My pal and fellow writer David Belbin was staying in the INK hotel in Amsterdam, which describes itself as – “a bohemian lifestyle hotel where the traditional rules of hospitality are freely translated to the modern day, writing a contemporary story in INK.” There in the room, David tells me, perhaps in all the rooms, was a copy of the Soft Atlas of Amsterdam by Jan Rothuizen, a book of hand drawn, very personal, annotated maps of the city, though also usable (I imagine) for getting around.
Not only that, the walls had wallpaper based on drawings from the book. As an occasional map obsessive this sounds like a fine idea to me. What could make it finer? Why the appearance of Nicholson. I'm not absolutely sure if I'm on the walls, but definitely in the book. Rothuizen bought a copy of my Lost Art of Walking - it says so!!
I can hardly tell you how chuffed I am by this. Writers are simple creatures. We toil in melancholy darkness, and very small things can sometimes make us very happy, and this is absolutely one of them. Thanks to David and to the hotel, and even more to Jan Rothuizen.
Naturally I did some research. Rothuizen is everywhere, not only in Amsterdam, Tokyo, Colombia, drawing, map-making and walking, but also in London where he had a rat thrown at him. I know this after watching a TED talk he did (available online) in which he talks about walking in New York, “This has to do with the hierarchy of information like I would see things, think about memories, I would hear songs, there were a lot of different things going on at the same time and I thought this was very worthwhile but also very rich.”
Yes, this is what we do, some of us. And I was feeling very good to have discovered a fellow-traveler, and one that was a new name to me, but then – knock me down with a feather – it clicked and I suddenly realized I haveseen his work before, and that the two of us can be found between the covers of this book, edited by the very wonderful Katharine Harmon.
It’s a small world, unless you decided to walk it all.
