London on an early summer evening. The air feels alive. A chatter of North African French takes me back to Marseille, the Panier quarter. The warm dusk, the exotic smells. Dark comes reluctantly as I make my way, step by step, from Poplar to Whitechapel. I skip through the streetlight puddles - the roar of East London rushes to greet me. Friday night in streets as old as memory. These stones have seen it all before. An expectancy hangs over us - the lure of summer. Tempting everyone out into the open. Celebrations like no other. Laughing, screaming, loving, living - human emotions amplified, echoing off every wall. Crowds spill out onto the cobbles, I push through. A flaneur, like so many before me. And so many to come.
Brick Lane appears with a blur of noise and neon. The smell of curry and cigarette smoke, short skirts jostling with jellabas for space. Further up, the old Brewery, windows throbbing in time to the beat. This street has not slept for hundreds of years.
Smashed glass is trampled underfoot. The sweepers won't come until the early hours. A group is gathered outside the beigel shops, warm bread soaking up too much beer. Dealers weave in and out like whispers. And still the noise and the lights are undimmed. "We are young!" They scream. "We are living".
Echos of what has come before, ringing in the air for those who will come after.
Brick Lane appears with a blur of noise and neon. The smell of curry and cigarette smoke, short skirts jostling with jellabas for space. Further up, the old Brewery, windows throbbing in time to the beat. This street has not slept for hundreds of years.
Smashed glass is trampled underfoot. The sweepers won't come until the early hours. A group is gathered outside the beigel shops, warm bread soaking up too much beer. Dealers weave in and out like whispers. And still the noise and the lights are undimmed. "We are young!" They scream. "We are living".
Echos of what has come before, ringing in the air for those who will come after.