There are, let’s say, times when I need to get away, and if not physically, then at least mentally, and in the latter case then all the better psycho-geographically. I need change to register with me in ways that signals different, alien, other. Even if the experience is vicarious, it should, best it can, express itself somatically. A walking tour can do this, a video-enabled wander around a place other than where I actually happen to live and work. Many such videos I piggyback on are from video games, where vloggers record their play in ways that avoid play in favor of ambience.
But, I’m not entirely against the real world, and this rainy day winter walk in London, recorded by the YouTuber who goes by Watched Walker, really hit the spot. Perhaps it was the time of day, or the weather, or the part of London, but much of the video, despite being from our actual flesh and blood (or concrete, glass, and cobblestone) world, feels as empty — in a good way — as those game-less video games, just a blank space in which one can follow along, and listen to the way the weather and geography, the building facades and vehicles, lend a music-less soundtrack to the excursion.