London Road
I couldn't help thinking there was someone behind me all the way back from the City Campus. In the subway under the ring-road the echo of my footsteps sounded like someone stalking me. I followed the signpost to London Road leaving invisible footprints on the concrete slabs. Under surveillance the whole time. Tracked by the prying eyes of numberless CTV cameras - my mobile phone shouting out my geo-location to anyone who's interested. Anyone. Well, who exactly? Who cares? But reading this left its print on me, making me think that things run something like this: you could be anywhere, but you're always somewhere; anyone could find you, if they knew where to look - if they could be bothered in the first place.
Wow that is a spooky idea isn't it? Traced through the mobile phone.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid (maybe about thirteen) I used to watch a lot of those detective things on tv where forensics played a great part. Detectives miraculously pieced together the final movements to the finest details of victims and their murderers. This seriously spooked me out that someone could tell where you had been and what you had done by following these paths of molecules and whatnot. So I used to try and clean up behind me all the time. Used to try and muck up the path. BUt I realised they would find THAT out aboit me too. (Paranoid or WHAT???!)
It's all in the name of security ... and now I sign in at the bottom of your blog, so that you can be monitoring who comes and writes here.
It was me.
ReplyDeleteI am doing an ethnography of bloggers (see my Dr Joolz comment) and have started with you.
Obviously I had to do some PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION and find out about your daily life in order to learn your local practices and whether the culture in Sheffield has any key features (Arctic Monkeys, underpasses).
Can you not recognise the ethnographer in the street when you hear one?
Ah Ha! The soft footfall of the solitary professional snooper - the participant whose participation is reduced to footsteps. The tracker who carries the scent of deCerteau, or Auster perhaps?
ReplyDelete