Busy Going Nowhere

Lately, I haven’t been anywhere that is more than twenty minutes walk from base-camp. But don’t panic, I tell myself. Remember that eccentric chap you met in the Student Union bar when you were twenty? You were all fired up with excited anticipation of your forthcoming year of Voluntary Service Overseas in some exotic, faraway place (it turned out to be Sudan) and he maintained that going to distant places was a waste of time: the only valid form of travel was the exploration of the mind, he said, and that could be accomplished from your armchair. Bearing this in mind, my week of staying put has not been so dull.

Coincidentally, an old friend from those VSO days in Sudan has been in town and we spent some time together at the Whitworth gallery, where we were enchanted by William Kentridge’s video work Second Hand Reading, despite neither of us being fans of the genre. The fast-paced moving images tell a story that is hard to pin down, but the evocation of South African culture and politics was evident – even though I have never been to that part of the world. I am sure the distinctive accompanying music also wrought its magic. Later, we lunched at a nearby Yemeni café, where the Arabic spoken reminded us of our Sudanese experience. But what struck me was the fact that ordinary day-to-day activity goes on for these people, despite the carnage of war that is ravaging their homeland. Yemen is another place I have never been to, though my father was stationed there during the time of the British garrison and it is his description of the place that lingers, despite current events.

And I have been drawn, as usual, to the cinema. Tempted by the ‘Steve McQueen hype’ (and the availability of cheap tickets) I went to see Widows which, despite the director’s pedigree, is a run-of-the-mill heist movie with an unconvincing plot and very little to challenge the imagination – except that it is set in present-day Chicago, a place that I have not visited but which is on my wish-list. Much more rewarding is the movie Wildlife, by Paul Dano. The action – such as it is – takes place in a small town that sits below a glowering mountain range somewhere in Montana. The time is 1960 and the 14 year-old Joe shares with me not only a name but also a birthdate, so the music, the fashions and the attitudes of the period resonate nostalgically. Montana itself is unfamiliar territory for me but the story told in Wildlife is not. It is a good example of William Faulkner’s notion that only the “human heart in conflict with itself... is worth writing about”.

But the most significant mind-travel this week came on the centenary of Armistice Day. Standing with the crowd around the city’s cenotaph was, I thought, the best way to pay tribute to those who fought and died in what they were led to believe was a just and necessary war. The military parade set the scene, but it was the plaintive strains of The Last Post and the contemplative two-minute silence that evoked an emotional response akin to empathy for those who suffered. Yet it was the cinema that managed the feat of transporting me back to the time and place of WWI. Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old is a remarkable work that takes old film footage of the front line and transforms it into a more lifelike, modern cinematographic experience, one with real power to help you imagine being there – not that you would have wanted to be.

So, it’s been a busy and, at times, intense week of going nowhere. Nevertheless, my appetite for real, passport-flourishing travel is unabated. London and, later, the island of Crete beckon.