Once upon a time when I lived in New York, I had the distinct pleasure of reading Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy, a series of detective novels set in the City and exploring the various kinds of identity and existential issues that might strike a person living there. It is unfortunate that I can point to no book or series of books and say 'this! This is The London Trilogy. I am tempted to point to Peter Ackroyd, cite novels such as Hawksmoor and say 'this is the British Paul Auster!' but that would be unfair to Ackroyd's own immense prowess as a writer - he is simply Peter Ackroyd, no comparison necessary.
The themes within Hawksmoor are eerily similar to those in The New York Trilogy, and walk hand-in-hand with themes in other books I've read recently: The Master and Margarita, which is likely the second-best novel I've ever read after 100 Years of Solitude, and The Satanic Verses, which I've not yet finished but is majestic and glorious in its portrayal of the placeless place that is the expatriate's Ell Oh En Dee Oh En.
But there is no London Trilogy per se just as there is no version of Woody Allen here to assign the city a theme tune (Rhapsody in Blue for New York, of course) and film us all in glorious black-and-white. The startling thing is that we don't need an Allen or a Trilogy. We're doing quite well on our own thank you, as Mr. Ackroyd and Mr. Rushdie and how many countless other writers have proven.
It is the very essence of unnaturalness that so many people are shoved into such a small space and I suspect it is this unnatural state of affairs that lead us to examine our identifies when confronted with so many other individuals at the same time. The millions of years of evolution that lead us here did nothing to prepare us for our Londons and our New Yorks, and for the question-answer hunt that we embrace when we move here and become aware of the glorious and lush tapestry of these lives around us.
I offer a new metaphor: London is a loom upon which we can weave our own patterns into the massive and unknowable cloth of life around us.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Unexpected Pleasures
Here's a list of some things I love about London that I didn't know about, didn't expect to like or took me by surprise:
- Not having a car. I enjoy driving (well, most of the time) and I absolutely loved my Prius. It was painful to give it up. But I've adjusted well to not having a car, and all that implies: you can't pick up Ikea furniture without getting a cab or home delivery, you have to limit yourself to small runs at the grocery store, and sometimes you get lost walking around. But you see so much more from the street than you do from a car. I love it.
- Fresh food. Fresh ingredients just taste better. Not so many preservatives means better tasting food, believe it or not.
- Living in the big city and being around so many diverse groups has not actually confirmed my stereotypes and prejudices. In many cases it has challenged them. Seeing people of different races, creeds and nationalities struggling every day for the same things I struggle for humanizes them. I take back things I said before about living in the city: this experience is not something you can get in strip-mall suburban America.
- I've mentioned it before: there are some women who think an American accent is sexy. Who'da thunk it?
- Things like this.
- I kind of enjoy carrying an umbrella around with me almost all the time now.
- Reading on mass transit. I've read more since I arrived here, mostly on the tube and on the bus on the way to and from work, than I have in the last two or three years combined.
- Great acts of kindness. This is probably a blog post in and of itself, but I've seen complete strangers being extraordinarily kind to each other. So many people living on top of each other requires some sort of unwritten social contract, and it's amazing what I've seen - people helping women with strollers onto busses, people helping elderly people who have fallen down. Clerks just generally being friendly and helpful. Returning someone's wallet or Oyster card after they left it in the store, or it fell out of their pocket. I've seen people being complete assholes of course, but I'm always floored by how kind people here are, often to complete strangers. Even if a drunk stumbles into you, you don't yell, you just say 'steady on mate' and help him on his way. After all - someday that very well could be you.
- Monmouth Coffee Company. Who knew some of the best coffee in the world is roasted in London?
- I'm playing less games, but doing more social sorts of things. This can only be a good thing.
- Photography. Who knew I'd take so many pictures here?
- My muse. I'm writing more than I have in years. Since college. Since ever, really.
- Contrary to what Republicans would have you believe, socialized health care does not suck. In fact, it fucking rocks.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Metaphor
Literature and history has provided us with a great many metaphors and images for London: a dark city, a labyrinth, a forest, Hell itself, a battleground, a ritual chamber, a market. TS Eliot used one of my favorites, simply referring to London as the 'unreal city,' a place that couldn't possibly exist and yet somehow does in spite of itself.
London is unusual in that the founding of the city can actually be traced to a specific period of time; in this instance, the landing of the Romans and the conquest of Brittania, where Londinium was a key military supply point and fortress. After the Romans withdrew, the city weakened and eventually passed from importance as the Saxons and Britons squabbled over control of pieces of what Rome left them. It wasn't until the late Dark Ages that London once again became important, and has continued to grow in importance ever since. It is arguably a city like no other, and certainly one of a select group which only includes New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Tokyo - and others one would no doubt argue belong in this set. Cities where things happen, events that trickle down into the rest of civilization. Vast centers of moneymaking and culture.
While many poets and sociologists no doubt have arguments as to why this is, I would offer a rather simple solution that the sheer numbers of people in these places offer no other possible conclusion. In less flowery language, it's the 'million monkeys' principle: they'll eventually produce something, be it Shakespeare or this blog. Or something entirely new.
And that's the problem I've found with trying to describe London in any of the metaphors I've encountered: they're too specific. The very thing that makes London so unique is that (as the quote at the top of this blog says) it really does contain everything. It in and of itself is a metaphor for the existence and condition of our entire species. That's some crazy mojo, dude.
The metaphor I've come to apply to London is that of a vast organism. Similar to the movie Pi, where the narrator describes an impossibly complex system 'screaming with life,' that is how London appears: a place where due to the sheer numbers you will encounter anything and everything, from the very best to the very worst humanity has to offer. In the scant few months I've been here I've seen people do heartless things to defenseless and crippled homeless people, and I've seen incredible displays of compassion for total strangers. If there is a representation of the city as anything, it's an extension of what makes us human: it's like a vast series of cells with the people as various organelles running to and fro, and the cells working together to make the organism work.
London isn't a tree or a creature or even some Cthulhoid monster that I might call it if I were less imaginative and observant. It's more like one of those massive underground fungus' scientists have discovered, something so ancient that it's hard to conceive that it started as a few simple cells and now covers miles of space. But that's exactly what London is: nothing more or less than the people that live here and make up the city. If the organelles were to stop working, London would simply cease to be and quietly slide back into the earth, awaiting the next militaristic expedition that realized the Thames would make a good shallow port for landing supplies.
I must admit the seduction of making London more than this. It is an inspiring city in all of its massed urban glory, and one that cannot help but fire the imagination in ways you'd never conceive. It is - unreal.
London is unusual in that the founding of the city can actually be traced to a specific period of time; in this instance, the landing of the Romans and the conquest of Brittania, where Londinium was a key military supply point and fortress. After the Romans withdrew, the city weakened and eventually passed from importance as the Saxons and Britons squabbled over control of pieces of what Rome left them. It wasn't until the late Dark Ages that London once again became important, and has continued to grow in importance ever since. It is arguably a city like no other, and certainly one of a select group which only includes New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Tokyo - and others one would no doubt argue belong in this set. Cities where things happen, events that trickle down into the rest of civilization. Vast centers of moneymaking and culture.
While many poets and sociologists no doubt have arguments as to why this is, I would offer a rather simple solution that the sheer numbers of people in these places offer no other possible conclusion. In less flowery language, it's the 'million monkeys' principle: they'll eventually produce something, be it Shakespeare or this blog. Or something entirely new.
And that's the problem I've found with trying to describe London in any of the metaphors I've encountered: they're too specific. The very thing that makes London so unique is that (as the quote at the top of this blog says) it really does contain everything. It in and of itself is a metaphor for the existence and condition of our entire species. That's some crazy mojo, dude.
The metaphor I've come to apply to London is that of a vast organism. Similar to the movie Pi, where the narrator describes an impossibly complex system 'screaming with life,' that is how London appears: a place where due to the sheer numbers you will encounter anything and everything, from the very best to the very worst humanity has to offer. In the scant few months I've been here I've seen people do heartless things to defenseless and crippled homeless people, and I've seen incredible displays of compassion for total strangers. If there is a representation of the city as anything, it's an extension of what makes us human: it's like a vast series of cells with the people as various organelles running to and fro, and the cells working together to make the organism work.
London isn't a tree or a creature or even some Cthulhoid monster that I might call it if I were less imaginative and observant. It's more like one of those massive underground fungus' scientists have discovered, something so ancient that it's hard to conceive that it started as a few simple cells and now covers miles of space. But that's exactly what London is: nothing more or less than the people that live here and make up the city. If the organelles were to stop working, London would simply cease to be and quietly slide back into the earth, awaiting the next militaristic expedition that realized the Thames would make a good shallow port for landing supplies.
I must admit the seduction of making London more than this. It is an inspiring city in all of its massed urban glory, and one that cannot help but fire the imagination in ways you'd never conceive. It is - unreal.
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