9-10-10 0630 Baker Street Internet. Well, this 'cafe'lost its server yesterday, but this morning, rumbly traffic, flickering blue minllights and allit was backup in business. Its efficiently set up, but has never been very used, perhaps emblematic ofthe times..most people dont actually do much writing on the internet, and most now have handheld gadgets. Although the number of people reading papers on the Tube still greatly outweighs the number hunching over electronic thumb pianos. At least here, Nintendo is making an effort to seduce people into its £130 gaming board with adult items like whodunit games and even books...seems like a kind of oldish smallish screen to me, but who knows that will work in the market.
today is Friday, and off to Norwich and a visit to Caroline. Wednesday we used the reopened Tube to head down to Mansion House early...fluffy white clouds, blue skies, and a beautiful walk across Millenium Footbridge opposite Tate Modern, with the tide streaming wildly up the Thames, gravelly banklets along the walls disappearing under the lick of each new running wave. They apparently conduct London walks to do some mudlarking, and there are serious diggers who come out for very low tides. I love the feel of the polish flint pebbles i've found, but trying to make a London necklace used up about one $7 drill per pebble, so i stopped trying. Perhaps setting in silver....
The Tate Modern, of course, is home to the Turbine Hall, which I feel would be a perfect venue for a very very large set of three mobiles. Ideally each would be found objects, like cars and other fossil fuel consuming objects circling on one, objects from the natural resource world on another, and objects relating to war in another...but i'm unsure about the strength of carbon fibers...and the cost of course. Far cheaper to do three mobiles of translucent panels and use projected images to create the identities. Also probably safer..people might have problems walking under a suspended car, although the main exhibit in the Tate Britain are two fighter planes...one suspended nose a few inches off the floor...and I think that there are bearings that are pretty safe that I could use. In the meantime, just now, the Turbine Hall is a huge space, too large to echo, with an incline that tempts running. And a small apparently chinese british child was doing a lot of that..His shrieks of joy loud in the pretty quiet place.
And how was the art? Hmm. Not as noteworthy as the Hall, from my perspective.
We had lunch in the cafe...very good, but notup tothe english pot pie we had in the V&A cafeteria...the highpoint of London eating so far for me. Its large enough so we pretty much share most meals.
It looked like rain when we split up, and i moved on by Tate to Tate boat to the Tate Britain. Its much smaller than i remember, the steps and all. Hours spent there with Paul years ago, he probably because he had to for his study program, I because Susie had loved to go there, and i had gone with, beginning back in the mid fifties. I h ad a mission...to renew viewing of Sargents portraits, having just come from the seascape show. They are still exceptionally wonderfully luminous...the people he portrayed must have fallen in love with the image. Except, of course, for Madame X...I have to learn more about the whole story, but without knowing that, just looking at the sharpened profile, and the anatomically correct but visually difficult image of her right arm skewed around to rest on the edge of the table, and at t he conventions of the times, makes you wonder how someone who seemed to be as careful about his career could have worked through several studies and submitted the final very unconventional image.
Hanging nose down in the central gallery of the Tate Britain is a Jaguar Jet. In the next room, grounded into the floor nose down is a Harrier jet. It give me hope for a flying junk mobile.
It was raining toads and frogs, so back down to the cafe for tea, and then a walk to the bus on Vauxhall and a ride home. We stayed in Weds night; I made a delicious chicken and mushrooms.
Yesterday the internet wasnt working.
We tubed to Holland Park, andemerged into another fluffy cloud morning. Walked down the high street to Clarendon and turned right. More small shops, and eating places with tables and chairs on t he walk, which were never there in the day. There is a small greengrocers on Clarendon, but its not the place sala used to shop at. And the three story single block of flats we lived in is torn down, replaced by a plain brick apartment block. The corner of Ladbroke Road still feels the same, though. The Triumph Roadster that we bought for £300 on the Kensington High Street just down from the Registory hall where we were married 44 years ago needed a lot of work, most of it done right there on the corner.
Up Holland Park to Notting Hill, and some time in the now permanent places selling high end tschotskies from far away places. Sala got a cast brass paint pot from South Asia. Then it was time to take the tube to Archway,and find abus up Highgate Hill to Southgrove and a visit with Jenner, my junior prom date years ago in Minneapolis. Actually, known since Sidney Pratt School in Prospect Park..so when it comes right down to it, one of my older friends.
I won't wax lyrically on and on about how a friendship thats managed to endure over t his amount time feels...you already know. But its a subject that is worth exploring in more detail, to try to discover what the actual structure of the feeling might be. Not at all the same as intimacy..Sala's teacher has said that as you become closer to a person, the intimacy must become more structured, and I think thats right...Jenner and I dont have a structured intimacy. And part of it is sharing...memories and impressions...because we spend a lot of time doing that when we meet...very infrequently. Shes kept up with other friends from that era as well..and at least with Marj says she has moved on to the present. And then,too, Jenner has always been a kind of muse for me...definitely something to work on.
We had lunch as a threesome...her husband was working. Sala left to go shopping, and eventually i mused my way across the highstreet and past my old school. Present day pupils in the grey flannel suits that we wore as uniforms were around. The main buildings were quite recognizeable. Caning was still part of the feedback program at that time...pehaps i am glad i experienced that era , altough at th e time it was quite a shock.
And so down the hill, internetting as I went, and back to Windsor Mansions in time to go out again to see, with Sala, The Railway Children, staged in a theatre that incorporates a railway track in Waterloo Station. But more on that later, its time to get a full english breakfast and catch the train.
regards
alan
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