Meddling with the Floydian past

Anyone who has even a very fair knowledge of what my interests are will immediately associate me with buildings, music and food. And sleep. This post is (indirectly) related to one of the contributors to my musical interest: the British band Pink Floyd. Of course, I will not even attempt to discuss PF today; the subject matter is too vast to even fit within the limitations of even an entire blog, let alone a single post. However, this particular post was somehow inspired by a Floydian song, which inspiration has led me to drop these few lines.

In 1971, Floyd released the album "Meddle", probably the album in which the shift from producing purely psychedelic material to more progressive rock made its initial appearance (I apologise for the unnecessary details, but I could not help it) and amongst the songs in this album was the epic Echoes. At almost half an hour long, it is definitely close to the top in the list of the longest rock songs ever written in history; I reckon Floyd tend to feature prominently in this list! Around the time when "Meddle" was composed, the band lived mostly in London and, although certain things undoubtedly changed since the early 1970s, I believe certain aspects of the city's life have not. I can safely draw this conclusion from the content of this song (or, at least, my interpretation thereof) and comparing this to my current experience of living in London...

Unless you happen to be a PF maniac to at least one unit of magnitude less than I am, you will not know the lyrics of Echoes and, to save you the hassle of Google-ing it, I will reproduce the relevant part:

Strangers passing on the street, by chance two separate glances meet, and I am you and what I see is me.

Now please do not tell me that this is some crap band! Surely somewhat more serious that the persistent bull**** we were presented by short-lived pop icons in the likes of Mickey Mouse star Britney Spheres...I mean, Britney Spears. Anyhow, I promised I will not delve into musical debates and stick to my point. Whenever I hear Echoes and, especially this verse of lyric, I reassure myself that Floyd songs in the like of Echoes were not composed in a state of mind simply driven by uninterrupted, many days' consumption of LSD or other illicit substances, well at least not in their entirety. A considerable amount of thought was spilled out from the mind of Roger Waters when he penned the lyrics.

Back in the 1970s, I would imagine Waters, in his daily commuting up and about on the Tube, walking around in north-west London on the way from Abbey Road studios to the nearest tobacconist and from his apartment to the nearest food store, might have noticed the patterns of fellow Londoners, particularly during rush hours I would say. People moving frantically on London's wide pavements, with no time to show any sense of humanistic communication, where any sort of encounter would be purely random and coincidental. People sitting on the Tube, deeply lost in their newspaper, scribbling notes on paper diaries or crossword puzzles. People almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown, engulfed in nothing else but getting to the workplace on time, completing scheduled tasks and returning home in the same delirious manner only to resume the following day. Day after day, until their retirement and eventual death in a few years' time (perhaps this truly disturbing concept was explored by Floyd in their next album, The dark side of the moon; again sorry for the detail).

Fast forward by almost four decades and, instead of Roger Waters (presumably he is happily living somewhere quieter than Central London), you find me moving around in London. Funnily enough, Roger and I both studied architecture but, other than that, I am not comparing myself to Waters; I simply believe that I find myself in similar situations which led to his observations in Echoes. On my daily routine walks to Imperial along Cromwell Road, past Earls' Court and Gloucester Road stations, I observe scores of people struggling in their race against time, completely distracted from the rest of the world, like a swarm of ants heading to the small-sized opening leading to their hideaway of underground blackness. People lost in their own Blackberry realm, feeling the constant need to "be online", check e-mails, update their Facebook status and chat with a friend or two. People completely shut off from the aural world around them, except for the sounds provided by their iPods which, although providing a potential playlist of several GB worth of music, will somehow only be limited to the same few songs they deliberately select. People sitting on the bus, smiling stupidly at their mobile phones as if the 1234567890 buttons provide the best entertainment possible. Luckily, I do not commute by Tube everyday but, when I do, I see people squeezing themselves onto a seat on the Tube, scanning their PDAs for the next appointment or striving to finish up their Sudoko game on their copy of Lite and struggling to get a copy of The Evening Standard to pursue another game.

And what about human communication? Reduced to the absolute minimum: self check-out points in supermarkets, Oyster cards instead of papers tickets to eliminate commuter-driver interaction, colleagues preferring e-mail correspondence more than anything else. No one dares to talk to anyone else, lest s/he is accused of infringing in the other's privacy or be interpreted as flirting and soon be engaged in a law suit for sexual harassment. And so on and so forth. Everyone is happy to live in his/her own little world, entirely submerged in individualism with no apparent concern for interaction with fellow members of the same human species and completely shut off from the rest of society, which could be fast approaching the sterile, totalitarian world predicted in Huxley's shocking Brave new world or as illustrated in Orwell's provocative 1984. Perhaps this is a far-fetched image of contemporary society, but which was first noticed by PF in the 1970s and which could be more of a reality now in the first decade of the new millennium.

Waters wrote Echoes so many years ago and, yet, today I feel similar emotions escaping from the spirit of the same London. So have things changed at all? Yes, they did - they have only become much worse. What if Floyd had to write Echoes today? Would they still talk of strangers passing on the street? Will they write about these strangers' glances meeting at all, even if by chance? And what do the strangers see? Will they see themselves mirrored in each other, both running the same insane race? I am sure I am going to sleep in a few minutes' time but am even more sure that all of the above questions will have "Yes" for an answer.

The glorious English weather

The stereotypical image of someone living in London would certainly be that of a white-skinned individual with serious solar exposure deficiency and longing for sunshine more than anything else in life. Besides the persistent talk of weather, very likely to be done over a warm cup of tea after having consumed a helping of fish-and-chips or the other English national food: sandwiches. The subject of the English weather is surely a prominent part of English culture. To quote Samuel Johnson again, "When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather" and the Brits have certainly lived up to this statement. And the common perception of most people is that the outcome of this weather talk will certainly be that, more often than not, everyone is complaining about the weather here.

From my limited experience of living here, I can boldly say that this is not true in its entirety. Certainly there are days when it is wet and cold and windy but, unless you happen to be in the Sahara, I suppose everywhere else such meteorological phenomena do, inevitably, occur. It actually has been quite challenging to be convincing in stating the the weather, so far, has been quite mild and surprisingly pleasantly sunny, given that we are midway through autumn. Contrary to what many people instinctively associate London with, most days have been sunny, dry and not that cold; the odd drizzles did not fail to make their appearance and the utterly dreadful overcast skies too. When it comes to the latter, actually, I feel quite startled since the overall grey sky which lingers on from sunrise to sunset (actually, there is no sun in such circumstances) simply retains my well-known morning sleep mood throughout the whole day. Result: alarming rates of yawning, worrying levels of productivity (or lack thereof) and severe lack of insomnia symptoms.

Other than that, I love the weather here and feel quite comfortable with it. Whereas virtually all of my office colleagues wear layer upon layer of long-sleeved clothing which I would, maybe, wear only in winter, I go to uni with a short sleeved shirt (and a jacket when I am outside). While some colleagues yearn to switch on the heater in the office (which I wholeheartedly detest with a passion), I often long to return to my room which has had open windows since the day I moved in and heater strictly switched off permanently. During one of my daily jogs, I recently noticed that part of my route includes a street from which I get a view of my residence's building. And a few days ago, whilst happily jogging by and looking up to quickly identify which is my room before I jog by, I realised that my room was actually quite simple to spot: the only one with the window open! It seems like I am quite immune to the cold and, according to theory I myself devised, this could be due to one or two reasons or a combination of both: (a) I have excessive thermal insulation in my body provided in the form of fatty tissue; (b) during my quarter of a decade living in Malta, I have so much latent heat stored within my system that I never (or rarely) feel cold. I often strive to delude myself that it is more of case (b) than (a)...

Actually, to be honest, this week I happened to fancy wearing a long sleeve shirt and, as soon as I turned up at the office, I was not greeted with, "Good morning" but with, "Hey Karl, are you OK? Are you sick?" People actually start worrying whenever I say that I am feeling cold! In fact, I have rarely complained of being cold in my 18 month stay in London so far. Probably the only time I really felt cold was on 01/02/08, when I visited Hampstead for the first time and, after successfully climbing up Parliament Hill to get a full view of the London skyline, I thought that my body extremities (i.e., ears, nose and fingers) were about to chip off my body. But I suppose this is perfectly justified given that, a few hours later, London was about to experience the heaviest snowfall in the last 18 years!

As I said earlier, I have no objection whatsoever to the cool temperature; indeed, the perfect day would be sunny, no (or little) patches of white cloud and a fresh air temperature not less than 10 degrees: bliss! And in the unlikely event of me feeling cold, this is no serious threat to my well-being: I simply wear more clothing! On the other hand, there is nothing I can do to make myself comfortable if I am feeling too hot. The converse of the former solution does hold: wear little clothing but there is a minimum level of clothing I need to wear which is the socially-acceptably threshold of public decency. And I would rather not violate that! So, bring on the cold!

Sick flick!

This is a post which, in a way, is not quite related to anything occurring here in London in particular. It is simply a random piece of written gibberish which I felt the urge to write following an unusual conversation I had today with 3 of my Italian colleagues on the way to lunch from our level 2 office in the Skempton (civil engineering) building to the canteen in the Sherfield (common facilities) building, 2 blocks within the Imperial campus.

The common factor "level 2" is, in actual fact, deceitful, since for us to navigate from working zone to feeding zone, we actually have to go up to level 3 in the Skempton building and then, after a pleasant walk in a sunny corridor, go down a flight of steps to find ourselves in level 2 again, but this time in the Sherfield building. Quite a remarkable feat of ingenious British architectural design, which, instead of providing a direct link at level 2, created a detour in users' daily routine, either consciously to encourage a daily dose of exercise or (more likely) it was a Friday afternoon job which the architect carried out with utmost enthusiasm. Any how, enough said - I am quite an optimistic person and, thankfully, this prolonged route to the canteen allowed enough time for a conversation, which will be the subject of my post today, to develop...

I really do not recall how it all started but I do know that, soon after the dialogue began, I soon became very disturbed about a recurrent pattern in my life. Many a time in the past, I have gone through various "phases" of (more often than not) severe fixation about a particular subject matter. This would lead me to become almost obsessed to the point that I could easily engage in discussion about the topic in question and be equipped with a database of knowledge that would suffice to write a PhD thesis on the subject from memory! What would then follow will be that that particular item will, as a result of being translated into a major media hit (namely, a movie, music or literature blockbuster) and become a worldwide craze, making me reduce to nothing but a mere apparent fan of that specific hit who, apparently, would be a "more of the same" aficionado. The disturbance is best illustrated with the examples used during the actual conversation.

When I was about eight or nine years old, I had become somewhat infatuated by dinosaurs. I spent all of my time reading magazines and books about the extinct reptiles, sketching an endless amount of T-Rexes and Brontosauruses, decorating my room with figures of these scary animals and memorising the names of the dinos. Of course, back then I depended on adult-sourced funding for buying all of these items and would eagerly negotiate getting some dino-related gift for my birthday, Christmas, passing exams and any other occasion worthy of a gift. All was well in my dino world until, in the summer of 1993, Mr. Spielberg rocked the world with his "Jurassic Park" and suddenly everyone, children and adults, went dino-mad. Whatever "fun fact" I could share with my friends suddenly became popular knowledge and I seemed to be nothing more than just a product of peer pressure.

Later on, I started to become more and more interested in the world of engineering. My interest led me to learn about one of the greatest engineering marvels of its time: the RMS Titanic. As had happened with dinos, I would strive to find any available time to sink into my desk chair (no pun intended) and let myself be bewildered by the dimensions, features and unlucky maiden voyage of the liner. Once more, I had notebooks with sketches and all of the data I would collect over time from various resources in an age when Wikipedia was still non-existent. What comes next? You have guessed it: James Cameron's movie of 1997 became possibly the greatest movie of all time and everyone went "Titanic"-crazy and I, with my immense knowledge of the subject, suddenly became perceived as nothing more than an apparently ardent fan of Di Caprio, at an age when I was supposed to display my first signs of manhood and thus my dislike of any soppy movies.

(P.S. I suddenly recalled that this whole conversation started when one of my Italian colleagues started that she had been to Southampton and, upon hearing that word, I screamed, "Have you been to the quay from where the Titanic departed?" which then led to this whole topic!)

At the dawn of the new millennium, I finally started my lifelong dream of enrolling the architecture/engineering course at University. This academic step led to yet another phase of fanatic behaviour which, unfortunately, seems to be a permanent one: buildings and structures. One particular pair of buildings became part of my database of buildings I should know about: Yamasaki's Twin Towers, which had already caught my attention a few years earlier when they featured in the De Laurentis version of "King Kong" (of which I was also an ardent fan!) but had now resurfaced as the example par excellence of tube framed buildings and became one of my favourite structures. What happens next? Mr. Bin Laden dreams of destroying these icons on 11/09/01 (or 09/11 in American notation), making the ill-fated structures a household name all over the world.

The most recent example (and final one for this post) occurred just a few months ago. Soon after I bought my iPod, I started feeding it with some of the world's best musicians' produce, including the album "Michael Jackson: King of pop", which was launched in June 2008, soon after MJ turned 50. In all fairness, I am not the world's most intense MJ fan, but I do love his best tracks Thriller and Billie Jean and his album found its way to my iPod almost by default. At one point, I had become so fond of Billie Jean that I had started sketching an orchestral version of the song (a project still uncompleted to date). In May 2008, I returned to Malta from London and, a month later, MJ sadly passed away. A few days after his demise, my sister happened to be going through my iPod playlists and, as soon as she found "Michael Jackson", she yelled, "Ohhhh, my bro is suddenly a fan of MJ!" when, in fact, the compilation had been there for almost a year!

This has been going on for ever and ever and has been tormenting my life! Anything I lay my hands upon soon becomes the subject of public interest #1 as a result of some Hollywood blockbuster, pop star sensation or even terrorist act! Now that I started my PhD and, for at least 3 years, will be in one of my typical brainwashed routines, I wonder what is next: a box-office wrecking movie about a giant tent fabricated from a cutting-edge hybrid composite material which gets erected to cover the entire area of the USA and, as a result of its superb blast-resisting performance, saves the world in the days of Armageddon! Well, let us hope not!