halfway through the week in London
[this was actually written Friday]
All is well here, with jet lag pretty well over after only a day. Partly, that's because there was almost no one on the plane, so we got to spread out--each of us with her own row for stretching out on! We were an hour later taking off because of weather north of houston, and there was a fair amount of turbulence, though nothing bone-jarring, during at least the first half of the flight. However, eventually we got beyond it and landed without incident--and with all our luggage, which was a nice plus.
Yesterday, we got up a tad late (Dar had gotten up earlier and walked down to the King's Road--our flat is on Sloane Avenue--bringing us back breakfast from a superb little French bakery she found down there. Much walking around and shopping in the Leicester Square and West End area. The Leceister Square area has many Dar-friendly shops, especially in the Neal's Yard area. After dinner back at the flat, which is small but newly remodeled and quite adequate, we went out to see "The Drowsy Chaperone," a hilarious newish musical. Most entertaining!
Tomorrow, I think, is Harrod's--the shopping yesterday was along the way, not serious expeditionary work!
There's been some rain here, but only off and on, which has actually been nice as it's helped keep things delightfully cool. And a typical English rain is just a light shower to us, anyway--although there have been really bad floods in Wales, and the rain and mud are so bad at Glastonbury it's apparently getting in the way of the drugs... We took the tube to Blackfriar's today and went through St. Paul's, then crossed the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern, where we spent most of the afternoon. It was actually pretty good, and there was a great special exhibition on Dali (especially with regard to his influence on film, Bunuel, Hitchcock, and Disney [of all people!]).
Dali's "The Invisible Man" reminded me of Zach's short story "Birthing Pains"...
The Tate Modern had one of Kandinsky's "Balancement" on which I based my tapestry, which was cool to see. Like Dali's "Persistence of Memory," though (and the MOna Lisa [before restoration, at least]), the actual canvas was darker and smaller (and hence overall less impressive) than I expected from the posters and prints I've seen.
I amused myself at a couple of points, one being where I saw a black and white canvas from a distance that I said to myself looked "Picasso-esque" and then I got up close and it was " Goat's Skull, BOttle, and Candle" by... Picasso.
And then there was a room of Rothko canvases, where the canvases where smaller than the ones in the Chapel and mostly reds/dark oranges and charcoal grays rather than purple and black. Apparently, the set in the Tate Modern was commissioned for a restaurant but even Rothko realized they weren't ideally suited for that sort of environment....
After seeing Dali and his influence on the cinema, I realized I should probably reread certain relevant sections of Deleuze... We found a cool little bookstore just off of King's Road--John Sandoe Ltd. I found a little piece called "translating Music" by Richard Pevear, the first of a series called "The Cahier Series." It's a couple of Pushkin tales with the author's translations of them, along with a piece called "The TRanslator's Voice--A Talk" that seems to have potential.
Also got several small Everyman's Library Pocket Poets for the existentialism and postmodernism course next year--"Beat Poets", "Jazz Poems", and "War Poems." Also bought Machado de Assis' "EPitaph of a Small WInner," which is based on an interesting conceit--that of a dead man writing his memoirs. I think I could write like Assis...
One of the things that impressed me about the Tate Modern was their bookstore since it had not only many art books, but many works on literary theory/criticism and philosophy. Someone else must be interested in a unified approach to the humanities, I suppose... While there, I got Barthes' "Mythologies" and two books in The Routledge Critical Thinkers series that I've enjoyed before--these two were on Said and de Beauvoir, so also useful for the course. Finally, got a book on Dali and two titles from the "Movements on Modern Art" series, on Cubism and Postmodernism."
All is well here, with jet lag pretty well over after only a day. Partly, that's because there was almost no one on the plane, so we got to spread out--each of us with her own row for stretching out on! We were an hour later taking off because of weather north of houston, and there was a fair amount of turbulence, though nothing bone-jarring, during at least the first half of the flight. However, eventually we got beyond it and landed without incident--and with all our luggage, which was a nice plus.
Yesterday, we got up a tad late (Dar had gotten up earlier and walked down to the King's Road--our flat is on Sloane Avenue--bringing us back breakfast from a superb little French bakery she found down there. Much walking around and shopping in the Leicester Square and West End area. The Leceister Square area has many Dar-friendly shops, especially in the Neal's Yard area. After dinner back at the flat, which is small but newly remodeled and quite adequate, we went out to see "The Drowsy Chaperone," a hilarious newish musical. Most entertaining!
Tomorrow, I think, is Harrod's--the shopping yesterday was along the way, not serious expeditionary work!
There's been some rain here, but only off and on, which has actually been nice as it's helped keep things delightfully cool. And a typical English rain is just a light shower to us, anyway--although there have been really bad floods in Wales, and the rain and mud are so bad at Glastonbury it's apparently getting in the way of the drugs... We took the tube to Blackfriar's today and went through St. Paul's, then crossed the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern, where we spent most of the afternoon. It was actually pretty good, and there was a great special exhibition on Dali (especially with regard to his influence on film, Bunuel, Hitchcock, and Disney [of all people!]).
Dali's "The Invisible Man" reminded me of Zach's short story "Birthing Pains"...
The Tate Modern had one of Kandinsky's "Balancement" on which I based my tapestry, which was cool to see. Like Dali's "Persistence of Memory," though (and the MOna Lisa [before restoration, at least]), the actual canvas was darker and smaller (and hence overall less impressive) than I expected from the posters and prints I've seen.
I amused myself at a couple of points, one being where I saw a black and white canvas from a distance that I said to myself looked "Picasso-esque" and then I got up close and it was " Goat's Skull, BOttle, and Candle" by... Picasso.
And then there was a room of Rothko canvases, where the canvases where smaller than the ones in the Chapel and mostly reds/dark oranges and charcoal grays rather than purple and black. Apparently, the set in the Tate Modern was commissioned for a restaurant but even Rothko realized they weren't ideally suited for that sort of environment....
After seeing Dali and his influence on the cinema, I realized I should probably reread certain relevant sections of Deleuze... We found a cool little bookstore just off of King's Road--John Sandoe Ltd. I found a little piece called "translating Music" by Richard Pevear, the first of a series called "The Cahier Series." It's a couple of Pushkin tales with the author's translations of them, along with a piece called "The TRanslator's Voice--A Talk" that seems to have potential.
Also got several small Everyman's Library Pocket Poets for the existentialism and postmodernism course next year--"Beat Poets", "Jazz Poems", and "War Poems." Also bought Machado de Assis' "EPitaph of a Small WInner," which is based on an interesting conceit--that of a dead man writing his memoirs. I think I could write like Assis...
One of the things that impressed me about the Tate Modern was their bookstore since it had not only many art books, but many works on literary theory/criticism and philosophy. Someone else must be interested in a unified approach to the humanities, I suppose... While there, I got Barthes' "Mythologies" and two books in The Routledge Critical Thinkers series that I've enjoyed before--these two were on Said and de Beauvoir, so also useful for the course. Finally, got a book on Dali and two titles from the "Movements on Modern Art" series, on Cubism and Postmodernism."