Having used the majority of my annual leave getting married, these days my only relief from the bleak monotony of Glasgow life is the occasional weekend away.
So I rushed home from work on Friday night, packed my bag, gavaged some leftovers down my throat, did the washing up, and trotted down the road to get the bus to the airport where (of course), because of delays, I had to wait an hour and a half to get the plane to Gatwick.
It sometimes feels like modern air travel is designed to be as horrible as possible, but when you are equipped with ear plugs and Ray Kurzweil’s book on the singularity (my new obsession), it is just about bearable.
It has been over three years since I moved from the capital and each time I visit it becomes more exotic. One is struck by how overcrowded it is and by how many foreigners there are. On the bus to Peckham, I didn’t know where to look as hardworking immigrants with bloodshot eyes competed with schizophrenic afro-caribbeans for grimey seats on the number 36.
On Saturday we got soaked as we walked from the NFT to Tate Modern, which was rather appropriate given that Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster installation in the Turbine Hall is an imagining of the year 2058 in which rain and damp is destroying world culture. All of my favourite books are on the 200 iron bunk beds: Drowned World, Lathe of Heaven, Ficciones . . . it’s almost as though she had read my mind. Alternatively, that which was once wild science-fiction is now considered a realistic forecast of what is to come.
In the evening we went to Cay Tre, a Vietnamese restaurant in Hoxton, where I was served a magnificent tofu soup and an interesting Heaven and Earth pork dish that had some kind of gelatinous pork scratching thing in it. Yum.
Some people, when they get bored of contemporary music, stop going to gigs and start going to restaurants. The restaurants are the venues and the dishes are the bands, it is a pretty neat transition I think. On Sunday, however, we went to Leighton Buzzard, where a man interested in contemporary music cooked us the best roast I have had for ages. It was the perfect way to end what was, despite modern travel, a lovely weekend.
what did you think of the rest of the installation though? i thought it was bloody awful!
At the time I just enjoyed the fact that the books and films that I like were in such a place, but on reflection it is obvious that people didn’t really engage with the installation in any meaningful sense. Lying on the uncomfortable beds for 30 secs before gawping at the sculptures is a bit rubbish compared to the mental transformation induced by Eliasson’s sun.
That said, the sculptures were quite impressive.
did you think so? i found the mdf and fiberglass to be a bit of a disappointment actually. the film was very good though, you’re right. and the beds made it feel like an ikea warehouse or something…
anyway, did you get to see the cildo miereles exhibition upstairs? quite an amazing comparison.
It was my pleasure, and thank you for the compliment. Glad you enjoyed your weekend. See you soon!
I liked Gonzalez-Foerster’s show Sarah, bunk-beds included. It had the bleakness of what I imagine the end of the world to be. Not comfortable, not necessarily engaging, certainly not pretty. I thought it was quite accurate and, for that reason, compelling. I did admire people making the best out of it, perched in the metal structures, getting comfortable for a long wait…
As for Cildo Meireles, well… I wish I had seen it, to be honest. I did not even know about it but it looks like my kind of thing totally. Might try to go during my fleeting visit on the 28th November… Next time, I’ll make sure I ask you what to do when I am down!
I apologise on behalf of my home town for the lack of restaurants and museums to break up the bleak monotony of life.
I’m off to find an empty Irn Bru bottle to smash over my head.
@Tom
I should have used the hyperbole tag there, I know, but trust me when I say “Be warned, it is wholly self-indulgent and may not be true.”
Don’t worry, I’m happier with the opportunity to leave sarcastic comments on friends’ blogs than I would be if they self-edited for fear of insulting the natives.
Is that bloke giving the prehistoric skeleton the V sign? In duplicate?
@Barney
Unfortunately, he is doing what everyone else was doing: taking crappy photos.