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| We Now Resume Our Semi-Regularly Scheduled Broadcast | 2003-08-28T18:20:32-04:00 | /we-now-resume-our-semi-regularly-scheduled-broadcast/ |
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Alas, the blogging-from-London bit didn’t pan out quite as well as I’d hoped — in no small part because I was having too much fun to stop and reflect on the fun that I was in the midst of having.
Now that I’m back in the SoCal heat, and in the thick of semester-startup, and no longer having any fun whatsoever, I can stop and do that reflecting. So, a few thoughts about London:
London is a good place to turn 36. We spent my birthday at the Tate Modern, and then walked up Fleet Street, through the Strand, to Somerset House, where I made my second visit in four days to the Courtauld Institute Gallery (thanks for the recommendation, Corey!). The best things I saw were the mesmerizing Bill Viola pieces, Five Angels for the Millennium, and Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Though very different, each has a way of just slightly disrupting one’s perceptions — the discrepancies between the scene and its ostensible reflection in the mirror behind; the uncertainty about the direction of the surface of the water — while simultaneously introducing a profound sense of melancholy. Very appropriate for the birthday at which one has arguably hit the statistical midpoint of one’s life.
London is also a good place to have one last night of being 35. We went to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Brand, which was either pedestrian or monumental, depending. (We found the performances breathtaking, but the play itself painful. But that’s what you get for going to see Ibsen.)
It’s good, in a sense, to be back in California — good to be back at work, good to be back online. London is, however, a difficult place to leave, particularly when you’re leaving someone behind there.