Londinium

For some reason, whenever I walk around in London, I hear a song by Jamie T called “Calm Down Dearest” in my head. It’s a half-hip hop, half-indie song about a long, drunken night out (as a lot of my favorite songs tend to be). I don’t know why I associate it so strongly with London, even though it takes place in the city (he talks about walking drunk down the Strand). Maybe it’s that the propulsive beats make me think of the flow of traffic, the sheer mass of people on the pavements, catching taxis, waiting for buses, thousands upon thousands of people with their places to go, their people to see, their own stories to live out. But despite the beats and the partying, there’s a sadness and a sweetness in the chorus. In the song it’s the narrator trying to console his lover, but to me I think it’s the hard ache of loving a city like this one, one that has so much ugliness and beauty all bleeding together in the great wash of history. You can’t ever know, truly know, a place this huge. But maybe, gradually, you can chip away. You find the good pub, the favorite park. Or, in my case, you end up on the roof of a parking garage in Peckham on a Friday night, sipping cheap white wine in a ridiculously arty clandestine cafe/art space, watching twilight slip out of the London sky, as all the buildings north of the river spark with minuscule white and red flames. I can’t know this place. But leaning on this balcony and looking at the London skyline, I feel that someday I’ll try.

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