Alignment

Graeme Miller, 2002

A line. A mean.

Is what a line means what a line meant?

Alignment.

Pedalling up the City Road, as one does, dodging traffic, a glimpse over to the right, as I usually do. Here the City Road Canal Basin opens out the view to the plush hill of Islington. Two spires are moving in the opposite direction – presumably tracking off to Old Street – although I never see if they ever get there as this is a short excerpt from their journey. The further church makes a stately transit across the stage, while in front, the nearer and faster steeple glides powerfully from behind with a speed and determination that means overtaking is inevitable. The churches enact their usual chase with the same result, but at the exact moment their pointy-bits come together, there a keen flash of exactness. It is my snapshot of the landscape taken at the exact same moment that an ultra long lens sniping from the far distant point of parallax captures me struggling up the hill.

It is a habit held from walking and re-walking the line of 18 transmitters in Salisbury eight years ago. I still retain snaps from this time and can see Cathedral spire intersecting Old Sarum’s mound. It is also a snap of me in a line of beech and holly trees looking out.

Marking a straight line on the ground, the surveyor lines his eye against two sticks and, in doing so, becomes a kind of third stick. Measurer measured. Experimenter part of the experiment. Spy spotted.

Hindsighting, Listening Ground’s steel-rule line and map-eye view yielded in its walking to the pervading sense of Lost Acres’ shuffleable guidebook and scattered markers – that you were always centre to a new frame.