Birthday update

Well, it's been ages, but the good news is I've been up to a lot, and I've decided to take a little time out on my birthday to give you the story. Since there's a lot to cover, though, and in the interest of brevity, let's see how it goes in bullet-point-form:

• The Women's Library -- I'd been dying to check out the Women's Library, which is, indeed a specialty library, but which also runs special exhibitions drawing from their own archives as well as other institutions in the UK. The current exhibit, up until April, is "Iron Ladies: Women in Thatcher's Britain." When Margaret Thatcher was running things my lifetime goal was to become Jem from Jem and the Holograms, so I came into the exhibition with a knowledge-base of just about zero. Turns out that wasn't a bad way to go, as it felt a bit like a scavenger hunt going from display case to framed poster, with displays containing everything from Thatcher's old speech notes, to placards of the Union Jack which say "Think British before you buy," to Flashdance-era workout clothes. The most striking part of the exhibition had to be the display on "peace camps" such as Greenham Common, set up by women to protest Britain's storing nuclear arms near their homes. I'd never heard of this movement, but it lasted over years, finally resulting (ten years after the missiles had returned to the States) in the land where these women camped, originally belonging to the air base at Greenham, being returned to the public. Just one example, but overall I was amazed at what a politically charged time the '80s were! I've always thought of it as the "Me Decade, Part Two" -- but compared to today's general apathy those people were damned hippies!
• Art stuff -- Yeah, lame heading, but whatever. I checked out a couple of the Paul Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery, given this year by David H. Solkin, a professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art. This year's theme was "The Epic of the Common Life," exploring the connection between developments in genre painting and the changing society of 19th-century Britain. I love to hear artists or art historians speak about a work of art. Their gaze is so refined; they know exactly how to tease every detail and nuance out of an image so that it seems almost to grow and brighten as we look. Solkin's lectures covered a massive amount of ground at only an hour each (there were five altogether) -- I went in feeling a bit skeptical (I'm a modern art girl, or have been) but in the end found myself won over by the active, often nearly chaotic scenes of life depicted by David Wilkie, Thomas Heaphy, and later Benjamin Robert Haydon. I also had a chance to finally check out the Courtauld Institute itself, or more properly its gallery, which consists of several small rooms in the Somerset House on the Strand filled with art by some of the most important painters in the last two hundred years -- Manet, Gaugin, Cezanne... I also appreciate the space, which still has most of the fixings of a grand Victorian affair -- a nice change of atmosphere from the sterility of most gallery and museum spaces.
• Fabric -- Because I can't go to museums all the time -- it's against the law when you're young -- I've had a couple outings to Fabric, London's most successful club, in the East Central area of the city close to St. Paul's Cathedral. The club can fit around 2000 people and regularly does; those who like to plan ahead buy their tickets online, so as to avoid a two-hour wait (even at three AM). Inside it's a pretty nice place -- three rooms, which feature DJ's spinning anything from drum n' bass to reggae, and naturally, every variation of house music known to humans. Club life is pricey, so it will be awhile before I go again, but if you want to dance it's definitely worth the effort to head there and do it up right.
• Brighton -- All of the sudden I realized I'd spent nearly eight weeks in London, while one of the main advantages to living in London is its proximity to everywhere! With this in mind, I went for a day trip with my flatmate M. to Brighton, a classic old beach resort town only a couple of hours for London. Having gone to a similarly Victorian-styled, slightly cheesy beach town each summer for my entire life, I was thoroughly charmed by the large wooden pier filled with lights and "American hot dogs" and hazardous carnival rides. The beach is full of pebbles, which seems to be standard for British beaches (I've seen one other, in Gosport over the summer, and it was the same), but if you throw on some flip-flops and wait until July or August, when the water will actually be warm, you're ready to rock! Snarkiness aside, it is your typical adorable beach town, and I do plan on enacting the above scenario for at least a week this summer. Send you a postcard!
• Eyes, Lies and Illusions -- In mid-November I went to the Goethe-Institut in South Kensington to see a couple of films in a series called Media Magica, by Werner Nekes, a German filmmaker and massive collector of cards, books, and toys that demonstrate the effects of optical illusions. He has an exhibition of some of his collection -- he owns more than 20,000 pieces -- on at the Hayward Gallery at the South Bank Centre, which is great fun, particularly for anyone with a fascination for looking through microscopes or telescopes or stereoscopes or plain old peepholes. The films themselves were a bit disappointing; they were billed as "experimental," but in fact were structured more like a good PBS miniseries (like that one with Patrick Stewart and the history of cartography -- has anyone seen that? It's pretty old... anyway...). So, entertaining, but not the night of crazy German collage films that my friend and I had in mind.
• Jill Scott -- Do y'all know her? If you're from Philly, at least, you'd better. I checked her out a few weeks ago at the Brixton Academy venue, which resembles an old opera house, except a bit rattier than it used to be as it now hosts rock and hip-hop concerts. Now, girlfriend is an amazing singer on her albums, but honestly, they are a pale, pale version of what she can actually do in person. What a performer! She's obviously one of those women who's known her whole life that she'd end up onstage; she's so comfortable there, and she makes the audience feel like her best-est friends. At several points she had the whole audience singing back-up! When she came back for her encore, she sang a song called "Rassool," about kids she knew in North Philly who were killed in the drug business. I'd never heard the song before, but it was powerful -- even to her; she began to cry and had to stop singing for a couple of minutes to calm herself. When she came back, she began to say the names of the people she knew who'd died selling drugs, and asked the audience to do the same. After a moment's hesitation, the room filled up with voices shouting or whispering the names of people that had been lost. Pretty much the whole place was in tears. So, yeah, if you get the chance, go and see her.
• By the Bog of Cats -- Last item for today (I'm going to turn this into a two-parter): I finally got out to see some West End theater! It's a new play, called By the Bog of Cats and set in Ireland, starring Holly Hunter as a desperately lonely but fiery woman whose lover, about to remarry, wants her to leave the bog where they live. It's a brief but intense play; kind of a reworking of the Medea myth. Holly Hunter was a perfect choice for the role -- she is gorgeous, hard as steel, and terrifying. The actress who played her daughter annoyed the hell out of me, but I have a thing against child actors (I think they're all brats), so I won't say definitively that she was crap. Overall a beautiful, haunting play, which made me realize how much I miss the theater. New Year's Resolution: Go to the theater twice a month. I think I can manage that...

Well, that's all I'll do for now... but stay tuned, because in the past two weekends I've been to Switzerland and Amsterdam, with adventures galore! Also, coming up, a big karaoke birthday party in a pub, and a giant tour of London's current exhibitions before I head back to the States for the holidays. Thanks again for being patient!