Saturday, June 05, 2021

obviously notes I wrote while in London sometime, but when and why???!!!

Michael Raedcker, Beam (2000) https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/michael_raedecker

Tooting - God Only Knows playing (fr radio) Quiet except that + crazy old skin (?) saying 'rock it out baby' over + over. Bought tasteless coconut drink + Guardian. Went to Colliers Wood to look at 157 Robinson.* Numerous wrong turns; didn't recognise it at all. Memories from this house - AL 'nobody mention bottoms'** - but over road - I decided not to take tube back because it is so boring + hot. This morning slept fitfully woke looking about 70 but scrubbed up ok. Has been warm since I've been up (abt 2 1/2 hours). Went to a LIDL store - didn't know what it was - just a cheap supermarket - nappies, milk additives, alcohol. Now ABBA's Mama Mia. I shd read the Gdian. Mama Mia has made old man say over + over 'want a smack in the head?' 3 private school (?) kids in black black suit uniforms regd him nervously. Variations on 'what, smack in the head?' And now 'He's got no hair anyway has he? Fuckin' baldie'. Now 'Only 16'. Worried abt laptop. Flat seems very secure. Signals change, I can hear something in the distance - trebly - Grassy edge to platform. Very quite considering it is just below v. busy st - feels a bit like stepping back in time - 

Steep cutting - covered w/some kind of ivy + bramble - god knows how many millions of ha London has of this space - shd invent tube houses - + god knows how many bodies are buried or things hidden there - streatham. 

Stopped at a rooftop covered in grass + weeds an empty rusted barrel and a small brick hut covered in graffiti . It wd be great if I cd see a little face in there, someone was secretly living in it.

I move to another seat + can see right in. Furniture pulled away from walls. Some rags, an old fridge, newspaper. It looks like someone was squatting in there once.  It's glary in the carriage hard to see. Someone has started to paint the walls brown w/a roller. 

Move off + v. shortly came to the river. Creep over the bridge. My forehead twitching. London Blackfriars. Long piece of driftwood.

Walk for ages around Thames trying to find Millennium Br. but despite all signs to it it seems there is no actual way through - just lots of odd road tunnels and disused/ partially dismantled forecourts to high rise office blogs, and silly churches that were presumably once on the edge of the river, w/silly names like St Andrews of the Wardrobe.*** Finally I get across and seek out Bermondsey St. Everyone I pass sounds like an Australian tourist.

Michael Raedecker - acrylic and thread canvas.****

* This is where I lived for a few months in 1986

** A joke occasionally made by housemate. 

***I thought this was the dumbest joke I had ever made, but I looked it up and basically it's true, only it's St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe. I shit you not. 

**** seems to be an extra note unconnected to the rest. 

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