Farewell?
25 September 2023


There is no one set of words that can capture how I feel. Believe me, I tried. I cried, wrote poems and a whole lot of essays, but none can capture the entirety of this feeling.

I moved to London 8 years ago in September looking for a place to study and a university. Instead I found direction, amazing friends and a way into the job that I knew I loved before even getting a chance to try it. I had my own personal cultural revolution, I felt I was allowed to exist in the exact way that I am.

I’m not tired of London, when you are tired of London you are tired of life, and I’m not tired of London. What I am tired of is feeling more foreign every day, unwanted, unappreciated, part of a minority of europeans that gets smaller every day, because, if I was looking to get those same opportunities that I got 8 years ago - for which I’m extremely grateful - today I couldn’t have them. Less people like me. Less creative people. Because when you start cutting the funds, when you open the food banks, when you start requesting visas, creatives are the first ones to go, off to places where it might cost a little less to simply exist. And I’m not talking about corporate creative sellouts such as myself, but those people whose souls we feed on and who make London the beautiful weird playground it is.

This has been home for me and I’ll definitely be back, I have faith that this is just one segment of a long history, but, in the meantime, this is my effort. I hope to be part of a statistic. Part of a number somewhere that convinces people of importance that things shouldn’t keep going the way they have. I want creative, weird, international London. Not a luxury space that only allows corporations to thrive.

I moved here 8 years ago almost today.
After 8 years I’m moving away.
What can I say? You chose to be an island.