Exit Strategies

I had a wonderful dinner last Thursday with a few (girl)friends – where I learnt to complain in the English way. “Complaining the English way” means that instead of mumbling and telling yourself you will never go again in a place you disliked for something due to the service or the food, you make it notice to the manager of the place, who will do its best to compensate you for what went wrong – with a dessert, or in any other fancy way. Cool, isn’t it? I like it – my critic attitude is definitely fulfilled by it.
Anyway, we had a lovely evening any anthropologists would dream about: talking with some other intellectuals, not from your field, about what we notice as similarities and differences between cultures – and Brigida and I are deeply embedded in this educational attitude and in broadering our knowledge about human cultures beyond academic community. So we spent some of our time teaching about hygienic norms and conceptions among gypsies, Italians and British people. When you take the shower in the morning, for example, we first use the bidet, and then take the shower: yes, we wash ourselves twice. And no, the bidet is not “that piece of forniture that fill the space between the WC and the sink”. Just as we would never use the small towel – the one we use to dry our privates – to dry our hands and face as well, for which we use the bigger towel. Of course, we had finished our dinner before talking about these issues – it wouldn’t be nice to talk about intimate washing whilst eating…

The day after I had what I consider the best interview I ever had for a job with whom could be considered at a first sight as a ‘weird’ professor – as I couldn’t even understand, before meeting, is she was a ‘she’ or a ‘he’. Her name is in fact Sue, but she uses as well the name Johnny to refer herself. On the net I saw some of her articles signed either with the masculine or the feminine name – so I couldn’t really understand. But at a certain point I didn’t worry about it anymore. “Whatever!” – I told myself, a comment really nice I learnt here, that means something like: “Whatever it is, it’s not an issue of mine, and/or it doesn’t make any difference” – it’s all London, baby!
Anyway, the inverview didn’t give me (at least not immediately) a job, but opened up some opportunities. What’s more important is that it has been the best inverview I had in my life: two hours spent 1) with a passionate person willing to learn about my researches, attitudes, aims, 2) listening with a sincere interest and care to me, 3) telling me a true and objective analysis of what I’ve done up now (so congratulating me for the good things as well as criticising for the wrong ones), 4) suggesting me the further steps to achieve my goals (and not forcing me to necessary do this in her department), and showing to be a people person with a deep and warm kindness to support me – like she could see my past in my eyes. Unbelievable! Something special I wish all the ones I love to live by/with someone else such as a potential mentor/tutor. So I’m keeping on thinking/wondering/reflecting about this still now. I’m getting every day more confused, but still in a serene way. Thinking about next steps. What I want to do. Where I want to live the next few months. What am I actually looking for in general…

Another day wandering around – still not knowing what to do next months, and taking the day off to go shopping and then relaxing, as I needed to… Went to Tesco in the area of Hackney Central Station: “I’m lost in the supermarket / I can no longer shop happily”. Little differences for an anonymous non-place. I found my way by talking to people: “God gave us the tongue to be able to ask directions” – as I used to say to strangers on my first Inter-rail when I was 18, and everybody wondered how this young girl could feel home everywhere, even in perfectly unknown places.

I spent the evening watching with my flatmate (and landlord) “The Boat That Rocked” (on a big screen & videoprojection: sometimes is not bad to enjoy others’ richness!), a lovely good film, with an amazing sountrack, about the first free radios in UK in late 60s. Rebels, pirates – we keep on building on that, isn’t it? The last romantics…

Thuesday passed in writing emails to universities, then, in the evening, I eventually went to one of the best concerts I’ve seen the last years: Kultur Shock, playing at the Camden Underworld. The Underworld is a music club, in the basement of a tipical victorian building. A good band played as supporters, Drunken Balordi. Fine gipsy punk, slightly folk too, sometimes. But really good.

And then Kultur Shock went on stage. And their songs and attitudes are really engaging and immersive! Take a look at the video to have an idea of the two hours I had the pleasure and honour to join. The violinist was the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen, and the singer had such a powerful voice and shy attitude at the same time, that you felt like crying at the lyrics of their songs.

Little differences: people in Italy dance. With different styles, some being a real vision of beauty, some others making you smile as they still have to train – but yet, they all dance and move according to the rythm. Here none of the people of the audience could dance, not even move to the rythm. Running, punching, kicking or, less dangerously, simply jumping. No surprise that “the music of the people who couldn’t play” – the punk – was born here by these beat&melody unconscious people! But I’ve been told that *the norther people* (expecially the ones from the area of Liverpool or the ones who come from different areas of England and then joined together) are much better, ahahah!…

The concert ended at 11pm – quite surprising for me used to concerts beginning at that hour, but this meant no worries in coming back. Even when not knowing where the bus stop to come back was. I asked a little young girl with violet hair, piercings, black clothes, with the @ stuck everywhere on her light jacket. And she moved from her way to lead me to the right bus stop – walking in the coldness of this humid town. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked. “Yes” – she replied with a smile. We said goodbye at the bus stop, and she straight off kissed me on my cheeks. I will probably never see her again, but she is part of my personal beautiful world now – a sister, a mate, an ‘accomplice’ in making the *wider society* better, and more mutually supportive. So thanks, my dear: wish you to keep on behaving this way!

Waking up quite early in the morning last Saturday – 4 cats around are not really the best company to sleep as long as you would like to! – I made up my mind to get to Camden Lock Market and have a walk around there before meeting in the afternoon with the London Art & Culture group.
I took the overtrain and then walked down the railway station to reach the market area. Camden is a folkloristic place to say the least, where people go to exhibit themselves and tourists buy any kind of fake punk stuff to have the feeling they recall an old memory, born and developed here, who affected them not only in teenager years – fucking seductive for the ones of us who still live/feel that way.

I mixed with this human flow, and became a further stranger among them. I ended up eating a wonderful seafood paella – sitting on the pavement in front of the channel. Sun was kissing me and about other 50 winter lizards, whilst looking around and thinking about my best friend and how much I desired to have her here with me to share this.

‘Kindness’ is the password, and no matter at the moment that it might sometimes be connected with hypocrisy – althugh I didn’t notice this happening around me up now. “Anything bad that might happen to you, if you go through any crisis or feel like crying or just need to talk, call me!” – a complete unknow lovely girl from the London Art & Culture group told me this after visiting together a contemporary art exhibition last Saturday at Saatchi Gallery. Yes, this is London, something very different from the cold, cool town of our imagination. The exhibition wasn’t astonishing: much of the works was somehow already seen – it seems to be quite hard to say something really new in contemporary art! But at least I met lovely Londoners in it – Rebecca and Samina. Yes, my dear ladies: I feel a little more confident now so I’ll be able to join you also in the evening next time!

Sunday I met Brigida and her friend Ula to go to a free shop in the area of Spitalfields. But we soon ended up, with some more mates, to join a pub – one of the most messed up place I’ve ever been, with such a loud volume music you couldn’t talk, so stuffy that you can understand why swein flue spread so much here, and with such a bad and mixed taste in forniture&decoration that you don’t need to get drunk to throw up. This to tell the truth, but nervertheless the building was really lovely, and in any case there was a very nice and relaxed atmosphere – not to mention the brilliant Brigida’s friends and the funny conversations we had with them!
We finally went for dinner in a place that deserves a mention, as everybody say UK food sucks: no, it doesn’t (when you have an ‘anthropologist of food’ leading you to *highly selected* bistrots such as the St. John restaurant where you get local food cooked according to ancient recipes. What I tasted recalled no memory in my head, it was something unexpected and so good that you… ahem… can’t believe it’s British!

Hackney is a lovely place. A little scaring, but I guess it’s only because I’m a newby, and I can’t recognise people’s attitudes by their faces yet – as one can do when is familiar with a place. It will take time. And I’m not used to so many black people around. It’s not a racial judgement, mine: it’s a realization. It’s kinda weird to wander around these white fancy terraced homes, and seeing old black people talking/smoking at the front door of them… I mean: this is the stereotype we have of Jamaica, not of London! But still is nice. And they all great you!

Greeting people you don’t know seems to be the easiest and most common thing here. I began a walk of the neighbourhood in late morning yesterday, to meet up with Brigida in the afternoon, and walking down the street to reach the local shopping area to buy some food I was greeted by all the people I saw without knowing them: a woman at the front door of her house, an old man while mending his car, a young guy riding his bike, the dustman who was sweeping the street. This was so weird!

After a few blocks, I eventually reached ‘my’ place: the Pogo Cafè, the meet-up point of the anarchists/squatters of the area – vegan, gluten free and definitely laid-back. With lovely people inside, sharing experiences about squatting and travelling, or talking about any issues, or simply sitting on a couch and reading. Brigida and I had lunch there and could grasp some words form the tables around (you know: we are anthropologists, always spying other people’s lives) – definitely nice ones!
We ended up with a long walk, reaching another nice street – Broadway Market, where on Saturdays there’s a vegetables & fruits market – full of fancy people, where you unpredictably feel ‘home’ even if it has nothing in common with the one you left in your hometown.

And again, walked through London Fields. The leaves mixed with the wet ground produced an autumn smell, and reminded me of many other good moments in my life – like a time warp where time bends on itself.

I’m back to London – the last time I was here was in 1989, quite a long time ago. My life is changing again, and I need a long break from Italy. I’m escaping – I know – from a situation that got too tough and that I can’t stand anymore. “Go to London!”, a mate told me; “Come to London!”, another one replied. So I’m back – open, curious, and willing to see, meet and feel “something else”. We never know what, when we leave. We leave imagining and hoping that what we find will be better of what we left behind.

It’s November 2009, and this is not a travelogue. It’s only another bit of fieldwork I want to do, while attempting to give a sort of direction to my life (but it’s also true that “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”). The next four posts were initially sent to my friends while spending the month in UK. Next ones will be posted after I get back, on January 8th, 2010, when my real stay begins.

London, you have an Italian anthropologist in town!