LONDON LETTER SEPTEMBER 2019
History, to adapt a phrase, is what happens when you are busy
making other plans. As we enter a decisive week in the whole sorry Brexit saga
there are two possible scenarios, Parliament folds and we see the beginning of
the decline of parliamentary democracy, or Johnson’s crude power bid is seen
off and Parliament emerges both victorious and enhanced.
For the Conservative party these are the end of days.
Certainly, a right of centre, indeed right wing party may emerge, but it will
no longer be the party of the Union, of small c conservatism, of
constitutional conformity and respect for tradition. Johnson’s gamble has
compromised the Queen and placed the Tory party on a collusion course with the Union.
Things can never be the same again. This is no longer just about Brexit but
whether the UK as currently constituted remains intact and what sort of democracy emerges if Johnson gets his
way. For make no mistake, the system, as Carole Cadwalladr has made clear has,
and continues to be, rigged in favour of the populist right. Where Trump and
Orban have gone, Johnson now seeks to follow.
As I write this Parliament has stood up to Johnson’s
bullying tactics and defeated him by a significant margin. He has also lost his
majority as one of his party have crossed the floor of the House and joined the
Liberal Democrats. Moreover the ensuing Commons performance was woeful, which should come as no surprise to those
familiar with his performance at Mayors question time when he governed the
city.
This may all mean nothing as he is capable of factoring in,
indeed of welcoming the destruction of the Tory centre, for he is a divide and
rule man. Much will depend on Corbyn not falling in to the traps that Johnson
will set for him. It is not over yet by any means
.
Recently visited the Olafur
Eliasson ‘In Real Life,*’ at the
Tate Modern with a friend. The stand out element being an installation called
Blind Alley.
I queued for a brief period. The people around me hummed as
multiple mobile phones took multiple pictures. I was surrounded by amusement,
anxiety, anticipation, excitement, this was the ‘community’ of strangers to
which Olafur refers, - in a statement written on a wall before you enter the
exhibition, - to which I now belonged. Then the door opened and I entered an
impenetrable, strange tasting, fog which appeared to have an orange tinge to
it.
I walked forward,
quickly I think, -for I cannot be sure as the whole experience had a dreamlike
quality. I certainly placed some distance between me and the disembodied voices
in my vicinity. It was then that I paused and looked around. The ghostly figure
of an attractive, -she had stood beside me in the queue, - young woman in white
stood momentarily framed, arms held aloft in a pose, a strange dance, her arms
dropping then rising again before being swallowed by the fog and the sound of
laughter. I turned facing forward again putting distance between myself and
others for a moment feeling as if the room had no exit.
When the door came into vision, with the word ‘push’ I felt
a strong desire to remain within this viscous, sweet tasting cloud. But,
reluctantly I left.
I have always liked fog, the essence of which is brilliantly
captured by Jean Paul Sartre in Nausea. Anything feels possible in fog. It
renders the familiar and banal strange, it generates uncertainty and anxiety
and makes fully conscious the sense of movement, immobility and space.
In truth, I had never heard of Olafur Eliasson before now
and it was by pure serendipity that my friend and I stumbled upon the opening
day of the exhibition. It was crowded, very crowded and queuing formed a major
element of the experience, since he exhorted visitors to engage with the pop up
community that the exhibition had created. Given my personality unsurprisingly
my success respecting this part of the experience was extremely limited.
It was the Blind alley that stayed with me in that strange
period following an exhibition, which in our case invariably involves a late
lunch.
Two things differentiate the experience from merely closing
one’s eyes or entering a dark room. Firstly, your eyes are open, you can ‘see.’
Secondly is the presence not of darkness but of vivid bright light. You ‘see’
the light, dense, intense, as opaque as window blinds, for that is all you can
see as you Shuffle slowly forward, experiencing only ‘blind’ movement.
Sensory deprivation can be and sometimes is used as a form
of torture, yet also, as here, as a form of stimulation of ‘entertainment. The
line is a thin one, and indeed on my second visit some weeks later a woman
brushed passed me, clearly uncomfortable with the experience. It is a curious
feature of the human condition, this flirtation with experiences that place us
outside our comfort zone. For myself what I find stimulating is the creativity
inspired by such deliberate derangement of the senses.
*Runs until 5th January 2020.
So now the Notting Hill Carnival is over for another year and autumn hints at its coming
arrival. Boris Johnson speaks, Donald
Trump speaks and we all must build our own shelters against the cloud of flatulence
threatening to engulf us.
AT September 3rd 2019
