From here I moved west along the Whitechapel Road and across the opening artery of Commercial Street which leads up to Hawksmoor’s famous Christchurch. I crossed over the road that forms part of a zero around the Algate East station – the island which houses St. Boltoph’s church – and then onto and along Aldgate. I took a dip down off Aldgate and onto London Street, a quiet road, particularly on a Sunday when the the City Of London is calm and business is on hold.  Down here is Fenchurch Street Station. Its an odd sight: a grand building nestled among bland, 20th century offices of glass and steel.  I’d come here for a purpose: the site sits on a leyline.

Christopher Wren’s grand designs for a post-fire London in 1666 were buried in bureaucracy and never came into fruition. However, significant evidence does remain. Presumably through Cabbalist reasoning, Wren used the Jewish distance of 2000 cubits to place significant sites. For example, the eastern city boundary from ‘the centre-point’ of St Paul’s, at a distance of 2000 cubits, is St Dunstan In The East – a church for which Wren also designed the spire. Another 2000 cubits beyond that point lies Wellclose Square, a once exclusive estate and a site of pilgrimage for many London occultists and alchemists. The significance of the 2000 cubits is that it was the distance from the walls of Jerusalem to the Mount Of Olives (roughly two thirds of a mile) and is the farthest a Jew may travel on the Sabbath.

This suggests Wren had plans for a ‘New Jerusalem’ that he never had the chance to construct and that Wellclose square is the same distance from (Wren’s) City Of London as The Mount Of Olives was from Jerusalem. On the leyline running from St Paul’s directly out to Wellclose Square, roughly three quarters of the way along, is Fenchurch Street station. Hawksmoor’s St Mary Woolnoth church also sits directly on the ley line a quarter of the way out.

Drawn out on a map, Shape Two surprised me. I had unwittingly traced the shape of a horse head in my steps.

The Shape began close to a ghost road in East London. Ostensibly, the junction at the southern tip of Kingsland Road is a crossroad. Except it isn’t. The junction is the convergence point of four roads: Kingsland Road, Old Street, Shoreditch High Street and Hackney Road. But, in fact, there is a phantom fifth: a small invisible right turn leads Kingsland Road into Old Street: Ophir Road. As far as I know, its naming is obscured, perhaps even unmarked on street level, but the ever roving Google Eye discloses the past as simply as the present.

If that is not intriguing enough – that an ancient road can exist but not not be seen – then its name offers a further enigma. Ophir is a biblical name for an unidentified region. The name is linked with King Solomon’s Mines: a mythical treasure trove purported to exist in Zimbabwe, Pakistan and China, among others.

From Kingsland Road I took Ophir Road, unknown to me at the time, and my perambulation – and Shape One - began. I hadn’t planned the shape, and in fact I wasn’t conscious that the shape had begun either. I was heading to the Artbook Bookshop on Pitfield Road and as soon as I turned the street corner I could see the bookshop was closed. A small panic arose, subdued only by reaching the sign in the window. I would have to wait a further  forty minutes until it opened and it was then I decided on my derivé.

I crossed Old Street diagonally, to the corner of Tabernacle Street, where a nondescript religious brick monument stands opposite another, doomed, brick bastion which holds a far more powerful and contemporary resonance: The Foundry. Along Tabernacle and right into Leonard Street, sidling beside the church nestled among the bars, graphic designers and architects. Along one side of the church prose had been sprayed on a long jet-black construction hoarding. The silver sprayed words disjointed, dodging and weaving the fly posters. It read:

It finished abruptly, the final word missing. Perhaps the author ran out of time. Perhaps the author was caught.

What followed was a series of loops. I walked in a circle around the wheel at the crossing of Leonard Street and Paul Street, and then I took another loop around the old Church and back onto Leonard Street to head East. I crossed  Great Eastern Street (presumably named after the 1862 railway company) and up Charlotte Road to cross Old Street and into Hoxton Square. There I made a full anti-clockwise circuit.

On Coronet Street, behind the Lux bar, stands The Vestry Of St Leonard Shoreditch Electric Light Station with its Latin motto carved in stone:

E PULERE LUX ET VIS (‘Out of the dust, light and power’).

Over time since 1895 it burnt refuse to create steam which powered a generator for electricity. Only the shell remains now. Inside, students use the huge chambers to learn the circus trade. From here, I sauntered up a Hoxton vein (Pitfield Street) into the heart of Hoxton, past The George & Vulture pub, past the Habidashers Alms house, bombed in World War I.

By now the bookshop had to be open. So I moved south down Pitfield Street and Shape One ended.

Saturday evening. From its wounded, brutalist, concrete core, long forgotten memories began to seep into the air like invisble vapour. Curious dogs approached, barking and snarling. Pedestrians walked close by and were visited by phantom memories of sun-blazed mornings, the rain-soaked windscreens of car crashes and of the tides of dark nights.

Sunday morning. It was all over. The lamp-post had split, fallen and shattered across the road.

I became aware that London emits a strange and captivating distress call: an ambient melancholic transmission. Not necessarily just to entice, but to hypnotise and draw in, like the Odyssean sirens. For thousands of years people have been compelled to London. Exactly why? Perhaps initially for the chase of riches, excitement, work and success. But, only then does the collusion begin: a process which takes years. I had felt this from far, far away. London is perhaps a dying star in its own cosmos: its gravitational pull luring passing objects into a tight orbit. It’s mantle formed from millenia of trodden grime and clay and the spectacular fires that have razed the city in the past now form its burning core.

Two months ago I returned, and I am immersed both physically and literally by London once more. As an introduction to a biographical quest, Merlin Coverley’s ‘Occult London’ served as an intriguing segue to the tome which is Peter Ackroyd’s ‘London: A Biography’, which I’m currently reading. I am also keenly following the developments of John Rogers and Nick Papadimitriou’s Ventures In Topography project on Resonance FM, and generally scrounging for appealing historical detail online. I am aware that this type of interest has become quite fashionable, but I don’t really care about that. I would argue its a cultural phenomenon of nostalgia created from the wealth of information online, but paradoxically, by a desire to reengage with our physical surroundings and explore them. Others can probably explain it better…

I’d like this particular blog entry to serve as an introduction to a series of posts which explore London’s gravity and depth by weaving a thread through (post)modernity, esoterica, history and occultism. I have no idea how this will work exactly, but as my travels have taught me, if you want to learn something, you must go on a journey.

Rockets, nuclear weapons, are auto-destructive.

Auto-destructive art.
The drop drop dropping of HH bombs.
Not interested in ruins, (the picturesque).

Auto-destructive art re-enacts the obsession with destruction, the pummelling to which individuals and masses are subjected.
Auto-destructive art demonstrates man’s power to accelerate disintegrative processes of nature and to order them.
Auto-destructive art mirrors the compulsive perfectionism of arms manufacture—polishing to destruction point.
Auto-destructive art is the transformation of technology into public art.
The immense productive capacity, the chaos of capitalism and of Soviet communism, the co-existence of surplus and starvation; the increasing stockpiling of nuclear weapons—more than enough to destroy technological societies; the disintegrative effects of machinery and of life in vast built-up areas on the person…

Auto-destructive art is art which contains within itself an agent which automatically leads to its destruction within a period of time not to exceed twenty years. Other forms of auto-destructive art involve manual manipulation. There are forms of auto-destructive art where the artist has a tight control over the nature and timing of the disintegrative process,and there are other forms where the artist’s control is slight.

Materials and techniques used in creating auto-destructive art include: Acid, Adhesives,Ballistics, Canvas, Clay, Combustion, Compression, Concrete, Corrosion, Cybernetics, Drop, Elasticity, Electricity, Electrolysis, Electronics, Explosives, Feedback, Glass, Heat, Human energy, Ice, Jet, Light, Load, Mass-production, Metal, Motion picture, Natural forces, Nuclear energy, Paint, Paper, Photography, Plaster, Plastics, Pressure, Radiation, Sand, Solar energy, Sound, Steam, Stress, Terra-cotta, Vibration, Water, Welding, Wire, Wood.

Gustav Metzger, “Manifesto Auto-Destructive Art” (London, to March t960), in Metzger at AA (London: Destruction/Creation, 1965).

Today I went to a modern art gallery in which, on one floor, an employee of the gallery had been given the opportunity to curate his own exhibition. Whilst I was in the room, a group of high school students where being given an introduction to the work by a different member of staff. The room was full of graffiti. On one wall directly opposite the entrance to the room was a full size piece of ‘writing’ – classic style typography in 6 foot high letters. It was sprayed directly onto the plaster, but this was the only piece unframed. Around the rest of the room were other smaller pieces, some on poster size paper stuck onto the wall, some on post-it size paper, but mostly they were framed. I have always liked graffiti, the variations of styles, the colours, the words, the typography, the way a well sprayed picture easily rivals anything done with paint on canvas. The work in here was nowhere near the quality I have seen either outside in places like Marseilles or Barcelona, or in magazines or books like On The Run or Spraycan Art, but it was accomplished enough to be interesting to take a look at briefly. But I was far more interested in hanging about to hear how a group of 16 year old boys would have this art explained to them, and also the broader question of “what the fuck is going on?”. Why is graffiti being framed and put in galleries, and conversely, why did the National Gallery in London run a show where copies of classic paintings where printed in high quality and put up on street walls? Why is art inside out? It was all OK when the YBA’s were at it….wasn’t it?

Some time ago I listened to a great Philosophy Bites episode with Derek Matravers on what constitutes a work of art. Its clearly a huge, grey, financially motivated subject and I don’t intend to go in-depth here. Though part of what he spoke about was interesting in relation to graffiti. Matravers made the point that what ties something modern and controversial like Tracy Emin’s ‘Bed’ to the art world is that she is institutionalised as an ‘artist’: taught at an appropriate and ‘recognised’ art college, and therefore whatever she claims to be art, as an artist, makes it art. There’s a touch of Midas about this, clearly. Its certainly not a watertight argument and Matravers wasn’t arguing in its favour, but it seems to make a lot of sense. It means artworks are defined by their legacy and not by their popularity and it makes a strong case for the idea that modern art has been completely commodified: if you train to be a watchmaker then that’s what you ‘do’, and that’s what you’re paid to do. If you’re an artist, likewise. Though perhaps its always been like that – Michaelangelo was paid to paint too.

Today I was reminded of Matravers point whilst flicking through some cards in the gallery shop (more commodification). These cards were typical gallery shop fare: random collections of images from the history of art to modern day, quant though clichéd, possibly because they were pictures of art removed from context. These cards particularly so, because they were images by Banksy. Here was someone’s art photographed and reduced to the simplicity of a gift card, and after all his hard work ‘establishing’ himself. Banksy didn’t go to Goldsmiths. He doesn’t know Saatchi (well, he might now). All his hard work, having to chip away at the artworld from the outside. Having not flowed into the artworld by the correct channels and by befriending the right people, here was someone who had to personally take their work into art galleries and hang it themselves, ostensibly as a publicity stunt, but actually, because there was no other way to publicly transform from the lowly street artist to the dizzy heights of a successful artworld artist. Not only did he do that, but the work he chose to use was work which gleefully sabotaged classic paintings. Again, purported to be a ‘statement’, but actually it was his only option.

The schoolboys at the exhibition were told that “this kind of work” is “all about emotions” often created by “people your age”. And that was it. The gallery employee, though confident and experienced, really had no other way of describing the graffiti and seemed to be quietly wondering why it was in the gallery herself. So was I. She began to rely on the timeless avoidance technique of describing everything objectively instead – “the work is 12 by 12 inches and you can still see the undercoat of paint if you look at the sides”. This to me, was strikingly similar to putting works of art onto gift wrapping, cards and mugs: awkward and out of place. The very ‘non-establishment’ concept that still surrounds graffiti, perpetuated mostly by the media rather than practitioners, is completely at odds with being framed, placed in a gallery and needing explanation to the age group who created it.

To attempt to answer my own question, perhaps its galleries themselves that have become a commodity, not the art inside them. They’re like airports now, with their expensive shops, their expanses of glass and concrete, security guards watching, and their “walk here” and “do not touch” signage.

One particular interview that has stuck with me was about Bethnal Green station. This is because it was my local station at the time I watched the programme. On 3 March 1943, amidst a period of WWII when more civilians were dying than soldiers, a mass panic ensued at Bethnal Green station which was doubling as a public bomb shelter. At 8.17 the air raid alert sounded and 1500 people fled into the station which already contained between five and six hundred people. At 8.27 a local anti-aircraft launcher fired rockets into the sky, which began a mass panic amongst people on the street. Those trying to get into the station believed the bottleneck at the entrance was caused by people being refused entry and so they began to push.  Moments later and people were being crushed to death, their screams masked by the sound of gunfire and rockets. 173 men, women and children were crushed to death, and a further 14 men, 33 women and 15 children were seriously injured. Ironically, no bombs had even fallen from the skies within 2 miles of the station. This was the psychology of an homicidal crowd: ‘every man for himself’.

In Ghosts On The Underground, a member of staff at Bethnal Green station recalls hearing screams of women and children coming from the platforms, but I think the event that created the alleged haunting is far more sinister: what can happen if you’re caught amongst a crowd of people all trying to save themselves.

Soon after the programme I went down to the station to see if I could find a commemoration. There is a relatively small  plaque over the south east entrance which you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it. In hindsight, this seems to mirror the attitude of the inquiry after the tragedy, which was hampered by having to remain almost secret, lest ‘the enemy’ find out and exploit panicking crowd psychology to their advantage.

The point is, everything needs an edit. We edit our lives all the time. We edit what we say before we say it. Some people are better at that than others. A good edit is important. Online, where many things are perpetually in “beta”, where many things are apparently just a stream of consciousness; where newspaper clippings are riddled with typos, blogs have unchecked facts and photographs are emptied off a camera onto Flickr, is the art of reviewing, editing and crafting finished works under threat in an attempt to keep up with the pace?

I wonder because I’m prone to haste and impatience myself. Generally getting something finished is such a painful process – putting the “final touches” to something. But that’s probably why its the most important part of doing anything. Its the stage of creating something I should make more time for but never seem to. The perfect place to examine everything, the chance to run it back and forth and ask questions.

Despite being horrendously overpriced, I have quite an affection for the London Underground. I think because its so old: running on WWII technology and how it floods in heavy rain. Its so amazing that various parts of it were used as a huge bomb shelter in the wars. I’m forever impressed by the complicated yet grand, iconic status of the Tube map. I even love the strangely muted acrid stench underground, the mild claustrophobia, the dirt, the mice on the tracks, the sense of Victorian ghosts wandering silently about. I love that wild howl the trains make in the tunnels and the fact that some of them bounce about like old roller coasters. I can very easily remember the taste of the hot air rushing in through an open window in summer. There is no feeling quite like being alone on an underground platform late at night. But mostly I love the fact that being down underneath the Big Smoke reminds me of everything above it and all the experiences I have had there, and will again!’s

From the Wikipedia entry on 2010: “According to David Crystal, author of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, the change of pronunciation to “twenty X” will occur in 2011, as “twenty eleven”, explaining that the way people pronounce years depends on rhythm, rather than logic. Crystal claims that the rhythm or “flow” of “two thousand (and) ten”, beats that of “twenty ten”, but the flow of “twenty eleven” beats “two thousand (and) eleven”.”