Steve_Bamlett_blog

Last night ended getting lost in Elephant and Castle and this morning I awoke to the noise of the Waterloo main line below my ninth floor windows at the Travelodge tower hotel, after what was a fairly succesful negotiation of London buses with my old man’s bus pass, if not the backways of the Elephant and Castle and the South Bank Univetsity campus.

But Central London at night was a payoff worth the getting lost. A late evening walk from the Aldwych along the Strand to Trafalgar Square, as the lights began to fade across the azure  – and street ones wake up the city bustle – still has a kind of dream-like quality for me.

Some how those lights allow the domination of the Square by my return  (the second of three in the day) to the beautiful Palladian grandeur of the National Gallery. 

And then just a step beyond is the false but beautiful grandeur of Royal St. James and my goal, the Theatre Royal Haymarket, just an hour before Waiting for Godot was to start.

There was time (I checked with the friendly guys at the beautiful Farzi reztaurant next door) to have spicy vegetarian dumplings and a salmon tikka main dish.

And then to the Theatre and the coarse Baroque splendour of the the Theatre Royal interior.

And me sitting, not very grand, within it.

Of the production I will only say that it was magnificent: strong and cruel as it needs to be and played as the superlative male analytic romance it is never usually allowed to be. But that is for a separate blog, one updating my preparatory one (at this link: https://livesteven.com/2024/10/03/a-blog-stating-a-case-for-a-queer-reading-of-the-classic-play-by-samuel-beckett-waiting-for-godot-a-tragicomedy-in-two-acts-seeing-ben-whishaw-at-the-haymarket-25th-october-202/) with the fulfilments and surprises I experienced during the evening, especially with regard to Shelley’s moon. The acting – well it was magnificent. Its brilliant star, Ben Whishaw is a true actor  never seeking limelight only the truth possible in acting in perfect communion with peers and the denial of false selves that requires

I was still enchanted as I waited for my bus.

So that was the evening. The day had been a whirl. Arriving about 15 minutes late at Kings Cross, I caught the old 91 bus I was so used to from.my student days, just in time (after the check for fluids in my bags) for my allotted time at the Van Gogh exhibition. Almost certainly, the strongest art exhibition I have ever seen, it requires a separate blog to update my prediction one [the latter at this link]. It may well be that new blog will be about the shock of truly great colourist impasto, but it may not, for such work is the path to something much more than innovations in technique in a painter.

The crowds were off putting unless you (sort of) eradicated their presence from.your mind, an act of great difficulty and uncertain ethics. I never quite succeeded in that when I overheard a man explaining to his son what a bad painter Van Gogh was, for the pictures hide the real shape of the world. 🐼 Poor son!

One thing I noticed was how many people wete clustered around Tranquetaille Bridge each time I returned to it, obviosly as captured by that painting as me. As, for me at least, I sort of expected it from my preparatory blog.

But another blog is called for. Wacked. I found my bearings for a bus to the Elephant and Castle and flopped in my ninth floor room, until time to be  out for the evening, as narrated above.

It is 7.10 now on Saturday 26th. I am now a day still.older than on yesterday’s blog, and awaiting with excitement my events with Bacon’s Portraits  at The National Portrait Gallery [see preparatory blog at https://livesteven.com/2024/10/21/this-blog-prepares-me-for-the-first-exhibition-of-bacon-devoted-solely-to-the-concept-of-portraiture-with-the-help-of-rosie-broadley-ed-2024-francis-bacon-human-presence/%5D and Danez Smith at the South Bank [likewise see preparatory blog at https://livesteven.com/2024/10/19/and-as-for-our-destination-there-is-a-place-but-thats-my-own-somewhere-far-from-your-knowing-this-is-a-blog-concerning-danez-smith-2024/%5D.

I will update this blog when I have time as the day happens and I have breaks, on the train at least if no other opportunities present, with the bare bones of events in the style of the above. Till then:

Anyway, the morning has started. Read a little more of Zola’s The Sins of Abbé Mouret as mood music for writing on Van Gogh again later, then said goodbye to the Travelodge at Elephant and Castle.

Now at Covent Garden Caffe Concerto, awiting an omelette and coffee for breakfast.

And here that breakfast is:

After breakfast, it was time to go to the National Portrait Gallery and see the Bacon exhibition. It took me time to settle into tjw exhibition and see just how good it was. I think I decided that I would write it up in the blog allocated to seeing this  relating to Bacon’s slit faces, which seemed to me so important this time as a theme.

The examples above are enough go establish that theme as a project. Meanwhile this show was not as busy as Van Gogh and on the whole better planned to accomodate the flow of visitors beween the themed rooms. Tjrte seemeed time to spprecuate the pictures more and for longet, even though log jams occurred.

The period before my next event seemed a long one. It would be 3 p.m. at the Purcell Room. I visited the bookhops at Cecil Court,  Foyles at South Bank, and the second-hand book barrows outside The British Film Institute. I got some things at the latter (the rather good book on Male Desire in American Art by Jonathan Weinberg) but little time was  passed (I felt I was parroting Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot in thinking this). I plumped for coffee at the foyer of The Purcell Room at SouthBank.

A pleasant volunteer then told me about an archive exhibition on Palestinian music. At this, you donned earphones to hear songs in Arabic and English: bold, beautiful, and defiant. As well you saw musical artefacts (tapes and so on), photographs of artists, read authentic stories about them, and it was heartbreaking.

And then it was time. The Purcell Room and the chance to see Danez Smith, to hear him read and work his collaborations with his audience.

It was a beautiful event, a lind of loving funny event yet dedicated to daring to tell the truth about those things we pretend may not be true,the bluff we pull on self and others, and ending eitha poem on Palestine.  I think I do not wish to write a longer secondary blog on this event. At the signing, Danez was beautiful, a picture of love. Incarnate. It was a day well ended.

On the train now. Our friends Rob and Linda are kindly picking me up at Darlington Station because Geoff is poorly. Hoped they like the gift I bought them.

That was a long haul of a blog. Bye and all my love.

With love

Steven xxxxxxx