Finding Soho

The journey around London and the West End is a long one. There are so many epithets for the West End: big, wide, polyglot, mixed-up, far-off. There are so many things one can say. Each place has its own metaphor. The word that comes to mind when thinking about the West End is compositeness. Many of the places are Classical or Gothic or Corinthian, many of the people “multi-exit”, many of the buildings new glass monsters. Yet all of them speak of a certain present and former glory. One only has to look hard enough. It is said that in this mixed-up, often mad, world of ours, each thing that exists gives up and forsakes something of what it is, to let the rest become something that is bigger. Each thing halves in attrition, for the big things to become bigger. So, in places like the West End, one just has to find that something that has been given up and that something that has become bigger (and better?). There is always something to see and something to learn, from the smallest of plac