The 8th March may have been our official start, but The Busking Project really began back in early 2010.
It has been my job to fit the logistical jigsaw together: London to Lisbon to Marrakech to Barcelona and then across the globe.
We’re travelling overland. I struggled with visas, closed borders, and weather systems. I know about freighters to America, the perils of the South China Sea, and South American bus travel. I planned a route from Calcutta to Bangkok, via the highest railway (Lhasa, Tibet), and down through China, Vietnam, Laos, and into Thailand. But we’re not doing that – too long, too expensive, too many variables. I struggled to comprehend the magnitude of our journey, dreaming of jugglers, tumblers, and timetables. Dancers and daily departures.
But we have now been on the road for six days and I’ve realised something important; I don’t need to understand the bigger picture. Total comprehension leads to needless worry. Our ferry crossing to South Korea is a long way off. Mongolian transit visas in Beijing can wait until we are in Beijing. The Chinese visa saga is a balancing act for South East Asia, and getting Belle into Cuba is a distant dream. I’m sure we’ll get the sponsorship we need. Cairo will calm down. Tokyo will survive.
It is the details that we risk loosing.
We arrived in France without me realizing, passing through the Chunnel for my first time and not even noticing. My ears popped, it went dark, but France appeared like a secret. When we arrived in Paris I concentrated harder: armed guards roamed Gare du Nord. We were stopped from filming by security men waving their arms, and as we descended into the tunnels of the Metro system, young deaf girls pestered for charity at the bottom of the escalator.
We continued South. On the TGV to Irun I experimented with shutter speeds, frame rates, and light sensitivity. The camera understood time better than me; it’s malleability. I filmed Belle, curled in an uncomfortable sleep, French countryside and small villages blinking by. At some stage we crossed into Spain. Nick was surrounded by wires, focused on the computer, already naming files, editing film clips, splitting and splicing the scenes we’d passed through.
I glued a London Underground map and a French Metro map into my journal – it’s going to be a dated scrapbook; I’m backing up my memory.
Chris
14th March 2011