Letter to NYC about London

Part of a writing exercise workshop, thinking back 9 years ago to when I first moved to London and writing back to a friend in NYC about my thoughts and observations about the change:

Dear Sara:

So here I am after the whirlwind of NYC for so many years, landed in a place that is somehow so similar yet polar opposite. The pace of life here is so much slower, and takes some getting used to. But slowing down feels good. I can hear myself and somehow be more the me than I was able to be before. What frustrated me about New York was everyone was always in your face all the time and I felt a lack of emotional space. Here everyone is so guarded and inside themselves. I think it must be the weather! 

The grey skies wrap you like a blanket and you feel comfortable and quiet, calming your emotions. Getting around these streets is so intense! Ive always prided myself of being an avid traveller, but my first week alone I got lost at least 10 x. There is no compass grid system to work with, you swear youre going North and suddenly its South! And with a white sky you cannot see the sun for direction. I realise now how rigid the grid system is, almost violent to our nature as organic beings. The medieval footprint here means you have to meander slowly to get anywhere, instead of pushing though a system of squares and rectangles, there are much more triangles and circles (in this case roundabouts). 

I also realise the who I am has changed by sheer context! There are few Latinos, some Americans, almost no real New Yorkers, and I have become much more an exotic of species, shorter and darker by comparison, with too sharp a tongue and too fast a pace. Need to exorcise the New York demon out of me…

One of my favourite things about London is how local it is. A big city that really is a collection of villages, people love and respect the local in a beautiful way. There is pride in the history and stories and Londoners are happy to share it with foreigners and immigrants, so I feel I am able to settle in and become one of many. Its funny only the English from outside of London tend to ask me where I am from, Londoners take it for granted that everyone is from somewhere and may instead ask what I do, or chat about the weather. Actually talking about the weather seems crucial as an ice-breaker. And you’ll never guess, everyone complains its rainy!! How funny is that? I guess it’s a social bonding method to moan and agree about the weather. Note to self, tone down the cheery attitude… 

Okay running out of space, love you and more soon! 

RMX

on Nature Walking...

Just returned from an epic trekking experience: did the 'circuito grande' of the Torres del Paine national park in Patagonia, Chile. Walked about 180km over 8 days starting at Refugio Laguna Amarga and ending at the waterfalls at Pudeto (map below).

The park itself has a variety of areas of outstanding natural beauty and levels of tourist infiltration, from more upscale country-hotel lodgings to free camping. The general trek is called 'W' which takes you up to see Glacier Grey then around one small mountain range and up Valle del Frances, back down to the immense lake and up again to see the famous torres.

Though the 'W' trek is highly walked, around the back of the mountain range you can go at it alone with the wind, waterfalls and puma tracks as company. Taking all my provisions with me, it took a few days before the noise in my head died down. No company, no phone, no music just my 12k pack stuffed with a good tent and sleeping bag and my walking shoes.

There is a poetry in walking and traversing space consciously. Becoming aware of the gradations of landscape, of the changes in temperature to altitude, of your body's own weight and posture. There's that moment that you stand still only moving your legs while the earth magically revolves under you. I think about Richard Long's work, where we get to glimpse a single moment of a journey. But when that journey goes on a week it becomes a pilgrimage, like the Camino de Santiado de Compostella.

And silence... This is key. It was days before I had to speak to anyone and then it was 'hola' in passing. There is a lucidity in quietness, in taking the time to listen and hear. Each bird call transforms from a musical note to a language, the trickle of the upcoming river beckons a rest and a drink, the thunder of crashing snow and glaciar ice a power that fills with awe and dread.

I can't remember feeling so alive and full of hope before. You feel the wind come off the millennial ice caps, formed from the cracking and popping of millions of little air bubbles trapped since before the dinosaurs and breathed into your lungs, whirling in your brain. The cold, crisp water that tastes so pure you just become certain its somehow linking you with the planet from before man ever even walked this land.

And so much water... clean, fresh, aqua-blue, sweet water flowing non-stop.... The dreams of 2012 armageddon are very far away in these remote places...

Moving your body through a landscape allows a sense of focus and freedom, of accomplishment and dedication and of humbling pain and uncertainty. A time-out from the urban experiences I study and love. But it also gives me the tools to understand better how we may walk in the concrete forests of London, New York or Santiago by being connected to the more subtle currents that revolve around us.

I may have arrived but I've left part of me in those mountains while part of them remain in me....





Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Memory Walking and Nostalgia

Just returned from Crete, visiting a friend who grew up in the capital Heraklion. We were given an amazing tour of the city centre that was based on her memory of what was there when she lived in the city during a variety of different ages. Seeing past the numerous cafes and bars a new city began emerging. Hidden under the parasols and flat screen tv's of the multiple venues, were beautiful facades of stately homes that housed a variety of characters who came to life among the cobbled lanes. The white noise of chatting people and buzzing phones, became the ghost sound of a child's bicycle racing down the slanted alleys, or the old woman chasing them with a pot of boiling water.

A new city emerged, like Raban's Soft City, one of histories and stories, one which seemed much more local as a social network. Raban tell us 'the city, our great modern form, is soft, amenable to a dazzling and libidinous variety of lives, dreams and interpretations'. It was this soft amenable city that came alive with the bench behind the square where lovers once met now empty, the popular hair dressers studio where the scraping of chairs being pulled out for customers was heard around the corner but is now turned residential, the childhood home transformed into a health spa yet retaining the original tiles and doors, allowing the phantoms of nostalgia to continue to inhabit the hard city. The hard city that retains its shape while the soft city lives and dies within it. 

Going on this walk around Heraklion opened up a past, re-awoke a memory, like Lazarus it brought to life a narrative that once was but had died. The deep nostalgia that punctuated the derive was palpable and I felt a strange sense of both belonging to the place and envying the memory. Somehow wanting to be a part of that which was never mine. It reminded me of Boym's The Future of Nostalgia and her rich analyses of the workings on memory on society and city. She tells us 'the past of the city... is not entirely legible; it is irreducible to any anachronistic language; it suggests other dimensions of the lived experience and haunts the city like a ghost.'

This was an alternate ghost tour of a city, a rich and vibrant walk down memory lane that made me really truly appreciate Heraklion and see it for what it was and had once been.

Linked by Graeme Miller

Did the intrepid journey that is the audio tour of Graeme Miller's archive of stories surrounding the construction of the M11 in East London and subsequent displacement of locals and protest culture that arose from the development.

Alas technology has erased all my notes, but I'll try to give an impression. Linked is a tour of East London given through a series of sound installations that are broadcast from transmitters attached to light poles across a 4 mile stretch. You have to pick up your own receiving devise and headphones in order to listen to the work, but these are hard to come by. Luckily Redbridge Museum had a few, adding a good amount of miles to our journey but somehow part of the adventure (if you plan on actually doing this walk plan ahead).  Though there is a map, finding each transmitter is still a challenge, though a group of us were lucky to be guided by Oliver James Hymans, who wrote a dissertation on psychogeography with this piece as a case study.

As you approach each transmitter the sound slowly starts feeding into the headphones. Its slightly eery and ghostly, as if you are overhearing a conversation through an open window somewhere nearby. It becomes clear the recordings are testimonials of people affected by the construction of the M11 motorway and destruction of well anything in its path. The recordings are sampled and remixed with music giving it the impression of an early negativland track. The testimonials range from residents, to squatters, to elderly focusing mostly on the energy of protest and the destruction of sites of memory and places of local identity and history. I particularly like the transmission coming from a light pole in between two chestnut trees that referenced The Battle of George Green and the feeling that the takeover of the park by protesters was like a return the common land before the Acts of Enclosures privatised areas across England, a fantastic analogy and still powerful today.

I was interested in the people who lived in the houses near these transmitters and I wondered if they had any idea about it. Though I loved the experience, even for me who loves to explore and is interested in site, history, memory and place this was not an easy task to fulfill. This was mostly due to such poor maintenance of the artwork itself by Museum of London and Arts Admin. I couldn't help to wonder about those transmitters powered 24/7 and broadcasting empty messages to deaf ears. Perhaps this is the route history eventually takes, most people forgetting the struggles of the past for the comforts of the future. After the work I felt happy to have learned a piece of history and a new respect for a locale and yet somewhat melancholic in thinking about our constant move towards greater privitisation and development. As a radicant myself I wonder about how to save and respect roots while helping us move across borders freely.

The M11 felt both like a massive border and yet somehow an escape route...


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.