10 ways of seeing London
excerpted recollections of my 4 days in London, written for my patrons program.
dear S,
after nearly a month in Paris, I decided to take short trips around European cities: London, Berlin, then Athens. I'm writing to you now from Berlin, after spending four days in London. I am going to tell you about London. tell you quickly before I forget, before this sensible world slips away from me — as worlds tend to do.
four days in London is not enough to claim that I have “seen” London, or that I “know” London — but it was my first time visiting. so I will recollect my impressions, like a collection of fragments on the dartboard of my imagination.
here, the table of contents —
01. London, in the afterimage of Paris
02. London, without the mysterious veil of language.
03. London as a city where everything is square-ish
04. London as a city where things are sorted out
05. London as an organized collection of things
06. London as a place to hold your culture.
07. London as seen from scooter
08. London as a city for beheaded ghosts and detectives
09. London is not a place for the tango spirit
10. London for dreamers
01. London, in the afterimage of Paris
I came to London after nearly a month in Paris. for the first forty eight hours, I saw the shadowed imprint of Paris etched everywhere; the absence of Paris in the absence of boulangeries on every corner, in the absence of elaborate windows and doors and ceilings with their enchanted trimmings; I saw Paris in the absence of decadence. London was much too practical for that. London was matter of fact, no nonsense; London was like New York in that it smelled like a place where you go to make money, not a place where you sit by the river to drink wine and eat cheese. so can you believe that I missed Paris - that pompously narcissistic city - that egocentric city so full of self-absorption and pride - I missed the way in which people worshipped pleasure and beauty without shame, unabashedly, that cool and unapologetic hedonism. London was a far more reasoned, and reasonable place. London was full of sense, and sensibility.
02. London, without the mysterious veil of language
the more I travel in Europe, the more it feels completely arbitrary to me that I write and speak in English. when I first arrived in London, stupid things were shouted in the plane. and then on the streets. I felt momentarily without wonder. there was no veil of language to make a place or its people feel more mysterious than they are (not that London is particularly mysterious anyway). but then you realize that conversations between people really can be that basic, regardless what tongue they speak. that underneath the coats of language, we are all equally naked and ugly.
03. London as a city where everything is square-ish
the British seem fond of a certain proportionality in design. but it is without the stoicism of the Germans, the whimsy of the Dutch, or the pleasing harmony of the Scandinavians. in London, everything is slightly squared. by slightly squared I mean, a near 1:1 ratio between height and width. on the exit to apartment buildings, there are perfect little green spheres that you can push. the door handles are small, squared pieces of silver metal. the toilets are rounded square vessels (sometimes with a hanging flush lever that you pull, which feels completely ridiculous and insensible), the stoplights are encased in oversized black boxes. the seats on the tube are as wide as they are long - as if designed to allow each person the possibility to avoid touching one another. on street signs, the typography is extra wide and extra large, like text in a large print book. everything feels like it was designed for children -- children that don’t play. it is very serious - either in black, or in startlingly un-elegant construction colors, like plastic red, bright orange, or neon green. as if to say: when we don’t speak in civil tones, we will raise our voice and yell.
04. London as a city where things are sorted out
while waiting for the tube, I hear a voice on the intercom:
“if you see something that isn’t right, text XXXXXXXXX. we’ll sort it out. see it, say it, sort it."
the voice is very reassuring in its systematic approach to the unknown. see it. say it. sort it. when I hear this message, I believe it. it’s like when you’re a child and your mother promises you that bad things won’t happen, and for nearly a decade, despite all evidence to the contrary, you believe her. in this case the voice is saying, we don’t need to talk about bad things. they are always fixable. sortable. don’t worry.
I think of how in New York, the voice makes no promises.
“see something, say something.”
but what do you mean, “something”? “something” is such a nebulous way of identifying danger - some dark cloud ready to blow a hole into the gridded coordinates of the city. I guess this is more faithful to how life actually is. bad things happen and they don’t always feel bad. they just feel like “something.” the voice does not promise to fix it. instead, it’s on us - our civic obligation.
I will miss this reassuring voice of London.
05. London as an organized collection of things
I did not go to any museums in London. my personal rule is: wildflowers over ticketed gardens. to never visit a city’s collection of beautiful things (often ravaged from other cultures) guarded, and put behind glass walls — until I’ve experienced its collections of unguarded beautiful things.
so I spent two days lingering in four bookstores (see below: #10, London for dreamers) in between the bookstores, I passed by other collections: a Victorian umbrella shop open for 100 years, a chocolate shop with infinite barrels and piles of truffles, a ceramics collection with bowls carefully laid out and individually lit, a shop that sold Roman coins, and, on my last day, walking home - a dimly lit arthouse film library with leather sofas, a small back theatre, and a dark wooden bar — like the idyllic vision of a British study. I swooned over this room like it was a dark, handsome man. bookmarked it in my heart for a future visit.
I think about British collectors — adventurers, explorers, taxonomists, people who traveled the world and collected things from exotic places. I think about the idea of collection: as a way of knowing. as a form of possession. an exacting of control and order on one’s surroundings. you collect to make the chaos of the unknowable known. to capture a sense of abundance; possession. I think about the masculine versus the feminine way of collecting things. this is what I’m doing now, no? this is my collection of London. collecting as an act of witnessing.
06. London as a place to hold your culture.
07. London as seen from scooter
08. London as a city for beheaded ghosts and detectives
09. London is not a place for the tango spirit
10. London for dreamers