Mixed up confusion

Sweet Thames Run Softly

It started well.  The day dawned fine, and Grosvenor Square was tranquil, though the strangely wrapped figure of Dwight David Eisenhower outside the Qatari remake of the US Embassy seemed an ominous portent:

Anyway, in one of the Halcyon Galleries on Bond Street I get a glimpse of early Hockney, where the women come and go:

And across the way Bob Dylan exposes his inner Marlborough Man with a little less finesse than Bradford Davey:

And then I work my way through the streets of Soho, past traces of earlier communications, now repositories of today's excess:

I note that Pink seems to be the in colour today, whether on your rickshaw:

Or with a casual glass of wine while trading al fresco:

Or as part of your biker gear:

Or if you are Queen for the day:

Then, where Kipling once lodged, I pass one of my favourite haunts, though now it's hard to get a seat:

With my special dragon bike I take a pedal up the river to Richmond and beyond, where the sun is out:

And a heron fishes, the cycle of life:

And where, in the 18th century, George II lodged Henrietta Howard, his mistress, in Palladian splendour, another cycle of life.

It is hot now, but the Sweet Thames runs softly, 

So I took her sailing on the river (Flow sweet river, flow),

From Putney Bridge to Nine Elms Reach
We cheek to cheek were dancing
Her necklace made of London Bridge
Her beauty was enhancing

Ewan MacColl

But this is where things start to go wrong.  The heat. The after effects of gothic strawberries, the press and confusion of London Town; even if it is French:

We dine upstairs, the food, the drink, the company, the wine, the digestifs.....

It may be my daughter's birthday, but the confusion is beginning to set in, my pulse beat racing, 

Well, there’s too many people

And they’re all too hard to please

Well, my head’s full of questions

My temperature’s rising fast

Well, I’m looking for some answers

But I don’t know who to ask

Bob Dylan

Mixed-Up Confusion

And so it goes......

But then, despite the gentle musings of Ewan MacColl, and the ebb and flow of Old Father Thames (without which, London would not be) I sink into oblivion, exhausted by the heat and confusion of the city. I long to be back in the calm of Norfolk, even though this yearning is a two-edged blade. I trip from MacColl to Edmund Spenser, and look to Prothalamion for solace, those sixteenth century lines like a cool gauze across my brow:

CALM was the day, and through the trembling air 

Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play, 

A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay 

Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair;

And at dawn it is quiet now.  Oxford Street so near a desert:

Tottenham Court Road a pedestrian dream:

And all the fowl which in his flood did dwell 

Gan flock about these twain, that did excel 

The rest so far as Cynthia doth shend 

The lesser stars. So they, enranged well, 

Did on those two attend, 

And their best service lend, 

Against their wedding day, which was not long: 

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

Edmund Spenser

Prothalamion

And, waking, as if from a confused state, I walk through Gordon Square, and hear a voice:

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

Rabindranath Tagore

But I’m walking and wondering

And my poor feet don’t ever stop

Seeing my reflection

I’m hung over, hung down, hung up!

Bob Dylan

Mixed-Up Confusion

*****

The nymphs are departed.

T S Eliot

The Waste Land

*****

To unwind, please see Christy Moore, with 

Sinéad O'Connor and Neill MacColl, singing Ewan MacColl's Sweet Thames Flow Softly....

https://youtu.be/Tgwtl-s0CNI

The Streets of London

 All the lonely people.....

So, what in the world's come over you?

And what in heaven's name have you done?

You've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness

You're out there running just to be on the run

I'm not alone. I'm with a small group of photographers, led by Simon Ellingworth, an international award-winning photographer and educator, who specialises, among other things, in street and black and white photography and available light portraiture. It's a day workshop in London, though I stray a little from the path.....

We start with a drink and a chat, introductions to each other, and some basic ideas on hunting, shooting and fishing - literally and metaphorically.  I fiddle with my camera to check the settings, and then we are off, a pack of photo-coyotes, eager for the kill.

I'm not alone - which is good - but I cannot deny a sense of loneliness, not necessarily in myself (though that's another story) but in many of the subjects I focus on. Some of these shots are candid - I hope no one is offended - but others are with consent. The trouble with consenting adults is that they then may pose and lose their spontaneity.....

Samuel Johnson coined the cliche that when one is tired of London one is tired of life, and William Wordsworth spouted that earth hath not anything to show more fair [than London from Westminster Bridge], but the thing about photography is that it is essentially a lonely and a probing craft. There is little point in "taking pictures" unless there is a point. Pointing and shooting won't kill the beast.

I find myself noticing elements of the loneliness of the city streets.  Above, a young man smokes and looks at his watch - is he expecting someone?  Here a woman sits alone, observed (discussed?) by three young men:

Here a young girl has a book for company - something of a rarity I think:

While just down the street, another girl has no book:

Andy Warhol's take on David Bowie reminds me that they are both dead, a thought that reminds me of life:

And life does go on, and on, and on, whether one is at work:

Or on a break:

On the move:

Or having a drink with a friend:

Or checking your phone while having a drink with a friend:

Or just checking your phone in case there is a friend out there:

Some people may be distracted from their phones for a moment:

While others aren't:

I wonder what Samuel J would say today?  When a man is tired of his phone, he's tired of life?  Or perhaps, When a man is tired of life, he rings someone....?

So, how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Let me take you by the hand

And lead you through the streets of London

Show you something to make you change your mind

I doubt I could change your mind.  Perhaps you're not lonely?  Making a phone call is not a certain indicator of isolation.  But what did we do before?  I used to queue to use phones in bars, and occasionally try via the operator to request a reverse charge call.  When I first ran a school boarding house in 1995, there was acute demand for the one payphone between fifty teenagers.....  And now......

But my images are not only of callers calling.  Simon has asked us to show him the world as he hasn't seen it before - not an easy task, and one that can lead to attempts at artifice, that ultimately lead nowhere. Framing is one gambit:

Blurring another:

Looking for colour swatches, or symmetry:

Picking out curious details:

Or trying to see the mundane in a fresh crop:

Looking for the abstract:

Or asking the Princess of Soho to strike a pose:

Or two:

Or even three:

There is a limit, for me, to how much I feel I can intrude on everyone else's world. I see individuals immersed in their own bubble, and I question what is it that makes me want to portray this?  Every day there are millions, if not billions, of pictures being recorded on smart phones and cameras across the globe, and what do we gain/learn from this?  

In a way I would like to think that somehow this will make us more aware of other people. More "tuned in" to the life of this world. But I am not sure. I love the Bar Italia in Frith Street, but more because I lived in Italy for twenty years, than because of its prices..... Photographing it makes me nostalgic for an Italy, or even a London, that has lost its way now, and quasi disappeared. So is my love of pictures a kind of nostalgia? After all, every picture you take is already in the past.....

Though to get a little bit Zen about it all, the essence of life is the infinitely expanded present, and here is a picture that works on at least one level in that way:  Michael Jackson is still with us, as is the young man with his bike waiting for instructions from another world, though time has moved on and they are already history.....

Back to the mono-polar essence of the smart phone. If nothing else, it makes you look wonderful between the pink and the blue of traditional values......

After the workshop I wander down the South Bank and keep my camera about me.  A woman in the Tate Modern Members' Bar asks me to take her photograph on her phone.  So I ask if I could take her on my camera.  What is this?  Should I have sat down and bought drinks and exchanged numbers?  Or was it just passing ships?  Is the infinitely expanded present all we can grasp?  I don't even know her name....

And then, silhouetted against the starkness of modern life a young man sounds a little Trenchtown, as people dance by, and I shoot him, as a hunter would.  Is that it?  Just another trophy?

Well, how can you ask about tomorrow

When we ain't got one word to say?

So, what in the world's come over you?

And what in heaven's name have you done?

You've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness

You're out there running just to be on the run

John Prine

Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

So, how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Ralph McTell

Streets of London

Thank you Simon