A London Only Night
Aside from my author friends, there are only five writers I would break even a Belgrade curfew to go hear talk. Ballard, Moore, MacLeod, Sinclair and Self. Even if I was struggling with two broken legs, I would put the weight on my crutches and drag myself across the city for any one of them speaking.
Sinclair and Self on the same bill talking about psychogeography. Dream tickets do not get any dreamier. It was inevitable I would suffer the crashing pain of every concussive step it took to haul myself over to the V&A.
As I hobbled across Hyde Park, the falling sun left behind a wreckage of pink clouds. Twilight turned the walkers, skaters and geese feeders on the banks of the Serpentine to Lowry silhouettes. I limped on. Not even the throbbing curse of my foot could not undermine my excitement.
Brompton Road obtained, I arrived at the V&A ridiculously early. The great thing about having a date at a museum is that if you are premature – or the girl in the red coat is late – you cannot feel like you are actually waiting. You just explore by yourself for a bit. Shamble off to find Giambologna’s Samson and Philistine, a Westwood dress or David Reekie’s A Captive Audience?
When my companion arrived, she found me singing The Lion Sleeps Tonight in the museum shop. It was hard to argue with her assessment that I was like a child overdosed on cordial. By my standards, I felt quite restrained given I was not actually dancing among the statuary.
Desperate for the event to start, I sat on the ornate ceramic staircase outside the lecture room. As two of the greatest writers in the English language arrived, I slipped among their entourage of family, Kevin Jackson and eager museum flunkies. As Sinclair and Self were miked up, I screwed my bottom to a prime spot in the front row, listening to the pair discuss the canonicity of a scurrilous story about a shared acquaintance in a New York elevator. I leaned my head back to take in the lavishly decorated domed ceiling. Gilded stars on a blue sky. Heaven. I was in a literary heaven. Behind me, the rows were soon thick with directors, photographers, actors, academics and fellow fans.
They began by reading from their latest books. Kevin Jackson moderated, trying to tease out the meaning of psychogeography as a term and its significance as a genre. Antecedents beyond Debord were cited: Thomas de Quincey, 1940s Parisians and Orson Welles walking the streets of London in 1955 in-between directing Moby Dick Rehearsed. Ballard was lauded. Stewart Home’s careerist head reared and Self neatly dismissed all the artsy wankers pushing repetitive walking.
Cutting through the crap, Sinclair summed up psychogeography as: ‘A way of thinking about the city.’ His words resonated with me, talk of ‘metatemporal journeys’, ‘landscape as parentage’ and the city an ‘anthology of possibilities’. London as ‘a dense series of memory controlled barriers’. Self’s description of Sinclair’s take on psychogeography as ‘secular shamanism’ made perfect sense when Sinclair said: ‘When I am walking, I am recovering and honouring the ancestors of the city.’
They were meanders into Olympic site conspiracies, secret underground cities in Epsom and the ‘shit one can get into trying to walk from JFK to Manhattan’. Sinclair and Self both fixed on psychogeography as one of the ‘tools of resistance’ the whole ‘Pods vs. Peds’ division among writers and a sense, as I would put it, of the power of walking to restore narrative to our lives. I was beyond chuffed when Sinclair said he ‘profoundly agreed’ with me when I questioned them about CCTV.
Afterwards my date spoke to Sinclair about me, making me feel more embarrassed than any child kissed by its mother in the school playground. She got him to sign a copy of London: City of Disappearances and even browbeat Self into signing his Charing Cross Hospital section on the book. We drifted downstairs to the Pre-Raphaelite glories of the green refreshment room. As we ate pies and roast parsnips amid William Morris plasterwork, Edward Burne-Jones glass and chandeliers resembling Dyson spheres, a pianist played.
Towards home, the tactful ignoring of a celebrity dog walker revelling in his sodium secrecy was the only incident. We tracked the canal, its black mirror bending the streetlight beams. The toll of concussion and tiredness slowed my hobbling, but I was still smiling. As my companion pointed out: ‘Iain Sinclair, Will Self and a pie at the V&A. That is a London only night. You would not get it anywhere else.'
Sinclair and Self on the same bill talking about psychogeography. Dream tickets do not get any dreamier. It was inevitable I would suffer the crashing pain of every concussive step it took to haul myself over to the V&A.
As I hobbled across Hyde Park, the falling sun left behind a wreckage of pink clouds. Twilight turned the walkers, skaters and geese feeders on the banks of the Serpentine to Lowry silhouettes. I limped on. Not even the throbbing curse of my foot could not undermine my excitement.
Brompton Road obtained, I arrived at the V&A ridiculously early. The great thing about having a date at a museum is that if you are premature – or the girl in the red coat is late – you cannot feel like you are actually waiting. You just explore by yourself for a bit. Shamble off to find Giambologna’s Samson and Philistine, a Westwood dress or David Reekie’s A Captive Audience?
When my companion arrived, she found me singing The Lion Sleeps Tonight in the museum shop. It was hard to argue with her assessment that I was like a child overdosed on cordial. By my standards, I felt quite restrained given I was not actually dancing among the statuary.
Desperate for the event to start, I sat on the ornate ceramic staircase outside the lecture room. As two of the greatest writers in the English language arrived, I slipped among their entourage of family, Kevin Jackson and eager museum flunkies. As Sinclair and Self were miked up, I screwed my bottom to a prime spot in the front row, listening to the pair discuss the canonicity of a scurrilous story about a shared acquaintance in a New York elevator. I leaned my head back to take in the lavishly decorated domed ceiling. Gilded stars on a blue sky. Heaven. I was in a literary heaven. Behind me, the rows were soon thick with directors, photographers, actors, academics and fellow fans.
They began by reading from their latest books. Kevin Jackson moderated, trying to tease out the meaning of psychogeography as a term and its significance as a genre. Antecedents beyond Debord were cited: Thomas de Quincey, 1940s Parisians and Orson Welles walking the streets of London in 1955 in-between directing Moby Dick Rehearsed. Ballard was lauded. Stewart Home’s careerist head reared and Self neatly dismissed all the artsy wankers pushing repetitive walking.
Cutting through the crap, Sinclair summed up psychogeography as: ‘A way of thinking about the city.’ His words resonated with me, talk of ‘metatemporal journeys’, ‘landscape as parentage’ and the city an ‘anthology of possibilities’. London as ‘a dense series of memory controlled barriers’. Self’s description of Sinclair’s take on psychogeography as ‘secular shamanism’ made perfect sense when Sinclair said: ‘When I am walking, I am recovering and honouring the ancestors of the city.’
They were meanders into Olympic site conspiracies, secret underground cities in Epsom and the ‘shit one can get into trying to walk from JFK to Manhattan’. Sinclair and Self both fixed on psychogeography as one of the ‘tools of resistance’ the whole ‘Pods vs. Peds’ division among writers and a sense, as I would put it, of the power of walking to restore narrative to our lives. I was beyond chuffed when Sinclair said he ‘profoundly agreed’ with me when I questioned them about CCTV.
Afterwards my date spoke to Sinclair about me, making me feel more embarrassed than any child kissed by its mother in the school playground. She got him to sign a copy of London: City of Disappearances and even browbeat Self into signing his Charing Cross Hospital section on the book. We drifted downstairs to the Pre-Raphaelite glories of the green refreshment room. As we ate pies and roast parsnips amid William Morris plasterwork, Edward Burne-Jones glass and chandeliers resembling Dyson spheres, a pianist played.
Towards home, the tactful ignoring of a celebrity dog walker revelling in his sodium secrecy was the only incident. We tracked the canal, its black mirror bending the streetlight beams. The toll of concussion and tiredness slowed my hobbling, but I was still smiling. As my companion pointed out: ‘Iain Sinclair, Will Self and a pie at the V&A. That is a London only night. You would not get it anywhere else.'
Labels: Iain Sinclair, Psychogeography, Victoria and Albert Museum, Will Self
posted by David at
11:07 PM
16 Comments:
Agreed. Events like this make London the place it is. The V&A is possibly my favourite place in London because of the whimsy, chaos and splendour in it's seeming random collections. Not sure about the pies but I always stop for a cake and a coffee in the William Morris room. Pure London.
Oh my. Did that make me smile, trying to imagine your wild-eyed excitement of the evening. Takes 5 years off, doesn't it?
Having lived in South Kensington for all those months, you would think I would have visited the Victoria & Albert; but I did not, and have regretted it ever since.
But thank you for such a lovely description of a luminous night in such a beautiful place.
How nice that you got out and did something fun! Synergy like that occurs only once a decade, perhaps. I enjoyed meeting Douglas Adams (terrible speaker, wonderful writer) before he died - I may have given him chicken pox as I was unknowingly deathly ill that night, but I never found out. And Whitley Strieber. But I seldom see authors anymore. It must be fun, being one, to hobnob with others like you. How rewarding!
An evening to restore the spirits. Just what the doctor ordered.
I wonder how you might read the metaphor of your broken foot in the psychogeography of your London night.
When I broke mine, it proved a powerful symbol, and it took all my power to overcome it.
Puss
They got some good mileage out of the CCTV question. Didn't realise it was you asking it though! great night, but doesn't time fly when you're listening to Iain Sinclair talk? I could quite happily have endured those infernal benches for another three or four hours of that discussion.
Matthew – I could not agree more. The V&A is pure London – past and present in chaotic, wonderful collision. The William Morris refreshment room is as much a treasure as anything in the collections.
GC – I was possibly a bit too wide-eyed. Five years? More like three decades! I certainly had a four year-old’s shyness when it came to the great men.
Muse – You missed out on the V&A? You poor soul!
Marvin – I met Adams at a book signing once. He was charming within the context of the sort of grumpiness you might expect from an author on an unwelcome publicity tour (though this irritability might have been down to fear of further contagion) I love spending time hobnobbing with fellow authors, but I am not in the same league as Sinclair and Self. They are geniuses, I am a hack.
Puss – There is power in walking. One thing I have learned is that my words are allied to the ability to drift through the city or the woods. My language is linked to landscape. Therefore it is no surprise that I am hobbling at both an ambulatory and literary level at the moment. There is some barely visible quod est superius est sicut quod est inferius relationship in effect.
Nick – Bloody hell, you were there too? Glad to see I was not the only oik among all those art and academic establishmentarians. The benches were hard on the bum, but like you, I could have suffered them for several more hours as long as Sinclair was speaking. There was some good gear about the need for personal narrative in response to the growth of the virtual and observation out of raising the CCTV spectre.
No, you would certainly not get that here.
It sounds like you had a great time and that is what I think counts most.
Z – You are right and of course, it is all location relative. We do not get any of those Wyoming pig wrestling nights in my little patch of the world.
you sound positively giddy! what a vicarious delight it is to read of your london adventure.
I heard Will Self speak a couple of years ago and thought he was great. Sadly, no pies were involved!
Merelyme – You are right, I was giddy!
Helen – I think Will Self and a pie makes for a great combination.
Never been to London, nor anywhere with old cities etc but I know the feeling you are talking about...
maybe I have been to older cities...so old they are dust beneath my feel...
The Lion Sleeps Tonight? Harhar.
A friend in Glastonbury, home of such things, coined the term "wankybollocks" for all the stuff the artsy wankers talk. I love that, and think it deserves a place in the dictionary.
The psychogeography of Seattle isn't nearly so interesting. Nor are the people we get speaking here. Seattle does OK occasionally, but the people I want to see here rarely come.
Treat that leg well!! No more long achey walks until you're all better! ;-)
I love the V and A. It's one of the reasons I sent my daughter to the Lycée opposite. And you can always steal food in the restaurant!
The mosaic floors were laid by convicts. It's the only way you'd get that kind of labour for free...
The full transcript of the conversation has now beeen edited and is at the latest issue of the Literary London journal www.literarylondon.org
Steve Barfield [U o Westminster]
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