Soundscape #39: Sometimes You Have To Walk Alone

May 2007. New Jewish Cemetery, Prague-Stranice.

There is an instinctual aversion to standing out in the collective unconsciousness of us humans, both physically and mentally. To stand out is to be alone and shunning from a fear of the unknown, we seek warmth and comfort in crowds, willingly giving up our individualities and be one with the majority. We are so used to it that a preference for solitude is likely to brand one as a loner or a social outcast. The one thing I realised from the trip is that there are some things one has to do alone; some feelings and experiences are just not meant to be shared.

I liked being alone with myself, with this side of me I rarely get to see at home; I never even knew it existed. It's a wonderful feeling to be walking around and on and on with no destination in mind but you know that you'd get somewhere. You don't have any expectations but you know you won't be disappointed even if you try.

I've never walked more in my life. Every morning after breakfast in Prague for example, I'd start walking from Point A to B. There is always public transport but the journey is sometimes more interesting than the destination itself. More often than not, I'd discover something more interesting en route; it's like a treasure hunt. If I don't have somewhere I want to be for that day, I'd pick a direction and just walk. It's magical to be walking in a foreign city and be held in wonder at everything. It's hard not to be treated like a tourist in Prague because I'm forever looking up at the gorgeous buildings and its sculptures of angels and saints and gargoyles and I'd be furiously clicking away. Besides, all the asians I see in Prague (there aren't many to begin with) are in tour groups and I'm conspicuously alone. And I got lost a lot. But even when I don't know where I am, I'd just walk along anyway (there was a tourist who approached me for directions and I'd never felt more honoured), fascinated by the new area I'm in, knowing that I'd just walk back the same way I came, so I don't really fit into the cliche of a lost tourist either.

I guess what I'm saying is although I am definitely not a resident here, I'm not strictly a tourist either. It's the in-between, the interstitial, and the feeling begins the moment you start to watch yourself just walking, a movie begins to play in your head of you just walking and the first chords of the soundtrack of your imaginary movie begin to fall into step with your own and it's so apt that you smile to yourself and someone across the street happened to be looking your way and smiled back.

But no matter how many times I replay these scenes in my head of the streets I've walked, the things I've seen and the people that I've met, I know that my eyes have seen more than my mind will ever remember and I feel nostalgic for the lost memories that I wouldn't even know I had.



Playlist:
1. (0:00) Bright Eyes - Old Soul Song (For The New World Order) (I'm Wide Awake It's Morning)
2. (4:30) Badly Drawn Boy - Magic In The Air (The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast)
3. (8:15) The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Give Up)
4. (12:58) Wilco - Walken (Sky Blue Sky)
5. (17:24) The Organ - Memorize The City (Grab That Gun)
6. (20:22) Teenage Fanclub - Don't Look Back (Grand Prix)
7. (24:04) The National - Fake Empire (Boxer)
8. (27:30) Josh Ritter - Here At The Right Time (The Animal Years)
9. (31:07) Cat Power - Lived In Bars (The Greatest)
10. (34:54) The Clientele - Step Into The Light (Strange Geometry)
11. (38:55) M. Ward - To Go Home (Post-War)
12. (42:45) Elliott Smith - A Fond Farewell (From A Basement On The Hill)
13. (46:44) The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely (Get Lonely)