Tuesday 13 October 2009

20.

are4 we fucking nailam? How cxab wea gat out of this epescies? Where ias the niode4 home ?

Sunday 11 October 2009

19. Fortissimo

Another darkened, strobe-lit, smoke-filled night ends after profound sweaty stuttering swaying stomping revelry finally collapses in upon itself and I am forcibly spat out into the nonchalant, unblinking streets of the old, new, everlasting Great Beast London. Dirt and noise cling to me filthily and I welcome them as I would old friends. (“Pull up an armpit!”)
My body is barely clothed in sweaty discoloured rags, my ears are humming with ten thousand watts of half-heard and half-imagined rhythms which reverberate until dawn comes and resonate until the end of time as a great grinding comforting cacophony.
There’s no such thing as going home again. Not now. I know now that I am here to wander, to dérive, to map out London and all of its stupendous stupefying magickal aura upon the thoughtscreens of the webworked wired world in full force, giggling all the way.

“Fortissimo at last!” will be my battle cry.

And I don’t have to stop if I don’t want to. Really. A new, old, unknown London is made real around me at every step and stagger, its boundaries dissolving into mine. The reanimated zombie London of the past and the as-yet-unrealised technopolis London of the future watch our every move with hidden eyes; unflinching, unconcerned. The streets have seen this before. The streets will see this again.
Roman plaster walls give way seamlessly onto steel and concrete foundations. Sections of the city (some larger than towerblocks, others smaller than photons) flicker between timezones; now marshes, now tamed fields, now houses, shops, alleys, car parks, subways, skyscrapers, tube trains, engines, beats, hearts, dust…
The streets are paved over in mud, in gold, in tarmac and then in mud again in a dizzying diurnal dance. Sun, moon, sun, moon, sun, moon…
On Oxford Street I blunder past a shade of De Quincey, who nods in my direction and mumbles under his breath about terræ incognitæ before disappearing northwest, guided by the pole star, through a glass shopfront into his own ‘sphynx’s riddles of streets without thoroughfares’. The pleasures of losing oneself will never diminish, no matter what the age…

Have you explored this town's alleyways in the alivedead dark before dawn? Pay special attention to your pathway's acoustics; to the rectilinear playgrounds left deserted by scaffolders; to the humming elephant-machines kept (unprotesting but melancholy) in pens to serve man's needs; to the tiny scribbled nonsensical ravings of lonely men and women found between the cracks of the tiles in a freshly painted underpass under an abandoned roundabout which lends silently sliding inertia to the nearby buildings. These things might be important; a white noise of data with which to predict the future and discern the past. On my own journey, I’m letting the dial freewheel – this is the static between stations you can hear, ghostly pale but always on the edge of resolving into meaningful wholes. Station to station, station to station. This is London calling. Repeat: this is London calling.

The city’s waking up but still I’m alone, barely registering the brief transience which makes up the presence of others; their flickering, temporary lights and forces have only a short lease on my senses; it is of the ages, this place with these streets, this great dark holy other, mother of civilisations, this king and queen of conurbations.

Almost blindly I find my way to Green Park to dance among lepers in their graves, among the long-dead still-living gentry who shoot each other for fun and for honour and for profit. I’m just in time to catch the fireworks as they rain green and gold in the late night early morning spring-autumn sky. And then, for one tiny moment, I catch a glimpse of the beautiful woman I spent last night dancing with in that little black underground room as we became soaked with two dozen different people’s sweat together. Was it really that long ago, my dear? How could all of this have passed between us? I remember when we were young…
My sensorium drifts slowly back to what I will call, for ease of reference, the present day. Up above, through the clouds, future neural whiteheat information networks are still blinking in and out of thought. I could ignore them if I decided I wanted to. Really, I could. The roar of today’s metropolis begins to engulf me again as I relieve myself on some monument or other (all queens look the same at the nape of the neck, don’t they?) and swagger, multiply enlightened, along the Mall.

“Did you miss me while I was gone?”, I ask the aetherwaves, not expecting any kind of reply.

I am bleeding from my right foot. My hair is perpendicular to my head. My short breaths are punctuated by wheezes. Maybe. My. Imagination. Is. Wearing. Off.
Bedraggled, bloody and gasping, I find myself in Trafalgar Square. I collapse on the floor. Before I pass out I can just make out a woman on one of the plinths, broadcasting someone else’s journey through this endless city.

“Fortissimo at last!”

12 Oct 2009, 9-10am