14-11-22 | Ramble On: A Zine Project
The purpose of this zine is to document walks that have been important to me in terms of mental health and connection to place. I hope that in sharing these, others will enjoy or benefit from a curated experience of walking. I believe walking is a therapeutic practice concerned with all the human senses. Once these senses are engaged, something transformative occurs, helping us navigate life manageably in times of high stress.
I’ve never hooked myself upon the peg of any specific exercise regime, a fact that niggles at me somewhat as I get older and start to think more and more about the disintegration of my body. The only thing that ever really stuck to me was walking. I guess this started to become a tangible aspect of my life the year after I finished music school. I would walk the 30 minutes to and from work everyday, with my music blaring in my ears, and it made the idea of the commute bearable at first. Then later, when I started working from a 1960s brutalist office building on Victoria Street, the walk changed from a means of commuting, to a lunchtime retreat I would allow myself to take daily. As I progressed in a career I never really wanted, and the stresses became insurmountable, these daily walking sessions saved me.
When I consider what it is about these walks that meant so much to me at the time, it’s not any one singular idea about walking, it’s many small effects and ideas. The movement - at my own pace - which as my ever fluctuating body allowed me ranged from ambles, to muscle-flexing strides. The soundtrack was perhaps more important than the exercise, and I would sometimes pain myself all morning as to the precise selection of album, artist, playlist. In this task I set myself, I was agonising to attain the perfect accompaniment for the way I was feeling, be that mentally or physically. Times when I was heartbroken, I would choose The Cranberries, because nothing could reproduce the aching like the voice of Dolores O'Riordan. When I was seething over an argument with my then boyfriend, I leant into Odessa by Caribou. If I was experiencing fatigue and felt as though my legs were lead weights, something along the lines of Kaytranada.
The music empowered me, and allowed me to walk the streets, parks, and landmarks around Westminster without fear - a defiance I never experienced in what I refer to as “the real world”, by which I mean the world experienced without headphones. Like a film, or a dance, I was all at once deeply connected cerebrally to my inner self, and focused sharp-as-attack on the external. The buildings, the trees. I felt attuned more than ever to the seasons, as I watched the Japanese cherry blossom trees of St. James’ Park turn, turn, turn into wet and wild winds that tunnelled aggressively through the newly developed Bressenden Place, with its Waitrose so closely affiliated to my place of work on the corner across. It was at this signpost I knew my journey was over, come full circle, and back to my desk.
Earlier this year I broke my leg, well, my fibula. For a person who can fairly openly explain that I believe to have had depression since I was a teenager, I can honestly say this was one of the darkest times of my life thus far. But this isn’t a pity party, and I am glad to say, where once I believed I would never take long, aimless or defined ambles, rambles, or scrabbles in my locality again, I can say for sure I will not go gentle into that good night! For now though, the walks are short: from Liverpool Street station to Petticoat Lane, and the studios of my art school. Of course I go through the park first to London Fields to catch my train. As I consider a future in sight where I can walk for longer, at a faster speed and in the comfort of my own soles, I’m going to begin documenting the many meaningful walks of my past. In this zine, I will offer routes, music, photographs and artworks that capture the spirit held in my memory. They may be walks close to home, or work, but they may also encompass those further flung footsteps of unfamiliar places. Wherever they are, and whatever the soundtrack, they have been meaningful in my life, and perhaps they can be meaningful in yours, or help others to connect with that exhilarating, longing, desperate desire to find one's place in the world.
1. Pages from Ramble On, Amanni Hassan Hollands, 2022
