Is there anything more indulgent than travelling in your imagination, idly and luxuriously? It’s sometimes preferable to reality, with all the planning and discomfort. When growing up, reading was both vice and escape, favorite books as a child were those about leaving a place of comfort to seek out adventure and to gain for the first time an appreciation of both the destination and self, whether it was real in the case of Laurie Lee’s journey to Spain or Tolkien’s fictional adventures in Middle Earth. But most often I surrender to real travel; planes and cars, adrift and disorientated in order to absorb some of the marvels the world offers. Travelling with expectancy can also be problematic, what we conjure in our imagination differs greatly from being on the ground, and that was my experience with Porto. Our trip started in this northern Portuguese city and then had us travel down the wild, sparce Atlantic coast to the southern tip of the country from where we made skirmishes into the Algarve. Then a few days ago I drove almost the entire length of the country from below Lisbon back up to the airport in Porto. The following day we woke early in the weak morning light to fly back to New York in time for a Vietnamese dinner with friends and then drove up to our home in the Northern Catskill mountains. So a sense of forward motion is still with me and provokes a restlessness that fuels hunger for the next trip.

It was only when we arrived in Porto that I realized that to experience this city was the conclusion of a long term yearning that had multiple origins. There was never anything specific, just snippets of information; its name seemed to appear unexpectedly on airport screens when I was reluctantly boarding flights to work destinations in South America that I had no wish to visit, so I felt it was tempting me, offering a different choice, an alternative life almost. I had also recently seen in several design articles innovative remodeling of the typical old terraced houses that I found refreshing and forward thinking, there was optimism in the pale Californian colors and simple forms. There were the overheard conversations between artists indicating that there is a movement from Berlin to this more affordable, livable city and there is the appeal of a second city rather than a capital as in Europe these are increasingly being wounded by mass tourism and so now I would take Utrecht over Amsterdam, Cologne over Berlin, Naples over Rome and Porto over Lisbon.

Porto is a city whose name succinctly describes its purpose, its one divided by a wide waterway that quickly narrows into a river that forms a deep vein into the heart of the country. The Romans saw this natural port locations strategic value quickly, a position the very edge of their world and a perfect geological rift and named both the city and the country after it. Homes and buildings cling onto the steep slopes like barnacles on a rock, there is beauty in its disorder, in the differing housing styles and finishes, distressed terrace houses butting up to modern sleek apartment blocks. However our first stop was in an affluent beach suburb and we used this hotel to explore the shorelines and its many excellent restaurants. It was pleasant to stroll to the beach paths and hear the cry of the gulls and smell the saltiness of the Atlantic, whose winds were brisk and cool in June. Much has been made of the migration to Portugal from wealthy Americans and Northern Europeans, German accents were heard wherever we travelled and yet it felt like Northern and Southern Europeans were cohabitating nicely or at least complacently in this pleasant climate. We were a little surprised at the prosperity of our suburb, glancing at the real estate windows and recoiling at the prices, admiring the expensive cars and manicured properties. But its location so close to the city yet still with a beach and places to watch the sunset into the Atlantic with a cocktail was enviable.

We quickly found that the food was mainly from the sea and was fresh but unadulterated, several restaurant’s we visited had a tank where you could select your fish or lobster, something concurrently theatrical and callous. The typical famous dishes in Porto are too hearty for us, the heavy meat based sandwiches; the francesinha and the bifana’s and despite a hard sell from a taxi driver we passed on the bacalao as we’ve had plenty of these before and the very thought of tripas a mode was dismissed immediately despite positive reviews from the late Antony Bourdain.  Food tells us so much about a place and in this working class town pragmatism rules; fish is salted for a reason, sandwiches are dense to satisfy hunger and to fuel physical work, the stomach of a cow is eaten because it could not be wasted.

In the time we spent along the coast in Comporta we dined in places designed by the finest architects and designers like Vincent VanDuysen and Philippe Stark, overlooking wind swept and largely empty beaches. In both cases the designers displayed a high sensitivity to natural resources and indigenous materials using cork, tile and terracotta for example without being heavy handed. Europeans seem to have a natural, understated, elegance when it comes to dining and I will always remember the peach colored sky announcing sunset. While tourists like myself with perhaps shorter or less reliable memories, or with a more pressing need to embrace each moment of beauty, rushed to the terrace gripping our cell phones and cameras.         

One morning we attempted to walk into the city center along the shoreline which was dotted with historic ruins and crumpling fortifications. Everything appeared closer on the map, and the day was a little too hot and we found ourselves resentful towards both the city and each other. From nowhere an explosive argument developed and I still don’t know how that fuse was lite, Mary walked in one direction to the hotel and I was left alone to fume and find it myself. I arrived before her but couldn’t stay in the room as she surely must have got lost, but half an hour later she appeared behind me and we talked about something else as if nothing had happened, all the hostility and unkind words were forgotten as quickly and mysteriously as they had surfaced. There is a point where the Ocean meets the river taming its wildness where you find the characteristically shaped fishing boats sulking in their redundancy. Visitors like us are drawn to fishing villages and ports for their picturesque nature but we rarely consider the suffering inherent in their history, the men vulnerable at sea the women and children perhaps even more so at land, financially and physically. And so there is a fog of sadness in the face of these modestly tiled cottages by the water, I imagine they are repositories of arguments, bitterness and joy, emotions that are elevated well above our own thanks to the extreme dangers of their time and the unforgiving nature of the Atlantic. Perhaps there is a reason why some houses are neglected, never to renovated thanks to the emotional weight they carry, the loneliness of a loved one being far away, one who might never return and I recalled a conversation with my grandmother who lived in a town next to a major English port who told me that twice in her life she ran from her home in terror at the sight of German warships, once during the first world war and again in the second.  I think of the weeks I have been away on business and how I could never do this again, even after a few days apart from Mary the food I eat tastes flavorless, the TV programs I watch become grey and humorless. I think of Saturday mornings when I slip out of bed to pick up a newspaper and maybe a croissant in New York and return to see her occupying my side of the bed, curled up and with her head heavy on my pillow.

My expectations of the city differed from reality in so many ways. I had not anticipated the steep aspect of Porto, it is a physically challenging place, to walk from the river to the higher monuments and train station is hard, there is a reason why there are so many tourist buggies carting people around. I had pictured it narrower and more intimate somehow and compact where in fact it is a large spread out city. It is also one with two halves and all the time we were there we didn’t visit its south side although we viewed it with curiosity. To this day I cannot imagine how one would cross it, the bridges were certainly too high, the most famous Dom Luis de Porto apparently has a pedestrian crossing which I didn’t have the energy or head to attempt, there are ferries that do the job, but I’m embarrassed to say that the only time we were there was when our taxi driver to the airport made a wrong turn. Strange to have this split city seemingly in conversation with itself across a river. We left early in the morning of a national day of festivities, we saw later on line the explosions of fireworks and the quaint traditions being kept alive, preserving their history and sharing celebrations, crowded noisy and joyful, but this was not how I wanted to remember the place and I’m glad we got out in time.

Visitors to New York City might be surprised to find the main, and second most famous thoroughfare, 5^th Avenue stop abruptly as it approaches the West Village at seventh street. Instead of carving through the tenement buildings further downtown which it once nearly did, there is a grandiose triumphal arch and a small neat park celebrating George Washington, a piece of urban planning which only makes sense if you try to visualize how it would have been a hundred and twenty years ago when this was a city of horses and carriages rather than one of cars and buses. If city officials had their way it might have been otherwise, traffic of all kinds would have been able to drive straight through but various local campaigns and civil activism prevailed and we are left with a meeting and performance place in the heart of downtown New York which in some ways neatly represents its societal and cultural shifts and might even be considered a microcosm of the city itself. There is an irony to such a victory in this city, one which has been built on the very idea of excess, the absence of planning, allowing the closely positioned and competing skyscrapers that give the cities character one of exuberance and dynamism. 

Three hundred years we would have found a tribe of Indians camped close to this swampy patch of ground, thanks to the Minerva creek it was a source of water and peacefulness at least for a while. This community  was replaced by the Dutch who transformed it into a military parade ground and following that its marshy foundations were used as a burial place for yellow fever victims. Eventually in the gilded age it became a meeting place for high society and its status was confirmed in 1895 by Stamford Whites arch, a bit of Parisian glamour and formality in the newly prosperous city. On the north side of the park there is a row of illustrious houses built around the same time owned by entrepreneurs and prominent citizens enjoying their newly minted wealth who had benefited financially from the accelerated volume and intensity of the city and also maybe also from its corruption. If you have sharp eyes you may see the Greek details on the building’s façade’s on the North side, I’m being crass when I say they are the architectural equivalent of a modern day bumper sticker asserting beliefs, signaling something beyond fashion or good taste, positioning the owners allegiance to poetry, dance, theatre, the arts, philosophy and above all democracy. The houses generous windows overlooking the park will have brought in the characteristically weak Northern light during the harsh winter months and will have been heavily shaded for those in the Summer to prevent the mid-Atlantic sun bleaching its furniture, I like to imagine its owners over the year staring out, witnessing the bewildering changes in society over the century with that Greek virtue, stoicism, or at least the new American virtue to accept and tolerate.

In the post war years it became a focal point for a new American identity, folk musicians and politicians, pot smokers and Vietnam war objectors, a cauldron of ideas and strategies. Even up to the early 1990’s it was dangerous at night and Mary would clutch my hand if we walked through it after dark, jumping a little at the soft Caribbean voices offering “smoke, smoke” from the darkness of the tree’s. Today it is equally reflective of our times, occupied by well off students from NYU and local residents who are somehow able to afford this neighborhood, a place where nostalgic people come to perform, there is usually a piano here, several aspiring musicians with guitars are worth making a detour to avoid, and on summer days entire jazz quartets are known to gather crowds for a free performance. A park like this is a necessity in New York’s urban landscape, apartments are typically small, frequently without any outdoor space, built to house workers for the factories and larger households that used to exist here.

I was in the park on a sunny but cold Saturday a few weeks ago. I had ridden a bicycle from home down an empty Park Avenue, cutting into fifth at 14^th street and then breaking protocols by mounting the footpaths within the park itself much to the annoyance of several New York pedestrian’s seeking someone or something to despise on such a lovely day. It had been a disjointed ride, I stopped from time to time in a sunny passage to warm up my hands before heading back into the shady and windy streets, rejoicing in the contradictions of a typical New York Spring day. The roads are treacherously pot holed and poorly maintained, and some streets had the photogenic wisps of smoke emerging from below ground, the cities infrastructure unsurprisingly unable to keep up with its constant abuse and as a cyclist, the universally accepted rule, that you occupy the lowest place in the hierarchy of road rights.

In the park that day was an elderly, apparently homeless, African American man in a wheel chair, his possessions strapped to its side, a voluminous bag on his lap. What caught my attention was a hand painted sign which I only partially remember; ”Be thankful, Be original”, followed by two or three more lines which I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to recall before finally “Don’t leave a mess behind”. I guess it was intended as instructions for the performer’s in the Park but its message resonates more widely now in these post covid world where many people I know seem to be seeking purpose and direction. I’ve gone back several times to find him again and see what the missing lines were but it seems unlikely so I’ve added my own, “Be authentic, Be kind, Be open…” but suspect I’m already heading blindly into Yoga studio cant.

One enduring characteristic of our species is that we crave order, rules and instructions for living our lives, sadly we seek leadership and are constantly disappointed, and so it’s hardly surprising we are now unenthusiastic about today’s organized western religions; that triangulation of power, money and art. Yet describing ourselves as atheist or agnostic is equally unsatisfactory, it doesn’t feel right to participate in any group with certainties or regulated sets of beliefs. I’m still surprised at my own early, precocious rejection of religion, maybe I sensed my own parents insincerity with a stroke of childhood intuition, when pushing me towards the church, it was just a “thing to do” in order to be a good member of a small rural society. The few Church services I attended were threatening and formal, saturated in dire warnings. At about seven or eight years old I was forced to have a short interview with the local vicar who had the scent (damp wool, leather, beeswax), ambiance and slow, dreamlike unhappiness of the elderly that left me even more afraid of the world and suspicious of its bewildering institutions. With the swagger and arrogance of youth I announced that I was a non-believer, one of the few attitudes that has struck all these years and still a source of pride.

Once, in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, I found myself visiting a rug dealer on the side of steep mountain having been cajoled by a guide we had somehow picked up facing the lengthy and tortuous sales pitches as each carpet had to be examined, touched and complemented, I had to increasingly hide my impatience.  They offered tea to prolong our stay and asked what religion we worshiped. Mary, ever one to walk fearlessly into a conversation offered Catholicism, but when it came to my own turn I said I am not religious setting off a commotion “you don’t believe in anything???”, the rug dealers looked at each other in astonishment, then laughter followed, they had never accommodated such a fool and looked at me with real curiosity. Later as we walked down the mountain our guide had lost his prior high spirits, he became introspective and withdrawn and glanced at me coldly, I don’t think it was just the lack of any commission from rug sales he was hoping for, I was meant to feel like an outsider. I should have named any religion and I think they might have accepted me as one of their own, being religious says you are subject to higher orders, that you are a humble servant and don’t possess idea’s above your station, there is a reason why football players who have never stepped inside a church affect the sign of the cross when they run on and off the field, why politicians carry (and sometimes sell) Bibles.      

But I cannot be completely nihilistic, and its Easter after all, let’s say that I respect faith but personally don’t accept any of the explanation’s, gods and holy books that have been devised and promoted with varying degrees of persuasion and violence over the last six thousand years, never submitting myself to their beauty or suspended belief to abstract ideas or mysticism, never felt compelled to imagine waters parting or sacrifices made. I prefer to live by simpler codes, ones found, for example, on a homeless man’s sign even if it does mean living a more conventional life confined by facts and deeds alone, compromised by what we might call reality, in denial and even fearful of spiritual euphoria and the paths that this may lead you down. Its sometimes a lonely and melancholy place to be, it taints my appreciation of art and antiquity, and so sometimes a degree of capitulation is in order. For the holiday weekend I took the Amtrak south to Philadelphia, sitting in the substantial leatherette chairs, allowing myself to get distracted from deeper concerns by its visual language and aspirations of a 1970’s muscle car. There is something almost reckless about the speed in which it runs down the North East corridor of factories, strip malls and warehouses, the shipping containers stacked high, ephemeral cathedrals to consumerism and globalization. I attended an Easter Sunday dinner where we greeted each family member with the words “Happy Easter!” and took Marys mother to lunch where she kissed the cross around her neck reminding me of the continued power of these institutions and the hold they still have on us.

On the last day of February 2024 I took a crowded flight from the Pacific coast of Mexico home to New York City largely composed of elderly American holiday makers and groups of exuberant students. The flight passed quickly as I was reading on my i-pad a downloaded 50 year old book by Kenneth Clark “Civilization” something that has been on my mind since returning from Rome a few months ago. The book was the result of a thirteen part TV series which I had watched as a young boy, existing all these years somewhere in my memory, so I was amazed to find it again by chance when idly scrolling through the many shows that are available on streaming services. Clark, in many ways a cliched version of an upper class gentleman and a character type that was expertly satirized by Monty Python a few years later, struggles to nail down exactly what a civilization is and goes to great lengths to offer his theories yet at the end of the day I think he is more successful in talking about what isn’t civilized behavior, which would have certainly included reading his book on an electronic device and staying in a resort hotel in Puerto Vallarta. When it comes to the latter its hard to disagree. I was in Mexico for an annual conference and this year there was a focus on ESG (Environment, Society and Governance) which I was to contribute towards in a small way, a topic that interests me and troubles me in equal measure, one that at first glance has nothing to do with civilization but now I’m beginning to wonder if that is true. Perhaps the most chilling theory in the book is around why civilizations end, for Clark it is described as fear and exhaustion “the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of prosperity”. It is a failure of confidence, a sense of pointlessness in building, learning or creating. On the plane I saw well off Americans of all ages guessing the likelihood is that perhaps only half of them would vote in November, about half again saving it for the destructive candidate, the one creating fear, promoting global isolation, the one who wants us to look back to a fictional time, bolstered by his barbarians waiting at the gate. I still hope one day we can look back and laugh at these unrealized fears because today they feel very real.

I had arrived in Mexico four days earlier on a dazzlingly bright Monday afternoon following the five hour flight down from Kennedy where I had already meet some colleagues onboard. On arrival we shared a brief glimpse of the city during the jarring ride in the mini bus, passing karaoke bars and strip clubs, deep shadows and bleached walls, dark shops without any windows displaying items on every surface. Like most towns in Mexico I’ve seen, many of the buildings were haphazardly, poorly constructed out of cheap sometimes even found materials, they lack a sense of permanence and have the depressing protective exteriors of barbed wire and iron gates broadcasting to us right away the kind of gated society we are entering. There is a sense that it could all be erased in an instance through the natural enemies of hurricanes or earthquakes and so the lack of effort in attempting structures of sophistication in one way could be understood but in another I wonder if such a goal is not such a high priority in Mexican culture. Or maybe it is just centuries of relative financial poverty and a lack of ambition. What has arrived is the gay culture from US visitors and the downtown area was decked with rainbow flags, chemist stores with signs for Cialis and Viagra and a formidable, almost prison like structure, with a large sign stating that this was the Spartacus sauna making me question how comfortably this lifestyle sits within a largely Catholic community, whether it is only tolerated because of the dollars it brings or if it is now genuinely accepted and supported.            

On the whole I hated my four days in Mexico. The conference took on a predictable air and format, occupying a vast space so artificially cold that we had to return to our rooms to find warmer garments, the irony of this when we are sitting and listening to optimistic progress reports on environmental sustainability, was not lost on most of us. One characteristic of the hotel was that all the bedrooms faced the Ocean and the roar of waves became a sonic back drop, as was the elevated, mechanical base notes from the music system by the beach, the shouts of the adults playing water volley ball against the cries of the birds which flew overheard like miniature dinosaurs. At the end of the day the sun dipped below the horizon giving us the inevitable tawdry light show and I joined the rest, a little self-consciously, taking photographs of the sunset, but for what I asked myself, what is it that propels us to glorify this evening event? a mob mentality I suppose, a collective but under challenged understanding of what constitutes beauty. Our distance ancestors would have found deeper meaning in the night sky, predicting future events, interpreting messages from their gods.

On the first day of the conference we did an activity that was intended to “give back” to the community hosting us through educational events or green activities. I had the task of helping plant tree’s in a local school to replace those damaged by a recent hurricane. It was nothing more than a photo opportunity, a staged activity that was heavy in symbolism and low on substance and we were all complicit: the participants, the school administration and even the children I suspected were mature enough to see through these privileged adults from the USA who had never held a pick axe before. As we struck into the rocky soil making a cavity large enough to hold the tree roots, some of the children gathered around and helped fill in the soil and water the tree. On another occasion a young boy, a little older than the rest, enthusiastically dug into the ground with us, already an expert and I felt unreasonably and with a sense of misery at my own prejudice, that this type of work was perhaps the extent of his aspirations. The school itself was set on a step hillside which was nestled by mountains, resting on a narrow ledge providing it with a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean perhaps a mile away in the distance but it was only later that day that I found out that most of the students were orphans and so these idyllic surroundings are no compensation for the sadness I imagine is contained within this community. At least I reassured myself, if was better than the previous year in Costa Rica, where we unwittingly had to “go teach” children as young as twelve how to work in a business selling ugly souvenir’s to tourists rather than attend school, something that still occupies nightmares of mine.

One of the topics I had in mind to discuss during the meeting was the backlash against ESG from the political right in America who had lumped the topic with the other acronym DEIB (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and Belonging) as an evil force entering our business, political and education institutions. From a pure business perspective the goals of both these seemingly non-profit related movements could be perceived as outside interference and overreach and critics may argue that the cost of installing programs and reporting structures could outweigh the benefits of transparency, risk management or innovation. I have left out the obvious benefits of social and environmental justice deliberately because I believe that the topic of ESG should be seen through a very narrow lens, one of an investor who is trying maximize their wealth over the long term. I tried to get this point across but one of the many frustrations of working for a large international corporation is that the information we receive and share often covers what we need to do or the actions we need to take but rarely why it is important or where it came from. The “why” and “where” are the most interesting side of the story and the least told, piecing together the background strikes me as a way to inform and enrich the topic of ESG.    

A good starting point to the story is 1994, an essay written by John Elkington coining the phrase “Triple Bottom Line” which was a call to action for business leaders to look beyond profit and to consider the environmental impact (Planet) and the well being of its employee’s (People). It was not intended as an accounting exercise but as a sideways shift in thinking and corporate strategy it was heavily embraced almost immediately. For accountants it was important as it’s only the second really major change since the invention of double entry bookkeeping five centuries ago, the other being the introduction of standards, I was not surprised by the cynicism of some of my colleagues whose reluctance to change was predictable. I imagine the origin of Elkington’s thinking has deep roots and hints are given when looking at the resume of its author, an incredibly open person, his website rich in detail covering both his professional and personal life but it’s just supposition on my side. I found myself grinning at his interests which include riding a bicycle around London, photography, art and design, 20^th century music and Johann Strauss, which mirror my own with the exception of cycling around New York rather than London and Mozart rather than Strauss.

I am interested in cultural interests because these frequently inform goals and objectives which in Elkington’s case I believe have some links to Kenneth Clark and his ideas about what constitutes a civilization. Clark argues that Civilizations are a combination of forces, military, political and cultural where something happens to move the world forward through a wave of energy and confidence. It is neither an art movement nor political one but it does frequently embolden architecture, literature, art and therefore to some extent is evaluated by what is left behind when its time is over. His survey ends in 1914 and he admits bafflement at the contemporary art of fifty years ago a stance which is in turn perplexing to myself and a modern audience. His is a very western interest which covers the Roman Empire and the Greco Roman influences on European culture as well as the Renaissance, the predominant focus of his academic and curatorial work, a highly Euro-centric view of what constitutes a Civilization. A contemporary viewer without my sense of nostalgia might be enraged at its highly privileged, colonial and myopic world view and turn to Edward Said for comfort or at least balance, I however, only see charm in his appearance and delivery and when the series ended I was struck overall by his lack of snobbery and kindness. 

I suspect we are living in the closing decades of what he would have called a civilization, the period from 1945 to about 2001, where New York City was unquestionably the center of the art and culture world. In painting and sculpture Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism and what we might bundle as Conceptual movements dominated the global art scene. Exciting developments in Cinema, Dance, Writing the Theatre took place in that time and in music, Rock and Roll, Blues, Tamala Motown, Soul, Jazz, Rap and Hip Hop all developed out of its black origins and from white settlers came Folk and Bluegrass. Sometimes they merged; Bob Dylan famously mixed Folk with Rock and Roll, a risky move that caused the same negative audience reaction that faced Stravinsky when he presented the Rite of Spring. When Joni Mitchell sang “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” she sang to a generation which included students who possessed a new attitude and very different priorities from their parent’s generation, they wanted love not war. This rebellion was easy to understand, their parents were from the war generation who either served in the military or endured the lean years of rationing and austerity afterwards. This backdrop spurned a cultural revolution, kids didn’t want to become their parents, and the business world also had leaders that would not allow them to be immune from such a pronounced societal shift, a concern for the environment, for wider and more creative thinking and inclusion of all.

In the 1960’s tentative steps towards social justice could be observed in real time thanks to technology which already feels antiquated to us, the television set, a tool also used by Clark as he recognized its power over society. The celebrity of the Beatles for example meant that everyone knew not just the names of the band members but their interests, personalities and creative process and in many ways they were the perfect team, you had the cynical one, the dreamer, the technician, the grounding force, the one seeking his spiritual side and towards the end the fierce competition between three song writers pushing them to new highs before burning out. Business leaders who are always looking for high performance teams took note. The bands from the 1960’s had huge influence on culture, few could have missed the Beatles public embrace of the African America musician Billy Preston as a fifth Beatle and more powerfully, the skinny white working class kids, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones sitting sometimes literally at the feet of their black hero’s; Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. The British musical invasion of the USA was the perfect example of the ebb and flow of ideas flowing across the Atlantic, the UK bands embracing everything they heard from the USA in the 1950’s reselling them back with a twist in the 1960’s eventually pushing music forward in unexpected ways. The dialogue between the Beatles and the Beach Boys was particularly strong and the albums of 1968 were the pinnacle of creativity, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys and Sargent Pepper by the Beatles feel like they were love letters across the Atlantic between Brain Wilson and Lennon/McCartney. When Elkington wrote that we must be concerned about People in the triple bottom line I think these influences matter, it’s not just a matter of preserving the bottom line from class action law suits, it is about finding cognitive diversity within decision makers to generate unpredictable and exhilarating outcomes, it’s about including unrepresented voices and most critically to be free from group think. It was a generation young enough to have escaped participation in the War but old enough to see a country like Germany taken over but a handful of evil leaders whose intransigent self-belief and narrow minded arrogance lead to their demise.     

The origins of social justice frequently start with artists and then gain wider political currency. In almost all cases it comes from activism within the United States whether it is woman’s rights, those of the disabled, LGBTQ members and freedom from discrimination based on age, race, religion or national origin. Progress is made but it sometimes feels like it is at a snail pace and sometimes it doesn’t feel authentic at all. When I used to teach compliance to America audiences I tailored the training to cover this activism and the resulting lives lost in the USA in order to force lawmakers to pay attention. I encouraged the audience to feel a sense of pride towards Black activism in the 1960’s, LGBT activism in the 1990’s and covered briefly, perhaps a little inexpertly, the history of gender rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In particular I talked about the security many felt within the USA compared to the rest of the world. 

The ESG journey through the United Nations (mainly thanks to Kofi Annan),through European lawmakers, through BlackRock under Larry Fink and the work of others in NGO’s is for another post. It has captured the imagination of young (and perhaps overly idealistic people) and yet I can see that point of view; there are around 8 billion people in the world, around 3.5 Billion work for Corporations that have their own Code of Conduct or are obliged to sign one of their customers. These internal corporate standards that we are strictly adhered to come mainly from the United Nations Global Compact which many of the largest companies in the world signed up for and covers anti-corruption, human rights and anti-discrimination topics. They send a robust message; imagine for example, a woman in the middle east not being allowed to drive, a gay person in central Africa who could be legally stoned to death, the fear of Christian persecution in Egypt and continued discrimination against black and brown people all over the world and consider that they have a high degree of protection at least when at work. And so it could be argued that global corporations are a civilizing force after all and these ideas have a wider reach and impact than any of the civilizations preceding it over the last 5,000 years. At their very best Global Companies can be a force for good, at their worst they can be cynical vessels that use data and rhetoric for their own self-aggrandizement and profit and it’s up to us to learn to read the data, know what exists between the lines, identify their tricks and decide for ourselves.

There is something pointless and sad about Christmas without children, perhaps its the ambiance of fake nostalgia embedded within the garish decorations and music from the 1970’s played with repetition. In England it is dark by 4.30 and doesn’t get light again until nine in the morning. When the day is blanketed in a grey wash like this, it struggles to come alive at all and instead takes on the character of an old photograph whose colors have faded and washed out and nothing, not even the Christmas lights and plastic models of Santa Clause, can revive its spirit. Its amazing how the weather fits our mood around this time of year, I can live with the damp and the darkness in cities but not in the countryside and especially not a place like this, a commuter town whose reputation has been bruised by the blandness of its housing stock that has encircled it like a fungus for the last 50 years. So I’m happy to take plane south to Italy, thankful for the relaxed policy around alcohol on these European Airlines and I am lightheaded with Prosecco and a renewed sense of freedom when we land two hours later in Rome.

The first remarkable sight you see when leaving the airport in the early evening is a tower characterized by perfectly symmetrical arches which for most people would be impossible to date, it could have been made two thousand years ago or two weeks ago. It has the same engineering precision as the aqueduct in Nimes crafted out of limestone in the first century by Romans, but a clue to its true origins lie in the mathematics of the building, known colloquially as the Colosseo Quadrato, which comes from its nine horizontal arches and six vertical ones to celebrate its sponsor, Benito (6) Mussolini (9). Therein lies the contradictions at the heart of Italian society; one that is characterized on one side by its sensuousness and emotion and on the other by the very fear of them that can only be tempered by order and disciple. In this city we saw a fiercely administered Papal organization but where naked human forms are celebrated on almost every surface of its buildings, the finest food and wines are served and engineering and design marvels are unequaled. 

But how to get to know a city? My normal approach is a cautious one, to tackle it on foot without much of a plan and to rely on my eye’s to register its scale and personality rather than my brain and especially without the internet. Its an approach that requires time and optimism, offering no guarantee that it will reap the rewards we seek (and only works on cities before the advent of motor vehicles) but I like to find out the poorest quarters and the wealthiest enclaves, to view the city in its extremes. What we seek of course is authenticity, the holy grail of tourists, to find the real meaning of a place. Rome is a city I had only been briefly to once before and as I left the planning to Mary and because of two days of sightseeing from a centrally placed hotel room I left knowing little more about it. What I did take in was some of the most famous Renaissance art and architecture in the world which left me under-awed or rather questioning the motives and purpose of art, in this case it is mostly from the same period, the fifteenth and sixteen centuries, what is called the high renaissance whose main stars were Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo.

For Leonardo and Michelangelo there is substantial evidence that they were what we would call “gay” today, although I suspect it didn’t matter as much in those times, their preference was for young male beauty, and in a small way this knowledge informs how we should view the work. Its more the familiarity of what we see in the Sistine Chapel that numbs its impact for me, we know it from Tote Bags and fridge magnets and numerous monographs and histories of art, have been told endlessly of its importance, and for some it is the starting point or even the pinnacle in the history of art. It was mainly commissioned by the Catholic Church, the dominant institution at the time and one that was highly politicized, suffering the considerable burden and anxieties of defining good taste and how its image should be promoted in the world. That’s never easy to do when you work with artists who want to express themselves and their desires.

So we have Michelangelo painting larger than life images of Jesus, fully naked and in action hero mode on the walls of the Chapel only to have its penis discreetly covered at a later date to the artists fury. In order to get to the chapel you pass through seemly endless corridors of sculptures of well-proportioned men all of whom have had their penises removed, making you wonder where their problem with male genitalia comes from. Its not hard to imagine the dilemma. My weariness came from the glorification of ordinary people, of administrators and politicians mainly, elevated and successful enough to be carved out of marble to spend eternity within these walls . On Christmas eve at a family event (sinking a little too comfortably into a designated role of drunk uncle) I chastised the younger members by saying how much I disliked Taylor Swifts music causing a predictable reaction; one of the young women almost whispered to me in reverential tones that she had once actually met her, and it was that dispiriting information as well as this experience in Rome days later surrounded by the mass production, almost industrialization, of statues, fresco’s and paintings that depressed me most; societies collective need to place people (literally) on pedestals.

I’m not a Christian, and so my simplistic, provocative perspective of visiting the Vatican is that it is a walled city within a city containing an overabundance of artwork that aimed to promote events that took place some 1400 years earlier in what we now call the Middle East. They celebrate the life of a Jew called Jesus whose ideas were told to us by his followers over the following decades. I think it’s safe to say that such a person existed and had powerful idea’s, charisma and communication skills which resonated at the time, yet I wonder how he would feel seeing himself as portrayed by Michelangelo on these walls, muscular and Caucasian, or his reaction to the news of the current events? a cocktails of power, mythology and property.

I’m less angry about organized religion today than I have been in the past. The sacking of a civilization like the Roman empire wasn’t inevitable, it is hard to maintain civil society when barbarism is so close to our true nature, something to think about each time January 6 comes around. I remind myself to think instead of the benefits of good governance and order, of ethics and morality that the Church aspires to and sometimes achieves and don’t completely dismiss its hopes to create stability through storytelling and art. Rome is a place where you think of these big themes; the history of religious beliefs and power structures, the role of art to fortify them.

But the dizzying contradictions of Rome remains; in the Vatican we saw a prostate elderly beggar praying into a Pringles tube within sight of the Popes window, on our small tour group I was distracted by someone wearing a Rocky Balboa Hoody “the Italian Stallion” and also by a young Filipino couple more interested in taking images of themselves on their phones rather than seeing those on the walls and everywhere the sight of these homogenized, pale and westernized, emotional mythical figures painted without restraint.  It was a relief to come to an open window where we could look out, away from the past into the present, onto the formal gardens and sunshine, but even this sight was politicized slightly by the Vatican radio tower. For a modern tourist, struggling with the ironies within this place and attempting to untangle its history, one that is so dense that it can feel overwhelming, we are left a little helpless. For the residents of the city, faced daily with the omnipresent evidence of its antiquity, a failed empire which seeps into the cities character like a sadness that cannot be shaken off, there is resignation I think.

There is a difference between admiring and liking art, and the work we see in Rome is undeniably innovative, technically remarkable and the industry and resolve of the artists is unquestionable. So was the richness of its culture at the time where science, philosophy, poetry and architecture was being propelled forward. Anyone with an opinion also has self-doubt and that was how I felt leaving the city. I caught glimpses of the real modern day Rome when packed buses took tired workers out to the suburbs, had dinner with friends eating a dish of squid so tender that I momentarily mistook it for pasta, walked along the still solemn green waters of the Tiber and a chill but sunny day. We went to see some fashionable shops including one stocked with the messy, inelegant prints and posters of Cy Twombly’s son, another with antiquarian frames without art to be used as an elaborate, show stopping, decorative device. The best part? missing a tour of the Parthenon by settling in the back of a dark café feasting on local ham and cheese feeling like we were skipping a day off school. 

Today I took my habitual early evening walk to central park to close out another workday. The autumn light was already fading, creating an unexpected luminance within the rustic tones of the trees which were framed by the grandiose buildings of 63^rd street. Just then the first light snow of the year appeared dancing without conviction around me, making me grin as winter starts like this every year; metallic breath, lightheaded with the chill, bitter wind on tender skin and a race to get home to the warmth. The lights within the solid Beaux Arts buildings around me briefly exposed their extravagant contents, did I imagine the top corner of an old master drawing or a glimpse of a mannerist painting? or see quick fleeting shadow or just a stillness within suggesting their inhabitants have already settled in, hibernating for the endless season to come.

I love this time of year in a city like New York, one large enough to make you aware of your insignificance, a city that allows you to get lost within it, to disappear almost without fear of running into someone you might know. Yet at the same time there are people all around, just like you, absorbed in their thoughts and possessing their own dreams, sidewalks dense with unrealizable desires, rushing home from work and back to their authentic selves as they detach from the roles they are forced to play and the business hierarchies that bind them for eight or more hours each day. Some are shop workers or doormen, angry from a day of servility maybe, others who are in the professional class are no more advantaged and share the dilemma but on a different scale or cadence, I include myself in this category.

In NYC you brush shoulders with criminals and doctors, architect’s and sex workers, waiters and deli owners, inadvertently rest your leg up against them on the egalitarian subways where there remains a veneer of respect as you know little about who you are next to. In my case I take exaggeratedly and almost comically deep breaths once in the park, in this newly cold city, which are a both metaphor for a sense freedom and a cure of sorts. The people I pass are a comfort, connect me to a wider world and the crisp cityscape is wonderful on the closing of a cloudless day. Those snowflakes are just the opening act of winter which has two parts, the first which is now, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, one of hope mixed with nostalgia, the second which takes place in the first three months of the new year is one of regret, austerity and work. This city is a reliable place, we know what is coming next and our small world takes on a repetitive pattern, seasons change as do our sentiments towards them, our emotions seem to surf on their waves.

Some years ago, when visiting the fashionable East End of London, we stopped at a restaurant which was shadowed by a billboard that said “Eat, Shop, Play” apparently a summation or a mission statement. Its message could reverberate across all large western cities which are vessels for the wealthy and for the tourists who emulate them for the week or so that they can afford to. At the time we laughed at its crassness and its truism for that certain class of entitled individuals where eating, playing and shopping was the norm but for the majority of city dwellers it is work opportunities, the need to make ends meet that draws them even in the age of the remote working. At the time we found the banner funny, but how many of the city’s workers see it with resentment, a city can also be a trap, a prison if you let it. 

For so many years my walk to Central Park has taken the same route which until February took me through the tight lane leading to its small zoo. I chose this route because there is a section where you could see the caged owl nicknamed Flaco, a voluminous Eurasian Owl which has a wingspan of over 6 feet. From time to time, I would photograph it and at others just stare in awe thinking that it might be used in an argument for or against Darwinism but never atheism. In February some still unknown vandals (or hero’s) cut a hole in the stainless-steel cage and the owl escaped. Since then, it has been a dark presence in the park sometimes venturing downtown but mostly staying hidden within its folds. I sometimes imagine it riding the cities thermals while park professionals fret about its safety, fearing rodenticide from the poisoned rats it is eating.

Shortly after the escape when it hit the news media I saw groups of bystanders and photographers with tripods and telephoto lens gathered on my normal route in the park I would occasionally join them to chat and to follow their sightlines in the hope of seeing the owl but never had success, such was the its adaptability in the wild, but also leaving me with doubts about how I would feel seeing it in such different circumstances, out of the context of imprisonment. Mainly though it is the thought of it being free after a decade locked in a small, windowed cabin to the wildness of the city where there are few natural predators only the danger from man, toxic rats and fast vehicles. The saddest part was the fact that it rarely leaves the area around the zoo and the cage it lived in, secretly perhaps, we are envious of its freedom or maybe we recognize something of ourselves in its conduct.

Its timid behavior has been much on my mind as I slowly approach my retirement from work. Like most in this situation, I’m in an overly reflective and slightly nervous mood, wondering how I will manage this change emotionally. There is a tendency amongst people of my generation to think of work, particularly corporate work as a waste of our talents and it’s true that I’m occasionally filled with a sense of loss and of failed opportunity and at others, more realistically, feel that the positives outnumbered the negatives. I’m a realist, but there are many things that I wish had been different, the most significant is the sense that modern day work requires full commitment and little time for anything else except relaxation in evenings, weekends and during the four-week annual vacation which becomes a rush to cram in as many sights and experiences. This model for living feels increasingly unsustainable and its worth comparing it with ancient Greece where I recently read that they delineated their days between paid labor, work, contemplation, play, leisure and engaged in cultural and political community activities. For me it was mainly just paid work and leisure (I might add shop and eat), simply an “on” and “off” switch, and I occasionally here from my friends that it is sad that I was forced to take this route in life, where I didn’t exploit my creative talents or take more risks. An old girlfriend this summer, who has just cause to be angry at the world, asked dismissively what my “wanky” job title was (the term far from complementary) proving to herself she still retains the power to hurt me a little and I the impulse to always forgive her.

I am leaving the paid corporate workforce with the strong feeling that it will change in the future, that there will be not just opportunities for sabbaticals, personal projects, play and different models of working which may even be mandatory; senior jobs to have term limits, organizations forced to have cognitive diversity through more studied and enlightened selections of teams and executives. I am hopeful that the search for talent will not be limited to traditional ideas around formal education and relatively new ideas around diversity and inclusion but will go beyond this to include examining background, privilege, formative experiences and current circumstances with greater understanding and empathy.

One of the most repeated cliches is when an older person gives advice to someone choosing their path when they say, “do something you love, and you will never have to work”. It infuriates me because (I want to shout) the world is full of people who failed to be successful artists, actors, musicians, film directors, interior decorators, designers; you can name any creative profession that someone may select at a young age. And what of those few who did choose the thing they love, gained enough success to live comfortably of it, are they contented and happy? At this point I don’t think that anyone seriously believes that the various art worlds and media worlds are happy places or ever were except to a small handful of those in power.

About a year ago Mary and I was invited to a party in Brooklyn. It was a late autumnal day, still warm enough to be coatless and I was looking forward to the promised intimate dinner with Mary’s Pilates instructor and her film maker husband. We took the subway which rattled and intermittently stopped from time to time for its own mysterious reasons eventually releasing us to an unfamiliar part of town where we clownishly fumbled on our phones for the right address, irritated with each other and by the lack the gridded streets we have grown far too accustomed to. The ride was harrowing, with the poignant presence of a young beggar then an athletic dancer break dancing to hip hop music from a boom box which was disregarded by the riders, engrossed with their phones and protected by the ubiquitous white earbuds. I was an audience of one and in helpless embarrassment allowed myself to be occupied by an empty Fanta bottle which noisily rolled the length of the carriage with each acceleration and deceleration of the train, and which was studiously ignored by everyone else.

We arrived at the same time as a tall pair of African American men who were going to the same party and I gave Mary a sour, deliberate look that said, “just the four of us”? We were led upstirs to a wide roof deck with a long central table decked with flowers and surrounded by about twenty people. If Hollywood was to caste a New York crowd of young, hip creatives, this would be what they would imagine. There were the mixed skin tones and physiognomy, fashion statements and glamour, nods to the academic world and, as I found out when I was placed between the two men we had entered with, to music as one ran a gospel choir in Harlem.

It was the magical time of day when the sky retreated from it gradient blue to peach, and the dynamic of the houses surrounding the deck changed and now it was our turn to be on stage, to be observed with curiosity. The guests were mellow, as if we had all signed an agreement not to be overly loud, not to shriek or raise our voices too much and the soft tone of the evening woke a voice in my head reminding me to treasure moments like this. But I also needed a drink and went to a makeshift bar where there was a single guy doing what I normally do, scanning the party but enjoying his own company.

We chatted about the location and the evening and soon discovered countless things we had in common; we were roughly the same age, relocated to the USA on the same year, share a love of Los Angeles and America generally, were raised very close to each other just outside of London suburbs and had the same taste in music. I enjoyed our conversation; it was unforced, and the main topic was our shared experience that whatever success we might achieve in the USA will never mean much back in the UK, he told me laughingly that when he returns to the UK his brothers are a huge grounding force, ridiculing any success he achieves.

We talked easily about favorite hikes in Los Angeles that we both take, about musicians now we admire like Nick Cave, our musical roots of the Punk movement and I shared that Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album was the soundtrack of our summer. I was on the verge of saying that we should listen exclusively to Black music for a while because the innovation and brilliance of this is not to be compared but suddenly a pretty African women approached us and said to him ‘are you who I think you are?’ he grinned and said ‘maybe” and when it was established that it was not a case of mistaken identity she said “I have loved your music my entire life, it’s taken me through some dark periods and good times and has always uplifted me” she then turned to me and said sorry to interrupt your conversation and left.  

So, you are a musician yourself I asked, and he named the famous band that he was the lead singer for and we continued to talk for a while, but for me the joy of the meeting had now faded, something had shifted and the realization that he inhabited a different world, and from his side too I guessed, our talk moved towards his professional life, his anonymity gone, he talked almost apologetically about a new album and tour under planning. That summer we saw him everywhere, frowning from the cover of a magazine in a Barcelona restaurant as his band was headlining a local festival, performing on late night chat shows, a new song on the radio. That night in the Uber home to Manhattan I searched his name on my phone and saw clips of his early hits, dancing on television singing songs familiar in my youth. Weeks later we watched concert films showing more recent performances and learnt about the dedication of fans around the world who supported after all these decades and regarded them still as a cult band. On television he was so different from the humble, funny and curious person I’d had met. It was clear that being the singer in a successful band was work, even talking about it was something to avoid, and that if that woman hadn’t approached, I would have said goodnight without ever knowing who he was.   

This April, on an absurdly hot day in Northern India, I stood outside the comfortable confines of an air-conditioned hotel to observe the thrilling spectacle of the road, its relentless momentum rushed by like a torrent which is always the same and always a shock. You see entire families ride by on an insubstantial motorcycle, open buses full of women in saris of vibrant colors, the indifference of lean street dogs, lethargic cows, old men straining on vintage bicycles and the controlled chaos of life and death, or at least injury, before your eyes. There was a feeling of euphoria being back here and I felt fearless but also faced uncertainty whether to jump into the fray and swim or to passively stand on the sidewalk, an onlooker. Aware of this unhappy metaphor, like so many of us, fearing it could be the central one in our lives, I decided not to dwell on it, to harbor any self recrimination.

There were plenty of offers from tuk-tuk drivers lingering nearby to sweep me up but I had no specific destination in mind. I was just a tourist and made this known by the conspicuously large camera I carried and took photographs of the distressed walls or sometimes of torn posters that bemused on lookers. Finally I pointed it at a young women in a red sari crossing the treacherous road confidently and with elegance. In doing so I found myself the focus of attention, the drama of the street had shifted and I was the target of real anger from an old women. I will never know what she shouted at me with such vehemence but perhaps I can guess; who has the vulgarity and bad taste to take a photograph of a women without her permission?

I scuttled away before there was more of a scene. I noticed some of younger people were amused, they know how we behave, like we own the world and care nothing about anyone else’s privacy especially a young woman in the flower of her youth in her spotless outfit and sultry walk across a dust blown street. As I write I find myself scrolling through the photographs on my phone where I’m struck again by her poise, the assurance of her worth, while I’m only focused on the visual ambiguity of elegance surrounded by the dirt and chaos of the road. I ran back into the safety of the hotel and the slightly patronizing security guards who haven’t witnessed my shame and so didn’t have the opportunity to reprimand me although I knew with some certainty they would relish the opportunity.

I reflected once I have settled down in my room some of the roots of my affection for India, it doesn’t just probe and engulf your sense’s but forces reconsideration your established world views. The encounter was a reminder that it’s a country of faiths and ardent believers of rituals and manners, on the surface it might appear disorderly but there is rigidity in its societal behavior. There is a clue to the importance of religion from the moment you fill in the visa application; a list of faiths that few westerners have ever encountered, many home grown, and I smiled to myself when I saw there was no room for an atheism or agnosticism and so became a reluctant Christian for the purposes of bureaucracy and categorization.

But it is a different, more modern form of faith that concerns me. I was in Mumbai to visit a small group of people employed during the Covid period to fix a problem in the USA and I had built strong relationships with them without ever meeting in person. And so it was a largely joyous occasion to be together physically at last. During a conversation with the teams leader I was asked a question that surprised me “Is the USA now a fading world power?” presented to me a hopefulness, a yearning even, that almost begged me to concur.

In India the printed daily newspaper available in the hotel feels sadly cynical with a pro-government and conservative narrative that could have been composed from any low ranking official. Younger people read online and have access to US based institutions such as CNN and don’t know quite what to believe. I took a cautious response and told him truthfully that in my opinion its global status was diminished only a little by Trump but seeing the shadow of disappointment on his face decided not to pursue this further. It was a surprising question as he had previously displayed high sensitivity to any matter that could be considered controversial and in my frequent conversations I had established that he was aware of the propaganda that exists in the news we all consume. I allowed it to affect me personally, spending the majority of my adult life in the USA, I’m liberated from the prejudices of my left leaning contemporaries in Europe, and I was not angry just saddened that so many people are heartened by a decline in US power.

The question lingered with me when I took the flight down the spine of the continent to the southern Chennai, a place I have visited several times. Our office is said to be in a prestigious location and looking down from one of the windows I could see flawless white birds with wide wings and impossibly thin legs, miniature dinosaurs, sometimes solitary and at others in large flocks in a lake which borders a major garbage heap. We were hostage to the complex smell of this heap depending on the strength and direction of the wind. It carried with it teenage memories of a metalworking class at school, an exclusively masculine affair, where steel is filed, bent and burnt combined with another memory around the same time in my life of a solitary walk in the woods pursued by the unmistakable scent of a dead animal. It was omnipresent, a textile of decay. Late one evening it encircled the roof top of a luxury hotel where there was a large celebratory dinner and we all made efforts to ignore the unwelcome guest, but the food was already tiresome for my taste, although delicious, repetition dampens my eagerness to please my hosts, and instead spent my time looking at the sun going down, tamed at that hour, a pale pink haze slipping below the horizon with the certain knowledge that it will return eight or nine hours later with a new ferocity burning angrily through the lace curtains of the hotel room.

Sunday was a lazy, aimless day so I hired a driver paying him by the hour to take me around the city. He was suspicious of my lack of enthusiasm, wanted a destination and sought some purpose from me, so I reluctantly visited a Christian Church, a Hindu Temple, but really all I wanted was to be in the noise and drama of the road, to be part of the discordant symphony of car and motorcycle horns and be close enough to the other speeding vehicles that I could reach out and touch them. Eventually we agreed to go to the beach, empty in the morning as what would be the point of lying on a beach in this heat? the concession stands were Edwardian looking hand trucks with large wooden wheels allowing them to be moved across the fine sand. Most were faded and blasted by sun, sand and rain but had once been painted bright carnival colors by hand and the resulting distress was a joy to photograph and occupied me for several hours to the visible annoyance of my driver. He had pointed out the wooden tables heaped with silver forms, some still moving, whatever the men caught that morning and pointed excitedly at a pair of elderly Europeans shopping saying “foreigners!” unaware of any irony. Closer to the edge of the Ocean there was a mess of fishing boats strewn with tarpaulin sheets, makeshift shelter on land. As I approached I became aware that this was where the fishermen and their families lived, it felt intrusive to go closer towards their encampments and I didn’t want to disrupt the intimacy as I could already hear children’s voices above the roar of the waves.

I started to compose what the true answer should have been and it has taken a few months now, and several other countries, to formulate. I thought about it, for example, when visited by three handsome and prosperous women from Aspen shorty after coming back to New York. It was a pleasant, unusually warm and humid evening so early in the summer. They were pleasant company and more fun after a first round of cocktails but I needed to suppress my views due to the unsettling combination of privilege and unhappiness where every circuitous conversation led to a destination of complaint and wrongdoing, this new American plague of victim hood. We discussed the news that Finland had again been stated as being the happiest country in the world and the apparent contradiction of my own perception, based on brief experience, of it being a frozen, dark landscape for much of the year. The explanation is surprising at first; the Finns apparently have low, or at least realistic, expectations from life. I wanted to expand this theme with my three wealthy guests and perhaps even share some of my photographs of India where poor families are waiting for buses in the scorching heat, dirt and humidity, in what we would undoubtedly term as a “slum”, but instead are visibly happy and content but it felt inappropriate in such company, I cannot become that kind of moralizer and instead was happy to volunteer to pick up our pizza order and walked out onto the purple neon of midtown, to the pent-up hum of the cars waiting to cross over the bridge to Queens and beyond, to the sidewalks full of New Yorker’s in their summer outfits, a new sexiness in the streets which lifted my mood.

Three weeks later I was on the move again back to Europe occasionally thinking about economic metrics such as GDP, unemployment rates, interest rates, deficits, defence spending etc. but they seem to be a little irrelevant to most of us. An answer of sorts came to me on the first night of arriving in Barcelona in a predictably stylish, fashionably illegal loft where a Swedish designer informed us that she was moving her business out of Spain because of the bureaucracy. She loved the country but complained about its bondage to petty taxes and over administration. It was strange to be there eating delicious local food overlooking the wide panorama of the city with its familiar landmarks and a strange yellow cloud formed by lasers which announced, a little embarrassingly, a third night’s sold-out performance by Coldplay, talking about the mundane matters of small business challenges.

There are some conversations that seem to scream “over-entitlement”; when I was growing up it was house price rises in London, these days it seems to be where should we live? Our friends told us that they had recently decided to relocate to London to be closer to the center of creativity in Europe. I steered the conversation westward and the virtues of Los Angeles making the argument that if our roles were reversed it is where I would take a dynamic business, aware that this same dialogue has happened continually for about 150 years or more. My case for America is uncomplicated; for all its faults it continually attracts the most talented people in the creative world, those who are most ambitious in business or science, those who want to express themselves without governmental interference. But I don’t know why I dwelt so much on my Indian colleagues question, do I really care if the USA has lost its influence as a world power? In my mind the opposite feels true, the main reason that the USA is perceived by some to be in decline is its very openness to debate issues in the public square. Its mistakes and failures are on view to the world without filter or fear of retribution. The incessant warfare between opposing parties is what gives democracy its vitality and you simply need to experience the opposite to understand its value.

       

On a pale English winter’s morning, a few weeks ago, I was walking along the River Thames from my hotel to the smug, prosperous town of Marlow. The sky was its habitual grey, as opaque and formidable as the side of a battleship and somewhere behind this wall, only vaguely visible, was a low hanging sun, too weak to make shadows. It cast the entire landscape in a strange cool light. There was the familiar sheiks of wild fowl shattering the stillness in the fields and the lazy progress of the River as it heads down to London and out to the North Sea. I was trying reach a state of boredom, that elusive goal in this period of my life, and I thought this environment might help me achieve it through its familiarity and omnipresence during my youth. I planned to do familiar things in this small town, visit the newsagents and pharmacies, look through the thrift stores and, absurdly perhaps, buy an old fashioned scone to eat on the edge of the River.

I had some lines of a poem on my mind by T.S. Eliot that I had acquired through a novel I’d liked years ago “We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.” These words, or approximations to them, were stalking me on the walk, a little out of reach in my memory and they were not fully formed until I was home in New York and had Google to help.

They are pretty well known, but new to me was that Eliot was born an American and became British as an adult and that by chance had taught in High Wycombe just a few miles from where I was staying. He would have been familiar with the Chiltern Hills that are to the north and the woods all around with Oak, Black Poplar trees and  the elegant Willows whose leaves skim the steely surface of the river, the fields with sheep and goats, the nettle patches and hedgerows that were now rigid with frost. He was also clearly aware of the complicated feelings that arise after leaving your home as an adult, the irrational and powerful pull that the place of your childhood and adolescence possesses.

Over the decades I’ve lived in New York these feelings have been triggered unexpectedly by an irreverent British TV show, an English musician or a friend passing through. However my visits to the UK tend to be fleeting, a rush through cities and countryside in rental cars or taxis’ in pursuit of hurried pleasures, an art show, a celebrated restaurant, a music festival or a walk along some famous cliffs. I’ve never taken the time to audit this place by myself for many years and this type of scrutiny was my objective.

The footpath is muddy in places and I needed to take wide leaps thankful for bringing hiking shoes. Occasionally I pass people who are alarmed by my morning greeting and don’t quite know how to respond, some mumble, some ignore it and occasionally (but not often) I receive friendly smile. Many have dogs, which seem more social and yet their owners mysteriously apologize for their pet’s curiosity which I assure them is really not necessary. All around is a tangle of woods the colors of tweed, the palette of my childhood where everything and nothing seemed possible and so they remain the colors of doubt for me, I’m thankful not to see them regularly. On the river there is little activity this time of year, it must be bitterly cold in the steel hulls of the houseboats yet I’m surprised to smell the sweet smoke from wood burning fires and see dim lights behind cotton curtains, outsiders in the truest sense with an enviable sense of freedom unknown to most of us.

The news warn us of a winter of discontent, strike action is proposed for the railroads, ambulance drivers, airport security in a single program. This unhappiness can be seen on the faces of the people in the high streets, white in these winter months and then later when I visited my elderly mother I receive a list of grievances; her sister couldn’t afford a dress for her granddaughters wedding that was paid for by the charity of her guests. Other tales of poverty and woe which were presented with solutions that to her were ingenious but to me seemed close to begging, leaving me dispirited and low and in a great hurry to leave.

The following day I took a taxi to the fast train service into London. My driver was from Pakistan and almost immediately told me how much he wants to return to his home country after spending all his life in the UK. His wife isn’t so interested and I suggest to him that that is not surprising bearing in mind how women can be treated in Islamic societies. This was a mistake. He is not the first driver I have had to listen to a tiresome catalogue of conspiracy theories and alternative news perspectives; Osama Bin Laden? Died many years ago of cancer, 9/11? An American hoax, the new monologues of the by-passed workers. But the idea of moving to Islamabad after a lifetime in suburban England might be a culture shock for him way beyond my move to the USA in the 1990’s. What I didn’t tell him, as we sped far too recklessly through the tight lanes of Berkshire, is that his very complaints of England and the desire to leave is something characteristically English and I felt he was too integrated, too ingrained already to make such a move, I feared it would remain a fantasy.

But to return to those lines of T.S.Eliot and knowing the place for the first time, perhaps this was less my intent and it was a more conceited, self-centered one, in knowing my own relationship to it. Taking these walks over complex Edwardian locks and bridges along the Thames in the fresh cold air of winter I realized a truth which is that I had aspirations beyond this Island with its ingrained class hierarchies and expectations.

For one, I reminded myself, I couldn’t participate in the masculine language of Pubs and when one evening I went to watch a soccer game where the minimalist grunts of greetings, the inane linguistic codes, those permissible dumbed down opinions passed around like sharp punches was a culture I never participated in and it left me an outsider, a stranger on a bar stool. I sensed there was some discomfort in the bar with me being there but I wasn’t about to explain myself, to be an object of curiosity, I was not prepared to be categorized and felt the less I said the louder my presence became. But I stayed, eves dropping on the conversations. There seemed to be a cultural requirement to present yourself in a slightly stupid way, to possess a simplistic world view despite background, experience and education. When I left for the USA close friends turned against me because they believed I had turned against them, leaving England made them assume I was seeking something better, when in fact I was seeking something different. Until them I hadn’t appreciated how closed and vulnerable English society could be.

I had a sharp reminder of this a little later than evening when I put on the BBC news. The big news item was that during an event in Buckingham Palace a young Black women called Ngozi Fulani, who works in providing support for women of African and Caribbean decent against sexual and domestic violence, had been repeatedly pressed on “where she came from” by a member of the royal household called Susan Hussey who had been the Queens’ lady in waiting. Hussey was 83 years old and had been in the sphere of the Royal family her entire adult life and resigned under pressure the following day. Immediately the Royal family stressed that racism was not acceptable and one observer noted that they are now acting like a modern corporation rather than an ancient institution. I fell to sleep with mixed feelings and sympathy’s, it’s too easy to both make accusations and to make apologies.

I too have been in a party where I’ve met someone and have perhaps insensitively asked whether they were born in the USA or come from elsewhere with a motive purely to engage in conversation, maybe even find something in common. I’ve also been scolded because I’ve asked someone “what they do”. Apparently now I’m awkward, a social liability, and what I should do is develop the skill of making slight, vacuous, conversation that won’t be considered offensive. My guess is that this member of the royal household was not purposely or even subconsciously racist, but I imagine the scene as if I am there and it’s a little agonizing, because I have had awkward encounters with what we call the upper classes who exist in their own world and also relish in their own codes and cyphers. On reflection, I think Fulani’s perfect response should have been “where do you come from”; society must change (of course), but we all need to build armor to exist in the world and have empathy for others who exist in others.

It’s always a mistake coming back after years of exploring, of travelling and living elsewhere, being nomadic and restless and as Bob Dylan say’s there is no direction home. The countryside remains the same with slight exceptions, a few new buildings by the river, but other than that the lack of change is extraordinary making me feel small and inconsequential. I thought I might be comforted and grounded by this sense of permanence but the opposite was true. I came to seek boredom but instead found self-pity and more than once I said to myself “I wish I hadn’t come”. England is going through the same societal turmoil as the USA; smart phones are making fools out of us, the news is not trusted by those struggling to make ends meet (and so they invent their own versions as a reprimand) and we find ourselves in a culture where everyone’s sensitivities are to be danced around, including my own.

I found solace in one of Marlow’s Michelin starred restaurant’s where they squeezed me in without a reservation at three o’clock. An hour later, satiated, I was questioning myself how to get back to the hotel. It gets dark at about four thirty in the evening during these winter months and as the Thames footpath takes an hour to walk I realized it would already be a little treacherous to take. However the sky to the west was alive. All the former greyness had gone and instead it graduated from the horizon with the moist color of apricot flesh up to a steely blue ceiling without cloud or blemish. The stark forms of leafless trees were reflected in the slow moving water of the river and the air I breathed had a pleasant metallic presence. As the light faded I realized there was movement all around, the air pulsated with the movement of bird wings, the hedgerows brushed by foxes and badgers and I saw the slight forms of bats in the dark of the forest and even in this dim light the alert silhouettes of rabbits deep in the fields. There was something sinister about it all, these animals going about their killing business.   

We heard about the death of the queen a few weeks ago from an Edinburgh taxi driver who did little to hide his indifference to the news. It came on a wet and cold Scottish evening and we were traveling from a trendy neighborhood called Leith back to the city center. It was expected of course, she was 96, and perhaps the only real surprise was the extent and numbing repetition of the national media coverage in England when we arrived there a few days later, its overwhelming positivity toward the Royal family, Charles in particular. I sometimes have to remind myself that I come from a generation where “God save the Queen” could only be rhymed with “the fascist regime” and better still “she ain’t no human being” thanks to the Sex Pistols.

What kind of human being she was is any ones guess. About five years after that song I found myself in a small village in mid Wales where unexpectedly I saw school children were holding national flags so I followed them to the high street where minutes later I came face to face with the Queen. A truly diminutive figure, projecting the very absence of power, tiny in highly polished shoes and lambs wool coat she briefly frowned on me, a scruffy twenty something and then she was gone.

Five years later I was living in Windsor, close to the airport, now working in a job taking me around the world on business and had begun to understand the claustrophobic nature of this line of work; breakfasts, lunches, dinners all became “meetings”. So when back home I found refuge in the wide open spaces of Windsor Great Park and would hike there despite of the sometimes wild nature of its winter weather. Frequently I would notice some of the royals driving past in Range Rovers or Bentleys and would give a casual wave happily, and almost certainly, breaking every protocol. They traveled in entourages with stern and capable looking men following close behind in modest, nondescript cars ready to handle any trouble that may arise.

One particularly ferocious Sunday found me deep inside the grounds happily soaked to my skin, I couldn’t have been wetter if I had stood fully dressed under a shower for half an hour, even my socks and underwear were completely wet but I didn’t care. There was something cinematic about that monochromatic day as dark clouds sped across the sky, it felt as if the film I was in was skipping forward too quickly while birds were drifting sideways across it shrieking in alarm. All around the haunting rising and falling hum of the shaking tree’s which were struggling to hold their ground, occasionally loosing limbs with a sudden snap.

I watched a single Land Rover approach from a distance and as it drew closer I saw the unmistakable cliché of that small lady with a headscarf, no secret service car following and the certainty that there wasn’t another human being for miles around. And then it happened; a wide, genuine grin from the Queen which I returned with a grateful laugh and a nod, the exchange was probably less than 5 seconds. No she didn’t offer me a ride, we didn’t become friends. I’m just sure she was just amused by my pitiful weather blown state but I would also like to think we were both escaping from responsibilities and colluding in a brief moment of elation while the wind was up, the earth was alive and most sensible humans were at home in front of the television. I still remember its warmth and authenticity but also somehow felt sure I would be part of an amusing anecdote over tea later in her day.   

It was a sweet moment but it never warmed me to her or her family, in this case my heart wasn’t overruled by my head. I think it is partially the vastness of her privilege, the absurd amount of wealth, the land and influence inherited, not earned, simply “past down”. Apparently she went to great lengths to hide this side from the English people giving clues to her guilt. There is also the matter of her children, one by one their marriages celebrated lavishly only to collapse under the weight of public expectations.

We are over familiar with all the arguments to support the Royal Family; continuity, stability, tradition, tourism even but it’s time to break free from these. The piety I witness in the English, starting with the media is the real tragedy and think that in the future the public should agree to choose heroes with more care. Let’s place those on pedestals those whose achievements advanced our society and seek ordinary citizens that achieved extraordinary things. In sorry, but I’m with Johnny Lydon – or at least the person he was in the 1970’s, I turned my back a long time ago on the idea of being some else’s “subject”.