Water Rooms

Well, I am just back from an interesting little trip to my birth city, London. The reason was to attend an all-day session/job interview involving workshops etc. for an internship with ITV (in answer to their recruitment ad, entitled 'I AM TV'). Thanks are due to G's thread on ON THIS FORUM. The ad on the website had stated that the application should be as surprising/creative as possible. Since I happen to have published a short poem specifically about TV (titled 'The Box') I sent them a copy, with no explanations or anything else. They loved it apparently, and so I got onto the long-list of 50. Here's the poem; never imagined it as a job application:

The Box

Sucks, but is beautiful.
I was raised in its milky light, fell
for The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Astroboy, Dr Who.

Thought-proofing for the old winged chariot?s out-of-the-blue-
doom on our doorstep. Nothing
is new after all:

pristine, natural
as any synaptic lightning, the wheel
pinwheeling in our eyes millennia before the dream

of cartwheels, sputtering rotors spun to a gleam.
Feeler to the stars, the bottom-silt
dark where they dwell

down the telescope-well;
our unfledged, twitchy buzz pulsed
far from the watery cloudnest. When you flick

it off, brush from the dark screen those webs of static,
inevitable in the primeval smog is this
square egg, warm still.

I love any excuse to travel to London, that vast maw of possibility; its every backstreet, corner, niche, crack utterly lived in and imbued with 'history' that one can either take or leave entirely to grow more ancient and ahistorical, more worn down in the daily stream of living and forgetting. I love the way, in summer especially, the mingling and dissociated crowds (tourists, receptionists, soldiers, students, buskers, lovers... any trade (or lack of) and singularity or tangle of lives you can dream of) wander, recline or weave rapidly through the streets and parks and along the banks of that "strong brown god", the Thames.

I was due at ITV at 11.15. My flight went smoothly, I got the Heathrow Express to Paddington with plenty of time to spare. Then I got into a cab and encountered an interval, a mood-shift that would stay with me for the rest of the day, a paranoid aggressive taxi-driver (by far the most vocally ignorant and threatening I have ever met) who told me he was voting for the BNP ("They should put the shutters up!") and, when I made the mistake of engaging with him (mildly, conversationally), told me I was "toyin'" with him and basically told me to shut up.

The session in ITV was interesting, mostly workshop-based group-exercises encouraging people to dream up program "formats" loosely based on the two short examples of new game shows we were shown. The crowd (about 30) were mostly at least 20 years younger than me, some shy and nervous but many of them full of the kind of enthusiasm I wouldn't attempt to emulate. When asked to give short intros statin why we liked/loved TV and which characters we'd like to be (if we had to choose) my mind almost blanked. It wasn't a question of being "genuine" of course, but I did want to say something vaguely inventive, that carried a flavour of my personality, such as it is. so I told them that of course I loved TV (having being raised in its light), but also hated it at times (for obvious reasons). As for characters: two popped into my head: don Draper from Mad Men, after he becomes more humane, less misanthropic, and Jo Brand, because I am coming back as a woman in my next life (why? because they are the other half, of course) and she came up with the most generously humorous put-down (of men) I have ever heard: "Men are great.... as a concept."

The view from the windows was impressive, the London Eye jammed between concrete and sky like a stray bicycle wheel, but somehow fitting in, a cog moving at a cloud's pace. By the time five o'clock came round I was pretty tired, my voice nearly gone (something definitely swinish I caught last week). But I had enough energy left to enjoy my meander towards the Royal Festival Hall, where I had arranged to meet with my old flower Barry, on the way in I encountered this fantastic fountain-installation (main blip above) by Danish artist Jeppe Hein: thin bars of water-spray rising and collapsing at intervals, making rooms that children (and adults) could dash into and out of, dodging the water-ribs or sticking arms and legs into them for a pleasurable soak (the weather was tropical, a steam bath). It is called, appropriately, 'Appearing Rooms'. Fabulous, utterly down to earth and for the gods, secular batisms for all.

Barry and I went for a lovely fish meal in a nearby outdoor restaurant then down the stone steps to dander along the brown god's beach (tide was out). On the way down we encountered a very friendly, open free runner, D, doing work-outs with his friends, a nice antidote to my morning brush with Mr BNP. Here's some of the shots:

HANDSTAND
D TALKING 1.
D TALKING 2.