Stepping out

This little missive is on the subject of Psychogeography. A bit of a mouthful this and I am not so sure where to start. This was a subject of which I have always been a student, but I didn't know until recently that it was even a thing. Wikipedia sums it up: "Psychogeography is an approach to geography that emphasizes playfulness and 'drifting' around urban environments". The Situationist Guy Debord described it as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."

I am sure that a lot of people are "psychogeographers" without even knowing it. It's quite nice at a mature age to discover that one is, what the french refer to as a "Flâneur", this word translates as "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer". Flânerie is the act of strolling - and goes hand in hand.

Back in my plain-clothes hippy years I was fascinated by the idea of "ley lines" and "The Old Straight Track" which are a similar interest and to this day, wherever I lay my hat, I always need to try to understand the history - recent and ancient. This percolates down through my imagination and will engender a feeling for the territory. This may in no way be connected but I feel there is a similarity: I don't know if this is in any way connected but, the French, (those cheese fondling vocabularicistes, Gawd Bless em), have a word for the set of factors that combine to make a wine (or cheese, or anything else) unique: "terroir".

So, if you would like to try this for yourself, get out, on scooter, or feet, move down any street, no matter how many times you have been down it before, look up, imagine what it will have been like 30, or even 300 years ago, let your imagination take flight and your feelings take hold, you may tap into something far deeper than you expect.

Photo: Corner of Frith St. and Old Compton St. Soho in the late 1950s.