Tearing the city at the seams #15 - Around the city in a day - A Circumnavigation of London

It is common parlance that to walk in circles is as maddening as it is pointless. The familiar conceit in any narrative regarding being lost in a remote landscape is the rediscovery of your own tracks, eradicating any notion of progress having been made.

With this in mind I found myself, with a week's leave from the usual working routine, pondering the notion of a radial walk around London, the idea being that the everyday contemplation of the city could be decidedly unraveled when viewed from a circular prospective.

In general, we are entranced by the notion of destiny, of a definite and eminently reachable point to which we spend our lives moving in a more or less linear fashion towards. The idea of simply traversing in circles is unpalatable, the antipode view of progress, yet has the capacity to be perversely compulsive.

In 'The Truce' Primo Levi, on making his monumental journey round Eastern Europe having been liberated from Auschwitz en route to his home in Turin, upon reaching Bratislava and being (relatively speaking) so close to the start of his epic journey, he wondered 'would we complete the circle...[and] begin another vain, exhausting circuit of Europe?'

The plan was to set out west from my flat in Brixton and complete a day-long circumnavigation of the city, closing the circle by arriving back at my flat from the eastern approach.

It struck me that very few people, if any, must complete such exaggerated routes as part of their day-to-day relationship with the urban environment. The sheer pointlessness of doing a circular walk on such a scale was what captivated me, as well as my stern conviction that this was as defiant a means as any of subverting the vice-like clench of urban routine, the short spurts of sporadic walking that punctuate our typical day so tightly mandated by fiscal and time imperatives.

This was to be my rebellion-of-sorts against the commercialisation of the city space, by forcing it to adapt to my own will, when so often it is cogently the case that the opposite applies.

As a repudiation of the strict time pressures forever imposed by life in the city, I decided to re-imagine the city as a clockface, on which, starting out from '6' I would conquer the city hour by hour as I progressed from Brixton to Putney through to Islington at the 'hour mark' and ticking round again via Shadwell and Southwark.

As far as I was concerned, I was merely fulfilling the urban walking directive of Joseph Paxton, the designer who, in 1855, proposed the building of a Great Victorian Way. This grand infrastructure project was to be a 10-mile covered arcade loop around most of central and west London, incorporating pedestrians, shops, hotels and other businesses; a vastly ambitious proposal that would have had the impact of Baron Haussmann on Paris, until it was shelved in favour of building the infinitely more useful (if less spectacular) sewer network system.

Setting out at 7.30am, the ice-blue sky thinning and thawing as the sun gained in confidence, I realised that I would also gain a unique perspective on a 'day in the life of a city', crunching my way along pavements behind dog walkers en route to Clapham Common, and commuters hurrying to keep pace with their regimented schedules. Free from thinking about such routine, I was able to view the city from a different patina, as it swiftly yawns into life, almost on a biological level as a complex interweaving network of organisms locking into action once more after the night's interregnum.

Descending onto the Putney embankment I admired the restrained and modest skyline that has been so far maintained in this riverine portion; as yet comparatively free from the pestiferous encroachment of Lego-block apartments and buildings that follow ‘statement’ rather than form.

All the way from the Boat Club to the Hammersmith Bridge I became embroiled in an initially humorous but eventually infuriating overtaking game with a band of middle-aged women out jogging. Harangued by a gangly and high-spirited motivational coach of around my age, the women would jog for 40 or 50 metres before one would give in to the lactic strain and, as though they were mountaineers roped together, drag the others to a weary stop.

At this point I would gain ground and retake the lead on them which would incense them into corralling their collective energies to spurt round me again for another few metres. The whole exchange was in danger of becoming quite farcical until I peeled off across Hammersmith Bridge, reflecting on this (as I am wont to do) as just another example of the consumptive nature of our culture, to the extent that an essentially free activity, such as going for a jog, has to be traded as another fungible asset for those willing to partake in the exchange.

Through Hammersmith and past the ‘Death Star of commerce’ Westfield Shopping Centre, I zeroed-in on Shepherd’s Bush and from there began to bestride the quintessential pale-brick townhouses of Notting Hill. Walking through this highly desirable West London locale I began to think of the hypothesis of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who stated that if you examined the great cities of the world they were all constructed on a strict declension from the west to east axis in accordant correlation from rich to poor.

Whether this is due to, as he suggested, the fundamental psychological synthesis existent between people and the built environment in alignment with socio-economic hierarchies, is a matter for much debate. The fact is though, that London has always been a patchwork of different social fabrics stitched together with little recourse to reason or grand design. That said, recent developments that can be seen all over the city (and which are nowhere more salient than on such a drawn-out walk as this), threaten to irreparably alter the urban stratiography under the auspices of, at best, gentrification, and at worst, social cleansing.

The traditional London ethos of the working class and the elite co-existing in close proximity is rapidly being abandoned. This has been government policy, acknowledged or otherwise, for the best part of 30 years. The problem is, that as with any major conurbation, low-paid workers will always be needed in the centre as much as the hedge fund managers, who will still need someone on a minimum-wage zero-hour contract to sell them a sandwich from Pret or Tesco Express.

These drastic changes, which are completely in hoc to capital as opposed to social responsibility, can be seen in the redevelopment of Battersea, the evolution of Dalston, Shoreditch, Hackney and Brixton to being places of burgeoning appeal. A prime case-in-point is Elephant & Castle, an area that has all the appearance of having been struck by the eruption of a concrete volcano.

The imminent demolition of the Heygate estate and the planned regeneration of the shopping centre and surrounding areas is the crystallisation of modern trends. The willingness to provide yet more luxury apartment complexes and delay for as long as possible the token quota of affordable housing is too symptomatic of the times to be worth being overly incensed by. The fact is though that far less than the budgeted £1.5 billion could have been spent on simply renovating the Heygate, as the Park Hill estate in Sheffield has been (to the point that it was nominated for this year's Sterling Prize).

Indeed, within the next 10 years the existing denizens of Elephant and Castle will have been replaced with a finance ghetto, a gated community full of bankers and accountants who, like eager sperm will be ejaculated from the testes of their brand new luxury flats across the supine river and all over the waiting face of the City.

But I digress. As midday approached, I hit Marylebone, with its reclusive mews' branching off here and there like streets-in-waiting. From there I trudged along past Euston, St. Pancras and King's Cross, the 3-pins of a plug inserted into the power socket of North London. Making my way through Hoxton and beginning to curve southwards through Bethnal Green, I realised that the walk was beginning to unfairly prejudice my approach to the environs, noting as I did just how boring and non-descript large parts of London actually are when subjected to slow and exacting scrutiny.

At times I found myself oscillating with each step into newly extreme mindsets. For about 3 minutes I decided I hated London, and questioned why the fuck it was that I was wasting my time with such a pursuit?! Normal people do not decide to do this on their days off from work I reasoned. Oh well, by now it was too late to turn back...

As you slice through Stepney towards Shadwell, Levi-Strauss' west-east theory is never more pertinent; layer upon layer of diminutive social accommodation buildings crush up against one another, yielding only occassionally for a bedraggled and featureless public park. The youthful resurgence of Hackney and Shoreditch has yet to inflect this particular quarter of East London, an area that was said to draw benefit from the Olympics of last year, although exactly how was unclear at the time and is even more mystifying after the event.

And yet the imposing behemoths of Canary Wharf manifest themselves almost like an opulent mirage on the horizon, both instilling a sense of futile Madison Avenue-esque aspirationalism and overreaching resentment. There is an arrogant, stand-offish feel to these capitalist monuments that exist apparently detached and enclosed from the rest of London, like a segment of Dubai ostentatiously plonked down, waiting to be islanded by the ox-bow lake of the Thames as the river severs its way decisively across Poplar's flank.

Following this logical train of thought, I began to wonder whether there were any cities built in a circular design or whether they were, in the main, improvised centrifugally in an urban sprawl or laid down in rigid graticule fashion like cables as in American cities? I could think of none, until I remembered the Venus Project, a quasi-cult research hub spearheaded by Jacque Fresco as a design for the complete overhaul of society.

The premise of the Venus Project is that a sustainable resource-based economy would replace all monetary systems, and pre-fabricated 'total cities' would sprout like mushrooms; its nucleus core orbited by ever-thickening layers of residency, industry and leisure, like the utilitarian version of Dante's levels of Hell.

Despite being quite benign, it doesn't take too much intellectual prying into the Project's 'manifesto' to deduce just how chronically utopian and simplistic it actually is, falling well foul of the usual utopian problem that it takes into no consideration at all the myriad varieties of wants and needs that prevent a unified human race from manifesting. The less said about the plans for a 'cybernated government' (linking all computers with automated services, allowing them full day-to-day control) the better, although I'd encourage people to give it a read purely for the entertainment value.

That said, I couldn't but feel a slight yearning for Franco's bucolic Eden as I began to enter the Rotherhithe tunnel to traverse under the Thames and back to London's southern hemisphere. Although technically walk-able, passing through on foot is strongly ill-advised and I could certainly understand why as I made my way through the hot, acrid tunnel, trying to inhale as infrequently as possible for fear the exhaust fumes might shear a good year or so from my life expectancy, trying to avoid the incredulous glances of passing motorists.

Upon reaching daylight after 1.5km of white-tiled exhaust pipe, I paused for some fresh air in Southwark Park. By now the light was beginning to tinge with dusk and as I made my way down through Peckham and then onto the final furlong of Denmark Hill, I entered an almost trance-like state of intoxication, maintaining forward motion whilst my mind slumped into an unapologetic mush of inertia. Cars and buses passed me by, full of the same commuters I had set out with in the morning, returning home after yet another day's work, the comfort of routine maintaining the steady equilibrium of their lives.

Dragging my sore heels through Brockwell Park and the final approach along Brixton Water Lane, I thought of all those explorers and adventurers who in centuries gone by had set off in search of new frontiers, circumnavigating the world when they were more mindful of falling off it, never sure whether they would see the shores of home again.

Relative to my usually quite sedentary existance, this day-long hike around the city would have to serve as a near-enough approximation of such far-flung travails. I had seen the city from a radically new perspective, redefining it according to my own eccentric parameters, in a way that was both invigorating and rewarding. Now though, I was ready to sit down.

REVIEW - 'Gravity'

Back in 1895, the Lumiere Brothers' ‘Arrival of a train at La Ciotat' played in theatres to audiences who fled, incredulous at this strange new apparition, in fear that the train would suddenly come chuffing out from the screen, pre-empting the sensations that 118 years later would still be breaking ground in the world of cinema. Indeed, it does seem mildly baffling that over a century on, ‘ground-breaking’ aesthetic advances in the cinematic medium are still being used as the primary hook-and-bait for ensnaring a mass audience.

Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’, some 2-and-a-half years in the making, has been heralded as the game-changer in modern science-fiction cinema, the maturing moment in the predominantly gimmicky lifecycle of 3D movies. Undeniably, the technology involved is remarkable and raises the bar for all space-based films to come. And yet despite this, ‘Gravity’ still manages to be a very mediocre film.

Its problem is that it believes the sheer heft of its technological accomplishment alone justifies its existence, as if an audience should not be entitled or expected to desire more abstract components such as a decent narrative, believable dialogue or functional characters. The plot is almost totally mindless, seemingly extracted wholesale from any number of formulaic popcorn action movies; whilst the two characters, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are worthy of absolutely no serious emotional investiture on the part of the audience, they are the vacuous black holes in this filmic rendering of space.

A lot has been made of the lack of scientific realism, and I defer to those far more knowledgeable than myself to make that case. That said, there are setpieces in the finale that are so far-fetched that it did nothing but distort all the exceptional visual realism that had served as a perfectly impressive canvas. [SPOILER ALERT] By the time Bullock crash-lands on Earth, myself along with several others in the cinema were guffawing loudly at the utter absurdity of the unfolding action.

The philosophic claims that have been made, with its religious and spiritual overtones, I would have to debunk as misguided. Instead, ‘Gravity’ sinks into a morass of predictable Hollywood positivism, the triumphing of humanity over all adversity, the melioristic redemption of the individual struggling to overcome all the odds weighing against them.

In the end, I can only conclude that my disappointment arose from hoping for a very different kind of film from the one ‘Gravity’ turned out to be. The opening 13-minute shot is sublime and I wish the film could have progressed in this slower vein along more existential or introspective themes about the role and nature of humankind floating in outer space. I was hoping for a more sedate and reflective ‘2001’-style study on the experience of humans at the very pinnacle of technological achievement. Instead, ‘Gravity’ is simply ‘Speed’ in space; a theme park simulator film in which style is everything and any substance is left to simply drift further and further out of reach.

The enduring legacy of JFK's assassination - 50 Years On

November 22nd marks the half-centenary milepost since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, an event that perhaps more than any other, is symbolic of the second half of the 20th century and the 'hyper-real' media landscape that grew like an additional ozone layer around the earth in consequence.

It is perhaps one of the most documented, analysed and debated single events of the last fifty years, and yet I would argue that in 2013 its real legacy resides, not in the repercussions of the event per se, but with the lasting impact on the mediarised 'image' as a wholly distinct entity capable of endless manipulation and exploitation.

Never before had the mass media, physical reality and the collective imagination fused together in a profound symbiosis that would leave such an indelible imprint upon the psyche of America, and to a certain extent, the wider world. Abraham Zapruder's infamous filmed footage provided the template for the endless reproductions and contexts in which it would be used from then on; its ubiquitous presence sinking deep within the public consciousness. In a sense, it galvanised the media organism like no other event had done previously; the bullet fired into the head of Kennedy was in essence the starting pistol for the media race that would go on to dominate the rest of the 1960s, with the Vietnam War and the moon landings being broadcast and reproduced on TV screens the world over.

Of course this vast media expansion was already in full flow, nonetheless, it can legitimately be judged that the Kennedy assassination - which harnassed all the fundamental dramatic components - from death and conspiracy to power and glamour - was the defining event, the final act of a Shakespearean tragedy captured frame-by-frame, that was needed to commodify and turn reality into artificial 'spectacle' for the purposes of mass consumption.

It became the blueprint for the 'captured event' compulsive obsession that pervades in 2013 when it seems everyone has the capability and inclination to record and distribute anything and everything at any given time. The obvious 'spectacular event' with which to draw comparison is 9/11. Again, a shocking and epochal event that was played and replayed across the world via the mass media landscape; thereby, scorching the images into the consciousness of everyone from that point on.

Leaving aside the limitless recyclability of the event, in thinking about it over the last few days, I began to query whether the events of Dealey Plaza in 1963 really warrant such unbridled notoriety? And what relevance, if any, does the assassination of JFK have to someone like me born in 1989, or to someone born today in 2013?

I would argue very little (aside from the aforementioned impact on the media landscape that it helped to fertilise). At the end of the day, the stark reality of the event is that it was the death of one man. Indeed, that man was the president of the leading world power, but nevertheless, it was one individual. The political ramifications in the aftermath were nothing like as severe as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, or, one could argue, of Martin Luther King in 1968 which was seen as an attack on the whole social movement of which he had been appointed spokesman.

Of infinitely more devastating universal implication was an event that took place only a year earlier. It seems curious to me that this colossal event, which for the first time brought the planet within inexorable proximity to its own destruction, appears to have been relegated somewhat in the league tables and its legacy diluted by the admixture of history. If JFK holds relatively minor significance for the children born into the 21st century, then the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 have faded even further into the background. In fact, I barely remember it featuring on my school history syllabus to any great extent.

My theory for the reasons behind this are based on the comparable scale of events. JFK's death came almost pre-packaged with all the elements of a Hollywood conspiracy thriller, together with Oswald's murder and the sensationalist Warren Commission that followed, as a 'human tragedy' that the collective imagination could invest in on a recognisable emotional level. The contemplation of such closeness to 'mutually assured destruction' (MAD) is on far too vast a scale for humans to psychologically grapple with on any meaningful grounding, it simply doesn't accord with any familiar level of reality.

This is the same reason why on any real scale the Space Age, according to J.G. Ballard -

'...lasted barely 15 years, from Gagarin's first flight in 1961 to the first Apollo splashdown not shown live on TV in 1975, a consequence of the public's loss of interest'.

The exploration of space was just too advanced a contemplation for easily digestible mass consumption, being literally not-of-this-earth, and therefore nowhere near as resonant or captivating as the more orthodox humanistic drama of the political assassination; a nation's grief at the loss of their glamorous figurehead.

Consider 'Black Saturday', when a Soviet submarine armed with nuclear warheads was prevented from surfacing by American fighter planes, leading them to believe a nuclear war had begun and nearly resulting in them launching their missiles. If humankind were able to fully grasp the cataclysmic implications of 'Black Saturday' I believe it could have been a ground-breaking moment, a transcendent mass-realisation of the folly of war, the nature of man and the fragile biosphere in which he has been allotted to exist.

It could have been a moment in which ideology, prejudice, and politics all took a substantial step backward, as we subsequently tried to move trepidatiously forward in a brave new world of co-existance, tolerance and appreciation of just how fallible and precious life is.

In reality, it has had nothing even close to such an influence; men still wage war, still refuse to take the decisive steps necessary to reverse or tackle environmental destruction, and nations still seem intent on developing and hoarding nuclear arms whilst concurrently, sections of their societies suffer from hunger and disease.

The assassination of JFK was of course a momentous event, a defining media spectacle. And yet I can't help but find its persistent resonance 50 years on to be ever so slightly misguided when you consider that the vast majority of people on Earth will never have heard of Vasili Arkhipov, the man who, if reports are to be believed, prevented our very own suicide.

Kate Moss exhibition - Lawrence Elkin Gallery

So to the Lawrence Elkin Gallery on New Compton Street on a Saturday afternoon to see a blink-and-you'll-miss-it exhibition of David Ross' photographic prints of the then-unknown Kate Moss in her first photo shoot.

Kate Moss represents a form of 'stardom' that in modern culture is, at the very least, anachronistic; and more accurately, almost entirely defunct. Her appeal and place within the cultural landscape harks back to someone like Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn. She is levitated voodoo-like above the snake-pit of 'celebrity' by virtue of an enigmatic allure which in turn casts the veil of 'icon' across her shoulders.

By remaining both imagistically ubiquitous yet personally aloof, we know comparatively little about Kate Moss, and hence she retains the appealing sense of mystery that is such scant currency in the over-exposed market of 21st century celebrity. Within this realm we are all complicit to a bizarre self-delusion that our lives are somehow proxy to those of the rich and famous; a misconception desperately cultivated by celebrities in an effort at demonstrating their 'humanity' at any opportunity that might ensure a positive correlation with publicity and the maintenance of their own 'brand'.

The exhibition's shots depict Moss as a whey-faced 14-year-old, years before the murky cloud of 'heroin chic' and anorexia smears began to form above her early fame. Her instantly-recognisable features smoulder with a fertile compound of innocence and self-awareness, naivete and shrewdity; these dichotomies are visible in every frame. There is an undeniably 'Lolita'-like quality to these shots, insofar as her latent sexuality and intrigue dance the precarious waltz between the aforementioned dichotomies.

Not only in physical terms - at one glance appearing disarmingly plain and ordinary, at the next almost overpoweringly sensual - but also in terms of appearing to possess that integral cynicism and business sense that would sustain her status as arguably the world's most recognisable model. You get the impression that even at age 14 she had mapped the trajectory of her own future from that point on.

The key to her longevity, aside from her versatility as a model, is the fact of her enigmatic presence in the cultural sphere that enables us all to import our own narratives or imaginations onto her, in much the same way as people become imaginatively transfixed by, and invested in, Marilyn Monroe.

For my own part, I have used Moss as a means of subversive imagery in my novel 'Digital' and a couple of years ago in a rather crude 3-part short story 'Sex Objects of the World Unite' in which she makes the ultimate protestation against the mass media glare by self-immolating on a catwalk a la the Tibetan monks.

Since then though I rather think the crux of the ‘protest’ idea to be misguided. As Moss’ image remains omnipresent and apparently age-less she appeals to the self-flagellating paranoia lying within the collective psyche as to the passage of time taking its inexorable toll. By embodying that delusional ‘Pan-like’ fantasy towards which society conditions us all to submit, wilfully or otherwise, she is able to elevate herself above the public’s attempts at humanising her through the medium of scandal.

As such she transcends the fickle carousel of celebrity, in which we idolise and emulate until the wave of popular affection reaches its critical mass, breaking back into denigration as a means of illuminating the foibles and human weaknesses that misguidedly convince and reassure us once again of their being ‘just like us’.

Culture - October

Books read:

William Golding - 'The Inheritors'
John Osborne - 'Look Back in Anger' (play)
Walter Benjamin - 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (non-fiction)
Louis-Ferdinand Celine - 'Journey to the End of the Night'
Gilles Neret - 'Salvador Dali' (non-fiction)
Leon Trotsky - 'An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe' (non-fiction)

This month I discovered a book I'm now eager to list as one of my favourites - Louis-Ferdinand Celine's 'Journey to the end of the night', an absurd and often hilarious nihilistic adventure following the gloriously ill-fortuned Bardamu as he travels from the Western Front to colonial Africa to New York and back to France. Reading it I became intricately aware of those writers - Burroughs, Kerouac, Bukowski - who had in turn been captivated and inspired by Celine's crude, riotous, free-flowing narrative and his often magical turn-of-phrase.

I also read a non-fiction book this month which struck me with its strangely modern relevance despite the decades filling up since its release. Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' is a remarkably prescient work, particularly in its commentary on the cult of celebrity, as well as the nature of cinema and film degrading the 'aura' of a given performance, something that is evident every day with everyone apparentely creating a filmed reproduction of their reality. I was particularly struck by the following phrase -

'Within major historical periods, along with changes in the overall mode of living of the human collective, there are also changes in the manner of its sense perception'.

We are facing such a sense-changing epoch right now with the 'digital renaissance' that is in its full and irreversible swing.


Films Watched:

'Blue Jasmine' (Woody Allen) (at Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton)
'A Field in England' (Ben Wheatley)
'Shrek' (Andrew Adamson & Vicky Jenson)
'Livid' (Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo).
'The Amityville Horror' (Stuart Rosenberg) (at Prince Charles Cinema, London)
'The Hills Have Eyes' (Wes Craven)
'Zero Dark Thirty' (Kathryn Bigelow)
'Le Week-end' (Roger Michell)
'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' (Oliver Stone)
'The Prestige' (Christopher Nolan)
'Limitless' (Neil Burger)
'V/H/S' (assorted directors)


Albums Played:

John Lennon - 'Plastic Ono Band'
Anna Calvi - 'One Breath'
Brian Eno & David Byrne - 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts'
Brian Eno - 'Lux'
The Orb - 'The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld'
God is an Astronaut - 'Origins'
Motorhead - 'Aftershock'
Lou Reed - 'Transformer'
Lou Reed - 'Berlin'
Paul McCartney - 'New'
Lorde - 'Pure Heroine'
James Blake - 'Overgrown'
Arcade Fire - 'Reflektor'


Gigs Attended:

Jessie J at O2 Arena, London

One of the beneficial aspects of being in a relationship is the healthy exposure to otherwise overlooked cultural experiences. So it was that I found myself inside the domic incrustation of the O2 on an October evening watching Jessie J with my girlfriend. First things first; it would be very easy for me to deride Jessie J and her music simply because of it not equating with my own preferences, but that isn't the point of this review.

The show was technically accomplished, the music itself perfectly listenable, and the capacity crowd seemed to thoroughly enjoy the whole event, as far as I could tell through the galaxy of camera phones hoisted aloft, a modern trend that is detestable yet sadly inevitable. (This though is a separate gripe and by no means limited to Jessie J's target audience, I once stood next to a middle-aged man at a Fall gig who watched the entire thing through his palm-sized screen.)

Whilst an undeniably competent performer and talented vocalist, Jessie J falls into the trap that so many celebrated vocalists (Houston, Carey, Beyonce, et al) have done over the years of wringing every vocal phrase's neck with a spiral of melismic warbling that, whilst amply demonstrating skill, never fails to strangulate any possible emotional delivery.

What really began to nauseate me about the show was the bizarre bursts of pseudo-philosophic phrases across the LED screens during the intermittent costume changes. It felt like being preached to by a Twitter-era self-help guru, with the banal proclamations of 'follow your instinct', 'love yourself', and 'we are all one'. The cringe-inducing nadir was Jessie herself offering up some bland platitude to the effect of 'we don't just live, we are alive!', which as far as philosophical statements go must be the equivalent of a soggy lettuce leaf found in the bottom of a fridge.

It was this dominant yet patronising drive to inspire and elevate that really became too much to take. At almost any opportunity Jessie seemed determined to emphasise her disbelief at playing on such a large stage; yet instead of simply demonstrating honest humility, she would pontificate on the merits of 'never letting anyone stop you from following your dreams' - spewing out this squeaky-voiced helium with which she sought to inflate her young fans with her impossible aspirationalism.

More than anything, it was this self-referential, rags-to-riches narrative of the show that took away from my simply being able to enjoy it on its own simple terms as a pop performance. The very best performers always exude the aura of belonging on that stage and nowhere else, that they were born simply to strut that stage before their audience; and yet with Jessie J I got the impression I was watching someone trying gamely but subconsciously steeling herself at any moment for the wheels to fall off, and as such one has to wonder how long her career can be sustained in so volatile and fickle a market.

Exhibitions Attended:

'Home Truths: Photography, Motherhood and Identity' at Photographer's Gallery, London

A Question of Demography - A prophecy of the changing social relations between the young and old

When a lot younger, my brothers and I, along with our Dad, would traipse into the centre of town every Saturday afternoon, lured on by the promise of selecting a chocolate bar of choice from Woolworths. (Oh, so easily pleased…)

Every so often, as we set out or made our sugar-fuelled return along the road from our house, we would pass an elderly man who would dictate a steady pace along the pavement with his walking cane. As a source of amusement between my brothers and I we would observe, as our Dad chatted to him for a few minutes, how quickly it would be that this wiry old man would re-route every conversation to the subject of his time spent as a POW in a Japanese labour camp during the Second World War. Even an observation as perfunctory as the cold chill in the air would spark the flames of recollection burning as to just how cold it would get during the bitter Japanese winters.

As unashamedly humorous as my brothers and I found these occasions, our Dad would always tell us of the cruel and torturous horrors inflicted upon such POWs in Japan, instil in us the necessity of respect for such men and the trials they endured, and lament the fact that those horrendous events had sunk so indelible a scar upon their psyches.

I’m sure most people of my age and older will have similar tales of association with representatives of the ‘war generation’ and the duty-bound sense of respect that set like concrete thereafter. This is, after all, how we have been conditioned to respond to older people for decades; upholding them in wizened esteem, eager as a just and compassionate society to provide for those who, when called upon to do so, served their country with distinction and honour, once they reach old age.

It is my belief that societal trends and prevailing attitudes to the older generations may see a gradual yet marked alteration in the years to come.

I believe the drivers of this change will be largely two-fold. Firstly, the inescapable fact of demographics of which most will already be familiar – with almost a quarter of the UK’s population predicted to be aged 65 or over by 2050. Secondly, and perhaps more controversially, I believe the change will be engendered by a residual yet tangible undercurrent of animosity and disharmony where once an unquestioning respect held root.

Life in the West for the majority, from the post-War years to before the last global economic crash will retrospectively be judged to have been the most insoucient and prosperous period to have been alive than any time previously in human history. The vast expansion of technology, medical science, globalisation, free market capitalism, relative freedom from major conflicts, the (at least, surface level) dissolution of arcane prejudices and segregations, and greater levels of personal wealth, all amount to a society of far higher merit for those inhabitants than any time previously.

The ‘baby boomers’ (1945 – early 1960s), reveling in the hard fought freedoms of the previous generation, have lived in a culture far more permissive and equal than ever before, with a functioning welfare system and health service, where property has been affordable, freely available education resulting in a ‘career-for-life’ with the prospect of an easily-defined structure of progression, with the promise of a generous pension upon retiring with at least a couple of decades still stretching out ahead of them. Of course, this is a reductive and halcyon-view of the second half of the 20th century, but regardless of the many troubles and hardships, it was undeniably tranquil in comparison with the preceding centuries of war, pestilence, famine and servitude.

The global economic crisis from 2008-onwards looks set to further expand the widening chasm between rich and poor, the corporatisation of everyday life, soaring property and wider ‘costs of living’, and the development – with a return to nefarious Victorian hallmarks of the employer’s market and ‘zero hour contracts’ – of a distinct underclass.

The tension will inevitably foment as the young look to the ever-increasing legions of the old and associate them, not with war heroes or defenders’ of their national freedom, but with the reasons why they cannot buy a house or afford to go to university or food and energy prices, or save into a pension scheme. Reflecting on the myopic tendencies of their elders, they may be forgiven for feeling resentment, as it makes a blatant mockery of the common yet misguided notion that human progress is infallible, that the gradual betterment of society intertwined with the life chances of the people are locked on a consistently upward gradient.

Looking overseas, similar developments can be seen to be brewing beneath the surface. China, the inculcator of the most speculative social experiment in modern times – the ‘one-child policy’ – is currently witnessing a pronounced shift in inter-generational obligations. Traditionally, the Chinese elderly were venerated and the act of caring for one’s parents seen as a hallowed duty incumbent upon every child as a means of repaying the parental debt.

With the rising growth in the elderly (in 2005, 11% of China’s population was aged 60 or over), and the slump in descendants due to the proliferation of single-child families, the tide may be turning in terms of how much of that debt can realistically be expected to be repaid. The expansion of rural healthcare and retirement homes can perhaps be seen as a marked sign of things to come for China’s elder population.

While the sealant of social cohesion between young and old may disintegrate in the years to come, in terms of politics the older generations will almost certainly detect the clammy embrace as politicos and policy makers clamber even further into bed with them, each more desperate than the other to plump their pillows and sing them comforting lullabies to sleep. Being as they are statistically more likely to vote, the elderly’s influence on political parties, as they each try and appear as attractive to the ‘grey vote’ as possible, is likely to become even more prevalent in the years to come.

Encumbered with the terminal ‘short-termism’ of so many career politicians, the welfare and preferences of the young will be shunted off the main political agenda in favour of pledges cleverly marketed at the huge numbers of the retired, property-owning target demographic.

This growing ostracisation of the young can already be recognised in the Conservatives and their plans to cap welfare for young families, refuse to act on accelerating private rent rates, and scrap Jobseeker’s Allowance for the under-25s. The problem is that everyone knows what kind of fissures occur when a section of society is put under persistent strain whilst at the same time feel a collective recognition of the section whose past is to blame for their present hardship.

An interesting paradigm to view in terms of how a current generation turn their backs in protest against the one previous is in the ‘de-Nazification’ of post-WWII Germany; in particular, the student rebellions of the late-60s which were taken to be a defiant rejection on the part of the young of the crimes and facilitation of their forefathers.

Whilst the circumstances connected with this societal shift are nowhere near the same tenor, it may well be the case that whereas class antagonisms divided in the past, in the decades to come it will be ageist antagonisms that prevail as responsibility, atonement and a sense of sharing the collective burden imposed by generational actions and improprieties find themselves in high stead.

To my way of thinking, respect is a valuable and finite commodity, much the same as genuine empathy or trust, not to be expended wantonly and without proper recourse to appropriate qualifiers.

Before long, the old man walking down the road won't be a war hero who suffered in the fight against tyranny but someone who perhaps, in his small and relatively minor way, contributed to the invisible tyranny of late-capitalism that has a negative implication for so many growing into adulthood in the early-21st century. The currency of generational respect is volatile and it may not be long before it enters a recession of its own.