.....we stopped in the colonnade,
10And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.The Waste Land.
I am sitting in a coffee shop, just off Trafalgar Square, the sun streams in through the skylights, as i look around me i imagine i am in some continental capital having just arrived, enjoying the sun, not a care in the world, sitting with other carefree denizens of the city. Snapping away, comparing images...
I have been reading and re-reading The Waste Land by T. S. Elliot. And as i read it and listen to it spoken, it strikes me with a shock that we are in the same place that Elliot found himself reflecting on, in the years after 1918.
A bomb has detonated, and we are in that split second before everything is blasted apart. Like scenes from the film Inception, the fabric around us is suspended in mid air between one state and another. it all looks the same but it isn't. Capitalism, is frozen in free-fall. And we stand looking at the damage, taking pictures.
... Son of Man you cannot say or guess,
for you know only a heap of Broken Images"
More than ever, we don't know, we cannot guess, but we see and feel the break, and we don't know what images to believe in anymore... scrabbling around for answers...
I recently read a superb analysis of how we got here, how we got to this point. it is called After Neo Liberalism: Analysing the Present' and is part of something called The Kilburn Manifesto: It is something we all should read and reflect on.. You can find it here:
And if you want to read one man's cultural response to crisis read The Wasteland, and reflect on the many and varied refrences to an 'Unreal City'.. That Square Mile in London which is stuck in mid air, exploded apart, and yet frozen in that moment.. yet to fall to the ground.
After all Elliot should know. He was once a Bank Clerk....
