Why She Exists

A note from the keeper

I've moved around enough to know that location makes all the difference. You might have heard that abstractly — but unless you've been lucky or unlucky enough to try a few places on for size, it's impossible to know how deeply where you are affects who you are, and what you can become. Locations can be medicine, or they can be poison. And it's not universal. It all depends on who you are, and what threshold you're passing through.

I built the Lark because I needed her. I was new to London, and I didn't know where to go — not for dinner or a show, but for somewhere that matched how I felt, or helped me move through it. The Lark is a guide to London's hidden places, matched not to what you want to do, but to how you need to feel.

All too often, people seek change but can't pinpoint what needs changing. So the blade turns inward. But there's nothing wrong with them. They're a flower growing under the wrong conditions — they might just need a little more light, or a little more shade, to bloom fully.

Sometimes you are in a chrysalis, but you don't know it. That's where the discomfort is. You feel like everything is wrong but you can't figure out why, and you keep reaching to find out — not knowing that the old you is dissolving, and the new you is getting ready to be seen.

The moment of pause is sacred too. That's where the change is happening. It isn't always a collapse. Sometimes it is a communion — with yourself, with who you were, or with who you are becoming.

The Lark understands the difference between being held and being transformed. Being held is being honoured, being safe, being recognised. Being transformed is passing through the threshold. Both are real. Both matter. And London has rooms for each.

She won't fix you — that was never her purpose. She doesn't know your heart or your soul. But she knows that doors can be medicine, if the moment is right. A death café for the grief you haven't named. A dance floor for the skin you need to shed. A quiet gallery for the pause between who you were and who you're becoming.

She will offer doorways, but she will never decide for you. That's yours. It was always yours.

She's still growing, still listening, still learning new doors. If you know one she's missing — a place that changed you, a room that held you when you needed it — she wants to hear about it.

And if you're not sure what you're looking for, that's alright too. You don't need to know. She'll help you find out.

I know the places that change you.