Fire, broken glass, and over everything the immortal beats of the drums. I've never seen Oxford Street look so beautiful. Topshop is wearing a belt of riot cops, lightened with notes of colour from pink and white paintball splashes, and draped in classic spiderwebs of shattered glass.
The crowd stands round, impressed at the monolith of monoculture and how easily it came down. Inside, the shadows of management move like birds with tense steps, wondering how this will affect their sweat-stained stock movement. Rebels shout insults at the police, who stay impassive and blank.
'Did you join the police force to protect leggings?' mocks a dwarf.
Tourists step dainty past, worried about being tainted by disorder. Some of the young ones are probably upset that they can't shop on their visit. Then again, some stop to take memento photos of themselves in the classic one-hand-raised-smile pose, with a background of disgruntled prostesters. This will be something to tell them back home.
Angry, drunken young men approach the police cordon, and shout that they're tools of the system. I think they probably know. I want the men to shut up and go drink their Special Brew somewhere else, because it's just the same lairy, directionless anger you get at 2.30 in the morning, and it never works out well.
'Watch out guys, there's a sock getting away!'
That's the way to do it, short guy. Highlight the absurdity of defending property, of defending money and privilege that will never make it out to society in general. It's sad enough already without more people suffering. We're angry enough already without bringing the aggro.
The band's still going though, and the insistent beat has many of us twitching. With the traffic-suffering street stopped for a blissful hour or two, and the city returned to a place for humans, we can overcome our reserve and do that. We can talk to strangers, pass on advice, pose, stage impromptu theatre. Climb the street furniture. It's our city; a city for people, not cars or corporations.
'How selfish', a middle aged woman says to her joyless partner. 'Don't they understand that some people just want to go shopping?'
Together we crowd Oxford Circus and young punks climb the station and let off banners and fireworks. The signs they hold are vague and about peace, love and understanding. Their trousers are below their buttocks and their outfits are coordinated. They've taken a break from complaining about big business to smoke a cigarette.
They're only young; they'll learn. They're just trying to find the real shit, the good shit.
The traffic lights count down the precious moments when pedestrians are allowed across the junction, when buses and taxis stop to let people without money have a go. We count along and at the final zero dissolve into cheers and roaring, and no car's coming this time.
Later, more shops go down. More fires start and passion and violence and rawness takes over the artificial heart of my sticky city. No more shrink wrap, latest models, body dysmorphia, trading your future for the newest thing.
There are those who can't take this. There are those that think that a broken window has a higher cost than the glazier puts on it, that a day's lost sales is a crime like hurting a human is a crime. That the loss runs deeper than profits, and that this outpouring will hurt what it hopes to salve.
They say we can't hope to bring down the corporations with rights like humans to the standard of humans. They say our country needs more money, the shared hallucination of the modern world. Every sale the country loses due to our hurt feelings means it'll take longer to climb back. Back up the sticky mound of multicoloured bodies that make up the global economy, to resume our rightful position squatting on the false summit. They say we simply cannot live the next ten years in the style to which we've become accustomed. We must tighten our belts, even those of us who have too many belt holes already, and we're only making it worse for ourselves by kicking against the traces.
They're forming an action group against our actions; an action group for traders who are missing profits because we made them listen. Looks like the lines are drawn, and we will lose, because real living is just too extreme these days and the sympathies of the people are with the structures they know. The cut and thrust of promotion, sales racks, sizing, downsizing, credit and debit, keeping promises, stiff upper lip, gentle exercise and avoiding overstimulation. Fire and anger and justice are for TV shows.
But for one day, we had a human heart in the dead, glossy-eyed streets, and it was as bitter and harsh and spontaneous and loving as humans are.
These stories of disorder and panic on the streets, these are my love letters.
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