Carl Halling Home Page

Like Some New Romantic

Some months after the final curtain triumphantly fell on Richard Cottrell's production of "The Dream" at the London Old Vic, I applied for and was offered the position of sales assistant in Bentall's china department in Kingston-on-Thames, staying there until just after Christmas. A short while later, thanks to the kindness of an old friend and colleague of my father's, Haydn, I found work as part of the cast and crew of a version of Petronius' “Satyricon” directed by Peter Benedict for the Phoenix Theatre, Charing Cross Road. Initially I was just an Assistant Stage Manager and percussionist, but in time I was offered a very small non-speaking role.
1981 was also the year in which I became a kind of hanger-on of a youth movement originally dubbed "The Cult with no Name", and whose origins lay in the late 1970s, largely among discontented ex-Punks reacting to the increasingly drab uniformity of Punk Johnny Come Latelys. Eventually known as New Romantics, they embraced a hyper-nostalgic devotion to various ages which they interpreted as romantic, whether recent times such as the Roaring Twenties, or more distant historical eras, the latter inspiring such stock New Romantic accessories as ruffs, veils, frills, kilts and so on. Several of the cult's pioneers went on to become famous names within the worlds of art, fashion and popular music. They tended be among the most foppish or flamboyant of the earliest adherents, and so stood in stark contrast to those council estate dandies for whom it could be said that New Romanticism was simply a passing fashion in much the same way as Punk was before it. Its soundtrack was a largely synthesized dance music influenced by German Art Rock collectives such as Kraftwerk and Can, as well as Glam, Funk and Disco. While it was arguably no longer cutting edge by the end of '81, it went on to exert a colossal influence on the development of music and fashion throughout the eighties, and partly inspired what became known as the Second British Invasion thanks to a desperate need for striking videos on the part of the newly arrived MTV (Music Television). I attended New Romantic club nights at Le Kilt and Le Beat Route among others, and was even snapped at one of these by the legendary London photographer David Bailey, but I was never a true New Romantic so much as a lone fellow traveller keen to experience first hand the last truly original London music and fashion cult before it imploded as all others had done before it. Yet, despite its florid decadence, New Romanticism was far more mainstream than other musical trends which came in the wake of Punk such as Post-Punk and Goth. For this reason, it eventually evolved in Britain into what has become known as New Pop, and which combined often complex if accessible tunes with a telegenic Glam image. I myself gravitated more far towards New Pop than various more esoteric musical styles that were doing the rounds, whether Goth or Indie or Grebo or whatever, and this was reflected by a gaudy image so typical of an infamously flamboyant decade, while my true musical passion remained Art Rock, but often of the darkest kind. Indeed while I rejected Goth as a fashion craze, I was passionate about many of its primary influences such as dark romanticism in all its forms and there was a duality about me which was true of the eighties as a whole.
As '81 went on, my acting career may have lost a little momentum, with the result that some kind of family decision was reached to the effect that I should return to my studies at the age of 25. So I went on to pass interviews for both the University of Exeter, and Westfield College, then situated on Kidderpore Avenue near the Finchley Road in Hampstead NW3, and part of the vast University of London. Founded in 1882 and going on to serve as the model for the University for Women parodied in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic "Princess Ida", Westfield was an all-woman college for more than 80 years, finally becoming co-educational in 1968. She officially merged with east London's Queen Mary College in 1989 to become Queen Mary and Westfield College, until the turn of the century when she was renamed Queen Mary, University of London, while legally retaining the original title of QMWC. I preferred to go to Westfield, although it was a bit of a Hobson's Choice for me, and my father was in agreement, so in the autumn I found myself embarking on a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and Drama mainly at Westfield, but also partly at the nearby Central School of Speech and Drama, while staying in a small room on campus. My dissatisfaction with my situation was initially so strong that at one point in an attempt to escape it I auditioned for work as an assistant stage manager, or acting ASM, for my old friend and agent Barrie Stacey, but it didn't work out, and I became resigned to my fate. Soon after having done so, while ambling at night in what I think was the Swiss Cottage area close by to the Central School, I was ambushed by a group of my fellow drama students, who were visibly pleased to see me and who might have appeared to my 26 year old eyes to incarnate the sheer carefree rapturous vitality and joy of life of youth. Whatever the truth, I came to love my time at Westfield, coinciding as it did with the first half of the crazy eighties...last of a triad of decades in the West of unceasing artistic and societal change and experimentation. For me the very early '80s was a time of constant exhilerated hedonism, the narcotic fuelling me back then not being alcohol so much as a furious desire for strong sensation within a variety of fields, the intellectual, the social, the amative among them, and reinforced by industrial strength doses of self-obsession. Furthermore, from around the turn of the eighties or earlier, I'd developed an adoration of early death, as well as those artists who, both gifted beyond measure and exquisite of face and form had gone in search of it. It was my desire to be ultimately numbered among such bedevilled individuals myself, to know such blissful delinquency.
The Playboy Philosophy which exploded in the 1960s could be said to have reached its full flowering in the crazy eighties. That's not to say, however, that the vast majority of people who came to maturity in this hyper-hedonistic decade didn't ultimately forge respectable family lives and careers following a brief season spent as flamboyant outsiders because of course they did. Few embraced these neo-libertine values with a the same kind of blind fervour as me...and yet of course there were a good many who took them far further than I ever did. Still, I can't deny that I now suffer from a cruel nostalgia for the trappings of status, security, respectability, things I once scorned, preferring instead to push to the limit as if under some enchantment my notion of myself as a poète maudit like my heroes, a notion somewhat at odds it has to be said with a certain lingering suburban ordinariness. I believed in the role of the artist as a dissolute provoker existent at all times on the verge of ecstasy or despair, of illumination or madness or death and worshipped those who had pursued this wretched anti-existence to the limit. This made me the worst kind of sinner in my eyes, a true prodigal in defiance of everything that makes society tolerable, such as personal restraint and respect for parents and authority. Such violent narcissism as I once displayed has been worshipped by the West for close on to half a decade especially as expressed through such popular arts as Rock 'n' Roll and the cinema. A universal obsession with rebellion and sensual abandon is a sign as I see it of a West increasingly given over to neo-pagan values. These are surely the same God-rejecting values that corrupted the antedeluvian world, and which survived the Flood to be disseminated throughout the nations. They spelled the end of one empire after the other, including the Egyptian, the Greek, the Roman. They are epidemic today through the West and beyond, where once they were marginalised as aberrant. I'd been blessed at birth by every good gift but the most desired qualities such as talent and beauty are among the most dangerous unless submitted in their entirety to God, not least to those who possess them. They are eminently visible and therefore vulnerable, and with more more temptations than most all too often fall prey to Luciferian pride and vanity like David's favourite son Absalom who was physically flawless but morally bereft. Little wonder therefore that so many of them are drawn to the power offered by art, and especially music, the writer of the first song Lamech having been in the line of Cain. Indeed, there are those Christians who believe that the Cainites were the first pagan people, and that they corrupted the Godly line of Seth through a sensual and wicked music not unlike much contemporary Rock. Of course not all Rock music is flagrantly wicked, far from it. Much of it is melodically lovely. While in terms of its lyrics, its finest songs display the most delicate poetic sensibility. The fact remains, however, that no art form has been quite so associated as Rock with rebellion, transgression, licentiousness, intoxication and thanatophilia (an undue fascination with death) nor been so influential as such. To think I once desperately sought fame as a Rock artist myself, and if not as Rock'n'Roll superstar then as actor, or writer, and it was surely a blessing I never gained this pagan form of immortality because had I done so I'd almost certainly have been used for the furtherance of the kingdom of darkness. Once I'd served my purpose I may well have died a solitary premature death as an addict, as has been the fate of so many men and women briefly briefly animated by the charismatic superstar spirit before being cruelly discarded by the Enemy of Souls.

Ferocity of an Enfant Terrible

Thanks to the generosity of my interviewers both at Westfield and Central, I'd effectively scraped in with two mediocre "A" levels at B and C. Ultimately though Dr Margaret Mein, my principle tutor during my final year advised me to seriously consider a career as a professional academic. Not bad for a secondary school write-off. From the very first essay I produced for assessment at Westfield, I exhibited a frenzied and insolent cerebrality in my writing at least partly influenced by my favourite avant garde artists but also reflecting my own tendency to mental causticity. While some of my tutors may have viewed these submissions with a dubious eye, my Dr Mein thrilled to them and awaited them with the sort of impatience normally accorded a favourite TV or radio series. How close this love of scandalising by way of the written word brought me to a seared conscience I can't say; but one thing is certain, my compassion started to recede. This didn't happen right away of course. Yet, even during those first two golden years, some of those who were drawn to me on a deep emotional level betrayed a certain unease with their words, and I was variously described as intense, inscrutable, mysterious, disabused and sad. So, why didn't I cross the line beyond which a person can no longer respond to the Holy Spirit? After all, from about 1983, I started to decline as a human being. Perhaps it was something to do with the prayers of believing friends and relatives. Or perhaps something precious was kept alive within me during those dark years. Certainly, I never fully stopped being a caring person, and I can recall being outraged by those avant gardists who advocated actual cruelty or the harming of innocents. How then did I square this with my adoration of certain favoured artists who thrived on verbal violence and scenes of madness and destruction? The fact is I couldn't, hypocrite that I was.
 I aspired to be an enfant terrible myself on a small scale, ever seeking the centre of attention, baulking at every restraint, talking, smoking, drinking to excess, driven by a desire to be loved while alienating those who'd gladly have devoted themselves to me and me alone. But that was never enough for me. And then there was the shadow that endlessly warred against this constant need to give and receive affection, a hidden, terrible rage significantly directed towards what I perceived as social injustice. The chief targets of this high and mighty dudgeon were dictators on the right wing of the political spectrum, indeed the political right as a whole, but when it came to left-wing oppression, I was no less indignant. The eighties was a decade of protest and riot in the UK, and all throughout its years of raging discontent, I allied myself with one radical lobby after the other, including Amnesty and Animal Aid, Greenpeace and CND. I marched against the nuclear threat in London and Paris, lectured for Amnesty while blind drunk to a roomful of middle-aged Rotarians, and had a letter published in the newspaper of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. I became a bit of nuisance with my tracts and posters and pamphlets. Mine was the righteous fury that is rooted in a false notion of the perfectibility of Man...that fails to recognise that oppression stems from the sin we all share...that has no real satisfying motive other than its own existence. In time, it started to turn inwards, and to eat away at the reserves of tenderness that meant so much to me, its darkness enhanced by alcohol and dissolute living, and an addiction to astrology and other occult topics, and scandalous art and philosophy. My soul effectively started to cave in, and while it was eventually delivered from terminal ruin by the Grace of God, I genuinely believe that despite my hard work, I've never fully recovered from the ravages I inflicted on it.

 This first remnant from my Westfield diaries, "Some Sad Dark Secret" testifies to some extent to a former tendency to mental vehemence, which was somewhat at odds with a usually affable manner. It was based on notes contained within a single piece of scrap paper which I recently unearthed and probably dating from 1982 or '83. The first three sections contain words of advice offered me by Dr Mein, the fourth and fifth by another of my Westfield tutors, which served to good-naturedly upbraid me for a  didacticism he considered to be reminiscent of Rousseau's. Rousseau being of course not the painter Henri but the Swiss-born writer, philosopher, composer and pioneer of the contemporay autobiography Jean-Jacques who remains one of the most influential men in history. His alleged position as the father of modern liberalism and the modern educational system - perhaps even the modern world as a whole - has made him a byword among certain Christian conservatives. He's also been widely cited as being one of the chief progenitors not just of the French Revolution, but the worldwide artistic movement that came in its wake known as Romanticism. And his assertion that Man is born free while being everywhere in chains which stems at least in part from his belief in the essential goodness of Man, has assured him a place of honour in the history of Socialism. And yet, for all his universal genius, and overflowing love for humankind, he died a bitter and disappointed man. This would almost certainly have been my fate had I continued to believe in the perfectibility of Man under certain social conditions, which is the essence of Socialism, and which to a greater or lesser extent was my creed prior to coming to the realisation that only through Christ can the heart of Man be changed. That is, of course, had I even managed to survive into middle age.   

Some Sad Dark Secret

Dr M. said:
“Temper
Your enthusiasm,
The extremes
Of your
reactions,
You should have
A more
Conventional
Frame
On which to
Hang your
unconventionality.”

The tone of some
Of my work
Is often
A little dubious,
She said.
She thought
That there
Was something
Wrong,
That I’m hiding
Some sad and dark
Secret
From the world.

She told me
Not to rhapsodise,
That it would be
Difficult,
Impossible, perhaps,
For me to
Harness
My dynamism.
“Don’t push People”,
She said.
“You make
Yourself
Vulnerable”.

Dr H. said:
“By the third page,
I felt I’d been
Bulldozed.
I can almost see
Your soapbox.
Like Rousseau,
You’re telling us
What to do.
You seem to
Work yourself
Into such an
Emotional pitch…

And this
Extraordinary
Capacity for lists.

The Westfield Players

I resented being at Westfield at first, perhaps because my acting career having only just begun I viewed being back in full-time education at 26 as a giant step backwards. It wasn't long, however, before I fell in love with the place and embarked on one of the most purely happy periods of my entire life. Westfield in the early '80s was a hotbed of talent and creativity and I was provided with almost unlimited opportunities for acting and performance. Within days I'd made a close friend of Andrew, a fellow French and Drama student from Darlington in the north east. Before long, we were both being directed by a dynamic and flamboyant guy called Lee in Brecht and Weill's's "The Threepenny Opera". I'd two small roles, the most interesting being that of a petty street thief Filch, who'd been played by the French writer and actor Antonin Artaud in "L' Opéra de quat'sous", one of two versions of the play directed in 1931 by G.W. Pabst. I came to be so very proud of this fact because Artaud, a horrifying example of the avant garde persuasion taken to its logical conclusion, was one of my most beloved cursed poets. Through this production I went on to play jive-talking disc jockey Galactic Jack in the musical play "The Tooth of Crime" by Sam Shepard, who has allegedly spoken of being influenced by Artaud. A coincidence perhaps, though Artaud's concept of a Theatre of Cruelty was tragically prophetic of so much post-war theatre, indeed art as a whole. The director, Neil, had been impressed by myself and Andrew in "The Threepenny Opera" and so cast us in "The Tooth" in consequence, with Andrew taking the lead role of Hoss. Before long I'd all but forgotten about acting in the outside world and was channelling every inch of my creative energy into performing at Westfield, the now vanished college which became my whole world for two glorious years. In the summer, a group of us went on to play in "Twelfth Night" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Directed by the brilliant Dawn Austwick with Shakespeare's Illyria tranformed into a Hippie Arcadia, I played Feste as a Dylanesque minstrel strumming dirge-like folk songs with a voice like sand and glue.
 The Westfield contingent's key players couldn't have deviated more from the politely liberal norm we seemed to encounter nightly at the Fringe Club on Chambers Street if we'd tried. That was particularly true of Ged, who played Malvolio. At the time he was a hard looking but colossally kind-hearted guy from Liverpool with slicked back rockabilly hair, usually dressed down in denims as per the fashion at the time, with post-Punk at the height of its popularity as an underground movement. It all but passed me by I have to say, as I favoured the more mainstream acts of New Pop. Ged I think had been around during the Punk days at Eric's in Liverpool, and was a fascinating, charismatic guy with a hilariously dark sense of humour. In fact we were both corrosively sardonic discontents, but never in a grimly miserabilist way, being soft and sensitive at heart, and essentially trusting of human goodness. He and his girlfriend Gail, who'd designed the flowing Hippie costumes, and who was also a very dear friend of mine back then, never stopped encouraging me nor believing in me. We were all very close that summer despite sharing a single large house on Prince's Street I think it was and there wasn't a single argument that I can remember.
 During my second year I lived in an upper floor apartment in Powis Gardens, Golders Green, sharing it with my close friends from the French department, Andrew and David. Andrew from Darlington in the north east was a slim dark good-looking guy who'd gone to the distinguished private school Sedburgh, but who was in full flowering rebellion by the time I met him, with his left ear pierced, and dressed in the trendiest '80s attire. David, who'd gone to the Catholic public school Ampleforth, dressed conservatively, but was as far from stuffy as you can get being an incredibly gifted pianist and guitarist who despite a misleadingly serious demeanor was a warm, affectionate, witty, eccentric character who endlessly buzzed with the nervous energy of near-genius. Soon after moving in, I decorated the walls of my room and the lounge, which doubled as David’s bedroom, with various provocative images including reproductions of Symbolist and Decadent paintings, and icons of popular culture and the avant garde. We then went on to organise what we optimistically called a salon, which although well-attended didn't survive beyond a single meeting, although this was well-attended. One thing is certain, we weren't part of any revived Brideshead generation or anything like that. We drove our effusive landlady half-crazy at times through heavy-footedness and other crimes of upper floor thoughtlessness, although I don't remember her complaining all that much despite the fact that we weren't averse to drink-fuelled discussions extending well into the night. In common with most of my friends I tended to drink heavily at night, but almost never during the day. The truth is that self-doubt wasn't an issue for me in the early eighties and I was a truly happy person, in fact so much so that I may've exaggerated my capacity for depth and melancholia as a means of making myself more interesting to others. But my first two Westfield years were wonderful...an almost nonstop cycle of plays, shows, concerts, discos, parties set in one of the most beautiful and bucolic areas of London. What possible reason was there to have been discontented?
 My second year drama project was centred on the one-act play "Playing with Fire" written in by the Swedish realist plawright August Strindberg. I was allotted the task of supplying the music for the production as well as the leading role of Knut, a sardonic Bohemian painter forced to endure the adulterous behaviour of a friend Alex who following an invitation to stay with him at the house of his upper middle class parents for a few days, embarks on a torrid affair with his wife Kerstin. Alex was played by budding playwright Vince, while Ondrej played Knut's hated bourgeois father. Both were as wifully madcap as me, and while there was a clash of personalities between Vince and Ondrej, I got on brilliantly with them both...in fact I went on to play the lead in one of Vince's more disturbingly provocative plays at college. Electric with rebellion we all three were, just like Harry Crosby, and yes, part of a new Lost Generation, rebellion being widespread throughout the nation in the 1980s, fuelled by various musical and cultural movements, Post-Punk, Futurism, Goth, Indie and so on.

 We performed "Playing with Fire" around three times in the Michaelmas term of 1982. I also think that the production of "Twelfth Night" we'd staged at Edinburgh was re-performed this term with most of the original cast intact, to be followed by "Blood Wedding". The piece below, adapted from notes I made during this period, with the first verse actually containing references to "Twelfth Night" captures the spirit of those heady first two years at Westfield, a college then in its twilight time prior to being incorporated into Queen Mary on east London’s grim Mile End Road, far, far from the semi-pastoral beauty of Hampstead. It also provides some indication of the unquenchable desire for attention, affection and approval that characterised me back then, and the way it affected some of those who cared for me most.

Gallant Festivities

It was my evening, that’s
For sure -
At last I’m good
At something -
27 years old
I may be, but…
“Spot the
Equity card…”
“It’s your aura, Carl…”
I even signed
One of Phil’s friends’
Programmes -
“When are you going
To be a superstar?”
Said Luce
A few days ago -
That seemed to be
The question
On everyone’s lips.
“You got Feste perfectly,
Just how I envisaged it”
“…Not only when
You’re onstage
but off too!”
At last, at last, at last
I’m good at something…

And so the party…Chloe
called me...I listened…
…To her problems…
References
To my “innocent face”…
Livvy said:
“Susy seems Elusive
But is in fact,
Accessible;
You’re the opposite -
You give to everyone
But are incapable
Of giving in particular.”
M. was comparing me
To June Miller
Descriptions by Nin:
“She does not dare
To be herself…”
Everything I’d always
Wanted to be, I now am…
“…She lives
On the reflections
Of herself in the eyes
Of others...
There is no June
To grasp and know…”
I kept getting up to dance…
Susy said: “I’m afraid…
You’re inscrutable
You’re not just
Blasé,
Are you?”
I spoke
Of the spells of calm
And the hysterical
Reactions
Psychic
Exhaustion

Then anxious elation...

A Hateful Work Ethic

I'd say things started to go a little wrong for me once I left Westfield in the summer of '83 with a few months to spare before travelling to Paris to work as an English language assistant in a French secondary school, the Lycee Jean-Paul Timbaud. This spelled my exile from the old drama clique, and I'd not be joining them in their final year celebrations, and the knowledge of this must have affected me. I was after all severing myself from a vast network of gifted friends of whom I was deeply fond, and so losing an opportunity of growing as an artist in tandem with like-minded spirits. I could've opted for an alternative few weeks in France as Andrew did, but doing so would've deprived me of the chance of spending more than six months in Paris, a city I’d long worshipped as the only true home of an artist. Even before the end of the summer term of 1983, I remember there was a twilight atmosphere to things, as if a golden era was winding down.
Earlier in the year, my close friend Monique, a brilliant dynamic woman of North African Jewish ancestry had told me something to the effect that while many were drawn to me, they sensed la mort in me, which is to say death. But then she was in thrall to the intellectual worldview, and familiar with the works of the great psychologist Freud who identified a death drive, subsequently named "thanatos", although Freud himself never used this word. Precisely what she meant by death in relation to me I'm unable to say, but she may have identified in me some kind of will to destruction, and specifically self-destruction. As things turned out she was right although it was barely embryonic in the early '80s. Looking back though I attribute this seed of self-destruction to a cocktail of poisons potentially fatal to the human spirit, including alcohol, astrology, and intellectualism. The last-named is not in itself wrong, but it's my contention that intellectuals are more tempted than most by various dark lures including pride, rebellion and sensuality. The same could be said of those who've been lavishly gifted by God with beauty, or great talent and so on. Intellectuals have been among the most powerful and often also dangerous men and women in history, and the Modern World has been significantly shaped by the ideas of intellectuals such as Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Their theories and especially those of Marx and Freud and their apostles both orthodox and schismatic fanned the flames of a largely bloodless revolution in the 1960s and while this'd been quenched by about 1972, the philosophies that inspired it far from fading themselves set about infiltrating the cultural mainstream, where they became more extreme than ever, and so entered the realm of the Postmodern, while remaining the ultimate consequence of centuries of Modernist erosion of the Judaeo-Christian fabric of Western civilisation.