Author: chiaraambrosio

THE HOSPITAL

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It has been raining for days now.
Outside the walls of this room the city closes its eyes as it is washed clean of its excess, of its speed, of its tired exhaustion.
They stare out of the windows of buildings, buses and cars, wondering if it will ever stop. It has been raining for days now, and it shows no sign of relenting, just a steady downpour over the black cobbles and concrete slabs, until the mud hidden underground percolates through the cracks, flowing like a dark river over old pathways and passages, rewriting the geography of this city once again, contributing another layer to the perpetual urban sedimentation.

We were told that there was no room, but we entered anyway.

We walked through the only door left open, down the ramp and through the heavy velvet curtain that sealed us all in.

We listened and we cared, and we held each other’s gaze as we came and went, without fanfare nor permission- we simply turned up for the show.

Now we sit in this room, and listen to the thunder tearing through the night- because it must be night by now. 
And the rain falls on the other side of these walls that hold us together even as outside the day is turning, and the stories are falling apart.
We can’t remember how long we have been down here, walking over the smooth black cobbles of this shelter, our shared refuge. 
We know all its kinks and ridges, and we never trip on the steps as we cross through the threshold. 
We sit on chairs that are always laid out in front of a screen lit up by the many iterations of our dreams, testimonies of our actions, because of all the things we know for sure the first one is that doing good or bad are both better than doing nothing.

They told us there was no room- but we slid through the cracks, and washed the dried ink from the floor, and mended the roof, and painted the walls- until it appeared.

And when they told us we had to leave, we turned into hauntings, and they could not remove us.

So we stayed.

And now, outside, it has been raining for days.

We sit close and keep each other warm- this room can get cold at times- it’s the old brick walls, and the cobbled floors, and the draughts that always seem to find a way in through the curtain, through our reverie…

We tell each other stories, and we show each other the scars, and we look after the still open wounds. After all this is our hospital, where we come to mend.

Outside the water is pooling up, streaming past their windows, confining them all to their solitude. And the tall buildings are buckling under the weight of this downpour, their skinny elegance badly adjusted to the earthbound gravity of the water. 
A power cut plunges the city into darkness, and all movement ceases.
Apart from the patter of the rain, everything is silent.
And the thunder rips through the sky once again.
Inside our room we sit and listen, and watch the brightness of our vision illuminate the screen in front of our eyes- a brightness unaffected by power shortages.
When we entered, we did not know that a room is all you need to dream.
When we dreamt, we did not know that a dream is all you need to float.

RAFT on RESONANCE 104.4 FM- Episode 4

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Credits for this month’s episode:

The Hospital- Written and narrated by Chiara Ambrosio-Soundscapes by Bird Radio

The Horse Hospital- a conversation with Roger K Burton, keeper of the Horse Hospital, a crucial home for the underground and avant-garde arts in London.

“Break The Law”- Written and performed by Bird Radio

THE GARDENER

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It was a bright morning in London and I was walking along London Wall when an iron man caught my eye: folded over a small patch of soil- it too cast out of iron- and trapped in the shadow of concrete buildings, the gardener was kneeling, perpetually caught in the act of covering over a seed just laid into the ground. 

 

He was paying close attention, undeterred by the loud morning traffic all around him. Seeing beyond the hardened surface of the soil, he knew that in due time it too would yield to allow an inevitable sprouting. 

 

He was perfectly alone on a small patch of cement, surrounded by busy roads and tall buildings, tending to a wilderness just out of sight, but whose beat could be heard amidst the car engines and the constant roar of construction sites.

 

At lunchtime someone would join him, sitting on a bench next to him, staring proudly at the city being torn apart and built again in front of their eyes, at the buildings erected and collapsed, cumbersome vessels leading nowhere despite their vertical thrust, appearing and disappearing like ships in the fog. 

They would bite into their sandwich, eyes adrift into private reveries, quite blind to the sight of the folded iron man tending to his iron garden in the middle of a city that grew newer by the minute, ready to swallow.

 

And the gardener, himself unable to stir, would feel the shuffle of bodies whose shadows glided over him as they left, but his iron eyes remained locked in place, 

As the blind men climbed back into their offices to keep the pulse of the city racing along, the gardener’s gaze burrowed deeper and deeper into his small patch of iron soil, past the seed he had just laid- was it the first? The last?- until he could clearly see a tangle of roots beneath the pavement, kept alive by an intricate network of underground currents.

 

The gardener, folded in place, undeterred, kept tending to his garden, in the heart of a city confused by its own speed, interrupted in mid-sentence as new conversations rolled into the spaces left empty by the silencing of other voices.

 

Afternoons went by lazily, the din of cranes and drills and traffic slowly fading to an empty evening stillness that seemed to fall out of time with the dying of the light. 

Surfaces became mercurial again, volatile, revealing tears through which other stories could be glimpsed- other rhythms, other bodies, distant echoes.

The gardener remembered them all: the sounds, the voices, the movement of other bodies brushing past him as he waited for his seed to sprout. Even as everything turned hard and cold- his own skin blackened and hardened, his joints locked out of movement- he kept the warmth of his pursuit alive, tending to it with steady resolution and unmovable hope.

 

At night the streets fell silent and heavy, thick with a different kind of dreaming. 

The gardener, barely visible in the darkness, his iron figure like a shadow amongst all other shadows, looked at the iron soil that his hand had just smoothed over the seed he had laid. Even though he couldn’t see much he knew it was still there, and growing, and that what would sprout would be wild and bright, and resilient.

 

 

 

HOUNSLOW MOON

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Night was falling in Hounslow when they all looked out of the window and saw the moon there, hanging by a thread between betting shops and Chinese takeaways.

It stirred in the wind, dampened by the rain, almost fading in the dying light of the evening.

 

They knew they had it coming, so they unrolled the fake grass like a red carpet in anticipation, all eyes transcending their usual trajectories to take in the sight of the moon- gigantic, inflated, caught within the metal frame of a suburban dream.

 

It came in a truck. 

They hoisted it up on a crane and left it there to dangle weightless over a concrete island at the crossroads between streets leading nowhere.

Above it airplanes arrived and departed as usual, never noticing Hounslow as they came and went, not even tonight.

 

A few brief glimpses is all it took to exhaust the metaphysical thrill as it moved swiftly through the margins, on its way to brighter, more suitable places. 

And then all gazes were retracted, like fishing nets from the sea after a meager catch- back to the lit-up screens in the pub and other scaled down dreams, while outside the gigantic moon swung, alone now.

 

Nobody noticed when the moon went.

When they looked up again, nobody could tell at what exact point it had vanished, or whether it had been there at all. 

All that remained was a nylon thread stirring in the wind like a forsaken fishing line that had failed to keep a hold of its catch.

 

Another passing dream dreamt by the city at night and forgotten at daybreak.

 

RAFT on RESONANCE 104.4 FM- Episode 2

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Credits for this month’s episode:

A walk in Trafalgar Square, featuring the thoughts, words and musings of Sukhdev Sandhu.

“Hounslow Moon” written and narrated by Chiara Ambrosio with soundscapes by Bird Radio.

“Wilderness” written and performed by Bird Radio.

RAFT on RESONANCE 104.4FM- Episode 1

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Credits for this month’s episode:

“Dawn over the city” written and performed by Bird Radio.

“Dig” written and narrated by Chiara Ambrosio with soundscapes by Bird Radio.

A walk in Haggerston park featuring the thoughts, words and musings of Gareth Evans.

Raft on Resonance 104.4 FM

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“Raft” is my new monthly programme on Resonance 104.4FM (London’s vital independent radio station), broadcast every 3rd Tuesday of the month at 5pm.

It will be a living lab in which ideas for “Raft” the movie will take shape and grow, a chronicle of my adventures and discoveries as I set off into the city- sometimes physically, sometimes in dreams- joined by a host of characters searching for redemption in an urban landscape of alienation and loneliness: independent artists, city flaneurs, cultural advocates, witnesses whose very physical presence within the changing  city is an act of subversion, the guardians of alternative narratives and local forms of culture.

Raft is a dystopic fairytale of London, an evocation of the city’s past, present and future, a gathering of voices, a call to arms; the celebration of collective action and alternative narratives, and the proposal of a new poetics of space that celebrates the marginal and eccentric as a powerful agent for social change within the context of urban life.

This month’s episode will be broadcast on Tuesday 18th September at 5pm and I will be joined on the Raft by Gareth Evans, writer, curater and cultural advocate, and Bird Radio, singer, songwriter and composer.

Tune in!