[Music: Peter Tong’s Hot Mix released on July 9 2023 – Renegade (Adam Ten & Mita Gami Remix)]
Traffic is worse that ever in London. At first glance the choice between throwing luggage into a taxi vs dragging it in the underground to change trains 3 times before reaching our destination with approximately the same travel time seemed like an easy choice- clearly the taxi for the win. Not the case- the taxi ride took us 1 hr 40 min to get from Heathrow to The Shard. I highly encourage taking the train unless it’s really a time of day where there is definitely no traffic.
The only pro to having taken a taxi that day is the glass ceiling in our taxi- which I never had been in one before like that. It was a small amount of joy to look up and above at the stream of architecture rising into the sky. I imagine what it must be to drive through the city, lying flat on your back, with nothing blocking your view- I’ll work on this tourism concept. 😉
The best walks I’ve been on exploring any city are certainly the ones at night- the deeper into the night the better. “Even if you are not ready for the day, the night cannot last forever” – a quote from Kölsch’s set with Joris Voorn closing Printworks set (Mar 22 2023) – but when in the night, it feels like I’m the closest to being at the center of myself. This particular walk was with a friend who by coincidence was overlapping just one day in London and we caught up on the way to my first visit to Ministry of Sound.
I wanted to go to both Ministry of Sound and Fabric on this trip so SJRM it was on Friday night. The hilarious story here is that I decided on Joris Voorn for Fabric on Saturday and I had no real idea who Joris was except it was an All Night Long. Low and behold I discover he’s great friends with Kölsch (hence b2b noted above) and I’ve since then been turned into a huge fan- this discovery is really just one wave of a journey the past few months that I’ve been swept into about new music… really a constant process of learning.
Back to the purpose here, the green light of this building caught my eye enough to wander closer- I was curious about the material of the stairwell and how the lighting was being created. Turns out the material was a wavy textured thick plexiglass type and the green light was actually for standby- green turned to white based on detection of motion.
[Sidenote: I couldn’t have been more excited for Joris and 3.5 hrs into the set, during his current famous song Transmission, suddenly the sound is cut and the lights turn on and Joris leaves the stage. I’m on the balcony but below in a few minutes some police show up and everyone is confused. With another 4.5 hrs to go in this All Night Long everyone is in despair as we get pushed out of the venue with no explanation. Turns out someone died, likely from drugs- making the extensive security entering Fabric a complete joke. I’ll never forget this moment, or the acquaintances made (James the rugby player keeping me company as we look for new dance spots and the long sunrise walk from Vauxhall – photos in block above from said walk; the giant crew of recent graduates all friends from South Africa now moved to London; the architect from Turkey or Lebanon). All I know is that if any dj is playing an All Night Long – it’s going to be worth it, death be damned.]
This corridor from London City Hall, past PwC and Ernst & Young (heading back from Tower Bridge to The Shard) was a lovely alternative to the Queen’s Walk- much less crowded and filled with interesting reflections (literal and metaphorical) and intersections. When it comes to spaces, it’s not the positive but also the negative that matters. What is the hierarchy here? The eyes see what the mind knows, but the mind is relative in the end.
What an entertaining series of random views from London. There’s always been something about this city that I’ve needed to connect to and slowly but surely I’m digging deeper into what it would be like to be part of it. I’ll never know what it could have been in 2002 when I was accepted to AA. What I do know is that there are places in the world that mean something so deeply to me that my mind nor my eyes will ever understand but know.
— Full Gallery —
ofallthespaces 