No, but seriously. You know how there are these wide expanses of New Jersey (maybe you don't...) that actually sit in a complete cultural vacuum? Places where empty plastic bags and shopping carts blow across the asphalt sea between soulless, big box merchants? Yeah. Welcome to London. But enough about that, let's climb a tree.
Of course, London's overall drabness, multiplied by the cheesy patina of the Olympic Games, doesn't necessarily mean that Hyde Park isn't itself quite nice. In fact, I'm not sure the human brain is equipped to handle the rush of dopamine that comes with drinking a Pimm's cup surrounded by so much greenery.
My long walk through the park takes me to the Serpentine Gallery, where Yoko Ono has a very infamous contemporary exhibit. Which, simply put, is silly, but silly in ways that art is quite comfortable being silly (highly conceptual, apparently effortless) and that I would expect people to be quite comfortable with art being silly. In other words, it's a bit surprising that you can still stand in a roomful of confused museum patrons facing three mounts of dirt where there ought to be something beautiful, one of them leaning to the left to mumble to his wife, "This is art?" Atavistic, anachronistic, pick whatever word you want to use to describe it.
The question that kept bubbling to mind, over and over again as I made my way up and down one London street after another, is why even bother coming to this city? There isn't much to see, there's not much to do, the music scene doesn't have much to offer and the cuisine claims authoritative mediocrity. Why even bother coming to this smelly, culturally irrelevant, hugely overpriced city? The answer probably lies somewhere at the heart of a similar question: why travel at all?
Obviously this is something that sticks in my side a great deal as I wander from country to country. Why bother, I keep asking myself? I'm not going to lie, I oftentimes find myself thinking that I'd much rather be at home. Granted, when I'm home I find myself thinking that I'd rather be abroad, seeking new experience and crafting clever prose to package all that exotic wonder. Home can be stifling, home can be consuming, gnawing: boring. There is an excess of stability, of familiarity, but that same excess is exactly what makes it possible to be creative. Being at home means being surrounded by good coffee, good friends and good cheer, and it means having the time and head space to kindle the little spark of inspiration into something more. When you want to start a fire, you don't start smashing logs of wet wood together on the deck of a submarine, you crouch low and focused over a tiny ember and you let the rest of the world die away as you breath straight and even into a little flame-cradle.
So how to justify these drab streets? I'm not sure yet. I certainly can't recommend that anyone make the pilgrimage to the South Bank. Trust me, there's nothing for you here.
See, this last one is exactly what I'm complaining about: halfhearted, vaguely ethnic trinkets masquerading as art. As far as I can tell, this is basically all that London is, and the Olympic games certainly aren't making it much better.
Hungry and exhausted from a full day of walking, overpaying and complaining, I eventually succumbed to the promise of an "authentic" Mexican burrito and sat down to dinner. If nothing else, at least the light from the American-style neon decorations would give me some light to read by, and I could always drown my sorrows in bitters and relax by the Thames. As anyone could have predicted, a few minutes after ordering I was presented with a plastic-scented tortilla filled with gummy beans and an almost religiose portion of sour cream. But the person who brought my that affront to the senses, a Polish grad student named Marta, defied all expectations by being one of the most likable people I'd yet met on my trip. We'd been on good terms ever since I'd asked her whether she thought I should get the burrito or the vegetarian noodles, to which she said, "It depends on what you want. One's a big flat bread with cheese in it, the other's a whole bunch of vegetables with noodles." But after she brought my check and asked if Alex Ross (I was reading Listen to This) had ever written about Frank Zappa, I knew we were going to be more than bored waitress-bored tourist. Turns out she was working her crummy job to make some money in her post-grad idleness; her studies has focused on writing and philosophy but to her surprise there wasn't much use for her particular expertise in the outside world. "I naturally assumed that since I'd read all about them, the proletariat was going to love me." We chatted a bit about school in Poland, the cost of living in London, whether pop music could have any lasting value, and then made loose plans to meet the following day. Awesome.
Everything, in short, went better than expected.
Of course, London's overall drabness, multiplied by the cheesy patina of the Olympic Games, doesn't necessarily mean that Hyde Park isn't itself quite nice. In fact, I'm not sure the human brain is equipped to handle the rush of dopamine that comes with drinking a Pimm's cup surrounded by so much greenery.
My long walk through the park takes me to the Serpentine Gallery, where Yoko Ono has a very infamous contemporary exhibit. Which, simply put, is silly, but silly in ways that art is quite comfortable being silly (highly conceptual, apparently effortless) and that I would expect people to be quite comfortable with art being silly. In other words, it's a bit surprising that you can still stand in a roomful of confused museum patrons facing three mounts of dirt where there ought to be something beautiful, one of them leaning to the left to mumble to his wife, "This is art?" Atavistic, anachronistic, pick whatever word you want to use to describe it.
The question that kept bubbling to mind, over and over again as I made my way up and down one London street after another, is why even bother coming to this city? There isn't much to see, there's not much to do, the music scene doesn't have much to offer and the cuisine claims authoritative mediocrity. Why even bother coming to this smelly, culturally irrelevant, hugely overpriced city? The answer probably lies somewhere at the heart of a similar question: why travel at all?
Obviously this is something that sticks in my side a great deal as I wander from country to country. Why bother, I keep asking myself? I'm not going to lie, I oftentimes find myself thinking that I'd much rather be at home. Granted, when I'm home I find myself thinking that I'd rather be abroad, seeking new experience and crafting clever prose to package all that exotic wonder. Home can be stifling, home can be consuming, gnawing: boring. There is an excess of stability, of familiarity, but that same excess is exactly what makes it possible to be creative. Being at home means being surrounded by good coffee, good friends and good cheer, and it means having the time and head space to kindle the little spark of inspiration into something more. When you want to start a fire, you don't start smashing logs of wet wood together on the deck of a submarine, you crouch low and focused over a tiny ember and you let the rest of the world die away as you breath straight and even into a little flame-cradle.
So how to justify these drab streets? I'm not sure yet. I certainly can't recommend that anyone make the pilgrimage to the South Bank. Trust me, there's nothing for you here.
See, this last one is exactly what I'm complaining about: halfhearted, vaguely ethnic trinkets masquerading as art. As far as I can tell, this is basically all that London is, and the Olympic games certainly aren't making it much better.
Hungry and exhausted from a full day of walking, overpaying and complaining, I eventually succumbed to the promise of an "authentic" Mexican burrito and sat down to dinner. If nothing else, at least the light from the American-style neon decorations would give me some light to read by, and I could always drown my sorrows in bitters and relax by the Thames. As anyone could have predicted, a few minutes after ordering I was presented with a plastic-scented tortilla filled with gummy beans and an almost religiose portion of sour cream. But the person who brought my that affront to the senses, a Polish grad student named Marta, defied all expectations by being one of the most likable people I'd yet met on my trip. We'd been on good terms ever since I'd asked her whether she thought I should get the burrito or the vegetarian noodles, to which she said, "It depends on what you want. One's a big flat bread with cheese in it, the other's a whole bunch of vegetables with noodles." But after she brought my check and asked if Alex Ross (I was reading Listen to This) had ever written about Frank Zappa, I knew we were going to be more than bored waitress-bored tourist. Turns out she was working her crummy job to make some money in her post-grad idleness; her studies has focused on writing and philosophy but to her surprise there wasn't much use for her particular expertise in the outside world. "I naturally assumed that since I'd read all about them, the proletariat was going to love me." We chatted a bit about school in Poland, the cost of living in London, whether pop music could have any lasting value, and then made loose plans to meet the following day. Awesome.
Everything, in short, went better than expected.
No comments:
Post a Comment