You do not have to be Alan Moore, Iain Sincair or Will Self to get the power that resonates behind some London place names. The Limehouse Cut is what it says – a brutal cut on landscape, a carved gash in the East London clay infected with industrial dirt. If there was a dream dictionary based on the geography of London, to dream of the Limehouse Cut would be to dream of danger, ill health and things falling apart.
Therefore to dream of walking the towpath of the Limehouse Cut to Bow Cemetery cannot ever be considered a comforting journey. This is especially true when you are walking at night, the cemetery displaying not its modern park aspect, but the fierce terror the boneyard forest. Once there, I was called before a parliament of crows, questioned on what I knew about plots by the conspiracy of ravens at the Tower of London.
After that part of the dream, the signal to noise problem with memory cuts in. I can no longer tell clearly what is remembered and what is imagined. However, I will happily take a third-rate blast of Poe in my nocturnal visions over the usual shouting and cordite fare of my nightmares.
4 comments:
The one thing I loved about Neil Gaimans 'Neverwhere' is the way he was able to weave the link between the names of ordinary places (in particular the tube line) to an alternate dimension of london where shards of the concrete world continually pierce the surreal world of gaimans. How he utilised the names, Piccadily Circus, Elephant and castle, Angel, Blackfriars was pure literary magic; your London sounds a bit like that and Limehouse Cut wouldnt have sounded a bit out of place in Gaimans world.
I'm reading Rogan Taylor's 'Death and Resurrection Show' right now, and that sounds about right for a Shamanic Rebirth scenario if you ask me.
I have a passion for crows and ravens, and was totally happy to get one land on the trunk of the car the other day when we parked up, and stare in at me for a few seconds before taking off again.
Those Tower Ravens are awesome.. I hope you didn't wake with the cold sweats from that one.
No, no cold sweats. A magical dream rich in omens is always preferable over a plain old nightmare.
Of course London itself is not real. It is a myth, a dream. A virtual reality of ideas that intersects with landscape. Gaiman told his London, I just report mine.
Brilliant dream. I'm a bit of a raven fan myself.
Hi.
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