First day of my holiday and I’m already
busy trying to shake off this unwelcome feeling of belonging to the 1% (ok,
perhaps the 10%...)
Belonging to it despite myself, in virtue of a destiny which weighs me down more than this breeze from the Thames uplifts me. And from up here/down there, from the vantage point of the disadvantaged, the hypocrisy is clear, above partisan clouds, up above the lofty penthouse of a cultural myopia that would want me blind to what is removed, to what is censored.
Belonging to it despite myself, in virtue of a destiny which weighs me down more than this breeze from the Thames uplifts me. And from up here/down there, from the vantage point of the disadvantaged, the hypocrisy is clear, above partisan clouds, up above the lofty penthouse of a cultural myopia that would want me blind to what is removed, to what is censored.
From where I stand, under menacing clouds,
in the mist of a manicured city-scape, riverside - London bridge-view - I tower
over the jewels of a crown that hurts as if made of thorns, as I munch on cold
noodles and insipid vegetables out of a plastic container. The bag the food
came in proudly announces ‘100% biodegradable’ – and it is thus that one hand,
the one holding a pair of disposable chopsticks, is washed clean of its sins
against the environment by the good deeds of the other. A happy ending story,
if you start from the right hand.
I scan the horizon, a pristine postcard of
post-modern pride in design, all asymmetry and multiple levels, perhaps a mark
of our fundamental inconsistencies, the collective subconscious displayed and
showed off, the stuff of social nightmares gone full circle and elevated to the
status of cool; the future that
begins today and it’s paid for with our taxes from tomorrow, because even style
is put on credit in these days of GFC’s and financial bubbles, building trouble
from the rubble and ruin of a present that crumbles on screens in walls
street’s the world over.
What modern architecture lacks is a sense
of decency - sufficient honesty to acknowledge that the price paid for a slick
riverside walk is a river that chokes, a sky that cries acid rain and a soul
that can’t regain tranquility from this sterility of marble and glass, from
this tale of brass and bullshit. I inspect some pennies for confirmation of my
theory, and… yes – there’s still heads on one side and tails on the other. But when
I look around our ‘modern’ cities, our ‘developed’ world, I scarcely see trace
of tails.
The great absent. The exorcised flipside of
our wealth and power.
Take, for example, this part of London.
South bank in the changing light of a moody, early October day: it desperately
seeks aesthetic approval in the guise of dropping jaws and softly uttered
wow’s. And don’t take me wrong, there sure is beauty in its width of breath,
its sinuous shapes, in the way it effortlessly accommodates the needs of many a
tourists with their hungry eyes and ravenous cameras, but the irony and the
sadness of a decadence so loud covers it like cheap icing would cover a sponge
cake.
What exactly should I be amazed at, I
wonder…
Perhaps at the apparent ease with which we pile
up and construct in the face of crippling national debt? Or at the elephant in
the room, the warship parked on the opposite bank, floating in the grey waves
and spelling p-e-a-c-e in sinister,
Orwellian newspeak? Or at the several cranes that line the sky like
stick-insects, intersecting our dreams of brotherhood and curbing them down to moribund
hopes of a connection that feels less
likely to be found with every new skyscraper that reaches for the clouds?
