19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

I was looking for confirmations and extensions of what I already knew.

Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

Rodinsky was an empty space, a lacuna; that which was not to be uncovered something sealed and forgotten.

19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

This was the period, the seventies between his disappearance and the breaking open the attic room. He wasn’t visible or invisible. He had neither presence nor absence.

Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

His story hadn’t been formulated.

Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair's Rodinsky's Room (1999)

From Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair’s Rodinsky’s Room (1999)

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

…and the death areas that men have been forced to abandon around them.

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

Within these areas perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries, galleries of masterpieces…

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

…and a vast accumulation of human achievement, whose charred remains lie buried…

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

…a legacy of curious material that only future generations may hope to examine.

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

From HG Wells’ The World Set Free (1914)

London Palladium, Argyll Street, Westminster, W1F

But when at dawn he drove away
With echo of their cheer,
To where his little daughter lay,
Then he knew – Fear.

London Palladium, Argyll Street, Westminster, W1F

From Robert W. Service’s The Actor

Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra's Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy and Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow (1963)

I’ll wait for you.
Where human feet have never trod,
Where human eyes have never seen.

Sun Ra's Space is the Place (1972)

I’ll build a world of abstract dreams
And wait for you.

Sun Ra's Space is the Place (1972)

From the liner notes of Sun Ra’s Monorails and Satellites (1968)

Nichoas Hawksmoor's Christchurch Spitalfields, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

… I see what a chequer’d Work Of Nature my life has been.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, City of London, EC3V

If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it)…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Anne's Limehouse, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, E14

… I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George-in-the-East, Shadwell, Tower Hamlets, E1

… but I cannot help their Unbelief…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George's Bloomsbury, Little Russell Street, Camden, WC1A

… and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Alfege, St Alfege Passage, Greenwich, SE10

From Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor (1985)

Peter Street, Soho, Westminster, W1F

One can commit. I have not been

Brewer Street, Soho, Westminster, W1F

Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion

Berwick Street, Soho, Westminster, W1F

Take and engulf me, mercilessly.

From Jorge Luis Borges’ Remorse

Barbara Rich's Angel Wings, Liverpool Road, Islington, N1

Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones.

Battersea Park, Battersea, Wandsworth, SW11

I’ve thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult.

Colchester War Memorial, Cowdray Crescent, Colchester, Essex, CO1

One thing I know. If living isn’t seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game.

From F Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920)

Marylebone Road, Westminster, NW1

One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up.

Tontone Street, Folkestone, Kent, CT20

I armed myself against justice.

Queenstown Road, Wandsworth, SW8

I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure’s been turned over to you!

Democracy Village, Parliament Square, Westminster, SW1P

I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it.

Gerry Judah's Auschwitz-Birkenau Model, The Holocaust Exhibition, Imperial War Museum, Lambeth, SE1

I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity.

From Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell (1873)

Raymond Hood and Gordon Jeeves' Ideal House, National Radiator Building, Great Marlborough Street, Westminster, W1F

Will the beautiful deco buildings erected as working shrines by what were once the largest companies in the world soon be abandoned?

Charles Holden's 55 Broadway, St James's Park, Westminster, SW1H

They’re already surrounded by a no man’s wasteland; it seems only a matter of time.

Walthamstow Stadium, Chingford Road, Walthamstow, Waltham Forest, E4

And then how long before people wander into that zone and ask themselves, “Who built this incredible building?”

George Coles' Troxy, Commercial Road, Stepney, Tower Hamlets, E1

From David Byrne’s Journal (2006)

Tom Murphy's Billy Fury, Albert Dock, Liverpool, Merseyside, L3

Becomes a living mould,

Ivor Roberts-Jones' Sir Winston Churchill, Parliament Square, Westminster, SW1P

The more the marble wastes,

Rowan Gillespie's Famine Memorial, Dublin Quayside, Dublin 1

The more the statue grows.

Edward W. Wyon's Richard Green, East India Dock Road, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

From Michelangelo’s Sonnet