Beneath a Medical Cannabis Mural
On the final day of the conference, while chasing Russell Brand for a photo, I met a young medical student from the University of Glasgow. We stuck together, and later we both met an Israeli make-up artist living in Canada, in London for a conference of her own.
The three of us, all strangers to each other, decided spontaneously to spend the night together, adventuring through London town.
We were not strangers for long.
We strolled around a deserted London, arm in arm, at a snails pace, soaking up the atmosphere of the damp city, without having to rush anywhere. Taking it slow in what is normally such a bustling city was surreal. We had such a nice time that, although we had originally planned to part ways at 1am, we couldn't bring ourselves to actually follow through.
We just kept going.
We stopped occasionally to rest, and at one point, were approached by a guy who, we were appalled to learn, had had his leg amputated after being shot by a home-intruder. He appreciated our spare change, but his eyes lit up with the hugs that followed.
We were feeling the love, and feeding it through to the rest of the city.
We came across a tunnel, filled with graffiti, and were struck by one mural in particular.
It read, "Adios Cancer", and it seemed to us as if the cyclops aliens in the artwork represented individual cannabinoids, fitting neatly into their little receptor sites on the cell membrane. In cancer cells, such an action causes the cancer cell to kill itself. To us, in the context of this understanding, the somewhat bizarre painting made complete sense.
We knew, though, that most people wouldn't have such a thought, and we wanted to make the message more explicit, while preserving the integrity of the original artwork. Hence, we made a modification to the mural that was as plain and un-intrusive as possible, while getting the message across.
The three of us, all strangers to each other, decided spontaneously to spend the night together, adventuring through London town.
We were not strangers for long.
We strolled around a deserted London, arm in arm, at a snails pace, soaking up the atmosphere of the damp city, without having to rush anywhere. Taking it slow in what is normally such a bustling city was surreal. We had such a nice time that, although we had originally planned to part ways at 1am, we couldn't bring ourselves to actually follow through.
We just kept going.
We stopped occasionally to rest, and at one point, were approached by a guy who, we were appalled to learn, had had his leg amputated after being shot by a home-intruder. He appreciated our spare change, but his eyes lit up with the hugs that followed.
We were feeling the love, and feeding it through to the rest of the city.
We came across a tunnel, filled with graffiti, and were struck by one mural in particular.
It read, "Adios Cancer", and it seemed to us as if the cyclops aliens in the artwork represented individual cannabinoids, fitting neatly into their little receptor sites on the cell membrane. In cancer cells, such an action causes the cancer cell to kill itself. To us, in the context of this understanding, the somewhat bizarre painting made complete sense.
We knew, though, that most people wouldn't have such a thought, and we wanted to make the message more explicit, while preserving the integrity of the original artwork. Hence, we made a modification to the mural that was as plain and un-intrusive as possible, while getting the message across.
We sat underneath the mural and played guitar, listening to the sounds echo off the walls of tunnel, until eventually, we fell asleep on the ground, in a group hug position.
Despite the weirdness of it all, something about it just seemed right.
My trip to London, and the whole experience of Breaking Convention, ended in one of the strangest, most spontaneous and all round best nights of my life, culminating in a loving embrace with strangers beneath a medical cannabis mural.