Everywhere is Somewhere
The stone staircases up to the doorways in the houses opposite are like the ink drawings of Alice Neel. Harlem.
The red sandstone tenements on the street I used to live in are like Edward Hopper’s Brooklyn.
The grid street system is said to resemble Chicago. As are the vacant lots, the demolished buildings, the motorways, the tall mirrored hotels, the band scene.
My friend pulled me over as she pointed up the long straight lanes of cars heading west at sunset, red traffic lights and red rear lights glowing in the haze. Look! San Francisco, she said..
The ox-blood red and arsenic green paint of close stair wells are in their way, very close to the stairwells I walked up in Moscow.
The low arches, tall doors and high ceilings, the shelves built in between doorways to stack old canvases, These are Moscow too.
For some, the tenement flats and their closes most remind them of Berlin.
The grandeur of old- fashioned living rooms, the calm stateliness and largesse of the houses out West, their stained glass. These are Putney Common in the seventies, where I grew up.
The untouched dark rooms of the grander squares. Rubber plants and net curtains and enormous rooms untouched for years – these persist like old dark Kensington.
Some say that the square topped slate rooftops with black ironwork are like France, and I suppose they are.
When I lived in Limehouse, I couldn’t think of anywhere for it to remind me of. Canary Wharf is a hell of displacement without memory. So I left it, for all its supposed psycho-geographic resonance.
Glasgow, 14th May 2011
The stone staircases up to the doorways in the houses opposite are like the ink drawings of Alice Neel. Harlem.
The red sandstone tenements on the street I used to live in are like Edward Hopper’s Brooklyn.
The grid street system is said to resemble Chicago. As are the vacant lots, the demolished buildings, the motorways, the tall mirrored hotels, the band scene.
My friend pulled me over as she pointed up the long straight lanes of cars heading west at sunset, red traffic lights and red rear lights glowing in the haze. Look! San Francisco, she said..
The ox-blood red and arsenic green paint of close stair wells are in their way, very close to the stairwells I walked up in Moscow.
The low arches, tall doors and high ceilings, the shelves built in between doorways to stack old canvases, These are Moscow too.
For some, the tenement flats and their closes most remind them of Berlin.
The grandeur of old- fashioned living rooms, the calm stateliness and largesse of the houses out West, their stained glass. These are Putney Common in the seventies, where I grew up.
The untouched dark rooms of the grander squares. Rubber plants and net curtains and enormous rooms untouched for years – these persist like old dark Kensington.
Some say that the square topped slate rooftops with black ironwork are like France, and I suppose they are.
When I lived in Limehouse, I couldn’t think of anywhere for it to remind me of. Canary Wharf is a hell of displacement without memory. So I left it, for all its supposed psycho-geographic resonance.
Glasgow, 14th May 2011