THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT. THE FUTURE PAST/PASSED OF TJ HUGHES. BY STEVEN BENSON

 

Antwerp Central Station

 

Hamlet believed his mission was to re-set the bone(s) of crippled time/dislocated time.

W.G.Sebald averred that outsize {monumentalist} buildings contained, within them, the seeds of their own (future) destruction; he meant this literally(maintenance costs!) and, metaphorically: he was, implicitly, referencing Hitler’s gigantic Tempelhof airport, with all its messages of abuse of power, oppression and horror (the vision for the exterminating “Germania”). Why the (self) destruction is-emblematically-guaranteed is not clear; but that is the nature of metaphor. Beyond disturbingly,Hitler’s evil and mad, immoral  visions might have endured; and, Tempelhof still stands (bereft of its airport status).

 

Of course, “T.Js” does not have these sinister connotations. It is, however, an institution (treasured to older Liverpudlians) that has-probably-outlived its own ability to inhabit its own carcase; “institution” being the word in that, like Lewis’s, its self-belief, together with obviously paucely-resourced self-reinvention, has the combined arrogance and misfortune of an ailing corporate, capitalist institution.

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Rooves always fail  first in ailing, neglected buildings……..

 

Look at those whited-out windows in T.J’s “flagship” (?Titanic) store

 

Look at the (attempt at) opulence plus ersatz architectural mishmash: The turrets (a la Scarborough “Grand” Hotel, another decaying monster); the garish lettering; the imitation train shed roof….

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We started in the cafe: myself and my fellow (nearly, because not QUITE demised buildings) urban decay-ite, purveyors of spectral psychogeographical memento mori, us two explorers of the (Benjamin-esque) detritus and remnants of capitalism…

In fact, it was/is the cafe which has the trainshed roof: begrimed, almost Snow Hill-like in its last, soot-encoated days. It was about 10 days before Christmas: should have been a busy shopping day, but it was nearly empty (like one of those Sebald public spaces which, ought, in the quotidian run of things, to be peopled, but are, in imagination or fact, barren);thus,it felt tenantless, with a few remains of any former grandeur it had:a roped-off VIP lounge, with potted plants. It was a waiting-room, a transit ( to where?), one of those old hotel -like liminal hallways.

 

But these were not marble halls; it was just tat; but CURIOUS tat(with pretensions/illusions): viz:

(camp Gothic, but actually truly, really, deeply HORRIFYING);

then this:

(the caged fire sings)

and

{ classic out-of-focus kitsch Seb imitation capture !}

 

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We ventured upstairs, ever intrepid amidst semi-desuetudinous realms. This is what we saw:

An old escalator to another (trainshed) vast roof, replicating endlessly, as far as the eye could see

It seemed to me that the lights were gradually going out for TJs

damp and pre-dereliction was accruing

 

Uncanny; matched by (erstwhile) Lewis’s -last days -style oddments. https://decayetude.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/desuetudeimages-and-text-on-decay-and-memory-inspired-by-sebald-and-the-death-of-a-department-store/

poignantly lovely in its tacky plastic plenitude

Such sad riches

I found this especially unheimliche heimat: Lewis’s… was it old stock from the demised (over 8 years ago) store….it turned out that “Lewis’s Retail”, current owner of TJS, had bought the rights to the famous name… but what kind of forsaken attempt was this to re-vivify a corpse…

and this: a hommage to another defunct store, (Woolworths)?!

It was another (barely) living museum.

 

____________________________________________________________________________Even this was like some sinister miniaturrisation of a old-style in-department-store book department

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So, good luck, TJs, as you yet attempt to bridge between the present and the past