Traffic Lights

In my day(ish) job I end up working either very late or very early. This means that I get to travel through an almost deserted London where the few cars that I do come across seem to drift about on auto-pilot. It’s a surreal place of shadows, wet streets and traffic lights. If there is one certainty in life it’s traffic lights. They’re always there; blinking away, corralling, cajoling, and curbing one’s passage to or from one’s bed. They stand on corners like some malevolent monster out of a John Wyndham novel, ready to strike out at passers by, freezing them to the spot for no other reason than to follow their silicon brains as they attempt to take over the planet.

And this got me to thinking, as it always does, about how these electronic totems change our lives and dictate our moods. My theory goes something like this. Take the red light, universally abhorred the world over. What does it do? It stops you. It halts your progress when you’re in a hurry. But it can do so much more. If you’re in a hurry it allows your temper to build up a head of steam that can become quite irrational at times. It can change your life as well. It can cause you to miss that nexus point in your life when things would finally turn around for you; (the opposite being true as well.) It could stop you meeting that drunk driver three streets further on or throw the timing of your journey so you meet only obstacles in your path.

Then consider how you react to the red light, and for that matter the amber. As you approach the light your current mental temperament takes over full control of your destiny. Anger increases the chance of running the light and dying from a complex gathering of quantum events. Adrenaline fuelled excitement has similar outcomes, while relaxed peacefulness means you’re going to be sat at the light waiting for non-existent cross-traffic to pass.

The Amber light is truly the dice-roll of the universe. Everything is up for grabs and it relies totally on your current mood. Run or don’t run, it’s a hormonal thing. In your mind there is no wrong or right answer. It is based entirely on how your life has been going of late. The tax man demands urgent payment; you run the light; just come back from the holiday of a life time; you slow down and come to a stop, humming gently to yourself.

Green is the colour of peace and tranquility, but also of guilty pleasure. As you approach the green light, you start praying to the god of electronics to hold the illuminated bulb in place. You squeeze the accelerator pedal slightly as you push toward the traffic light, hoping beyond hope that it will stay green. Then, as you reach it, you let out a sigh of relief, with the knowledge that you live in a just and righteous world, deserving only green lights in your life.

Then you get the colour coded days. The reds, ambers or greens. These are the days when you make your way to or from home, and all the lights seem to be the same colour. The more common red day seems to push your temper into new realms; the amber, the feeling of risk and daring. Only with the green does the journey change slightly. It turns into a silent ritual as you count the number of green lights you pass in unbroken order. You start to lift off as you see a far-off red shining out across the wet streets and will it to change before you reach the white line of doom. It doesn’t matter how slowly you go, if the light changes before you get there then it’s a win and the number of greens can increase by one.

Some days the green journey can be an almost magical event. You say to your self as you approach your destination, ‘my wheels haven’t stopped turning for the whole trip.’ Moments like these are rare to say the least, but they seem to re-enforce in our primitive brains the idea of a higher power at play; God, Space Aliens, Ancestral Spirits etc. And yet it’s probably just Heisenberg and his damn electron spins that control our lives for their own nefarious deeds.

And what does this have to do with writing? Everything. Time, temper, lost ideas, time available for writing; the effect of traffic lights on writing is incalculable. In my mind, traffic lights are probably the single most powerful influence on a story…. Well, probably.

Today was a red day - damn that Heisenberg