Something of Myself
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Brick in the Wall
Is the imagery of the fog a bleak one? That's what is one my mind right now - a dense, all-encompassing blanket of fog. And of course, with fog comes London.
Haven't been to London for quite sometime now and the last visit wasn't really a visit - it was to stand by a friend who had lost someone very precious.
This time around I want to go to Brick Lane and Ladbroke Grove and Railton Road and all other such places where communities thrive with a wonderful and painful mixture of colour and class. I want to feel history - go to Mangrove Nine, Metro Four, Brockwell Park Three...everywhere, all parts that have carefully retained and sheltered little bits and pieces of history. I do not want to go to Picaddily Circus or Trafalgar Square or Leicester Square or Oxford Street or Regent Street - they have a different charm, the charm of actually getting to see millions and millions of people. I am not in that frame of mind right now. I want to walk out on a winter night, wearing my black overcoat, its collar risen to beat the winds and I want to take a dictaphone with me and walk the streets of London, carefully avoiding any eye-contact with all. It is as if "walking" on the streets of London is almost a symbolic image of my freedom and my one-ness (if you will) with the country and the culture of the city.
Instead, I am in this small town in Devon; sitting in this prison cell, staring at the laptop screen and wondering if I can ever do what I want to do. It's about freedom and it's about choice.
The freedom to choose. The freedom to call someone your own. The freedom to don the garb of a Londoner and see London through the eyes of Dickens or a Smith or a Johnson or a Blake. The freedom to say - ah, this is the bit that I want, this is the person whom I want to talk to, this is the food I want to eat...almost banal choices you see, nothing extravagant, nothing posh, nothing extraordinary but just an ordinary way of looking at things and making them permanent by etching them in the innermost regions of my mind.
This is a weird feeling - for the first time ever I want to be alone. All my life I hated being alone, but today, I just want to go out there and be alone as if I was born just moments ago. I don't want any language, any mode of communication, any systemof signs to convey emotions, any social mediums by which I will be considered "human" and thus part of the flock.
But these are wanderings, wild thoughts, products of a troubled soul. After all how can I forget - "All in all you're just another brick in the wall." :)
Is the imagery of the fog a bleak one? That's what is one my mind right now - a dense, all-encompassing blanket of fog. And of course, with fog comes London.
Haven't been to London for quite sometime now and the last visit wasn't really a visit - it was to stand by a friend who had lost someone very precious.
This time around I want to go to Brick Lane and Ladbroke Grove and Railton Road and all other such places where communities thrive with a wonderful and painful mixture of colour and class. I want to feel history - go to Mangrove Nine, Metro Four, Brockwell Park Three...everywhere, all parts that have carefully retained and sheltered little bits and pieces of history. I do not want to go to Picaddily Circus or Trafalgar Square or Leicester Square or Oxford Street or Regent Street - they have a different charm, the charm of actually getting to see millions and millions of people. I am not in that frame of mind right now. I want to walk out on a winter night, wearing my black overcoat, its collar risen to beat the winds and I want to take a dictaphone with me and walk the streets of London, carefully avoiding any eye-contact with all. It is as if "walking" on the streets of London is almost a symbolic image of my freedom and my one-ness (if you will) with the country and the culture of the city.
Instead, I am in this small town in Devon; sitting in this prison cell, staring at the laptop screen and wondering if I can ever do what I want to do. It's about freedom and it's about choice.
The freedom to choose. The freedom to call someone your own. The freedom to don the garb of a Londoner and see London through the eyes of Dickens or a Smith or a Johnson or a Blake. The freedom to say - ah, this is the bit that I want, this is the person whom I want to talk to, this is the food I want to eat...almost banal choices you see, nothing extravagant, nothing posh, nothing extraordinary but just an ordinary way of looking at things and making them permanent by etching them in the innermost regions of my mind.
This is a weird feeling - for the first time ever I want to be alone. All my life I hated being alone, but today, I just want to go out there and be alone as if I was born just moments ago. I don't want any language, any mode of communication, any systemof signs to convey emotions, any social mediums by which I will be considered "human" and thus part of the flock.
But these are wanderings, wild thoughts, products of a troubled soul. After all how can I forget - "All in all you're just another brick in the wall." :)
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