London

It’s amazing really… it only takes a short ten seconds of the piano playing its scale and I’m back in London. I’m back on Tottenham Court road walking to the metro or to the Arms. I’m back taking a late night walk just off the Court walking towards my building, the building facing me… lit up with those subtle blue floodlights. And now I’m back in the retro brown chair that hasn’t been recovered since the 1970s watch the BBC waiting to see what quality programming they’re going to put in front of me next. Oh the life… how I miss that life of pints, football, the BBC, and Westminster.

So thanks Coldplay and Clocks… thanks for taking me back to London when ever I want to. When ever I need to… thanks. I leave with some past thoughts of that city when I was there....
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Feb. 23, 2003
And we stare at the beautiful women….

I love that line. It’s so true, one of the more turn lines in music if you ask me.

Anyway, I’m hung over right now. Very hung over, but I’ll get threw it. I’m trying to tell myself to get over it. I would like to go to sleep, but going to bed makes me think of Girl#1/Girl#2 and I want to be in bed with one of them more than I want to be asleep, so in other words it’s a pain in the ass to go to be because the only thing that happens is that I lust. And I like lusting, to a degree, after a while it gets annoying, because you can’t have it. But it feels good, well I should watch that because too much lust is very bad. It can dominate one’s feelings and emotions, and that’s not good.
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March 24, 2003
Thoughts on London, England

So what is there to say about London. It’s not New York and it’s not Paris. There are frightening similarities between the two cities and London, but it is neither city in the end.

London is the kind of place where the air of anything can happen doesn’t exist. It’s not the kind of place where you go to find inspiration, London is far to efficient. It doesn’t try to wow you, maybe because there is nothing to wow you with. Big Ben is, in the end, just a clock. The River Thames is dead, the theater district just a sprawling run of generic plays, Westminster just a maze of a building, no tall buildings that make you look up, the squares are been there done that and overly disappointing, no capital of capitalism… just a few large beautiful parks with nice museums. That’s what separates London from other places in the world.

So London isn’t beautiful in the physical sense, outside of its parks. Even as a city, London fails to over whelm with beauty. London rather is beautiful in a different, much different sense. Since it doesn’t wow you like New York, or captivate you like Paris or Rome, London is left to give you something else. London has more in common with Chicago than anywhere else. It spreads out forever, it has it’s neighborhoods, which are becoming more and more ethnic. It is real, dirty down allies, smart, and practical.

London is the most diverse place I’ve ever been. While there may not be the sear number of blacks, not a day goes by without seeing at least 10 blacks, and like in the States, it’s no big deal, so it’s easy to over look this. And then from Indians, to Pakistanis, to Arabs, and Europeans, London has them all. And like Chicago of the 19th and early 20th century, they have all begun and are making their mark on the city itself.

So what does this make London… well it changes too much to say. What is London, just like what is the United States, gives many different answers. London is not Big Ben or St. Paul’s. London runs deeper than that, London is more than it’s people also. So London is left as is. Not in the what you see is what you get sense, but rather, London is just London. With different cultures and ideas all mixed together. It’s diversity and it’s professionalism and it’s fun are all wrapped up into this city. It has realized that it is no longer the greatest city on earth, but it sure enjoys being the second greatest. Something along those lines.

London understands that it doesn’t have the cultural or approach to life that France has. Just as the French understand that they were never the power that England was. But the irony of the entire situation, is that both the French and English want the other has. England wants London to be Paris, Paris wants France to be England. London wants to be Paris and New York wrapped up in one, but it ends up being London. And those that understand and see that London is, in many ways, better than, but most important, different than Paris and New York, we’ll they appreciate London isn’t more.

I don’t know where you can find London. It may be the main roads. It may be the side streets. Maybe it’s at St. Paul’s and in the Museums. Maybe it’s in the parks. Or maybe it’s something different all together, something that I haven’t found. Something that I can’t put my finger on.

And maybe that’s what I like about it, you can be you and no one cares. No one is going to look at you any longer than what you are. You aren’t going to be seen as weird, or different, or anything but what you are. And I’ll gladly take that over anything else or anywhere else.