Hybridity and the third space, baby

[alexsarll]

Over the past week I have spent time among some strange tribes - the rats and bats and strange throat-clearing old folk of the Richmond riverside, the rollerbladers and riders of Hyde Park, even the little lost sliver of Central Europe that is Mayfair (it even has the slightly substandard police - though there's maybe a hint of India to it as well; I've never seen a library with so many Wodehouse books, not even my own). And this combined with an article from the previous weekend about the death/rebirth of travel writing and set me thinking, has anyone ever done a London travel book? By which I mean, one where writers from one part of London write pieces about other areas as the foreign lands they so clearly are. It seems like an Iain Sinclair kind of project, but I think I've read all his London prose and I don't recall anything quite like this. Arthur Machen's London Adventure has something of the spirit I mean, but as one would expect from a man of a more imperial age, his project was much more centred - he spoke of "the London known to Londoners" and the lands beyond, whereas I think more in terms of separate but equal principalities under London's aegis.

There was something about the light - and later, the quality of the darkness - on Saturday night. So walking to The Melting Ice Caps/Soft Close-Ups/Soft Ice Caps (no Melting Close-Ups this time) show at Gloomy (played to a rightly rapturous crowd, some of whom I don't even know personally), I didn't necessarily want any music in my ears. Except that I had the chorus of 'We Are Golden' by Mika stuck in my head and I sure as blazes needed something to shift that, because even as someone who rather liked (most of) his first album, I find the new stuff irksomely hollow.

Comments

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

We (by which i mean some folk we know that like London and writing) should totally write that travel book. I reckon it'd make an excellent collaborative project.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes, just as soon as I get enough people telling me it doesn't already exist, which I still can't quite believe...

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

Ach well, novels about love exist but people still write more of 'em. Even if there are already London travel books I reckon ours would still be top.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, though - I often see books and think 'Why did this need to be written?' - some authors are no better than people who need to say their bit in every conversation even when someone else has already said the same thing.

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

Aye, true enough. It's one of my big reasons for not doing any non-lj non-work writing really, the fact that so many books and stories and projects exist already. But then! Where would we be if everyone thought like that? There is often room for more stuff, even (perhaps especially) if it's done on a DIY self-publishy basis.

[charleston.livejournal.com]

I agree with all the above. And Alex, I love this post. And given that you are a gentleman of leisure, why not write it yourself?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

In my head it's an anthology but I'm certainly tempted to do bits and pieces.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

As with eg attempted chat-ups, the problem is that the very people who so seriously need to think 'hang on, is this wanted?', and then stop, are precisely the people who never will.

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

One of the most interesting things to me is how little actual Londoners know about bits of it that aren't their bit. If I'm somewhere else with ny native North London friends, I pretty much end up being their tour guide, and similarly I've a friend from Hounslow who was completely lost when she founde herself in North London with me once.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I have odd little pockets away from home that I know pretty well, and sometimes I can even explore the intervening territories enough to stitch them together with what I think of as my turf, but yes, definitely.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

writers from one part of London write pieces about other areas as the foreign lands they so clearly are.

This is clearly destined to be an LJ project

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think there's probably the rough draft of it already scattered among various LJs of people I know and people they know.

[augstone.livejournal.com]

that is a very good idea. surely it must exist. but then again most things that 'surely must exist' usually don't.

i'm anxious to read some more uncle fred.

i think the melting close-ups was a thing that may never be repeated as if i'm there it now makes sense for me to play with him on our songs.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

This was what I would naturally have assumed, but you were participating in other songs at the Franklin House gig where it happened...

They had both of the ones where Uncle Fred's in the title, but also Ukridge so I got that instead, having read two Blandings already this summer. No Psmith that I could see, was the only omission.

[augstone.livejournal.com]

this was before we realized - at your prompting - that guitar would work on 'ditch the theory' & 'fireworks'. YOU KILLED THE MELTING CLOSE-UPS!!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, in my shadowy guiding of your music career, I must destroy as well as create.

[augstone.livejournal.com]

i completely understand. its almost as if you loaned me illuminatus to prepare me for this knowledge ; )

[euphoricstimuli.livejournal.com]

That sounds a really good idea.
Living south of the river for the first time has certainly been interesting. In many ways its still the same, but in others it feels like a different city.
It would be a great book, and I don't know of one like it.

As far as We are Golden goes, try singing Heaven is a place on Earth by Belinda Carlisle over the top of it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

With the best will in the world, I'm not hearing it...

It interests me how people go on about Budapest being two cities divided by a river, when London is three cities divided by a river among other things, with the differences at least as marked and I would say more so.