Myth and the city

Taking a a walkover to St Pancreas Station, that vast, Gothic monstrosity which dominates the landscape of Kings Cross. Back in the distant past this folly was going to be demolished in favour of a modernistic disaster much like Euston Station which must be the most ugly travel trap in the whole world. These buildings represents clash of travel styles which speak volumes about how culture experience the idea of travel. St Pancreas was conceive at a time when to travel meant some different. A statement of England at the time when the confidence in the Empire was on the wane. But the class system still prevailed. The building was/is a monument to the self perception of bombast and imagined power.
When we use our penetrating gaze and focus our attention upon the style of this form of Gothic structure we must question what we are observing. This is a symbol of invented histories which have no meaning what so ever in reality. Its a imagined reality in a landscape of imagined passion. When the building went up it was already out if time with the changing historical reality.
Nothing about the building tells us anything about the times. Monuments which hold onto fairy stories offer up a comfort against the harsh troubles of the times.
The railway station was a microcosm of 19c expectations. It is a space of waiting, the original interior was a net work of waiting rooms. It was a monument to the tedium of waiting and the expectation of new things.
The roof is a master work of engineering.
Everything else is candy land reality. They/the station is,was full of illusions and deceptions which high light the high point of capitalism in the late 19c Its a dreamscape, today it represents the Disney version of pleasure.The big difference being shopping .
Importantly for me the station became my adventure playground way back in my tender years. This is why I am returning back with a different gaze.

MYTH AND LANDSCAPE

This is the title of series of blogs exploring the ideas of re looking at the Urban landscape through the eyes of depression. I want to explore an idea. Does the depressed person develop a different encounter with the city? Does the depressed cultivate some sense of "altered" state of viewing the way engage with the aura of what the city scape presents us? Is the gaze of depression transformed by a state of mind? When I look at the city does my mood inform my response to how the perception of an object/place/person inform my opinion?
The gaze of a depressed person is different from the gaze of a person who does not suffer from depression. Like wise the female gaze is different form the male gaze. Experience informs observation. The gaze of a child is not the same as the gaze of a parent.
My gaze is experience by my "experience". My sense of the past is developed via my lived history. A history unique to me. Likewise your history is unique to you. Your experience is your uniqueness.
What I see is the same as what you see. But how we experience the viewed object is not the same. We see and feel. The same with sound. We live by experience.
When I walk I observe. What I observe is a place in time. A sound caught within a special moment. When I walk along the South Bank of the River Thames in the early hours of a Sunday morning I know the space inside out. Never the less each time I walk that few miles the familiarity is the same, but how my mind embraces the familiarity, will always be altered. Te next blog will be a journey into St Pancras Station. A personal history mixed with some observations about place and time withsome diversions into history which is myth.
Whilst Im on the subject of myth why dont we start creating our own myths? Story teeling needs to make a return.

walking

Once again the idea of walking comes to mind, I keep on attempting to find head space to kick start this project. Iwill write on my face book when this long delayed project will start. Sorry to keep playing about.

catscradle and politics

It seems the political establishment as reach its zenith. Art and culture is devoid ,cleansed of any political motivation.The liberal mentality stands accused of cowardness. Culture sold out to the corporate society. We have a cleansed culture. Nothing upsets the rule of the state. Resistance is at its lowest point for 50 years. We are content with our lot.

walking and talking

This is a simple snippet concerning a little piece of of wandering talking. By that I mean just letting the talk lead the way into what ever direction the talking wishes to to take. The conversation came around to walking through the High Lands and I was asked a question. Do I like talking when I'm walking?? And to be honest I haven't a clue. This is the sort of question with multiple possibilities. Does it matter?? Let me think and I will got back latter.

walking before returning

I'm trying to dig deep into a very tired mind, the past week have been "messy". Times are changing, modernity led us to believe we lived in a time of progress, a path towards the mythical Utopia. One of the more demanding pleasures in walking comes about when we revisited aspects of our historical selves caught in a fleeting shadow. We see what we thought we must have known only to discover a surge of disorientation,intoxication and loss of identity.
I walk along the same path in the knowledge of rediscovering what was, and is lost. We only ever go back in time in our minds. The experience of times past can transform into a lust for nostalgia.
We live in backward times in a space where what was thought buried is back with us.Politically this should become the age of resistance. When I walk I DREAM and seek the answers to questions I never thought I would believed I would need to seek. Nothing integrates on these walks. The sense of alienation only heightens what in reality I already understood. We don't have control over the external madness embedded in a system called Capitalism. There is something of a negation in the role of Capitalism with our physic.... I need to think my mind is tired. Be back very soon.

the eye begins to see

It was looking at me all the time and I simply failed to connect with a fundamental reality. There I was looking across the River Thames towards St Paul's Cathedral, not only was I looking but a whole lot of other people where looking at the same object as me. My experience of St Paul's is informed by my childhood when I would play amongst the ruins left standing after the second world war. I was looking at part of my history. Not history in the "logical"understanding rather history in the sense of lived experience. What I was experiencing at that time was different from what other people where experiencing,even though we were gazing at the same object. For that one moment in time I realised I was different from "others". And they were different from each other. Each person gazed on the "same" but each individual came from a personal experience. We are alienated from the world by our individual lives. what we see is our truth.,not the others truth. I'm coming to the conclusion that the SOUL is the personal quest in our search for the self.