Three Naked Women (& and some Shakespeare)
Friday dawned, apparently, cool and crisp. I’d taken the airline earplugs and for a change, I’d had one good night’s sleep, bereft of any interruptions. Didn’t even hear the last of the Jubilee Line’s trains pass under the flat.
So I dressed in jeans, boots and nice shirt, and headed out. Picked up a couple of papers, looks like I was 100% accurate when I told my friend in NC that she was going to see a hurricane soon.
Halfway through Richard II, the lady sitting next to me asked me what I thought of the play so far. Shakespeare’s Richard II (the first in the teratology that goes R II, Henry IV part Uno, part Dos, Henry V), as it was performed, the way the lead actor played out the role, King Richard was tortured soul, and for my money, he played a tortured soul better than Hamlet. Plus there’s a wealth of material I can mine from the play’s poetry. Eloquent speeches, rendered as a perfect as can be, with the language falling trippingly from the tongue.
Overheard, after the play was done, one patron was remarking that her version of English History was much muddled by Shakespeare, “where all the right people die or get killed at the right time.”
I stopped off at the National Theatre long enough to pick up requisite “merch.” I voiced my disappointment that the single design for “Jerry Springer: the Opera” shirts was kind of lame, just a small logo over the front left pocket area. The counter help pointed out that there was a Latin inscription on the back, but no one in the shop knew what it meant.
“FORTE VULNERATUS A VIRO SUCCINTULO DUM CLODIANUM CANEM IPSE PETIT.”
N. Girlaldius Oriundus MMIII
I’ll figure it out when I’ve got faster net access, or, at least, some books handy.
Chatted with Ma Wetzel for a moment, killed off half a pint of ice cream and a sandwich, and headed back out, over to the Tate Modern.
I keep a journal, mostly online, so I can remember exactly when and where something happened. I was riding on the escalator, going up to the top floor when I saw one of the gallery’s title included some more Salvador Dali. I just headed on in. Mark Rothko, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock.
It was a couple years ago here that I learned to love Jackson Pollock. This time, it was one of those little museum blurbs:
“Space – in particular, landscape space – was an essential element of the surrealist imagination.”
– Jennifer Mundy, Inner Worlds
Landscape, space, wide-open spaces, surrealism, – I live in Texas. Look. We – Texans – are the masters of the surrealist environment. We live in one all the time.
Time and again, I’m drawn back to the erotic, bizarre, and just plain weird images that Dali did. Couldn’t figure it out until I saw blurb put it into words. Landscape. Space.
And some weirdness, too.
On the tube ride back to the flat, a guy with a suit jacket and a purple Mohawk passed me. “London’s a bit strange?” Not really. I can recall being in a bar in Texas, listening to the grandson of Hank Williams. Three guys with Mohawks were there; one was purple.
So the Surrealists make sense, finally.
Now, one of the last paintings I spent any time with was one of three of Picasso’s women. The section was supposedly nudes. I spent the most time looking at those naked Picasso women. Three naked women. One was actually a brunette, but I had to expend a little effort, sort of looking at the painting sideways, and I could see her, in all her parts. Then I started to think about work, and how I look at some clients like a Picasso painting, all bits and pieces without a lot of conventional perspective.
The Picasso paintings were about the best part. Basically, I was looking at three naked women, but you know, they were all down Picasso style. Just looking at life from different point of view.
I was going to try and get a shot of the Dali “Time” sculpture again, with Big Ben as a backdrop. Whoever arranged that installation probably had that very image in mind. But the camera’s battery died, so here another Dali animal.
“And so now to bed.”
