one perfect sunset
This is way overdue, written on the laptop a while ago but not posted due to internet woes. Maybe you're all sick of people banging on about London by now. What the hey. I want to tell you all about my amazing, sudden, colourful journey, but I'm going to talk about this first.
There I was last Thursday in Luxembourg, watching BBC World News into the night, with channel-surfing breaks (naked chicks playing badminton, news channels full of exploded bus shots and the story of the blasts in three different languages, bizarre garden-centre shopping channels. European TV that night was all sex and death and garden gnomes). The next day, reading LJ and laughing at the tea icons. Being amazed at how the plan came together, buses ferrying the injured. Seeing several people independently posting the lyrics to London Pride. Well, I was proud. And on Sunday evening, heading out to kesstrel’s Drury Lane show (for a whole different kind of pride, the “that’s my friend up there on the stage!” kind) I asked the Underground man at Highgate station if the tube was running and he beamed and said “yes, business as usual”, and I couldn’t help beaming back and saying “Fair play to you,” as if I wasn’t just addressing him but the whole underground system.
And I kept thinking about a gorgeous sunny day last summer when I set out to Brentford to meet lostcarpark at a Robert Rankin convention. It was a few days after the big storms that filled the Thames with sewage, and Brentford smelled a bit like Bangkok, but as the tide rose it got better and we sat and drank cider by the water with the truly ubiquitous mzdt who was doing the sound. I headed back, in a happy bubble of drunk, as the sun was starting to set. I’d just bought Orbital’s Blue Album and by the time my train pulled into Waterloo I was blissed out on music and buzzing with energy as if the cider fizz had migrated into my whole body. I decided to walk from Waterloo to my bus at Tottenham Court Road. The sky was blue-pink-lilac and everything looked larger than life - the South Bank buildings and bridges, the London Eye spinning above me. One Perfect Sunrise was on the discman, Lisa Gerrard singing on the last track of Orbital’s career, and I felt like I was at the centre of everything and wanted the walk to last forever. I found myself actually crying, wiping my eyes with a huge stupid smile, getting very strange looks from passers-by. Most of that summer I felt like living in this city was hammering me down into powder, but right then it was all worth it to be there at that moment. Can you be in love with a city the way you can with a person? Has anyone else felt that way? Some people must have done. The guy who wrote Waterloo Sunset must have done, in the same place at the same hour. Have you?
This is what I scribbled in my notebook on the bus afterwards:
London, you have me in your thrall. You have me by the throat, by the guts, and I can’t leave.
You give with one hand and take with the other. My life is a constant struggle to meet your standards of brilliance, efficiency, strength; to satisfy your demands; to keep you appeased. The red bills falling on the doormat are your fractious, foot-stamping cries of ‘feed me!’ But as long as I stay on the treadmill, gasping for breath and running my heart out, all your treasures are open to me. Your stories, your songs, your vistas, your dreams. And perhaps even your secrets if I'm lucky, lying hidden under accretions of stone.
You glue me to the ground with sticky black soot. You are an energy sink, sucking life-force down into your wet chalk pit. But even as you make me feel hopeless and desperate, you make my mind explode with the white blaze of inspiration.
Everyone wants to be here. There are other towns which seem to say “go on, lie back in my sleepy arms and grow fat and complacent if you like; I’ll take care of you.” I know London won’t. The moment I stop trying I will fall behind and someone else, someone shinier and more energetic, eager to do the London Thing, will step into my place. So I keep on running to stay where I am, and sometimes I think my heart will give out.
But to leave - that would be death, dullness, blankness, the end of inspiration. So go on, keep on feeding on me, and I’ll see how many more stories I can wrest from you while I have the strength. You are the centre around which things turn and I’ll stay here as long as I can, loving you and hating you and still loving you.
There I was last Thursday in Luxembourg, watching BBC World News into the night, with channel-surfing breaks (naked chicks playing badminton, news channels full of exploded bus shots and the story of the blasts in three different languages, bizarre garden-centre shopping channels. European TV that night was all sex and death and garden gnomes). The next day, reading LJ and laughing at the tea icons. Being amazed at how the plan came together, buses ferrying the injured. Seeing several people independently posting the lyrics to London Pride. Well, I was proud. And on Sunday evening, heading out to kesstrel’s Drury Lane show (for a whole different kind of pride, the “that’s my friend up there on the stage!” kind) I asked the Underground man at Highgate station if the tube was running and he beamed and said “yes, business as usual”, and I couldn’t help beaming back and saying “Fair play to you,” as if I wasn’t just addressing him but the whole underground system.
And I kept thinking about a gorgeous sunny day last summer when I set out to Brentford to meet lostcarpark at a Robert Rankin convention. It was a few days after the big storms that filled the Thames with sewage, and Brentford smelled a bit like Bangkok, but as the tide rose it got better and we sat and drank cider by the water with the truly ubiquitous mzdt who was doing the sound. I headed back, in a happy bubble of drunk, as the sun was starting to set. I’d just bought Orbital’s Blue Album and by the time my train pulled into Waterloo I was blissed out on music and buzzing with energy as if the cider fizz had migrated into my whole body. I decided to walk from Waterloo to my bus at Tottenham Court Road. The sky was blue-pink-lilac and everything looked larger than life - the South Bank buildings and bridges, the London Eye spinning above me. One Perfect Sunrise was on the discman, Lisa Gerrard singing on the last track of Orbital’s career, and I felt like I was at the centre of everything and wanted the walk to last forever. I found myself actually crying, wiping my eyes with a huge stupid smile, getting very strange looks from passers-by. Most of that summer I felt like living in this city was hammering me down into powder, but right then it was all worth it to be there at that moment. Can you be in love with a city the way you can with a person? Has anyone else felt that way? Some people must have done. The guy who wrote Waterloo Sunset must have done, in the same place at the same hour. Have you?
This is what I scribbled in my notebook on the bus afterwards:
London, you have me in your thrall. You have me by the throat, by the guts, and I can’t leave.
You give with one hand and take with the other. My life is a constant struggle to meet your standards of brilliance, efficiency, strength; to satisfy your demands; to keep you appeased. The red bills falling on the doormat are your fractious, foot-stamping cries of ‘feed me!’ But as long as I stay on the treadmill, gasping for breath and running my heart out, all your treasures are open to me. Your stories, your songs, your vistas, your dreams. And perhaps even your secrets if I'm lucky, lying hidden under accretions of stone.
You glue me to the ground with sticky black soot. You are an energy sink, sucking life-force down into your wet chalk pit. But even as you make me feel hopeless and desperate, you make my mind explode with the white blaze of inspiration.
Everyone wants to be here. There are other towns which seem to say “go on, lie back in my sleepy arms and grow fat and complacent if you like; I’ll take care of you.” I know London won’t. The moment I stop trying I will fall behind and someone else, someone shinier and more energetic, eager to do the London Thing, will step into my place. So I keep on running to stay where I am, and sometimes I think my heart will give out.
But to leave - that would be death, dullness, blankness, the end of inspiration. So go on, keep on feeding on me, and I’ll see how many more stories I can wrest from you while I have the strength. You are the centre around which things turn and I’ll stay here as long as I can, loving you and hating you and still loving you.