I'm a ghost and I'm in the most visited city in the world, here where the amount of recorded reality exceeds by far the physical reality. The area with more number of clothing stores and mobile-phone shops per square meter. No dark corners around here. All the spaces are taken. Everything is business. Even the surveillance cameras, are a kind of business. The entrances to some bigger buildings in the back of the shops are barricaded with security codes, there are no escaping streets, all kind of alleys are surrounded with railings and in the main street, the construction works, are covered with huge placards, hiding the excavations, like the this ones on the back of the Totenham Court subway station. I’m already peeking through the breaches, I want to see some real reality, some chaos, mud and scrap metal. Little mans with helmets and green waistcoats, the striking of pneumatic hammers, the thrusts of underground backhoe loaders and the welding machines, dropping their sparks over all this wreckage, construction and deconstruction. I wish I could be there, improving their methods of work, but no, I have to return to a more ordinary reality. I notice that in this area, one of the ways for the traffic is cut off, follow only one direction, and the red double-decker buses passing slowly, one after other, almost touching, the people inside watching the tourists, and the tourists watching them. And this monochromatic red of the buses, also present in public works or telephone booths, it’s depressing to me. But let’s forget that. Let’s get away from here. Getting through the masses. Oxford street. I try to differentiate the bodies, observe their movement, their apparently standardized actions. Now passing in front of the blue “CarPhone Warehouse”. The front of the store advertising “a year of free home broadband'. Here, a dude in a Jamaica-colored hoodie, speaks on his cell phone in front of the shop window, ignoring the people around, forced to bump against him in order to pass. Many Asian tourists, European tourists, African tourists. Everybody can be a tourist. Wanna-be tourists. Pseudo businessmen of all nationalities, bluish suits; girls in cleavage and knee out; T-shirt boys with letterings like “Just do it now”; “Good girls go to heaven Bad girls go to the moon”; “Sometimes pretending to be normal”; “I'm not rude I'm just saying what everybody is thinking”; “Not perfect, just limited edition”; “Warning! explicit contention”; “Stop following me!”; “Pizza princess”; “Blink if you want me”; “Obey”; “Too much self control”; “etc.” and so on. Some of them with colorful haircuts, sharp hair, curly hair, no hair at all. All kind of accessories attached to the clothes. People looking inside shops. Others waiting in corners. Munching. Chatting. Yawning. No one caring about my presence. The only thing they care is their phones. Some of them pushing suitcases. Suitcases pushing them. Polished jeans carrying legs with gait that reflect the personality of the user, sometimes manly, sometimes nervous, calm, confused, relaxed, curious, late, pre-mature, disintegrated, attentive, sleepwalking, tired, greedy, sly, self-centered, bizarre, normal-looking individuals… From “The Tottenham” pub, big-bellied Englishmen come out with haughty eyes, and others with minor bellies and shifted eyes, some enter in the next Mcdonald's. Meat hungry, after a day of work organizing information, serving as a fitting piece in a virtual hierarchy fed on petrol-coffee, lewd looks, black humor, and an authoritarian desire for self-realization through the usage of various types of plafonds and bank cards, trading and recreation membership cards, discount-bought happiness cards and premiums for the worker of the week and the tourist of the month.


Heavy afternoon, I sit on burning stairs of Syntagma square, Athens, the Hellenic parliament on my back, a pink building that I have nothing to talk about. Not so much people crossing the square at this time. It’s really hot, and quiet, you can feel the boredom hovering, like in many other squares of Athens, at this time of the day. This heavy stones should melt, but no, a failed promise from the sun. There is a metro exit on my side, I face the people getting out, not many, but their faces are not that bored actually, they express some equilibrium, and they dress casual, not pretenders, you can’t judge them by the looks. So, from where is this feeling of boredom coming? I’m not sure, perhaps from the openness of the place itself, or the lack of enthusiasm showed by the people moving on the surroundings gardens… and the heaviness of the wall containing the square, may help… more this sun, full of empty promises… thus, I have no problems about sprawling my loneliness here, like a viscous, pouring from this imposing staircase, and spreading through the veins this stony floor, blazing veins debouching around the neoclassic fountain, installed on the middle of the square, yellowish water being projected, from time to time, randomly. By the side of this fountain, an old bearded man hangs around, sometimes a murmur, a kind of speech, or a cry, coming out from his camouflaged lips. A weak speech. He carries a stick with him, a stick with some plastic bottles and other sort of plastic packages attached to it. Sometimes holding the stick over his shoulders, other times waving it around, a kind of flag hanging from it too, you could read the word “cancer” on it, coz that is written with big letters, and other shorter letters from the Greek alphabet. Some tourists approach the fountain from time to time, seldom, but when they see the man, they stand back and leave the place. But the locals, passing by his side, are not shocked at all, they just pass by him, informally, some even smile to the man, but no one stops by his side. As I said the square have two gardens, or green areas, one on my left side, where is the metro exit and the man with the stick, and other on my right side, with bigger trees and benches under it, some people seated on, mainly alone, one per bench, some looking inside themselves, some looking around, some dozing while eating that kind of circular sesame bread you can buy on any corner here. I approach some youngsters settled on the scarce grass, they offered me beers; we talk, informally, like we are happy about everything, nothing matters. Then I move to the garden on the other side of the fountain, the one almost without grass and withered trees. The man with the stick is close by, but no one pays any attention to him. The ones wandering through this part of the garden have darker skin, and some of them are carrying baggage, like me. There is a silence in between. Everyone is alone here. I can say, Georgian, Armenian, Albanian migrants, and others, you may not understand the color of the blood. But the Pakistani, or are they from Bangladesh? always find a mote of conversation, even if they are just whispering, it’s easy to them to find a point, they don’t care about desolation, bad humor, crisis, to them, all opportunities of meeting are good opportunities to be now, on the moment, an affirmation of brotherhood that is not just that. They give me strength, so I come back to the metro exit, by the big staircase, and begin unpack my stuff, my percussion stuff, buckets, pots and pans, cymbals, singing bowls, a xylophone, a few contact mics, an effects box, some speakers. It takes me time to unpack and set everything, and I do it slowly and at ease. People don’t care about what am I building there. No questions, almost no looks. After doing some body exercises, I seat properly over a bucket (once there was olives inside, so still greasy), and I look around. Despite the headache, I’m ready to start my performance, and I go through it, kinda awkwardly in the beginning, coz it’s too hard sound for such a desolated square, anyway, I don’t care about expectations, I do my job. It takes me no more than five minutes to start sweating, and after a while I’m already changing my clothes, right there, in the middle of the square, without any problem. People bring me coins, people bring liquids, many tired faces, but also some smiles, help me keep going. As the sun goes down I get more enthusiastic, even more melodic, less banging, more people coming out of the underground, I’m not making big money, but I keep going because now I’m totally inside it, I reached that trance that make it automatic, I’m the thing now, just need to express it. Some people sit on my side, absorbing it, making questions that I answer with other questions. I’m all on this place now, totally landed. This is my dwelling now. Night came but I didn’t notice, I see nothing of what is happening around, I keep exercising, going through mountains of oomph, cleaning the sides. But the climate of the square changes. There are people protesting on the other side of the fountain. I don’t understand what they are vindicating. They have flags with slogans, and carry traffic signs with them, it looks, the people coming out of the metro move in their direction. No money at all are coming now, but I don’t stop playing, not just because I’m totally inside it but also because I don’t have a better place to go. Some youngsters give their support, making enthusiastic gestures like “keep going, keep going – harder harder”. The police arrive, they come through the big stairs on my back, passing on my side, not caring about me, they come in groups, not rushing, and all protected with sticks, helmets and armors. They reach the protesters and try to avoid them of disturbing the traffic passing on the avenue in front of the square. Ok. I keep playing, rarely raising my head to see what is happening. More people are coming out of the metro. The protesters move around the square, they form different groups, some have covered faces. And I keep going, banging on. No one cares. I don’t care about them too. This is my ship, and I’m already on the bottom of the sea, they can’t sink me. But there are bomb explosions, now. I keep going. Spray and gas. Wonderful smells. All I wanted is to get more dizzy. Choirs. Some screaming. Until that, one girl dressed with leggings and skirt over comes by running and sits in front of me, touching her curly short hair from time to time; she is also not worrying about the clashes. But she is not really smiling. And after a while watching me she decides to steal part of my instrument and joins me in this musical allegory. And yeah, she knows what she is doing, she is able to catch my rhythmic patterns and impose her own way of playing. We are jamming now. Some protesters left the manifestations and came to us, they are into dancing now. But bombs are getting closer and closer, well, damn it, it’s enough boys and girls. We start packing. She helps me. We staff everything inside two big bags as fast as we can and run away from there, laughing, going through the stairs of the parliament, crossing that rich area with all the embassies, giving fast kisses in front of this or that republic. But this is not a very inspiring area of the city, we should turn to the other side, she remembered a friend was giving a party in the other side of the city, and so we should come back to the place we just left, not far from the demonstrations, we bought some more beer, the clashes were still going, mainly on Ermou street, now, the street with all the multinational cloth stores, broken showcases here and there, people being arrested, cyborgs on the watch, hip hop slogans, screams from upper windows, claims against capitalism, horse shit here and there, and we, trying to get away from all that mess, but as we reached the surroundings of the university of arts, again the same thing, she presented me to some friends, that understood nothing from her demands, and there we went again, running along panepistimiou street, pissing against the national library building. Echarchia was on fire too, but we avoided the central area of the neighborhood, we went through the back streets, full of graffiti, even on residential buildings, we got lost, but she never gave up, and always helping me carrying the stuff. After several attempts of going through the insides of some building, knocking on doors of people she said she knew, but it turned out they didn’t open doors or they showed not any sign of recognizing my friend as a relative of them. Like that we went from building to building, stealing decoration stuff from the entrance halls of these buildings, etc. For me all this was a game, and I was content to do it according to her rules.