NUDGE IT
/Sure, I’ve always wanted people to come to this website because they were curious to see which house was up for sale this week. Building an audience is part of the job. I want you to buy one of the places teased below, of course I do, or tell your friends about it, and I also want you to call when it’s time for your next move. That’s just the most obvious of truths.
But what’s also true is that it’s a mighty unexpected spot I find myself in. After all, I don’t think anyone wakes up thinking, ‘What I’d really like is to end up a middle-aged real estate agent.’ And yet here I am.
I like the work, and do it decently. But I look in the mirror sometimes and it’s that old Talking Heads chestnut that soundtracks the reflection: “And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile …. And you may ask yourself, “Well, How did I get here?”” I’m pretty shocked at where I’ve come to rest, and can never quite tell whether I’m pleased or disappointed. A measure of both, I suppose, which is how life goes for all of us.
One thing I did at the beginning of this career was swear that I wasn’t going to hide who I was, just to flog some semi-detached out behind the mall. I’m opinionated and I’m both quiet and loud. I like punk music and hot food. I lean pretty hard left in my politics and some of what I see in real estate makes me decidedly uncomfortable. I haven’t much enjoyed the last couple of years, to be honest, and I fear that good housing is inaccessible to far too many. In my own neighbourhood I worry that rising house prices are also driving rents astronomically high, and forcing good people to the city’s more distant margins. It’s complicated out there.
Which is a long-winded way of saying, there is a lot going on. Often I seek my escapes from all that noise in exciting new music, or drives north, or some brilliant take-out eaten alone on a sunsplashed park bench. Lately I’m blown away by the writing of Rachel Kushner, and (for the umpteenth time) the paintings of Gerhard Richter. I despair at the world whenever I finish the newspaper and yet on Saturday mornings I watch football (soccer) as if it’s all that matters. It’s a balancing act, wouldn’t you agree?
Tonight I was listening to Sleaford Mods. They’re a long-time favourite, a Nottingham post-punk band (but also not a punk band at all, in my opinion), and the song here is a recent one. The video probably won’t send shivers up your spine the way it did mine when I watched it for the first time, but it brings me no small measure of solace when the world threatens to rise up like a grey sea and inundate the people and places I love.