Day 128, 14 May: London: Life Imitating Art

Anne of Cleves, London, Day 128. London: Life Imitating Art

This entry, for the sake of convenience in its length, is divided by location/site. Essentially, 'Life imitating art' refers to the blurred line between life and art which is evident in London: how the Globe is a globe (B), how a canvas is a canvas that is art in itself (C), how a spy from books can be displayed next to spies from history all to explain the past (D), how the actor lives like his character Billy Elliot (E), and how a midnight dinner is...oh, that one was by accident.

A. NEAR TOWER BRIDGE 

The morning wind chilled me for the first mile, then my legs (and long leg hair) warmed me up and the run over Tower Bridge and through the streets of London was thrilling.

      Today we headed off half ten (that is ten thirty) and walked around inside the Tower of London. I was afraid my parents would want to do the beefeater’s tour, but they found it more interesting (like me) just to wander around, tower to tower and then see the Crown Jewels. Seeing things a second time wasn’t boring but refreshing: I perceived more of the progression of the crowns through the centuries, the more ornate look and the certain eras more prosper than others, not chronologically either (my mom pointed this out). We left through the side door near Traitor’s Gate and headed over the Tower Bridge.

Tower Bridge At Noon

      I traced back my running route from the morning—which I remembered back from Day 78 when Katya and I were trying to (and did) find the Globe. We ate next to a Golden Hinde replica at the Old Thameside Inn, a Nicholson’s (quality chain) bar--then onto Shakespeare's Globe!

B. SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE

      The tour we took involved seeing a Mexican theatre company in the midst of a dress rehearsal, and watching Spanish Shakespeare is even more hard to follow than normal Shakespeare, let me tell you. Only body gestures helped so much. Once back outside, the tour guide said everything she would’ve said inside the theatre. I was struck by the claim of the guide that Shakespeare’s famous line ‘All the world’s a stage’ could manifest in the very design of the theatre itself:  I mean, the Globe is named the ‘Globe’, it’s spherical, there’s a partial ceiling backdrop of a dark sky, the huge opening on the top lets in natural light, and Hellish characters enter from trapdoors from below the stage while Heavenly characters float down to the stage by mechanized platform (hence the Greek phrase ‘deus ex machina’: god  from the machine).

C. THE TATE MODERN      

This was one of the collage-like
art pieces: fist + radio tower signals.

Next stop alongside the Thames: The TATE Modern museum. I have to confess that I felt anger at seeing a crumpled soda can wrapped in tissue and placed in a glass display. That said, it was only the object art that I hated to see. The paintings and portraits and collage-like designs rang as art—the bending of genres of the past, i.e. seeing the classic figure of a nude corrupted by anxious lines to illustrate the insecure nature of the body image in the time it was painted. My favourite piece was actually a simple blank canvas with cigarette burn marks through it—yes, it seems like this would be classified with the anyone-can-do-it type like the soda can, but the description and my own reflection got me to see what line of thought this art provokes: the canvas itself is the art, not a representation of reality or non-reality upon it. Plus, in this case, nature’s and man’s effects on the piece are blurred, so how natural—how artificial must art be to be…art?

D. IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

      Dad and Mom left to nap while I had enough energy to go on to see this: the Imperial War Museum. War machines filled the space of the vast interior, planes appeared in mid-flight thanks to cables on the ceiling. I spotted even swastikas on the tails of two planes. On the ground were tanks, jeeps, missiles, and industrial machine guns. On the second level were also one-man submarines, used unsuccessfully by the Germans in WWII. Over by the glass cases, I shuddered at the sight of the title of one pamphlet, ‘A Last Appeal to Reason’, once I saw the author: ‘by Adolf Hitler’. In another area was matted parchment from a sea log post-shipwreck.

      But there was a suppressed reason why I had come to this museum, and before calling quits, I see a sign. 'The Secret War Exhibit'.Right before me was what looked like an original copy of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball. James Bond. I had found what I had hoped I would see. A Spy Exhibit.

Yes, those are bullet marks.

      After the first display, on spy fiction, I entered into real spy history, encountering such things as the Enigma decoder and a spy pen used to debug…bugs (tracker devices) for MI5 and MI6. I took in the sight of ciphers of all kinds and had to limit myself to only a few seconds per thing. (You may start to wonder why I was so fascinated: well, it all started in grammar school and it crystallized one Halloween when I dressed up in an all-black costume with a utility belt that doubled in my imagination as storage for secret gadgets. I had my own name for my costume: Secret Spencer. I was a spy. And after reading all of the Ian Fleming’s James Bond books in one swoop two summers ago, you could say that the interest never left me.)

E. VICTORIA PALACE THEATRE

      In a thirty-minute half-run, half-Tube journey I was back at the Anne of Cleves flat. Soon Dad, Mom, and I were off to the Victoria Palace Theatre. On asking where our seats were, the attendant pointed out out to the street. Then we realized he was referring to the door just outside that led up to the Grand Circle. We were high up, the seats on a steep incline. The place was beautiful.

      The lights soon dimmed and the spotlight flashed on. A guy walked to the centre of the stage and announced that this was the first night of their newest (their 30^th) Billy Elliot, Harrison Dowzell. He had spent a year preparing for this night and the announcer thanked his family for letting them have Harrison with them for so many rehearsals and hours upon hours of training. As I would learn from watching this play and hearing Mom say it, this was ‘life imitating art’. Billy Elliot the character learns, as Harrison did, how to dance and then is sent away from family to train more rigorously, as Harrison does essentially.

      There was a scene. A scene that reminded me why I write, sing, love the arts. In a moment when Billy’s future looks as if it will vanish like a wisp of smoke, he cries out from his bed. The guitar reeves up, the orchestra on fire. Billy also reeves up, dance shoes on, his feet on fire. Once downstage, he takes his fury out in the dancing, the flinging, the fierce, the fantastic level of emotion all controlled in the curve of his step, of his move, of another leap or controlled fall to the floor. The passion is why art is powerful.

F. AND BACK      

After the performance, we headed home to streets empty of opened restaurants. We cooked back at the flat a midnight meal and called it a night. And a day well spent.

                                                

Tower Bridge At Midnight