Please find this short story from Garry Barker. There is an exhibition being held within the Leeds Corn Exchange and as we’re in a position where we’re unable to go to our usual places and ahead of the anticipated re-opening on Wednesday 2nd December please find the first of three parts of this short story. It relates to the Leeds Corn Exchange, art and other influences. Images of the works on display can be found within the ‘Imagined City’ tab on our home page.
Cosmic retail: Part 1
Sometimes colours find themselves in the wrong place, certain pinks should not be placed where there is a history of cosmic uncertainty, a particular orange can cause disaster when it occurs in conjunction with a certain phase of the moon. In this case certain forms had begun to exist out of their time, and simply by virtue of their status as Platonic, had an existence in an alternative universe as well as the one most of us inhabit on a day to day basis. Perhaps I ought to explain. Some buildings have a cosmic significance far beyond the one associated with their status as shopping centres. My role as buildings inspector, (part time) means that as well as dealing with essential issues such as health and safety, day to day building maintenance and cleaning, I’m also charged with keeping an eye on those significant other issues that crop up much less frequently, but which when they do, need specialist attention. In particular there are issues associated with the ancient foundations on which buildings such as this are built, their location, orientation, association with certain star patterns due to the time of their laying and the various stories that are embedded into their timelines, are all at one time or another prone to cause problems and when they do, these problems need resolving well before a building’s ‘normal’ façade is dropped and its original intention and aspect rises to the surface. Take my word for it, the current city’s population of scientific thinking, media fed humans would not be able to deal with the old chthonic deities that from time to time try to emerge out of the sacred ground that underpins this building’s foundations. There are forces and concepts far too alien for the modern mind, energy forms that if released back into the city, would cause mayhem as minds were twisted, logic overturned and deep rooted psychological fears raised up into thought patterns that had had enough of lockdown, let alone having to deal with eldritch phantoms and demons from another dimension. Into my care I have been given a Cuthbert Brodwick designed building dating from the nineteenth century. This is of course its modern designation, the arbitrary idea of dates being anchored to the particular birthdate of a certain prophet, who lived not that very long ago, is quite amusing really, but let’s just say that the actual date of this building’s real foundation, was several millions of years earlier than that. A series of buildings and other constructions have occupied this site for over 40,000 years and long before humans began to move stones or scoop out shallow indentations and cover them in branches, this site has been an energy terminal. Brodwick’s Victorian design, was unknown to him, psychically attuned to the building that was constructed on the site during the seventeenth century, a building that was itself conceived as a restoration of the one erected a hundred years before that. Each construction, being aligned in such a way that it ensured that the earth’s power was not severed from a deep down global entanglement in the magma currents, currents that as they ran beneath what humans now call the continent of Europe, charge an earth battery that lies between what is now the Leeds corn exchange and its other terminal in Paris, the similarly oval Halle de Blé. When Brodwick was asked to design the Leeds corn exchange, he had a dream and in this dream he walked the labyrinthine attics of a strange oval building. In this dream he walked moonlit spaces of what he then recognised as the Halle de Blé, a place he had visited several years before, and he knew then that an oval form would be the key element of his new design. Part 2 released 30 November 2020 at 15:00hrs
