'New Towns for Old'
Both a sister piece to 'The Tyrant' and the outcome of my position as a Research Assistant with Dr Adi Kunstman in the Department of Politics, MMU. In contrast to 'The Tyrant', 'New Towns for Old' was written at a far faster rate, as I spent just a two days in Milton Keynes. I have never visited a city so different to every other model of urbanism I've encountered; so unique and remarkable it it's absolute mundanity and order.
This piece was first shown as part of MANUSCRIPT, at the Manchester Art Fair, and also in 'The words that precede my mouth'.
The city spans out
like a perfect grid and as I
wander aimlessly (looking purposeful)
away from the close crowds
congregated within the mirror
of a perfectly symmetrical station
I am struck by the order,
the perfect organisation of this place.
Taxis queue, engines off,
in identical ranks flanking
the broad pavement,
yet now, already, I can feel it emptying
as they continue to wait,
as no one arrives.
What’s going on?
Is it always this quiet?
She says with a warm smile
Returning the key, looking away
Yes, it’s always this quiet
Move on, move away
that smile says
And I move away
to a windowless room,
its initial coldness numbing
the growing claustrophobia
rising in my chest to my throat.
It can’t hold and within minutes
clothes stick to hot skin as
I enter back into the rising pressure
of the sweltering day.
I imagine all the skin, flesh,
the pulp of matter before my bones
scalding, drying in a kiln,
cracking like bare earth under
an infinite blazing white sun.
I wait in the shade
between the black windows
of two empty office blocks,
identical to the hotel,
to every other facade on this street.
Through the low arch
leading to the uneven pavement
glistening bonnets flash,
brilliant in the bright sun.
Hundreds of cars in orderly rows
line every stretch of the road
and soon their surfaces swarm
into one metallic sheet,
singular in colour.
A rampart or great sea barricading
the shade of the opposite pavement
from my reach.
(my eyes ache from yesterday).
Splitting the air, reverberating
like static in the pressure,
the sharp crack of a car door
slammed in fury.
A brief silence before
a cry of voices rose,
shielded from sight
by the crest of the soft hill
off to my right.
With caution, though haste,
I follow it, drawn forward
to any noise is such a silent city.
The slope flattens then drops,
also without haste.
A few hundred yards
down the incline
a group gathers and splits.
Two halves, averse yet balanced.
One pair volatile,
the source of the sound,
draw a circular path
whilst remaining eye to eye.
A spit, a glancing shove.
The second pair
feels secluded, private,
despite their proximity.
Leant against a low wall,
I can see they are speaking
but no sound reaches me.
A fifth figure appears
through the mirrored glass doors,
stooping low and murmuring,
consoling the crying pair.
I am intruding,
this isn't for me to see.
I cross the expansive boulevard,
I find myself almost returned
into the dead air of this grid town.
Before I disappear
through the underpass leading uphill
I glance backwards once more.
Above the mirrored doors
large lettering reads County Courts.
Have you seen the film Playtime?
There’s a scene within a restaurant
where they are still constructing it
around the first customers,
parts fall off, it shows itself as fake, though for a while it is perfectly ordered on the surface.
It feels like that.
Of course the fight happens
right outside the county court.
Chance couldn’t create
a narrative so convenient.
I feel like it’s built around me.
No, why?
Along the stifled boulevards
I move listlessly,
only occasionally roused
by the rush of a passing car
or the slap of sandals
hurrying along, out of sight.
The lines of cars still border
each path I walk along,
a stark reminder that
-despite the stillness-
I am surrounded by people.
The absence of streets,
something so mundane
it rarely is of note in itself,
is the most striking difference;
I pass no shops, no cafes,
throughout the afternoon.
Round a sharp corner in the pathway,
leaves, dried to a brittleness
that promised to be satisfying,
lay in heaps, troughs,
gathered, by wind or hand,
and left on this corner.
They block my sight
until a few steps further
-halting abruptly-
I stand toe to toe with a rat.
Its mottled ash-grey fur
matching the paving stones precisely.
We stood frozen and then
in a gesture of control
the rat relaxed first, began chewing
at some scrap caught deep
between the slabs.
I retreated and went the other way.
On the furthest side
of a broad crossroads;
crowds at last.
I weave around the roads-
Exactly; these roads
that the city moves around,
they’re in control.
Only the slight hills
suggest any natural contour,
apart from these arcs
this modular city could be anywhere.
I read expansive papers
on their push to greener travel;
but how to unbalance convenience?
And if the cars went away,
what then? do the miles of car parks
lining every road and building
It is undoubtably a city built for cars.
lie empty in waiting?
Soon the white lines,
skeletal ribs along the asphalt,
fade and break apart.
The streetlights guarding each edge
fail to come on one day
and never are lit again.
I have too, not far from here
At the edge of Milton Keynes?
On one side the network of roads,
so ordered at the centre, stops.
The pathways still lead across
though they end against a fence,
sheets of metal and through the gaps
emptiness. All the way down a valley
till far away, on the furthest shore
I've seen somewhere like this
Perhaps it was the same place?
estates rotate in concentric circles
and parallel lines. Before then?
A vast car park, lost under grasses,
bows of long establish shrubs,
coarse trees, lichen, a yellow crud
encasing unused street lights.
For the rest of the evening,
within the crowds once more,
and through the blank glamour
of refurbished shopping centres
and chain restaurants,
I imagined the city like that.
Not yet.
Would you go back?