#and if you disagree i could gsrdly imsgine disco elysium would have appealed to you

[spyramy]

When I learned that ZA/UM had a studio in Brighton/Hove, I got thinking about some of the seaside areas on Martinaise, and took some pictures as I walked up the coast to Rottingdean.

Brighton and Martinaise have a fair amount in common (and a lot not in common). There's a Harbour in Shoreham down the coast, a large amount of fading, crumbling infrastructure and one of the largest drug/alcohol problems in the country. What struck me most was Joyce Messier's story about how Martinaise was 'built' by the ruling class as a holiday destination.

Brighton, at earliest recognisability, was a 16th century fishing village known as Brighthelmstone. It grew it's population into the 17th century, but saw economic decline into the 18th, and was then overhauled by the ruling classes as a 'health resort'. A move which brought wealth into the city, and built a grand Victorian seafront, boardwalk and (now burnt down) pleasure pier.

Brighton also has no shortage of memorials to absurd royal figures. Chiefly the Royal Pavilion. Serving as much as a monument to a monarch's profligacy as to their greatness. Much like a certain exploding horse statue.

In the 20th century, due to its fading appeal as a resort, and the effects of the wars, the city became popular with artists, bohemians, communists and anarchists across the economic spectrum. A notable 1930s Anarchist called Harry Cowley still has a mutual aid organisation/bookshop/social space/anarchist club named after him on London Road. It's economic decline dipped lowest in the 1980s (like many places under Thatcherism). The exploitable fashionable nature of its history has now led to it being a hugely expensive place to live in the UK, as well as being service industry based and for those residents who don't work for the one or two global companies with offices here, financially crippling. It's also a mishmash of absurd uber-rich empty developments, studded into a town of rotting buildings, slum landlords, massive homelessness, and stretched to breaking drug and alcohol services.

At my former job at a now sadly liquidated karaoke bar on a troubled street in the gay village, we used to call Brighton a city of lost souls.

As you walk across the cliffs, or look out over the sea towards the offshore wind farm, in the rays of a clouded dusk, you can sometimes feel the tension of the city dissipate. The rough edges between what this place was, what it has been, what it is now, and what it may become seem to soften slightly towards one another, like begrudging neighbors over long decades.

A fishing village. A health resort. An artist's commune. A neoliberal grind.

I know you could draw connections between Revachol and any city in Europe. Possibly the world. That's the beauty and genius of the writing. But I'm grateful for the chance to reflect on my city, re-examining it through this lense has allowed me.

Finally. The Smallest Church in Saint-Saïns is based on the song The Smallest Church in Sussex by Sea Power who were Brighton based for a long time. And describes the Seven Sisters, a nearby chalk cliff formation which I, and most others who live round here, have walked.

I would often go there

To the tiny church there

The Smallest Church in Sussex

Though it once was larger

How the rill may rest there

Down through the mist there

Toward the seven sisters

Toward those white cliffs there

I would often stay there

In the tiny yard there

I have been so glad here

Looking forward to the past here

But now you are all alone

None of this matters at all