writing: it's what i do.

After spending approximately four minutes reading the Wikipedia article on dalmatians, I, unrelated, decided it was about time I post what I actually write to th'blog. Which isn't blogging. I've only got a couple months left of undergrad, which means only two months left of somebody handing me clever exercises to keep me regularly writing. I'll post some of the one pagers from my Creative Nonfiction course.

The following exercise was simply to describe a place that suggests a story. Enjoy:

What is that song?

The usual sounds were there -- Voices figuring out if they needed the Northern Line or Piccadilly Line [an American couple deciding upon the Black line rather than the Blue line], voices competing over who was more pissed last night [Richard or Rodge?], voices considering which show to go see tonight [always insulting choices -- Wicked or We Will Rock You or Mamma Mia--]

That's it! It's 'Dancing Queen.' He's playing Dancing Queen.

No one riding the tubescalator -- The escalator, that is -- Had ever seen the guy play anything quite as melodically complex as 'Dancing Queen' before. Anyone staring down, angled at him, were staring into his bucket -- Because unlike the other buskers who all used the case their instruments came and went in, he used a blue twelve-gallon bucket, like one a horse would drink out of. How a vacuum cleaner saxophone playing robot thought he would ever make twelve gallons of loose 5p coins was absolutely ludicrous. It is this realisation alone that would make twelve people go by completely looking away -- And it is difficult to look away from a vacuum cleaner robot that is playing "Dancing Queen" on a vacuum cleaner saxophone.

The tubescalator seemed to move extra slow. It is around the end of the day and the beginning of the evening -- Not the night, but the evening, specifically -- That this appears to happen. It doesn't actually move any slower. There is probably, or maybe, no way of controlling the speed of the tubescalator, but when it is so completely filled with tourists who haven't been warned of the law about standing to the right and letting others pass -- That pulling out your excessively large Tube map completely last minute or finding your souvenir Tube map thong you just shamelessly purchased -- is not nearly as important as other people getting to where they need to go -- This is the pride and joy of the London transport system -- A seamless flow.

Without a seamless flow, life is harder to observe on account of building frustration. The big Leicester Square roundel looms overhead -- The legendary red circle with the horizontal blue bar with white text reading either 'Underground' or whatever station it is ornamenting. If the miners had such a simple, soothing logo such as this reading 'Underground,' the idea of that word may have not been filled with such anxiety. A seamless flow.

On the walls, lining the tubescalator, are rectangles -- Approximately twelve inch by eighteen inch rectangles. They're usually filled with ads, often for plays and shows going on, often for travel, and even more often for Virgin gym. They were not filled with ads then, but were instead filled with morose, pleading faces of frustration -- Faces that were still able to feel complete narcissism despite the congestion. The space looked so dark in the rectangles -- And the world seemed to move even slower. Nearing the end of the moving stairs, finally able to maybe break free of the backed up humans, five people struggled in woolen pockets for change. Maybe the vacuum cleaner saxophone playing robot needed some after all. Only he could make "Dancing Queen" last what seemed like forever. And when a seamless flow of people heads down a brightly lit white hallway into a stream of building heat, it was probably a good time to empty heavy pockets.