Keys to the labyrinth

There is no single entrance to this labyrinth, no views by which to set a compass, no shared geometry for the easy mapping of immediate futures, no park or garden or building as final destination. Forget empty space, multiple scales, straight lines, the perception of distance. In this place where the street turns endlessly and buildings squeeze the light from the air and portals mascarade as doorways, we must abandon ourselves to a world of sound, to the heard – footsteps on stone, the shout of a bar, the movement of crowds, a guitar tuned – as the points on a map, to being lost and then found.

A five-day festival of largely and all kinds of folk music, the Temple Bar Tradfest takes place every January, and is one among many events to have benefited from a late twentieth century grassroots movement to save Temple Bar from the developer’s axe.