The crypt is really getting to me now. When I’m not there, I think about it, and when I am there I sink into the dark crevices of the distinctive space like a creature terrified of the light.
It is ghoulish, it is eerie and strange. It is all the things you would expect of a place where bodies once lay. But it has a gentle silence which is captivating and eloquent, and a quiet coolness which feels eternal and precious.
The space feels like it is working with me now – whereas at first it felt slightly ill at ease with my presence.
It doesn’t breathe or speak to me in any way except in the absence of anything in there.
It feels curiously blank – like it’s a negative area – a place which holds nothing rather than anything.
It is only a few footsteps from the ‘real’ hyper-fast modern world of cafes and seaside shops but it holds its own in time and space like nowhere else I’ve ever been.
I am learning to love the crypt – despite its long-since deceased inhabitants. It has de-mystifyed death for me in a way that perhaps I wasn’t expecting. After all, the only other occupants are the bones behind the gravestones – and they feel more animal than human in origin now.
Life and death – the ultimate rites of passage. And all they really represnt is time and space themselves. And maybe there’s really nothing to be afraid of in here. It’s what’s ‘out there’ that’s scary…….
ST MARY-IN-THE-CASTLE CRYPT
HASTINGS OLD TOWN
PRIVATE VIEW – SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 6-8PM
