march - july 2020
51°30’26.359”N 0°7’39.53”W
a very unusual time of my life.
i had been thinking about a longer term “project” on crowds and crowd dynamics. London would have been the perfect place for that. as i was finding my feet with this initiative, the lockdown happened. i was happy things were slowing down, but only because i was quite comfortable - my daytime job, which i did not dislike at all, kept me well fed, i didn’t have to spend my days commuting… come to think of it, i’d unwittingly put in place the ideal pandemic setup. what really mattered was that London had suddenly become my playground - i would use my state-mandated daily walk to “survey” the city’s service areas, the ones where you’d typically have the men in suits conduct serious business. with nobody about, these places didn’t make for particularly interesting subjects, but the eeriness of it still made walking around Bank very appealing.
at night i would often catch foxes running about. everyone’s aware of London’s growing fox population, but never before had i seen so many. with the slowing down of traffic, they must have felt particularly comfortable rummaging through the bins. but that wasn’t all - London had become this immense cluster of micro communities, atomised and bearing distinct identities. around my modest rental in Islington you’d have the less wealthy communities, the ones concentrated around blocks of flats, coexisting with the bon vivant homes, with creaky wooden floors and bottles of red wine left out on balconies.
what i wanted to do was rediscover the city, so i did. i walked the same streets i had for over two years, overwriting memories and reinterpreting moments past. i did well in that endeavour - London is no longer the city i moved to, both externally and in my mind. yet i still can’t come to terms with the disappearance of the never-ending nightlife. but that’s okay - i tell myself things will have gone back to normal when i get back, whenever that may happen.
until then, i’ll keep on dreaming of London as the place of crowded pubs, dreams of “making it big”, and a trainwreck of a relationship i had high hopes for, but never managed to salvage.
march - july 2020
51°30’26.359”N 0°7’39.53”W
a very unusual time of my life.
i had been thinking about a longer term “project” on crowds and crowd dynamics. London would have been the perfect place for that. as i was finding my feet with this initiative, the lockdown happened. i was happy things were slowing down, but only because i was quite comfortable - my daytime job, which i did not dislike at all, kept me well fed, i didn’t have to spend my days commuting… come to think of it, i’d unwittingly put in place the ideal pandemic setup. what really mattered was that London had suddenly become my playground - i would use my state-mandated daily walk to “survey” the city’s service areas, the ones where you’d typically have the men in suits conduct serious business. with nobody about, these places didn’t make for particularly interesting subjects, but the eeriness of it still made walking around Bank very appealing.
at night i would often catch foxes running about. everyone’s aware of London’s growing fox population, but never before had i seen so many. with the slowing down of traffic, they must have felt particularly comfortable rummaging through the bins. but that wasn’t all - London had become this immense cluster of micro communities, atomised and bearing distinct identities. around my modest rental in Islington you’d have the less wealthy communities, the ones concentrated around blocks of flats, coexisting with the bon vivant homes, with creaky wooden floors and bottles of red wine left out on balconies.
what i wanted to do was rediscover the city, so i did. i walked the same streets i had for over two years, overwriting memories and reinterpreting moments past. i did well in that endeavour - London is no longer the city i moved to, both externally and in my mind. yet i still can’t come to terms with the disappearance of the never-ending nightlife. but that’s okay - i tell myself things will have gone back to normal when I get back, whenever that may happen.
until then, I’ll keep on dreaming of London as the place of crowded pubs, dreams of “making it big”, and a trainwreck of a relationship i had high hopes for, but never managed to salvage.
