In Which We Return To The Place Where Nothing Ever Happens

A London Particular

by JESSICA FURSETH

I know what it’s like to live in a place where nothing ever happens, and West London is nothing like that. I know what it’s like to live in a place where you can’t choose your friends because there are only 300 souls in the village and no public transport, and this is certainly nothing like that. There’s a Tube station ten minutes up the road from my flat, and the world is just there. But it’s not East London.

The window in my old bedroom in Hackney, out East, would open onto the tiny, overgrown garden nestled in between the two rows of terrace houses. There were birds and chattering neighbours and the faraway hum of traffic; I’d lie on my bed, which was exactly the same height as the windowsill, with my head out the open window. The feeling was one of a secret patch of quiet. My current living room in Isleworth, out West, has a window wall with a door that opens out to a terrace, which would be nice if only there wasn’t so much traffic.

It takes me an hour to get to Soho now from the Isleworth flat, straight on the Piccadilly Line, crammed in with the crowds from the airport. The quickest way to get into Soho from my Hackney house was to walk down to Dalston Kingsland and get the Overground, and the city was there in half hour flat, via Highbury & Islington. My favourite route though, was to walk to the bus stop on Newington Green, which was about the same distance from the house but took you into a completely different part of the city. The leafy backroads were quiet, surrounded by houses made from that yellow brick you see all over East London. Always so much green, so many flowers.

I moved to West London for a good reason, for the only reason I’d ever have even considered it. The man I married has always lived this end of town, first for being a child here and second for working here. Before we really knew each other I expected the hour-and-a-half trek between our houses, between our London villages, to eventually become too big of an obstacle, but as it turned out, not his time. Marriage is different. Actually, let me rephrase that: marriage means that the relationship is different. It wouldn’t work with just anyone.

Because everything else about getting married has been great, but this West London thing … I thought I’d get over it, but I’m not. I’m really not, I know it’s bratty but I can’t help it. I remind myself that this really isn’t that bad, that none of the issues are actually problems, but still, I can’t shift the feeling that this is all wrong. West London is too slick; I miss the grit. This nostalgia is unusual for me, as I’ve lived in ten houses in London before this one and I’ve never felt homesick for any one of them. I even left a whole country once and never looked back: once I’ve left, that’s it. But as it turned out, not his time.

This is England, and nowhere else is this humid. It’s never more noticeable than when I get off an airplane, having spent time somewhere invariably drier; the humidity descends like a second skin the moment you step onto the jetway. The constant mugginess makes the city feel raw in the winter and sticky in the summer, exaggerating the natural direction of the temperatures. The icy fog seeps into your bones in the winter; it’s a London particular, rough and punishing. In the summer the damp heat does the same, but it’s mellow, reminding is why we love the city the way that we do. 

East London is not that far away. And West London is really not that different. But home is a feeling.

Jessica Furseth is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find her twitter here and her website here. She tumbls here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

Photographs by the author.

In Which We Sleep On Crisp White Sheets

Desert State

by JESSICA FURSETH

Every morning at 7 a.m. I climb over my sleeping husband, pulling the curtains open to let in a stream of dusty light. It is pitch black until then inside this hotel bubble without sound or light, but I'm relieved to get up after yet another night of jetlag-ragged sleep. I tiptoe to the bathroom but nothing in this hotel makes any noise: carpet covers every surface, doors close slowly so as not to slam, furniture is heavy so it won't topple over.

The kettle takes so long to boil I have time not only to prepare the cafetiere, but also to brush my teeth for the full two minutes recommended by the dentist. I listen to the buzzing inside my head while outside the sky is preparing for another day of pale sun in a violet sky. It's the same as yesterday, and it will be the same tomorrow. We are in a desert state, in a brand new metropolis built on a sudden fortune, in a place where everything is shiny yet dull. It's a city but it feels like a suburb, created from a drawing board. Every surface is kept clean yet it's always dusty; the air is so dry that it only takes a moment.

I sit by the window drinking my coffee inside a skyscraper hotel, part of a skyline that looks impressive from a distance. The bay is a few blocks away but I can see the shore because the buildings are just a little too far apart. I've never thought about that before: the distance between city buildings. But now, in this brand new environment that's being built in front of our very eyes, it's impossible not to look at it.

In an old city, like the one I call home, the buildings push into each other, like the people on the street, and everywhere are cafes, shops, and even pavements. Here each trip to the supermarket means manoeuvring a ledge next to a six-lane road, before scaling a sloped brick shoulder that takes you to the shopping mall parking lot. You're not supposed to walk is the thing, not when petrol is this cheap. Half the year it's too hot to move around on foot anyway, with the searing sunshine leaving the outdoors just as inaccessible as if we were in a snowstorm.

In the bed, my husband has pulled the covers over his eyes, fighting against the light pouring in. He got here before me, so he's adjusted to the local time. As much as the early mornings are a novelty for me, I envy his ability to stay up past 10 p.m.

The sun is up and I'm awake, but my body is fighting me. I gain a little more ground every day, but I'm alarmed at how my heart pounds against my ribs, like a warning. It's morning in the desert but my body thinks I've been up all night again, hankering back to a place that's much bolder and louder than this. I sip my coffee as I listen to the sounds trickling in, muffled through the double-glazing; the construction work has already started. For every building in this city there's another one going up, and another road blocked to build a new lane. Inside their air-conditioned white cars, people are blasting the horns in frustration over the delays. Outside, the workers wears cloths around their heads to protect from the heat and dust.

Each day the hotel maid brings more bottled water and provides all fresh towels even though the little card says the towels will only be changed if you put them on the floor. We may be in the desert, but there's little concern for saving water. I wonder if they recycle all these empty water bottles. If I leave the cafetiere unwashed the maid will clean it; at first I felt I shouldn't leave it as it's not their job, but then I forgot a few times and now I think it's really nice not to have to do it myself. I watch how people in restaurants ignore waitstaff who bring them things, wondering how long I'd have to live here before I stop saying thanks.

I stretch my body on the impossibly white sheets, thinking about what I'm going to do today. I have work but my head is full of cotton. I'm only here for the week anyway, having come to see my husband while he's working. I'd never have come otherwise, it's not the sort of place you visit. I was at the airport once for a stopover, just long enough to learn the name of the capital city and figure I'd probably never actually see it.

But circumstances happen and now I'm here, in a padded hotel bubble, inside a not-quite-there skyline. Time feels like it's standing still yet it's slipping away, as before I know it it's morning again and I'm opening the curtains, listening to the slow hiss of the kettle as the water heats up. In the desert, and in this city, there are no pavements, but people are creating sandy paths through the construction sites. Every evening the sun sets, creating a bright spectacle in the sky, and for a moment it’s amazing before it's gone and the sky is a dark, blank slate. Something is happening, but life is elsewhere. 

Jessica Furseth is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find her twitter here and her website here. She tumbls here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She last wrote in these pages about Anya Lsk.

"I Was A Ghost" - Farewell Flight (mp3)

"Everything Changed" - Farewell Flight (mp3)

In Which Anya Lsk Answers Through Disruption

by Anya Lsk

Visual Language

by JESSICA FURSETH

A photographer friend of mine is obsessed with bodies and architecture. How the two interact in the cityscape, the soft curled around the hard, breaking up the clean lines. She creates variations on these images again and again but she doesn’t know why, just that they compel her. Of course, she can’t write that on the pieces of paper that’s handed out at her exhibitions. Art has to have an intent. If none comes to mind you have to make it up, so that is what she does. 

As a words person, I get a kick out of that sort of task. To mull over a feeling, shift it back and forth, distilling the essence like an egg yolk passed between shells to remove the white. To look for the words to convey the emotion, starting with something vague and feeling the rush as the words come together. But for a visual person like my friend, this translation from feeling to vocabulary is a mystery, a task that feels impossible. For her, the answers are all in the clean lines in her pictures, and in the roundness of the bodies as they distract and mess it all up, without which the city would have no meaning. She knows this, how the answer is in the disruption, but this awareness is not literal but in the heart, just a hunch.

by Anya Lsk

Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts. Edgar Allan Poe

These collages are by Anya Lsk. We don’t know much about this artist. Her work echoes across the internet, with all roads leading back to her tumblr, Long Time No See. Not that she wants to see anyone as she ignores all attempts to reach her, but as she makes her work available it seems she does want people to see her.

Her photography is all clean lines and architecture, a bit like my friend’s, but the stars of the show are her collages. One image is injected into another, brutal yet effective, to create layers of meaning where previously there was only one. A tree in the midst of a barren landscape, a ravine between two lovers, a city in a lake. We know that Anya Lsk is an artist and photographer from Moscow, Russia, but that’s about it. Except, of course, what’s in her work.

by Anya Lsk

On the surface, Lsk’s collages do a lot of the interpreting work for us, as the contrasts are so clear. One world inserted into another, creating a an obvious comparison between opposing forces. So why is it so difficult to pin down? A piece of blue sky in the middle of a mountain, those are extremes, sure. But to what end?

I wonder what Lsk wants us to think when we look at her work, knowing that if she’s anything like my friend she probably has no real interest in trying to articulate it at all. Lsk is a picture person and she’s denied us any explanation, which for a words person like me is frustrating. It’s left a void where her intentions should be and we have to fill it with own thoughts. I look at Lsk’s contrasting worlds and there is a feeling there, it nags and eludes and it kills me that I’m not better at doing the thing that I love. But I keep looking for the words, even though I get distracted all the time, by the trivial, by the profound, by my own resistance and attraction to the things I need. 

by Anya Lsk I feel sorry for need, which gives us life and wastes our time. But I am deep down just that way, and it is good. I love being in love. I have wasted so many productive years on relationships that have amounted to time spent. But what is life but time spent? Elizabeth Wurtzel

I read a newspaper feature once, it was maybe ten years ago, which told the story how this woman always cut the ends off the ham before roasting it. She didn’t know why she did this, except that she learnt it from her mother. Her mother was then asked about this habit, but she didn’t know either except, again, that her own mother did it. Then to the grandmother, solving the mystery: the habit of trimming the edges off the ham originated because she had a very small oven.

This story has stayed with me all these years, fascinating me with the thought that one lost detail can provide meaning. How there’s always a reason for things, even if we aren’t aware of it. Lsk may be able to explain why she placed an obelisk emerging from a rainbow into a lake, or it could just be a feeling for her, triggered by something profound, or obscure, or random. Maybe she isn’t paying attention, or she’s behaving perhaps deviously. Somewhere in the muddle there’s a small oven, but Anya Lsk isn’t telling us where it is.

I dealt with it the same way I deal with everything. I just tended my own garden, didn’t pay much attention, behaved - I suppose - deviously. I mean, I didn’t actually let too many people know what I was doing. Joan Didion

Jessica Furseth is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in London. You can find her website here, and she tumbls here and twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about returning from a darker place.

"Distant Relative Salute" - White Denim (mp3)

"Corsicana Lemonade" - White Denim (mp3)

The new album from White Denim is entitled Corsicana Lemonade, and it was released on October 29th from Downtown.