It’ll soon be Thanksgiving break back in Canada. That thought scares me, and has also prompted me to scour booking websites, to think about trips for the coming weekends so I don’t miss out on anything. It’s too easy to put that off.
Yesterday, we made the trek into London in the early afternoon, to see an evening showing of Mike Leigh’s play, Grief, at the National Theatre. Mike Leigh is a director with a decent-sized Wikipedia article and a few Academy Award nominations, if that gives any indication of his merit. One of Gary Oldman’s first films was a Mike Leigh one, back in the ’80s.
Before we went to the theatre, we went to the Tate Modern, a huge (and, surprisingly, plain-looking) modern art gallery across the Millennium Bridge. The place had a real large-scale, impressive feel to it on the inside, with lots of empty space for contemplation (read: wasted space; what do you need a room the size of my house to look at a few paintings?). The rooms were divided based on the time periods and the artistic movements, which helped give some focus and context.
Now, here’s the thing. I get why this is amazing:
Not that this is at the Tate; "The Raft of the Medusa" is at the Louvre
Really, I do. I tried to paint more than once, and it didn’t turn out like that. And some of the surrealist stuff we saw was really cool. Like this one of a German witches’ gathering:
Look closely
And hey, the room on dark comedy and satire was pretty funny:
But. Just because you tack up a nice little description about your piece and explain how this canvas represents human fragility or oppression or whatever, doesn’t necessarily mean that it does. That’s kind of something altogether different, isn’t it? I hate pretentious people, really I do. If you really connect to Modern Art, cool; I respect that completely. I don’t connect, but then again I don’t like sushi, and it’s totally cool if you do. But, if you go into the Tate because you want to sound like you’re better than us lowly cave dwellers who think that pictures that look like the stuff they’re representing are actually pretty good, you have sadly failed to impress me. It’s like people who can’t deal with poems that rhyme. Get over yourself.
I asked Kayla what she thought of a pair of paintings, “Adam” and “Eve,” that were solid-coloured works with single lines drawn up vertically. “What,” she asked, “that piece of shit hanging there?”
There you go. That’s not pretentious, and it’s sure more valid than some of the things I heard on that trip.
A pile of crap
Don’t get the wrong idea; I enjoyed the few hours we spent there, I just got off to a rough start. The surrealist stuff was cool, there were works by Monet and Picasso, and a really cool photo exhibits on families that look at all kinds of different definitions of “family.” After our time was spent, it was time to head to the National Theatre, just a few minutes down the southern bank of the Thames.
Too bad that it was monsoon season in London, apparently.
We’d been lucky up to that point in avoiding the rain. But not that night. It was pouring, and I didn’t even have a jacket. We made it about halfway before D. Nichol made the practical suggestion of popping into a restaurant for a pint. We waited out the rain, so that the second leg was much drier.
When we got to the theatre, it turns out that our seats were in the front row. Much better than the usual balcony seats with a post in front of your face. Grief actually had the biggest impact on me so far; the pacing was slow, focussing on a single mother, her useless older brother, and her daughter, who despises not only her, but life itself. Whereas some people found it boring, I thought it was subtle. Not a lot happened until the ending, but my attention was still held all the way through.
Meanwhile, the ending was devastating, disturbing, and unavoidable. It still gives me a bit of shudder. It also made me realize how nasty kids can be to their parents and what the other perspective looks like; I thought a lot about being 15, and even though I can’t remember ever slamming my door shut and screaming how much I hate the people who did everything for me, I still did some shitty things. We all did, I guess, but I don’t know that that makes adolescence any more bearable.
Anyway, it was the play that had the strongest hold on me, and next week we’re actually seeing Mike Leigh speak about his work. Should be cool. Made the 11 o’clock train out of Liverpool Street, and back in Harlow just shy of midnight. The days are long, and yet, at the same time, they go by so quickly.
It’s that perspective thing again. A blessing and a curse.
Tomorrow we’re heading back into London in the early morning, this time to go to the Globe Theatre – Shakespeare’s alma matter, an authentic 1997 reconstruction not far from the original site. We’re seeing Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus – when I studied the play in second-year English, I absolutely loved the medieval story about selling your soul to the devil, so I’m really excited to see a modern adaptation in a theatre that reverberates with an Elizabethan feel.
For now though, I’ve got to see if I can find a flight that’s cheap to a place I’ve never heard of, for an experience that’s unforgettable. Is that too much to ask for?
Cheers,
rb
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