Iain Sinclair: The Last London

Iain Sinclair walks around the city he can no longer write about.
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[@scottmcneil1150]

I initially discovered John Rogers online during lockdown, then subsequently Iain Sinclair and Patrick Keiller. Quite a revelation. Their work immediately resonated wit me, reminding me of how I had lived in the city and how I had walked, interpreted and related to it.

[@DCI-Frank-Burnside]

Sinclair got me into the habit of listing the detritus you find on the side of roadways. "Crushed tango can, broken computer keyboard, empty cement bag, Ribena carton, steel bolt..." Quite cathartic reading them back, brings back the thoughts and visions you were having on your ramble without the need for precision.

[@lostuser1094]

aye, his eye for detail really allows the character of the city to breath through the text. Also i see you everywhere, nice taste.

[@peterthillaye7041]

What a remarkable restless presence pacing London and poking out it's secrets and marvels .. wonderful mind

[@oldgit4260]

Alan Moore's favourite author, recommendation indeed

[@hohdude]

Looking forward to his commentaries about Peru...what a great transition to Peru via his great grand-father's adventures there. May have to leave behind the cell phones and all.

[@trevorbarre5616]

Sinclair is London's greatest living chronicler. Some people just don't get it. He would have a field day with Yehuda Macbeth Simmons's name.

[@frflinstone]

Not only London's greatest chronicler but for me England's greatest writer, a unique thinker too

[@GRTZK]

No, he's not. He's a pompous, wittering millionaire NIMBY hypocrite struggling with the idea of mortality.

[@gavinhalm3016]

The wonderful thing about Reality (including the ever changing London, or any city X), is that, even with all of the electronic "overlay" (and, just wait for AR) we hoist upon Real Life, the facticity of its inherent concreteness (no pun intended, though wryly accepted) remains there for anyone to find, uncover, uphold, and ultimately shed a loving gaze upon...after all, those images and feelings you store in your memory are, themselves, also a mediation.

[@londonbeyondtimeandplace2489]

Iain Sinclair is one of my greatest inspirations.

[@simeonbanner6204]

His willingness to look at both sides: the riches and the poverty and then some makes him somebody you watch, sit up and listen to instantly. Never easy cliches or thought patterns. That disparity between wealth and poverty and me hanging on was the thing that made me leave London. Just sticking it out to somehow make it as an artist, whatever that meant, seemed a futile strategy. I don't think those more wealthy, friends etc ever really understood that. For them London was a playground.

[@hazelwray4184]

... and then some makes him somebody. The riches and the poverty, and then some. Make him somebody you watch....

[@ringscircles142]

beyond brilliance way way beyond

[@johncrockett5458]

What about the people that lived in Whiston road and the old pubs

[@johndaarteest]

Very much like Nick Papadimitriou, who Iain knows.

[@thewielloyd988]

At 0:40, is that a sticker of Stewart Lee subtly plastered on that street sign in the background as some sort of easter egg?

[@hazelwray4184]

Isn't it a Banksy type stencil of a boy's face? 4 year old comment, I know. Lol

[@trevorbarre5616]

The book is great, by the way. Came out a week or so ago, I think, and its good to have these images to accompany the text. Sinclair doesn't patronise this guy, he gives him an importance that he would never have been given otherwise, certainly by the yuppies that now infest this area. And that has to mean something surely?

[@georgepowell72]

It doesn’t ‘have to’ mean something, it ‘could have’ meant something. Iain in this video says he couldn’t find any information on this guy, when all the time he could have asked him his name, asked how he was doing. It’s lazy ignorance, by definition. Iain even looks nervously to the camera when saying he couldn’t find information. Tell tale.

[@ted4331]

London has been given away.

[@GRTZK]

Balls.

[@danieljamesmead]

Who owned it in the first place?

[@GRTZK]

@@danieljamesmead Picts. No: early Britons and Celts. Which is why when a new housing development pops up, it appalls me that there's no subsidised allocation for ten thousand year old hunter gatherers.

[@nightmail7962]

There is a strange shape on the wall where the figure used to sit.

[@TheMetyx]

SPIRIT OF TRUE LONDONER

[@janeharrington9811]

I find him totally fascinating. I would have talked to the man. But that's just me and how I approach environment and predicament.

[@shaunlanighan813]

That London! 'strewth where's me by-way...

[@TracyPicabia]

Very very enjoyable. Many thanks for the introduction to the terrific work of Effie Paleologou too. Well yes, cognitive recency bias and the elderly fear of electronic tech: everything has gone down the shitter. Why can't everything be better like it used to be instead of worse like it is now ; ? Isn't and wasn't London always on its Last legs?

[@aceventura8890]

The comments here are awesome

[@paulklee5790]

Interlinked....

[@dodgyg3697]

Incredibly moving. I spend a lot of time in the East End, it's not change, it's self destruction. Slow suicide, witnessed.

[@parathink]

Sturtevant predicted this and diagnosed it from the 60s.

[@trevorbarre5616]

Thinking more about the two comments below got me more and more 'aggravated'. So, Sinclair and pals shouldn't use up to date technology, is that what you're saying? Maybe they should have got Gustave Dore in to do a few shots? Sinclair's comments about our obsession with mobile phones leading to everyone 'floating above' everything, rather than engaging with what's in front of 'em, rather than what's on their tiny screens - not in any way relevant to modern life, eh? Can't work out what's more irritating: the ageist implications in these comments or their indifference to a radical way of re-engaging with our immediate environment.

[@ammvision]

I agree with you that Sincair’s comment about mobile phones is an insightful one. However, in your criticism of William Fowler's comment, you’ve neglected to mention the issue that he led with. Surely the sight of two privileged people voyeuristically filming a homeless person and then sharing that footage within this film is at least somewhat problematic?

[@GRTZK]

There's nothing radical about ridiculous old nimbys in expensive properties ranting about the place having gone to the dogs.

[@georgepowell72]

Hypocritically, Sinclair is himself 'floating above'. Contained inside his own intellect, refusing to engage with humans he sees worthy of mythologising.

[@GRTZK]

@@georgepowell72 Amen. He's a profoundly absurd narcissist. His life's oeuvre is a daft Nimby's howling against change and social shifts - despite the fact that the silly twit isn't even from London and sits in a house in De Beauvoir Town he bought for a song as the very kind of 'gentrifier' he loathes. He labours under the delusion that London was at its most perfect and complete - by coincidence - at the moment he was getting laid and didn't have a paunch, and that every silly poetry workshop or jazz club he went to in '73 should have a blue placque. He's an utterly glorious portrait of middle class pomposity.

[@georgepowell72]

@@GRTZK I feel like you've had a run in with him?

[@nightmail7962]

No white dot it never ends just layers for ever.

[@hazelwray4184]

The city as palimpsest.

[@johnkirk.]

"instead of simply talking to this man let's romanticise him from a distance and then surreptitiously film him like a creep"

[@tripp8833]

Jesus Christ - what a badass

[@brijmsn]

Well that was depressing

[@antonwilson2960]

London. GOING GOING GONE. Sold to the man in the hat at the back.

[@GRTZK]

Just say 'young people', you daft old fart.

[@xqqqme]

Which London? It has been going, going, gone for eons, with generation after generation of Iain Sinclairs bemoaning the loss of "their" London, each of them claiming to have occupied space in the last truly legitimate London.

[@antonwilson2960]

@@xqqqme so you seem to agree with my sentiment Londons citizens are destined forever rootless, the outsider waiting to be displaced by the next economic wave.. Call it home if you may, but it'll just be temporary. Just wish more people would admit this instead of being wax lyrical about community, tradition and shared values As John Cleese observed, London is not an English city.

[@xqqqme]

@@antonwilson2960 Er, yeah, I do. At least I think so 😉. Full disclosure: I don't claim to know London. But I know other cities and I recognize the familiar, cross-cultural pattern of expansion/development *and* the accompanying complaints revealing that each generation feels the version of the city they knew was the only (or in Sinclair's case, the last) one to be praised, treasured and locked in amber.

[@iainclark6210]

Why didn't you talk to the man? Was there any feeling you may destroy the myth of the fellow by engaging with him?

[@georgepowell72]

It feels like it's far more important to ponder privately than connect with other humans. I don't understand this at all.

[@mctasty6094]

@@georgepowell72 but that's what he's doing pondering privately then documenting it. He doesn't work for Crisis!!!

[@georgepowell72]

@@mctasty6094 I'm of the belief that projecting your thoughts and ideas through a vulnerable person for a payday (I'm assuming he got paid for his book) is inappropriate.

[@mctasty6094]

@@georgepowell72 that's just to reactionary,

[@georgepowell72]

@@mctasty6094 Would you like to discuss this away from KZbin, as I think it's an incredibly important point? You can contact me through the website listed on my channel.

[@georgepowell72]

The one thing I don't understand, is why Iain didn't speak to this person. I think for all the great work people like Iain have done with their solitary musings on place, there's a disconnect with everyone else, tantamount to ignorance. I think it's time for psychogeographers/deep topographers/flaneurs to stop walking around with their notepad contemplating what it's like to live like other people in different places and just fucking ask them. If this is the 'Last London' we're moving away from, I'm all for it.

[@nickpn23]

It's a question of focus. Deep Topography selectively foregrounds the material environment while shushing the human presence as one way of destabilising response to the environment. That doesn't mean its chief practitioner (probably only practitioner) doesn't interreact with and care for other humans when he's 'off duty', just that the writing he does responds to other facets than the historic/social such as surface textures, animal life, infrastructure, weathering and ageing. I don't think Deep Topography belongs in that list. It's something else. And its chief practitioner doesn't live in a yuppy house.

[@georgepowell72]

@@nickpn23 that would make sense if he didn’t use a human as a reference point, but he did, and refused to even ask his name. It’s awful.

[@nickpn23]

@@georgepowell72 He wrote a short story about observing a homeless man somewhere down near the mouth of the Lea. I read it back in 1992 in Poland and have never seen it elsewhere. I hate saying this out of old loyalties but I agree with you.

[@georgepowell72]

@@nickpn23 we really can do so much better.

[@hazelwray4184]

Or something like mass observation, 1937 to mid 1960s (in Britain). Lol

[@classicartfoundation639]

The politicians have destroyed London's special vibe, political correctness, mass immigration, over crowding, lack of opportunities job wise, I look to the past of London for inspiration. It's future is dead.....

[@PB-mo1fs]

You gave yourself away with "... mass immigration..."

[@llwyde1104]

Very sad... For you. I have known London for 60 years and it's better than ever.

[@SouthLondonCyclist]

What's really happening here is a man getting old.

[@hazelwray4184]

Yes and no.

[@buttlesschap]

Is he a NIMBY? I only have a cursory glance of his work.

[@mackan-kf4tg]

Psycho-babble!!😂😂....”the colonisation of his mythology”!! Oh please!!!....👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

[@johndaarteest]

Yes, it was Pseuds Corner.

[@GRTZK]

Amen. He's a pompous twit.

[@hohdude]

Looking forward to his commentaries about Peru...what a great transition to Peru via his great grand-father's adventures there. May have to leave behind the cell phones and all.

[@mneill719]

Hohdude Hohdude