When I was studying in London, doing my reading for a course about the representation of London in the eighteenth century, I came across a quote that so perfectly summed up the reason I felt (and continue to feel) drawn to that great city:
There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can "invoke" or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in…--Michel de Certeau
It became apparent to me in the moment of reading this that it was exactly my sense of London as a place "haunted" by its social, political, and literary history that made me want to be a part of it. Before I had ever even visited, I had expectations about London gleaned from the pages of the books I'd read and loved -- everything from William Blake to Neil Gaiman -- and rather than being disappointed upon arrival that the London I actually saw was none of the Londons I'd read about, I felt even more at home there. It wasn't any of them, so it could be all of them, from Blake's grave at Bunhill Fields to all the names of tube stations cleverly reworked in Gaiman's Neverwhere. I didn't even have to go out of my way to find these associations; I was so steeped in the books that it just happened, I saw them everywhere (perhaps even where they weren't), and they made me feel like I belonged.
At the end of my year there, a friend and I ended up doing one of our projects about how our experience of "texts" -- defined loosely to include books, movies, television shows, songs, works of art, you name it -- had shaped our experience of London. It was a fascinating experience, deconstructing our own expectations and trying to trace them back to the source (my friend, for example, is pretty sure that his love of London began with movies like The Great Mouse Detective and Peter Pan; I, in a slightly more chagrined way, can probably attribute mine to my first encounter with Harry Potter).
It's almost a year since we finished that project -- almost a year since I left London -- and now that I'm leaving Berkeley, I'm beginning to realize that even though I never read anything significant involving Berkeley, the city was haunted for me in a different way. My father came to college here, and while I spent the better part of eighteen years being sure I didn't want to come to college here (long story short: I was stupid), I grew up with his stories about the place, and I always loved the way that they made me feel like I knew it. In the three years I've lived here, I've created a Berkeley of my own, separate from my father's, but still connected. Whenever I study in the North Reading Room of Doe Library, shifting in the the wooden chairs, I think of how he used to sit and study here. The other week, I celebrated the end of classes by getting lunch at the pizza place which used to be my dad's college hangout and which has survived the intervening years in style.
In the past few months, I've been thinking more about this concept of "haunting" in the face of my impending relocation to New York. I had a sense, before I ever visited, that New York would be like the London of the US -- not because it's a big city, or a central one, but because such a wealth of text surrounds it, and was bound to weigh upon my experience of it.
I've only spent five days there, but I'm inclined to think I was right. London and the British Isles still figure more prominently in my reading, but around the same time I ran into Harry Potter and kicked off that particular fascination, I discovered some other young wizards who began to haunt my idea of New York. Diane Duane's Young Wizards series -- beginning with So You Want to Be a Wizard -- follows a couple of teenage wizards living in the New York suburbs, making occasional trips into the city and usually getting caught up in some kind of adventure when they do. I had never been to New York City before March, but at that point Nita and Kit's New York had been a part of my imagination for about ten years, and at times I found their world suddenly superimposed over the one I saw before me: Grand Central played host to intergalactic travel, magical creatures lived in abandoned subway tunnels, and the statues in Central Park could be awakened to aid the virtuous in their time of need.
It's not quite the New York I'm moving to. But it's a pretty fabulous one in its own right -- and if it makes me feel somehow like I belong in this one, I can't complain.
In my Post Colonial Geography class we studied in detail a very interesting way to go about understanding both history and geography; We proposed in that class, that the only way to adequately understand a place or a point in history is in a relational kind of way - meaning that any 'place' is made up by the relationships it has with the outside, and the relationships that are made by the various people there (A place cannot exist if there isn't a community). Transferred to history this means that any point of history should also be viewed in the ways that we in the present relate to that time, and the ways that event have been related to those people preceding us.
ReplyDeleteWhen you talk about how London seemed like a haunted place to you (in the best way possible) I can't help but think about this relational understanding! London, as well as the other places you've mentioned, have solidified as places by your relationship to them and to the other relationships that these authors had/have. Furthermore it's interesting that you bring up that places can be 'haunted' by people who are not yet dead, but yet not there physically. People's memories and experiences when gained after the fact build your own experiences and make these places more real...I for instance will probably always think about the wonderful times my Brother and I have had in Alaska and Oaklahoma long after he is stationed elsewhere (some of my best memories are from then). I agree completely that the best places, the places that people can really 'live' are places that have this profound connection with the world and with various communities.
@Adam
ReplyDeleteI've never directly learned this kind of "relational" theory, but I agree with it wholeheartedly! It's very hard, nowadays, to actually go somewhere you know nothing about -- and even if you are traveling to a frontier, you will have expectations about it. They might not be met -- somehow I doubt that I will encounter the Doctor, no matter how much space travel I manage in my future life! -- but they still shape your experience.
It's funny, because Duane's Young Wizards books posit a way in which magic itself works according to this rule of relation and the pressure of living beings -- worldgating complexes are most likely to spring organically in places with high population pressure (or sustained population over a length of time); so will magical phenomena in general. And she posits a structure of universes where things that are pervasive fictions in this reality -- certain kinds of myths and legends, core stories that many cultures share -- might just be reflections of something that is actually true of a core universe from which all others have spawned. (Yes, the science of this is a little timey-wimey, but the idea of it is magical.)
A final thought -- in the same class where I read de Certeau, we talked briefly about the overlap between places and spaces -- places being physical, spaces being social. For example, an online forum is a space, but a cafe is a place. However, certain kinds of places can acquire "space qualities" -- which are specifically created by community interactions going on within them -- the example my professor gave was the way in which coffeehouses in 17th- and 18th-century London were places that seemed particularly conducive to fostering a particular kind of social space, where people interacted more or less on equal footing, and reason was valued above rank as an evaluative criterion.
hmm it seems Blogger has ate my response...ahem
ReplyDeleteTo build off of your last thought, it's also interesting to note that these spaces and places change constantly and organically depending on the relations of the individuals that make up these 'place/spaces.' As far as your last sentence, in my thesis work (that I am still working on >.<) I'm fiddling around with something that is directly related to such events. Jurgen Habermas' theory on the Public Sphere is intense to say the least (not that I don't have problems with it...I do).
I also like (from your words) Duane's portrayal of magic!. It strikes a similar chord to what I hope to do with my own stories involving magic and humanity.