04.05.2020 - Fictional realities, and nonce mentality in the East End

Been for a wander through both the physical and mental back streets of East London this morning. I’ll update you presently, but first I want to fill you in with a thought that belongs with its relatives in yesterdays post. Let’s see if I can capture its likeness sufficiently well for you to get an impression.

Sitting in the twig box that I have assigned magical powers, and heard other dog walkers refer to as ‘the witch square’ I had an idea. I could turn this blog into a great conceit of fiction, maybe creatures, spirit beings, or metaphysical intelligences, could emerge from the square, or maybe as I sit there a tree strikes up a conversation with me, or I could fall through the ground, into a world almost exactly the same, but with very subtle differences, maybe the red and the blue in the London Underground are reversed. Maybe the East London Mosque has converted into a morgue (it has), maybe I go home to my flat, it's exactly the same but somehow the my-ness about it has gone.

A diary observing, or imagining strange mystic symbols in the oddly ordinary unreality the world suddenly finds it self in, is a great set up for a magic realism novel.

Maybe I meet the person who made the square, or someone who seems like they did but we never know for sure. Or maybe I made it myself. I mean, I’m a fairly compelling character with a narrative that seems almost true, I have flaws that could even make me human, like I can think for myself. I might even be a real person.

We've got most of the ingredients of a Haruki Murakami novel already. Urban ennui, cooking, parallel worlds, dreams that seem more vivid than waking life, looking out at the pouring rain drinking whisky, enjoying a beer on my own once or twice, the odd experience being offered a job that never seems to start, and just now, I saw a cat from a missing cat poster and rang the number. No answer, but who knows where that story line will lead. Probably, because Murakami is writing, this it will seem poignant but in the end not go anywhere or mean anything. And of course the magic square. All we need is for it to start raining fish, another world at the bottom of a well, through this door, which was I saw open for the first time the other day (I had a look in, and there was just a soiled mattress, I didn't feel like investigating further), the whole meaning of everything that’s going on to sit just tantalisingly out of reach. In the end nothing will make sense, heavy symbolism won’t mean any more than what it literally does because this is real life. I think we’re getting there with all the grasping in the ephemera for meaning which dissolves into wistful melancholy as soon as you get near it, too.

If the writing was better it might pass for one of his, in a different reality.

This idea might seem absurd, but as we discussed yesterday, there’s no reason to assume cause always comes before effect, when before and after are such arbitrary concepts. So maybe we are living in a story that hasn’t been written yet. In fact, isn’t that exactly what we eight billion authors are doing?

If I imagined doing it, there must be a branch of probability where I did write this reality, so that scenario does exist even if it didn’t actually happen, even if I just created that possibility with a thought. Who’s to say we aren’t that story experiencing itself? What would the difference actually be?

Which makes me wonder about all fiction, and what is more real our physical world or the imagined fictional one? Me or Harry Potter? Harry Potter exists in many more people’s minds than I do, and commands a lot more power and energy than me, so in a way he is more real.

So if Harry Potter is real, why can’t I talk to him? Well, maybe I could. At least in a dream or drug or ritual prayer induced trance state. I could worship him if I wanted and call on him for help. In a way I suppose a lot of people do.

Or, say God is a made up, fictional concept, which I think it probably is, it doesn’t preclude it from being real. I’m not sure how far you can take this idea, but is it conceivable that imagining a supernatural all powerful being creating the universe actually caused it to happen after (or before, I can't tell the difference anymore) it did?

And where do you fit in to all of this? 

Weird, right? I can’t quite get my head round it.

I wonder what stage of coming to terms with the pandemic questioning whether you are fictional represents.

Wait a sec, we actually are in another reality. Remember last year, when Jeremy Corbyn was called an antisemite because he gave Boris Johnson a copy of A Christmas Carol for Christmas, and the time he pronounced the name Epstein correctly (German is a phonetic language, there's a right way to say Stein). People were howling for him to resign. Michael Gove's wife Sarah Vine, just tweeted a photo of their bookcase, on which were books by the notorious holocaust denier David Irving and the discredited race science eugenics book The Bell Curve, but somehow that's not antisemitic, in fact if you bend logic just right, just gently twist it, it's actually quite a good thing. 

Ok, so back to the realm we'll agree to call ‘reality’.

Another walk this morning, another chase up of Serco. Serco have a reputation for being shit, and fucking up every government contract they get, and so far my experience is confirming that.

I saw quite a lot of that nonce mentality too. A lot of people actually spraying graffiti over people’s windows. Can you imagine thinking that would be ok? 

This ad shows utter contempt for humanity, one of the defining attributes of the nonce mentality. 

See under the bridge, tent, they were on both sides, but I wanted to get the huge Gilard Homes building behind.

I also saw quite a few people living in tents. You don’t see so many people out begging in places like Shoreditch High Street, because there’s almost no one there, but you do in busier places like Broadway Market. There was a story on Channel Four News the other day about the left behind homeless in London. They said there was “up to 500 people still out on the streets.” While the story was admirable, that they went out to talk to homeless people and document what they’re going through, I refute the claim that there’s only 500.

Greater London is 605 square miles. We walked about four miles today and I saw at least 6 tents. Even just in Shadwell I know at least ten homeless people, in a very small area. There’s no way there’s only 500 people still on the streets of London, unless they are doing the kind of trick that seems to be de rigueur for the Tory Party, and actually only counting the City of London, which is about two square miles. I would believe there were 500 people sleeping rough there, but the whole of London? No.

We stopped on the way back to chat to the donkeys at Shoreditch City Farm. One became quite a good mate of mine actually, because I managed to get a branch with some leaves on through the fence of his enclosure for him to chew.

Where the first meeting of the organisation that became the Salvation Army was held, on New Road. 

I also saw a couple of things that related to an earlier post about the radical history of the East End. I mentioned the Salvation Army started here, but I didn’t realise their first meeting was held less than five minutes walk away from my flat.

I also noticed this piece of graffiti promoting the march against the English Defence League I was at.

I read a story saying the East London Mosque is now operating as a morgue, I walked past it twice in the last two days. The first time I saw that ‘funeral ambulance’ which is just a little white van, and today I saw a big cockney funeral style hearse with mum written in flowers waiting outside. I didn’t take a photo because I thought it would be disrespectful.

We also saw this clothing wholesaler between Whitechapel and Aldgate that has converted into distributing medical supplies.

And another thing from an old post I wrote about the strange rehabilitation of Jack The Ripper. This barber on Brick Lane calls itself Jack The Clipper. I think that’s pretty fucking gross to be honest.

And the most terrifying pub in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

See you in another reality folks. Stay healthy.