Coe: Along the Thames (Part I)
Photography: Luke Brosnahan
George has a few things to celebrate. He’s on the verge of becoming a fully qualified architect and is garnering attention off the back of his Woozy and GlassTalk releases.
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
I turn to Luke as we wait for George to meet us at the Southwark View Point along the Thames, the Shard looming over the office blocks that envelop us. “Are there many places worse than central London on a sunny day during the post-work rush?” I ask, almost rhetorically. “A load of yuppies in their suits flocking to the terraces. I hate it.” Not even the Southwark cathedral directly ahead can rid this space of its neoliberal sins.
George, aka Coe, appears from behind a group of tourists that are about to embark on a tour of the area, the tour guide remaining conspicuous with a red triangular flag hanging over his head. George looks at us and looks down at his own identical attire: white t-shirt, navy shorts, and black trainers. “We’ve got the uniform on,” he initially remarks.
Luke and I let out a hearty laugh.
“Do you guys know the area at all?” George asks.
“No,” I say, “not at all.”
“No,” Luke utters.
“I just keep coming here,” George continues. “I just thought it'd be a funny place to come today. There's always, like, really weird events happening. Shit just kicks off.”
“Fingers crossed,” Luke laughs.
“Let's head that way,” George points in the direction of Tower Bridge before stopping to put his black backpack down. “If you'd like, I've got some beers in my bag. I should've gotten three.”
“I'm alright,” I say. “But, Luke?”
George turns to Luke. “Do you want a beer?”
“Yeah, go on,” Luke says. George hands him a half litre bottle of booze.
“I'm fucking parched,” says George, hunched over and rooting through his bag for the second bottle of beer. “I'm celebrating today.”
"Oh, yeah,” I say, remembering the day in question from a previous conversation. “You're done with all the assignments?”
George takes out the other bottle of beer, puts his bag on his back, and three of us begin walking down the quiet, brown-bricked underpass.
“So, I've got an interview,” George says, “with the main body of architecture. You know, the charter stuff. You have to do that in, like, the first week of September. But in terms of assignments and shit, everything is done.”
“And is that an undergrad?” I ask. “A master’s?”
“Ah, no. It's fully chartership. So, it's the final thing, yeah.”
“Ok, you're fully qualified.”
“Fully qualified.”
“It is a day to celebrate.”
“You have to do, like, seven years?” Luke asks.
“Yeah, but I did it in nine,” George says. “So, I'm 27, but most people I know are coming into their 30s. It's weird, because you can do it in seven years, but I don't think anyone would want to hire you as an architect because you'd know fuck all. The university courses are hyper conceptual and it's really good because it's basically like an art degree, especially where I did my masters. But, when you come into the real world, all of that shit just goes out of the window because you don't actually have to think how you're going to build this thing. You can't just make shit float, or whatever.”
“Maybe you could,” I say. “Having that creative outlet through the architecture, does that release you from the pressure when it comes to making music?”
George ponders.
“Or are they just completely different worlds?”
“They're very separate. But I defo think I work on shit the same way. I like to use the word additive. I like to just keep adding to shit over and over again, over a course of time, looking at it or listening to it constantly. With production, I'll make a track and then listen to it a hundred times and then if anything isn't standing out, it stays. But, if something is standing out then it goes.”
“I see.”
“With architecture, you're constantly repeating designs. You're making lots of designs. You're trying out every option to work out the best solution, and not just going with the first one. And I definitely do that with music as well. I want to rewrite every element at least once. You can always go back to it. You don't know if it's the best option until you at least try something else.”
“How much of your creative process is collaborative?”
“Well,” George says, “I guess I definitely do like to bounce ideas off people, like, constantly. Especially when I first started out. I don't do that anymore. I guess the thing that comes from architecture is that you're constantly having to pin up all your work and then you have a panel of people in front of you and you have to explain all your work and go through your processes and they can literally pull a drawing off the board and rip it to shreds in front of you if they don't like it.”
Myself and Luke laugh at the ruthlessness.
“Not so much anymore, but it literally was that. I think I'm additive in my processes. I like to just keep going and adding, which is the same with how you design, a building anyway. And I definitely need feedback from a second opinion. I can't trust my own ears, I feel.”
“Sometimes,” I say, ”you have to be careful whose opinion you're getting because if they don't want to hurt your ego then they might just tell you a lie.”
“That's probably why I don't send it to a lot of people now, because I have a few select friends that will be straight up and blatant. They won't hide their feelings about it. That's so, so much more important. Being able to take constructive criticism helps speed up the process so much. You almost have to develop a thick skin about it.”
We turn the corner and enter the homogeneously corporate aesthetic of London Bridge City. Tall glass buildings soak the last of the sun, without giving anything in return. Hoards of people leaving work walk by us.
“But with the architecture,” I say, “because you have that and it's a passion as much as it is a job-”
George winces and sighs.
“Oh.”
“It definitely was a passion — and it still might be a passion — but I think just because of the final qualification process, it's kind of bludgeoned the interest out of it.”
“I was just going to say,” Luke says. “This is probably the worst time to ask you that question.”
“Yeah,” George quickly replies. “I need to find my spark. I think as well, I've been working on this one project for quite a while now. I'm entering this stage of handover, so at this point I've literally been staring at the same set of drawings for a year and a half, so it's time to move on. But I need to learn this handover process because I've never done it before.”
“It's funny,” Luke says, “because I find that with music sometimes. The first 90% is 50% of the work and then that last 10% can be the next 50%.”
George shakes his head with annoyance. “Mate, absolutely.”
We walk along the pathway through a buzzing Potters Fields Park that hosts little hives of young people all hoping the night doesn’t smother the twilight too soon. Deciding to join, we sit down in a ripple effect in front of a Tower Bridge that’s bathing in the sun.
“London in the summer,” I exclaim.
“Yeah,” George says. “Here we go.”
“I lived in London, like, three years ago now and it just didn't click for me.”
“Did it not?”
“No. I don't know,” I admit. “How is the London scene staying afloat? London is losing spaces as well. Didn't The Cause close down?”
“So, that was always temporary,” George tells me, “and then it got extended a bit. Have you gone there?”
“No, I haven't, no.”
“Never. Where were you going when you lived here?”
“I was living in Hackney Wick, so I was going to the spaces around there. I couldn't even tell you. It was a bit of a blurry time in my life. I won't lie.”
“London can get like that, for sure.”
“Do you think London is ever in danger where the cost of living outweighs the sense of opportunity?”
“100%,” George says. “I mean, I've got a fairly decent career and I feel like I'm struggling, so I can't imagine if you're just trying to be a creative person, with a full-on creative enterprise. It must be so hard. It must be so stressful to do that really. I feel like it would force you to make decisions that you weren't fully happy with doing because you just wanted to make money. I don't feel I have enough time to be creative. I'm not too bothered that I don't, but I think there is some real talent out there that needs that opportunity to do that and the cost of how expensive everything is probably strangles that a little bit in this city.”
Luke suggests that he takes a few photos of George before we lose the sun entirely. We walk through a narrow archway and come out the other side to a narrow, stony bed that skirts the Thames. George and Luke insist it’s a beach. I insist that it isn’t.
While treading carefully on the wet, uneven surface, a yacht full of yuppies still dressed in their work attire passes by under Tower Bridge. The noise of the chatter coming from those on the crowded top deck drowns out the ghoulish music that I can only imagine they’ve coined the sound of the summer.
“What's going on here?” George asks.
“Boat party,” I assume.
We start waving and jeering frantically over at those on the top deck.
“They can't hear you,” Luke says.
George jeers more ferociously until some on the top deck start waving and jeering back towards us.
“They love us,” I exclaim. “They love us.”
“Wankers,” George utters jokingly under his breath.
