In Love with London

If life is a giant map, various points make up the constellation of our lives, big or small. Some points shine brighter than others or radiate to a different hue. Some are large, some are small, some loud, some melodic, some comfortable, some harsh, and everything in between. I lived in London for five years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which made up most of my twenties. It is a particularly multi-layered, vibrant, fascinating point where I experienced much personality development and healing.

Moving to London had been a long time in the making. After graduating high school in Boston, I went to Los Angeles for college. The academic part soon became irrelevant and petered out after a few months. I spent three years moving back and forth between Boston and LA. It was during my final stint in LA that I felt called to go to London. I was coming to accept that I didn’t seem to be able to make LA work. Living with my friend in South Pasadena, I was unemployed and without a car.  I walked to the library most days and looked at books on art. I was fantastically inspired. Art seemed to me to be the perfect way of explaining everything. It was the language of the cosmos. My soul latched onto it like we were opposite poles of a magnet.

I researched schools in earnest. Of course, location is always relevant. I narrowed it down to Savannah, Georgia, USA, or London, UK. Both seemed to be exceptional for differing reasons, but in the end, Europe won out over the USA. I located an American school that appeared to take pretty much anyone. I arrived in the coveted W1 postcode that summer to study Interior Design.

Of course, that London no longer exists. London is not unique in that; nowhere is the same as it was in 1988. The change there has been deep and broad. I grieve for the version of that city that no longer exists, but I am glad I got to experience it so thoroughly. It formed who I am on a fundamental level.

Life was magical. London was the center of everything. Where Los Angeles had been an improvement over Boston, London left Los Angeles in the dust. It was a WORLD capital. That was palpable to me, and I loved it.

Art was everywhere. It was in the beauty of the buildings, the smoothness of the sidewalk stones, the elaborate iron gates that appeared out of nowhere, the shops along the street, and the clothes people wore. There was an explosion of museums representing every conceivable expression of art and culture. There were the expected world-famous museums housing paintings from all points in history. Those did not particularly interest me. I adored then, and still do, the Victoria and Albert Museum, champion of design in so many of its forms. I got lost in the vast expansive building on pretty much every visit. It’s also hard to find things you’ve seen before and may like to see again. One such instance was when I stumbled upon a collection of Italian coffee related items from the 1960s. Yes, there were enough of those to make up a large collection. I stood there, staring at case after case of sleek, imaginative coffee pots and cups. I was flabbergasted and overjoyed that such design was recognized and celebrated by a world-renowned institution.

The Royal Academy was another favorite. It held quickly rotating, well produced exhibitions, such as retrospectives of Salvador Dali (nude genitals feature surprisingly often) and Henry Moore, carver of sheep and women with head lumps. Their annual student exhibition was so extensive you could barely see it in three hours.  Then there were totally fringe things. I saw the performance artist Leigh Bowery at the peak of his fame. It was so peculiar as to warrant a lot of time there, as you wonder if it’s going to change or if you will suddenly start to get it. For the most part, he languished in a series of large tanks, atop elaborate chaise longues, wiggling his fingertips. There was a television crew outside the doors as I left. They shined a light in my face, shoved a microphone towards me, and asked what I thought. I said,

“I thought it was interesting, and quite funny.” The humor didn’t seem to be intentional, so I wondered if my comment would be cut for saying it. In terms of appearance, I was glad to be wearing a sort of classy hand-me-down sweater from my mother. She had quite the style sense in the 1960s. It was three shades of warm brown, joined by a geometric pattern.

Then there was the moving parkour of riding double decker busses. At that time, all the buses were open in the back. You could get on and off there and go up and down the stairs. There was one handrail in the open space. Inevitably, the lure became how far you could push the envelope in daredevilry.

I learned some important rules of physics. I learned that running from a moving surface (the street) onto a stationary surface (the bus) was relatively easy and never resulted in injury. The opposite, however – from a stationery surface onto a moving one – was darned tricky. One day on Regent Street, I leapt onto the pavement and fell flat on my face. My pride was hurt most of all, but I also had long scrapes along both shins. My black tights (US: pantyhose) ripped, which created a bloody red smear in the middle of dead white skin, bordered by the black tights. It looked cool and kind of punk, so I left it like that for the whole day.

London was also a great place to be poor. I mean this in the way that people often are in their 20s, when you have no way to earn much money and socializing takes priority. When I was in LA, I spent a lot of time pursuing off-the-beaten-track income opportunities (well, d’uh). There was often an assumption that you had either a cell phone, or a car, or a computer. To not have the necessary object meant missing out on that opportunity. In the London scene I was in, no one had anything. It was ludicrous to think you would. The biggest expense was a tube pass. (Mine was monthly, Zone 3, for much of my time there.)

The standard living arrangement was a bedsit. Cheap weekly rent on a room with a bed in it, shared kitchen and bathroom, and a pay phone in the hall. Heat and hot water were obtained by putting 10p coins into the meter in your room, or the bathroom. You may or may not ever meet the other residents. It was perfect. I feel sad that bedsits don’t exist anymore.

I do not consider myself a nostalgia person. I have always been firmly forward-looking. My recollections of that London are a fascinating journey to a point in history, mine and the world’s. The past, present, and future are merely points in time and space, in a glorious, never-ending web.