London in Creative Writing: the Tube

Tube Scribblings

The train spits out people, crawling underground like worms, brushing against each other in the rigid space. I walk the other way and take position between the bars.

The crowd is silent and solitary. Thoughts are writhing and U-shaping inside the skulls, but nothing comes out. Sometimes the mind is asleep, protected by the noise of the engine and doors and brakes, not forced to show off some occupation of any kind.

Here where the other minds sleep, mine comes out in stains of ink, tiptoeing on paper clouds, careless of the world underneath. Where Londoners bury their thoughts, here is my writing space. 

Moving Londoners since 1863.

The Original Scroll - And the Only Word I Had Was "Wow"

120 feet went on the typewriter, never stopping tlack tlack tlack of black ghosts hunting paper until they are set free. Three weeks went on the coffee, or what it stood for, bebop rapsody of black liquid down the throat, down the veins, down out of the fingers and into the typewriter, hitting the unexperienced paper with memories of“it”.

51 years after those three weeks, the original scroll runs inside its glass shrine at the British Library, aged and yet untouched in its essence like the road that wrote it. It's the late published, first written version of On the Road, the very novel that opened my life to the Beat Generation, the “ fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars” and “it”.

I hit the road with Robert Frank and “saw the best mind of my generation starving hysterical naked” and followed my own Dean and Neal. Stumbling on my typewriter, I travelled along the road, went out of the map, left the path, lost myself and found the road again. The road is always there, beyond the walls of your mind, behind the bricks and ill-fitting automated lives on the edge of sanity.

Still typing, still on the road, and still looking for “it”.

The manuscript scroll is at the British Library until December 27.

The Devil Wears Prada, Six Years After

KT Tunsell singing “Suddenly I see/ this is all I wanna be” while all the clackers and Anne Hathaway get ready for work at the beginning of The Devil Wears Prada is my motivational hymn. I can't help smiling, my heart warms up and I get so much determination and confidence I could stab a dictator with a stiletto. Maybe it's because the movie is about getting where you want at any cost, or because I became attached to it when I decided that following my instinct was the only way in life.

I found myself watching it again last night (in search of a motivational hymn?) and thinking about how 2006 it is. It's still charmingly timely, but there are a few things that changed in the past few years... or maybe I couldn't notice the discrepancy until I gained some real life experience.

I'm not talking about the revenge of size 6, Valentino's retirement from fashion or the end of the Harry Potter's saga; I am talking about attitudes. The Devil Wears Prada is the story of a girl, with a national prize for student journalism and some  editorial experience at a University magazine, who gets a low paid job at the most famous publication in the world. Her parents feel sorry for her, because she is late with her rent and because she doesn't get to write articles.

Pardon? Paid. Job. Well credited publication. This sounds like heaven to me! Or to thousands of other girls like me, with a Master's degree and very grim options for the future.

In 2012 you don't even look for a job that you're not going to get, you apply for one month internships or one week work experiences with only travel and lunch expenses paid. If you're lucky. And you feel very grateful if you even get one, at any publication, PR agency or crappy press office. Of course then you need a part time job to pay the rent. And anything you manage to get your hands on is temporary, like a cheap perfume. Truth is, you don't expect anything else.

When we all watched the movie the first time in 2006, we felt sorry for poor Andy crying in Nigel's office and thought it was mean of him telling her that “Andy, be serious, you're not trying. You are whining”. Then of course Andy really tries harder and gets where she didn't expect to. The question is: are we still ready to kill ourself trying? Do we still believe in goals or is this status quo turning us all in hopeless automats?

Finally, the no plan B situation. Having a plan B is handy when plan A fails, and we know life rarely goes as planned. But hasn't this cliché become a bit overrated? When asked to fetch the Harry Potter unpublished manuscript, Andy calls Christian Thomphson, who tells her to come up with a plan B and she prontly replies “It's Miranda Priestly we're talking about, there's no plan B, there's only plan A!” Andy's committment to do the impossible to succeed is a bit crazy, but definitely admirable. Are we so determinate to follow plan A, or are we too used to scroll down the alphabet till plan B, C,... Z?

We are all Andys, just in a worse economic situation. We should all fight like pirates and believe like martyrs if we are smart like her. We should be able to deal with Mirandas. Miranda Priestly might be a tough cooky, a boss from hell, the Devil wearing Prada, but what we all want is to have a boss. Or to be one, eventually.

The I Think Project VII

Mr Brainwash

In London, you might be walking towards Tottenham Court Road station on your home, and run into the Beatles looking at you from above a bandidos style handkerchief. A black wall, four coloured handkerchiefs, and four pairs of unmistakingly iconic eyes. Above them, the Queen in her best attire, holding a spray can. I could lie and say I knew exactly what that was, but I didn’t… until I got closer and read “Art Shoe Fri – Sun 1 – 7 pm Free Admission Mr Brainwash”. I turned the corner and followed Kate Moss’ portrait calling me like a siren to the entrance. It’s not until I entered the Old Sorting Office that I remembered the central page of a magazine, fluo paint, Chaplin, “Life is beautiful”…

They’re all there, from Darth Vader to Elvis and Madonna, the icons of pop culture stolen from Andy Warhol and painted over, ironically modified, used to convey messages. “Life is beautiful” “Never, never give up” “Follow your dreams” “Love is the answer” “Art is all over”…

We are familiar with Andy Warhol and his iconisation of pop culture, but Mr Brainwash pop is something else. Where Warhol celebrates, Mr Brainwash is thought provoking, he gets the public’s attention through the icon’s allure, and then he instills an idea into the familiar image. And he celebrates too.

Icons are exaggerated, overlapped, in an ironic tangle of powerful and puzzling. The Beatles use the Kiss’ makeup, and Kate Moss face smiles from a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, Chaplin and Einstein share the same painting.

The Englishness of the exhibition is emphasized through national celebs, black cabs (splashed with pink), and Union Jack coated Campbell Soup cans. The UK is under the magnifier in a funny, slightly sardonic way.

My personal favs are the music black&white portraits made with vinyls. Beatles and Stones sharing a wall and facing Elvis, while Dean Martin’s version of Buonasera Signorina caresses colours, visitors and fame.

This is not a report. This is my pleasant surprise while discovering that the past is not sucking up the future, but newness can still be pursued, in art, thought and society. Ideas are not dead, brainwashed, prefab. Mr Brainwash is here to tell us that “If everybody thought the same nothing would ever change”.

One Cake a Day – Brighton Edition

My stay in Brighton was only two days long, but it was literally as sweet as the four days cake olympics in Dublin. The motto is “more chocolate, less boredom”, and will soon be followed by “more sport, less heart and weight related problems”. This post brings me back to my childhood dreams of Hänsel and Gretel's marzipan house. I strongly believe the Grimm Brothers inspired dark beauties such as the Schwarzwald and the Sachertorte.

Choccywoccydoodah

How much chocolate can you imagine in the same plate? Well, they'll give you more! Sit on a heart-shaped couch, listen to catchy Disney classics, from the Jungle Books swing to the Aristocats's jazz, and forget calories count. A lavish portion of chocolate surrounded by chocolate and topped with chocolate is at the basis of the menu. And if raspberry finishings and cream are the guests of honour at this cocoa feast, just indulge in epicureism for a, alas too brief, moment. Then visit the shop at 24 Duke Strret to admire the chocolate sculptures (as seen on TV) or buy some edible souvenirs.

Not to miss: Choccywoccy cake.

Where: 27 Middle Street, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1AL 

Angel Food Bakery

The name refers to the fact that their cupcakes probably come from Heaven. And they sell the ingredients and the materials to realize them, and also teach you how to bake them... real pro guardian angels! The place isn't big, but once you're lost into tasting, nothing else matters. Take the cooky and cream cupcake for example: you start with an Oreo on top, and who doesn't love Oreos? The cream is consistent but not heavy, delicious but not too sugary, and if you think the base is the most boring part, you'll be surprised by a chocolate touch. Looks like the staircase to Heaven is paved with cupcakes!

Not to miss: Cooky and cream cupcake.

Where: 20 Meeting House Lane, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1HB

A Curious Invitation

The Last Tuesday Society's two day Halloween mask ball will launch A Curious Invitation by Suzette Fields. Contents: the forty greatest parties in literature.

How fun would it be to sneak into a novel right when the party starts, to leave after a few pages and enter another one, and then another, and another one more. I suppose we could at least try a few, starting from some Classics… shall we?

Still from Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby (2013)

The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald
"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."

The Twenties were pretty much about partying: Charleston, embedded dress, no financial crash on sight and Prohibition Laws, which just made drinking even more fun. Gatsby embraces all of this by throwing all night long parties in his luxurious villa. I honestly think this is what makes the book: who the hell cares about the fact that he did all of this to get close to his beloved Daisy, that she doesn’t leave her cheating husband and that he dies more or less as a consequence of protecting her? Nobody really, but we all remember the champagne, the tux and the Rolls-Royce as if we were there.

The Master and Margarita by Mihail Bulgakov

“ 'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.

'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!’ ”

The most fascinating host in the history of literature is the Devil, here disguised as Professor Woland; which counts as a costume and makes him even cooler. The guests are all deceased sinners, they don’t show up before midnight and the orchestra is directed by Strauss. What is very very wicked is the fact that this scene was inspired by a real Spring Festival held at the residence of the US Ambassador in Moscow. Literally a hell of a party.

Illustration by Lynn Hatzius

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thakeray

"I have heard from ladies who were in the town at the period, that the talk and interest of persons of their own sex regarding the ball was much greater even than in respect of the enemy in their front."

What should you do if you live in Brussels and it is the eve of the battle of Waterloo? Get wasted and dance! This is what the Duchess of Richmond thought, and Thackeray can’t but tailoring this to the story of socialite Becky Sharp. Too bad the party was crashed by news of battle.

Macbeth by Shakespeare

“Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling, Showed like a rebel's whore.”

It could be written a whole article only mentioning parties in Shakespeare. It is quite logic, since he wrote more than the average person could possibly read in a lifetime. My all times Shakespeare’s favourite is Macbeth and I’d like to call this episode ‘dinner with the murderer’. What is worse than an uninvited guest? A dead uninvited guest, whose assassination you ordered. So when Macbeth joins the banquet, he finds sitting at his place Banquo’s ghost. The play also constitutes the first written record of the word ‘assassination’ in the English language. The devil’s in the detail.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“It’s always tea time!”

Madness, a nice hat and nonsense conversations: the Mad Tea Party is the party. Timeless is the best of times.