Enjoy a Route From Your Own Home!
For every traveller, there are times when life conspires to keep us at home. Perhaps we’re saving money for our next big adventure, perhaps work or college keeps us tied up. Whatever the reason, there plenty of times when we can only look at the places we want to visit and dream. So how great is it when you find a route that lets you sample some of its delights from your own living room?
Enter Solange Berchemin’s tour of Trinity Buoy Wharf.
This route is a dream, taking in street art, modern architecture in the form of Container City and food thrown into the bargain. But the stand out point of this route has to be the Longplayer.
The Longplayer is one of those wonderful artistic visions that is as daring and broad in its scope as it is brilliant in its simplicity. Installed in London’s only Lighthouse, are 234 Tibetan bowls playing six short pieces of music. Each time the longplayer begins a new loop of these musical numbers the bowls are played in a different way, subtle differences allowed to enter the tune. To play all the possible variations and iterations the bowls can produce will take 1000 years to complete. It is a project of great vision and none of us will be around to see the Longplayer chime its final note.
As of April 26, 2018, the Longplayer has been playing for 18 years 115 days, meaning we get to enjoy its subtle and soothing chimes for another 982 years to come. With this in mind, if you want to see the Longplayer in action, you don’t have to worry about missing the show.
However, the best thing about the Longplayer is that you do not even have to go to Trinity Buoy Wharf to enjoy it. You can also listen to a live stream online at longplayer.org. It is wonderful to listen to and a great aide to work. Even if Tibetan bowls aren’t your kind of thing, I recommend you check out the live stream just experience the Longplayer. It is an exciting and bold musical experiment and who knows, maybe in 982 years’ time, some future descendant of your own might get to listen to the closing stages of the performance.
