Banking Modernist on London Bridge
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
These lines are from the poem ‘Waste Land’ which T.S. Eliot wrote 101 years ago when he worked as a banker in the City to afford a career as a poet. His views on the zombie-like bankers crossing the bridge each morning were perhaps not flattering but he might have had a point.
How can I not think of T.S. Elliot and his poem when I walk across London Bridge on a grey morning on my way to meet a group of bankers on King William Street, preferably before the bells of Saint Mary Woolnoth toll nine! I have already received the first phone call of warning: Where are you?
I am not in the same league as T.S. Eliot but my business is the same: I want to inspire the world to re-invent itself and forget old ways and 'Waste Land’ is a good place to start. It is considered the breakthrough of modernist poetry and a literary lighthouse in line with Alfred Döblin’s 'Berlin Alexanderplatz’ and James Joyce’ Ulysses, also published in 1922. Eliot’s initial 19-page long poem was edited and shortened by the critic Erza Pound who soon became mentor for Ernest Hemingway too. None of these litterary rebels wanted to repeat the obsolete language that had lead the world into a dead end.
As a futurist I’m fascinated by the modernist writers who a hundred years ago, turned their back to establishment and brought thinking and language up to par with modern times. It was not easy for the poets. The world was not asking for transformation. It opposed it. Another of the modernists F. Scott Fitzgerand said “Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to become one”.
T.S. Elliot was a close friend of James Joyce and he was there for him many years later when Joyce published “Finnegans Wake” - probably the most difficult book to read. And it was the feminist Sylvia Beach in Paris and her bookshop “Shakespeare & Company” who published “Ulyssees” and helped a young Hemingway sell his first book “3 stories and 10 poems” in 1923. The young challengers were all poor literary startups depending on their modernist ecosystem to break through. I have a dejas-vue.
My meeting i King William Street is interesting; one of the undone bankers is trying to modernise the world but his ambition is at odds with incumbents who don’t want to change. After power points, I tumble back into the street and continue through King William Street past Saint Mary Woolnoth to Bank Station. Too lazy to walk, I take the tube one stop to Moorgate. I cross Finsbury Square - Monzo’s old hood - and continue to the coworking space RISE on Luke Street at the edge of Shoreditch. Here recide the “Fintech Modernists”. What Paris was for young artists in the 1920’s the area around Old Street is for entrepreneurs today. They dont write poetry or novels and drink red wine in night cafes, they drink flat whites, eat croissants and write codes in the form of APIs and Apps which are sometimes as hard to understand for their contemporaries as “Waste Land” was then. The tech-challengers strive to get heard, be understood and establish collaboration with an establishment that wants to innovate without really wanting change.
At Rise I run into a young 'changeologist’; she is an expert in bringing old and obsolete organisation across the chasm into the modern world. Mind the gap! She is the 21st century banking mentor, a critic like Ezra Pound, who helps banks leave old business models behind. Often they resist and fear the first step into the future. But this is why Charlotte and I are here at Rise and we wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Everybody loves Woody Allen’s film 'Midnight in Paris’ and wish they had been present amongst the creative artists who defined the 20th century with new ideas; yet so many professionals miss out of this creation of future finance. The financial roaring 20s are here and now! In a few years people will say: 'It must have been exciting then!
I have decided not just to see it and say it, but also to sort it and take a dose of modernist medicin myself: I have founded a new startup and found a small team of tech-poets who pour blockchain and AI over my simple ideas. Let’s see if we can convince the eco-system. After a long macbook day we finish off over a pint at Joiner on Worship Street - there must be an end to latte in paper cups.
It’s late as I walk back down Moorgate and King William Street and cross London Bridge. The bankers have left the pavement and the skyscrapers shine their lights on the river. I enter the station and walk through the arcade, there are not many people and a freezing homeless who is reading the Evening Standard silently curses contactless payments. ('Sorry mate, it’s my fault, I’m afraid’. I think.)
“Ah, still amongst the living, are we?”.
I turn around and see a man in his late 30s, he looks a bit out of place but otherwise dapper in a three-piece Prince of Wales check suit with a silk tie. He smokes nervously on a cigarette without filter.
“Yes, death has not done me in yet”, I answer
“You know, my friend Ezra Pound once said to me: Make it new. What can be changed must be changed. If you make it new, you’ll never grow old and useless”
The smoke from his cigarette smells of Virginia tobacco. I haven’t smelled that for a very long time. He has yellow stained finger tips.
“Thanks for the advice. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?
But the man has vanished and is nowhere to be seen. I tap in with my creditcard from a bank, that did not exist ten years ago and rush up the escalator to catch the 22:16 train to Dartford.
It feels good to be alive.
