Urban Magic

Election 2010

Posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 in Misc. | 4 Comments

So, I’m not what you’d call big on politics.  I mean, I care, and get very pissed off about the whole business, but I’m not what you’d call a believer.  I’m a wishy-washy liberal, which by definition means someone who is prepared to sit down and consider the other guy’s point of view.  (This naturally makes liberalism a rather difficult doctrine to sell, since when asked to say something charismatic and powerful about your rival’s political stance the best you can usually come up with is ‘well, that’s a very interesting view, would you care to have a rational and reasonable discussion about its implications sometime and perhaps provide me with your evidence and references for the same?’  Unlike, say, a less liberal political doctrine in which you can absolutely say ‘no, you’re wrong and I’m right hah!’ and thus if nothing else achieve a certain punchiness in presentation.)  I guess if I believe anything at all it is that wealth does not equal entitlement, that poverty does not equal failure, that nuclear missiles started off a bad idea and haven’t changed much, that continual setting of educational targets does not create learning, that the NHS is a Good Thing, that Britishness is not a fixed absolute that should be imposed upon society, (and even if it were, it is again not another Good Thing) and of course, that power does not equal aptitude.  (Witness the MP’s expenses scandal, sigh.)  And of course, like a good sometime-history student, I believe that all ideals are tempered by viability – thus the sacred protest chant – ‘What Do We Want?’  ‘Reasonably Agreeable and Mutually Beneficial Change For The Overall Good!’  ‘When Do We Want It?’  ‘Within a Practicable Timeframe, Please!’

All of which largely leaves me without a party to support in the coming general election.  I mean, my instinct is to vote Green, simply because when all other issues are stripped down, the continual survival of the planet really kinda tops them all.  But in the first past the post system, I do find myself playing an amateur’s strategic voting game.  I live in a marginal constituency, and the Greens don’t even seem to be trying to win here.  What good are my ethics if they have no political consequence?  (I ask myself.)  I won’t beat about the bush – I find the idea of a Conservative government rather horrifying, as it seems that they either have no ideas, or their ideas are founded on a doctrine of get power first, get a plan last.  Douglas Adams had it right when he suggested that those who wanted power should absolutely be the very very last people to get it.  That said, Labour’s main intention seems to be the retention of power, and again, past that there doesn’t seem to be a plan, although I can at least sympathize with some of their basic principals, even if the past however many years seems to have twisted and corrupted the core ethics to squat.  As for the Lib Dems… I couldn’t even recognize Clegg until two weeks ago and I still don’t know what they stand for.  They have some sympathy from me in that they haven’t done anything that seems absolutely inane these last few years – their MPs were reasonably not-too-corrupt-overall compared to some of the obscene corruptions that have emerged from 2009, and they were opposed to the Iraq War which was quite clearly another obscenity that shall go down in the history books as one of the most politically stupid and morally reprehensible acts of the British government in the last 50 years.  Then again, they were a 3rd party in a parliament of two parties united on the war and thus had very little to lose by opposing the war, not least when 2 million protesters were marching through the streets of London on this very theme – quite what they’d do in government when idealism met practicality who knows?  Perhaps it is just an innate truth that power always corrupts, that the brightest of idealists when they decide to become MPs will soon find themselves so lost in the combat of politics that ethics gives way to survivor’s instinct.  Democracy, as Winston Churchill put it – the least bad form of government.

It is also possible that I am basing my decision on seriously iffy information.  The newspapers are hardly squeaky clean in their election reports – some are so blatantly pro one party or another that there’s no point even pretending that journalistic neutrality exists.  When did we reach a point where a newspaper could ‘declare’ itself for one party or another?  And the BBC, my usual source of all knowledge, is in such a hurry to deliver information that often the depth can be hard to find.  It makes a murky contest even murkier, not fully knowing what information to trust.

Some things I can soundly declare myself to be opposed to.  The British National Party causes me nothing but fear and offense; fear because they seem to be getting better at putting a slick mask on what is an inherently offensive operation.  Even if the BNP denies that it’s a racist party, their core doctrine seems still to be the imposition of one culture – a fantastical ‘British culture’ – on everybody.  I don’t recognise this Britishness that the BNP seems to describe; to me, there is nothing more British than having a lamb bhuna while watching American TV in the company of friends from across the world, knowing that tomorrow morning I can get baklava from across the road run by the man who watches epic Hindu drama on a tiny TV screen above the cigarette counter, before getting on a bus in which the common language of conversation is Arabic, Farsi, Russian, Polish, French, German, Cantonese and as well as English.  What is London if not a city of everyone and everything; and is this not something that makes it great?  To impose a culture on anyone or anything automatically implies the absolute superiority of any culture, and that I cannot accept.  And yet to watch the BNP at work… it reminds me of student union debates, in which everyone had to come armed with a battery of statistics and examples and figures plucked from who knew where to prove god knew what, sounding incredibly impressive until you noticed the lack of footnotes.

It would be politically correct of me to say that I respect people who hold other political views from mine.  And certainly, some I can; that which is supported by argument, by reason, that view which can hear the views of others, recognize the broader picture, base its views on evidence and understanding; that political view which has at its heart the needs of others, regardless of race, creed or colour, sure I can respect that – our political aims are the same, even if our methods for achieving all of the above are different.  But I see no sure sign that the BNP fulfils even this ambition, let alone holds methods I can respect.  So I guess that even if I can’t guarantee which party I’ll be voting for in the coming election, I can at least tick a few off the list.

London Borough of Hackney

Posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 in London | 1 Comment

I was born and raised in Hackney.

Technically, if we’re going to wax literal about this, I was born in St.Bartholemew’s Hospital, Smithfields, the day after a nuclear disaster and a few months before the maternity ward shut down, and while this is not in Hackney, by dint of being within the sound of Bow Bells it does technically mean I’m supposed to be a cockney.  I mention this only because, as you might have guessed, dear reader, my syntax isn’t very cockney.  I am the product of my education, which was ridiculously academic, so don’t hold your breath if you’re looking for my blogger’s guide to rhyming slang; I’m just not your girl.  All this being so, Hackney is the borough where you were traditionally supposed to stumble on your cockneys, although you’re more likely to stumble on dialects of Farsi these days, and you’d probably have an easier time understanding if you did.

I guess I should start off by explaining the title of this blog – London Borough of Hackney.  I’m a dead proud Hackney girl, not least because there’s a snotty knee-jerk reaction that happens generally in London when you mention the borough’s name, a certain curling of the lower lip or, in some cases a cry of ‘but is that safe?’  The estate agents would probably tell me that I grew up on ‘Islington borders’ – in other words, I nearly practically grew up in a borough that is in every way considered brighter, better, cleaner, safer and basically nicer than Hackney.  However, I mildly resent this accusation, since I can’t help but notice that the people on the other side of the borough line never describe themselves as being in ‘Hackney borders’ so why should I return the compliment?

Let’s not beat about the bush, there’s plenty about Hackney that’s wrong.  The local council once had a reputation for being one of the most corrupt in Britain, although I think in recent years there’s been so many councils that they’ve been reluctantly forced to relent.  The bureaucracy remains fiendish, but this may just be a common local borough trait.  (Certainly none of the boroughs I’ve lived in since have exactly gone out of their way to make life easier.)  There are plenty of grotty areas; Hackney possesses both a very large number of council estates of the kind that were built with an ideal in mind and not much sociological reasoning, and poverty remains a quiet under-note for much of its busy streets.  It is not a place for Waitroses or Starbucks, but rather the streets of Hackney are ruled by pound shops and greasy spoons and I for one kinda cheer for this.  Hackney has a reputation for gun and knife crime; whether this is earned I’m not in the best position to judge; with guns and knives there are also drugs.  If you look, you can find all of the above; however my one weak comfort to those who cringe at this thought is that if you don’t go looking, it’s not going to seek you out either.

But!  With all this doom and gloom out of the way, let me explain why I remain a proud Hackney girl.  For a start, I challenge anyone to enter the borough and not be able to find something of anything.  It’s a great big sprawling place, with its southern border stopping at Old Street, nudged right up next to the Corporation of London, the oldest part of the city where the bankers do their business behind extremely polished glass while wearing very expensive ties.  Its northern border makes it to Tottenham, a place where inner city density and suburban sprawl fight tooth and claw for which will be the winner.  (Currently 0-0.)  At the eastern edge, Hackney meets Tower Hamlets, and at the bottom edge of Mare Street the lampposts are hung with banners proclaiming each borough to be superior to its neighbour, as if the daily inhabitants might somehow want to reconsider their place in life while jostling for the Central Line at Bethnal Green.  It is a mixture of old and new; grand Victorian terraces, black and white houses with sashed windows, sit opposite 1960s orange brick council estates and all shop at the same local newsagent.  Rather optimistic council initiatives, such as bright white offices and the perhaps ironically named ‘Ability Plaza’ sit bang smack next to the old-made-new, such as the Hackney Empire.  The Empire was resurrected a few years ago from a run-down music hall with barely a lick of paint left on its walls to a brilliant, bright new theatre with all the extravagance of its past brightened and raised up.  Throughout the year you can find panto, comedy shows, high drama, amateur dramatics and soap opera all being acted out in fairly even quantity at moderate prices.  The Empire itself sits at the top of Mare Street, which is the nearest thing to a main thoroughfare that Central Hackney lays claim to, a mixture of grand terraces turned into shops selling mysterious unnamed root vegetables and hairdressers specialising in bright nails and the Afro style.

The ethnic diversity of Hackney is one of its most notable features.  Halal butchers and telephone shops specializing in cheap calls and money transfers to Jamaica, Sudan and Pakistan are as common as parking fines, and in the bustling market at Dalston Kingsland you would have to be blind to not be able to find cassettes of the greatest hits of Trinidad, or love music from Bollywood on sale in between the fish and cheap clothes stalls.  It is as easy to buy a sari as it is a pair of sandals, pide is as cheap as pizza and baklava is the dessert of choice.  Council leaflets to all its residents come in a minimum of eight languages, and no self-respecting Hackney library would be without its foreign language and gay interest sections.  There’s a large Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, noticeable a mile off for their uniform of black fur hats and black coats, smart suits and skullcaps, clustered to the edge of the railway lines that run out of Liverpool Street towards the north; around Green Lanes there is a Turkish community who, when Turkey came 3rd in the Football World Cup some years ago, drove round and round with the roofs of their cars open and flags waving, much to the chargrin of the Cypriot and Armenian communities that live up towards Wood Green.  On Stoke Newington High Street, one Turkish supermarket has set up shop inside what was once a mosque, a building covered almost entirely in green and blue mosiac tiles, while towards Clissold Park you can find church sat opposite a synagogue with only a kebab shop and some rather over-enthusiastic traffic to keep them apart.  Towards Whitechapel you will struggle to miss the minarets of the Suleyman Mosque, but it is far easier to not notice the Regents Canal as you cross it on your way heading south, running from Camden, through Islington, slicing across Hackney and finally moseying out towards the Lee River Valley. It is a place of transitory immigrants, people passing through on the way to somewhere more stable, as well as a borough where the newly settled plant their first solid roots; you don’t have to look hard in Dalston or Clapton to find a wedding dress, first or second hand.

The density of buildings can often disguise secret patches of calm in Hackney as well.  Clissold Park, London Fields, Cambridge Heath, Bethnal Green and the sprawling marshy mass of Hackney Downs all seem to pop out between the buildings when you least expect them, a simple turn down a simple street like any other and bham, open grass and swings and people playing football badly.  Buses are the traveler’s means of choice in Hackney, almost entirely because it has barely a half dozen underground stations to claim as its own.  (Although all in the borough wait with baited breath to see what will happen to the East London and Crossrail projects, come the election…)  There are a few unlikely travel options available though… with the underground so dominant in north London, few really considers the potential of the mainline trains that chug out of Liverpool Street station and up the side of London Fields on route to the edge of the city, but they can illustrate with immense ease how a train can in ten minutes cover a distance that on foot would take an hour.  Likewise, there is the Overground railway, which has in its time been known by many names – ‘Silverlink Metro’, ‘North London Line’ or more often than not ‘you aren’t seriously thinking of taking that, are you’?  Recent years have improved on the Overground and it is now possible to get from Hackney Central to Camden on one train in one journey in roughly fifteen minutes without having to beat little old ladies over the head to do so.

So you see, when I say that I come from the London Borough of Hackney, I’m only giving its full name to make sure you understand… it’s not just any old place I grew up in…

Djinn

Posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2010 in Glossary | 2 Comments

Throughout history, there have been legends of djinn.  Sometimes they’re desert wanderers, cruel tricksters, creatures of fire and vengeance; other times, they’re friendly helpful, almost fairy-like creatures that show up at dodgy narrative moments and fulfil your every desire or, at the very least, offer to fulfil your very desire even if it later turns out that you didn’t know what was good for you.  (This being the perpetual problem with trying to get what you want through mystical means – there’s no one ever really checking the small print, and no helpful guidebook on the art of keeping wishes sensible and safe.)

In this modern time, the djinn naturally have adapted to the advent of urban magic, and the terminology has become rather vaguer as a consequence.  Certainly, there remain the desert spirits of old, rolling across the sands on wings of flame, but their urban cousins are a far more varied breed.  The djinn of the London underground, for example, exist as living winds that dance forever through the tunnels in the wake of the trains.  Only rarely are they spotted, as when a gust of wind catches a pile of discarded newspaper left on the platform and for a moment, as the pages are turned in the wind, there is a face, a shape that might almost be living, defined in old paper and air.  Their surface cousins can often be seen in the same way, in the plastic bags that get caught in the vents of air conditioning units and which turn, just very rarely, to take on the shape of a living thing.  Sometimes they are tricksters – your average djinn gets a ridiculously high level of pleasure from turning the umbrellas of commuters inside out, or from splitting open a briefcase and catching the papers within in a gale of wind.  Sometimes they are downright malign, pushing against the feet of travelers who are standing too close to the edge of the platform.  Occasionally, sometimes, they are protecting spirits, defenders in the night who tumble through the tight streets of the city on wings of airborn rubbish, paper and steam, watching over the early-morning travelers.

Familiars

Posted on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 in Glossary | 3 Comments

Throughout the history of magic, witches and wizards have had a noble tradition of keeping animal familiars as spiritual companions, pets and occasional useful substitutes for the mailman in times of trouble, closely bound and by their sides.  This tradition continues to this day, although the rising of urban magic has naturally caused some changes to fashion.  Owls, for example, are now rather tricky familiars to keep, although curiously enough the domestication of the rabbit as a fluffy pet means that some wizards still find it useful to keep them as mystical familiars, albeit rather fatter, cuter familiars than perhaps their ancestors were.  Wolves are out, foxes are in – indeed, the urban fox is considered one of the more useful and fashionable familiars for any wizard to keep, valuable for their powerful senses, cunning, survival skills and unrivaled nocturnal mastery of the city streets.  Pigeons are a common airborn familiar, and rats are also a popular choice, able to access pretty much anywhere and do anything.  Mice are not very fashionable, although recent trends in the domestic cat population suggest that soon the cats of the city will be too fat and lazy to pose any real threat to this particular breed of familiar.

There are also tales of more exotic familiars that urban wizards have been known to acquire.  One witch was said to adopt a motorbike as her pet familiar, which would somehow manage to appear wherever she went regardless of whether she’d driven it there, as loyal as a pet puppy.  Needless to say, this resulted in a lot of parking fines, and was for that reason abandoned as being a rather foolish choice of animated pet.  A member of the Beggar King’s court managed to bond with his own fleas, turning them into a rather irritating weapon of choice that could at any given moment hop onto the backs of his enemies and annoy them to death; and it said that in Miami one rather reckless sorcerer adopted a baby crocodile as his familiar, only to discover that the tinned meat bill once his familiar reached adulthood was prohibitive.   Thus, while it can be said that having an animal familiar magically bound to you can be a useful tool for any self-respecting wizard, the advise always stands – call your local borough council first, and consider your budget before making any major mystical choices on the subject.

Midsummer Nights Dream

Posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 in Misc. | 1 Comment

So, I’m sat at RADA on my lunch break, having just finished cutting colour for a production of Midsummer Nights Dream.  It’s a holiday job, in which RADA and the New York University join forces to produce a bit of Shakespeare, and I did the last NYU/RADA production as well… Pericles… and since it was fun and I figured since this is paid, I signed up as Lighting Designer for this production too!

It’s one of Shakespeare’s sexy plays.  I mean, in narrative terms, we’re not talking about profound art.  The plot involves two sets of romantically dubious lovers, a gang of squabbling fairies and a magic potion, which should put any sane person on their guard immediately.  But the language is Shakespeare at his showing-off sexiest.  Frankly, the speeches where the fairies go about describing their environments and events and stuff that has happened is pretty much the Tudor era’s answer to the non-existence of lighting rigs – if you can’t do it with wattage, Mr Shakespeare seems to suggest, then damn well do it with words!

Which, naturally, as a writer I’m entirely cheering for, and as a lighting designer I have mixed feelings about.  I mean, sure, it makes it easier to create an atmosphere is the script is doing it for you, but the language is in its own way so sexy that it just kinda ups the stakes for the lighting designer to try and achieve the same level of magic as the words imply.  From a practical point of view, this often means that Midsummer Nights Dream is not cheap on haze fluid. 

We have yet to have a dress rehearsal… hell, I have yet to get my rig in the air and see if it even works… but it’s a cool play to light and, for that matter, a cool play to read, so, fingers crossed… watch this space…

Yellow Fluorescent Jackets

Posted on Saturday, April 10th, 2010 in Glossary | 4 Comments

In nearly all cities, there is no symbol so universally recognized as the yellow fluorescent jacket.  From Tokyo to Venice, everywhere you go, it is a sign that immediately cries out ‘I am an important person carrying on important, if not vital urban work and if you interfear with this work you and the civic authorities will probably both come to reject it.’  No bouncer will deny access to those who wear this sign of authority; no building site will refuse admission, no worker question its presence, no driver fail to spot, and no casual citizen fail to ignore, having spotted it.  Women tend to avoid men wearing it, as the adornment of the yellow fluorescent jacket on the back of nearly any man will immediately transform this creature from a perfectly respectable member of the human race to a sexual monkey who, despite their general sensitivity and potential poetic soul, will still, once the jacket is one, feel the need to shout ‘lovely pair of tits darling!’ at any female who happens to cross their path.

Needless to say, some members of the urban magic community have come to realise the power of the yellow fluorescent jacket as a tool of magic.  It is the next best thing to an invisibility cloak, since while people will very much see anyone wearing it, they will often fail to perceive anyone wearing it, and thus it serves just as well when times are hard.  A few more cynical members of the magical community go one step further, arguing that this power has been corrupted for evil purposes, and there in fact exists a sinister society of men in yellow fluorescent jackets, who can access anywhere and see everything, to achieve an agenda unknown to those not garbed in their sacred uniform.  The ‘lovely pair of tits’ business is therefore, it is argued, not so much a manifestation of blokes being blokish, but in fact a secret code phrase used to identify members of this secret society to each other.

And let’s face it…

… there may be something to this.

Seah’s Syndrome

Posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 in Glossary | 4 Comments

Seah’s syndrome is a rare medical condition affecting vampires.  Essentially, it causes a mutation of the intestinal lining whereby the vampire’s digestive system, which can usually break down and process all blood types that may be imbibed, is altered to reject all but a specific antegen blood group.  While most vampires can muddle by with standard O-type blood, and just be careful to avoid drinking any blood type which carries the rejected antegens, in extreme cases of Seah’s Syndrome the unfortunate vampiric victim can only process one specific blood group and will have a violent, often fatal reaction to the drinking of any blood which does not meet very high medical standards.

This, combined with a rising concern about blood quality and personal hygiene in general, following the discovery that vampirism did not, in fact, render immunity to certain blood-borne diseases, has naturally inhibited the lifestyle of many otherwise merrily predatory vampires, as a victim of Seah’s Syndrome, while he or she may enjoy stalking their prey, will often have to conclude their hunt with a series of personal and probing medical questions before risking even a casual drink.

Lady Neon

Posted on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 in Glossary | 5 Comments

No urban magician can really agree on the origins of Lady Neon.  Which is, for any academic magician, an excellent thing, since there’s nothing quite like certainty to dampen the potential for highly paid papers, conferences and consultancy groups of the subject.  However, one story stands out more than any other, and it goes something like this…

Once upon a time, in days of yore, the magic of the world lay in the land.  Wizards and witches walked the muddy paths between forests where the trees sang to each other and the water of the river whispered of mountains and seas; sorcerers sang and ivy grew, druids opened their fingers to the sky and the rain fell, and everything was, all things considered, pretty fine and dandy.  The dryads were scantily clad, the unicorns didn’t smell too bad, and the centaurs appreciated a good pint in the pub.  It was the time of classical magic, and at the heart of classical magic there was, hidden in fog and shadows but undeniably beating away, the Faerie Court, ruled by the Faerie Queen.  And she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman on the earth, one kiss of her lips enough to turn any man to her slave, one look from her eye enough to make mortals weep tears that turned to diamonds when they struck the earth.  She lived in the heart of the forest, a spirit of the wind and the earth, and all worshipped her, and all were afraid.

Then, as things will, the world changed.  Men discovered about iron and metal and steel and steam, and before you knew it there were railways and factories and roads and ships and empires and before you could say ‘where’d I put my sacred rowan branch?’ the wizards and witches of this world were discovering that actually, the spells they used to weave from lighting in the sky, they could now cast from electricity in the wires; and the gods that used to wear nothing but a well placed fig leaf over their private parts, now liked to dress up in denim, and that really all things considered, while no one would actually want to fly Easyjet, it still beat a freezing cold broom stick clamped between the thighs.  And so the Faerie Court began to wither and decline, its power fading as the magic went where the life was, moving to the city, until one day, it became no more than a shadow of the past, its glory withered to nothing.  And then one day, it vanished entirely.

Except…

… except shortly after the Faerie Court disappeared, rumours started of another Court.  A new Court, something different.  Rumours of a place in the heart of the city where the lights never went out, rumours of a woman too beautiful to look at, of a palace in Tokyo where the servants of this new court danced from dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn, of music with a pounding bass beat that, once it was in your mind, would never leave.  Rumours of fashion magazines in which eyes of the models really, and quite really, did follow you round the room, of enchantments made in the back of fast cars.  Rumours of a new kind of faerie dust, of a dust breathed in on the air that fulfilled your every desire until suddenly, you had no more desires left to feel and just danced and danced and danced because that was all your body was capable of doing, until you too dissolved, and became dust on the air.  And in time, these rumours were given a name, and that name was Lady Neon.  Strange, everyone said, how quickly her enemies fell, and how easily she made new friends.  Remarkable how quickly people became accostomed to the idea of the Neon Court; almost as if it had always been there, or as if the Faerie Court had never quite gone away.

Coming soon…

Posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2010 in Glossary | 1 Comment

So, something I’ve been planning for a while is a glossary of urban magic terminology.  Some of which is in the books, some of which isn’t, just to kinda put it out there and generally make this blog, which is about urban magic, more sorta about urban magic.  So, since this is still kinda  a work in progress, for now I’ll just say…

… watch this space.

The 39 Steps

Posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 in London, Misc. | 1 Comment

So!  I went to the theatre a few days ago, for the first time in ages.  The ironic thing about learning how to work in theatre, is that you never really have time to go and see the real thing… but anyway…  we found discount tickets to go and see a show in the West End, which is something I haven’t done for a while anyway, and after much negotiation we settled on the 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre.

I’ve read the 39 Steps… I enjoy it… it’s part of a series of books by John Buchan in which his hero, Richard Hannay, fights conspiracies and unearths deadly, usually German, plots involving military secrets and occasionally illicit uses of hypnosis.  And I promise you, the upper lip has never been stiffer.  Danger and daring-do are the words,  and if the works can be summarized in any way, it’s probably by the sentiment ‘oh jolly gosh, I seem to have been shot’.  Only much, much better than that.

The phrase ‘oh jolly gosh’, while I’m sure it never actually appears in the works of John Buchan, does seem to have been the idea that was seized upon by the powers behind the theatre adaptation of the 39 Steps, with brilliant results.  The play is a rip off of all things Hitchcock, performed by 4 actors in 40 hats and the strategically materialized arm of one ASM, with a set for which the word versatile was really created.  It is honestly hilarious, exciting and basically, at the end of the day, just tonnes and tonnes of fun.  And for £10 a throw, all I can really add to this is… GO!