
Joyce Carol Vincent lived and died in London. Throughout her life she had family, friends and romantic relationships with men, all of whom loved and cared for her during the time she spent on this Earth, in London. This woman who had such a life, not just an existence, who even had her face broadcasted to the whole world at one point was found dead three years after she is believed to have died. She died alone, wrapping Christmas presents in her home in Wood Green. Nobody knows how she died and it seems nobody had gone to Joyce’s house inquiring about her absence. Her body spent three years decomposing in her living room and nobody knew. It was not even her family and friends who found her, it was debt collectors as the deceased Joyce had not been paying her rent.
The story of Joyce Vincent is one I find harrowing, it digs into my bones and brings me to tears because I can picture myself becoming Joyce. I grew up in London, it is my home. I consider myself to be a ‘Londoner’. My family moved to Birmingham three years ago, taking me with them and leaving London behind. I hated Birmingham. I found it too miniature in comparison to London. The city and its districts have a sense of community that made me feel uncomfortable, ambushed and captured. Though I grew up in a small town, I had the means to escape to the many metropolises of London that I adored. Camden Town, Borough Market, Shoreditch and Soho to name a few. These are places where I knew nobody and did not need to know anybody. Richard Taylor from Hull complains that people in London are “unfriendly” because strangers don’t smile or greet one another like they do where he grew up. Perhaps it is because I grew up here that I don’t feel the need to live a community-centred way of life. It is true that I feel it is the people who make London the world famous city it is, without people, London would be a wasteland. It is the masses of people here who give London its affectivity, its personality, its life.
What is it about London that brings people to her? I interviewed a number of people who have not had the London upbringing I had. I chose people from different countries, cities and towns in England. The people I chose were young people who made the decision to leave behind their families, friends; all that they knew to chase London. Twenty one year old Christina Reid left the ultimate metropolis that is New York City in search for an escape from the “constant competition” of the city. However, Christina chose to move to London as opposed to a small town because she was so used to “living in a metropolitan area” and did not wish to fully leave what she “was comfortable with.” Christina also feels that “you can literally be whoever you want here”, an attribute she surprisingly found lacking in New York City. I have never been to the City of New York so I do not feel I can comment on individuality there. However, in Birmingham, the second largest city in England compared to London, I share Christina’s sympathies in the loss of individuality in a city, where being whoever you want to be is not embraced by those around you. Nineteen year old Gergana Krasteva from Sofia, Bulgaria was also inclined to move to London in search of people who had a different mentality from the ‘close minded’ and ‘judgemental’ people she was faced with in her home city. A memory that sticks by me is being at an LGBTQ Pride parade in an area of Birmingham City Centre known as ‘The Birmingham Gay Village’ with a friend of mine. We were wearing dresses whereas a lot of other gay women we’d spotted were wearing baggy jeans and shirts. An older woman we do not know walked up to us and called us “straight acting baby dykes”. We felt isolated, and not in a gratifying way. We stood out and because we did not look or dress like the majority, we were made to feel like we do not belong in a community that claimed to embrace the differences of people, differences that were not accepted by the majority of the world.
Gergana Krasteva said that “London is nothing special, it is just another place to live” and she is correct. There are plenty of other cities in the world that have beautiful architecture, a complex underground system, and people from all possible walks of life. My interviews taught me that just because someone from a much smaller part of the world or country has chosen to disappear from all that they know and replace it with the unfamiliar City of London, it does not mean they are as in love with London as myself and others, or at all. Samuel Napier from Dover thinks of London as a city of opportunities for himself as a musician. He came to London in search of people, specifically musicians with whom he can “collaborate for the good of art”. Despite having reached his career goals, Sam tells me he “feels isolated here. It might just be this area but there seems to be no community in London. I miss that.” Sam and I are opposites. He misses the community aspect surrounding Dover, whereas I do not miss the communities of Birmingham. I do not want to live in a community. I crave isolation and personal space. London gives me the opportunity to be as anonymous as I wish.
I fear I will die in similar circumstances to Joyce Vincent because of this. I moved back to London by myself, leaving my family behind. I go weeks without talking to them, it does not occur to me to even text them and they begin to worry about me. Just like Joyce Vincent, I have friends and flatmates who care about me. My problem is that I easily become exhausted with company and yearn to be alone. And I give myself what I want. I take myself out, I get on a train and I lose myself in London. I immerse myself in the cultural offerings of this city. I meet people I will never see again and give them a fake name, I can be whoever I wish here, and I am.
I have accepted that London is just the beginning of a life of isolation for me. A number of the people I interviewed expressed wishes to get out of London after their studies are over. Not in search of a smaller community and a home, but to isolate themselves from all they know even more than they already have done in search of success in their chosen career paths, for places that would offer them more opportunities than London can. Eighteen year old Brendan Byers from Newmarket, Cambridgeshire has hopes to penetrate the film and talent industry in California in four years’ time. He tells me. “It’s a much larger industry there, I think I’d have a better chance of making a name for myself. London could help get me to America, Cambridge cannot. That’s why I’m here.” I envy a boy two years my senior because he has a plan, a path for himself and I do not have any idea what I am going to do with my life. I want to be educated, to travel and most importantly, to write. I adore London but I know eventually it will lose its spark. I fear I will grow tired of what I know and I will soon have seen everything she has to show me. Like a person with a fear of commitment: I will always want something new sooner or later. London is my wife, she’s beautiful and has everything I want. Yet I cannot resist the urge to cheat on her with other cities in the world, in search for wonders I do not know of. After all, London really is just a place, a place I’m starting to think I’ve seen too much of.
I envy Brendan for having his life planned out on some level, but at the same time I can’t think of anything worse. Though he would be isolated in California when he moves there, he actually plans to settle himself down there, to have a home, a life, friends and work. Eventually, his whole life will be in the place he moved to and he will no longer be isolated. I don’t want to have my whole life planned out, by myself or anybody else, and that is why I came back. I want to lose myself, to be immersed in the world. But for now, London and learning will do. But London is not enough for me, not anymore. I need more anonymity. I believe this is because I am ‘settled down’ in terms of the life I lead, something that most people seem to want, I do not understand the need for such a monotonous life. I wake up, shower, get on the tube, and go to university, go home and do it all over again the next. This was a choice I made myself and it is not one I regret. But the current and impending routine in my life sometimes makes it near enough impossible for me to get out of bed, because it is so very monotonous.
However, when I walk through Oxford Circus in the morning, afternoons or evenings and see all the people, the architecture, the buzz; I feel much better. I am anonymous again. I am a face in a crowd. I am in London and I am alone in an accumulation of people and noise. I am lost in my home. This yearning for loss is probably nothing to do with London, I have just spent a large portion of my life using her to embrace my own feelings of isolation and loneliness and now that is what I associate her with. That is all I want from her in all honest. London is full of people, but people I do not know. People who do not expect anything from me, people who do not hurt or bother me, people who give me the space I want without questioning my need for it. I realise now that I love London because she gives me what I want, when I want it. I can revel in her and be as selfish as I need to be without any reprimand, which would be the case with actual human beings. She really is my faithful, doting wife. I can, I will leave her but when I return I know she will be right there waiting for me, welcoming me back with her vibrancy and beauty. I don’t need a community or a home here, I came back to escape exactly that.
My hatred of community and familiarity will most likely lead to my downfall, or I will grow up and end up ‘settling down’ somewhere, with a real person, maybe a cat too. It is most likely the case that I will not die in circumstances similar to Joyce Vincent’s; that my feelings will alter, that I will stop folding in on myself and eventually find what it is that I am seeking in my wanderlust and thirst for isolation. But right now, at this point in my life, dying alone and in London – however morbid this may sound – is how I see my life turning out, and I feel indifferent about this possibility. It is a bittersweet thought, but this is what London means to me. It is a place I have so much adoration for that dying here is enough for my soul to be content. Some people want community and work, I want contentment, and right now that is isolation.
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