Walking Through a Museum of Painful Ghosts
There are parts of London that still make me feel as if I am walking through a museum of painful ghosts. Given they are areas such as St James, the Law Courts and Bell Yard, avoidance is not usually a problem. However, today as I trudged towards the ITN building to record an interview for Channel 4 News, there was no way of evading Chancery Lance and Grays Inn Road.
Sometimes I wish the huge holes in my mind gifted by old traumas were more complete. Instead of the jumble of three-month gaps, I long for whole years of erasement. The blessing of a decade of oblivion.
Yet memory is not static. Our own inner maps linking emotion to place are constantly being redrawn. I am a different person to the scared, hurt and idiotic man that last walked this way. Each step I take allows me to create new associations. This street can be either a Sunday in 1999 or a Tuesday morning in 2008. I move between worlds; walk the temporal line and make my choices.
I choose to focus on the now. Ignore the cicatrix and relish every fresh moment of life. Light rain on my face. The enticing smell of choux pastry and patisserie cream escaping from a briefly opened door. Arguments I will deploy when staring down the lens.
Later in the day, I make a second journey to 200 Grays Inn Road to pre-record an interview for the ITN evening news. This time my thoughts drift only towards which Victorian gas holder we will use as a backdrop and being back canalside tonight. The prospect of homemade soup is heavenly when you stand behind King’s Cross, battered by wind as the cameraman tries to compose a shot of the elegant industrial skeleton which manages to hide the Post Office Tower.
Sometimes I wish the huge holes in my mind gifted by old traumas were more complete. Instead of the jumble of three-month gaps, I long for whole years of erasement. The blessing of a decade of oblivion.
Yet memory is not static. Our own inner maps linking emotion to place are constantly being redrawn. I am a different person to the scared, hurt and idiotic man that last walked this way. Each step I take allows me to create new associations. This street can be either a Sunday in 1999 or a Tuesday morning in 2008. I move between worlds; walk the temporal line and make my choices.
I choose to focus on the now. Ignore the cicatrix and relish every fresh moment of life. Light rain on my face. The enticing smell of choux pastry and patisserie cream escaping from a briefly opened door. Arguments I will deploy when staring down the lens.
Later in the day, I make a second journey to 200 Grays Inn Road to pre-record an interview for the ITN evening news. This time my thoughts drift only towards which Victorian gas holder we will use as a backdrop and being back canalside tonight. The prospect of homemade soup is heavenly when you stand behind King’s Cross, battered by wind as the cameraman tries to compose a shot of the elegant industrial skeleton which manages to hide the Post Office Tower.
Labels: Cicatrix, King’s Cross, Post Office Tower, Psychogeography
posted by David at 7:08 PM
12 Comments:
Is it a London thing? I wonder.Whenever I return to the village wher I taught, I feel its malevolence creep over me as all the bad memories surface, but in London, as you say, the ghosts are somehow more alive. Is is because the city itself thrums with life thus energising the ghosts, or is it because London is eternal, as is the past?
Dunno.
Puss
You can find painful ghosts and be forced in reflex to rub the emotional scar tissue in any place where you have history. However, like you, I find the unquiet spirits of memory kick hard in London. I think of London as a being of collected information, alive across the past, present and future. Maybe it is all that temporal energy married to the constant turn of the city that provides them with the such an energising environment.
Scars are a mark of bravery, of experience, of learning. Retrace your scars often, to seek comfort in the fading memories of pain, and to replace those memories with new, less-freighted memories.
Ooh, how for some reason this reminds me of the darkness of Victorian London and Jack the Ripper.
I love reading about London and hearing those familiar names, Grey's Inn, Charing Cross, Kensington, etc.
But, David, how painful for you and how wise to continue on and forge new associations with your old romps.
We cannot change our past or what has happened to us, but to have the fortitude to veneer how we presently see the past, in the long run, may be most healthy.
Marvin – Thank you. Very eloquently put.
GM – I agree. We are the sum of our choices. However, as we make new choices every day, we can at least be allowed to hope the ghosts of our memory will help keep us wiser than we were.
yes here is to new associations! i do think it is possible.
If only I could sense a deeper presence when I am home.
For one ... the U.S. is a baby country ...
For two, where I live is even younger due to suburban expansion.
England ... no matter which part ... always sounds so much more interesting than boring old Nebraska.
But I love Nebraska for other reasons.
-J
PS: We do NOT wrestle pigs here either.
Merelyme – I think it is possible to.
JM – I am fairly certain I would get arrested if I tried to wrestle pigs in London. I can probably do it in Australia though.
Hello David thanks for stopping by.
The Ghost are precisely what I miss, the feeling the first time came out of a theatre late at night in the throng of a massive crowd and walked through city to get home, all exhilarated. The way St Pancras always reminds me of a Gothic castle rather then a railway station. Places that evoke memories and people I've lost. Times I long to remember and forget.
London is a much a living breathing entity as any person I suppose thats its charm. I'm glad to find someone who understands.
Good luck in Australia, it is a lovely country. I do hope the interviews went well.
SF
Ahh, ghosts. Sometimes it's almost as painful not to have them there as it is to be in their company. The past can be treacherous country, full of mires and quicksands, ever shifting, but it is where we spring from... It can be an uneasy mix.
As an aisde David, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'se curious... On whose behalf are you suffering this onslaught of political and meedja indignity?
Tim – You and I are both used to walking between worlds – whether those of soaring imagination and empty stomach reality or past and present – so your point on the ghosts of memory is well taken. You more than anyone knows that the answer to some questions has to be: ‘know, will, dare and be silent in the hope the idiots with grudges are not going to spend hours on the Internet trying to work out how to find you.’ Therefore, despite my occasional public profile, I am not going to make it even easier for them by spelling it out on this blog.
I remember some years back looking out of a high rise motel which cost a bob or two, sipping something nice and with a shock - seeing myself in my mind's eye down on the street looking back at me...I realised I had lived a week or two in a rabbits warren tumbledown place directly accross the road... and had emoty pockets a lot...not even running water in the room... I wondered were I to meet myself would either one of me recognise me... not sure...
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