By one of those strange coincidences which haunt pilgrimage, I happened to watch this DVD on 25th July. Only on getting to the last episode did I learn that 25th July is the Feast Day of Santiago.
This is a candid and moving exploration into the nature of pilgrimage, and Brian Sewell's emotional integrity does full service to the subject. It isn't an easy thing to do: going on pilgrimage. Whether one is a religious believer or not, the implacable nature of any pilgrimage is that it turns one inside out. Springs bubble up, lids won't remain shut. Whatever one imagines one is undertaking is almost certainly not what's going to happen. What does happen is whatever is needed to effect a transformation. Setting out always counts as assent, though reaching the place of pilgrimage is often not the end of the journey: change needs time afterwards, to ripen.
It seemed to me that despite setting out on what he'd hoped would be a bit of a jaunt, Brian Sewell was fully aware that this pilgrimage was more than that. Yet though emotionally buffeted, he was able to face his sense of being 'nothing' (as he described it) without the comfort of self-delusion. Personally shorn of belief, he started out with the observer's protective carapace, yet became drawn towards the honesty of other pilgrims on the Way, despite their religious fervour. He describes his discomfort at feeling tearful, but dissolving and resolving are the necessary ebb and flowtide of the process; the gift here is that he neither hides nor dramatises his feelings.
It soon becomes clear that though interesting, the architecture is simply not the point. Despite Brian's erudition his heart isn't in it, and the buildings become mere backdrops to the real journey. The most tranquil stage is the last, where he completes his journey to Compostela on a gentle mare and can finally adopt the pace most appropriate to pilgrimage.
If I have any criticism at all, it is that sometimes the narrative seems sketchy and the scenes jumpily unconnected. I wonder how much had to be edited out so as to fit the broadcasting time? Perhaps fewer shots of Brian driving, and more of him discussing his experiences with fellow pilgrims would have added depth. I was also astonished that he could stand in Chartres Cathedral and not once look down at the labyrinth! Although this does seem a fitting metaphor for a pilgrimage which was going on under his nose, unremarked.
The final scene, in which he burns the clothes he's travelled in and wades naked into the sea, moved me and has since left me tugged around by the undertow of this journey. Not for the first time I have been wondering about pilgrimages: why we need to make them, and even whether we can go on pilgrimage without leaving our home? Certainly there is no requirement for religious belief, yet somehow every need for faith of a different kind: faith in meaning.
'The Naked Pilgrim' is so much more than a tour of cathedrals, or a look at why bits of dead people should be revered and mounted in kitsch boxes. Like the best music, not everything is articulated: there are silent spaces, and the inexpressible is allowed to linger, unworded.
I'd love to spend an evening with Brian Sewell talking about all the roads we take, and why we take them; I'd even buy the wine.
