![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistWhen I burst into the 1830 Station section of the museum, and found it empty, that was when I got angry. I stormed through empty galleries flinging my hands in futile gestures and suddenly I knew I wouldn't be able to avoid crying.
I'd taken Kat to one of my favorite places, which I still think of as MOSI though now it's officially the "Science and Industry Museum" on the map and the events schedule for the day that I was still clutching at this point in the hand that didn't have the white plastic bag from the market stall in it. Kat had bought presents for herself and others, including a bag I'd fallen in love with as she deliberated over the colors of scarves she wanted; I'd intended to pay for the bag myself but when the market stall owner patted the colorful pile of fabric and asked if it was going to be paid for all together, Kat said yes and let me argue and feel guilty about it (she said she found it amusing) but didn't let me pay her back.
Anyway, back to the museum. Its branding is now in line with what was the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, then the Media Museum for a year, now the Science and Media Museum in Bradford. They're both owned owned by the Science Museum Group, i.e. the London science museum. SMG bought the York railway museum too and I wonder how they'll manage to wedge "science" into the name of that.
I've been wary of such changes since learning that, soon after SMG bought the northern museums, it wanted to close one of them. I have weird emotional attachments to them, in order of their proximity. The railway museum is merely one of my favorite things to do in one of my favorite cities to visit. The media museum was for years the location of annual pilgrimages of found family and friends for the Fantastic Films weekend. And MOSI was somewhere free and soothing I could go back when I had no money or friends, somewhere I spent a summer doing a course about volunteering in heritage sites, somewhere I take all my visitors to Manchester to show off some of the best things about the city.
Yesterday's trip got off to a rocky start: the Power Hall, the bit I used to go visit when I had no friends or money, just to soak in the noises of the machines and the delicious scents of metal and old hydrocarbons, was closed for renovations. A shame when I'd just been waxing lyrical to Kat about it, but I was glad to see it getting the care it needs. So we walked down to the 1830 Warehouse, where I'd volunteered. But it was a nightmare of inaccessible stairs and lifts, and yes it's the school holidays but everything was kid stuff: noise and neon and computers, and you had to pay for a wristband that got you a set amount of time in the exhibits.
So I strode out toward the Station building. Here I'd studied and presented the final project for my course, mine was on the first passenger railway journey, which set off from this station in 1830. I'd made use of all kinds of information and props from the exhibits here. And I'd always loved this bit anyway as a general human history of Manchester, talking about everything from Roman settlements to radical politics that happened here. It helped me learn to stop hating this city I associated with the loneliness and grief and poverty I was immersed in when I moved here, and I like to show it off to visitors in the hopes that they'll like it too.
But the entire building was empty now. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the floors. "It looked like it had been looted," Kat said later when we were telling Andrew about this. "Except it was all very clean."
It's a winding path you have to take through the building (all these walls to hang photos and objects and write explanatory text on) so it took me a long time to storm out of it. I was walking faster and faster, almost colliding with a small kid and a pram someone was pushing, just inside the doorway. I barely stifled the impulse to yell at them to turn around, not to bother with this. I got outside and I started crying.
Kat gave me a hug and spoke to me softly. We sat down on a bench nearby and she tried to do that active listening thing by telling me she understood how capitalism has ruined this thing I loved so much. But it isn't capitalism: I think it's London. I told her that when I did that heritage volunteering course, we learned that 96% of museum funding in the UK goes to London. I told her about the plan the Science Museum Group had had to close one of their three northern museums. I told her about them taking the Royal Photographic Society (though I couldn't remember the name then; I looked it up now) collection out of Bradford back to London.
Eventually I was restless and wanted to salvage something of this miserable afternoon, so we went to the textile gallery. It was thankfully basically how I'd remembered it. I wanted to see the demonstration of all the machines, which was due to start in half an hour. We bimbled around a little, until I realized that I was carrying the map and leaflet and nothing else. Not the white plastic bag with the scarves and my new bag in it.
I was horrified. All that money Kat had spent, on such nice gifts... We started to retrace our steps. It wasn't by the bench we'd been sitting on. We both tried to remember when we saw it last. I couldn't because I'd been so upset before that...and I was more upset now that my stupid attachment to this stupid place had fucked me up enough to make me lose track of my stuff -- something I rarely do. I thought I could remember the bag banging against my leg as I flailed my arms in wordless misery as I stomped out of the station building. But I couldn't be sure. (I still don't know; there's no way of knowing where it got left, of course.) Now all I could think was that Kat had spent a lot of money on the things I'd so casually left somewhere and I hated having been so irresponsible.
I ended up having a proper anxiety attack just outside the station building, just where I'd started crying in the first place. (The places we'd been to the previous two days, with their Peterloo exhibits, had made Kat cry and I'd joked as we'd walked into MOSI on this day that this museum wasn't going to make her cry. Well, it didn't! But by far the most crying happened here. Serves me right.) I was so angry I wanted to punch something, and since I couldn't I threw the map and leaflet to the ground. Why was I still carrying these horrible things and not the precious things? Through a haze of tears I felt bad for the staff person who'd likely have to tidy up my litter, but not bad enough that I could reach down and pick it up again.
Kat told me I'd given her the best bad gift, and at that point my surprised laughter hiccuped through my sobs. She said she'd been in my position often enough, and been comforted by friends and partners who told her everything was okay when she found that impossible to believe. Now she was on the other side of it, and really did thoroughly believe that everything was okay, and this helped her retroactively appreciate what she'd been told all those times herself. She told me that she'd give me money to buy a new bag from the market stall, and she'd buy other gifts. She told me she was at a point where the money lost, if it were lost, was not a crisis for her like it would've been at some points in the long time we'd known each other, and she was glad of that. And even as part of me felt inconsolable -- we'd spent so long picking out the perfect colors, these scarves, this bag, and my faraway friend was so happy she could finally get me something tangible -- another part of me recognized that she was really very good at consoling me with all this.
"It's not my phone," she said as we started walking again. "It's not my passport. It isnt anything necessary." I acknowledged this, recognizing that I've got the same kind of priorities when I travel -- I think of my phone, passport and money as a holy trinity -- but I also said I thought I was upset precisely because for a long time my life has felt like it's been pared to the necessary, and hasn't had enough that's just nice (I had a flash of thinking of Tiffany Aching feeling the same way about her horse necklace, for those who've read that book.) . The new bag was not necessary for me, I was delighted with it precisely because I did not need it. And here it was taken away from me immediately, by nothing more than my own treacherous hands and brain.
We trekked back to the main information desk, to see if anyone had handed it in, though neither of us was really hopeful. While we were waiting for the person behind the desk who was speaking to another museum-goer, Kat happened to spot our precious white plastic bag behind the curve of the desk. Both of us went bananas at the sheer sight of it, so it wasn't long before we had the staff member's attention. I was so relieved but my heart started racing anyway and I worried I'd cry again. I think the person we talked to, and someone else who did the lost-and-found paperwork for us, were a little bemused at just how emotional we both were at what looked like an extemely unremarkable shopping bag. By that point it was invested with so much emotion...but trying to explain that would've seemed even weirder.
So the new bag, a sort of half-backpack half-shoulder bag kind of thing, feels even more like a gift now. I transferred everything over to it this morning and took it out with me when I went with Kat to collect her train tickets and get on the first of her trains. We sat on diner-esque stools at the window of the waiting room in Stockport train station so Kat could use the power sockets at the counter there while we waited for her train to London. I put my bag on the counter and leaned tiredly over it, finding myself with my arms wrapped around it.
I knew yesterday that a different bag, if Kat had to give me money to buy another one, wouldn't be the same: it'd be a different wild combination of colors than this one we'd carefully chosen together, and I didn't know if I'd ever stop thinking about The Bag It Replaced when I saw it or if it'd have soured the whole thing for me. Better to have this bag back, and to still be glad Kat has learned people can mean the reassurances they offer her when she's struggling, and still be glad that I have learned how important unnecessary nice things are for me right now. We've still learned our intangible lessons, and that's very good, but sometimes they're just easier to swallow when you've got the actual nice things you wanted in the first place, as well.
The third and perhaps most important lesson to take from this is of course fuck London and fuck how much money and resources it hoards from the rest of the UK. I didn't realize until I was telling Stuart about this that I wasn't just upset or angry when I saw that empty station building and started crying. I was scared. "It was scary because..." I said, just figuring this out as I was saying it, "I was scared they're never going to put it all back." Well, reasonably enough, he said, and I was sad this was reasonable to someone else but I was soothed to not be alone in what still feels like a massive overreaction to a museum, however good it is. Was.
I'd taken Kat to one of my favorite places, which I still think of as MOSI though now it's officially the "Science and Industry Museum" on the map and the events schedule for the day that I was still clutching at this point in the hand that didn't have the white plastic bag from the market stall in it. Kat had bought presents for herself and others, including a bag I'd fallen in love with as she deliberated over the colors of scarves she wanted; I'd intended to pay for the bag myself but when the market stall owner patted the colorful pile of fabric and asked if it was going to be paid for all together, Kat said yes and let me argue and feel guilty about it (she said she found it amusing) but didn't let me pay her back.
Anyway, back to the museum. Its branding is now in line with what was the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, then the Media Museum for a year, now the Science and Media Museum in Bradford. They're both owned owned by the Science Museum Group, i.e. the London science museum. SMG bought the York railway museum too and I wonder how they'll manage to wedge "science" into the name of that.
I've been wary of such changes since learning that, soon after SMG bought the northern museums, it wanted to close one of them. I have weird emotional attachments to them, in order of their proximity. The railway museum is merely one of my favorite things to do in one of my favorite cities to visit. The media museum was for years the location of annual pilgrimages of found family and friends for the Fantastic Films weekend. And MOSI was somewhere free and soothing I could go back when I had no money or friends, somewhere I spent a summer doing a course about volunteering in heritage sites, somewhere I take all my visitors to Manchester to show off some of the best things about the city.
Yesterday's trip got off to a rocky start: the Power Hall, the bit I used to go visit when I had no friends or money, just to soak in the noises of the machines and the delicious scents of metal and old hydrocarbons, was closed for renovations. A shame when I'd just been waxing lyrical to Kat about it, but I was glad to see it getting the care it needs. So we walked down to the 1830 Warehouse, where I'd volunteered. But it was a nightmare of inaccessible stairs and lifts, and yes it's the school holidays but everything was kid stuff: noise and neon and computers, and you had to pay for a wristband that got you a set amount of time in the exhibits.
So I strode out toward the Station building. Here I'd studied and presented the final project for my course, mine was on the first passenger railway journey, which set off from this station in 1830. I'd made use of all kinds of information and props from the exhibits here. And I'd always loved this bit anyway as a general human history of Manchester, talking about everything from Roman settlements to radical politics that happened here. It helped me learn to stop hating this city I associated with the loneliness and grief and poverty I was immersed in when I moved here, and I like to show it off to visitors in the hopes that they'll like it too.
But the entire building was empty now. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the floors. "It looked like it had been looted," Kat said later when we were telling Andrew about this. "Except it was all very clean."
It's a winding path you have to take through the building (all these walls to hang photos and objects and write explanatory text on) so it took me a long time to storm out of it. I was walking faster and faster, almost colliding with a small kid and a pram someone was pushing, just inside the doorway. I barely stifled the impulse to yell at them to turn around, not to bother with this. I got outside and I started crying.
Kat gave me a hug and spoke to me softly. We sat down on a bench nearby and she tried to do that active listening thing by telling me she understood how capitalism has ruined this thing I loved so much. But it isn't capitalism: I think it's London. I told her that when I did that heritage volunteering course, we learned that 96% of museum funding in the UK goes to London. I told her about the plan the Science Museum Group had had to close one of their three northern museums. I told her about them taking the Royal Photographic Society (though I couldn't remember the name then; I looked it up now) collection out of Bradford back to London.
Eventually I was restless and wanted to salvage something of this miserable afternoon, so we went to the textile gallery. It was thankfully basically how I'd remembered it. I wanted to see the demonstration of all the machines, which was due to start in half an hour. We bimbled around a little, until I realized that I was carrying the map and leaflet and nothing else. Not the white plastic bag with the scarves and my new bag in it.
I was horrified. All that money Kat had spent, on such nice gifts... We started to retrace our steps. It wasn't by the bench we'd been sitting on. We both tried to remember when we saw it last. I couldn't because I'd been so upset before that...and I was more upset now that my stupid attachment to this stupid place had fucked me up enough to make me lose track of my stuff -- something I rarely do. I thought I could remember the bag banging against my leg as I flailed my arms in wordless misery as I stomped out of the station building. But I couldn't be sure. (I still don't know; there's no way of knowing where it got left, of course.) Now all I could think was that Kat had spent a lot of money on the things I'd so casually left somewhere and I hated having been so irresponsible.
I ended up having a proper anxiety attack just outside the station building, just where I'd started crying in the first place. (The places we'd been to the previous two days, with their Peterloo exhibits, had made Kat cry and I'd joked as we'd walked into MOSI on this day that this museum wasn't going to make her cry. Well, it didn't! But by far the most crying happened here. Serves me right.) I was so angry I wanted to punch something, and since I couldn't I threw the map and leaflet to the ground. Why was I still carrying these horrible things and not the precious things? Through a haze of tears I felt bad for the staff person who'd likely have to tidy up my litter, but not bad enough that I could reach down and pick it up again.
Kat told me I'd given her the best bad gift, and at that point my surprised laughter hiccuped through my sobs. She said she'd been in my position often enough, and been comforted by friends and partners who told her everything was okay when she found that impossible to believe. Now she was on the other side of it, and really did thoroughly believe that everything was okay, and this helped her retroactively appreciate what she'd been told all those times herself. She told me that she'd give me money to buy a new bag from the market stall, and she'd buy other gifts. She told me she was at a point where the money lost, if it were lost, was not a crisis for her like it would've been at some points in the long time we'd known each other, and she was glad of that. And even as part of me felt inconsolable -- we'd spent so long picking out the perfect colors, these scarves, this bag, and my faraway friend was so happy she could finally get me something tangible -- another part of me recognized that she was really very good at consoling me with all this.
"It's not my phone," she said as we started walking again. "It's not my passport. It isnt anything necessary." I acknowledged this, recognizing that I've got the same kind of priorities when I travel -- I think of my phone, passport and money as a holy trinity -- but I also said I thought I was upset precisely because for a long time my life has felt like it's been pared to the necessary, and hasn't had enough that's just nice (I had a flash of thinking of Tiffany Aching feeling the same way about her horse necklace, for those who've read that book.) . The new bag was not necessary for me, I was delighted with it precisely because I did not need it. And here it was taken away from me immediately, by nothing more than my own treacherous hands and brain.
We trekked back to the main information desk, to see if anyone had handed it in, though neither of us was really hopeful. While we were waiting for the person behind the desk who was speaking to another museum-goer, Kat happened to spot our precious white plastic bag behind the curve of the desk. Both of us went bananas at the sheer sight of it, so it wasn't long before we had the staff member's attention. I was so relieved but my heart started racing anyway and I worried I'd cry again. I think the person we talked to, and someone else who did the lost-and-found paperwork for us, were a little bemused at just how emotional we both were at what looked like an extemely unremarkable shopping bag. By that point it was invested with so much emotion...but trying to explain that would've seemed even weirder.
So the new bag, a sort of half-backpack half-shoulder bag kind of thing, feels even more like a gift now. I transferred everything over to it this morning and took it out with me when I went with Kat to collect her train tickets and get on the first of her trains. We sat on diner-esque stools at the window of the waiting room in Stockport train station so Kat could use the power sockets at the counter there while we waited for her train to London. I put my bag on the counter and leaned tiredly over it, finding myself with my arms wrapped around it.
I knew yesterday that a different bag, if Kat had to give me money to buy another one, wouldn't be the same: it'd be a different wild combination of colors than this one we'd carefully chosen together, and I didn't know if I'd ever stop thinking about The Bag It Replaced when I saw it or if it'd have soured the whole thing for me. Better to have this bag back, and to still be glad Kat has learned people can mean the reassurances they offer her when she's struggling, and still be glad that I have learned how important unnecessary nice things are for me right now. We've still learned our intangible lessons, and that's very good, but sometimes they're just easier to swallow when you've got the actual nice things you wanted in the first place, as well.
The third and perhaps most important lesson to take from this is of course fuck London and fuck how much money and resources it hoards from the rest of the UK. I didn't realize until I was telling Stuart about this that I wasn't just upset or angry when I saw that empty station building and started crying. I was scared. "It was scary because..." I said, just figuring this out as I was saying it, "I was scared they're never going to put it all back." Well, reasonably enough, he said, and I was sad this was reasonable to someone else but I was soothed to not be alone in what still feels like a massive overreaction to a museum, however good it is. Was.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 01:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 07:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 05:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 07:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 07:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-05 11:10 pm (UTC)I'm sorry that it's so very colored for me with all the bits they've done to harm it.
I could see the bones of what had been a wonderful place, and the desolation of those empty rooms was just overwhelming after the irritation of the badly designed elevator space leading to that noisy place of corporate greed.
London, absolutely, as a gravity well of late stage capitalism and frankly a birthplace of modern capitalism and...yeah, different than if it were local wealth redistribution which would be maddening enough, but to have it so affected by far away and defined-by-them as "high above"? Devastating and angry making on a whole different level.
It deepened my understanding of how big city/captial vs. small place dynamics works. It's not enough compensation for the impact it's having on many others. <3
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 10:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 11:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 11:51 am (UTC)I'm sorry you had such a bad experience, but at least you can see that you and Kat learned things. And I really hope they put the museum back.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 01:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 02:22 pm (UTC)I find it baffling that a museum person, board, or otherwise didn't say or have posted anything about the situation well in advance of your discovering what wasn't there.
I am glad the bag came back, though, and I have a lot of empathy for how the process went for you. It sounds very familiar to how I might have reacted to such a trip.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 07:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 11:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 07:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-25 08:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-25 01:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-25 09:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-27 09:48 am (UTC)quote
we've still learned our intangible lessons, and that's very good, but sometimes they're just easier to swallow when you've got the actual nice things you wanted in the first place, as well
unquote
yes this, I heart you