European Elections? Well, they are happening somewhere

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:36:44 PDT

Out of Brixton into the world

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:30:08 PDT

Timothy Abbott's Chronicles of night and Northern Light

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:28:43 PDT

These are the Chronicles of Timothy Abbott because of a conscious effort to avoid the pitfalls and pigeon-holes of public perception of my art. To take my degree at face value, I am a bachelor of this art. And any art should not be dismissed on the basis of specific experience.

I like exploring. Ideas in reporting, landscapes of the mind or of the body

Wenn sie Deutschsprachig sind, klicken sie hier. RSS feed

Twitter Updates

Jetzt, meine Gedanken ueber Deutschland ab de.lightchronicles.info 1 day ago
European Elections? Well, they are happening somewhere - http://tinyurl.com/ojpx26 3 days ago
is impressed/depressed by the level of happiness that people can show at someone else's failure. 10 days ago
is not all bothered if the best team wins tonight. as long as it is united lifting the cup. 11 days ago
A reflection on Wolfsburg up on the front page of www.lightchronicles.info as VfL Wolfsburg win the German football league. 12 days ago

follow me on Twitter

My latest report , on the local atmosphere surrounding the European Elections, is now up here

On Friday 20th May, my mental landscaping made it's radio debut. It is available here.

My exploration of ideas has led me in the direction of pieces investigating Paralympic sport and the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. More details here.

Any other questions, look at the FAQ or contact me

Landscapes of the mind and soul » Timothy Abbott. Professionally produced, unconventional journalism

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:13:13 PDT

'Everyone Has Their Monsters'

Jonny Brown presents:
The fifth of seven Hallucinatory soundscapes on Mining for Gold, Friday night 22nd May from 11pm until 12.30am. A dialogue co-written by Timothy Abbott and Mark Read with tarot intervention by Madame Pattna.

Streamed on www.resonancefm.com and on FM in London on 104.4fm

Landscapes of the body » Timothy Abbott. Professionally produced, unconventional journalism

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:10:19 PDT

Landscapes of the body

Who am I?

Poetry

I'm a European in a deeply Euroskeptic country. Specifically I am a Germanophile in a country still haunted by the ghosts of the two world wars. In fact, it is those ghosts which first brought me into its orbit.

The troops who remained after the end of the 1939-45 war had been strained through the blotting paper of geopolitics, and preventative measures designed to prevent a third war, into the ongoing presence as a NATO and EU partner. The residual presence of UK armed forces played host to a spiral arm of my family in the post-industrial greys of the Ruhrgebiet, as they played civilian civic roles within a couple of bases and we made sporadic childhood trips to the Ruhrgebiet like any family visiting far flung relatives.

Faced with a confusing familiarity on base, of British food and syndicated British broadcasting and yet commercial premises either controlled by the state or by benevolent non-profit partners, I relished the travelling to and from, with memories of Ausfahrt ramps and the rhythmic cadences of a language which sounded so gutteral and yet so nearly English. Even a disasterous trip through Duesseldorf Airport failed to cure me of my curiousity.

Teenage years were spent studying the death of the Weimar Republic (by most accounts, the most democratic state ever to have existed - eventually overthrown by the inherant instability in democracy) and the subsequent and consequent rise of extremism of both shades and the National Socialist Democratic Workers Party up to and then after the Second World War served up my first ever visit to Berlin, to the Topographie des Terror in the old headquarters of the Staatspolizei and to the slightly more Disneyland venue of Checkpoint Charlie.

At the time of the visit, Berlin was - to borrow from Dean Aitchison - a city without an empire and yet to have found a role. A later visit spent in slightly older company served only to reinforce a dislike of capital cities although I have to admit to a state of awe when wandering the amazing dome of the Reichstagsgebaeude.

That second trip was a strange diversion in the completing of a long path from Northern England's wooleybacks to North Germany's Nordlichtern. With my base in the riverside city of Bremen, I found that my soul speaks German and that I feel most at ease walking around that city.

Having also visited Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, I left the country feeling like my two month language course had been a peak experience, to use a Maslow-ism, revealing the deep ties between my spirit and the country, a feeling which has not left me in the three years since I left.

So this is to my spiritual twin Lilja, my good friend Jeannine and the many bemused Germans I have met along the way who have invariably told me that "alles in Ordnung", even if they begun by asking why I was bothering with their language - when I could already speak English.

If there are corners of England which I feel at home, they are Manchester and Brixton.

I have been into and through Manchester hundreds of times in my life. Until I moved to London and despite having never lived there, Manchester was my home city.

My favourite corner of this city, my home for almost two years. I present my own little piece of Brixton.

I want to paint you a portrait of Brixton so vivid that you can feel the energy coursing through your body. What energy? There was once a river which flowed from Vauxhall through the centre of this town. Flowing powerfully South towards confluence, it has since been forced underground by modern life and now flows as a sewer, below my former home road of Effra Road. It was the River Effra and residents still say it gives Brixton its energy to this day.

The top end of Brixton is where Stockwell, with its Portuguese and Brasilian rhythms melts through the high density housing symptomatic of South London into the skate park and onto the main junction with Brixton Road ("the high street" in UK parlance).

At the junction sits a domed theatre - The Brixton Academy, with its neighbouring bar, a landmark for the Northern end of Brixton. The buses and pedestrians turn right into Brixton Road down the rain spattered pavements, past chemists and clothes shops at various stages of opening, closing, and disrepair.

Across the road is the big department store Morleys, our next landmark and a typical old single fronted shop which has somehow managed to maintain its identity as all else around went mainstream. The second floor is a chain coffee shop but above is a professionally painted mural pronouncing "Brixton, 80db and rizing". When we turn our eyes back to the left side of the road, we are at the Tube station with its steel frontage and glass lift. And its ever increasing supply of 'touts' who buy travel and Academy gig tickets and attempt to sell them on.

If you hadn't noticed the shift towards West Indian flavours then passing the Tube station you will smell the powerful incense burning from sticks being sold by a wizzened, West Indian guy who never says anything - but just rattles his tin suggestively. The accents of the cannibis sellers taking shelter in the bus stop are also a mixture of local and Caribbean. They are no problem, relaxed and chatty but not pushy.

We are shuffled into single file by the number of people thronged along the street even at this early hour. The market traders are unpacking their food and setting up their metallic frames in Pope's Road and Electric Avenue (the first street ever to have street lights, and a song by Eddy Grant).

It's 8.30am and the sound of chimes brings us looking across the road at our next landmark, Lambeth Town Hall, with its distinctive Victorian style and elegance and its clock faces, which show to Brixton Road and Brixton Hill. We cross over Coldharbour Lane - whose indoor markets, cafe's and restaurants stretch down towards Camberwell - and past the Ritzy cinema, a centre of music and film to the top end of St. Matthews Peace Garden. We pass along the end of the garden, past the Budd family memorial and round the corner on to Brixton Hill.

The crowds have thinned out and it is not unusual to be alone as you walk the short distance through the first gate and onto Rush Common - the parkland which stretched unimpeded (secured by an 1880s law) along a buffer zone in front of this part of the hill. Down the asphalt path, past the fallen tree trunks, grass and blossom. The greenery dominates and the buses fade away into the distance as the path heads diagonally towards a children's play area and then round the corner to the masses of construction workers currently parked below.

Passing down the slope - away from the park, into the estate and round the corner (under the plastic sheeting) to the door for one of the handful of tower blocks. Opening the door, we head for the lift, which has been 'decorated' by local kids at some point in the recent past with graffiti, but nonetheless stays safe.

It is amazing to me the transformatory effect of the weather on an area. The snows of February 2009 were one of those occasions. The snow fell over a long Sunday night and by midnight it had settled on Rush Common outside my flat.

Resurfacing at night for work, the snow lay thick and crunchy on the ground across the entire length of the park. Footing was solid, traction gained by the weight of compacted snow. Those passages of reduced weight of snow were gritted.

As the sole underground train line with no overground sections, the Victoria Line ran unimpeded from Brixton station north. The station was open but the walk to there was punctuated by an eerily quiet evening devoid of human company. The trains were also sparsely populated.

The District Line was already operating on a shoestring when I arrived to make my connection, large sections of the service run through peripheral sections of London and overground. But a lineside fire at Westminster station put paid to any prospect of a successful connection and my journey was completed by taxi, through an astonishingly quiet section of the city of Westminster and over Westminster Bridge. The City of London is normally quiet, but to see its commercial counterpart so thoroughly empty of people was redolent of a scene from 28 Days Later. The taxi driver told me that his business was impaired by the complete lack of custom, even though the little custom available was scooped up in the absence of those taxi drivers who were also unable to reach their central bases on a night when bus services were suspended.

Exploration

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:09:02 PDT

Landscapes of the mind and soul

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:08:18 PDT

Timothy Abbott. Professionally produced, unconventional journalism

timothy@lightchronicles.info (Timothy Abbott) — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:06:24 PDT

'Everyone Has Their Monsters'

Jonny Brown and Resonance 104.4fm present:

The fifth of seven Hallucinatory soundscapes on Mining for Gold, Friday night 22nd May from 11pm until 12.30am. A dialogue co-written by Timothy Abbott and Mark Read with tarot intervention by Madame Pattna.

Streamed on www.resonancefm.com and on FM in London on 104.4fm

" Everyone has their monsters, myths of society which bind people together like Emmanuel Goldstein through a shared sense of fear, fear of the unknown - the original xenophobia - or the deeper unspoken fears of the mind and body, or of its malfunctions."

"chronicles of timothy abbott" via Timothy in Google Reader