Description
Book Synopsis"A sensitive walk up any High Street is a Pilgrim's Progress" Phil Smith - playwright, walk-performance artist and author (Mythogeography and Counter-Tourism) - recently retraced W.G. Sebald's famous 'Rings of Saturn' walk round East Anglia. At one level On Walking describes this blistered walk from one incongruous B&B to the next, taking in places like Dunwich, Bungay, Covehithe, Orford Ness, Sutton Hoo and Rendlesham Forest - with their lost villages, Cold War testing sites, black dogs, white deer and alien trails. Phil Smith's walk soon becomes every bit as remarkable as Sebald's and he matches Sebald's erudition, originality and humour swathe for swathe. At a second level, the book sets out a unique kind of 'hyper-sensitised' walking for which the author is quietly famous. It burrows beneath the guidebook and the map, looks beyond the shopfront and Tudor facade and feels beneath the blisters and aches of the everyday. The Suffolk walk described here is an exemplary walk that goes beyond 'wandering around looking at stuff' and shows how every walk can be art, revolution and pilgrimage. At a third level, On Walking is an intellectual tour de force, encompassing Situationism, alchemy, dancing, jouissance, geology, psychogeography, 20th century cinema and old TV, architecture, grief, pilgrimage, WWII, the Cold War, Uzumaki, pub conversations, somatics and synchronicity.
Table of ContentsWho me? Superstitions What I do when I walk My Sebald walk: Taken from my notebooks Walking bodies actics of sensitivity Knees Crab Man's razor Don't take your own food A skill... A few ighlights from other drifts and wanders (1) Encounters Democracy O my International Lettristes! O my Situationists! Getting started Scratching from start Mythogeography Jouissance Environmentalism Pilgrimage Dodgy Walk in the footsteps of others Being ready Leaderless Holey actics and things Deep topography Autotopography Cemetery Walk (2003) Walking in the Suburbs (2013) Doppel A few ighlights from other drifts and wanders (2) Cryptic Coincidences Note The wobbly art of memory Holey space Follow animal tracks Bluster The right to more Rhythms Psychogeography Walk to the ends of the earth Atmospheres Alchemical crossing Walking in character Undercovers Walking as an ordeal The man in the mask Women and walking Re:enactment Urfaces A few highlights from other drifts and wanders (3) A few highlights from other drifts and wanders (4) The fire doors of perception The last tactic Appendix Walking for a change: A manifesto for a new nomad References
