Beautiful noise

Last Saturday I was on Oxford Street which, like every day, was a roaring river of noise. It was an experience like I imagine a surfer feels hugging the inner curl of a wave, enclosed in a near wall of water, alone and in a situation perilously close to overwhelming, yet at the same time, madly intoxicating .

That particular evening was extraordinary though;  the nearer I got towards Marble Arch, the more I thought I could hear steady, rhythmic drumming albeit on a monumental scale. Like a shape clearing in the fog, the drumming became clearer, the drum patterns more evident, then a throbbing bass strode out to greet me by the time I'd reached Marble Arch. The Stones in full flight. So this is how live is on the runway. Thudding, numbing, and bizarrely arousing.

It's the unfinished symphony of car horns, sirens, roadworks, throaty buses, squealing taxis, buskers, music leaking out of store doors, the hubbub of conversations in hundreds of languages that has melded effortlessly into London's now ever present and un-choreographed  sound track. If Babylon was being blueprinted again, I'm pretty confident it would sound, smell and look like today's London.