Avoidance of the p-word, a drift, & encountering underpass Birmingham

It has taken me this long to realise that I have so far avoided calling my approach to the Hedge, the spirit of place, by the name of psychogeography. Witches tend not to be thought of as psychogeographers, but we must be, since it is defined as �the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals� (http://thoughtsfitsstarts.blogspot.com/2011/08/godfathers-of-soles.html?m=1). This came to my attention, chatting to the chiropodist the other day. I like to break people in to my weirdness gently, & I thought I would do that by telling him the classic technique of going round one place, using the map of another. He looked at me in horror, wanted to know where that would ever get you, produced a map of Barcelona out of nowhere, which he thrust into my hands & demanded to know how you'd find your way around Birmingham with that. This action raises several questions for me: the answer to one of them is that he has never been to Barcelona, but would like to go. Keeping a map of a place that you would only like to go to, & telling me to *think* that my feet will get better, to ensure they do, are actions only marginally removed, in my mind, from magic. Anyway I opened the map: I don't know what map it was, I certainly can't find one online of Barcelona that looks like it, but Birmingham's Inner Ring Road appeared on this map clearly, & even he had to admit that he could see it when I challenged him.

I think the reason I've avoided calling what I do 'psychogeography' is that when it comes down to it it is a load of poncey nonsense. In fact it's right up there with literary theory & witchcraft! There have apparently been attempts to turn psychogeography into a science, but of course it simply isn't in any conventional, repeatable, empirical sense. Of *course* this creates a crossover with witchcraft: much of the point of the modern drawing on the witch figure is its slipperiness, it is not susceptible to a single simple definition & so draws on elements of lots of things, including ones that are clearly fictional.

Defoe's Journal about the plague year is a) clearly fictional & b) written some years afterwards, but has become a key text of psychogeography. The point here is not only the effect of the city on us, but our conceptualisation of the city, in Defoe's case a reconceptualisation prompted by a disease process. Leaving aside that much of the writing about psychogeography focuses on London or Paris, Birmingham is actually also a perfect city for it: it is a city that not only changes fast, but that lends itself to personal maps & identifications. You always have your own Birmingham, created by you.

My normal custom is to go on a more traditional derive, sometimes aiming for a place & wandering around. Today I went on a  more structured wander, using a technique where the walk is more defined beforehand. The ancient mystical technique used here (dating back to the 1990s) is to draw a circle on a map with a wine glass & walk around staying as close to the line as you can. I did it in an updated way by downloading a map (credit: visitbirmingham.com) then drawing a shape on it using Microsoft Paint. I arbitrarily chose a heart, & the green lines were some possible routes that I drew in, since I don't really know that side of the city.

I tried to stay as close to the heart shape as I could, allowing myself to be sidetracked if I saw something interesting but always trying to return as close as I could to the heart. I tend to think of that area behind Aston University as 'old' Birmingham, because it's been less affected by the re-redevelopment since the nineties. In fact there was a real concrete jungle experience in the shape of the underpass at Ashted Circus (pictured facing towards Eastside), forcing me to revise my previous idea that Holloway Head was the only traffic roundabout with a garden in the middle left in the city centre, although Ashted Circus was actually on the middleway.

This walk was interesting in comparison to the more conventional derives I do, since it imposed a form on what I was going to do, changing the dynamic to one where I had to stick to a plan, that was nonetheless completely arbitrary to begin with. Because I took a map & drew a shape on it it also made me go somewhere I have only seen from a bus before, thereby opening me up to a new experience. The area I walked through is on the one hand largely industrial, yet on the other I skirted the science park, Aston university, Millenium Point & Birmingham Metropolitan college, making it pretty academic too. I didn't like the way it felt, if I were to be absolutely frank, but I think only because it feels to me like the spirit of place is unloved around there. The industrial & educational uses of that place are in a sense all too transitory - people go there for a time & leave, meaning the spirit of place is unloved & unnurtured. Even the few residential buildings are for students so it is terribly transitory.

I'm still determined to superimpose the map of 1731 on a modern map & walk that - the only reason I didn't do it today was it gave me too much of a headache trying to do it last night. But I definitely will do this shape on a map technique again. Drawing on the more occult aspects of psychogeography, walking a sigil in the city, or mapping a derive & turning that into a sigil, could both present interesting potentials in exploring & interacting with the spirit of place.

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