So now that I got that out of my system let's get down to brass tacks... how much for the pint?
Before I left Russia Nellman said to me: "London will drain your bank account faster than any other city on Earth." Guess what, he was right. I've had to stop myself from computing the cost of things. I mean 2 quid for a cup of joe, sounds great, right? Wrong that's 4 bucks! I mean I don't think it's that expensive at a baseball game even. I pulled 200 pounds out when I arrived and realized I was grabbing 400 hundred dollars, oh well, that's how it goes. Maybe I'll win the lottery when I get home. Ha!
My first full day in London, and Erez's birthday was a long affair. We started the morning by walking to Westminster Abbey which is about five blocks away, or somewhere there about. What can I say about a house of the dead? I've never seen so much art in service of the dead. Well that's not entirely true too, but I swear the British are like the Egyptians in that they glorify their pharohs in one house rather than building a separate one for each and every single one of them. This is probably good as the whole of London would be nothing but one big graveyard otherwise. Westminster Abbey is an amazing place. It really is in that it houses world famous writers, poets, in the poet's corner and monarchs that have defined not only English history, which ultimately affected most of the world if we're to believe in the old addage: "the sun never sets on the British empire." I was a little disappointed to find out that photography was verboten in the abbey. I would've very much liked to have taken pictures of some of the graves and monuments. I remember pausing for a long while when I reached the coffin of Elizabeth and then Henry the 5th. These figures are not only the stuff of history and myth in the western world, but they're also a kind of literary icon considering that Shakespeare wrote two of the most stirring speeches in the English language when he penned Henry the 5th (St. Crispen's Day and Once More Unto the Breach) but that he wrote in Elizabethan England. It's a wonderful place, and frustrating as well. Every nook and cranny of the abbey is filled with a stone to someone or other. There are modern figures like Laurence Olivier and Winston Churchill and of course obscure generals and what not that earned their rights in the afterlife by dying gallantly in battle. Yet, there's this put on air about the whole thing, a kind of over romanticism about the building and it's contents which are naturally invaluable to the character and spirit of England, but somehow over wrought and now thought of as invaluable. I think most monuments fall into this category in one way or another. The austerity of Arlington isn't that far off from this place, but maybe the open space creates a kind of quietness about it, that the containment of the abbey, filled with tourists, can't quite create, or mute their over zealous and rude footsteps on the heads of so many defining personages from history. It was a mixed bag and I'm not sure why, but I thought back to a book that Boobar had with him on Benjamin and Monuments. I have a feeling I'll be looking to my dear friend Walter Benjamin for advice on this one. I did find one thing slightly curious, it was a stone in one of the chapels near Elizabeth's grave and it was a curious stone that had a crescent moon on it that looked more like something you'd see on top of a mosque than an icon in a Christian church. I asked a priest about it who flashed me a smile and said hello outside the chapel and he didn't know why it was there. Eventually, after walking out of the Abbey i asked one of the robed guides and he couldn't remember the exact significance of the stone, so he called his manager over, a man named "Eddy" and he too couldn't quite remember why that stone was there. He postulated that it might be part of the family crest of whoever was buried in that chapel. After some more discussion I proposed that this person's family might've been involved in the crusades and possibly had a stake in the Jerusalem of the 12th/13th century thereby bringing that bit of iconography into his or her family crest, which he thought was possible. He was a nice fellow and I enjoyed talking to him. I went on to ask him if any of the bodies had been removed or bones moved and he said they're all there, except for one, a high protectorate of England who was exumed and then disposed off following the Reformation and that whole debacle with Bloody Mary. He had fallen out of favor, postmortem, and had been forcibly removed from his honored resting place.
After the Abbey we walked along to see Big Ben, Parliament, then along the Embankment where I shot a few pictures of the monument to those that fought and died during the Battle of London and the air raids. The words "Never has so much been owed to so few by so many" is etched into the stone of the memorial from a speech delivered by Winston Churchill. It's a rather beautiful memorial. Pictures are to come.
From there it was off to Picadilly and then Trafalgar as we contemplated buying tickets for Fiddler on the Roof. We've been toying with this idea for a couple days now and I'm just not in the mood to sit for a musical, I much rather be walking around. Yeah, great walking I'm doing thick with insomnia now. Poor Erez will be waking up in like an hour to head out to Aberdene in Scotland on business. He's had the last couple days off and has been wandering around London with me, but alas, it's back to the grind for all of us at some point, he's coming back tomorrow night... but man... it's going to be a long day for him.
Back to the day though... it was off to Covent Garden, I saw St. Paul's church, a lovely small church on the edge of the market with a beautiful garden wet from the rain. The trees here are majestic and seem to be as old or older than the castles. No telling how many survived the fires and German bombs that fell on this city during the war years, but nonetheless, they are truly regal. From Covent we found our way back to a small corner restaurant where we dined on Fish and chips (you have to once, right?) and then went back to Trafalgar which is being prepared for the Tour de France kick off in London. Not sure about that to be quite honest, but hey whatever floats their boats. You know Tour de France, France, I know I know, the British have always laid a claim on the French throne, but aren't we past that yet?
The national gallery was free and open late so we hopped in queue and found ourselves facia tu facia with Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks. WoW. What a marvelous work of art that shows off his three masterful skills: contraposto, sfumato and chiaroscuro. All three of these are at work in this painting. He has done small things that are completely out of character for other works of this period and earlier, the Christ child is not being held by Mary, quite the contrary, the baby next to mary praying makes you think is the Christ, but on the contrary that's John the Baptist praying to the Christ child which is closer to the Foreground and is being attended too, or meditated upon by an angel. To think that human hands found a way to glorify myth with such passion and force of conviction as to create a work of art that takes into account all of Da Vinci's amazing talents for physiology, science, graphic art etc is to really be impressed by the power of faith as the corner stone of art through most of human history.
There are some wonderful Titian's in the collection including the very dark Allegory of Prudence that features 2 three headed figures one composed of the face of 3 men representing past present and future and one of a wolf lion and dog representing prudence in an allegorical fashion of those that may consume the imprudent. A little message is included for the obtuse that might miss this powerful visual symbol in latin on the canvas: "learning from yesterday, today acts prudently, lest by misaction he spoil tomorrow."
Above and beyond the museum has a wonderful collection of modern art that includes Seurat and Monet, Van Gogh's sunflowers are on loan from the Van Gogh museum in the Netherlands and I was happy to see them again.
From the national gallery we went back to wandering around a bit and finally returned to Westminster to shop for groceries. We cooked dinner at home and drank beer and wine. I fell ill at this point, something didn't quite agree with me. I'm still not sure what it was, either old mayo that I had with my chips or maybe the tap water, who knows. I tried to rally and we went back to Covent Garden to make merry for E's 29th, but I had a devil of a time and started to sweat and go through the rigamarole of fending off a foreign intruder. I held it together long enough to make it to a Brazilian club called Guanabara that had fantastic music, a thin crowd that night, but some great dancers. A couple in particular, really caught my eye and I watched them for a long time. He was obviously the stronger dancer of the two, she wasn't half bad either, but you could tell he was definitely in charge and would make corrections to her moves when they were not in line with his intentions. It was the bosa nova mate, and it was good. He would push and pull her and she had a radiant smile on her face. I grew nostalgic for our somewhat drunken dance sessions at Achtung Baby, that cavernous cellar in the back of some 19th century building that we couldn't quite stay away from. It was far less graceful than what I saw that night, but it was just as passionate and at times unforgettable in the sheer bliss of the moment as we all of us, madmen and women, writers and all, glided across the dance floor.
Well I'm going to call this a night for updating the blog. I'll tell you about the Tate and the southbank tomorrrow or some other time, It's four in the morning, Erez is up, and I'm going to hit the sack... once he leaves, so maybe I'll post some scribbles from my notebook before I go though... adieu...
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