The United Kingdom of Don't Touch That...?

The first time I went to New York, before I was old, educated, or cultured enough to have any sort of appreciation for museums, and hence any desire to visit them, the only one that held any appeal for me and the only one I ended up going to was Madame Tussauds. Now I would hesitate before even calling this a museum, and I certainly doubt I will ever enter one again…but back then, coming from the African jungle where there wasn’t even a cinema by way of entertainment, the idea of rubbing shoulders with the celebrities I had grown up watching, loving and envying on TV was mind-blowing, even though they were made of wax and would probably melt to the floor if the air-conditioning stopped working and the heat of New York summer snuck into the building. I kissed Brad Pitt, I impersonated Diana Ross and I looked high up into Shaq’s nose. I took pictures with all of them, and I couldn’t wait to get back home and convince all my highschool friends that Brad Pitt and I were now BFFs. Well I took pictures with all but one – Princess Diana was guarded by a velvet rope and therefore off-limits. A tad too late, they had finally decided to give the woman some space. The American friend I was with said, “I bet the Brits ordered that. They’re so damn uptight.” The Americans, of course, were much more liberal with their “kings”—you could lick Elvis if you wanted to.

But when I moved there years later, I learned that Diana wasn’t the only thing you couldn’t touch in New York, and it wasn’t only the Brits who were “uptight.” Far from being the land of liberty, America was the land of the velvet rope, the land of the forbidden, as Ben Stiller rightly calls it in Night at the Museum II, “The United States of Don’t Touch That”. There’s no playing ball on the beach, no walking on the grass in Central Park, no climbing the lions that guard the Public Library. What do you do on the beach other than play ball, or in the park other than walk on the grass, or with a statue but climb up and pose for a photograph…or god forbid, make out? We all know this—just as a diary with a lock and key invites you to open it, a glass cabinet to touch or lean on it, so a statue invites you to climb it, ride it, hug it, kiss it, or whatever else your imagination might drive you to do. Juliet’s breast in Verona has lost its color from all the people that have touched it. Lord only knows how many marble, cement and stone breasts, bums and balls I have touched, how many lions and horses I have ridden, how many generals and greek gods have given me piggy backs…all in the name of “original” tourist photography, or playing the fool.

But there is something deeper that occurs in this interaction with a city’s concrete zoo. Yes, we are indeed left with great photographs of ourselves draped across a copper steed, and priceless memories of teenage kissing sessions that lasted so long even the lion seemed to let out a yawn, but in doing so we also subconsciously feel we have left our mark on a city, the way it inevitably leaves its mark on us. Yes, in those moments, we once again become the schoolchildren who inscribed their names with compasses on the bathroom walls and wrote the words “was here” beneath them, the teenagers who fingered their love’s name on the fogged up windscreen of their first car, dogs who piss on their territory to say that’s mine. Of course, some people do go to these actual measures, take the notion of leaving their mark on the city’s monuments beyond the symbolic, which is probably why America has surrounded itself with velvet rope. But this is also why I feel I never “left my mark,” on it, why I never hugged, kissed or touched any part of it, and consequently perhaps why it never touched me.

When I came to London I immediately fell in love, and we caressed each other day and night. I spent many a night in Trafalgar Square leaning on Nelson's column waiting for a date, and many a sunny day there, sitting on the steps in front of the National Gallery, eating a sandwich and smiling as I watched children climb up the lions and say to their parents “Look!” “Look at me!” Yes, they were saying, “look at me, I’m on the lion,” but they were also inherently saying, “look at me, I’m a part of London, and it’s a part of me!” – partly what I imagine Antony Gormley had in mind with his "One&Other" project for the fourth plinth—where different Britons stand for an hour each day, all day, in an artistically symbolic installation where people become the people of the city, in the city, and on the city. Regardless of whether or not we may agree that this work is or isn’t art, I’m sure we could agree that it serves a priceless function in not only representing, but defining the city and the people who live in it, and in doing so, distinguishing it markedly from anywhere else, like say, the U.S of D.T.T.

When I read in the newspaper yesterday that Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery was appalled by the roudiness and debauchery of the people in Trafalgar Square and felt that it was “destroying the tranquility of the National Gallery” and disturbing the high art and culture within the gallery’s walls, I couldn’t believe it. Granted he is defending tradition and old school values…but if that’s what he wants, then returning to the good old days also means returning to the days of very few people going to museums. Over the last few decades the number of museum-goers has more than doubled, and if this means the outside is noisy then so be it. It’s a price you have to pay for huge “price” you’re making compared to what you used to. Velazquez will be Velazquez—it will take a lot more than lion-climbing children and seemingly animalistic humans to disrupt that. And if this country turns into the United Kingdom of Don’t Touch That, I’m leaving. And don’t touch me on my way out.