What I love about getting lost:
Let's see, the first time I came to London on my own, or rather the first time I came to London and explored, so this was after the time we saw the man being beaten up and the prostitute who looked and talked like a friend from home, but wasn't, and that night ended up with us sitting near the South Bank all night and talking, not knowing where to go, run out of cigarettes. After that time.
But before the time it all snapped into place and I knew how it fit together. We were looking for a particular bar in Soho, designed by the person who did the cover of the Bjork album that had - at the time - just come out. It's changed now. But all the streets look the same. And the more you walk the more you get lost because after a while you're not sure whether the streets do indeed all look the same, or if you're walking down the same street again and again.
Now I wasn't really lost because I knew I was firstly in London and, secondly, somewhere between Shaftsbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street and whatever it is on the west end, Regent Street I think, so I knew where I was, to within a resolution of a thousand metres of so.
In terms of finding my way to a given place on the outside however, Leicester Square, say, where one trip we watched a man threatening to throw himself from the top of the building opposite the Swiss Centre but still on the square at 5 am or thereabouts, people milling around shouting Jump!, I was more than the physical distance between point A - me - and point B, point B being Leicester Square itself. Because to cross that distance, A to B, I'd have to know where A was, which way A should face, etc, so I was a long, long way from anywhere.
To begin with I'd known that I was in the north-east corner of Soho, but I gradually became more unsure. Was I heading north or west? Had I been past that particular sex show before? How about that broken phone box? After nearly an hour of this I could've been anywhere.
And then I looked up.
My god, I looked up. Never again have I seen anything like it. The moon, which was full that night, no longer appeared as a flat disc against the sky, but a vividly three dimensional sphere floating in a vaulted heaven, parallaxed against the stars, with mountains and gulleys, a rich and fractal landscape. I saw satellites closer still, like fireflies infront of my face, and I could distinguish their antenna and solar panels. Suddenly an almost black spyplane darted out across the sky, so close I tried to brush it away before it hit me.
Then I realised what had happened. I had total uncertainty about where I was, and so my position had been blurred out over the whole of Soho, my corporeal form smeared over central London. When I looked up it was as if my eye had grown to the whole length of Old Compton Street, I had become a much wider lens. And just like a very large telescope, my resolution had increased, and my stereo vision too.
And if I was smeared out all over Soho, I should be exhibiting interference effects! Indeed, I looked back down and saw the whole of Soho simultaneously from every road junction -- in every place my waveform was coherent with itself, wherever two roads met, a peak would form: I manifested in a hundred places, and in one of them saw the bar I need to find. I reached out and touched the door, collapsing the wavefunction to a single point, and increasing my probability of being there to 100%. Then I went in to meet my friends, and, belatedly, get a drink.
What I love about getting lost:
Let's see, the first time I came to London on my own, or rather the first time I came to London and explored, so this was after the time we saw the man being beaten up and the prostitute who looked and talked like a friend from home, but wasn't, and that night ended up with us sitting near the South Bank all night and talking, not knowing where to go, run out of cigarettes. After that time.
But before the time it all snapped into place and I knew how it fit together. We were looking for a particular bar in Soho, designed by the person who did the cover of the Bjork album that had - at the time - just come out. It's changed now. But all the streets look the same. And the more you walk the more you get lost because after a while you're not sure whether the streets do indeed all look the same, or if you're walking down the same street again and again.
Now I wasn't really lost because I knew I was firstly in London and, secondly, somewhere between Shaftsbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road, Oxford Street and whatever it is on the west end, Regent Street I think, so I knew where I was, to within a resolution of a thousand metres of so.
In terms of finding my way to a given place on the outside however, Leicester Square, say, where one trip we watched a man threatening to throw himself from the top of the building opposite the Swiss Centre but still on the square at 5 am or thereabouts, people milling around shouting Jump!, I was more than the physical distance between point A - me - and point B, point B being Leicester Square itself. Because to cross that distance, A to B, I'd have to know where A was, which way A should face, etc, so I was a long, long way from anywhere.
To begin with I'd known that I was in the north-east corner of Soho, but I gradually became more unsure. Was I heading north or west? Had I been past that particular sex show before? How about that broken phone box? After nearly an hour of this I could've been anywhere.
And then I looked up.
My god, I looked up. Never again have I seen anything like it. The moon, which was full that night, no longer appeared as a flat disc against the sky, but a vividly three dimensional sphere floating in a vaulted heaven, parallaxed against the stars, with mountains and gulleys, a rich and fractal landscape. I saw satellites closer still, like fireflies infront of my face, and I could distinguish their antenna and solar panels. Suddenly an almost black spyplane darted out across the sky, so close I tried to brush it away before it hit me.
Then I realised what had happened. I had total uncertainty about where I was, and so my position had been blurred out over the whole of Soho, my corporeal form smeared over central London. When I looked up it was as if my eye had grown to the whole length of Old Compton Street, I had become a much wider lens. And just like a very large telescope, my resolution had increased, and my stereo vision too.
And if I was smeared out all over Soho, I should be exhibiting interference effects! Indeed, I looked back down and saw the whole of Soho simultaneously from every road junction -- in every place my waveform was coherent with itself, wherever two roads met, a peak would form: I manifested in a hundred places, and in one of them saw the bar I need to find. I reached out and touched the door, collapsing the wavefunction to a single point, and increasing my probability of being there to 100%. Then I went in to meet my friends, and, belatedly, get a drink.