A 'noctumnal' journey
After over 30 posts in a year of blogging, learning all the way, it's time to go boldly into something more experimental.
Psychogeography is usually concerned with urban wandering, but not necessarily. Having relocated to rural Gogledd Cymru, I have become more aware of the seasons: more distinct than I remember in the suburbs of SE England. It's Autumn. And with winter coming, I think about a house I walk past if I'm out for the evening, set back from the road, surrounded by farmland. Closed blinds at the windows, dimly lit from behind, accentuate the fragile separation between indoors and out at this time of year. I imagine it's cosy inside, while the bleakness of the outside is only kept at bay by two layers of glass (3/4" gap) and the fabric of a roller blind. Those inside can shut themselves in from the cold. From the unknown. From the darkness.
It reminds me, if you can bear with me, of a classic episode from TV series Star Trek, The Next Generation (Season 2, ep 12, 1989). Members of an 'away mission' find themselves trapped in the casino of a strange hotel ('The Royale') on an otherwise uninhabitable planet. Essentially there is nothing out there. A revolving entrance door leads only to a dark void (see links for an explanation).
I recall similar perceptions from 'urban wandering' along a wide thoroughfare known as Kingsway Avenue, accompanied by the guilty pleasure of being out and about on a Sunday night, despite work the next morning. The last train home would have been earlier than on weeknights, other than the morning 'Milk Train' which anyway no longer existed by then. The incongruously tree-lined road is as if in a deep gorge, flanked mostly by eight storey commercial buildings of Portland stone. It is nevertheless dark at night, the gloom punctuated by the glow from a rare tavern. One such, solitary and cavernous, is largely empty of custom, as it's on the western edge of a small city that shuts at weekends.
It is the third smallest city in the (dis)UK after Llanelwy (St Asaph) and Tyddewi (St David's). Fewer than 9000 people reside in Its "square mile", although half a million turn up to work there during the week. Llundain was often referred to as the de-facto capital of Cymru until Caerdydd (Cardiff) took its place in 1955, although in the north (Gogledd Cymru) many looked to Lerpwl (Liverpool), home to a large Cymreig population. In 1884, 1900 and 1929, Eisteddfodau were held there. But the first modern era Eisteddfod had been held at Primrose Hill in 1792. The actual seat of government had been next door to Dinas Llundain at nearby San Steffan (a.k.a. Westminster). In any case, the connections and dislocations are powerful.
The notion of a 'noctumnal' scene is for me amply illustrated by Nighthawks, an iconic painting by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) showing a starkly lit, nearly empty night-time café in 1942 New York surrounded by dark streets. Nighthawks appears quite often in psychogeography writings, its juxtaposition of bleakness, loneliness, warmth and solace a metaphor for urban living. The relationship between the four people in the painting (barman and three customers seemingly) is for individual interpretation. Noctumnal" is my neologism for things nocturnal and autumnal: conflating "night" and "fall".
Strange things happen at night. Sometimes time stands still. If I wake at 3am (an age thing I am told), and doze again for seemingly another hour, I find it is still 3am. And in between I will have vividly visited a previous home in Ynys Wyth (the Isle of Wight). It's Ryde [Jim] but not as we know it. It's familiar but changed as if recreated by AI. The town's topography is a surreally twisted parody of itself. In one such recurring dream I meet people I worked with 40 years ago, and teach them a bit of Cymraeg, as if in appreciation of the difference between an old and new life.
At Havenstreet (near Ryde) a few years ago, I was more than delighted to chat in Cymraeg with a media acquaintance from my new home, who happened to be filming an autumnal festival of steam at the heritage railway there. But this last item is a digression: it was not in a dream.
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I look forward to your comments. Also it would be nice to know where you are in the world. Thanks for reading.