Round and Round (by David Cochrane)

“On a bike your consciousness is small. The harder you work the smaller it gets. Every thought that arises is immediately and utterly true, every unexpected thought is something you had known all along…..what goes round in a riders mind is a monolithic ball bearing, so smooth, so uniform that you cant even see it spin…”

‘The Rider’- Tim Krabbe

 

What follows may not transport you; the reader, from A to B. ‘Writing about writing about cycling’ ends up firstly being an acknowledgment that one is putting oneself through a process of self analysis; an acknowledgement that what follows will be a loose self portrait of you the cyclist as writer and secondly an exercise in frustration as it does not take long to fall back into the mode of ‘writing about cycling’. Or maybe it’s that one cannot ‘write about writing about cycling’ without ‘writing about cycling’. Bare with me….

Whilst riding I’ve noticed that my streams of thought work much like my feet on the pedals; as I ride a track bike to work during the week, and my feet are constantly moving, this link between mind and body becomes more and more apparent. So as my feet push down on the left pedal and pull up on the right my thoughts are in perpetual motion with them.

Pushing forward through traffic my mind skips and jumps from one thing to the next, as soon as I dismount these rhizomatic connections stop. As I set off the recognition of a tight physical sensation in my stretching thigh muscles gives way to the details of the day ahead, to the weekend, to someone I once knew, to a present once bought for me, to a birthday of a far away friend that looms closer, to a dinner I once ate with a colleague who is no longer nearby; a loose collection of details; quickly thumbed pages of re-collections that roll along quickly and blur with my own speed. It is as if I find myself sat in a darkened room watching the contents of my own mind spinning on a zoetrope in front of me. I can notice but I cannot grasp each thought as it appears.

Parallels can be drawn between this and the act of meditation; an endeavour that is often described as ‘ridding one’s mind of all thoughts’ when in actual fact most teachers of meditation will point out that meditation is really an observation of our minds and what occurs within it during those long hours of sitting (reasonably) still and concentrating on ones breathing. One is supposed to acknowledge the un-impeded mind at work and watch it, without ‘grasping’ as it bounces from one thing to the next, lost and confused without the convention of logical ‘coherence’. 

For many years I attended a course of therapy with a clinical psychologist who practiced EMDR; a branch of therapy that for a large part also involves acknowledging what the relaxed mind does. Unhindered thoughts from the subconscious arise as ones eyes watch the therapists finger move from left to right, akin to the swinging arm of a metronome. This latter motion is a useful tool for helping people who have undergone severe trauma; something that often causes the brain to get confused. It is said to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain at once and ‘pull them in line’ with one another.

The wagging finger I spent hours watching works exactly the same as my feet on the pedals; back and forth and side to side does the same thing for the brain as up and down, push and pull.

After four years of cycling across town once a week I began to realise that the journey to my therapist was becoming almost as helpful to me as the course I was attending. While riding my mind felt free and unburdened, able to think without past negativities clouding its progress. My feet moved, my thoughts tumbled along, and things that had seemed problematic at the start of the journey were no longer problems by the end. Whereupon I would reach my destination, jump off and the speeding thoughts subsided into the background noise of the street. People walked with their coffees, and their prams with children, buses growled their way along the tarmac and I would scrabble desperately for the lost pearls of thought before they were washed down the nearest gutter with the summer rain.

Because of this rare phenomenon, much of this article was written in intermittent stops while out riding and consists of scribbled, quite often illegible notes in my notebook that I kept in my back pocket.

As I previously mentioned, writing about cycling as a day-to-day activity (as opposed to a sports commentary for the Tour de France or the Vuelta d’Espana for example) becomes a portrait of our daily lives. I reflect, fantasise, resolve, dream and ponder on my bike. And the nice thing is I’m quite sure that I’m not the only one. After the 7/7 bombings in London, the city saw a surge in cycling not witnessed since the 1930s. Add to this various cycle hire schemes, a huge push in advertising from the mayors office, the introduction of so called ‘cycle superhighways’, a growth in independent bike retailers and the added ‘hip’ factor of pretty bikes ridden by pretty people in pretty clothes, with not one single bead of sweat between any of them no sirreeee…and we now have have a city where a large percentage of its population thinks on two wheels instead of four.

A portion of a capital city whose thoughts are stimulated by a pace determined by ones own legs; a human pace with added wind and, judging by the past three summers, rain in ones hair for invigoration (!) plus the empowerment that comes from getting somewhere using ones own volition and determination. Ok, so we’re not catching up Copenhagen just yet which currently wears the maillot jaune for having 36% of the cities population get to work by bike but we are getting there…

Everyday I pass hundred of cyclists; old chaps with greying beards on tourer’s, men and women with seats on the back for the kids, young men in Lycra on smart Italian racing frames, rudeboy’s on outsize mountain bikes with suspension forks, young ladies on Pashley’s and Peugeot’s and couriers on beaten up steel horse’s with flyers for the last alleycat* they rode at the weekend pushed into their spokes…. and most of them are smiling. You may think this is an exaggeration but I promise you, its not. Get hold of a bike for the day and watch the others pedal with you and you will see this unconscious grin, so rare on the faces of commuters in this city, spread its way across the lips of many. This is the same smile I wore at aged ten, as I tried to impress my uncle by taking a tight corner on my new racing bike and instead ploughed through Mrs Boyd’s hedge stopping just short of ending up going through her living room window. This smile has not gone away. The self empowerment that comes from getting from A to B using ones own legs, heart and head should not be underestimated and lest I sound like some cyclismistic preacher of two wheeled wonderment (which I know I do…) yes, of course cycling in London is tough, tiring, wet, and dirty but it is, I believe, fully worth the effort.

Of course, not everyone is cycling to get from A to B. Long term cyclist and writer Graham Fife speaks in his book “The beautiful machine” how aged five he learnt that escaping from an abusive home life on two wheels was a lot quicker than walking, for him cycling was not about arriving, it was about leaving:

“ I knew what the bicycle promised, it promised Freedom”

The 1939 film “The wizard of Oz” introduces us to Dorothy Gale who dreams of finding another place:

“Its not a place you get to by boat or train

Behind the moon, beyond the rain”

One can only wonder how Dorothy’s story would have differed if she had, instead of waiting for a tornado to come along and sweep her away, stolen Miss Gulch’s (the Wicked Witch of the West no less) bicycle with Toto in her basket and got out of little town Kansas the hard way.

I’ve cycled since I was a small boy, and as I’ve grown my two-wheeled fixation has grown with me. Two years ago I began going out at night, not to get to work, the pub, or a friends house but just to ride. I came to realise I agreed with the words of the great naturalist John Muir when speaking about the power of the outdoors on the workings of ones mind:

…” going outside was really going inside.”

This was the point where I realised that my addiction had hit a point that I couldn’t rationalise to others. Friends, colleagues and strangers at parties looked at me as if I were crazy, thankfully a handful understood. As I pedalled through the night observing the different lights, people and time signatures of the city my mind would again begin to loosen. This is why I cycle I thought to myself and this is why this article floats along from point to point in some desperate attempt to convey what happens in the saddle. A task that feels nigh on impossible. There are no words that exist in the place my mind goes when I ride…so I can only talk about motion from a stationary position.

After a summer of bruised skies and daily deluges, autumn is shaping up beautifully. Most morning’s last week were fresh and crisp, with blue skies and a cold wind that bit around my ankles and reminded me that in the coming months winter riding would be upon us. This cold Autumnal wind that beats down the road towards me is the challenge of this time of year; as positive as cycling is, its ALWAYS a challenge.

Quite often this challenge is a mental one, and then distance, weather and hills play their part and seek to put one’s two wheels into reverse. Climbing the last hill before I get home these days I find myself naming the London hills I can think of: Champion, Fox, Knights, Highgate, Biggin, Norbury and so on: a verbal meditation and a distraction from the pain in my thighs. Last week as I pulled myself up this final climb a cyclist zipping down the hill towards me smiled and lifted a hand from the bars in recognition of a familiar struggle.

In his book “What is Sport?”, the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes while writing about the Tour de France speaks of this battle and the camaraderie that exists: 

“ This combat is a competition, not a conflict. Which means that man must conquer, not man but the resistance of things”

On a bicycle I feel in control in a world that makes us feel we should be, but quite often are not. On a bicycle I can conquer the ‘resistance of things’ that the world puts in my path and it makes me look forward to being old and grey, possibly deaf, possibly bald…but still pedalling.

 

*A type of race started by bike messengers that consists of hitting various checkpoints around the city in order for a nominal prize

……………………………………………………………………..

David Cochrane is an artist based in London and co-founder of brokenbiscuitsbikerides.wordpress

Thanks to Andy Marsh, co- founder of brokenbiscuits for encouragement and much bike related discussion when progressing up said hills.

 

The Stick (by C Hazell)

I had been at work for three hours.

The engine was ticking over nicely.

Strip lights stripping their omnipresent glare onto all that is sentient and all inanimate beneath. Temperate stale air – revolved and recycled so no persons should ever need open a window. BBC News playing on the flat screen with the volume down low – providing a soothing background hum of world affairs. The frisson of technology in the air!

I, a now fairly well oiled cog in this machine dutifully perform my tasks with a quiet mind. It is better that way. To not think. To be at one with the machine. Shut the imagination down and silence desires – at least until home time anyway. Keeps one out of trouble.

...BLANK...BLANK...

...BLANK...

Then on this day, at this particular time I was asked for a stick.

The insulated bubble momentarily burst -

...BLANK...?

- A stick

Torn away from vacant contemplation my swivel chair stopped swivelling.

A stick?

[A crack of static]

A stick...I have not been rehearsed in this one. [Mouth goes dry as panic sets in]. Am not the best at thinking on my feet nor on my chair for that matter...

- A STICK?

[Autumn. A fire of leaves and sawn branches. The bite of the cold air complements the earth woody scent combusting in the amber glow. A stick to prod the fire. A stick to throw on the fire...a stick...]

[A machine somewhere bleets]

The cold air dissipates as I focus on to the enquiring face illuminated by strip lights.

A question mark lingers in the air, growing heavier with each millisecond... the cog is faltering and in danger of disturbing the equilibrium...

But! Suddenly a flash of comprehension!

A JOKE!

It is a joke! Strip light face is joking!

Word has got around about the occasional dirt underneath un-manicured fingernails! They can all see through the facade of vacant professionalism unto the feral unhinged individual underneath! There must be some sort of creepy crawly in the meeting room which needs to be banished with a stick and who better to ask than:

You are right!

I DO keep a stack on wood underneath my desk! You never know when you might need it. But also, between you and me

on the eve of company meetings when everyone has gone home I place all the sticks in the centre of the office take my clothes off and dance around an unlit fire shrieking loudly and leap from desk to desk and then roll around and rub myself against the synthetic carpet until all my hair stands on end...

I smile back knowingly – how wonderful to have pre-empted a joke about oneself! I am now in on it as well – the smelly hippy!

However, my self-satisfied smile encounters a slight change of expression beneath the strip lights. Soft focus enquiring has sharpened suddenly into hard lined questioning...

- A Memory Stick? Do you have a memory stick?

Oh...

Oh yes.

That kind of stick.

...BLANK...BLANK...

...BLANK...

Cut Grass And Diesel (by Paul McCann)

What were they doing in the fucking sky? Thousands of cars... just floating. It seemed so natural, how it looked I mean. It looked so natural.

I knew that road well. The woods where we would hide, the green where we played World Cup and the hill where we fell off our pound-shop skateboards. It was just on the corner where we stood.It has changed with time but unlike everything else, this memory seems to have grown clearer.

I once read an article on the effects of growing old on a person’s vision. The article proposed that the flickering of Television imagery experienced by the elderly was due to the gradual decay of the cornea over a lifetime.

The cornea is in a very real sense the point where the images of the world around us are actualised. Those images remain momentarily on the cornea, as a frame in a film.

 

In the late 19^th century the eyes of murder victims were photographed in detail. The Detectives believed that in the future technology would exist to extract the final image witnessed, thus revealing the murderer's identity.But the images on the cornea fade away as transiently as the moments themselves.

Interestingly, the older more decayed cornea processes this transition faster and so in fact sees faster. The flickering experienced is due to the eyes being faster than the frame rate of the television.      

 

I digress; we stood on that corner facing the sky, my father’s hand resting on my shoulder and my hand resting in my mother’s.

We watched, we watched as did everyone else on the road, amongst the rotary sound of a nearby lawnmower, and the smell of cut grass and diesel.

My friend Denis cycled by... oblivious to what we witnessed. He glided down the hill on his bicycle and around the corner where we stood.

Between the instance of seeing my friend and before my gaze returned to the sky, I expected the cars to have gone, disappeared like some ethereal spectre but there they were lingering, softly drifting away above us.

 

We used to hang out in his dad's broken down old Lada. I remember one moment vividly. It was when hurricane Charlie arrived. We sat in the car for hours burning the dashboard with the cigarette lighter. Violent winds rattled the world around us as we focussed on the task at hand.

It was a discovery of great significance. You simply pressed it in, twenty seconds later it popped. You then removed it and examined the spiraling glowing wire. You could spit on it for effect.

The car's battery was dead. It wouldn't start, the radio, the lights, the Cobra car-alarm system none of it worked but the cigarette lighter worked just fine.

Maybe the concentric nature of the burns appealed to some deeply embedded prehistoric drive, drawing out a particular state of mind, a remnant of Pagan times. Or perhaps there was simply a satisfaction through inflicting ourselves on this machine.

On this occasion, when I saw the underside of the cars; I couldn’t help but think about the colouration of marine life. The grey -green of the fins and torso to provide camouflage in the murky water of a lake and the pale underbelly to mimics the colour of clouds.

On this particular day the car’s grimy metallic underbelly likewise  blended into the overcast sky... the clouds seemed nothing more than the billowing vapours these machines once exhausted.

I can still feel it, like a humming static wrapping itself around me.  just as when a hand is close to your face, though never quite making contact it can still be felt as a presence.

Sunday (by Michael Lawton)

I have removed this while I ‘cannibalise’ it. Sorry, any question let me know.

ML

Into the Woods (by George Cutts)

I check my watch, 6.30am. Standing on the pavement, I pull the front door closed for the last time. The dead lock turns with a thud and I stuff the keys through the letterbox. It’s that milky early morning light I only ever see through sleepy eyes. The sun is appearing over the row of terraced houses opposite but the air is still chilly and the grass verges are damp with dew. I go to take off my navy wool jumper but can’t stomach any more faffing and leave it on.

I pick up the rucksack laid at my feet and swing it with some effort over my shoulder, contorting my back to slide in my right then left arm. It takes a moment to balance myself and I clip the support belt around my waist, hating the bulges it creates. I look through the window into the empty front room. An intermittent scrape runs across the bare boards, caused by dragging a heavy Victorian wardrobe across the floor. We couldn’t get the wardrobe up the stairs and it ended up sitting in the back garden, like a grand privy. The back wall of the front room is divided into two by a straight edge of dirt where the sofa used to be; where I would put my arm around her shoulders and tickle her ear whilst we watched television in the evening. The paint below shines white.

A reflection stares back at me in the window; recently clippered brown hair, squinting eyes and a dark jaw covered by 3 weeks’ worth of stubble, almost a beard. I close my eyes for a second, open them and set off. I stop at the end of the road and glance back at the house; bare ochre bricks, the bright red door re-painted last summer and the wicker hanging basket, red, purple and white flowers straggling over the side; they’ve not been watered for weeks. The ‘for sale/sold’ sign scars the house façade and I turn away, repeating a mantra in my head; ‘walk, walk, walk.’

I would normally turn right here towards the town, past the short row of eclectic shops; a funeral parlour, bakers and bathroom showroom, but I go left, in the direction of the sun. A girl in a green tunic is walking along the pavement towards me. She looks pretty from a distance. Pretending to be interested in the architecture of the houses opposite, I watch her out of the corner of my eye as she gets closer. We pass without making eye contact. She has an unformed teenage face. I hoist the rucksack up on my shoulders.

I pull out the small notepad from my jeans and flick to the middle pages, mentally running through the list against what I am carrying. I shouldn’t have packed so much, but I think I need it. Stopping at the post-box set into the wall, I pull 6 envelopes from my back pocket and check each name and address. Hesitating, I then bung them into the slit with the same force as wine bottles into an empty bottle bank. The letters, written last night but composed over the last few weeks are brief, mostly truthful. I resist the temptation to bang my head against the wall.

I carry on through semi-familiar streets usually seen from the drivers’ seat of a car. The roads get wider; the houses get bigger and have front gardens. After ten minutes, I regret not taking my jumper off. Sweat is forming in my armpits and down my back. Fuck it. I diagonally cross the empty park (not even a dog being walked), bisecting two football pitches. Dampness creeps across my brown leather boots. I come to the main road out of town and walk alongside the sparse morning traffic until I reach the 24 hour garage. At the entrance I drop the rucksack onto the floor next to the newspaper stand and pick up a copy of the Times. The warning sound of the door startles me; EET EEP. I go to the till and ask for a pouch of Drum tobacco. Realising that my wallet is in a side pocket of the rucksack, I tell the attendant and go to fetch it; EET EEP. I’ve never lost a wallet and never forget it, apart from on holiday. This is what happens when there is no routine to guide you.

I go back inside; EET EEP. The attendant has spotted the rucksack:

‘Where are you off to?’

For a second I don’t have an answer; ‘A festival.’

‘Oh right, hope the weather is good.’

‘Me too.’

He hands me the change.

‘Cheers.’

‘Thanks.’

EET EEP.

I take a swig of water and take off the jumper. My plain white t-shirt rides up, showing the roll of fat above my belt as the rucksack is heaved on once again. I cross the road waiting for two vans to pass and go up a narrow lane. The pavement abruptly ends but there is no traffic. On the left hand side there are large houses with sheltered gated driveways. The right hand side is wooded. I walk with my head down counting my footsteps. After around twenty minutes I take a right hand turn onto a stoned track with a padlocked metal five bar gate, a hand painted ‘Keep out’ sign held in place by faded red string.

I take off the rucksack and lug it over the gate. I climb over and follow the track. My breathing is getting heavy. I’m unfit. Too much time spent living on sandwiches. I look through the trees for movement. It is still. These aren’t woods passed through by joggers or gangs of children roaming around with recently acquired cigarette lighters and bottles of cider. There are no scrunched up carrier bags soiled with glue.

I turn left off the track onto a narrow overgrown path. It is barely even a path anymore. I walk into the woods identifying the trees; Scots pine and Douglas fir. Oak, ash, birch, hazel, sycamore and willow are all here. The path peters out. I carry on until I reach a familiar arrangement of birch trees. 7.47am. I’ve arrived.  I stand the rucksack up against one of the trees and retrieve a battered pouch of tobacco. I also get out a pair of grey gardening gloves which I stuff into my back pocket. Standing, I roll a cigarette and smoke, planning what to do next.

The floor is covered in plants of various sizes, branches and leaf litter. I put on the gloves and clear a small area, pulling up the most intrusive straggling brambles and stamping down the remaining vegetation. I unclip the tent from the rucksack, unpack it and quickly erect the basic structure. The pegs slide into the moist earth and I tighten the guide ropes. The small blue igloo shaped tent sits incongruously in the woods. Enough room to lie down at night or to sit crossed legged in the doorway. I’ve not thought about you for twenty minutes now.

I’ve thought about this for the last eleven weeks. Since you didn’t come home and I got the phone call. 6 weeks ago, I called the number on the website and now I’m the owner of 3 ½ acres of woodland, bought for £20k, from the profit of selling the house. The land was cheap, it has  little or no commercial value and there would never be permission to build on it. The surrounding wood is maintained but the area is quiet.

It is not yet 10am. I start unpacking. Most things end up in the tent for now to make sure they don’t get wet.

Carrying the fold-up spade and a toilet roll, I walk 100 steps away from the camp and reach a clump of bushes. I dig a hole, the size of a bucket, with some difficulty through the chalky earth. I was hoping not to have to do this so soon. I look around to vainly check there is no one watching me and pull down my trousers. I squat over the hole and laugh. After, I throw some earth into the hole and wipe my hands with anti-bacterial gel.

I spend the afternoon walking around the woods getting familiar with my new surroundings and collecting firewood. I go back to the camp and build a fire. A dinner of baked beans and sausages eaten hot from the tin. Already I crave bread. I need to lose weight anyway. I sit by the fire swigging on a bottle of rum, smoking, watching the flames and listening. ‘What am I doing?’

The firewood runs out. The trees stand black against the greying sky. Looking up, silhouetted leaves dance against the greying sky. The floor is black around me and it’s no use looking for more firewood. I take a final swig of rum. Time for bed. I stand a little way from the dying fire facing away from the camp, convinced that at any moment something will come out of the dark. ‘Fuckitfuckitfuckitidon’tgiveashit’. Nothing happens, just a steady thrum on the earth.

I get into the tent, gathering around the things that reassure me. Spotlighting each with the small torch; Swiss army knife, large knife, and dead mobile phone. £1K cash is spread throughout my belongings, but that is less important. I take off my shoes and jeans and jumper, and climb into the sleeping bag. I turn off the torch. Everything is black. I lay awake for a long time, listening to the wind through the trees, paranoid thoughts of attack in my mind, in spite of the numbing rum. The occasional snap sends a wave of heat through my body, followed by an outbreak of cold sweat. I don’t hear any animals. It’s not that different from being in the empty house. There are less ghosts here but the memories still come; your 27^th birthday at Alton Towers, when we met at a friends’ birthday; sat on a beach under scorching sun in Turkey. ‘I fucking miss you so much.’ Curled up on my side I cry jerkily into my chest, supressing the sobs. I concentrate on bringing my breathing under control and lie there for a long time.

I open my eyes, it is no longer black. I roll over, 5.23am. I try to go back to sleep; rolling from side to side, until i next check the clock 6.17am. I sit up in the sleeping bag, reluctant to leave its warmth, and unzip the tent. The cold air is immediately sucked in. The apprehension of the night has gone. The wood is still, full of light and fresh. I tune into the sound of birds. This time yesterday I was locking the front door.

Using the gas stove I boil the kettle, roll a cigarette and make a black coffee. I take out the notebook and spend twenty minutes writing down everything that has happened over the last twenty four hours.

_________________________________________________________________________

 

‘Alright.’

‘Alright.’

They shake hands, and he is pulled into an embrace. Reluctant tears are running down the cheeks of both men.

The newcomer chokes a stupid question: ‘This is where you’ve been?’

He doesn’t answer. They part and he sits down on the tree trunk. The interloper sits down next to him.

‘You’ve been here for two months? You look different, you’re not as fat. The beard looks daft. Have you cut your own hair?’

‘Yep. So does yours, you’re tanned.’

‘Just got back from Brittany, we thought you might be there.’

‘What?’

‘We’ve been looking for you since we got the letters.’

‘I told you I was going away.’

‘We rang the FCO after a few days and they knew nothing about you.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘By accident, the solicitor’s secretary saw Janey in the pub and asked about the woods.’

The blackened kettle puffs and whistles.

‘Brew?’

‘OK, what is it?’

‘Coffee. I’ve not been living on berries and nettle tea.’

‘Mum’s been out of her mind.’

‘I don’t have milk, except for special occasions. Sugar, rum?’

‘No thanks.’

The visitor takes in the camp. Silence. He hands over the coffee in a cup stained brown and adds a tot of rum to his own.

‘Go on then.’

He dribbles the rum into the outstretched mug.

‘Say ‘when.’

‘When.’

‘Christ, your fingers are dirty.’

They both laugh, blowing into their mugs.

‘What have you been doing?

‘Walking around collecting firewood mainly.’

‘Shelter looks good. I didn’t see it for ages. It was only the smoke that made me think I wasn’t being stupid looking for you in the woods.’

‘I should have used gas.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ They smile.

‘What’s it been like, what have you been doing?’

‘Alright. Once you get used to the dark. The food’s crap.’

‘I can tell.’

‘I tried to keep a diary.’

‘How long did it last?’

‘One day.’

Silence. They stare at the dying fire.

‘England whitewashed Australia.’

‘I know, I’ve got a radio. Good, wasn’t it’?’

‘I went to the Oval with work.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘People miss you, you know? Couldn’t you have told us?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Come back with me. Have a bath, you stink and we’ll get fish and chips. Have a beer. Stay with us.’

‘Hmmm’.

‘You can’t stay here forever. You’ll fucking freeze to death.’

‘I will come back.’

‘When? You’re as stubborn as ever then, what if I tell you to stay, will you come back then, I don’t know how she put up with you for fucks’ sake.’

‘Piss off.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I miss her so fucking much.’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t know what to do now she’s gone.’

‘She wouldn’t want…’

‘Don’t.’ 

They sit in silence drinking the coffee.

‘Is there anything I can bring? I’ll come back tomorrow.’

‘No, I’m fine; I have everything, thanks.’

‘I’m still coming back’.

There is no malice in either voice now. Neither wants to argue. They get up and embrace (‘Christ, you’re skinny.’) saying goodbye.

He watches his brother walk through the woods.

‘WAIT UP'

He grabs his jumper, zips up the tent, and begins the walk back.

 

Into the Woods is part of a larger work in progress.

 

I Miss The North (by Michael Lawton)

‘I miss the North,’ she thought.

 

‘I miss the North,’ she thought as she was cleaning the espresso machine the pub had bought during its refit. She saw her face, frowning with exertion as she wiped the milk frother, distorted in the metal of the appliance which with its dials and handles reminded her of a rudimentary time machine. The pubs she had grown up in hadn’t had espresso machines. The pubs that she’d grown up in, where she’s met Tony, 16 years ago. They were jukebox-places, places you were loud in to show you were pissed off with the world, not loud because everybody else was. The pubs that she’d grown up in, where she’d got her first job, crisps-kicked-across-the-floor-places. She smiled at the cycles of life; she was back behind the bar. 

She was singing to herself as she cleaned, she had emptied the fridges of their bottles and was wiping the shelves. She was listening to the Richard Hawley album Lowedges. It was a present from one her colleagues; Mark.

“He’s one of yours isn’t he?” He’d said referring to the fact Richard Hawley like her was from Sheffield. His slight surliness not hiding that he clearly had a thing for her, he’d bought her the CD after all, he didn’t own it himself; he’d just downloaded onto his IPod. He’d tried to explain the process to her, to convince her she should buy an MP3 player. 

“I’m 34 and a northerner Mark, it doesn’t mean I’m thick. Don’t patronise me. I’ve got other things to spend my money on, not least; rent.’

She’d let him seduce her though. She liked him and she was lonely. She was living in ‘shared accommodation’ for the first time in her life, the Victorian properties with sloping floors and skewiff window ledges. She lived with other ‘young professionals’ a term that’d made her bark with laughter when she’d heard it. She didn’t see much of her flatmates and they didn’t seem to spend much time with each other. She was close to one girl, Lucille, a postgraduate student from South America who was close to her age.

 

“Why did you move to London?”

 

She’d whistled softly, thinking of her reply.

 

“That’s a big question; I guess I’ve always wanted to see it. To live somewhere different and well to get away from my life, it was bringing me down in Sheffield.”

She’d confided in Lucille up to a point, but a complete explanation would mean getting her own head around it and she found that difficult to think about.  Where would she start, meeting Tony in the pub was where her life started. Or her life as it was anyway. He chatted her up, ‘coppers have to be good at talking,’ he’d said. They’d dated for a year then married. She’d got pregnant, given birth to Hayley, raised her, something had gone wrong. They’d separated and she’d moved / got kicked out: A life in a paragraph.

 

But she missed the North. Missed the friendliness of the café she’d go to. The music made her think of parks. Of taking Hayley to the park when she was little, the winter air heavy in the park as she pushed Hayley on the swings. Do I miss the North, or do I just miss my youth she wondered. What youth? Or what twenties? She wanted the amorphousness of the twenties of her colleagues. Twenties of nothing save gathering experiences; as Mark had it:

 

‘I love your stretch marks; lines of experience and life.’

 

‘Shut up you soft git, stop being so pretentious,’

 

Was how she replied. But she liked being with him, immersed in his life. He was a DJ as were half the people his age she’d met in London. There was nine years between them. All of it showing in her mind.

 

She’d tried to find office work in London. She’d gone to a temping agency, but had walked out. She didn’t like the women there. The pink cowboy hats in their in-trays, ready for the forced abandonment of a Friday night. She was bored of that. She seen a sign in the window of her local and applied there. And here she was. 

The CD had repeated, track three was playing…“All my love’s too late…” She’d scream this as she was lying on her bed, damp after a shower, drying in the air. “All my love’s too late…” She’d bawl this thinking about Hayley her daughter who had chosen to stay with her father.

Hayley had shown no inclination to visit her. Not even to go shopping. ‘I can go to Meadowhall mum.’ But every text message lifted her, to know Hayley was thinking of her.

 

She didn’t know what she was going to do. She knew she had to make a decision sooner or late, point her life in some direction and head that way but which way, she was giving herself time to do nothing. 

She turned to greet the man who’d entered, a newspaper under his arm, she could tell he’d knocked off early, as he was smiling gently at having the pub to himself, he’d a start on the city that evening.

“Yes luv?”

Transparency: A Future Without Sunday Drivers (by Gene George Earle)

Ways of Looking

A question no-one really asks is what happened to transparent casings for computerized objects. I recall as a child peering with fascination at chips and motherboards inside old VCRs and PCs, bewildered by how impossible it seemed that an abstract world of unnatural green and sharp solderings could make the tapes spin, CD’s play, or Doom beasts explode. What the original manufacturers had in mind is anyone’s guess, having had what seems a very brief lifespan somewhere in the late eighties and early nineties, yet subsequently falling into ‘failed design gimmick’ obscurity thereafter. Some techno-acculturated minds might procure the image of the first Apple computers that tried their hand at the ‘transparency’ quip on a commercial scale, disappointingly doing it only in a referent way that manufactured semi-transparent blue and orange cases and keyboards which in sum, never amounted sadly to much other than curvy but dirty looking fish tanks. And though it might surface here or there every now and again, its modern manifestations are predominantly squeezed out along a miserable production line of a vastly inferior objects, failing usually to poke its existence above the mere gimmicks and other ‘retro’ inanities like plastic vomit, Furbies, Tamagotchis and heart-shaped frying pans. Even today it seems astonishing that there hasn’t been one mobile phone range with this particular quality incorporated in its design, a commodity as protean as it comes. There’s something strange going on when the ‘transparency’ of objects are largely absent from the present but wholly part of some of our speculative futures, making notable cameos namely in the literature of cyberpunk (it’s heyday -by no accident- being in the eighties). But its realized relics remain few; all I have salvaged from this fuzzy phase of product design is a bedside lamp and an old Gameboy, things which –looking simultaneously at and through them now- casts once again the power of wonder over the inner child, offering the hidden interior life of an electrical good up to the eyes in a way that emulates the most basic unit of advertising; the shop display.

 

The World As A Shop Display

For practical reasons no-one asks why glass wasn’t used -though as a thought experiment computers glazed in glass doesn’t seem completely inconceivable-, however on the surface of it, the temperament of transparency (or its lack) would seem rather at odds with much of what today is perceived to be embedded in ‘the cultural logic of late capitalism’, in a era where we have great hopes for transparency. It for one it enjoys regular outings in political rhetoric, used as reprimands in expense scandals, birthing initiatives such as the Publish what You Pay Campaign, designed for mining and oil companies in the third world (a mention should go to Gordon Brown’s voluntary ‘Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’, a less successful programme with an eye on the same aim) and institutions as far ranging (or near, as the case me be) as police and newspapers/journalism. But as on the side of the built world too, these are things relate more specifically to a balance of power; its no accident that glass is today one of the most loved materials in city architecture -most notably it follows financial or business districts, where towering glass houses exude a symbolic transparency of an ideological ‘all seeing’ office community-. In fact in the context of global capital, it’s truly a material for the future. Some of these buildings do the exact opposite and play with their own invisibility (employing mirrored or one way glass for example as an alternative), deflecting the would-be gazes of pedestrians into a hall of mirrors tour of themselves, dipping as if in and out of dreams in front of shop displays¹. But big transparent glassy offices operate differently by operating paradoxically; despite offering the entire interior visually to us, the spectacle is there not to be truly looked in but at. It may sound like a confusing window, but the principle is familiar to any cinemagoer perennially exposed to the illusory visual experience of fusing the flat moving image with depth, mistaking the screen for a world. These ways of seeing in visual shorthand’s are probably inherited from the usual suspects (many adding cynically that the world is becoming one big advert) and have become practically second nature to the well-initiated city dweller who, walking through the city in the late afternoon, somehow intuitively catches the mysterious broadcast left by the intentioned architects; that work needs to be visualised.  Whether this process is anxiety driven, symptomatic of a specific ideology, or simply a third wave unimaginative response to a more generalizable trend is an open question. However what can be accounted for is that the expression of work in this way has meant turning our physical trajectories through such buildings into virtual narratives and allegorical energy flows, things which in Tati’s ‘Playtime’ (perhaps the most instructive exemplar to date) describes the design of the modern office as the ultimate panopticon; and which much more radically also proposes that for the ‘civilized’ worker/inhabitant of these spaces, that they are actors on an penultimate stage².

Sunday Drivers

 

Yet despite its shortcomings, transparency -limited to objects- seems entirely plausible as a fixture in our modern world, operating if it must, like buildings, on an almost secondary level of looking. Perhaps its because most of us have become (to use a stubborn term of George Friedmann’s) Sunday Drivers. Whilst Friedmann meant it as a way of describing people who have never opened their car bonnets (this was the fifties after all) and who had no idea of what was under their hoods, contemporaneously the notion spreads to entire swathes of our technologically governed lives. As gadgetry and technical machinery have proliferated, the mythologies and morphology that mask and conceal the inner lives and function have moved correspondingly, like complimentary steps in a dance. This in a sense constitutes the beginning of a fashion. The very existence of such forms necessarily hinge on the need for obscuring the integral mechanisms or components at the very point when it has become apparent that our language and vocabulary for describing the multiplicity of objects and their minute components have stagnated. Furthermore, language has been left behind by the sheer velocity of competitive markets perpetually driven by nuanced innovations, outstripping the ability to name and comprehend items truly fast enough.³

 

Anxious Luddites, the Cyberpunks Are Waiting…

 

The cyberpunks for example, know what to call that-thing-that-does-that-thing, everyone who doesn’t is either vulnerable or extinct. The protagonists in these novels are nearly always the antithesis of Sunday Drivers (implying nearly always in them that those who don’t are extremely rich and live sheltered lives -usually in high orbit-, or dead) when it comes to computerized technology, knowing how to hack, physically make, manipulate, and customize from scrap, ensures better survival; the old order of automated machinery and technology implies ignorance. Not only that, it would seem futuristically, it implies a weak disposition; for the smooth casings that made early Mac laptops the white gold, are they say, for the benefit of the psychological comfort of those who can’t bear ugly inner truth; structures are violent. Perhaps it means that transparency will never make a true comeback until earthly conditions get more apocalyptic, and our relationships to our objects are determined less by the manufacturers, who always have a consumer in mind. Maybe the eighties was a blip on the radar of time for transparency, but fictionally its heart seems closer to the Cold War. Some popular dystopian visions stem precisely from allowing the luddite’s classic anxieties to have authority over the landscape, who looking at much of our alarm clocks, TVs, microwaves and vacuum cleaners know that apart from their immediate use value, each is a terrifying testimony to a void of knowledge. It is perhaps this mild ambience of precariousness that in daily living disturbs, and which to add to the anxiety, implies we no longer know how to even fix things. The things that are now taking over more and more space in the house, the garage, the bottom of the wardrobes, sometimes kept there for years, some noisy (so we have to work round it, never putting it on before bed) some always solidly but silently at work, have in many cases become like a familiar and bizarre cast of sitcom characters with no or limited life insurance. The modern day user is like an imbecilic doctor in relation to them, not knowing how to diagnose, and when it comes to surgery, will lose patient after patient. Here is where our inner luddite feels them crushing him with their ontological weight. So for now we’re content with enamel white elliptical laptops, silver fridges and things that look ready for space travel, their forms always steeped in the formal mystiques of our present time (forgetting hubristically that we are living in fashions, and that they too, when the structure of production alters, will look –or be resurrected- again and again with a new body). For functioning is not merely the function of things, but also their mystery.

 

Notes

¹ Around a recent roundtable discussion concerning urban planning, it became clear that there was real ambivalence towards the modern phenomenon of seeing oneself multiplied into the surrounding architecture, the positive attitude akin almost to a ‘modern take’ on the Narcissus’s myth, the other akin to the fabled tribesmen who upon smiling to a camera and seeing Polaroid’s of themselves, thought that a their souls were being stolen.  

²One of the most haunting signifiers of this relationship between work, transparency, and the built world exists in the quintessentially modern phenomenon of lights being left on in office blocks, even when the normal working day has quite clearly ended. Putting aside the fact that our working hours have stretched into a disorientated global rhythm, from a pious (and sensible) perspective, it’s a waste of electricity, one which the offending companies should be taken to task for. Simultaneously however its symbolic function feels like a solemn visual hymn, or a chord that drones from the aggregate of each individual lit office culminating into a sheer symphony of the city. It somehow seems indispensible (paranormal even, considering how collectively well co-ordinated the entire affair has been between buildings and employees who have never met each other). From a psychoanalytical perspective, perhaps it expresses or enounces the modern anxiety of being alone in a place where we are never able to be alone (much like the functional by-product of muzak), or perhaps it’s a grand conspiracy to communicate with objects, donning materiality with spirituality. Either way, we let the messenger live. 

³ Oddly enough this seems like a reversal or parable of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, who must have had several very frustrating episodes trying to invent new names for things; not least having been later expelled from the garden and forced to start again in the fallows. Regardless, in studying our own use of language in relation to increasingly more computerized technologies, it has become evident objects for us today are less ‘natural’ in essence but more biological than ever; the supreme examples being the systems theory inspired automated environments and regulatory ecosystems that both HAL and GERTY preside over.