“Everyone” is an artist..”

I have an intense affinity for this city, particularly because every so often when my life is in free fall, I find it speaking to me. In the last few months, my life did a major 180 (or was it more like 360???). And as it was building momentum I noticed a few strange things. The first of which was the demolition across the street from my flat, of a major office building (that  prior to demolition, looked like it has been there since the sixties and was there to stay..)

The demolition became the only thing i could really see (and hear) from my bedroom. As the contruction team began to bring it down to crumbling tendrils, the landscape began to have a post-apocalyptic quality.

But that was too obvious as a metaphor maybe, so i paid note and ignored it in equal measures. and then one day I came to work (late as usual) and as my heels clicked briskly to the door I saw something and stopped. Now being an urbanite makes you fairly jaded about random people in the street "performing", and yes it may have been some kind of publicity stunt, but the timing of it and the relevance in my life really struck me. This was what i saw

Just in case you can’t read that the sign he is wearing, it says:

"THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!"

But that was a bit over the top, and melodramatic, so though i found it a bit jarring, I again thought not too much of it. And then a few days later I was going home on the bus, There is a big billboard four or five bus stops before mine. I noticed they were changing the billboard and was curious what the new image would be. The next day I looked out for it specifically.

the new billboard:

rrrrriiight.

ok.

this was getting a little bit strange.

I spoke to a friend that night about my theory of the city relating back to you, in the way you related to it. I told her how i felt it was charged with all the people within it, who had lived in it, who would. She wrote it off to perception, in the same bag as how all pop songs take on a sparkling relevance when you’re in love.

call me a magical realist, but i do beleive that the city (the concept of the city in general) is constantly giving and taking and embracing and advising. there are constantly messages, thousands of messages that we choose to ignore or take in every second, minute, day.

being a lady drawn to words, i’m always curious about the little statements people in the city scrawl on walls, tables, buildings, and cubicle doors. There is something about someone with a intensity, or maybe just a little bit too much to drink, with a pen, or pencil, or crayon, or lipstick, who feels very strongly that he/she must get their message out for others to see.

When fine art duo Gilbert and George were questioned about their "dirty words pictures" (a series of pieces featuring photographs of obscene graffitti in the east end) They said

There’s very few people who actually go out and write sexual things on the wall, but it must be an amazing driving force. Or people write on the back of a white van in the dust, this van is nearly as dirty as my wife last night, she, da, da, da, da, da. It’s extraordinary the power inside a person to make them do that.

And similarly I kind of wonder, what is it that pushes someone to write something on a wall, what is the feeling just before it happens? How long or short do they think about what they’re going to say? and I’m fascinated by how certain bars and clubs have graffiti in their cubicles that can be so passionate, or poetic, or political. Most recently, I was out for drinks at what is now becoming my new favourite local, the Dolphin, and when I went in to the ladies room,  the graffiti i saw in the cubicle made me NEED to document it.

So i went back to my table and got my camera phone ,  it was kind of intense taking the pictures.

I found myself shutting myself in the cubicle specifically for that purpose.

 

(in case you can’t make out the one above, the first writer has said

"lets destroy something beautiful" to which the second writer responded

"you destroyed me"  to which a third commented

" i doubt it , you’re not beautiful")

I had trapped myself in this little urban, verbal, installation where women  express themselves in anger, or elation, about desire..

as i walked home that night. I carried all those little statements with me.

i’ve had no "messages" from the city since then.  but i’m paying very close attention to the next time  when i will.

Before getting into the topic at hand I must digress a little.

This morning one of my friends at work gave me a suggestion for an entry, precisely when I was struggling to decide what to write about. He suggested I write about the use and misuse of the word gay. A topical topic,  however, I’ve decided I want to write about something entirely different. So thank you to my blog muse, I’m going to have to save the "gay" blog for a later entry, and I’m afraid you’re going to be very disappointed with what I’m about to say because I really am very proud of you for quitting the habit….

Now, ladies and gentlemen (and everything in between)…

THIS 

is my love letter

To smoking….

There is a date above all dates, that is inked into my diary, brain, and heart.  July first is the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine about the smoking ban being instigated in London, I know it will be better for me, I know I will smoke less (and trust me I need to smoke less, chain smoking is something as natural as breathing to me). And of course it may help me give up eventually, and help people who have given up not start again, and generally make the world a better place and cause less CANCER (there I said it ok) and then the sun will set and rainbows will span the sky and a full orchestra will play the score casablanca or sunset boulevard, and all these healthy people with perfect skin and teeth and nails will float through the landscape on angel wings singing because the evil demon nicotine has finally been banished…

orrrr not.

In the tipping point, Malcom Gladwell examines smokers earliest memories/imagery of someone smoking. And I have to say, regardless of the fact my mom gave up smoking long before having me, and my dad was never a smoker, the most potent images come from people in my family. I can remember the glamour of my aunt rhian smoking long thin menthol cigarettes, her other hand curved around a voluminous brandy glass, her nails perfectly manicured.. I remember my uncle kofi, in his fairly posh flat in Bayswater, a lowball glass of whiskey in one hand, a dunhill in the other. And his daughter, my cousin, who by far for me was the coolest person on the planet when I was a child. I remember her being this hip  London teenager and me her little cousin begging her to give up smoking because smoking killed you and I didn’t want her to die. And lastly my uncle kwesi, with his pipe, which seemed the most magic of all, the smell, the concentration and pleasure he seemed to take from it. 

I didn’t pick up a cigarette until 21 or 22, but I always hung out with “the smokers” in highschool. In retrospect I think all but one of my highschool boyfriends were smokers. And underage smoking in a school environment could be a complicated task, because it involved hiding in the back of locker rooms, or under bleachers or wandering out to the outer reaches of fields. The summer of my sophomore I went to theatre camp, as I did every year. That year was particularly special because I met this amazing girl called Yvette. Yvette was cute as hell, a great actress, rip roaringly funny and a chain smoker. Suddenly I found myself really desperately being drawn to a girl in a way I never had before. What was in my favour was she was gay and did seem to like me. But I had no idea how to make anything happen, so I just trailed around after her for the two weeks I was at camp. And because you couldn’t buy cigarettes on the college campus we are on, and Yvette smoked a lot, and quickly ran out of cigarettes, I spent a lot of time (and missed a lot of very expensive classes I was booked for) walking the 20minute walk to town with her, buying cigarettes. I remember her saying to me that with all these classes I was meant to be taking, that I wanted to take, it seemed bizarre that I was happy to ditch them to walk with her, especially as I wasn’t a smoker. I either smiled or blushed. Did it all start then?

In college I discovered that though the smoking lounge was much much grittier and dirtier then the non smoking lounge, the people in it (the smoking lounge) always seemed so much cooler. They were louder, they drank more, they partied more, they had better stories. Somewhere along the lines I think I may have picked up social smoking. I’m divided on exactly how it started. It was either when

1. I carelessly bought a carton of cocktail cigarettes flying back from  new york to London. Why? I liked the idea of smoking multicoloured cigarettes. It seemed more like picking up an accessory rather than a life altering health changing habit. Getting cancer from a pink or blue stick with gold filters seemed unlikely..

2. The first lounge party I went to (indigo at madame jojo’s, sadly no longer). I had heard of the lounge scene and was desperate to enter it with impact. So once I had my cocktail dress sorted, perfected my martini sipping pose, the natural addition was a cigarette in a long holder, so I bought myself a pack of ten marlboro’s a week before and smoked until I didn’t cough and it felt and looked natural. I was in drama school at the time rememeber..

And then after one or both of these two incidents I became a social smoker. And a very specific one, I had to be fairly drunk and in very intense one and on one conversation with a smoker. And then I might have one or two. At some point I graduated to the kind of smoker who only smokes when drinking. And then I moved in with a smoker. A hard core smoker. A smoker who rolled his cigarettes and whose hands seemed constantly stuck in that nimble gesture of rolling rolling rolling. He taught me that smoking did not only have to happen in a bar at nighttime, it could happen with tea before the shower, out the door as you walked to the tube, at the café on the way to college, in the college canteen (ah the days..) in lectures (ah the days..) at every coffee break, in the park, in sun rain or shine. And suddenly in wonder of the many occasions and times that smoking could accompany. I finally truly became a full time smoker. Meanwhile the rolling flatmate years later read THE BOOK and alan carr’s firm words removed the habit from him. And impressively a year or more late,r he has never smoked again (regardless of the fact his girlfriend does.)

As for me since becoming a smoker, I have never seriously considered quitting. I give up when I’m sick, because I hate being sick more than I love smoking and want to get well as quickly as possible.. Once in a while I entertain this idea of cutting down, which sounds very vague probably because it is. Smoking has become so much part of my character, part of how I carry myself.

I take so much pleasure in the act of it, from the opening of a fresh pack, to the slipping out of the cigarette (or the offering to someone else) the rise of the flame, the brief wait for it the end ot be lit, the first inhale, and each inhale after, its like a kind of punctuation to thoughts statements, feelings. I love the littel intimate interaction of lighting someone else’s ciggarette, of someone lighting yours. I love the cigarette after a very full meal, the nicotine buzz melt down. I love the intense nicotine clashed with caffeine buzz I get smoking in a café drinking espresso or frothy latte’s, I love smoking when I’m drunk, smoking after sex. I love this little bit of focus it gives you on the act of breathing, gazing, gestures. And I know that there is something about me that radiates the sheer pleasure I take from it sometimes because I seem to have disproportionate amount of friends who only smoke when they are with me. And they are “ex-smokers”, “non-smokers

As the ban edges closer I find myself wanting to smoke more than usual. I want to feel every last day I have left being able to sit in smoky cavernous spaces with my wine, my cocktail, my coffee, watching all those gorgeous grey tendrils rise to the sky. And ultimately the ban will be a good thing. I ‘ve spent time in enough cities with the ban in place. And it does interest me how it breaks down what kind of smoker you are. Because most people, told that they have leave their friends, go outside, possibly not take their drink , will not be that fussed about whether they smoke or not. Particularly if no else in the group is smoking.

But what I learned when I visited san franciso  (which has had the ban in place for many years) was, I am the kind of smoker who halfway through my drink, will go outside, regardless of weather, regardless of company, whether there is friendly stranger to talk to or solo, because I want to smoke that badly. And as an added bonus, the people who are like me, who are also standing alone, away from their friends, sometimes shivering in winter, or straining to stay out of the rain, They tend to have good stories, and good energies, and having this little addiction, this bond together, is no bad thing.

So goes my passionate history of smoking, and I’ll tell you this, I’m happy to say that the last day of public smoking, june 30^th, falls on a Saturday. And I intend to have the last big smoke out. I will have a massive party, I will have cigarette girls in sexy retro outfits handing out packs to all my revellers, I will have cigars, hookahs, cigarillos, joints, blunts, rollies, pipes, I will invite even the non smokers to take up the habit just for one night.

Interested?

Well you are welcome to join me. You’ll find me outside, in a corner, protecting my matches from the wind as I light up…