Sodium-lit office towers plastered with illuminated billboards crept into sight, and soon the Viacom building loomed.
He was not sure that the same could be said for the rest of the City of London: he peered over the roof, stared away from his beloved sky, down to the sodium-lit pavement below.
In the soggy sodium-lit hours of a Sunday night in 2013, I met with urban explorers in Vauxhall, London, to sneak into The Tower at One St George Wharf, the tallest residential building in the United Kingdom, which was still under construction.
Those stowing their jib aboard this happily unexpected houseboat, are offered shelves stacked with books on London, peerless views and the strangest sense of being marooned alone in the heart, not of darkness, but of a neon, fluorescent and sodium-lit city and with the sound of Thames water lapping the South Bank shore overlain with the noise of night buses and emergency service sirens.
But by night, through the window of the bedroom where I sleep – a room into which I have moved to enjoy it – I thrill to the sight of this Orion's dagger, dropped from the jet-howling darkness to quiver and wink in the sodium-lit belly of the urban beast; and I hearken – like the good global tribalist that I am – to the message of this medium: to look upon the Shard is, perforce, to worship it.
It takes place in the same sodium-vapor-lit Los Angeles you may remember from Collateral, and includes some really memorable bits of atmospheric music by James Newton Howard.
The photograph is an aerial image of London's Westway, which shows the road and the adjacent sports pitches lit by the sodium glow of street lamps, and was chosen because the band believed "it was important we captured London breathing".
The cigarette was attached to the cigarette holder and lit and the smoke was extracted by applying vacuum, pulling the smoke directly into the 0.09% sodium chloride solution.
