Wednesday + beyond

Week Ten- blogged
Originally uploaded by chlorinebeach

I got up earlyish on wednesday in order to get to the Garden Museum by the time it opened at 10:30. I have been getting up early and going to bed early quite a lot recently, and I must say I really like it- it makes me feel so much more productive.

The Garden Museum was kind of a bust. I had seen into what I thought was it on the bus yesterday on my way to the Tate, but when I got inside it appeared that what I had been seeing was actually somebody else's private garden. The museum had free entry for students, though, so Sarah + I sat in the (tiny) garden, she with her book and I with my inks.

We walked home along the Thames and up through Covent Garden, and I stopped into the Royal Opera House to see if I could get tickets for the Gerome Robbins show being done, and decided to do SRO day of, but bought tickets for the showing of Swan Lake that evening.

I had an appointment for a free facial at Lush, so I went, and it was really quite nice. The store was relatively empty, so the employees were dancing around and kept coming over to chat with me in a very sincere way, which added to the whole experience. The girl who gave me my massage was from Barbados, so it was interesting to hear a different kind of outsider's perspective on the whole culture.

Tom decided that he wanted to go with me to Swan Lake, so at the appointed time we made the 10 minute jaunt to the Royal Opera house and took our positions in the SRO boxes, people watching the wealthier classes below us.

I haven't been to a full-on, old-school ballet in quite a long time, so it was fun to watch all of the spectacle of costumes and scenery and crazy dancing whizzing around. Part of the fun was watching the drunk woman try not to fall out of the chair in front of me, and Tom had a really great time, this being his first ballet.

Other highlights this week include:

-Violin/Accordion concert at SBC
-the Garden Museum
-Climbing out onto the roof
-Waiting For Godot with Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Simon Callow + Ronald Pickup
-Getting my Computer back + running

Tate Britain: Altermodern

Tate Britain: Altermodern
Originally uploaded by Tim Bradshaw

Today I got on a bus and went down to the Tate to see their "Altermodern" exhibition. After wandering around past parliament due to a diversion suffered by my bus, I bought my ticket (£4.50 for students, not too bad), got my free brochure, + proceeded to wander around.

I found that many of the artists had their base, or a lot of their work, in performance- which solidified the feeling of wanting to spend my life on some kind of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Some of the work I felt relatively neutral about, and some of the work I didn't really get, and I was interested to find that I hardly hated anything at all [I have the tendency to get very angry at art].

I won't bother describing any of the art, but I'll send you a link to an article on Charles Avery (and a link to a photo of the room where his work was displayed), because I enjoyed his work in particular.

But the whole, whole point of this post is that I feel like going to this exhibit has, in some way, helped me with my 'journey.' I still don't know what I want to do with my life (who does?), but I know a few things-

-Sculpture is more interesting than drawing
-Making clothing IS sculpting
-My life will somehow be connected with the theater.

Will I build avante-garde costumes for the hat circus? Will I be a good personal assistant to a lawyer/celebrity/accountant? Will I spend my days in a coffee shop and my nights building a tiny replica of Binghamton in my basement? Only time will tell, but it seems that these people have managed to do it (and some of them not that well, or interestingly), so there's no reason I can't.

If I had known all of this when I started undergrad, I could have created my own program of study and given myself an education in sculpture/costume design. But I didn't, and that's okay too.

Sorry, Kids

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't posted in so long- I got back from Break on Saturday, and I've been spending most of the time that I've been around the computer trying to upload pictures to Flickr, + I'm not even really done yet, but here are some links to what I do have:

Glasgow
Edinburgh
Train Between Edinburgh + York
York
Fountains Abbey

York and Fountains Abbey are still in the process of being updated (should be done by tonight, so check back then), and after that I just have the Liverpool pictures to put up. The Fountain's Abbey is the one that is probably the most dense with pictures, so don't feel like you have to look at all of them (or any of them, really)

Another reason I haven't updated recently is that my computer has been seriously having a seizure, and I honestly thought it was completely gone at the beginning of this week. Fortunately I have been able to fix some of it, but I have an appointment at the Apple store to get it fixed on Saturday. My worst fear is that they have to wipe my entire hard drive to save the computer from whatever it has, and while that wouldn't be too horrifying as I backed up my computer before I left for London back in January, it's still not great- I'll lose any pictures I haven't posted to the internet, all of the music that I've bought since January, and (worst of all) the journal that I've been keeping since then. I did put my journal on my little 1 GB jump drive, but I can't really save the rest of it- the drive is too small. So keep your fingers crossed for me, okay?

Notes from the Road: Glasgow edition

Hello all! Thought you wouldn't hear from me, did you? Wrong!

The bus ride up to Glagow was good. Long, tedious, and a smelley guy, but I guess that's how the bus is- I read half of a book Sarah lent me (the one I meant to bring, 'A Room With A View', I accidentally left in my backpack, which was below the bus). I messed up our hostel booking, but they were really nice about it and gave us some better rooms that were avaliable for the same price as we would have paid for the ones I made the reservation for.

Glasgow itself was very beautiful. Many of the buildings are from the Victorain era (which is when it was a boom town), so it's interesting to think that that is what London would have been more like if it hadn't been bombed all apart during the war. All of the people who live there are very friendly too! I didn't feel any ill will toward me as a tourist at any point, and everybody was very friendly and polite.

We went on a self-guided walking tour, saw a few museums, looked at the school, and walked up the side of the necropolis near the cathedral, which had GREAT views. I took about 100 pictures, and don't worry- they'll be up on Flickr as soon as I get home.

2009.2.18- Where you going?

2009.2.18- Dogs in the Park
Originally uploaded by chlorinebeach

So, here it is, the promised update-

1. Glasgow- Because Laura had is recommended to her, + Jill knows somebody who lives there.
2. Edinburgh- Because Sarah has a friend who is studying there.
3.York- Because it means that we get to visit Fountain's Abbey! (Be jealous, be mad jealous.)
4.Liverpool- Because Sarah loves the Beatles.

Now, I realize that this itinerary makes it look like I didn't want to go any of these places, but that is not the case! I really wanted to go around the UK during my break, because I feel like I really want to experience where we are and rushing all around Europe is not my idea of a good time. But! I didn't have my own independent ideas of where I wanted to go, so I let other people make the decisions for me, and I am very happy with them. Oh, and I am mad stoked to go to the Abbey. Srsly, landscape/architecture <3.
___

(The photo is some dogs we saw tree a squirrel while out with classes. It has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, it's just that my camera is still without memory card)

Yikes

2009.2.20
Originally uploaded by chlorinebeach

Yes, here it is people, the entry you've all been waiting for- "Oh my gosh, I have a million things I want to do and my semester is already half over."

Many of the things I want to do are time specific- seeing the tulips in Green park, visiting the Royal Mews, or seeing the Museum of Tea and Coffee are all things I cannot do until mid-March, at earliest, because they're not open/available until then.

Only a few of the things I want to do haven't been gotten to because I've been lame- many many art exhibits, a few specific pubs/restaurants, and several movies.

However, the bulk of things I want to do haven't been gotten to because I only just realized I want to do them- the History of Hats exhibit at the V + A, and about a thousand plays. There are not enough days in the week for the number of plays I want to see. I think I've only just started looking into the theatre because I've moved past the getting comfortable phase, vaguely into a bored phase, and now into a wanting to do things phase. Which is all part of the process, I'm sure.

Overall I feel alright, and I am somewhat anxious to get back home to familiar, less expensive territory, but I feel that very familiar New York feeling of gearing up to rush around just about everywhere.

Soon: a new memory card for my camera, more pictures, and a preview of my Spring Break (which starts on Friday, aaack!)

Hey y'all

2009.2.16- Outside Canterbury Cathedral
Originally uploaded by chlorinebeach

Long time, no blog- I am exceedingly sorry! My family visited this week, and I was so busy running around having fun with them that I was barely near the computer at all.

Here's a short list of things I have done:

-Jazz/Bellowhead concert at the Southbank Centre, Silent Rave in Leicester Square
-Visit to Canterbury + the Cathedral
-Delicious French food at "La Poule Aux Pot" with the family
-Saw "Taming of the Shrew"
-Bought some pretty headscarves at Liberty of London
-Multiple sleepovers at the flat my family stayed in
-Visit to Warwick castle, broke my camera
-Saw a great production of "The Tempest"
-Visit to Avon, went to Anne Hathaway's house + Holy Trinity where Will is buried.

So I've been busy!

My camera broke when I was sitting at a picnic table- it slipped out of my pocket + hit the ground. I didn't think anything of it, and went on with my life, but the next time I tried to turn it on it made a scary grinding noise + wouldn't cooperate. Needless to say I was very upset, and thought I tried not to let it spoil my day, but I'm still very disappointed.
Fortuitously, my parents were in town this week, so they let me have the old family camera (which is kind of on it's way out anyway), + took mine home to see if it can be repaired.

I'm a little disappointed, because though I had wanted a new camera for some time, I was hoping to buy a nice camera- probably a few steps down from an SLR. There's a lot of research involved in buying a new one, which I just really don't have time to do right now. AND, I had been planning on buying a new computer (a desktop) this summer- I don't have the extra money for a camera.

But I have my parent's camera, + I have learned my lesson- keep the camera in a case.