Category: Thoughts

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Our Heart Is Here

This is from Brixton where the local people are currently fighting to save the arches. Where at the weekend a young man old boy dressed all in black smashed the window of a Foxtons. I condone this action.
This is from Brixton where the local people are currently fighting to save the arches. Where at the weekend a young man old boy dressed all in black smashed the window of a Foxtons. I condone this action. This post was written following seeing Carmen Disruption.

The train tracks are singing

The train tracks are singing to me
I have never heard them sing like this

I put my headphones in
I put my head phones in with nothing playing which is the closest I get to this city
I leave the theatre and
I put my headphones in with nothing playing and the streets look like they’re lit by par cans and fresnels
An old man whose beard furrows into his hat sings as he passes me and it sounds French or Italian.
A sign in a shop window lettered like ‘keep calm’ reads ‘love is only mad-‘ but I can’t read the rest of the message
Petals of blossom filter down through the air like sunlight and confetti

I have my headphones in with nothing playing and I listen to the city. This city that never feels like a place I would be, I feel small and successful. A man sat on the floor with a tin in front of him reads a book through gloveless fingers

The eyes of a young man or old boy linger on me, brown eyes and corn rows I glance behind me and he turns and follows.

He’s following me along the street, I see it in the reflection of the Wetherspoons and another young man old boy glances at me then talks to the friend and I hear him say ‘she had headphones in’ as I walk on

It is only at Warren Street I realise they probably wanted me to buy them some beer at Budgens.

I wonder if I would have done,
I feel bad for feeling threatened by them. I feel like If I hadn’t have been wearing headphones and they had asked I wouldn’t have known what to do and probably would have done something terrible like make them promise that they’d do something to make up for getting drunk tonight, like call their grandmothers, or read a book I could recommend them.

Or go to the theatre. I could buy them a ticket to go see the play I just saw. I would explain to them who Kate Tempest is and how I feel now like I did after I saw her raise her voice with poetry of broken hearts and broken people like myths and heroes. ‘It’s mostly about mobile phones, and cities’, I would say, ‘and how capitalism is on the floor, bleeding and we are black, black, black with its blood’.

And they would let me buy them the beer and give me fake email addresses to send the ticket references to.

It takes me to Pimlico to finish the thought of what I would do about a thing that never happened.
I’ve been trying to remember who described contemporary technology in the city as cultivating a new ‘alone together’.
I think it was maybe Graeme Miller, but if it wasn’t, if I start by looking there, I think that’s the way I’ll remember where to find it

I think “I’ll look it up on my phone when I get to Brixton”.

 

 

 

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No More Heroes

a picture of the 199 bus
a picture of the 199 bus
Image shared by Nico Hogg on flickr via CC

I am sat on a bus. Except I’m not. Because actually my charger broke for my phone a day ago. So when I’m having this thought, I’m on a bus. Even though right now, literally right now, I am sat on a patchwork quilt that took my mum 4 months to make with a slightly too hot soya hot chocolate next to me. But I am also sat on a bus. And I am thinking about heroes. I’m listening to a Radiolab episode. I managed to dig out an old phone that will hold audio even though I don’t have a sim card that will work for it and I don’t have the time to add anything but a single podcast before I run for the 225, earlier. I stand on the doorstep and watch the download icon swing to 360 degrees. I run. I run in that way that’s always not right because I’m not wearing running shoes and I worry it makes me look pathetic. I miss the 225, anyway. So I walk to Lewisham High Street instead and I intend on getting the 47 but I look at the orange lit sign and there’s a 199. I know the 199 will get me to the same place but it goes a slightly different way and that’s not the problem the problem is I haven’t got on the 199 since Tom broke up with me. Somehow, though, today that’s OK. I had my hair cut. I’m going to see some old friends from Leeds. I’m going to drink beer with people with accidental beards and proper consonants. So I flag it. I get on. And I sit in my usual seat, top deck front left. I decide not to waste the audio, and I read a book instead.

I am sat on a bus. Another one. This bus is 3 hours later and this time I wait longer than necessary but find a 225. I am sat on this bus and I am thinking about heroes. Radiolab is talking about Nihilism, and really it’s a philosophy that rankles with me. I struggle with it. It’s dirty. It says everything is mud, and aren’t we clever for writhing in it. Aren’t we clever for throwing it, we’re not making it worse. Look, I built a mudman out of it. Here, here’s a carrot for the nose. It touches on Dada, which I know enough about as I did a bit on it in my PhD, and then there’s Beyonce’s husband in the desert. I can’t remember his name when I write this. But apparently he’s in the desert with a denim jacket on that says something like ‘in the dust of this planet’ and they’re talking about the appeal of nihilism in an era of climate change. And then the costume designer, the costume designer who put Beyonce’s husband in the jacket, says that to her, for her, the jacket wasn’t about saying ‘there is nothing and that’s ok’, to her, it’s saying ‘there is nothing, and I am not afraid.’. For Jad Abumrad on radiolab that jacket is now about being a hero. And I think about the broken construct: hero. How I always want to be one. How the thing some of the best interactive theatre often shows me is that I’m good at leading but when I lead I’m not necessarily good. How when I daydream, it’s always me saving people. I dream of saving people I love but haven’t told yet from traffic. I dream of becoming an accidental viral image at a protest. I dream of saying a thing that will be whispered all around the country. And when I dream at night, I dream in the genre of apocalyptic, or mystic, or fantastic thriller. I’m always surviving, just, always fighting back, always escaping some half-known villain. Hero. Hero. Hero. And today I think “maybe that’s the last bit of Tomboy that I need to drop”, I think “heroes do not save us in the situations that face us, climate change cannot be solved by one person, or one state. Notions of collectivism always dissolve in the loss of the heroes who put it in place. Gamergate is founded on the fundamental notion: we are the heroes, not you.

I am sitting on a bus. And I am thinking about heroes. About how it’s time to let them go. How it’s time I stopped wanting to be one, and other people stopped waiting for them and we find a new way to tell stories, to listen to them, to be a part of them. And then I find my stop (Thornford Road), and get off. Walk home. I make myself a slightly drunken hot chocolate. I try to drink it. It is too hot. So I write this. Post it. Edit the mistakes. Click ‘update’.