On Urban Detachment and Public Transport
Sometimes the thought can strike me, one that I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing; sometimes, I’d like a bus journey to go on forever. But why wish, desire or pine for the elongation of a bus ride? Busses are — in the U.K anyway — often loud, fairly unclean environments which serve as a means to an end, the vessel which connects the A to the B; objectively they are unremarkable contraptions. Busses lack the romance of train travel (one could wonder whether A Brief Encounter would be the same if Laura and Alec met at a bus station?) and the international zeal of flying, as well as the potential of individualistic expression fostered within private car ownership. So why can some passengers feel so at home in such a public space?
In his magnum opus ‘The Practice of Everyday Life’, French scholar Michel de Certeau muses upon the spatial realities of train travel where his observations overlap with bus travel. For instance, de Certeau notes that there are two ‘immobilities’ at play, those of the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. When a passenger is seated or standing on a bus or a train they are stationary, immobile, as is the world around them. Of course the world is moving in that people and cars move, but the ground is still and the road the bus is trundling along on is stationary. The world slides by, revealing itself to the observing passenger.
All that exists beyond the frame of the bus is separated through motion, as ‘things that stay there detached and absolute’ where passengers are ‘deprived of them, surprised by their ephemeral and quiet strangeness’. This phenomena rings true for both bus and rail travel where the familiar artifacts of contemporary life are recognizable but unobtainable. For instance any passenger is aware of what a field looks like and has probably walked amongst the grass before, but that reality is removed from the observer.
This detachment from the surrounding world is the departure point of similarity for rail and bus travel. Firstly, on a bus you pay to get on and that is the end of the encroachment of capital accumulation for the journey (aside from advertisements of course), where as on a train, food and drink are pushed down the aisle. Yet, the largest diversion between the two modes of travel comes not what is within, the ‘inside’, but what is on the outside, that which is detached. For a train line cuts through the countryside, intersecting fields, passing rural communities, spaces which are by enlarge unfamiliar to the traveler. Unless the passenger is from or has physically visited one of these communities or tends to one of the fields, they will not be familiar with that which passes. Where as the bus passenger is much more likely to be familiar with the milieu through which the bus services.
Trains flit between places by traversing space which is seldom used. Trains are noisier and dirtier than the already noisy and dirty buses and are therefore more suitable far from places of dense populations, i.e. cities. A train does not service the city in the same way a bus does. Sure metros exist and are an essential thread which binds many an urban tapestry, but they are mostly underground, and when a metro joins the surface they are often elevated (for instance the Amsterdam Metro beyond the canal ring).
So what passes by someone on a train is familiarly unfamiliar, whereas the view on display for a bus passenger is much more likely to be familiar to them, for busses are to be found in all sections of the city, from suburban commuter services to inner city shuttles. This ubiquity means that busses take their passengers through places of familiarity where other vehicles share the roads, pedestrians meander along pavements, under trees caught in the breeze, the world beyond the bus window is one which is kinetic, the passenger can observe the world and reflexively place themselves amongst that which they are watching. In short, trains pass through rural spaces at a speed which renders it unfamiliar, where as busses are situated within places of familiarity, not necessarily the familiarity of that place physically, but of the actions and episodes which take place within it — through the murky bus window, the passenger can observe the world in much more detail than they who ride the train, whilst also retaining the sense of detachment.
The idea to write about this came to me when riding the bus to work, rather than walking or cycling as I usually do. The roads I sailed along with are very familiar to myself, but the experience of being in the same environment yet detached from it reminded me of one of the most famous artworks of the 20th century, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Why would a bus journey to work in the morning remind me of a painting of a New York bar at night? Well, Nighthawks deals with — according to this great YouTube video — ‘themes of loneliness, alienation, voyeurism and quiet contemplation’, all of which are directly applicable to bus travel. A passenger, unless joined by an acquaintance, will sit alone, alienated from the familiar that surrounds them, but still able to observe where they are whilst in a space which allows for contemplation.
De Certeau states that like Jules Verne’s ships (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea springs to mind), railroad travel entwines dreams and technology, providing a location in which ‘the speculative returns, located within the very heart of the mechanical order’. This speculation is afforded through the bus window which affords the voyeur a view of the detached world. Glass is important here, a bus window is often filthy, meaning that the view outside is somewhat distorted (this is certainly the case in the winter with condensation fogging up the glass), further adding to the sense of removal. The Lonely City, a book which ‘explores the connection between isolation and creativity’] written by Olivia Laing, deals with Nighthawks in this sense. Laing writes in The Guardian about the time when she first saw the painting in real life
it was the window that really stopped me in my tracks: a bubble of glass that separated the diner from the street, curving sinuously back against itself. It was impossible to gaze through into the luminous interior without experiencing a swift apprehension of loneliness, of how it might feel to be shut out, standing alone in the cooling air.
The detachment experienced by Olivia Laing allows for speculation. As an outside observer, one cannot know for sure the actions of those observed, for instance are the man and women in the red dress married, adulterous lovers, nervous first-date inductees, friends or drunken revellers? You can speculate, but you’ll never be sure. The familiar plays out, you can put yourself in their shoes, you can imagine scenarios, which is why I sometimes feel that I’d like a bus journey to last forever. For there is a melancholy pleasure in seeing what one is separated from mused de Certeau, a pleasure in seeing the world you are familiar with as an observer, an audience member watching the stage in which you normally perform. A train breezes through the rolling hills and country parishes, the airliner reveals blue skies, the car is but an extension of private space which removes the occupants from the public. The bus was cold, noisy, dirty and late, but it’s ability to temporarily remove me from the familiar whilst firmly placing me within it is a special luxury of sorts, which no other form of transport can afford.
