Its been a pretty amazing few weeks, my last week in London, then 8 days with Anne in Amsterdam then hanging with Sam in Madrid. I think I've learnt a lot about myself. One thing is that i need to step up more. In taking care of myself and in having the initiative to follow through on all the good ideas that I have and know Im capable of and then I never get around to them. I am too much a creature of leisure sometimes.
So I realised that I was rapidly running out of time in London to do things I wanted and needed to do.
I did make it to the Tate Modern and went to an amazing Minimalism show, which turned scary as i got lost in it, and kept on coming back to the same room full of stark red squares. I need the texture of Rothko's minimal stuff, not the smooth plastic effect of some of the things I was confronted with. It did my head in because also I was alone and needed someone to talk to. Some of the artworks there made me feel like you could scream into them and the sound would disappear. The warmth of communication, through art, music or conversation is what excites me. That's one of the many reasons I like street art, because the texture and context of the street/neighbourhood add so much to the art in question.
Finally having 'me' time was so good though, it was hard to actually get off my ass and do things like seek out the anarchist info-shop to get rid of some patches and see Jet and Neil more. I need to be a better friend and to actually think about what Im committing to before I say 'hell yeah'. Im really glad I did a performance at Bar Wotever though. Giving a little energy back to London was good and the feedback I got was very rewarding. That night I ended up in Soho with Neil.
He is an amazing man with so much calm energy to give. A wonderful communicator and a sound human.
Im having a holiday from life-as-usual and activism, but I did go to a protest in support of the Tube cleaners who were on strike, early in the morning. Bags of rubbish were dumped at the doors of the Tube corporation Transport For London after people attempted to shut down a station in the middle of the financial district. We were leaving as the cops showed up. The office is actually opposite Scotland Yard, so there were cops across the road with machine guns. As well as the amazing number of CCTV cameras everywhere (4.2 million of them in London) the city is freaked out about any bag left alone for more than 2 seconds. My bag was even searched at the 2 museums I went to.
I guess after the legacy of the IRA and the London bombings of a few years ago the paranoia is understandable but with such uptightness, the 'terrorists' win as everyone becomes a suspect and everyone is filmed hundreds of times a day when they go out. People can be tracked through the city for hours if whoever is watching them wants to see where they are going. It is the panopticon effect. That's a circular prison design with one guard in the middle with a moveable mirror that can see into any cell at any point. The idea is that if people think that they are possibly being watched then they will modify their behaviour as if they are being watched all the time, even though it is not possible for everyone to be monitored by all 4.2 million CCTV cameras. So many people do behave as if someone is watching them all the time. Big Brother indeed....
I saw Morrissey and Beck as well as a bit of Suzie Sio and the Arctic Monkeys at the O2 Festival in Hyde Park London on the Friday of my last weekend in London with a bunch of friendly bears. Many beers and wanderings around a giant festival set up. Hanging with some wonderful people and the Magic of Morrissey was something I wasn't ready for, but am now a convert. Bumped into an old school friend Todd who is now living in London, but sadly didn't make it to his birthday celebration at the after party. I actually listened to my body and realised that I was tired. Im still a party boy with stamina but after so many parties, sometimes I actually must listen to my body. As we were leaving Hyde park among the bootleggers and people pissing everywhere a cop stopped me and asked me if I wanted a Smiths poster, I think she'd taken them off a bootlegger. They were on the ground and she was holding them down with her foot. A grabbed one and folded it up as a nice souvenir. As I said to J2, the last thing a cop had given me before that night was a big push out of the way, so maybe it was some kind of omen.
The next day was London Pride and while I didn't feel like battling with the crowd around the parade, I dragged myself to the mashed up post parade street party at old Compton Street, which was actually 5 blocks of chaos and drinking in the gutters with every kind of queer you can think of. I met up with 2 nice Aussies who'd been staying at Camille and Nics place and then Rob. Now we were a posse, and we found some cold takeaway beers and sat in the gutter (where we belong) and watched the passing circus of London's finest as I felt the whole neighbourhood gear itself up for a night of debauchery. When it got dark we went off to a super old-school bear pub nearby and the whole street was full of big guys with beards blocking traffic. I think I've had dreams that start like that.
An unexpected dinner adventure presented itself a block away with a posse of Aussie guys, most of who I have enormous love for, and after an amazing dinner with more delicious food than we could finish it was time for Wotever Worlds Club Whatever, with a smogasboard of sexy people. I told myself to behave as I was flying to Amsterdam the next morning at 2pm, but um, I found myself at a lock-in next door until 9am with some of my new most favourite London folk. The core crew from Wotever, friends, pints, all having very enthusiastic conversations, cold pints and lots of hugs and smiles all round. At 9am I kind of freaked out, but being too munted to really care, I somehow got a taxi and crashed at Whitechapel for 2 hours, before getting awoken and pushed in the direction of the airport. I really was in no state to fly, but at least I was going to Amsterdam which was probably the right city for me to land in. There were no customs at all to get through, just a little gate. I probably looked like shit, but as I was waiting for my bag I saw Anne, whose luggage had been lost for 24 hours.
A really nice surprise because I was fucked, so I just tagged along with her to Amsterdam central, struggled to find where I was staying, dumped my bags and then wandered around for a while soaking up the calmness of Amsterdam and the festy ambience of the canals. It was hard to comprehend that anyone could get so trashed in the 'dam that they'd actually jump in there. The canals are a signature of Amsterdam but they fucking stink and the water is a dark shade of green. Even the ducks look disgusted, and some of the boats are filthy.
We kept looking at cute little boats and sighing, going 'oh that could be our boat...'
We had plans to sit under a windmill among tulips in the sun and get fed cheese and spliffs by a cute Dutch boy wearing clogs and nothing else but the reality was, hmmm, a bit more seedy. And cold. And raining.
We went on several tours of coffeeshops. They are different to a cafe. In a cafe they are in the food and coffee business. 'Coffeeshops' sell minimal food and coffee and all kinds of pot and hash, cookies and smoking supplies. We found a few great ones and a few seedy ones. The first one we went to ended up being our favourite, called 'Ricks'. It was relaxed and seedy, like the Olde Fish Shop in Newtown if it sold drugs. It was painted black and had fake plants and birds, good coffee and little booths. tacky and relaxed. Scruffy couches and good coffee.
We went into one called Black Star and the vibe in there was rigid and a bit scary. Pounding Dub and no smiles. Some guy holding about 5 grams of hash and saying it wasn't good enough. That side of the scene is not really nice to be around but at least it's regulated instead of trying to stop the trade of a plant that grows in the ground.
Mostly we stuck to pre rolled joints of hash. They were cheap and calming. Sweet and strong.
The cycling culture there is amazing. Thousands of bikes going in all directions with few accidents, like a scene from the Matrix, objects going in an infinite amount of directions with no collisions. There were bikes locked up everywhere. As I left the tram to go to the airport I saw cops with and anglegrinder cut the lock off a bike chained to a tree. Another Amsterdam mystery. What happens to the bike?
I wonder how locals perceive the endless stream of tourists however. It seemed like every second person had a map in their hands. The red light district is like a maze of hedonism, with sex drugs but seemingly no rock and roll in the neighbourhood. 2 out of 3 isn't bad I guess. On my second last night there I had a smoke and wandered for hours down little alleyways to the sounds of the buzz of tattoo guns and quiet offers of cocaine from a few dozen dodgy characters. The smell of burning hash and piss from the open-air pissoirs next to the canals. Later I met Anne at a Rasta cafe where she'd met a boy and we sat on the edge of the canal and watched the glow of neon lights on the water surface and talked. 'What did we learn and get from this holiday?'.
The sound of bucks weekends passing us in matching t shirts jarred against the sight of families on holiday smoking joints together. A city of history and hedonism, cycling and cannabis.
I really didn't need 8 days there. Four would have been enough. The hostel we ended up staying in for the last four nights was a challenge. Four steep flights of stairs after taking advantage of the delights of Amsterdam was enough to tire me out, even without being out until 4am. Property in Amsterdam used to be taxed by the width of the house so most places are quite narrow.
I am going to go back there and take full advantage of the cultural aspects of Amsterdam without getting sucked into the tourist trap that it can be. The take away food shops there do a roaring trade.
The paradox of THC and a maze of streets with names you cant pronounce is a funny one. The first night I was there I got quite lost. Sleep deprivation, nightime and a strange city are a wicked combination. The Dutch language is a harsh sounding stream of hard syllables. Everyone there speaks English thankfully. Damn dominant culture...
Im glad i taught myself a bit of Spanish before I landed in Madrid. The city sits high on top of a 'baking plain' and the heat is dry and baking. The first few nights myself and Sam stayed in a gay hostel with a mix of uber-gays from all over the world. We were on the edge of the gay district and the working girls and maybe a few guys hung out at the top of the street. It made going out to buy beers late at night from the tiny little dodgy beer stalls (a cardboard box on its end with chocolate bars and a few empty cans on top to show what they had for sale) interesting as the girls would try and get you to stop and go for a quickie. Having by balls grabbed by a hooker was almost on par with the thorough fondling I got from the massive security guy at Amsterdam airport. He could have bought me dinner first at least.
The pace of life in Madrid is great. Siesta from about 3 to 7 after working for a few hours (or drinking beer and eating tapas while myself and Sam plan for world integration and swimming) and then the Plazas and streets fill up at night, seemingly all night. We went to a massive art gallery which hosts many Picassos and a whole gallery of Miros work. One of my eyes was actually hurting by the time we left. Soaking up so many monumental works of art left us with overloaded brains and in desperate need of Chorizo and San Miguel. The one that really struck me was a beautiful painting of Rothko's of burnt orange and flecks of yellow, that seemed to recharge my brain after the stark message of Picasso's Guernica and the loaded space of Miro's work. The warped beauty of Picassos other work was hurting to look at after a while as your brain felt like it was folding in on itself again and again.
The one that struck me though was a giant Liechtenstein sculpture in the open area, a massive indoor foyer of a smear of paint twenty metres high with a smooth plastic finish as if it had been screenprinted like so much of his other work, but amplified and removed from scale and the backing of a canvas, standing alone and massive.
There was also a wonderful show of robots powered by the wind that moved like synthetic dinosaurs along the beach and interactive robotic screens which interacted with your movements and the shape of your body. Sam was very excited by it all whereas I was just enthralled. And captivated.
A display of photographs from World War 2 was touching in a way that cannot be conveyed by a small picture in a book or on a screen. The human impact that a war and the draft has was there in a large format that cannot be understated. Even the before and after scenes of the landscapes devastated by bombings shows how everything, every little building is a target like in a video game. One you've bombed the factories and the offices, perhaps the warped human psyche that dominates during times of conflict dictates that then you bomb the biggest houses and then the smaller ones...
Forty years of photos from the one photographer from 1900 to the 1950s showed the evolution of photography, and it made me want to document my life and the circles that I move in, just as I have the desire to play the trumpet whenever I hear it. Two more things to work on. The life of a jack of all trades is appealing.
After Sam and I went T-shirt shopping one evening, we were sitting in a very friendly Bear bar called O Clock in Madrid when I suddenly realised that I didn't want to be working in a factory printing all the time. Selling my stuff that I make is also vital to keeping me interested in what I do and the whole process of production and creation. I also want my own shop, connected to a printing space. Im going to work on that, as a logical extension of my love of printing, taking some material and some ink and a screen and turning it into more than the sum of its parts. South King Street or Enmore Road is my destination I think. Im prepared for the work and the hard slog, the ink stained clothes and the satisfaction that I already get from getting my stuff out there in a limited way already.
It was like a revelation that I didn't realise that I needed to have.
To celebrate we were given shots of an amazing honey rum (perfect for bears) called Guermele which was sweet, sweet enough for me to ask for another one for the road. Like sugar and fire on the tounge.
The street stalls here are excellent, diverse, but always on the lookout for cops. There was one with about 9 stalls in a shopping street near our hostel. They are blankets with ropes tied to each corner so they can be gathered up at a seconds notice, or cork boards balanced on top of cardboard boxes.
I was looking at badges when I saw the police stop in the middle of the street. Within about eight or ten seconds all the stalls had swept up their stuff and they were bolting up the road, really running. It was amazing to watch, not only the speed that it all happened, but also the fear that the market folk had. I wonder what happens to them if the police catch them.
It made me think about the 'scene' in Sydney and how lucky we are in some ways. People don't run from cops for setting up a street stall. However the DIY markets seem to be on the edge of getting shut down by the cops because they have become too big and the cars have become a real issue in terms of traffic management in an already congested area. There is also an issue with the amount of drinking in the square.
It is stressful rock and a hard place to deal with, especially as i am on the other side of the world but have such a close affinity with DIY. Its frustrating but I am not letting it affect my holiday. I'll just do some writing and troubleshooting and email it off and hope for the best. It's all I can do. On the last weekend that I was there for the markets I saw it teetering on the edge of being too big.
It's true chaos theory in action. I don't know how much community there is at DIY. It seems more like a free-for-all that has turned into a party space that makes quite a bit of rubbish and mess. It's good for the neighbourhood but something has to give. I can see it being a legit market one day, but the politics of the transition will be sticky and loaded with the use of a public space for private gain, even with the vibe of 'classic Newtown' as a bonus for the area. Newtown has needed something like DIY, as the wave of gentrification has washed over the suburb in the last ten years or so.
Im off to Berlin to see Kris tomorrow so I'd better learn some German in a hurry. It's a difficult language to learn, I've tried from a few of the many German I've met in Oz. But it's going to be great to see Kris. I love that guy very much.
I'll update this when I can, and dump a bunch of photos onto here or Face**** when I can so I don't have to show them to people who may/may not be interested in them when I get back. I know how painful travel photos can be. They're greatif you were there and perhaps mildly entertaining if you care about underground queer rock n roll dance parties in London. Although it was awsome to hear L7's 'Pretend we're dead' surrounded by bears and queer punks at 3am. Also Iggy Pop's 'Lust for life' at 4am. That was sweet.
Lots of love to you all from Madrid.
X Chris
