This piece tells a true story of a remarkable co-incidence that I don’t think has been noted before. We’ll start with William Blake. Blake evidenced lifelong faith in his art. Near the end of that life he was still laboring to complete a set of illustrations for Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”, even though he was in even more dire poverty than was the norm for him, even while he was deathly ill with liver disease that may have been brought on by the chemicals his engraving process required.
I recently had a chance to visit England, and one of the must stops for me was the Blake room at the Tate Gallery. The room is deliberately kept in dim light to protect the fading inks and watercolors, and I needed to get very close to the small pamphlet-sized prints of Blake’s work to see the detail. This room was so filled with contrasts. A dark room to protect what had been bright colors. Small prints filled with gods, angels, cosmic events. The work of a man who lived in poverty and general disregard that now has his own room in one of the great art museums of London. Sadness, triumph.
Back to this audio piece now. The first part re-tells an account from one of Blake’s friends of his death in a tiny apartment off an alley in London. You can’t quite visit the site of Blake’s last work and death. The area was later rebuilt. Looking at what was there now, I noted that the replacement building was The Savoy Hotel. That’s when the connection light went off in my mind, something that my twin interests in music and poetry was bound to see, and that’s told in the second part of “Angels in the Alley.”
You see, the Savoy Hotel was a major setting for "Don't Look Back," the documentary film about Bob Dylan touring England in 1965. And in that film is the famous film clip of Bob Dylan flashing hand lettered cards with key words as his song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” blares out. Where was that filmed? In the alley next to the Savoy Hotel. One of Dylan’s Beat Generation older siblings, Allen Ginsberg, is standing in the background as this plays out. Just before the song winds down and everyone walks off, Ginsberg gestures grandly, raising both his hands over his head. It’s like he’s trying to show some kind of mind expansion. Or strike a ballerina pose. Or shape his arms like upraised wings, like an angel.