Golders Green Station, North London. About 11am. Probably later. But I meant to get here an hour before I am due at work, so we'll call it 11am. Fictitious license, allows this here waiter to be viewed as punctual. The Charring Cross train arrives in three minutes and I wonder along, to the top of the platform. The wrought iron, Art-Nuevo, canopy shelter, drapes out only up to where the front doors of the second carriage will pull up to. It's not raining, but the roof also provides barrier protection from the cold, so I stop well short of the end of the ash felt platform. Despite the distracting, loud Bluegrass that the iPod is blowing into my head, I sense a lone, 28 year old female walking towards me. She walks heavy. Heavier than you'd expect of a girl as diminutive as her. Her petite feet are driven by gymnast strength calves into the ground. Those calves drive them feet hard. So hard, that, even though she's ten to fifteen meters away from me, I can feel her footsteps tremor through the ash felt, concrete and steel below my feet.
She knows it. She knows the pounding ripples she is spreading around. Maybe I've involuntarily winced. Narrowed my eyes and expressed a slight pain and pang of uncomfortability. Not at her - not at her personally - but at her direction. Her face reacts to mine. She paints on a part pained, part embarrassed expression. She's felt this before. This embarrassment. She wishes she could tread lighter, leave a more inconspicuous trail of traverse. Even if a rumbling train could pull in and drain out the noise, that'd free her momentary unease. But she's just like me; she needs that front carriage and this is her daily sacrifice - a quid pro quo- that she lives and accepts. We all gotta decide between lesser evils. Surrender some battles, so we can eventually win the war. Bob Dylan once sang about a fellow winning The War at the final shot, despite losing at The Battle. Her Final Shot comes now - the Charring Cross train pulls in.
I turn my intent stare away and chose the front door of the front carriage. It's a routine born from an occurrence, a story, a few years back. I need this routine. Makes it easier to face what should really be such a mundane task. The carriage is empty. Not completely, but there's plenty of space. Both standing and sitting. Nice. An empty carriage is nice.
Back in 6th Grade, we had an Advanced English Teacher, who set us an assignment based around defining the word 'Nice'. The premise being, that the oft used word could invoke and be substituted by so many more precise definitions, in so very many contexts. To encourage us to think, talk and write in more exacting and descriptive language, she wished to set us an exercise that would open our eyes to the alternatives available; that would allow our language to be correctly expressive and not just lazily satisfactory. She asked us to fill as many pages as possible with said alternatives. The simple lessons in school are and always were the most effective. Case in point, is how I so clearly remember this simple homework from nearly 20 years ago. It really left a major mark upon me. So, with that in mind, let me reclarify “nice empty carriage” for you.
Nice; adjective; (nahys) pleasing; agreeable; relieving; An empty carriage is nice. The feeling that washes over me as I step onto the empty carriage. Feeling of relief, tinged with relaxed preparation for a comfortable journey ahead. Probably made more acute, due to the ability of a crammed carriage to set off elements of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Years ago, I had a fairly intensely unpleasant experience on a Tube Train. The train that day was almost impossibly overcrowded. The sense-memory of a sardine can like carriage will sometimes trigger adrenaline levels, that can cause very slight tremors and cold sweats.
Right, so now we've cleared that up, and Mrs. Morris would be proud, we can continue.
I feel like sitting today. I select the seat closest to the door. This way, when the frail, bent thing in her 80's stumbles on board, I'll notice her immediately and be able to offer my seat. It would be hypocritical to lambast the lack of moral consideration down in those dark, oxygen starved tunnels, if I were to commit the very same social crimes I cry out about. Just before the doors slide completely shut, an all black clad, figure scrapes inside the train. I look up. She's definitely got her Hipster on. The jeans are black skin-tight, the combat jacket is frayed, the shoes are Converse and that hair is surely not her real colour - her skin is way too porcelain to naturally complement such raven locks. She slouches down into the seats across from me and snakes out white earphones from her bag. Her Apple is far more advanced than mine; hers is a phone as well. Into the ear they go. She glances a smile at my direction. I just got busted staring, but I’m too tired to pull away. To me, she's putting on a show. To me, she wants an audience. To me, I just assume that I'm young enough, well dressed enough, well shaved enough and, damn it, good looking enough, to get away with just a little bit of a longer linger in a stare, than could diabetic, blotchy-red faced, personal injury lawyer, who's just falling out of his cheap, pin-stripe suit, a few seats down. He had to turn back down to his free newspaper, much quicker than I.
I love black on white. I love jet black hair, pushing back from a powder white forehead. I love the muted dark edges of a classic bit of 50's Film Noir. I love bold, black typeset of a F. Scott shortstory, against a clean, virgin paper page. I love the chessboard like tiles of a roadside diner. I love early photos of Man Ray and the later acrylic works of Ed Ruscha. I love black on white. Except for the Collingwood Football Club. Man, I really don't like those black and white suckers. But this Hipster is no footballer. Her long torso builds her more like an Olympic diver, minus those hideously frightening, bold, muscular shoulders. She doesn't look like she would exercise much - must be those good English genes. They breed them long and thin here. That is, until they get stuck in the perpetual merry-go-round of beers, kebabs, bad supermarkets and a depressively, languid approach to forward motion. She must be young. Her Englishness hasn't taken the requisite toll on her physical appearance.
There was a time, when I would wish to ask her much. A time when I had the desire to build a relationship and the patience to execute it daily. I pined for perfection, whilst forgiving misdemeanours. I mistook signals and would fall in feet first. I'd move in fast, run off overseas too quickly and re-run and patch-up blindly. Time has passed. I no longer care for her hopes and dreams. No longer, am I able to be inspired by her View of Days. I'm not going to sing for you and I certainly don't want to go see your brother do the same, at some dive bar down in Camden. I'm no longer the guy that asks what your vice is. There's only one thing I could ask you. And I would. I'm just curious. In an anthropological, social study, kind of a way.
What you listening to? What did you select on your iPhone? Is it an entire album, or a playlist or are you just going to manually jump around, like a personal DJ? I wanna know.
I sit on several trains a day, but have never asked anyone this question. I really should. I don't know why I really want to know, but I predict an enjoyment and satisfaction upon making such discoveries. What the hell are the people out there listening too? So many iPods, so much damn music, so much escape, so much rhythm, so much head banging, so much mouthing of lyrics, so much imagining, so much foot tapping, so much selection, so much freedom and so much expression. And all this going on. On my train. On my carriage. Wow! I really want to know more. Appreciate more. Understand more. Be inspired more. Art on The Tube is not those silly poems mounted on the advertising hording, but is going on right now in that Hipster's ears.
And I want to know.
