‘It went zip when it moved and bop when it stopped and whirrrrr when it stood still. I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will.’ Or
so says Val Doonican of his marvellous, but totally impenetrable toy. And it
might be equally true to say of celebrated intersex personality, Anthony Hogarty.
For me, when I was a lad, it wasn’t a toy as such but a piece of wood roughly
12” in length, 3” wide and with pointy brass caps at both ends. For years I
thought it was something you might go fishing with. It had a big bobin of string
in the centre that was cool for attaching hooks to and all manner of crazy shit.
It was by turns a rocket ship, a boat, a dagger and something I threw unsystematically
around the garden from time to time. It was quite literally an endless source
of fascination and piqued my curiosity in a way that only sex would after my
thirteenth birthday. Of course, when I discovered that it was wee wooden shuttle
from a loom that my grandmother used to work, it ceased to command my attention.
It was interesting from a historical perspective, in a rather nerdish and unexciting
kind of way, but over time it got stuffed in a drawer and pretty much forgotten
about.
You see, it’s not what you know about a thing that makes it attractive, it’s
what you don’t know. And it was, and still is, a mantra I repeat to myself whenever
I go out on a date or whenever I buy a new record. Everything has a lifespan.
Everything is temporary. Knowing a thing means exhausting a thing.
Just as death and the unknown are likely to command all your mortal fears,
the strange and elusive visitor is what captivates you the most. The strange
and the mysterious is a source of endless speculation. There are even those
who argue that the device even extends to art. Poetry is fundamentally different
than the language that we use everyday because it is more difficult to understand.
And it’s this lack of familiarity, this dissonance, that gives us art. Real
art simply forces the audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or strange
way. Even Aristotle admitted that poetry should be ‘strange and wonderful’.
Familiar but unfamiliar, and whilst the unshapely Anthony Hegarty is hardly
on the same level as say, Damien Hirst’s Mother and Child Divided (a
cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde) his unearthly
yet oddly sacred transexulaity is the device that frames the picture. Hegarty’s
magnetism is assured because of such freakish irregularities rather than in
spite of them.
Of course, this is a curiously long-winded way of going about saying he sings
like a lass and that his shamelessly camp, multi-octave falsetto is as good
a stunt as any. But whilst there’s little doubting the artist has courted notoriety
with much the same enthusiam as a bishop in a brothel, any such cynicism is
naturally disarmed by the purity of his voice and the merciful, healing properties
of his unpretentious music.
Of course it was Anthony and the Johnsons’ 2005 Mercury nominated album, ‘I
Am A Bird Now’ that put Hegarty where he is. On that album, the British-Canadian
singer was joined by a breezy summer camp of contemporary and vintage queens,
which included Rufus Wainwright, Marc Almond, Boy George and Lou Reed (who in
turn recruited Hagarty for his Raven project). The album was variously described
as ‘cabaret’ and ‘baroque pop’ but in truth it defied all attempts to have it
filed, stamped or numbered. It was its own thing. A freedom-guided missile whose
only real brief was to transcend the usual boundaries imposed by the habits
and customs of his drab surburban upbringing. Hegarty made what could have been
an aloof and disengaging ego-rub of a record, one of the most beautiful and
remarkable pieces of work of the last thirty-years.
Whilst the follow-up, ‘The Crying Light’ is a much sparser affair, any concerns
you had that it wouldn’t be as absorbing or earnest as it’s crushed-velvet predecessor
are laid immediately to rest with ‘Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground’ – a warm
and consoling mix of cellos and pianos and Hegarty’s weeping vocal swaying almost
as lazily as the flowers he sings of. It’s not an attempt to engage with his
sexuality this time, but with nature, not the vicissitudes of life and death
but the stirring green-shoots of the landscape around him. There are risks of
course, as ‘One Dove’ illustrates only too well. Freedom comes at a price, just
as it does in Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. To court mercy, one must first surrender
to the cruel hazards of love, and the anxious arpeggios and cymbal strokes that
escort this confession correspond perfectly to the crying starlight that comes
to offer him redemption. What does he mean when he sings, ‘Epilepsy is dancing,
she’s a Christ now departing and I’m finding my rhythm as I twist in the snow’?
I’ve really no idea, but therein lies the record’s power; the joyful, luscious
melodies curl like garlands around the images, providing a thorny and decorative
edge that both prick and console our interest. It’s both the glue that holds
it together and the stress that pulls it apart.
In truth, it’s a magical and mesmerising performance all round, not so much
a reinvention as a resurrection – the boy reborn of earth. If Hogarty approached,
‘I Am A Bird Now’ like a 19th century aristocrat approaching a Turkish bath,
he approaches, ‘The Crying Light’ as a bare-chested peasant
approaching the lake, kneeling down on its muddy banks and dutifully waiting
for the holy spirit.
Neither the last yawning hours of the dusk, nor the first gasping breaths of
the morning – but something in between. And all the more stunning because of
it.
Introducing (for all those not already converted) The Gospel According to Anthony.
‘THE CRYING LIGHT’ – RELEASED 29.01.07 (US) 19.01.09 (UK)
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