Shravanee Amrute: Anecdotes from a student’s life in Durham.
Some cities are flashy, and some are Durham. Durham shows itself to a person through a gradual shift that is very much like charcoal drawing on textured paper. It doesn’t want to impress you or make you love it. Rather, it waits patiently for you to discover that it has shown you how to see more clearly through this world.
When I first arrived, Durham felt deceptively small. The buildings made from stone and the quietness of the streets combined to give off this greyish tone found in northern parts of England. My understanding grew as I spent more time in Durham about why there is beauty there. The beauty isn’t as overt as other art forms such as paint and sculpture, but instead has similar qualities to that of a well-composed photograph in terms of the ambiance created by the frame, the way that ordinary everyday activities can lead to familiarizing oneself with both the photograph and the location.
Sometimes, in the mornings, I walk along Bailey when the city is half asleep. The rainwater is still on the cobbles, and the towers of Durham Cathedral come slowly into view through the haze of mist in their magnificent and dignified way, so much so that you want to be quiet. Later in the day, around the cathedral is the normal hustle and bustle of life, students running with coffee cups in one hand and unfinished essays in the other, cyclists avoiding tourists who are looking at maps, professors disappearing down sideways between ancient stone walls. Over an expanse of time that has lasted so long, we find an incredible structure that has been the focus of our attention throughout history, the Durham Cathedral.
I find the fact that there are two coexisting worlds in Durham to be both fascinating and disconcerting. We can see people studying for exams in front of buildings that are more than 800 years old. We can see people laughing with their friends; we can observe their footsteps on the ground where people walked centuries ago. When you look at the physical presence of the ancient world and the current activities of the students living in Durham, it seems as if the two worlds are brushing against each other, though their borders have almost disappeared.
At some point, I found that I no longer saw it as an architectural project; it had started to feel alive, an artwork constantly changing based on the environment around it. The cathedral’s character is different, depending on what view one observes it from. Viewed from a bridge crossing the River Wear, the towers appear as though they were painted above the river, their edges left unfinished. Viewed from Observatory Hill, the landscape seems to have an impossible theatrical quality in that the trees appear to part, like curtains, to reveal the city skyline. Particularly now, several months after my original encounter, there are still times when I would look at the cathedral very briefly and stop walking altogether, the feeling of seeing it in a different way every time, it’s overwhelming.
Then there is the river, the pulse of the city. For Durham, the Wear alters everything about its identity. The city along the river becomes softer. In the morning, rowers glide through the water with precision that borders on poetic. With luck you will be at the river when the sun strikes it at just the right angle, making the entire surface glisten, creating a movie-like world, bridges and the cathedral above. That’s pretty hard to describe without sounding too sappy.
Its home is within bookstores, wherein dirt settles upon texts. Within shadowy taverns are the wooden surfaces polished from many hands and elbows and stories. Through conversations surrounding literature or politics taking place adjacent to artsy windows. Through the peaceful assurance provided by a city that has refused to permit itself to be altered past the point of existing. These are some of the many fragments of culture within Durham.
Durham teaches you patience in observing your surroundings. You learn to watch the arches of bridges, hear the sound of cathedral bells ringing into the cold night air, the moisture-filled stones after rain. You will realize that beauty is cumulative; it accumulates slowly over time by being present and paying attention.
Living here seems to me more like being in an art gallery than a city. I see architecture, history, the landscape, and people’s lives all interacting together.
The artistry of Durham probably is not so much the beautiful things in Durham; it is how quietly and unnoticeably Durham has changed my perception of the art around me.
