152.  “Is there anybody clearing the tables because I don’t think there is anybody clearing the tables”

Re-starting serious writing again, after a long break.  Transitioning to think like an artist again.

I’m at the great Chiltern Court.  It’s odd to think that John Betjeman came here in a past era.  If he was here now he’d probably mingle with the locals, he seemed a jovial type.   People from the past sometimes seem unreal, like fictional characters from film, books, Parkinson interviews, Wikipedia pages.  I work amongst different celebrities but they are contemporary, their fame and status may be transitory, we don’t know.  Harry and I saw Hugh Sachs at the Almeida theatre a few weeks ago.  Seeing him in TV programmes was just like seeing an actor working from a script.  I don’t know whether he’s especially good or not, it’s hard to tell from Benidorm.  He used to work in the phone room at Moss Empires and was quite miserable then.  He had carrier bags of things all over the place too.

James and I went to the Aldgate Bauhaus degree show this week.  I think I’ve lost the ability to look at art and understand it.  I don’t know if I want it back, I feel empty without it, but free.  I can relate to photography, landscape photography especially interests me.  I want to do more film photography and darkroom printing.  I can write.  I’m not sure I need to be a filmmaker now, once the current endless pieces are finished.  There would be a freedom from needing technology too if I didn’t have to be doing it.  I could set myself rules to not over-edit.  When writing I often feel like Patrick Keiller, observing with a static camera, adding observational diaglogue.  Actually Keiller’s style is perhaps a tiny bit like Betjeman in Metroland, although Betjeman was directed and produced, by someone else presumably.

I’m applying for a different job, well, a secondment.  It’s a more office-like job, weekends free, non-emotional, hopefully, less background distraction.  Maybe it’s a low key soft leaving, it is time to move on.  Really, I resent and can’t forgive that venue for pushing me into such a bleak dangerous situation a few months ago.  I recognised what was happening this time, and it scared me.  I didn’t think things could get like that again.  For self preservation I’m now more detached, aloof.  I feel unsupported, it is time for change.

Being in the west of the city still feels unusual for me, as if I’m on holiday, pretending to be normal but knowing I shouldn’t be here, enjoying covert decadence, hoping no one finds out.  All these people, are they doing the same?  Are they as transient as I am?  Do they ever go to places I know, and feel similarly fraudulent?  It would feel like a wholesale relocation to move over to this side.  I thought again about the Queens Park flats this morning.  I’d live there if I had to but I’m not sure what the point would be.  If I’m relocating make it somewhere worthwhile and exciting.  Glasgow maybe.

There are attractive people here.  At first I thought they were just different, but some are attractive.  Some aren’t.