No-Thing, No Limits

In 1980, John Redhead, a then neighbour of ours in Bethesda, North Wales, whom we knew as an artist and little more, did the first ascent of the UKs first E7 rock route on North Stack, Ynys Môn: "The Bells, The Bells". As I didn't return to climbing until the mid-eighties and didn't engage with the climbing media, I was blissfully unaware of this at the time. By the time I got back into climbing, after a gap of around twenty years, I was approaching my thirties and had started to engage again with what the scene had mutated into in the interim, and learned that my now former neighbour was some kind of maverick legend in the game, and the route deemed, essentially, a potential death sentence to all but the most talented and fearless of climbers.

In fact, it was a full six years before a successful second ascent of thing, and in all to date there have been, I think, only ten in the last forty-six years. What prompted my thinking about this was that I have been following the YouTube channel of Rob Matheson [pictured]. Rob is an E6 climber with well over fifty years experience behind him, who decided when he turned seventy that he would climb E7 for the first time in his career and he and his son set up his channel to record this seemingly mad enterprise, climbing various routes at that grade and posting accordingly. All good: he still climbs with fluidity and chutzpah, and the routes he chooses are chosen for delicacy of footwork rather than brute strength [something that starts to wane in all of us past seventy].

A number of successes under his belt at E7 and earning well-deserved likes and subscribes - including mine - he turned his sights on a seemingly very unlikely prize: The Bells. When I saw the first of the four videos he posted about the project, I thought it was just insanity, to be frank. However, after much preparation, he did it in good style, stripping away the years between the then young John Redhead's pioneering first ascent and his own, and as Rob himself put it, quoting the sentiment of Dylan Thomas' poem: '...rage, rage at the dying of the light...'.

David Bowie has been dead these last ten years, and I own a copy of his final album on vinyl, which I think I have played through in entirety just once, bringing the total number of listens to two in all those ten years. This is not because it's a bad record - it isn't at all - but because I first heard from start to finish on its day of release - Friday, January 8th, 2016 on internet radio. Although dark in tone, the album impressed me and I determined to buy the vinyl version as soon as possible, which turned out to be over a week later as the first pressing sold out almost immediately. Bowie, though dying of liver cancer during the making of the album, scheduled its release for the day of his sixty-ninth birthday.

To quote his long-time producer, Tony Visconti: ' "He was so brave and courageous ... and his energy was still incredible for a man who had cancer. He never showed any fear. He was just all business about making the album." ' I woke on the Sunday morning to the news that Bowie was dead of his illness. As a lifelong fan of the artist and his music, I was truly gutted at the news, but oh, the theatricality of that death so soon after the global release of that final artistic statement. I find the record difficult to listen to even now, but I'm sure that will eventually change with increasing age.

And thirdly, lastly, I leave you with perhaps the ultimate parting message to the world. On the last day of his life, 27th July, 1892, the Zen master Tanzan wrote sixty postcards and asked his assistant to mail them, before he passed away. The cards all read: 'I am departing from this world. This is my last announcement. Tanzan. 27 July 1892. Rob Matheson is still with us and continues raging against the dying of the light: Bowie and Tanzan worked and produced right up to their ceasing. Let's hope Rob has a few more projects up his sleeve. To quote yet again my now adopted motto of these last few, post-covid years: Oriens Morior, Moriens Orior. Zen in a nutshell...