My Faceless Housing Estate is about to become yet even more faceless, with even less character. An enormous industrial / housing estate application, originally thrown out, is currently being rubber-stamped through by an MP as I write this. This development will be, quite literally, in 'my back yard'! With the immanent expansion of my housing estate, subsumed further into the urban sprawl, I have found myself temporarily lost for words. I have already written a long and rambling blog entry only to delete it when I discovered it wasn't exactly fulfilling the original aims of the project, "...to discover hope and beauty in the mundane and banal".
Worse still, in recent weeks my beloved perambulations about the estate have been completely curtailed due to an ongoing and as yet undiagnosed pain in my foot!
It is in such a depressed state of mind that the blog reader finds its chronicler. Nevertheless, I wanted to put a few things down, some crumbs of hope and beauty. Firstly, it is spring at long last and the blogger can look forward to celebrating the suburban landscape come alive. In particular, I am eagerly observing a Wisteria that clings to a house along my route. This magnificent tree hugs the entire front of the building, curling its craggy branches around windows and under eaves. Bare, woody and stark all winter, each spring it suddenly bursts into an explosion of purple and blue with its heavy flowers dangling everywhere. Bricks and sticks transform into a riot of violet, a transformation of an ugly built environment into a beautiful bucolic one. And if that, at least, is not a reason to be cheerful, I don't know what is.
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Glove Actually
Gloves. I'm sure it's been done before, a thousand times over, but I'm thinking of starting a winter photographic project that involves the taking of pictures of all the single gloves I find discarded out on the street. I see so many on my walks in winter. Gloves and mittens of all colours, designs and sizes, and in various states of decay. A glover's wabi sabi. Ah, look, even a very cursory check of Google uncovers http://www.lostglove.co.uk/index.php
Anyway, it doesn't matter that it's been done before. Yes, there is something that moves me each time I discover a lost glove. You see, that glove has an owner and a twin. It is a token of their presence at a particular place, on a particular moment, revealed to me.
Of course, this dropped glove is technically litter, I suppose. Should the dropping of a Mars Bar wrapper be any less significant, then? The dropping of a glove, though, is accidental and its significance is therefore its loss to somebody. It is also personal to the owner, the two once going together literally 'hand in glove'. I like to think, therefore, that the sign of a lost glove moves me because (unlike the mass produced chocolate bar wrappers), the glove is a powerful signifier of the presence of an individual. One for whom we can even construct something of a basic biography.
For example, a pink, adult-sized glove probably signifies a woman. A woman who is right now rueing the inconvenient loss of an item of clothing. Her left hand is cold. Probably. I know that much. In fact, I hold the key to resolving her grief as well. If only we two lost souls, like the separated gloves themselves, could actually unite. We might even unknowingly pass each other every day on our routes to work. But I know that the possibility of us actually meeting, identifying each other as mutual glove keepers and then uniting our clothing items, is virtually nil. We'll probably remain to each other just two more random individuals in a faceless housing estate in a characterless city.
Might still do that photo project, though.
Anyway, it doesn't matter that it's been done before. Yes, there is something that moves me each time I discover a lost glove. You see, that glove has an owner and a twin. It is a token of their presence at a particular place, on a particular moment, revealed to me.
Of course, this dropped glove is technically litter, I suppose. Should the dropping of a Mars Bar wrapper be any less significant, then? The dropping of a glove, though, is accidental and its significance is therefore its loss to somebody. It is also personal to the owner, the two once going together literally 'hand in glove'. I like to think, therefore, that the sign of a lost glove moves me because (unlike the mass produced chocolate bar wrappers), the glove is a powerful signifier of the presence of an individual. One for whom we can even construct something of a basic biography.
For example, a pink, adult-sized glove probably signifies a woman. A woman who is right now rueing the inconvenient loss of an item of clothing. Her left hand is cold. Probably. I know that much. In fact, I hold the key to resolving her grief as well. If only we two lost souls, like the separated gloves themselves, could actually unite. We might even unknowingly pass each other every day on our routes to work. But I know that the possibility of us actually meeting, identifying each other as mutual glove keepers and then uniting our clothing items, is virtually nil. We'll probably remain to each other just two more random individuals in a faceless housing estate in a characterless city.
Might still do that photo project, though.
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Lichen it or Lump It: Concrete Civic Architecture
The Council Offices that I pass by are a classic example of sixties architecture; confusing layers of the building placed at right angles to each other like a gigantic game of Jenga. Everything is square, grey, concrete. The University of East Anglia’s campus, of which I'm familiar through being a student there, was designed by Sir Denys Lasdun, whose other notable works include London’s South Bank complex; all “Brutalist” architecture. The UEA campus reminds me of the council offices that I now pass regularly. The students there provided their own laconic judgement on Lasdun’s design by naming their student newspaper simply, “Concrete”. Lasdun’s design tried to incorporate a ‘plaza’, modelled on the similar Italian plazas; bright, open and clean with citizens lounging about in the sun. Concrete in non-mediterranean climes, however, isn’t bright and clean. In Leicester’s wetter, colder climate it goes a dark grey, mottled with lichen and pollution, looks dirty and grim.
Leicestershire's council was troubled enough about the ‘concrete effect’ to embark on a recent intensive cleaning exercise in order to restore some lighter lustre to the Battleship Grey that had taken hold. It coincided with the arrival of a new sign which has troubled me ever since. It simply says something along the lines of “working in partnership with Chegdu, Sichuan Province, China” or similar. I am by instinct an internationalist, ‘a citizen of the world’ to quote Keats, and encourage communication with other peoples. However, given China’s appalling human rights record, I am troubled that the administration of my elected representatives are 'working in close partnership' with an institution that who denies the same freedoms as we. I wonder if there would have been more of a local furore if a sign had gone up working closely with Saddam Hussein’s regime, or Apartheid South Africa, or Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe? Is twinning eroding barriers or validating oppression, I wonder?
This blog was supposed to be discovering beauty in an apparently drab, urban environment. So, with this in mind, I should add that there is a actually beauty in this 'brutal' building. Its imposing, grand and harsh concrete lines, set incongruously like an alien spacecraft that has landed amongst landscaped grounds, rises out of the mists on an early January morning in a sight that inspires rather than depresses. And in that moment one sees a glimpse of something that may have been in Sir Denys Lasdun’s mind’s eye all those decades ago but has been utterly lost to many ever since.
Leicestershire's council was troubled enough about the ‘concrete effect’ to embark on a recent intensive cleaning exercise in order to restore some lighter lustre to the Battleship Grey that had taken hold. It coincided with the arrival of a new sign which has troubled me ever since. It simply says something along the lines of “working in partnership with Chegdu, Sichuan Province, China” or similar. I am by instinct an internationalist, ‘a citizen of the world’ to quote Keats, and encourage communication with other peoples. However, given China’s appalling human rights record, I am troubled that the administration of my elected representatives are 'working in close partnership' with an institution that who denies the same freedoms as we. I wonder if there would have been more of a local furore if a sign had gone up working closely with Saddam Hussein’s regime, or Apartheid South Africa, or Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe? Is twinning eroding barriers or validating oppression, I wonder?
This blog was supposed to be discovering beauty in an apparently drab, urban environment. So, with this in mind, I should add that there is a actually beauty in this 'brutal' building. Its imposing, grand and harsh concrete lines, set incongruously like an alien spacecraft that has landed amongst landscaped grounds, rises out of the mists on an early January morning in a sight that inspires rather than depresses. And in that moment one sees a glimpse of something that may have been in Sir Denys Lasdun’s mind’s eye all those decades ago but has been utterly lost to many ever since.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Subway Subtexts
A quote I found recently seems to reflect nicely the aesthetic of this blog:
"A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of a cement pavement, the fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments." Sogyal Rinpoche.
Speaking of the 'subway' (by which I mean the pedestrian underpass interpretation), there is a subway that I often pass through on my ramblings. It seems to be a battleground between graffiti artists and the nearby council. Like the ebb and flow of battle lines, the amount of graffiti waxes and wanes as it gets sprayed or removed in an endless tussle. Winter seems to promote more of the sprayed tags, as if the perpretators come down there to shelter from the cold.
As I pass through the myriad of different sprayed-on colours, I note a very limited number of tags, just the same people spraying their presence over and over again. It's as if they have nothing else to say except to endlessly repeat their presence in a kind of repetitiously nihilistic 'cogito'. "I was here". I find it a great shame that they have nothing to announce; no political commentary or slogans, none of the ritualistic symbolism found in the first cave paintings. Graffiti in this instance is not a sign of urban decay, it's a sign of cultural decay.
Perhaps I could start adding my own graffiti to those subway walls? Some extracts from my blogged observations, or a quote from Sogyal Rinpoche, perhaps?
"A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of a cement pavement, the fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments." Sogyal Rinpoche.
Speaking of the 'subway' (by which I mean the pedestrian underpass interpretation), there is a subway that I often pass through on my ramblings. It seems to be a battleground between graffiti artists and the nearby council. Like the ebb and flow of battle lines, the amount of graffiti waxes and wanes as it gets sprayed or removed in an endless tussle. Winter seems to promote more of the sprayed tags, as if the perpretators come down there to shelter from the cold.
As I pass through the myriad of different sprayed-on colours, I note a very limited number of tags, just the same people spraying their presence over and over again. It's as if they have nothing else to say except to endlessly repeat their presence in a kind of repetitiously nihilistic 'cogito'. "I was here". I find it a great shame that they have nothing to announce; no political commentary or slogans, none of the ritualistic symbolism found in the first cave paintings. Graffiti in this instance is not a sign of urban decay, it's a sign of cultural decay.
Perhaps I could start adding my own graffiti to those subway walls? Some extracts from my blogged observations, or a quote from Sogyal Rinpoche, perhaps?
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Bright Lights, Big Suburb
It was something of a surreal experience walking home recently. In the dark, misty air, the streets that I know so well take on a new aspect. A thick fog had descended, one of those bitterly cold winter mists that occur at nightfall. With Christmas coming, lights of all colours decorate the houses. In the icy fog, their colours seem to glow and hang in the air, caught on the icy droplets. Out of the gloom, a shining, scarlet tree suddenly appears or an electric blue row of fairy lights running along a gable end. And of course, the row of amber street lamps guide me home.
Blue seemed to have been the colour of choice last year but, after the novelty of seeing so much of the hue had passed, I thought it a curiously unseasonal colour. It gives off a cold, dull glow doing little to pierce the gloom of a winter fog. I prefer the fiercer, bolder red light, scarlet being the colour of passion, love, and is a common sight on hedgerows in autumn suggesting fecundity and flavour. For the same seasonal reason, I appreciate the sight of green or gold. Whilst, I appreciate the lights, I am less keen on the gaudy 'displays'; those occasionally animated scenes of Santa waving or climbing a chimney. Knowing when to stop and that 'less is more' seems to me a measure of good taste and a potential strain on neighbourly relations.
The disconnect from reality that I felt walking home was intensified by my being hunkered deep down in a (fake) fur-lined hood, with a scarf wrapped around my face like a bandit. My eyes, the only exposed part of my body, peep out and are smarted by the cold night air as they view the unfamiliar scene. I am a flaneur for all seasons.
Blue seemed to have been the colour of choice last year but, after the novelty of seeing so much of the hue had passed, I thought it a curiously unseasonal colour. It gives off a cold, dull glow doing little to pierce the gloom of a winter fog. I prefer the fiercer, bolder red light, scarlet being the colour of passion, love, and is a common sight on hedgerows in autumn suggesting fecundity and flavour. For the same seasonal reason, I appreciate the sight of green or gold. Whilst, I appreciate the lights, I am less keen on the gaudy 'displays'; those occasionally animated scenes of Santa waving or climbing a chimney. Knowing when to stop and that 'less is more' seems to me a measure of good taste and a potential strain on neighbourly relations.
The disconnect from reality that I felt walking home was intensified by my being hunkered deep down in a (fake) fur-lined hood, with a scarf wrapped around my face like a bandit. My eyes, the only exposed part of my body, peep out and are smarted by the cold night air as they view the unfamiliar scene. I am a flaneur for all seasons.
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