Saturday 10th November

THE STREETS ARE ALIVE!:

A day that didn’t stick to the schedule, a day made of randoms & 
recognised opportunities – travelling different roads. 
It started in the fields of  South Essex, a train, a tube, a phone call on 
a street corner in NottingHill. An after party woman loading boxed 
wine glasses into a hybrid car watched by a kindly grey gentleman 
as three men stood close, negotiating the price of  a tiny piece of 
real-estate. A phone call received, a forgotten promise that generated 
stress & self loathing, waves you could feel across a small room growing 
pastel Mondrian shelving. Tangled wires & rhythms. 

There was obvious enthusiasm for staying right there & making music. 
Maybe it was foolish, but a door opened with a path on the other side, 
a suggestion there was something not to be missed, a suggestion was made,
a fuse was lit, a phone call made, a plan was changed. A tube ride with 
a borrowed guitar, no longer inconspicuous in the street. A man in a red cap 
provoking glances (surely it couldn’t be ‘him’ riding down here with the rest
of us?). A speed drawing on a cellphone in a crowded carriage. 

Stepping out of an unfamiliar underground station, new marks on the walls,
new cracks in strange rhythms. Fresh combinations of images & words,
posters advertising stuff we don’t have in Essex. Crossing to another culture, 
community, the way people walk in the street – It was vibrant, stimulating. 
We we greeted with hand shakes though we were strangers, greeted with smiles like neighbours. Feasted on Jerk Chicken, red beans, rice & salad, sat down at tables made from logs to create titles of unwritten songs from the names of shops under a large loud flat screen tv. You turned the sound down to let us think, I noted how you took control over the room, a soap opera on a loop screwed  high into a fake wood wall. Fabulous posters of uncelebrated legends, churches, congregations gathered on pavements, fabulous vegetables & fruit with the dirt still on. Fresh things in unfamiliar natural forms, the world outside of  GM luxury styling. 

The names of small shops & family businesses, all full of shoppers queueing 
to buy. Through metal gates we were led into a small windowless room 
that used to be a take-away & behind metal shutters we found drum & bass 
& mint tea. 

For the rain today I think Jaessica Slighter’s album, ‘Fear and the Framing‘

(K)