from the archive: when the streets are empty, I think of turbulence.
On brutalities, pulsations, and spectacles. As written on Thursday, 29th October.
“The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales and downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness […] To step […] and pause amid its emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn.” - Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders.
France is now in its second round of lockdown. The public mood is tense. My street woke to the throbs of the cement mixer coating new layers of ground yesterday. A week ago, the police came knocking on our doors telling us to move our vehicles. I remember how I answered the door still in my pyjamas, unprepared to speak to three masked men that early in the morning. When Macron made his Tuesday evening speech, we had a day to make preparations before the country went down. It feels like we’re always living on the cusp: often little prepared but making do with the time we have.
And now the street pulses as if it knows its neighbours toss and turn behind closed doors. The new ground works have been laid and now it tests our patience with new rhythms. Suddenly a one-way street known for its car park entrances, high school buildings, and busy apartment blocks has turned into a liminal space. What a strange un-utopia. We have become one with the underpasses of those Ballardian highways and abandoned department stores. No neighbourly criss-crossing of a boy with his baguette and the man walking his white terrier. The mum and her two kids and a stroller no longer take their daily walk screaming and wailing. The elderly ladies and their fresh blow-dries no longer stand at the gate waiting for neighbourhood dramas to unfold. I hope they’re doing alright indoors. It’s all stops and starts now, irregular and sporadic like the drip-dropping of water from a tap shut long ago. I can hear the sudden cry of a toddler and a maman trying to wrestle with them, explain to them why it is that the house is so busy these days. I wonder what the kid will cry for tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I’ll hear the sirens of an ambulance again. I saw one today, actually. I wonder if tomorrow I’ll catch a glimpse of a couple fighting or if I’ll hear someone slam their fists against piano keys from upstairs. I wonder what will call me to the window next. We are always waiting for bigger spectacles, it seems.
A show for no charge, free for perusal and free of ownership. What do we look for: a circus or a riot? We are streams and streams of brutal gestures. Torrents of pandemonium. Our species revels in it all. Only until everything falls to pieces and we’ve hurt each other do we offer vague glances of uncertain sympathy. Surely this year has given us plenty of examples. It’s something I’ve long been preoccupied with. What keeps us in spectatorship surely has to do with our vaguely sick, though truthful, lust for others’ hurt. Spectatorship allows for experience which is distinctly second-hand. Sometimes we are guilty bystanders, but other times, we are absolved of responsibility. When a woman on a bus is being harassed, we steal glances but look ashamedly away when she calls for help. When a car crash has scattered across the side of a highway, we slow down, turn, and hold our mouths agape. We want to know what it feels like to have their despair and chaos for a moment. The ability to walk away is a strange privilege; subconsciously, perhaps we want the bruises they have.
I think of movement within the spaces we’ve got. How lockdown must impact those with vulnerable family members, the less able bodied, those with young children, those with learning disabilities, those on their own, those with generations under one roof, and those without roofs at all...
I always have this vision of rooms being unpeeled, undone like delivery boxes, one after another — with the facades down, what would we find in each? Deconstructions of home life. Furniture back into flat-pack form, the wallpaper stripped back. Isometric plans dissected. I like to imagine muffled conversations and full-blown fights. Chaos unfolding and extending itself in outwards motion, then freezing in haphazard commotion. The air ringing from the amalgamation of voices stacked upon each other. Head cocked to the side and I’m watching it all unfold before me like a child that’s just caused havoc between parents.
The life that keeps on growing is the mould on the stale loaf of bread you bought. Remember? You bought it last week when you started hauling shit home to ‘stock up’ on in lockdown. Some things we forget and others we choose to put aside. Somehow it seems the loaf of bread failed us in this time of need. We hold onto it like a beloved one until we take their company for granted. They’re a changed thing now, irrecoverable. Now you’ve got to chuck them in the bin.
I’ve heard all too many stories of couples who are finding it hard this year. In a sudden break in routine, friends have told me they can’t deal with their significant other because pace is different, priorities are different— “it’s like I’m living with someone completely different all of a sudden; it’s not like them to be like this”. You’re seeing them for the first time, truly naked, and it astonishes you that you hadn’t seen through them before everything went to pieces. You were little prepared to deal with someone who had your lover’s face but didn’t have the guts to face the realities of the present. Maybe in life’s ordinary set of unrealities, the two of you might have worked. Detached from the turbulence of distractions and excuses, we are suddenly puppets dancing to a rhythm we’ve never heard before—only some will make it past the first few bars. I try not to be too envious of these people.
What a year to have met someone. Two terrified fools who felt it was a miracle to have found each other whilst weathering a storm. Perhaps we were playing at trying to make things work under pretence that the odds weren’t so against us. Perhaps it was miraculous. However long it lasted and whatever we were to each other, in my heart I recognise you and celebrate what we crafted together. We put aside all expectations and the rulebooks— and we were fearless, daring, truthful. We played no games. Know that I was more vulnerable with you than I ever had been with someone before. I took huge chances and so did you. Our shared vulnerability was vivid. But with any two waves which crash too quickly against each other, the parting is inevitable. In life’s ordinary set of unrealities, would we have worked? We parted like strangers, wordless. In our stillness now, I feel your presence all the more and I'm not sure how to feel about that just yet. All I know is that when and if we were to break the silence, it will be as two bounding waves. Two fools, perhaps less terrified but all the same, in turmoil. This world is so utterly corporate. It renders us mute. I hope you’re doing well across the channel. In such a year as this, I’m glad we chose intensity over longevity. Thank you for holding me so very tightly whilst the world undid itself.
In chaos and calm, which do we hold onto? What is sure or what stirs? Perhaps we are our very own rough and candid performances, with sincerity murky sometimes and our vulnerabilities too openly given occasionally— a circus and a riot in our own bodies.