Thinking about the nature of democracy and democratic institutions, there is an argument that the two most democratic institutions in a ‘developed’ country are the telephone network and the road network. Anyone with 20p has access to the telephone network and it is essentially the same network used by everyone, regardless of wealth and social status. Unless you are housebound everyone has access to the road network, whether by car, bike or foot. Or to put it another way, anyone who wants to can get from any point in the country to any other point in the country can do, at any time that they choose.
What interests me are the exceptions, which for the road network is toll roads (though generally you don’t pay a toll on foot or bike) and motorways.
With motorways there are several things:
They are part of and not part of the democratic institution, they exclude pedestrians and cyclists.
They create a kind of vacuum when you’re travelling on them in which the rest of the country disappears.
Whilst you’re on them only your destination seems to matter.
They seem sterile when in fact they’re not, because the country that has disappeared keeps intruding.
In a sense they become the site of conflict between democratic and undemocratic values: everyone going in the same direction, everyone following the same rules, everyone isolated and in their own privatised worlds. The mode of transport, the thing being transported, and the status of the transport tend towards elision. Equality through conformity.
As an initial exploration I thought it would be interesting to write some motorway poems. Two so far, others (hopefully) to follow. Anyway, here they are.
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motorway 5 p.m.
the setting sun and a kite wheeling over the road.
i keep thinking there must be a rubbish dump
somewhere nearby.
then i think this would make the perfect photograph,
power lines and the elegant black ghost of a kite
and ten miles of traffic. and the average speed cameras
with their yellow stems, bobbing like daffodils. and
the overturned car by itself on the hard shoulder, blue lights
mirroring the road fast behind me.
***
motorway verge
it looks like a fox cub, not survived its first winter;
body and tail still intact, just the head missing.
two sculpture crows on the fence, feigning they’re made
from black ice. nothing happened. foreign artics
panting as they gundog the hill.