Another glance at carnival time
I am wondering about Carnival London once more. When the mask is donned and begins radiating as the very soul, there is an astonishing shift in perspective. In a leap the old clock of the interregnum is surpassed by the cheerful bounce and skip of a new time: Carnival time. Its dawning pulse flushes out and eviscerates the shadows in every cranny as just so much fuel to nourish its essential good humour. Carnival London is already here, I believe. Which is not to say that it is at our disposal. The reverse case – that we find ourselves disposed to it – is true, though presently we remain resolutely turned away from it. Believe you me it has little tolerance for this mediocre sort of pre-occupied navel gazing. So its element roguishly jostles and upsets our best efforts to keep to the well-trodden path. To turn towards it, to be rocked gently in its cradle, is nothing other than that inner beckoning to turn towards oneself for the first time. Carnival London is my provisional answer to the question of how to turn towards oneself and embrace the jubilant throes of Carnival time – that ecstatic pulse ownmost ours. We Londoners are indeed ripe for the picking, being that we so perfectly comprehend our city’s malaise and remain so well-adjusted to our own disquietude about it. Carnival London is the effort to notice the ways that Carnival time shoots through London at every turn. To bring to our attention what I shall tentatively call ‘encounters’, which irrupt through our broken monotony, always goings on right beneath our very noses.