night 19
Night 19. Tuesday 6 December 2022
On the way home from school G laughs as we simultaneously point out a rising moon low and large on the horizon and the setting sun. I can almost feel the earth spinning. I type into the screen tucked tightly into the sleeping bag. Timings are confused as this journal entry arrives late - written as Night 20 approaches.
Memories of the night fade fast.
Dan stirs from slumber to exclaims ‘ shit it’s bin day.’ I reassure him that that is tomorrow. The view towards Canary Wharf is the clearest it’s been so far. These towers haunt our work. They first appeared as backdrop and character in a film staging a DIY Olympics on the sites set to become the London 2012 Olympic Park in 2017. These were the glass offices from which Sebastian Coe and the London Olympic Organising Committee looked out across East London and designated a swathe of land brownfield and empty. This was our land. The industrial studio units where we first made a home together, trained on the trapeze in industrial warehouses and roamed massive informal markets - a land where life thrived in the margins. Later they became the seat of the Gods in a reworking of Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’ for London’s outer edges of wild beauty and waste. In Bank Job we got closer – blowing up our debt in transit van in front of these citadels of finance and now we see them as we go to sleep – their visibility and proximity a constant reminder of the power of the financial imagination over our lives. Dan seems to have ‘hidden’ that chocolate gifted yesterday and I crave it up here as the cold becomes more noticeable.
Today we were visited by George and Cameron from Citizens UK. Over green tea we discussed how we might work together– running workshops and recruiting champions and organisers to build POWER STATION street by street. The day is taken up with urgent work on the song we will be recording with the school tomorrow - call outs for people to take part in the shots we need to complete the music video. We need to make signs, do call sheets, prepare equipment, make sure the campaign is ready to go. As we’re running out of time a friend comes bearing gifts of home made danish cookies. They smell of Christmas. An old friend knocks on the door. She has travelled especially to see us on the roof but we haven’t gone to bed yet. The bedding lies tucked through the window ready to pull outside for the live stream that we are set to do from the roof. Dan has tested it and the signal is good. We set up the laptop on our rooftop desk and are parachuted into the q&a with directors and producers of a new documentary called The Oil Machine. “Oil has been an invisible machine at the core of our economy and society. It now faces an uncertain future as activists an investors demand change. Is this the end of oil?” The discussion talks about the cultural change needed in this transition away from fossil fuels and imagination and we pop up from our chilly nest as culture in action. We say ‘good night’ and act going to bed before we really do.
I climb the ladder with determination, always careful and concentrating though the clarity of the sky on these nights of descending temperature takes my breath away. Breath that is visible now.
