Film: a month in London
A transcribed journal of my London film and notes, taken and written by me. January 2023.
I remember our trip to Europe starting something like this: The Smiths blasting through my headphone speakers, looking past the window panes in an Austin bus, fall of 2021.
My resonance with lyrics about London panic (and a detailed list of things that I wanted to do during winter that I sent to Camille while in my summer law class) now seems like a wave of hand.
Windsor revealed all sorts of self-explanatory getaways: Queen Charlotte Street, Church Lane, Castle Hill. I saw myself walking in wide strides in the store reflections.
On the Piccadilly line with our bags and suitcases, a teenage girl with long braided hair walked inside our wagon. The intercom announced that a group of pickpocketers usually hop the tube in the area, and she left before we took off.
When the metro was too full to have a seat, we peeked over people’s shoulders to read their newspapers.
On the morning of December 28th after a night in our moldy and humid Airbnb, I sat on the second floor of a terrace that overlooked Waterloo Station. I sat like a conductor trying to catch an error inside a running machine, facing a cubic clock in the center that had pigeons and crows circling it like gears in a watch.
The grid of people created a choreography to the same silent beat of departing and arriving trains.
“The dim roar of London was like a bourdon note of a distant organ.” An Oscar Wilde quote because at that time I finished Portrait of Dorian Gray.
When getting lost in Wokingham, I walked the boundaries of central “Peach” street by maroon houses and their tall, thin chimneys stitched with patches of fuzzy moss. I took photos on my film camera of a beige building that looked like a castle - a still graveyard laying neatly behind it as the rain bounced off of undisturbed headstones. I wonder how many spirits whisper their secrets there at night.
I enjoyed the scenic drives – the thick pastures sloping over the horizon, the thin trees that imitated a stop-motion roulette, and the deep shades of green as we turned away from forests and grasslands. At one point, we passed by Jane Austen’s hometown in the Hampshire woods.
The train drew an attention span out of me to look out of the window for a long, long time. I tried to remember each blurred sheep, each hidden house that I saw behind the hills. The darkness unveiled a purple tint outside. I could see my own iris holding the sunset in the window reflection.
Melting snow in Hyde Park.
