1.
There were only ever snatches of information about my family lines. My maternal grandmother, an inveterate liar and generally unpleasant person, claimed she came from Rome. On meeting Italian expats, they all said the same: Italian immigrants don’t come from Rome. Not to mention her growing up under Mussolini. Why would a resident of a facist country move to an Allied nation? When I was a kid, she told me she threw stones at Mussolini’s body when the partisans dragged it through the street. Whether this is true or not, I’ll never know. She enjoyed telling me, in any case.
My sister-in-law - how she got this information is too long winded to go through here - confirmed there may be truth, that my grandmother grew up around Vatican City. I was told stories about being raised by vicious nuns (but I mean, Italy in the early 20th century: where wasn’t that happening?) and having to promptly leave when she became pregnant out of wedlock. When all this is said, the only thing I can confirm is she was Italian. She spoke Italian. She wasn’t black, she wasn’t white, she was… Italian.
My paternal grandmother gave us ancestral glimpses, but she was dealing with her own traumas. She mentioned that her father was a big deal in local politics, and - when I became public about poetry in my early 20s - fleetingly mentioned my great uncle was a poet. It wasn’t until last month I had a solid lead, a maiden name: Clucas. Along with this, my sister-in-law recollected that he was a speaker at the House of Keys.
It didn’t take long for me to find George Clucas. He fit the little my grandmother and father said, and neither of them were bragging. (Again, the problem was the total lack of solid information they gave me.) Then I started following crumbs back.
George Clucas married Louisa Hughes-Games, whose father was Joshua Hughes-Games. One of his sons was the theologian and poet Stephen Hughes-Games. This would make my great uncle a poet, allowing the pieces to fall together tightly.
He published Thekla, and Other Poems - which you can read in its entirety here - in 1904 by Longmans, Green and Co. With Stephen being clearly indebted to 19th century hymnals and religious poetry, the name Thekla comes from the Ancient Greek for God’s glory.
2.
The reputation of Bristol’s music venue, Thekla, accelerated after Banksy used its hull in 2003. Although I lived in the city for 10 years, I didn’t go to a gig there until the end of my time. On reflection, I almost saw Deerhoof a couple of years prior but, for reasons I can’t quite remember, I didn’t go. (I always forget how great Deerhoof are until I hear them again.)
I have a close childhood friend who’s a heavy metal fanatic. Because no one else my age in Gloucester was into techno circa 2005, I went to punk and metal shows to socialise. My friend took me to see the up and coming bands of the time: Sikth, Norma Jean… I’m sure there were others. Years later, when a band he liked was playing Thekla, I went with him for old time’s sake.
I can’t talk about metal in any intelligible way. Even when it comes to the experimental metal I enjoy - like Nadja - I can only think in non-metal terms: Phil Niblock, Merzbow, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, musique concrete… This is something I really value about contemporary music, thinking more specifically about extreme noise and experimental metal. When they’re at their absolute best, they cross over different communities. Folk can find them through Ligeti or Aphex Twin or Earth. This crossing over, this speaking about things aslant, was how I processed being at the metal gig in Thekla.
When I left school, I trained as a sound engineer. We were taught that, because the sound waves of bass frequencies have long intervals, if someone stands right in front of a bass speaker they won’t hear all the bass. They’re catching only a part of the sound wave. If they stand at the back of the room, the whole sound wave will go through them and they’ll feel more.
I’m reminded of a feature in The Wire years ago. They invited contributors to make brief commentaries on bass. Roots Manuva recalled, growing up in a strict religious household, lying in bed and hearing the bass from the club across the road: a sound that moved through social boundaries.
Bass became a way for me to think about all sound, something that can move through boundaries with such ease it even moves through the social realm - like Roots Manuva’s religious upbringing - and out into the immaterial. I carry this in my body, walking through St Paul’s Carnival in Bristol and feeling those sound systems in the open air. I’m convinced hearing the bass on Pole’s first album as a teenager, especially this track, changed me at a level I can’t describe. (Laptop speakers won’t do it justice.) The only claim I can make is that I felt fundamentally and lastingly different after I experienced it.
3.
Being raised religious I didn’t hear about saints, let alone Thecla. The reason for this is twofold: I was raised Protestant, which historically defined itself as “anti-superstition” (read: anti-Catholic before Vatican II, so saints and the BVM were excluded); secondly, Thecla came from the Acts of Paul, which isn’t in the Protestant Bible.
Long story short, Thecla was engaged to marry Thamyris but on hearing Paul preach about chastity she dumped him and became a Christian. There are trifling details about Thecla baptising herself in beast infested water in an arena Gladiator II style, but you can learn about that yourself (you’ll have a good time tbh).
It’s important to remember that women in the ancient world had one purpose: to make babies, and keep making babies. Eventually they were going to die in labour. For a woman to choose chastity was to be freed from sexual slavery. This is different from state sanctioned demands on autonomy seen in the present day. It’s annoying to think the modern church - of which I have no involvement in or sympathies with - inherited a radical act, women taking control of their bodies, and turned it into a shitshow.
I’m simultaneously fascinated and haunted by these ideological backfires. The example of this par excellence is Peter and Alison Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens. Designed according to brutalism’s socialist imperative, the building’s sharp turnings and secluded passageways bred crime and alienation. Ballard’s High Rise, along with Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump’s excellent film adaptation, is an exaggerated take on this.
I find it difficult not to imagine Robin Hood Gardens, and the brutalist project in general, caught a virus in the intellectual infrastructure that produced it. That, somehow, Le Corbusier’s facist sympathies came with the concrete blocks, irradiated them, and produced the same ideology further down the line unbeknownst to the architects.
It is odd how Nazi-ish a lot of socialist architecture looks: big and blocky. But I totally get why brutalism has had a moment in the sun: its visual impact clearly holds an emotional charge. I have to admit that, while I’m in awe of a lot of brutalist architecture, I can’t say I love a lot of it. The buildings are an allegory for modern living: cold, detached and imposing. They don’t posit a new world; they want to mirror the current one. I’d like to see art deco architecture have a comeback, to see a world of glamour and colour and joy. To see social material pass positively through the immaterial.
Correction added 19/3/25:
It transpired George Clucas was my paternal grandmother’s grandfather, not father, by marriage. The genealogy outlined above should be moved back a generation.