The Eye of Providence
I am in the shadow of Thames House. Sixth floor. Windows open to defeat stuffiness. The droning circles of a military helicopter crowds the room. Low in the sky, a trajectory taking it towards the Babylon-on-Thames building. Its bullying sound obscures the 11am chimes of Big Ben. It passes quickly, but the thworp thworp of its blades dominates until it has nearly crossed the river. Over the next two hours, more follow.
Desensitisation to my surroundings is rare. The city lives in my senses and imagination. I can navigate by the smell of agarwood incense and fried sambusac along Edgeware Road. Close my eyes, listen to the soft exhalation of traffic and know whether I am in Kensington or Earl’s Court. Still the psychic static and I can feel temporal echoes of history occulted by the exigencies of everday life.
Yet in this particular corner of the Westminster village, I become strangely insensitive to the stories of stone and brick. Numb to the paranoid reek that should sting my eyes. Inside the security triangle, some protective mechanism kicks in and forces you to tune out the whole industry of fear embedded in the territory. Tune out Five and all its manifestations of the Eye of Providence.
Today, after the intrusion of helicopter flights, ignoring my milieu is not an option. The spell is broken. Armoured Range Rovers charge down Horseferry Road like metallic black rhinos. I cannot help but recognise chaps I know from Five emerging from Starbucks. View architecture as a series of adaptations to the risk of explosives measured in the clinical horror of high yield numbers.
England occupies little more than 0.1% of the globe’s inhabitable land mass, yet boasts more than 20% of the world’s CCTV camera. It seems as if a good proportion of them are concentrated in this section of Millbank. Step outside the blast doors and the invisible tyranny of constant observation begins. Smart and suspicious software analysing number plates, faces and gait. Cameras chittering data to distant electronic brains. Kick-starting paranoid pouring through stored information for recognised faces, walks and numerical sequences.
Walking here turns us into data ghosts. Our movements translated into a virtual world where our very existence is reason for distrust. Each camera capture a new scene in a fragmented narrative obsessed with trying to discern motive from detail. We have become extras in a film we will never get to see.
Desensitisation to my surroundings is rare. The city lives in my senses and imagination. I can navigate by the smell of agarwood incense and fried sambusac along Edgeware Road. Close my eyes, listen to the soft exhalation of traffic and know whether I am in Kensington or Earl’s Court. Still the psychic static and I can feel temporal echoes of history occulted by the exigencies of everday life.
Yet in this particular corner of the Westminster village, I become strangely insensitive to the stories of stone and brick. Numb to the paranoid reek that should sting my eyes. Inside the security triangle, some protective mechanism kicks in and forces you to tune out the whole industry of fear embedded in the territory. Tune out Five and all its manifestations of the Eye of Providence.
Today, after the intrusion of helicopter flights, ignoring my milieu is not an option. The spell is broken. Armoured Range Rovers charge down Horseferry Road like metallic black rhinos. I cannot help but recognise chaps I know from Five emerging from Starbucks. View architecture as a series of adaptations to the risk of explosives measured in the clinical horror of high yield numbers.
England occupies little more than 0.1% of the globe’s inhabitable land mass, yet boasts more than 20% of the world’s CCTV camera. It seems as if a good proportion of them are concentrated in this section of Millbank. Step outside the blast doors and the invisible tyranny of constant observation begins. Smart and suspicious software analysing number plates, faces and gait. Cameras chittering data to distant electronic brains. Kick-starting paranoid pouring through stored information for recognised faces, walks and numerical sequences.
Walking here turns us into data ghosts. Our movements translated into a virtual world where our very existence is reason for distrust. Each camera capture a new scene in a fragmented narrative obsessed with trying to discern motive from detail. We have become extras in a film we will never get to see.
Labels: MI5, Millbank, Westminster Village
posted by David at
11:32 PM
9 Comments:
What's sad is that the cameras are only good for forensics, figuring out what happened, AFTER something horrible happens. It's an interesting national mindset, for a people to surrender themselves to such intrusion in the vain hope that it makes them safer.
Love the title, David.
I felt it very strange when I recently found that you were born in 1971, but I doth thought you are much older than me. What gives me that feeling...? I don't know (and really feel quite funny) but I guess it is also nice.
Write on. Always hunger for your beautifully written words. I wonder if a writer like you begins to write poems, what will they like? Would love to read some (I know there must be some lovely ones in your drawer. It's hard to believe that there is someone who's as dumb as me - who began to write poems when she was in her 36. (But at least, I wrote; and at least, I pained, and loved.) Only myself knows how I was hurt; but only god knows how deeply he was hurt, and how much he has sacrificed. I’m nobody, aren’t I? But he... ;and why should I resent for a little pain in my heart? However, today this line still made me cry, you are a look in your eye, a dream passing by in the sky.
Wish you a nice English dream, and a warm weekend.
Lian
It all sounds so "stealthy" and so exposed at the same time.
Ah, how I miss South Kensington and I know what you mean by closing your eyes and knowing if you are in Earl's Court or Kensington....
Marvin – I have not blogged about it, but I was recently violently attacked by two footpads pretty much in the shadow of Thames House and the cameras were not even good for forensics. As the Met so helpfully pointed out when I reported the crime: “Yes Sir, we take your point about cameras, but given the buildings involved Sir, we cannot expect much cooperation on that front.” The culture of subservience to surveillance is deeply troubling.
Anon – I wrote poems when I was a younger man. They were not very good. The last poems I wrote were trashed by an ex-fiancée and I have not written any since. This is probably a good thing because I probably have as much ability to write a good poem as I do to safely operate a HGV.
No one is a nobody and writing has no age barrier, no barriers of sex, race or status. Write your voice and whoever you are, you are performing an act of magic.
GM – I would always rather be in South Ken, even though Earl’s Court has a TARDIS.
"We have become extras in a film we will never get to see."
...wow.
I am thinking of renting a narrow boat for a week come December. How does one handle a canal boat anyway? (As for "why January", well, why not. I figure if I am frozen in, I won't need to worry about "handling" the blessed thing in any case.)
You are the only one I know who might be able to set me straight.
stag@southtower.on.ca
Bloody hell. I hate this blog, really. Every time I visit here, I come away from it feeling green with envy at the way you are able to see London, at the gift you have for writing London down.
Man, you are lucky and mighty skilled.
Unilove - Thank you.
Stag – What? You have not bought my book Canalside 101 – From Steering To Stowing, Tillers to Towpaths? Shame on you.
Actually the basics of handling are fairly simple. You steer from the back using a tiller, your engine controls only have forward and reverse. The two most physically demanding aspect of most boat journeys is operating the locks and mooring. Turning the boat at a winding hole is like trying to do a three-point turn in a car, but as it is on water it usually turns into a seventeen-point turn.
Given that even an uncoordinated fool like me can operate a barge, I am more worried the prospects of you getting to grips with the wood burning stove you will need in December. If you want further advice, just email me at cult.author@gmail.com.
Milla - What with Unilove, you and even Iain Sinclair saying nice things about my use of language this week I might run the risk of becoming big-headed if any of it were true. I am still writing the crap out of my system, still more hack than artist.
However, you have spotted London is my muse. When writing about it I know at one level it becomes an extended love letter. If I cannot come up with the odd good sentence about London now and again, I should not type or scratch paper. When London does not inspire words, vocabulary itself is dead.
I'm kinda glad I am reading so late, this being the 15th. I get to read all the responses, too.
I can understand the mechanism needed to be present within such a zone of intense surveillance. Like your own personal forcefield.
I hope you weren't seriously injured, though it sounds like an awful experience, to put it mildly. :(
Oh, it does definitely bring to mind the extended love letter to London. Makes me want to know for certain a place like that for myself.
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