London - a global experiment
I was sitting on that little patch of green at the bottom of Brick Lane this week, enjoying this eerie late-patch of summer and watching the world wash by, when I realised something about London. In 2006 London is not a city; it is a massive experiment. What happens if you take people from all over the world – Jamaican trannies and Thai brides, Aussie surfers and Somali jihadis, Polish brickies and Mexican bikers – and cram them into one small space bordered by the M25? What will they say and do to each other? In human history, a mixture of peoples this drastic and this cacophonous has never been tried before. London now is a teeming planetary test, where globalisation is made flesh and we really are the whole world in one city.
And yes, we should admit this means many of the problems of the world wash our way: we don’t get to feast on the Babel of cultures but hold the suicide bombings and Congolese child witches. But it has also made London the single most exciting place on earth, throwing up flavours and syntheses that couldn’t have been imagined anywhere else. Citizens of London are the first truly global citizens, seeing every continent, every day. For my work, I’m often sent to remote and desolate places, but as a Londoner I never feel like I am in a foreign country anywhere in the world. Congo, Iraq, Palestine: it all feels like just another tube stop in Zone Six I haven’t explored yet. The world has come to London, and London looks like the world. Is there anywhere else you’d rather be?
