Tombstones, snow, and me
A most affectual of assemblages
Here I riff with assemblages, communities and tombstones, drawing upon Deleuze, Guattari and Harris, amongst others. My research may be situated in the Roman world, but communities of the dead can be found much closer to home…
The midlands, like much of the UK, was hit my some serious snow last week. Therefore, on Thursday I woke to a different and (I thought) more beautiful world. As I walked to campus, I glanced upon the Welford Road Cemetery, as I always do — the allure of the space always captured my attention — but this time, the cemetery had been transformed: a new entity clad in snow. I had to go in.
Entering through the gate, I joined the wrens, the dusted bushes, the snow capped tombstones, and the crunch of the ice. I became entangled amongst all these components of Welford cemetery. To use some jargon, I become territorialised within this community of the dead.
This new snow-clad cemetery was of course the same as the old one I walked past every day, but it had been reterritorialised (changed, redeveloped, altered) through the inclusion of a dusting of snow which brought to life it’s stony inhabitants. Dynamic relations between snow and stone saw the numerous greenish tombstones emerge as vibrant characters. Their different forms accentuated by new white trimmings, differentiating them all, yet creating uniformity in this difference.
Perhaps the dead only lay still because we commemorate them in stone?
My footsteps trace my movement through this necropolis, this city of the dead with its many meandering Gräberstraßen (roads lined with tombs). My imprints are a physically impermanent relic of our interaction — the snow the binding agent.
I eventually left the cemetery, detteritorialising from this wondrous arrangement of materials. My footprints, however, remained a while longer, reminders that this stone community still lived. The snow also remained. An agent of ambiance and vibrancy within the cemetery, once outside, it was simply an agent of cold again.
My gloves are wet.
By Friday, the snow too would leave Welford. All of us — snow, man and cemetery — were forever changed because of a Thursday morning in Leicester.
