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back from the parallel universe...

Doctor Who news! Billie Piper's coming back!

...and once again we venture into a modern art museum

Today I went to the Tate Modern. I have to walk past it every time I go to class, and it was high time I went in. So I gathered a friend and we did.

This modern art experience was better than my last one in Dublin. I actually enjoyed part of it and didn't feel scared by the hipsters.

Here's the big news at the Tate Modern: Shibboleth. Yes, it's a crack in the floor. It symbolizes...stuff. And other stuff.


Overall I enjoyed myself. There were not enough Miros and too many Jackson Pollacks, an out-of-place Monet, one pretty little Calder, some awesome Lichtensteins, and the requisite smattering of Picassos and Francis Bacons. There was also an exhibit of the USSR in Construction magazine that reminded me of one of my friends at home.


Then there was lots of weird shit like the big square painted gray. But overall we had fun and felt cultured.

thanksgiving! yay!

Thanksgiving was a rousing success. Everyone even liked the pumpkin pie (all these British people were verrrry dubious about the whole idea--remarkably so). There aren't many pictures of any quality, but here are the highlights:

When making a pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin, it is helpful to
have a blender or some other such food smushing device. Since
I did not have such a device, I smushed by hand.
Here is the smushing in action.

And here is the bird. Beautiful, no?

And then my camera ran out of batteries. Anyway, Thanksgiving was great fun. Also cooking for 13 people was fun. Really. Except during the last 10 minutes of cooking time when they all seemed to be standing in front of the stove I needed to use.

Made me a bit homesick though--I'm only here for another 5-6 weeks! Crazy!

...and all is right with the world.

LOOK!!!!

The local market came through for me. Isn't it beautiful? Of course, I've never made a pumpkin pie from, um, non-canned pumpkin, so this will be all sorts of interesting. But I have a pumpkin! A huge one! Thanksgiving might just work after all.

One more picture, just before the ritual sacrifice begins...

disaster looms

There is something fundamentally wrong with this country I'm in. I cannot acquire pumpkin (of the fresh or canned variety) for love or money.

How in the blazes am I supposed to do Thanksgiving without pumpkin?!?!

If anyone knows of a can of pumpkin within a twenty mile radius of London, please let me know. I'm going to go to the local market tomorrow to try to find fresh pumpkin, or if that fails someone has suggested just any sort of squash--I know I've seen butternut around here. Though I may just make apple pie instead...

Good grief, no wonder the empire collapsed. No pumpkin...

The Tate

Too much more of this culture stuff and I might just explode.

Today's adventure was the Tate Britain, mostly to see the exhibit on Sir John Everett Millais, one of my favorite painters and co-founder/co-creator of one of my favorite genres/styles/groups of painters, the Pre-Raphaelites. You may remember when I stood on him at St. Paul's Cathedral.

(NB. funny story. here I am in England and I wouldn't have known about this exhibit--on one of my favorite painters--if it weren't for my mother. in Montana. boy, I'm observant. thanks, Mom!)

After some adventures getting there--mostly it was just a bit farther than I thought--we did the official "Tate Britain in a Hurry" tour, which literally took five minutes and let my co-museumers leave in time to get back to their class. Then I went to the Millais exhibit, which had all of his masterpieces, including these:

Isabella

Mariana

Orders of Release

Basically I was happy wherever I turned and wherever I looked.

Then I went to the Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite rooms, where I saw some of my favorite paintings ever, by the likes of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, Frederic Lord Leighton, John William Waterhouse, and Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. Here are some of the highlights...

(Proserpine, by Rossetti)

(Lady of Shalott, by Waterhouse)

(St. Eulalia, also Waterhouse...one of my favorites paintings...)

I decided to call it quits after seeing all the Victorian paintings--start on a high note and end on a high note, that's my theory. That was like the best day at an art museum ever.

review: Carmen at ENO

I seem to have bad luck with actor-illness. When I went to see Spam-a-lot in New York a few years ago, that was the night Tim Curry didn't perform. (I almost cried. Until the show started, then I couldn't stop laughing.) Tonight at the English National Opera's Carmen, the lead-who-I'd-never-heard-of was out sick. I guess I'm cursed.

Not that it would have mattered here.

First of all, the show was in English. Excuse my language, but What. The Hell. Carmen was written by a Frenchman. In FRENCH. Not badly-translated English. French. Oh. My God.*

Imagine, if you will, the classic "Toreador" song in English. There, now you feel my pain. I will have nightmares for a week.

And then the director (former film director Sally Potter--her Orlando was apparently genius) did everything she possibly could to make this the worst night of opera in my young life. And boy did she succeed!

After wreaking havoc with the songs, she updated the story to modern times. Okay. I am open to new interpretations of old theater. Fine and dandy. But only if they don't...suck. (yes, my vocabulary is fine, how is yours?)

Then she decided to remind everyone that she was a filmmaker. In front of the stage area was a sheer curtain screen thing on which film was projected. Sometimes it was stuff happening offstage (Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey used this technique too, on a much smaller and more efficient television-sized scale--it helps increase the size of the theatrical space) and sometimes it was stuff happening in front of us on stage so we were watching it twice but no matter what, it was IN FRONT of the action and the singing. And then the screen was left down for basically the first half of Act I, even if there wasn't anything on it, so everything was blurry until Carmen started singing that famous song L'amour est un oiseau rebelle (or, in this production, Love is a Rebellious Bird), usually called the Habanera.

Things weren't quite so bad after that. Jose was very good. Jose's non-Carmen girl was very good. Escamillo was very shiny. If I ignored the fact that I was listening to a French opera in English, and that a lot of the staging was ridiculous and/or dull, it was quite lovely.

And the dancing. That was the show's one redeeming quality--there were some professional dancers scattered throughout and they could dance. Man oh man. I think that if the rest of the show had been done properly, the dancers would have been a distraction, but as it stands they were highlights.

I'm glad I went. Carmen's one of my favorite operas, and I wouldn't have been happy if I'd missed it. Also someone left 5 pounds in change in a ticket machine at the tube station, so my net travel costs for the evening were +2.

But seriously.

Everyone repeat after me: Carmen is a FRENCH opera. Carmen is a FRENCH opera.*


By the way, this Guardian review is a good and snarky one with which I mostly agree. Wish I'd seen it beforehand.

*edit. Apparently the English National Opera only does things in English...oops. I didn't do a lot of research before I ran off to see one of my favorite operas...

Dublin, Final Thoughts

Wednesday, traveling from Dublin back to London, kinda sucked a lot. I missed the morning ferry by 30 minutes, arriving at the docks at 9:30am, so I had to wait until the 2:30 ferry. I ended up home finally at 10:30 that night. But I made it.

And I had a great time in Dublin. Just to wrap things up, a few things I observed while there that I think worth noting:

1. Traveling with someone else would have been nice but being alone wasn't particularly detrimental to the experience. Although I should probably get better at talking to strangers if I'm going to do it often.

2. My favorite parts of Dublin were the parts not saturated by tourists. The farther west I got, towards Kilm..um...Kilmainham Gaol, the more I liked it (most tourists took the bus I think, so the space in between landmarks was "normal"); the same when I was walking south towards Shaw's birthplace, though that was more of a business district. Those areas just felt more like real cities rather than tourist brochures. So next time I go somewhere new and exciting, I'll have to budget more time for exploring the places not in the guidebook.

3. I heard more German and Spanish than I did Irish-English. Seriously, there are German tourists everywhere, in London too. That ties into point (2) above and the tourist-saturated districts of cities.

4. Irish people are either crazy or lovely. Totally nuts or sweet. Or maybe the lovely ones are just hiding it....

That's all, folks! The Dublin saga is officially over.

Dublin, day the Third

I think Tuesday might have been my favorite day, and I didn't even go to Oscar's house. Probably it was because of the sunshine.

I started my day with a long, pleasant walk to Kilmainham Gaol ("the gaol where beats the gruesome heart of Irish history, in all its defiant glory"--guidebook). It was interesting and informative and historical and all that jazz--recommended for anyone who visits Dublin.



Pleasant looking place, no?

Here's the "new" wing. I recognized it immediately when I saw it...


That's right, Kilmainham Gaol was used as the prison set in the original Italian Job (1969-with Michael Caine). Which means Noel Coward walked those steps above. Here is the only picture I can find of Coward in the jail; it is ridiculously small, I'm afraid, but you can see it's the same place.

I trod in the footsteps of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde in the same trip. Yes, my life is good.

From there, I was all set to head back to the main part of Dublin when I noticed the Irish Museum of Modern Art basically across the street. Now, I'm not much for modern art, and I had made it a point not to search out the IMMA, but, well, it was right there. And it was pretty.

So I walked up this stately path to the stately mansion and, as is usual with modern art museums, I liked the outside better than the inside.

Not to say that it wasn't worth the trip. For instance, I greatly enjoyed this statue, which is what would happen if our St. Paul Peanuts statues had been made by someone on acid:

There was some sort of A/V special exhibit that I walked through, very confused. One, um, "piece" (?) I actually liked and took a picture of even though I don't think I was supposed to:


The best part of this exhibit, though, was the final room. Imagine, if you will:

A dark room. Projected on the wall is an image of a dark-haired woman of average proportions, naked, lying either in a glass coffin or one of those weird tanning machines. Across the room from this image is a bench. On this bench sit three live human beings, women, just sitting, and watching. Watching this image, which does not change or move. One coughs, one adjusts her purse, and all three just sit there watching, entranced.

I stayed long enough to verify that the image was indeed a still one, then I got out before their crazy began to rub off. It's not like the pictures was spectacular in any way, and it wasn't doing anything. And they weren't looking at it in the way people normally sit and look at art in museums--they weren't looking, they were watching. Very creepy.

The other special exhibit I walked through contained the sketches of some famous artist I'd never heard of and didn't really care to acquaint myself with, once I'd gotten a look at his art. This exhibit was noteworthy only in the unintentional humor it provided me. See, this museum is housed in an actual house (mansion/estate/big place), which was once functional with bedrooms and such. And fireplaces.

Nowadays these fireplaces are empty and sealed off, and sitting in each one is a fire extinguisher.

Ok, now isn't that funny? If it hadn't been for the fact that this was a special exhibit devoted to this one specific dude, I would have thought it was intentional and artistic. But no. So one of my favorite artistic pieces in the IMMA was not actually art.

Or maybe I'm just easily amused.

But wait. There's more. I know, I've been giving a lot of space to a museum I didn't particularly like. But seriously.



These signs were posted on the walkway up to one of the entrances. Now, all the art pieces outside had little plaques next to them saying what they were, but I couldn't find one here. This leads me to believe that these are in fact warning signs telling us to beware of the local wildlife. Never can tell what those squirrels will do...

Okay, having exhausted every possible source of amusement at the IMMA, I headed back into central Dublin. I spent a lot of time wandering around Temple Bar, a neighborhood which appears to exist solely for the purpose of sucking money out of unsuspecting tourists' wallets. There were three shops selling (mostly identical) Indian clothing/thingamabobs, and lots of overpriced bars, and a rather fantastic music store specializing in traditional Irish music.

My final stop before dinner was the Dublin Writer's Museum. I did enjoy it because I'm a nerd that way, but it was overpriced and not designed as well as one might have liked. Lots of dense text to read + an audio tour. So you'd walk up to a display, listen to 5 minutes of someone talking about the subject, then spend 10 minutes reading about the subject. Mostly I just looked at the cool stuff, like the programs for the original performances of some of Oscar's plays. :)

Then dinner and back to the hostel. A good day.

Dublin, day the Second

It was gloomy and rainy and misty and gray on Monday. My first stop--after a goodly walk--was the birthplace of George Bernard Shaw. I love Dublin.

Unfortunately the museum closes in October. Oh well. From there I went to Iv...Ivi...hold on a sec...Iveagh Gardens, there we go. I was the only person there, because it was all gray and stuff, but it was really pretty. Very Secret Garden-esque.




I expected Mary and Dickon to pop up any minute.

From there I went...back...to...Oscar's house. Hey, it was on the way to the National Gallery! Well, kind of. Okay, I'm a nerd and I made it be on the way. Anyway, across the street from his house, in Merrion Park, is this statue which features prominently on postcards and touristy brochures. I don't actually like it much. Oscar has a strange sneer on his face. And seriously, he would never sit on a rock.


Then to the National Gallery of Ireland, which was spectacular. (I'm going to run out of adjectives soon...) Their highlight piece is the famous Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ...


...but I preferred the section on Dutch painters I didn't recognize and couldn't pronounce. There was a Breughel the Younger and a famous Vermeer...


...but aside from that I didn't really know any of them. I also really liked the collection of Jack Butler Yeats (William the poet's brother), who is apparently "Ireland's most important 20th century artist." I cannot for the life of me find a picture of my favorite of his paintings, of a sad and lonely clown, but here is one vaguely similar:


Anyway, I spent many hours at the Gallery before heading off for lunch. I highly recommend it to anyone who visits Dublin.

The other museum I wanted to go to on Monday was closed for some reason. The National Museum of Ireland--Natural History, was described thusly by my guidebook: "Scarcely changed since 1857, this terrifically antiquated place unashamedly eschews the 21st century with its dusty dinosaur-era displays and authentic Victorian atmosphere." And it was CLOSED!! The first time in years I've been excited about a natural history museum, and it was closed, with big banners apologizing for the closed-ness but giving no explanation. Grrr....

To drown my sorrows I went to a street market and bought a beautiful book about Oscar Wilde. George's Street Arcade, as the market is called, was lovely and cute, if slightly overpriced. There's a priceless bookstall that sells old postcards and the usual assortment of used books, and an "old books" bookstore in which I spent at least an hour. The Oscar Wilde shelf was small but impressive and included a book by my current professor of 1890s British Literature. I should have bought it--it's going for $90 at amazon and I could have made a profit. Instead I bought this book...


...which isn't worth nearly as much but is much prettier. Oh well. It's not like I was buying it to resell anyway.

Oh yes, and on the way to George's Street, I walked through St. Stephen's Green. I only got one picture, which isn't very good, but here y'go.


It kind of reminded me of Boston Commons, except smaller and without the Make Way for Ducklings statue. But pleasant. A pleasant little park.

That night I went to the Abbey Theatre, which is world-famous for those of you who've never heard of it. They were doing a production of J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, which was originally produced at the Abbey, in 1907 ,and led to riots. The version I saw was "rewritten" and "modern." It worked mostly, except for some Dublin-specific jokes I didn't understand (Irish health care? what?) and some directing decisions that led to having the main male character in a pink fuzzy tracksuit. Also I had a few issues with the accents at the beginning, but I got used to it. All in all, a lovely evening at the theatre.

And that was Day 2. I feel like I didn't do as much Monday, but I recall being exhausted as I drifted off to sleep surrounded once again by the sounds of Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, CCR, and...Billy Joel. Crazy Spaniards.

Dublin, day the First

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the most important building in Dublin:

Oscar Wilde's childhood home. Yes, it was the first place I went Sunday morning. Here are some more pictures, to make sure you get the full glory of the place:



Isn't it beautiful? Oscar wasn't born here, but he moved here within his first year and stayed for the remainder of his childhood--until he went to Trinity College, Dublin, if memory serves. Speaking of which...

Trinity was my second stop, for entirely non-Oscar-related reasons. That's where my tour began. I took a "historical walking tour" of Dublin that was actually fantastic and managed to give me an idea for my history senior project. The guide spoke a lot about Trinity College (created for very exact political/religious reasons) and then we moved on. On the way out, after showing us where Jonathan Swift (I think) lived, he sort of waved at this building and said, "and Oscar Wilde, that writer, lived in rooms behind that building when he was here." (that writer! hmph!) Anyway, here's the building in question. And that will be the last Oscar topic for the day.



We walked along a lovely touristy street (Dame, I think it was called) and stopped for some Parliamentary history at the former Parliament-turned-Bank of Ireland which I appear to have neglected to photograph. From there we went up to Dublin Castle.

Learned lots more about Irish history and the various "troubles" as they are apparently called. I'm sure anyone who had a strong grasp of Irish history would have been bored senseless, but as a semi-ignorant American I was enthralled. Here is where the first man was shot in the 1916 Rebellion:


From here the tour went through Christ Church Cathedral (I took this picture a few days later, you can tell by the blue sky):

Lovely.

Oh, I liked this bit. Here is an office complex owned by the city:

It is sitting on top of--crushing, actually, and obliterating with its underground parking garage--a Viking village. The Vikings got here a long time ago and plundered up and down and around Ireland, using the Dublin area as a winter camp/port. A few years after archaeologists discovered the remains of the Viking complex here (in the 70s, I think), the city built their complex, insuring that no further investigation could be done. Apparently there's a bit of Viking stuff buried behind the building and not under it that might still be salvageable, but nobody's dug it up yet and there isn't very much. Go city!

In contrast to this, we have, literally across the street, the Casey house:

The Casey family refuses to move out because if they do the city will be allowed to take the house and tear it down, but as long as their family remains there it's safe. Go Caseys!

So that was pretty much the tour.

I then went back to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, a beautiful bible manuscript from the 8th century. Supposedly, according to rumor, they turn one page of this book per day. Anyway, it's absolutely gorgeous. No photos allowed, obviously, but here are some I gleaned from the net:


More here.

My favorite part of this museum/part of Trinity, though, was this, the Long Room (again not my picture):

Oh. My. Goodness. I almost didn't leave. There was an exhibit while I was there, set up along the middle, called "Writing Irish History" which "brings together all surviving original volumes of the Annals of Four Masters" who were monks or something from the 17th century. I enjoyed that exhibit almost more than I enjoyed the Book of Kells, but most of all I loved being in that room. I mean, look at it. All those books! And they're old! And they're beautiful! Ahhhh!

My day had one more stop, the Chester Beatty Library. Actually a museum, it sits behind Dublin Castle and was founded by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, an American who made gobs of money in mining and then spent it all on buying half the artifacts of the known world. He had so many he was even able to donate them to other museums--there were definitely some paintings in the National Gallery which came from him, but that's a story for tomorrow. Unfortunately, the first floor was closed when I was there, but the second floor, which was devoted solely to world religions, was worth the visit. They had an amazing and glittery Koran collection, as well as the oldest surviving Bible manuscripts.

I'm pretty sure that's all I did on Sunday. Wandered around a bit, getting a feel for the city, but after the Chester Beatty I went back to the hostel, read Ender's Game, and went to sleep with Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin playing loudly from somewhere close by. And Creedence Clearwater Revival. I didn't know Spaniards even knew about CCR.

One final picture, of the garden behind Dublin Castle and in front of the Chester Beatty:

Dublin, Introduction

I'm back!

And Dublin was amazing. Seriously. Much of my blogging on the subject will probably sound like it was sponsored by the Dublin Tourist Board. I'm going to break it up into a couple posts, some of which may not occur until tomorrow. But there will be pictures, I promise you.

I left London at the crack of dawn on Saturday. The train ride was kind of disconcerting: when I fell asleep outside of London it was bright and sunny. When I woke up outside of Crewe it was overcast and gloomy. I wouldn't see the sun again for three days....

I was on the big, slow ferry on the way over, a smooth trip that took over 3 hours so it was after dark when I arrived. I took a bus to the city center, sharing the upper deck with a frightening Welsh rugby team that kept swearing loudly and crudely and then apologizing to me.

So then there I was, alone in an unknown city, not knowing where exactly the bus had just dropped me, the sun long gone and surrounded by Welshmen. What was I to do?

I pulled out a map, had someone show me where on that map I was located, and walked up to the youth hostel. I know, that story could have had a much more entertaining ending, but, oh well. I didn't get mugged my first night in Dublin. Sorry.

Here is the youth hostel, a few days later in the light (the far right, with the white bay windows):


It was nice, actually. Lots of loud Spaniards and old people--and by old, we're talking blue hair. So I felt relatively safe. Tho you never can tell with old people.

I wandered around O'Connell a bit after dropping off my bag, but basically that was my first night. Thrilling, no? Oh, you just wait until tomorrow....

and we're off!

Ok, I have my passport and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card to keep me entertained on the train and a few changes of clothes. I'm set! See y'all on the other side of the Emerald Isle!

good times

So I went to my first theater (theatre?) in London yesterday--Glengarry Glen Ross at the Apollo, written by David Mamet and starring Jonathan Pryce and some guy I've never heard of (Aiden Gillen) who was apparently in The Wire for three years.

I don't feel quite worthy of reviewing it. It was just that good. From the moment the curtain went up and Jonathan Pryce was talking to the end, it was an exhilarating ride. The second act was absolutely perfect, with Gillen putting on a tour-de-force performance that took my breath away. The only thing that bothered me was one actor whose American accent was shaky, but he was a small character so it didn't matter much. Everything else was absolutely perfect.*

So I'm in a good mood now.

Also yesterday, while waiting for the show to start, I went to Murder One, a bookstore devoted entirely to crime, and then accidentally discovered Chinatown, which is basically across the street from the Apollo. It smelled delicious.

By the way, if anyone would like to subsidize my going to Aida and/or Carmen at the England National Opera, let me know. I take cash or check. I'll probably just have to choose one of them, which brings up problems because Carmen is one of my favorite operas and Verdi is one of my favorite opera-writer-people.



*I realize this is a short and unexciting review. I apologize. It's always easier to write reviews of plays I don't like...