagely caring heart dragged like heavy luggage. I imagine a catholic coloured statue of her, a Jeff Koons perhaps, a single tear in the corner of those dipped blue eyes dropping with the weight of the sorrow of the world.

This is the Christianity I learnt at home, at sunday school, at school:

Think of others before yourself.

Give without counting the cost.

Do a good turn every day.

As a family we said prayers every night until I was a teenager when I finally rebelled against the tradition, the words themselves exhausted by the speed with which we rattled them off. We didn't have a TV and I think my childhood was more old fashioned than my age. Exh still laughs at my 'Oranges are not the Only Fruit' story of collecting for Oxfam when the men landed on the moon. ( though not actually the first landing I suspect ). My younger brother and I peering round the dimpled glass front door of a house to see the grainy black and white picture of men in bulky suits as if made on Blue Peter. My Mum above us rattling the collecting tin circled by the pictures of starving children to a Dad who was surprised the door bell had rung.

Co d is what you learn when you detach from an alcoholic. What you have become or have always been. It is the unhealthy attachment to another, the willingness to take care of someone else's problems, a compulsive wish to control others by your care.

This is what Nietzsche said on christianity:

'Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.'

He 'called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good and evil a "calamitous error", and wished to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Judeo-Christian world.'

' Nietzsche associates slave-morality with the Jewish and Christian traditions. Nietzsche sees slave-morality born out of the resentment of slaves. It works to overcome the slave's own sense of inferiority before the (better-off) masters. It does so by making out slave weakness to be a matter of choice, by, e.g., relabeling it as "meekness." '

It seems a lot of the churches I want to get into now are only open on Sundays or odd times in the week and it is increasingly difficult just to slip into a church as I am working all but full time. Also I have discovered on my map behind the computer that charts churches I have been to and those still to visit, a purple sticker over a yellow one on a church in Soho - though I am not sure if this is a mistake or if the boys are playing a trick on me. I had a boyfriend once a long time ago, a college boyfriend, who kept adding extra birds to a large copy of Constable's Haywain that hung in his parents front room. They never noticed he said and the intricacy of the sly sabotage made me laugh.

It is pouring as I turn off Leicester Square into the narrow street of Notre Dame of France. Infront of the Odeon there is a woman with a clip board directing passersby away from the workmen creating a gothic landscape for the premiere of Snow White and the Hunstmen. A drunk man cackles to security guards behind the newly errected barriers 'It is pissing down, no one will be coming here.' 'They will come.' they say calmly - behind them green astro turf being rolled out and men placing fake crows in fake trees.

In a flat faced large 50s building I walk up the steps and into a huge rotunda room with grey light from a cupola skylight in the shallow domed roof. It is a bit murky, a bit municipal, a bit unkempt. I sit at a pew. Just sit. There are about five others sat in the pews with their heads bowed. Perhaps just sheltering I wonder - the heels of scruffy shoes and stowed bags visible, though they seem devout in their prayer. As I sit in the grey stillness it feels like an arbitary act that I am just sitting still on a Tuesday lunchtime here in this place. I begin to hear high holy music, as if almost at a frequency beyond human ear, I can't work out where it is coming from, and imagine a cd piped in for atmosphere. Later when I am researching the church I find a mention on flickr that there was an organ playing when the photographer took the pictures and I wonder now writing this whether someone was actually quietly playing.

Above the altar piece is an large ornate and richly detailed tapestry of Mary. Like a Disney princess she is surrounded by animals and birds - a cockerel, a peacock, a squirrel, a deer. I am mesmerized by the fine detail though I find it a bit sickly, a bit ugly.

Eventually I stand and walk to the back of the church, finding blue and white delft tiles depicting the Stations of the Cross and a notice board on the curved wall labelled 'Spiritual Life' listing retreats, and prayer groups, some of it in French. I find too a mention of Jean Cocteau's mural. Aha I think, they are here. A friend had mentioned that there were some of Cocteau murals in a french church in Soho but for some reason I had assumed they were in the French Protestant church in Soho Square which I still haven't got into. I have to wander around the church, up to the altar and then to the side curved wall where there are glass booths sectioned off from the church. It isn't clear if they are chapels or offices but pressing my face to the dark glass and through the reflection I see the slab of an altar and vibrant life-sized drawings of the Cruxifiction on the wall behind. Passionate but stylised line drawings in bright pencil crayon colours they show only the legs and bleeding feet of Jesus, the blood dripping from his feet to a rose. Homoerotic soldiers, bereft women, a gold ringed black sun, there is an odd but modern narrative within the picture, a crucifixion of difficult human emotions.

The mural was painted over eight days in Novemeber 1959 when Jean Cocteau was promoting his film Le Testament d'Orphee in London. The church had been badly bombed in 1940 and then restored. The french cultural attache Renee Varin was commissioned to encourage eminent french artists to help create a sacred space. Though Cocteau's poetry, opium and homosexuality were seen to sit uneasily with his Catholicism he was invited to decorate a chapel and screens had to be errected to keep away the crowds while he worked.

'He arrived each morning about 10am and began by lighting a candle. He was heard talking to the Virgin Mary while working on the drawing. 'O you, most beautiful of women, loveliest of God's creatures, you were the best loved. So I want you to be my best piece of work too....I am drawing you with light strokes....You are the yet unfinished work of Grace.'

And when he left,

'I am sorry to go, as if the wall of the chapel had drawn me into another world.' 'I shall never forget that wide open heart of Notre Dame de France and the place you allowed me to take within it'

Though as I begin researching the murals I am tipped through a door of conspiracy and complicated plots attached to Cocteau. A lot seems to be based on the discredited Priory of Sion - a lineage invented by the frenchman Pierre Plantard in 1956 to prove he was descended from the true King of France. The plot included fake documents being planted by Plantard and accomplices in the Biblioteque Nationale and across France to establish his claim. (Oh I love the idea of false history embedded in the real. ) Despite Plantard admitting his hoax the story seems to have gathered momentum, being used to prove the lineage of Jesus and Mary Magdalegne and becoming the basis of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. The son of a suicide Cocteau was listed by Plantard as a Grand Master of Sion along with Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton. The murals at Notre Dame fuel the debate:

'The Priory of Sion has, in the past, purposely used the letters "MM", or sometimes jus "M" to symbolize Magdalene and Cocteau used them as well. In the Church of Notre Dame de France ("Our Lady of France") in London, which Cocteau decorated with fantastic murals, this letter "M" is mysteriously placed on the altar, directly beneath the scene of the crucifixion. To the left are depicted the dice thrown by the Roman soldiers who according to the Gospels, cast lots to determine who should get Christ's clothing after he died. The number of dots that are shown on the dice is fifty-eight, a significant number. The skull of Baphomet, which the Templars and later the Priory of Sion are said to have possessed, was referred to cryptically as "Caput 58M" 5 +8= 13, and "M" is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. Therefore "58M" could be a code for "Mary Magdalene" who is traditionally shown praying before a skull.'

'The same statement is being made in Cocteau's mural at Notre Dame. This statement is further reinforced by the fact that the 'M' on the altar is directly below a rose that Cocteau has placed on the cross, precisely beneath Christ's feet. Not only does that make it a 'rose cross' but the rose is above the initial for 'Mary'. The term 'Rosemary' is used in occult parlance to refer to the female consort of a god or demon. (Thus the title for the film Rosemary's Baby.) This is exactly what Magdalene's symbolism entailed. The fact that the rose as well as the blood drops beneath it, are coloured both red and blue may indicate the 'blue blood' of Christ's royal line. Given all of this, the Church's title 'Notre Dame de France' is interesting. Most would assume this to be a reference to the Virgin Mary, who is called by Catholics 'Our Lady'. But the true 'Lady of France' is the goddess Marianne, their national symbol. Perhaps 'Marianne' and Magdalene' are representations of the same archetype.'

http://quintessentialpublications.com/tymman/?page_id=26

Phew, I find this stuff exhausting. Though ( and I think this is my favourite bit) I also read fascinating accounts of two female academics of impeccable reputation being transported through time in the gardens of Versailles in 1901. Cocteau calling it 'the most important experiences of our time'

http://www.kathleenmcgowan.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52:the-mystery-of-the-versailles-time-slip&catid=38:articles&Itemid=62

Notre Dame of France itself was established by the Marist Fathers for the French community in London in the 1860s in a building that had previously been 'Burford's Panaroma' accounting for its circular shape. Consecrated in 1868 the church's mission included a hospital, an orphanage and two schools which were run by the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul. The Marist fathers wished to put the sacrifice of Mary at the centre of their faith - Mary's close and gentle but human relationship to Jesus to mirror their own. They call themselves rather intriguingly 'hidden and unknown' - I think they mean that their work is 'unsung' 'unobserved' - again like Mary - with the sacrifice of her holy motherhood.

The original panoramic building was built in 1793 by Richard Barker. He had invented a circular drawing on a cylindrical surface to convey complete 360 degree scenes in 1792 and obtained a royal lincence in 1787 for the exclusive use of his invention for fourteen years. Initially setting up with his son he showed huge panoraomic drawings in a make shift shed in his back garden near Leicester Square before purchasing this site and commissioning the purpose designed rotunda building. 'Panorama painting seems to be all the rage' wrote Constable in a letter of 1803 and Ruskin later described a visit to Milan:

'I had been partly prepared for this view [of the city from the cathedral roof] by the admirable presentation of it in London a year or two before, in a great exhibition of which the vanishing has been in later life a greatly felt loss to me,--Burford's panorama in Leicester Square, which was an educational institution of the highest and purest value, and ought to have been supported by the government as one of the most beneficial school instruments in London. There I had seen, exquisitely painted, the view from the roof of Milan Cathedral, when I had no hope of ever seeing the reality, but with a joy and wonder of the deepest;--and now to be there indeed, made a deep wonder become fathomless. (from Praeterita: TheAutobiography of John Ruskin [Oxford 1978]

http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/2003/panorama/new_001.htm for a picture.

It was not the only spectacular attraction of Leicester Square - in 1851 the area was occupied by a large, circular, domed building, in which was exhibited Wyld's "Great Globe."

http://www.ssplprints.com/image/105139/unattributed-wylds-globe-leicester-square-london-12-july-1851 Do look! It is a fascinating illustration!

The representation of the world was sixty-five feet in diameter, and comprised a surface of some ten thousand square feet. Galleries encircled the interior of the building at different heights from the ground, by which means visitors were enabled to walk round and inspect every portion of the globe, an attendant, staff in hand, pointing out its principal features; lectures were likewise delivered at intervals during the day.

Though anybody who complains about Leicester Square these days will like the later description of the central patch of land once the Globe had closed down: 'Overgrown with rank and fetid vegetation, it was a public nuisance, both in an æsthetic and in a sanitary point of view; covered with the débris of tin pots and kettles, cast-off shoes, old clothes, and dead cats and dogs, it was an eye-sore to every one forced to pass by it. '

The Notre Dame Hall beneath the church later hosted many punk gigs. Here, a description from John Springate from the Glitter Band:

'Gerry Shephard and I went to see The Sex Pistols at Notre Dame Hall in Leicester Square, which I think was late-76. Gerry and I were dressed in our snazziest gear with flared trousers and all that, and there's all these punks there with drainpipe jeans, short hair, really sort of 'now'. The Sex Pistols came on and did four numbers and I said to Gerry - cos we'd had had enough by then, we'd seen enough and we came out - I said, 'Well that's it then.' I just knew.'

http://www.alwynwturner.com/glitter/punk.html ( a music site charting glam rock in its proponents own words including its demise as punk arrived. Here too is this great description from Tina Charles ( 'I love to love ( But my Baby Loves to Dance') ):

'I did a TV show in Germany with The Clash and Dana and Showaddywaddy, which was a very strange group of people. And we were all on the 'plane going over and I always remember The Clash were so badly behaved, taking all the mini-bar from the hotel and everything - they were just shocking. And there was Dana and I behaving ourselves totally.'

And in the late 80s when I helped my neighbours in the opposite bedsit in Baron's Court run a party business we hosted a Burns Night party there - attaching stag's heads to sandy concrete and borrowed tartan draped round pillars and folding endless purple and green napkins. Thatcher's children indeed.

I struggle writing the Cocteau conspiracy theories for days then wipe out the whole post by accident. In tears I text friends to see if they can help me retrieve what I have written. I take it on myself to delve deep into the bowels of the computer getting as far as 'meta data and hidden cache' but not knowing the software to open them with.

Still cycling back and forth across the parks - preparations for the Queen's celebrations are underway. One morning with traffic at a standstill I have to push the bike infront of the palace because the roads are shut. Soldiers in Nutcracker suite outfits dotted across Green Park move in a slow pace sweeping for bombs. Another day, I turn the bike onto Birdcage Walk to find myself at the head of a busby-clad brass band regiment like a middle aged masthead on a hired bike. I treat myself to an out of character self-waved circular cheer - a booyah! to the world, though no one is watching .

I rewrite the blog - remembering almost word for word some of the early stuff then getting bogged down in religious conspiracies again. It feels like it takes me ages - an extra week at least to rewrite and I don't even have the satisfaction of a purple sticker to place.

OL sends me an image of a church sign he has seen in Cambridgeshire visiting his parents. 'The Hokey Cokey is NOT what its all about' it says. He says it is the sister image to a nearby off licence which says 'What if the Hokey Cokey IS all it's about?'

Amen.