back from sussex, but not back from thesis-ing
brighton has two piers. the main street snaking down from the train station into the bay deposits you at a point equidistant from the old pier on the right, and the new pier on the left. the old pier is a precarious skeleton, charred & twisted from the fire four years ago. "there's nothing there," my friend said. I insisted. we walked over and I watched it for a while, this odd broken edifice with the waves lapping into the gaps. it had an air of a house of cards, or something that might crumple into the sea at any moment, with little more than a sigh -- a final exhalation, the last wisp of the inferno laid to rest. there were hardly any people -- the odd introvert gazing out to sea, the tidal silence.
later, walking through the obnoxious, repulsive new pier that screamed with arcades, bilious and extortionate games stalls and the shatter of beer bottles, I was seized with a desire to burn it down. a kind of redemptive pyromania -- because if the old pier was the same bastion of feckless & diseased consumerism, then from the ashes of something revolting might arise a hushed and fragile art.
and while on the subject of art arising from setting fire to something revolting
[photo credit: amanda falgas-ravry; combustive act transpired some time ago at one particularly literary tea party, which I had the pleasure of attending]