Category: unit 2 articles

reflection

I am mindful that not everyone can go for a “walk”. I approached “walking” as an able-bodied person, as that is my lived experience. I would like to think that “walking” as an idea, has a commonality, whether you physically walk, using 2 legs, or whether you wheel, are wheeled, or move around in some other way, but I’m not in a position to comment on that. 

At one point, during lockdown, walking was about all we were allowed to do outside of the house. I tried cycling too, but walking became the most common. A lot of the walks took me to the supermarket, many to the park. They were always accompanied by at least one family member.

I used the walks to my own ends. To attempt to make some sort of art during and out of the walks. 

I had intended to lead some art walks prior to lockdown. Well, I’ve probably got that out of my system. I’m not sure it’s for me. I think I’d rather walk alone. I don’t have much to say when I’m walking. I like to use the time to think. But everyone wants to talk, walk and talk, the walk sets off thoughts and the thoughts come out of other people. Mine stay inside. I enjoy walking for the internal dialogue. Reflecting on my thoughts. Working through my problems and ideas independently.

I bought a couple of books on walking. I haven’t finished either of them, even though one is really thin.

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I thought about protest marches, and then I thought about marching. My time as a majorette, marching for miles and miles in carnivals. I thought about running and how it differs from walking but that’s another story. I thought about Eddie Izzard and all those marathons he did in South Africa. I thought about Nelson Mandela because of that.

I thought about nomads and travellers. And I thought about pilgrimage. I thought I should follow up on my thoughts, but I didn’t expect to focus so much on walking.

I thought I should have thought about time, in a linear way, but I didn’t. 

I thought about artists. 

And Christian Marclay’s walks referenced time.

https://www.wallpaper.com/art/christian-marclay-artworks-to-be-projected-outdoors-at-white-cube-bermondsey-during-frieze-london#0_pic_0

Richard Long and his performative art practice. Lucy Gunning and the mirror event, Francis Alÿs and his block of ice, or his magnetic shoes, or the fiery football kicked down the street.

From my phone feed, Ligia Lewis “Walk, walk, walk until” for Hans Ulrich Obrist’s “Do It”.

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From my son’s school, Raymond Bradbury’s, The Pedestrian, assigned for homelearning,

“What are you doing out?”

“Walking.”

“Walking!”

“Just walking.” He said simply but his face felt cold.

“Walking, just walking, walking? “

“Yes, sir.”,

“Walking where? For what?”

“Walking for air. Walking to see.”

These walks started to appear in my feeds. Either others were thinking about walking, or that algorithm was thinking of me.

All those walks. Don’t get me wrong. I like trampling, making my mark, I like intervening and documenting, I like journeys and I like Google maps. But I hope I can escape this topic, there has to be more than walking.

I thought about dog walking but not much, as I don’t have a dog. I tried to think of all the different kinds of walk. But mostly I sat. And I haven’t been out for a walk for several days, trying to write something. I’d like to go out for a walk now, but I’ve really run out of time. 

“The extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due to a particular school of art… At present people see fogs not because there are fogs but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects (the fogs) They did not exist till Art invented them”

Oscar Wilde “La decadencia de la mentida” in L’anima de l’home

As ramblers trudge across fields and cliff tops, in their uniform; stick and hiking boots, choosing “youth” hostels en route, they are engaging in endurance; striding forth, battling weather, with purpose. They also synthesise with culture, physically and with that of the cult of walking. The walkers are entrenched in the apparent romanticism inherent in the walk, arguably put there by artists. Suffering for pleasure, immersing themselves in the sublime, before returning home to warmth, comfort and safety.

Walking is a form of dependence on the other as every act is. Using a road and wearing shoes. Even if we go barefoot across the landscape, we are still in the chain, walking on land formed by others, a path perhaps worn accidentally, or fields more deliberately sculpted and carved by ownership. The wilds of this country are planted forests and woods, it is sand dredged up on the beach, denied its natural path around the coast. Consider the interventions of others in the place we perceive as wild and free, and the land that is owned and controlled. Outside of the city, nature, the countryside, is controlled, even if it doesn’t display a sign defining it as a royal park, or council owned recreation ground. Escape, as an idea, is flawed, as the dog walker, hounded by a police drone during lockdown will testify. Perhaps, being at one with nature, is just that, a co-dependence with it. 

Regardless of restrictions, can we walk for walking’s sake? Is it possible to walk without purpose or reason? Can we set off at one point and walk, not knowing where the walk will take us; or in choosing to do so, are we not inflicting an element of choice onto the walk? 

Can we walk without care, without concerns; food, water, shelter, weather, safety? Do we have to be prepared to walk; shoes, bag, route, phone? Are we free to leave? Should we let others know where we are going and when we’ll be back? Or can we lose responsibility? Is it a mere dream to imagine it or are there possibilities? 

Epic walker, Richard Long, talks of freedom and independence, but despite his seemingly unfettered walks, Richard Long imposes his own restrictions, conditions and sets of rules. With walking as art practice, he documents, purposefully makes his mark, notes the distance. His walks are constrained, not necessarily free. 

One might detach oneself from purpose, but the new purpose is inherent in the intention to go for a walk, whether that is for the sake of walking alone or for arts sake. 

“…when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk… (I) have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for”

Henry David Thoreau

Away from the romantic strolling of Wordsworthian landscapes and Heathcliff’s wuthering cliff tops, the apparent freedom of the walk, denied in lockdown, is offered as a carrot of escapism – being allowed to leave the home environment, for “no longer than an hour”. 

However, in a domestic setting, walking by government instruction, for daily exercise, becomes a necessity and a chore. We are robbed of the ramble, the opportunity to roam free, bound by distance and time constraints. And have purpose in our step, we purposefully walk; briskly, controlled, managed. 

And then repeat, repeat, repeat. 

Don’t talk, just walk. Don’t make eye contact with strangers. 

We have imposed our own set of rules on our walk, we pass by as ghosts, steering clear of others, resisting any engagement that might encourage a breaking of social distance, the risk of raising our voices in order to be heard is matched with an increase likelihood of us spitting potentially infected droplets into others faces. So, we hang our heads in shame, no one knowing who is cursed, avoiding others for our own safety and theirs. 

“To make walking into an investigation, a ritual, a meditation, is a special subset of walking, physiologically like and philosophical unlike the way the mail carrier brings the mail and the office worker reaches the train”

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust 

I would say postmen, and to a certain extent commuters too, do relate to walking in a philosophical way. Their routine is not all drudgery, and they can no doubt find solace, as we all can, in those often solitary moments. The walking part of our day is often ritualistic, maybe you walk the dog first, before taking the same route to work or school, picking up a coffee at the same café, going to the same tube station, standing on the same platform, walking to the same bus stop, dropping your coffee cup in the same bin, chatting to the same person, commenting on the weather, or the traffic. It is routine but not without focus, what goes on in our head has all the elements of investigation, ritual and meditation. Its purpose may be getting from A to B, or delivering post along a route, but engagement in it is not that perfunctory. 

The interruption in our behavioural pattern during lockdown highlighted how valuable and necessary these subset of routines were. I don’t think we would have felt such yearning if they were less vital.