Everyone complains about the tube; as a Londoner it is as genetic as your hair colour. It means so many things to different people. I use the tube to think about the rubbish that circles around my brain - it is the only time of my day that I am forced to sit with my own thoughts for 20 minutes. Many arguments have been avoided and friendships saved as a result. Today I bumped into a friend from Cambridge who I haven't seen in over 3 years. All the more bizarre because he lives in Azabaijan and was in my carriage.
If you look around, the tube is like its own society - a microcosm under the streets of London; it is full of people who are so totally different. When I am happy and not thinking so intensely, I notice couples and find them fascinating. Some couples argue, some look in love, some look unhappy, some should really find a room, some are gay, and some are probably not in a relationship at all. I think I will attack the relationship concept at another time - for the time being, assume that by couple I mean two people attached to one another by means of a love partnership slash bond.
Some couples are stunningly attractive both individually and together, some couples, to me, look ugly, and some couples look like they are entirely wrong.
Do the attractive ones have anything apart from the lust which must be distractingly present?
Will they have anything in their relationship when the inescapability of age attacks their bodies?
Do the ugly ones find one another attractive or are they just in love?
Are ugly people automatically attracted to other ugly people?
What about the mixed ones? What is going on in the heads? Does the attractive half wish his/her partner was a beauty? Does the uglier one feel as if they owe something. Or have they just found real love, beauty and solace in one another.
Of course 'relationship' could almost mean anything these days, so these are futile and improper questions. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and good on both beholders for fitting their jigsaws together as much as they can.
It is really a question of perception and perception is certainly one of the Rhythms of Life. Cole Porter fans unite. Why do I find people beautiful or ugly? I suppose I've learnt it. It is the same way that the arts I find beautiful are only so because they follow rules which I've been told (or experienced) make something stunning. Or is that true? Perception is evolving all the time in each individual - it's what can make diversity.
I didn't like coffee the first several times I drank it, in much the same way that I'm sure my love of Bach only grows the more I experience music. When I was 11 years old and sang in the Premiere of Michael Garrick's 'Judas Kiss', the sight and sound of Norma Winstone scat singing was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Five years later when my Dad took me and a friend to Ronnie Scott's to see Betty Carter, it was the most informative and amazing experience of my Jazz love. My perception of scat singing had changed: my beholding had changed.
There is no answer to this ramble yet. It is thought in progress. I have a lovely image of Freud in my head. He is sitting on the Victoria Line surrounded by people.
Expect more...
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I like that image of Freud. I was reading through a novel I never finished several years ago and I found a short chapter which featured Mozart at a urinal. It didn't fit into the rest of the story at all but I liked that as well. And what I'm really wondering now is whether there's a need for a calendar of famous dead people in everyday places.
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