I was obliged to go to North Acton this morning. I had to walk about half a mile from the underground station. The walk took me along an alley sandwiched between a graveyard and the railway tracks. It was littered with dead leaves, plastic bottles and sodden newspapers. The steel railings, warehouse walls and lamp posts were all covered with graffiti. A mournful sign on the railway tracks said 'Whistle'. It was cold and raining. I would not, on balance, walk through there at night. But this morning it made me deliriously happy for reasons I did not at first understand. Then I realised this place had been romanticised and redeemed by the work of that recently late and timelessly great artist Robert Rauschenberg. And it was Rauschenberg, I also now realise, that prompted me to take the above picture on a quite different occasion.
Friday, November 28, 2008
For Rauschenberg
I was obliged to go to North Acton this morning. I had to walk about half a mile from the underground station. The walk took me along an alley sandwiched between a graveyard and the railway tracks. It was littered with dead leaves, plastic bottles and sodden newspapers. The steel railings, warehouse walls and lamp posts were all covered with graffiti. A mournful sign on the railway tracks said 'Whistle'. It was cold and raining. I would not, on balance, walk through there at night. But this morning it made me deliriously happy for reasons I did not at first understand. Then I realised this place had been romanticised and redeemed by the work of that recently late and timelessly great artist Robert Rauschenberg. And it was Rauschenberg, I also now realise, that prompted me to take the above picture on a quite different occasion.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Ah, now this is why I visit Thought Experiments.
ReplyDeleteAnyone can post about the recession (it's always somehow disappointing when you write about Gordon Brown etc, as if a concert pianist is playing chopsticks), but you could only find stuff like this on Appleyard's blog: a postcard from a quite different plane.
Hmmm thanks, Brit, I think
ReplyDeleteIf you had an expandable baton you could walk through that alley anytime you liked. You could even live there - like a troll lurking under a bridge, a troll equipped with an expandable baton.
ReplyDeleteDe nada. It is intended in the spirit in which it is meant to be taken.
ReplyDeleteSo you have been to OZ recently on your travels (you are right they are on the chubby side)
ReplyDeleteLooks to me like Victoria state (not just because of the beer logo on the store) but because Victoria has a lot of British 4 seasons in one day weather, its looks cloudy. At a stab Kangaroo island.
God, that's scarily brilliant, passer by
ReplyDeleteSorry, that should be South Australia? did you do the great coast road?
ReplyDeleteNo much more complicated than one road. But I will be writing about this so that's all for now
ReplyDeleteI see :0) Ive drove the whole way around too, the Nullabor was my favourite bit, racing the Indian pacific. living like Mad Max. I wonder if you eat any roadkill?
ReplyDeleteOnly the humans
ReplyDeleteVictoria Bitter is ok...
ReplyDeleteI also walk in that gap between art and life.
ReplyDelete