Prolific author-walker Will Self was blogging at the New York Times this summer for a series called Necessary Steps. Self was in Toronto last year to promote his book Psychogeography and complete a walk from Pearson Airport to Harbourfront (even asking us advice in advance on how to get out of the airport on foot). His final post earlier this month — also his final “Psychogeography” column in The Independent — took us to the European beautiful-ugly wasteland of Ibiza, and reminded me of my post on Malta’s nowhereville clubland I wrote about in August. Self writes:
Ibiza, once a lazy and forgotten corner of the Balearics where a few guitar-strumming longhairs (and by “long†we’re talking collar-length here) sheltered from the asperities of Francoism, has long since hypertrophied into a nauseating projection of all the worst roads to freedom. In the immediate vicinity of the main town of Eivissa and the airport there are a score of mega-clubs — Amnesia, Aura, Space — whale-like establishments that suck in tens of thousands of Euro-youth. Ticket touts and drug dealers play the part of baleine, stripping the kids of their cash, their psyches and their inhibitions; then, once in the belly of the beast, they frolic in foam, stagger, then punch the air to the chthonic thud. In this mad realm the DJ is king of the krill, while the only writer that matters is named “King.â€
As for walking — forget it; clubland itself is a desiccated zone of dirt and concrete, the only picturesque things hereabouts are… postcards. The beaches are so crowded that they resemble barbecues, with the north Europeans playing the part of prime cut. Even inland, where the country opens out a little, there’s still an astonishing density to the habitation, as if a vast suburb had been scattered over the hills. On earlier Ibizan promenades I had become convinced that behind every shuttered window of every terracotta villa there lurked a Milanese brassiere manufacturer committing some unspeakable act of onanism.
It’s worth poking around his other rambling walkabouts, especially this one on Edinburgh.
Photo of Ibiza by Luke Robinson.