Changing your environment to change your mind
Are you moving to a new place, or just escaping the old one
I like novelty, and so it’s perhaps not surprising that I like going to, and moving to, new places. The first few weeks are always imbued with a certain magic – building a new routine, figuring out public transport, enjoying the local language and all the ways in which the place is different from home. Making new friends and spending time with old ones, too – when I spent a year in Bristol, I had an amazing summer with the school friend I was living with, someone I’m hugely fond of but don’t get to see all that much.
I’m torn on whether the desire to move somewhere new is a push or a pull. Sometimes you’re drawn to a new place: for a new job, a community that’s a better fit, a pace of life that suits you, or just for a change. And sometimes you move because you’re escaping the old place, and all the baggage and trauma you’ve built up there.
Certainly my move to Bristol was the latter. I was escaping a shattering heartbreak and all the misery that entailed. I’m about to spend a summer in Berlin, and though I certainly feel mostly done with London, I’ve felt that way for quite a while, and the draw of Berlin is undeniable. Spending six weeks in Berkeley and the bay also stirred something in me, a sense that a close-knit community of my kind of weirdos, and being at the centre of the universe at a pivotal moment in history, might be within touching distance.
I think it’s worth being wary of the moves where you’re being pushed to leave, rather than pulled to the new place.
Of course all moves will have a bit of both. Few will move to a new place which they know nothing about. But the push moves can be hasty, and probably are ultimately less successful than ones where you’re drawn to life in the new place. Bristol had some of this shape for me. I had some amazing times there – cycling round Ashton Court in the sun, a Christian Löffler gig on 2C-B, the new friends I made and the festivals I went to. But I wasn’t in a good enough place to really able to make the most of it.
I visited a friend in Berlin a few months ago, someone recovering from a relationship breakdown and a business failing, in quick succession. It was a strange visit, but I think it cheered him up, and I loved spending time with him, enjoying Berlin’s lakes and sauna culture (I make no apologies for being an FKK enjoyer) and putting the world to rights over a beer, or several.
He couldn’t stomach London any more. Every street he walked down was imbued with some sort of memory of the old relationship, of things gone wrong. He went back for a day to collect some belongings but wasn’t going to stay a minute longer than he needed to.
His description of this was eerily familiar. For a long time I didn’t go anywhere near the spot in south London where I used to live, taking longer routes on my bike to avoid even passing through it. It took years before that visceral reaction faded. The memories didn’t have the same valence, or intensity, but they were still there, indelibly etched into the roads and buildings you once haunted.
When you’ve been in a place long enough, it can feel like every street you go down has some significance. Sometimes moving to a new place is just a good way of escaping the well-trodden streets of your old haunts, and all the memories they’re imbued with.