Pierre smiles and nods at me from the place where he works: a black half-circle printed on the floor beneath his feet. An empty guitar case sits beside him. It is sinking in on itself under the weight of a few coins. A stream of blurred faces, shoulders and shoes pass by us. As far as we know, raindrops are still pelting the streets of London outside. But we cannot say for sure. We are standing far below the city’s surface. And Pierre is quietly singing a song.

Read the full story on Thought Catalog.

Read the full story on Thought Catalog.
Read about the tunnel musicians of Chicago on Gapers Block.

The photos and text below are from my coverage of the London mayoral election on 3 May 2012.

It is election morning and Siobhan Benita is sitting in her kitchen in Kingston having a cup of tea. An open box labelled “Power Megaphone With Pistol Grip” is sitting on a counter across the room from her. Benita’s campaign manager, Paul da Gama, is filling up orange and green balloons from a bright red helium tank. As he fills them, he hands them to Benita’s parents, who have come to visit, and to tie multi-coloured balloons together with ribbon and string.

Benita, the only independent mayoral candidate, alternates between helping da Gama and her parents, sipping her tea, talking on her phone, tweeting to her followers, and considering her route for the day. She has already visited her New Malden polling station, and plans to spend the rest of the morning canvassing the old-fashioned way: by driving through the city’s streets in a car adorned with posters and balloons, leaning out the window of a car, brandishing a megaphone with a pistol grip.

“We’ll drive around the city a bit,” Benita says. “Then we’ll be leafleting in Waterloo this afternoon. And then we’ll all go to the pub.”

Born in Wimbledon and raised in Merton, Benita has run her campaign on one guiding principle: people over political parties. The 40-year-old mother of two has strived to represent the disillusioned and politician-wary voter. Her policies lean heavy on improving the education system, giving a voice to young people in city hall, and giving transit fare breaks to everyone in the city. She’s made a promise to focus on the day-to-day issues that affect everyday people, rather than party politics.

Benita’s independent bid for mayor began with her leaving her senior civil service post in protest over NHS reforms. And while she appears to have gained some traction with the voters who know who she is, it hasn’t been enough to bring her close to an election win. Benita has struggled to get airtime on TV due to her independent status, with broadcasters like the BBC choosing not to grant her a party election.

“Yesterday was the first day that they put all seven of the candidates faces on the BBC,” Benita says. “And the fact that they did it then, just shows that they could have done it from the start.”

She pauses to consider her expectations heading into the vote count, then breaks her silence with a short sigh. “At this point, just coming in above any of the established parties would be big,” she says.

But Benita’s far from given up. She remains enthused, passionate and optimistic about her campaign, whatever may come of it. She lights up even more when she learns that the latest electoral polls show her receiving 4% of the first choice vote, up 1% from the previous poll. “That’s a good thing,” she says looking up brightly from her phone.

As Benita walks out the door of her home for the day, she reflects on the run up to this moment. “Going out canvassing in the car like this, after all the hard work of the past couple weeks,” she says smiling. “This is just mad!”

Benita and her parents grab their cameras to capture the moment, and da Gama starts the car. As they all drive off together, the balloons that have been tied to the car shake in the wet wind. Rain drizzles down from the grey skies that blanket London. Benita raises her megaphone toward a worker in a passing white truck: “Are you voting today?” she asks. “I will be,” he answers. “For Boris.” The whole car boos.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately walking around the London Underground, talking to musicians. It’s for a story I’m working on. But the truth is I enjoy walking around down there with nowhere else to be. Almost all of our time in these tunnels is spent rushing from one point to the next. And it feels good to walk through them slowly, with no other destination in mind but toward the music and good conversation. People rush by me. But for at least a little while I am not a part of their race. I’ve done a story like this once before. And I’ll probably do more. But, even if I don’t, I’ll likely spend much more of whatever’s left of my life walking beneath cities, and moving slowly amid their hum.

The photos below were taken within a block of my Tube stop this afternoon.

It was more sunny than rainy today. At times it was both. As I type this the sun is setting outside my window and the sky is a pale blue. When I uploaded these photos a few minutes ago I could hear thunder crackling. It really is a great sound. Oddly enough, I don’t remember hearing it here before. But enough about the weather. Here’s an incredible version of “Hey Joe” by The Arbors. And here are some photos.

Went for a walk in the rain today. Found Simone Felice and his band singing songs in a bandstand in Northampton Square. It sounded beautiful. This is why I like walking the streets of cities I’m not from.

The photos below are portraits of some of the people I’ve met on the streets since August last year. The thoughts that come to mind as I scan through them? The war in Afghanistan. The nice man with a sketchy past in South Asia. The friendly force of life that ended our conversation by wishing me well and lighting a crack pipe. Christmas Eve. Two weeks in a hostel in Bloomsbury. The woman who thought she wasn’t very pretty. The sad clown.

It’s still too early to tell, but I think I will end up remembering London as a great but cruel city. One that seemed to never want me here. One that beat me down and forced me to be stronger, kinder, and more forgiving, of others and of myself. One that I grew to like in a strange and perverse sort of way. One where I met some great people, from across oceans and continents, foreign rivers and faraway cities. One that stands tall amid all the punches that should have knocked it down. Everything I have in me respects that. The rest is just dust, noise. Cheers.

“I ditched work today. Took a train out to Montauk.”

This photo was taken near St Christopher’s Place on Christmas Eve. It makes me think of the song “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson. It’s a good thought to have.

This photo does not make me think of Elvis’ version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water“. But I can’t seem to shake that thought lately anyway. So here we are.

Right now, I’m ending the fifth week of a 10-week international journalism bender, and riding it out on a strange wave of exhaustion.

A big part of the reason I haven’t written here in so long, I think, is not so much that I’ve been too busy, but that I’ve been too busy to be depressed. This is good. This has been the strategy for a long time now, in fact. And, for the most part, it’s worked fairly well. While I don’t like long stretches of empty notebook pages, it usually means I’m on the right track.

But when the train stops I can’t help but fall apart some. It’s like that song that, no matter how many times you hear it, you always want it to go on. Even when you think you don’t. It sounds so good when it plays. And each time it ends the silence feels a little like death.

Well, tonight, for a moment, the train stopped. And for the same unidentifiable reason as always, I suppose, I feel like I lost something in the fall. It may have happened a week or two ago, or maybe three or four. It’s hard to say for sure. But whenever it happened, I want the broken pieces back. I think it’s important to hold onto them, to take the time to find and fix them after they crack and tumble away. I think they work best when they’re kept tempered and bruised. And this takes years, practice, heart; everything.

And what seems to string it all together is the music. That one song that you never want to end, all of them.

As I write this, I’m listening to Dax Riggs playing an acoustic guitar and singing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams. Sweet Jesus, what a song. The quality of the recording is so bad it’s irrelevant. That voice singing that melody and those words together is crushing me in all the places that needed it right now. It’s strange how it happens like that.

I remember interviewing Dax a couple years ago, late one night in a dark room at a small club in Dallas, Texas. I remember him telling me about the first time a friend of his turned him onto Ronnie Lane, and how important it felt to him at the time. He said something about not knowing what he would have done with himself had he not heard that music right then and there. And I know that feeling so well. He didn’t elaborate and he didn’t have to. I just know that feeling, like it’s been there for a million years.

That was a great night. I like that it sometimes bleeds into others. Wild and vicious and kind.