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Published
in Gulf News, September 26, 2006
Sofa beds,
big cities,
old friends
In
the
Museum of Modern Art in New York is a work called The Lights Going
On and Off by Martin Creed. It is an empty gallery with bare walls
in which the lights are set on a continuous timer to turn on for
five seconds and off for five seconds.
It's
the sort of piece that can set people's teeth gnashing, but in the
context of the museum, it was strangely compelling. When something
so mundane as lights going on and off is presented as art, the tendency
is to scrutinise, which forces surprising observations from the
experience. It's all about setting, and the last three weeks of
sofa beds, big cities and old friends have been a similar exercise
in context for me. Old familiarities are presented in new places,
giving them unexpected emotional weight. The happiest findings were
that years may pass, spouses may come, countries may change, but
the rhythms of old friendships stay the same.
Take
A, an old friend from Bangalore. We'd often sit on the balcony of
her parents' apartment, sipping on excellent South Indian filter
coffee and enjoying both conversation and silence. Many years and
a few lifetimes later, we were on the balcony of her beautiful apartment
in London indulging in the old ritual. Instead of overlooking the
roofs and coconut trees of Indiranagar, we were looking out over
the Thames and the Millennium Dome. So much has changed in both
our lives, but the rhythm of conversation and silence came back
instantly. And good South Indian filter coffee drunk out of tumblers
over a London skyline is a compelling transposition; it works as
modern art.
This
riff of 'old image, new context' was repeated when fate led me to
New York for the first time. When I emerged from the subway onto
a street shadowed by skyscrapers and interspersed with yellow taxis,
I felt as if I'd come home. New York is so minutely familiar before
a visit, and so easygoing during one, that it makes itself your
city instantly. There isn't even a welcome, it's just yours for
the taking.
I stayed
with people in three distinct neighbourhoods. With each set of old
friends I quickly rediscovered why we'd all gravitated to each other
in the first place, with easy conversations going well into the
night. Everything about their lives had changed from the last time
we'd met, so I got the most pleasure from sharing in the mundane.
I accompanied one friend as she walked her dog. I helped two friends
encourage their child to eat breakfast quickly before school. I
set up audio speakers with one at his flat in Manhattan.
And
everybody who walked with me around the mythical big city tried
to set it in context. New Yorkers seem to pride themselves in knowing
the history of their neighbourhoods and how it relates to life around
them. Every neighbourhood I was shown seems to have followed the
same pattern. They were once rough areas, but rents were low, so
artists moved in. As they brought their hipness with them, the rich
folk started to move in, rents went up and the artists had to move
on. The rapidity of this change of context is astounding.
The
days went by and soon it was time for me to move on too. I left,
aware that I may or may not meet these friends again for years.
But it's heartening to know that they're there and that everything
we shared in the past can be conjured again with a shared meal,
a cup of coffee, or the remembrance of a near-forgotten foolishness.
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