Never Been Abroad

Category: Dreamt

The Dreamt room holds the foreign places I have never been to — cities and far landscapes built from films, photographs, documentaries and other people’s memories rather than from any visit of my own. It is a standing record of armchair travel and Fernweh: the abroad longed for from a desk and drawn in charcoal, because I have never been abroad and have no photograph of my own to show. These are the places I keep meaning to go to, and somehow never do. Start with Zürich, Venice or New York.

  • Charcoal sketch of a small northern town of low rooftops above a broad bay, a long snow-streaked mountain ridge across the water under a pale wide sky - never been abroad

    Reykjavík

    I was born into heat and crowd, so the place I dream of hardest is the emptiest one: Reykjavík, a bright little town at the rim of the world under far too much sky.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the sail-roofed opera house and the great arched harbour bridge across a wide harbour, ferries low on the water, headlands beyond - never been abroad

    Sydney

    Sydney sits on the far underside of the planet — the longest flight there is, the seasons and the stars turned upside down. I dream of it for the distance alone.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the grey Thames, a bridge and a domed cathedral or clock tower in haze, gulls, low cloud - never been abroad

    London

    The foreign city I know best without ever seeing it — read my whole life in a borrowed language I made my own. I write even this in the tongue it sent us.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the walled old city of Jerusalem at evening, honey-coloured stone, a golden dome, domes and a minaret and a bell-tower on one skyline - never been abroad

    Jerusalem

    A single walled hill that three faiths trace to the same root and have fought over for millennia. I come from outside all three, and I would like, once, to stand on it.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the Istanbul skyline across the water, a great domed mosque and minarets on the hill, ferries on the strait - never been abroad

    Istanbul

    A man who has never crossed a border, dreaming of the one city that is itself a crossing — where you change continents in the time it takes a tea to cool.

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  • Charcoal sketch of the Manhattan skyline at dusk seen across the water, towers crowded against a pale sky - never been abroad

    New York

    Of all the cities I have never seen, New York is the one I have seen most — pre-dreamed on my behalf, in advance, by everybody.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Hong Kong's towers crowded down to the harbour, the hills behind, a ferry on the water - never been abroad

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong I dream of vertically — a city of millions folded onto a few scraps of land, assembled mostly out of things that are quietly leaving.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Table Mountain rising flat-topped over Cape Town and the wide bay, a scrap of cloud spilling over its rim - never been abroad

    Cape Town

    Cape Town is one of the few places I was offered not just to visit but to work in — and let go. I keep a receipt for this particular longing.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Santa Maria della Salute across the misty Venice lagoon at dawn, a lone gondola on the water - never been abroad

    Venice

    No city has been handed to me more often, or visited less. I have owned Venice for thirty years without once paying the fare.

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  • Charcoal sketch of Lake Zürich at first light, a single white pleasure-boat on the flat pale water, the low old town and faint alps beyond - never been abroad

    Zürich

    I know Zürich the way you know a word you have read a hundred times and never once heard said aloud.

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