I'm interested in psychogeography.
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Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as the "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."
Usually this idea is applied to the movement of pedestrians around cities - with an interest in anything that takes the pedestrian away from their usual routes dominated by the rituals of city life and toward a more liberated drift around town.
In Paris, this kind of urban wandering got very bloody cool in the late 50's - with many a
flâneur strolling through the urban environment in a state of detached observation. Think rambling but with more jay walking and less grass.
So, what's the point in all this wander-mongering? For one, to break out of auto-pilot mode and wake up
before getting to your final destination. Why do we find ourselves shuffling along the trodden paths, funneled down the routes of least pedestrian-resistance? I'm not necessarily suggesting here that we all start leaping over the nearest barbed-wire wall to
open our minds man, but starting to notice the way we amble to work/school/parole office could turn out really interesting.
Walking is only one such way which allows for a tempered digestion of a journey; have you ever walked a route before driving it? it becomes like a familiar dot - to - dot puzzle, sprinkled with useful recognisable points.
It often seems to me that we do what we can to switch off after leaving domesticity each day - the a to b trip anywhere is treated as a burden which should be as short as possible and as distracting as our mode of transport allows. We do what we can to chop up the experience of distance; treating the car as an extension of the living room - sit down, look out the window if it's a nice day, start fiddling with some digital console if not.. the bus is like a public library of magazines and free newspapers and the train chuggs peacefully along like a public bedroom, a blanket of mouths agape sounding out a multi tonal snore-score.
We do anything we can to distract ourselves from the getting-there part of life. But by doing so, I feel like we're missing out on something. Distracted and disconnected I don't have any substantial idea of what a real distance is. Being so focused on the destination, the distance there is now more often talked about in terms of time than space.
This is why I'm so excited about driving to Mongolia. I'm trading in the 24 hours I would spend under the benevolent care of a cabin crew for a 10,000 mile jostle across ground. Admittedly, by climbing into a car, I'll be a full step away from the psychogeographic ideal of strolling by foot; cocooned instead inside a vehicle. But the principal of being guided by the geography of the surrounding terrain will stay with me as we inch across the continent, treading on the mysterious in-between that spreads all the way from here to there.
I have high hopes for this continental pleasure drive, I hope to learn about the breakfasts, landscapes, insults and celebrities of the en route countries. I also hope to return a little more mechanically minded. And most of all I'm hoping there is something beyond the in flight movie.
'If I was assaulting a tyranny it was one of distance, and of a form of transportation that decentres and destabilises us, making all of us that can afford it subjects of a ribbon empire that encircles the globe. This is a papery and insubstantial realm, like a sanitary strip wrapped around a toilet bowl.' WSI'm flushing the chain and taking action.
I'm reclaiming the journey from distraction!
