985 - Face Value

Sylvester's Ballroom, one of the derelict buildings along Whitley's seafront. I've been thinking about my second post, no. 999. I said in it:

Whitley Bay is for the living. Whitley Bay is, as it always has been, alive.

But Sylvester's doesn't look very alive.

So I'm thinking about how you look at things. What I'm thinking is this. You can look at something face on, and it is what it is, right now. Sylvester's is a boarded-up shell.

Or you can look at it sideways. From a vantage point in the past, say, Sylvester's is an Ozymandias, warning of future collapse, whilst from the future, it points back to an Eden. But these are scarcely more alive.

There's another way to look. It's not really looking: it's more not looking. The life flows out through the cracks, as you shift your viewpoint back, face on and forward, but as soon as you stop moving, you cease to see it. In other words, as long as you are alive and moving, it is alive. When you die, it dies.

Sylvester's is each viewpoint: a swing-band panoramic swirl-room; shell-suited chav-suite; far-from-sweet hereafter. But also a tea-dance when you wanted a Time Warp; a Millenium, not a millstone round the neck.

And face value? Now? Whatever you want. It's whatever it is, and whatever you want it to be.