There is a pause. She ashes her cigarette. It falls on me. It seems like the birds have stopped too.
feel you
we need to be deconstructing our identities
i know a little bit of lacan which probably influences me in a way i cant articulate
yeah people dont get it they assume its ahnaf
Hours staring at the ceiling, the wall, curling up into a ball. It seems annoyed with the light, it kind of recoils. It will get lighter. I wonder where it goes in the day.
Maybe, Jack, I'm doing this because I'm English?
i want to do that too
yeah
was it worth it
thank you
no like which do people call me
i sat down to eat my peasant dinner but i thought it was a song you sent so i didn’t watch it then
Actual born-Londoners aren't LARPing like this, they sold their shite family home for a million pounds and moved to Malaga years ago. They have their culture and they've taken it elsewhere.
i was tempted to lie about my name
He was a proper old-fashioned London geezer (cringe word, hate it, can't think of a better one, worst of all it's the correct word), kind of East Endy, kind of Real London, the kind you don't really meet but if you do it always feels like an uncanny immersive theatre experience. They're anachronistic. They only belong in the London collectively imagined by people who don't spend any time in it.
send link
not so on: yvf(wthw)
magnetises a pin
I'm sat out the front of a cafe in Hatton Garden. I've just eaten a brie and bacon panini, and I'm rolling a cigarette. Feeling very London. An old man comes up to me and asks for a roll-up. I oblige.
i really havent
wait what is that
The studio designs some piece of media to perpetuate the marketable concept of Real London, while the real London is hollowed out by hollow bankers or whatever. Not pulling on that thread. But the yuppies don't mind because they're free to iterate on Real London without any competition from real London because it's too concerned with its slow eradication. And there's nice flats to live in now or whatever. The yuppies can begin to inhabit their Real London.
The Hatton geezer (fuck off) reminds me of this old failed actor who I'd met at a party a few years ago, another man out of time and out of place. This actor had scored a minor role in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and never really let go of it, had gone on to build his whole identity around it. I can't really blame him.
Like the tide, it comes in and it washes over the beach. It's beautiful. But like the tide it goes out, sometimes it goes out further than it ever has, it recedes back across the beach and further out beyond the horizon. The bare seabed opens up in front of you and all you can do is look at it.
...
...
The only real Londoner remaining is old, bitter, kept around for entertainment, defined by tropes from 30+ years ago. They play gangsters in films, or they work in a pie and mash shop, or they go on Business Insider's YouTube channel to tell you about their crimes. And they somehow still find the time to spend all day hanging about cafes and pubs for you to bump into, to remind you of Real London.
what do you think my name is
plato
i don't really want to be associated with that one for some reason