fourth column for "Kazin"

Tonight I was bored of London and human beings.
I went into a cool place on the corner between Old Street and Great Eastern Street: there are scaffolding around but the owners are that creative that they folded with wood and graffiti.
You pass by there and feel the urge to get in.
However, I had pass in front of it for a whole year and never entered, I waited for the right occasion.
If you pass by, do it soon – not like me.
Then you enter and you are suddenly embraced by one of the most incredible places I ever been to.
And you feel you are not bored of London anymore, and you think that human beings could actually be captivating.
Big television cables are used as ceiling and among some old sofas there are artists and short wooden tables.
On a wall there are pictures of Africa, while on the opposite some intriguing maze like paintings.
On the side of the counter a small space for the dj is created with walls done with old broken computers.
If you follow the cables you get to a big basement of four big rooms full of art installations and weird people playing improvised music with guitars, violins and clarinet flutes.
I sat there with a friend from Nazareth and I started telling him about London. Look at us, I said, we are here and we pretend not to see all these interesting people surrounding us. I would love now to talk to them. But we never get the chance, because everyone in London is supposed to live in his small world. London is a universe of small worlds. You can meet everyone, but you do not. We walk everyday elbow to elbow and we pretend to be stranger, we pretend that that physical contact did not take place – that physical contact is not a contact.
But this is absurd, people are alienated and their only way of surviving is becoming more and more alone – more and more stranger to others.
If from one side people are trying to gather together they do it in antisocial places like clubs, for example. And they take antisocial drugs, like amphetamines. Synthetic drugs belong to a synthetic world and a synthetic music of which London is the empire. An empire of loneliness.
Too much together but nothing gets shared. If you actually go and walk the streets of London you will get a lot of sights, emotions, sensations, smiles from people but all these contacts are sudden and when you lie down in your bed at night you feel full but empty.
So I thought we should create in London a different place – and there is one up in Kingsland Rd, the Melange Collective. But, I think, we, Londoners, we should create another one.
There are too many clubs in London and they are all so standardized. It is impressive – synthetic world with synthetic sensations people are searching their souls but they get it lost again by taking amphetamines in prisons – clubs.
If you actually think about it you might have fun dancing in a London club but after a bit you will feel just the four walls of that artificial cage of fun and the sweat of people.
So, I think we should create a new place. I had a vision of this new place. I want a place in which people can gather together and not be bored of each other, in which the creativity of each of us will come out and shine of uniqueness. I want a place in which you do not need to take an amphetamine to find your soul because you will be there to donate your soul to others. I want a place covered up in art.
And now I tell you how.
It will be a place that will have not real walls. It will be build up with old screens of computer and from the outside it will be just covered with a particular metal foil. Around there will be a garden with coloured lights and their colours will reflect in dozen of imaginary lullabies dancers.
Then from the inside each computer screen will have a different video art record and the whole place will just look like a harmony of colours and images. The floor must be just wood and the ceiling, oh, I would love a glass ceiling to see the stars out of it. I do not want any clocks because the time should not be counted in there. Music will flow among screens and huge speakers and people will dance happy. There should be a basement all white where everyone can paint on the walls and around, play, do theatre or whatever installation.
I would love people to know that by building such a place, we would avoid the dumping of all our old computers to the third world.
I would love to see people happy because of this, I would love to see people understanding that our objects do have a soul too. That we cannot just use a computer and when we do not like it anymore we dump it to Nigeria. One day, that computer will come back to us. He will knock at our doors.
I would build a disco labyrinth done up of computers and leave the Third World clean.
I would love to see Londoners happy to dance inside a labyrinth of computer and souls, and smile, hand in hand.