In which our hero kicks Western Civilization butt...
I've not read d.'s travelogues today (heck, I've not caught up on his 15-post set last week) so apologies if there's overlap.
Yesterday we went for round two at the British Museum, including the Michelangelo drawings special exhibit. M. was apparently the only of his contemporaries who saved thousands of drawings and letters, which were in turn saved by others (I suppose because it wasn't politically dangerous to do so). We got to see a wide selection-- from draft drawings for parts of the Sistine Chapel, to a little bit of doodled porn that d. noticed. (Sorry- I should've called it by its museum term, 'baudy art'.)
I was touched by a letter from him to his father, when he was in his 40s or so, asking his father to please stop saying nasty things about him in public, because it hurt him a lot. Also, the guy seemed like a stubborn SOB, repeatedly refusing to sell his works to powerful people who he didn't agree with politically.
Other stuff at the museum I liked: the Enlightenment Collection (centralized from kings' libraries). They showed nicely how British natural philosophy and history developed-- and they gave me a new appreciation for the Classical education that I didn't really get. I also saw the stolen/recovered bits of the Parthanon known as the Elgin Marbles. I found a plaque on the controversies involving them; it made it clear that in the museum's view, Elgin saved them from distruction and decay. They made a good argument, with a sample that Elgin made a cast of and left the original behind, and the original which is now worn down to a nubbin. And a lot of the Parthanon was apparently destroyed in a munitions explosion in the 1700s. But- there isn't a compelling argument why the British still have the rights to them; I expect Greece has the means to preserve them properly now. Anyway, this isn't a battle I'm getting involved with; it did sort of bookend my museum visit with a distinct feeling of imperial entitlement.
In the afternoon, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral for another evensong concert. d. described this well, so I won't repeat him. The music was wonderful, the setting was... tremendously huge. My brain had a hard time with a church this large. One thing I noticed was a crane or cherry-picker, on one of the balconies near the ceiling. Knowing how large it was, combined with tiny it looked from the ground, made my head hurt.
For dinner we got take-away chicken pot pies and hoofed over to The Eye, a 135-meter-tall ferris-wheel with enclosed capsules. I'm looking forward to looking at the photos properly- I promise I'll post the good ones when I get home!
That pretty much covered Saturday, which was a satisfying day.
But today was better.
I saw Dan out the door bright and early, dawdled a bit over breakfast, and headed out the door to catch Quaker Meeting. I went to the Meeting in the Quaker Centre near Euston Station; it was smaller than I expected, about 40 people. Roughly 1/3 were visitors. I arrived at the same time as a woman visiting from Adailade, Australia, and afterward I chatted with her, and with another visitor, from Seattle.
Toward the end of Meeting I sort of fought the urge to stand and speak (I mean, what kind of pushy guy am I, being a visitor and all?!) but ultimately I did speak; about going to St. Paul's cathedral yesterday, and while asthetically I found the music and space to be beautiful, it didn't feel like God was particularly present for me. My thought was that even though God speaks through the quietest humblest surroundings, it seems an error to decide that God doesn't also speak in beautiful spaces, and to make that error diminishes my acknowledgment of the divine.
Afterward, the Meeting fed us sandwiches and tea, which nicely solved my question of lunch.
Next, I walked over to King's Cross station (oo, yet another huge airplane-hanger-like train-station! London's certainly got its share), and I was going to head down to Tower Bridge when I remembered that before I went, I wanted to check out the Library's Rare Books collection, which includes the Magna Carta (!). So, back I went, convinced the rare books would be closed because it was Sunday.
So: no Magna Carta, it's off for cleaning or something. But in its place, they had an original Mozart folio. And.
Also: the compositional draft version of Handel's Messiah; the same for Brittan's War Requium (huh, his writing's neater than Mozart's); pages of Leonardo Da Vinci's hand-written notebook; a first printing of Galileo's first book; a pair of Gutenburg Bibles (one velum, one parchment); a stunningly beautiful illuminated Arabic text called the Miscellany of Iskandar Sultan, some beautifully illuminated New Testament folios; the Codex Sinaticus, the oldest most complete copy of the New Testament (whose description includes the wonderful line: "In antiquity and textual importance it is equal of the Codex Vaticans in Rome and generally superior to the Codex Alexandrinus (exhibited to the right)."
I mean. Really.
I could've stayed here and stared for the rest of the afternoon. There was an actual printed Indulgence. Did you know that Gutenberg started printing Indulgences the same year as his first Bibles, in 1455? I wrote down this text from the description: "Indulgentia were sold by the church to raise revenue and gave the purchaser forgiveness from sins. For the church, printing meant an end to labour-intensive and costly procedure as thousands of identical letters of indulgence could be required for a single town. This maximized profits, in this case used to defend Cyprus against a Turkish invasion."
See, now that is using technology to your advantage.
One final quote, from the text describing the Arabic Miscellany I mentioned above. The page of the Miscellany was a description and several illustrations of Euclidian geometry. "Written in gold in the margins are verses praising the manuscript's patron: 'With the pen of justice, fortune has enscribed he signs of grace and bounty on your days' page, in both text and marginalia.'"
I like that.
Instead of going back to the hotel and blissing out for the rest of the day, I had to go overdo it and take in another evensong at St. Paul's. This time, I got there 30 minutes early and asked whether I could sit with the people behind the Choirs. They had space there, so I went through and sat in an obscenely ornate pew, right next to the seat reserved for the Lord Mayor (who, thankfully, didn't come).The service was different because of Palm Sunday; there were fewer chants, there were three hymns we were all expected to sing (none which I liked much), and there was a sermon. Which was surprisingly good. I wish I 'd written down some of it. The topic was that being a Christian is not supposed to be easy. The Bible showed how the disciples had a hard time of it; and modern-day Christians are supposed to do whatever it takes to bring themselves closer to God. I was curious so I googled the Reverend. Simon Raynolds has a few sermons on the church's website; they're written in the same way as he talked. Yes, I wish I wrote down more of today's, it was interesting.
What else to say about the service? Hm. Some mundane but fun things; they had a neat magic trick; one of the pew-seats like mine across the way didn't have a back, so people could appear and disappear from 'backstage' when necessary.
Also it is totally amazing when unamplified voices (choir-boys no less) stop singing, and it takes well over three seconds for the note to die away. That's a big space.
Oh, and out-of-order; when I first got out of the Underground station for St. Paul's, their bells were ringing full-blast, which in itself was quite the cacouphony from half a block away.
The rest of my day was remarkably more mundane. It was raining when I left St. Paul's; I caught a bus to Tower Bridge, and walked across (a bit cold!) and decided against shelling out 8 pounds for a tour; I walked around a bit on the south bank until it started raining hard again, when I took another bus back across the river. In the process I saw people queuing to be audience for Coronation Street. :)
In quick succession, I got kicked out of Waterstone's bookstore and Virgin Music, because they both closed as I got there. Had I realized that, I would've gone for a final concert at St. Paul's. But that's OK.
I caught dinner in Chinatown and came back to the hotel.
And now, it's time to sleep; I'll pack in the morning and hope to be back home by dinnertime tomorrow.
I miss my bed. And, now, my sweetie again.
Yesterday we went for round two at the British Museum, including the Michelangelo drawings special exhibit. M. was apparently the only of his contemporaries who saved thousands of drawings and letters, which were in turn saved by others (I suppose because it wasn't politically dangerous to do so). We got to see a wide selection-- from draft drawings for parts of the Sistine Chapel, to a little bit of doodled porn that d. noticed. (Sorry- I should've called it by its museum term, 'baudy art'.)
I was touched by a letter from him to his father, when he was in his 40s or so, asking his father to please stop saying nasty things about him in public, because it hurt him a lot. Also, the guy seemed like a stubborn SOB, repeatedly refusing to sell his works to powerful people who he didn't agree with politically.
Other stuff at the museum I liked: the Enlightenment Collection (centralized from kings' libraries). They showed nicely how British natural philosophy and history developed-- and they gave me a new appreciation for the Classical education that I didn't really get. I also saw the stolen/recovered bits of the Parthanon known as the Elgin Marbles. I found a plaque on the controversies involving them; it made it clear that in the museum's view, Elgin saved them from distruction and decay. They made a good argument, with a sample that Elgin made a cast of and left the original behind, and the original which is now worn down to a nubbin. And a lot of the Parthanon was apparently destroyed in a munitions explosion in the 1700s. But- there isn't a compelling argument why the British still have the rights to them; I expect Greece has the means to preserve them properly now. Anyway, this isn't a battle I'm getting involved with; it did sort of bookend my museum visit with a distinct feeling of imperial entitlement.
In the afternoon, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral for another evensong concert. d. described this well, so I won't repeat him. The music was wonderful, the setting was... tremendously huge. My brain had a hard time with a church this large. One thing I noticed was a crane or cherry-picker, on one of the balconies near the ceiling. Knowing how large it was, combined with tiny it looked from the ground, made my head hurt.
For dinner we got take-away chicken pot pies and hoofed over to The Eye, a 135-meter-tall ferris-wheel with enclosed capsules. I'm looking forward to looking at the photos properly- I promise I'll post the good ones when I get home!
That pretty much covered Saturday, which was a satisfying day.
But today was better.
I saw Dan out the door bright and early, dawdled a bit over breakfast, and headed out the door to catch Quaker Meeting. I went to the Meeting in the Quaker Centre near Euston Station; it was smaller than I expected, about 40 people. Roughly 1/3 were visitors. I arrived at the same time as a woman visiting from Adailade, Australia, and afterward I chatted with her, and with another visitor, from Seattle.
Toward the end of Meeting I sort of fought the urge to stand and speak (I mean, what kind of pushy guy am I, being a visitor and all?!) but ultimately I did speak; about going to St. Paul's cathedral yesterday, and while asthetically I found the music and space to be beautiful, it didn't feel like God was particularly present for me. My thought was that even though God speaks through the quietest humblest surroundings, it seems an error to decide that God doesn't also speak in beautiful spaces, and to make that error diminishes my acknowledgment of the divine.
Afterward, the Meeting fed us sandwiches and tea, which nicely solved my question of lunch.
Next, I walked over to King's Cross station (oo, yet another huge airplane-hanger-like train-station! London's certainly got its share), and I was going to head down to Tower Bridge when I remembered that before I went, I wanted to check out the Library's Rare Books collection, which includes the Magna Carta (!). So, back I went, convinced the rare books would be closed because it was Sunday.
So: no Magna Carta, it's off for cleaning or something. But in its place, they had an original Mozart folio. And.
Also: the compositional draft version of Handel's Messiah; the same for Brittan's War Requium (huh, his writing's neater than Mozart's); pages of Leonardo Da Vinci's hand-written notebook; a first printing of Galileo's first book; a pair of Gutenburg Bibles (one velum, one parchment); a stunningly beautiful illuminated Arabic text called the Miscellany of Iskandar Sultan, some beautifully illuminated New Testament folios; the Codex Sinaticus, the oldest most complete copy of the New Testament (whose description includes the wonderful line: "In antiquity and textual importance it is equal of the Codex Vaticans in Rome and generally superior to the Codex Alexandrinus (exhibited to the right)."
I mean. Really.
I could've stayed here and stared for the rest of the afternoon. There was an actual printed Indulgence. Did you know that Gutenberg started printing Indulgences the same year as his first Bibles, in 1455? I wrote down this text from the description: "Indulgentia were sold by the church to raise revenue and gave the purchaser forgiveness from sins. For the church, printing meant an end to labour-intensive and costly procedure as thousands of identical letters of indulgence could be required for a single town. This maximized profits, in this case used to defend Cyprus against a Turkish invasion."
See, now that is using technology to your advantage.
One final quote, from the text describing the Arabic Miscellany I mentioned above. The page of the Miscellany was a description and several illustrations of Euclidian geometry. "Written in gold in the margins are verses praising the manuscript's patron: 'With the pen of justice, fortune has enscribed he signs of grace and bounty on your days' page, in both text and marginalia.'"
I like that.
Instead of going back to the hotel and blissing out for the rest of the day, I had to go overdo it and take in another evensong at St. Paul's. This time, I got there 30 minutes early and asked whether I could sit with the people behind the Choirs. They had space there, so I went through and sat in an obscenely ornate pew, right next to the seat reserved for the Lord Mayor (who, thankfully, didn't come).The service was different because of Palm Sunday; there were fewer chants, there were three hymns we were all expected to sing (none which I liked much), and there was a sermon. Which was surprisingly good. I wish I 'd written down some of it. The topic was that being a Christian is not supposed to be easy. The Bible showed how the disciples had a hard time of it; and modern-day Christians are supposed to do whatever it takes to bring themselves closer to God. I was curious so I googled the Reverend. Simon Raynolds has a few sermons on the church's website; they're written in the same way as he talked. Yes, I wish I wrote down more of today's, it was interesting.
What else to say about the service? Hm. Some mundane but fun things; they had a neat magic trick; one of the pew-seats like mine across the way didn't have a back, so people could appear and disappear from 'backstage' when necessary.
Also it is totally amazing when unamplified voices (choir-boys no less) stop singing, and it takes well over three seconds for the note to die away. That's a big space.
Oh, and out-of-order; when I first got out of the Underground station for St. Paul's, their bells were ringing full-blast, which in itself was quite the cacouphony from half a block away.
The rest of my day was remarkably more mundane. It was raining when I left St. Paul's; I caught a bus to Tower Bridge, and walked across (a bit cold!) and decided against shelling out 8 pounds for a tour; I walked around a bit on the south bank until it started raining hard again, when I took another bus back across the river. In the process I saw people queuing to be audience for Coronation Street. :)
In quick succession, I got kicked out of Waterstone's bookstore and Virgin Music, because they both closed as I got there. Had I realized that, I would've gone for a final concert at St. Paul's. But that's OK.
I caught dinner in Chinatown and came back to the hotel.
And now, it's time to sleep; I'll pack in the morning and hope to be back home by dinnertime tomorrow.
I miss my bed. And, now, my sweetie again.