William Burroughs: Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.
Quentin Crisp: In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
Siouxsie Sioux: The suburbs inspired intense hatred. I think the lure of London was always there. I remember my sister taking me to Biba on Kensington High Street; I bought a coat and used to gravitate towards going there on my own later. But the suburbs were also a yardstick for measuring how much we didn’t fit in…I would definitely say that our early material, for at least the first two albums, was suburbia – where I grew up, and the circumstances.
It was an interesting kind of boredom. The days seemed to stretch out in an attempt to touch forever. One evening the local 7-11 was held up at gunpoint – the robbers were “from London”. Another time, some cows escaped from a nearby field and roamed the estate haphazardly mowing the suburban lawns. I lived in Kings Worthy for nine years and these are the two events outside of my own adventures that I can remember. It wasn’t so much that nothing happened there, more that what did happen never seemed newsworthy (it wasn’t until a long time after I left that Britain’s Biggest Love-Rat was revealed to be living there by The Sun “newspaper”- who knew?). If you were sensitive, intelligent, creative, fashionable, stylish or any combination of those things chances were you weren’t going to fit in very well. And you were probably either too young or had too little money to get out. So you worked hard at something that would buy you a one-way ticket to London.
During the Seventies and Eighties, there must have been tens of thousands of people joining this exodus from suburbs all over the country. Every one of them Hell-bent on recreating the city in their image – desperate to realise their fantasy of what an ideal London should be. And the city took them in.
In 2014, Chislehurst, where Siouxsie Sioux grew up is no longer a suburb, but has been absorbed into Greater London. And it’s widely acknowledged by the media that London has become more suburban in character. I think all us escapees brought the contagion with us – you can’t create the flipside of suburbia without carrying the values of suburbia inside you and one day they are going to want to get out.
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The Tinderbox is the seventh track on the Cocteau Twins’ second album, Head Over Heels (1983). You can listen to it here. The whole album is ethereal and beautiful with just the right touch of bright steel to lift it from being an easy listen. Tinderbox (1986) is also an album by Siouxsie and the Banshees. You can watch them performing Land’s End on the Old Grey Whistle Test here.
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Our relations with cities are like our relations with people. We love them, hate them, or are indifferent toward them. On our first day in a city that is new to us, we go looking for the city. We go down this street, around that corner. We are aware of the faces of passers-by. But the city eludes us, and we become uncertain whether we are looking for a city, or for a person.
(Extract from Some Cities (1996) by Victor Burgin)
So beautiful!
Thank you so much!
Brilliant photo – I really do get how London can have become more suburban: I see it in my own city but am not as persuaded that it is all those ex-pat suburbanites rubbing off on the urban and urbane as much as it is how all the radicals and wild young things have succumbed to a suburban attitude, a “settling” for the status quo as they get older and entrenched in keeping up. Even the most avant-garde among us have had days where we sat and just stared at our hands, bewildered, wondering how it ever all came to this…
Thanks very much! Yes, for sure that’s true – I think it’s a combination of a lot of factors and settling is one of them. Hopefully we are in a transitional phase!
Fantastic image.
Thanks very much!
What a brilliant image Richard, it is fantastic.
Thanks so much, Leanne – that’s a lovely compliment, voming from you!
A beautiful and poignant shot Richard. @ideflex made the wonderful point expressing bewilderment as to how this happens, plans are such strange beasts.
Thanks very much, Patti. Yes, indeed – never try to second guess the human animal.
Yes, poignant was the word that came to mind for me too. It’s breathy and beautiful.
A friend of mine has an original William Burroughs ‘shotgun’ painting; it is definitely offbeat but rather beautiful too! sort of landscape-y.
There is a fun video of him making this type of painting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u02kFg_nxeA
Thanks so much, Karen. What a lovely description. Burroughs has been a favourite writer of mine on and off since the eighties. Thanks for the link!
A nicely written post, Richard, and you cannot beat a bit of the Cocteau Twins! The photo adds to the apathy/poignancy. 🙂
Thanks very much, Richard! Indeed not! No one’s ever made a sound like them before or since.
The photo is superb, very dark, just my cup of tea and followed by a very well written post, although you had me at Burroughs to be honest he is one of my favorite authors.
Thanks very much, Leon. Yes, WSB is one of my favourites too. Do you prefer early or late period?
I prefer his earlier works, Junky, Naked Lunch and the Nova Trilogy being my favorites. Although i did also like his Red Night Trilogy there was just something about his earlier works that really resonated with me.
I also have an audio book of him reading Junky but when he was much older which is quite powerful to listen to as you can hear the emotion of him revisiting such a personal book coming out within is croaky voice. Along with some very odd music after every chapter
Also if you have not already been i highly recommend the Burroughs and the Lynch exhibitions at the photographers gallery
http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/current-exhibitions-2
Yes, there’s that feeling in the early stuff that WSB is feeling his way in a strange land. I really like Naked Lunch the most, with the trilogy running a close second (particularly Cities of the Red Night). But it’s all good – Junky, Soft Machine etc. Nobody’s really got close as regards experimentation since. I’ll see if I can get hold of the audio book – sounds really interesting.
I always liked silhouettes, the figure silhouetted by the sun the scratched glass… Very beautiful shot!!!
Thank you very much, Alberto! Love your blog, by the way.
It also seems that the world is becoming more homogeneous. What has been the alternative is becoming mainstream,”..time is on the side of the outcast..”. Many cities walk that line of edginess and “cleanliness” for the sake of tourism (“white-washing”). Thankfully, the appreciation of creativity and art endures.
Thank you for your thought-provoking post *and* for reminding me of the Cocteau Twins, which I enjoyed in the early ’90s – time to get out those old cassettes…
~ Lorian
Thanks very much for your comment, Lorian. Yes, everything seemingly gets absorbed and sold back to us in a diluted form in the end. I think things will change for the better – the internet makes me feel optimistic. Yes, dig out the Cocteaus – they’re ace!
What a great shot– the geometry of the train echoed in the curve of the woman’s slouching back, not one but two see- through windows with their own reflections and patterns galore, the grime of the glass and the grim mood of the dejected woman– all splendid! And especially love the Quentin Crisp quote. Wonderful post!
Thanks so much, Ellen! I’m really glad you like the post – I enjoy putting these together a lot.
This is a wonderful and moving image.
Thanks so much, Shimon – I am beaming!
I like the texture and the greyness of your photo. It gives it a sort of dreamy feel.
Yes, it was just the effect of the light – a very lucky moment. I tweaked the contrast a bit in PS.
The image resonates with me as I’ve commuted by train quite extensively – at one time a 2+ hour each way daily commute, and it is a kind of no man’s land where you become familiar with fellow commuters and even the train, and it becomes comfortable. I couldn’t sustain it but there were times it was indeed a respite from commitments at either end.
The G.O. and I have been in Sydney’s inner-city for a decade and we find ourselves observing more and more of people “there not from ’round here”. It’s like you search for that elusive thing, victorious when you find it, only given bit of time it seems everyone else has too.
Yes, commutes can be great, especially if you have your head buried in a good book. Totally agree with you about elusive things…I wonder where it will lead.
This has gone into my top few Richard portraits!
Yay! That’s good to hear.
Great post and image.
Thanks so much, John.
I adore this Richard, very jealous it is not mine!
I’m really glad you like it, Lesley. Thanks for such a great compliment!
Looks like I have some catching up to do, this is gorgeous, I love the old style, scratchy surface textures.
Thanks so much, Cheryl! Pure chance, really – the train window was seriously scratched and where it could reflect it caught the chain-link fence behind me. It was one of those I have to take this shots.
Really quite lovely!
Thanks so much, Jennifer!
Beautiful, very well captured… 🙂
Thanks so much, Drake 🙂