A daytrip to the British Museum

That pretty much sums it up. Took the lovely sister-in-common-law and nephew-in-common-law to the British Museum where we visited a bunch of my favourite things: The massive Assyrian wingèd horse-man gatekeeper statues, the Easter Island head, the Tree of Life in the African section (the one made out of guns) and the fabulous knives near it. I think the only one of my favourites we didn’t visit was the Isle of Lewis chessmen, but that’s OK. I also found a new fave in the Egyptian section – a colossal scarab:

In the evening I introduced the nephew-in-common-law to ebelskivers with lemon curd and extra-thick double cream. They seemed to be well received. Then after his bedtime, his mama and I talked web stats and SEO into the wee hours of the morning which was great – it helped her see where she can improve some stuff and also helped to clarify my thoughts a bit about where I want my shiny new business to go. Thinking that ultimately I probably would prefer to ditch the code and act more as a consultant, teaching other devs and designers what they need to do to help their clients. It would help the clients and it would also help to spread the word about web standards and various best-practice … um… practices. Win-win really. I think that’s a little way off yet though.

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Muybridge

It’s been an arty week! Frantically trying to not miss exhibitions I meant to see ages back. So today Djelibeybi and I went to the Tate Britain to see the Eadweard Muybridge exhibition. Took a bit of an effort to get out of the house but I think it was worth it – the animal-motion stuff was very interesting but it was great too to see the fantastic landscapes he took early in his career at Yosemite and later of San Francisco before the big earthquake. Nice, too, to just spend a quiet day with Djeli – feels like I haven’t been able to do that in quite some time.

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Gaugin

So I finally got to the Gaugin exhibition at Tate Modern. A little underwhelmed actually. I don’t know whether my whelm levels were overcome by the overwhelming exhaustion I’ve been suffering from since getting back from Durham but it just didn’t do it for me. I quite liked his Breton paintings and there was certainly a good range both from his European and Tahitian work, but nothing I really wanted to revisit or take home with me by the time I got to the end. So hey ho, but it was good to see and good to get out of the house (even though it took all the energy I had to actually get there) and I know I’d have been seriously kicking myself if I’d missed it, so all in all a Good Thing.

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A Ballets Russes indulgence

I got back from Durham yesterday and today was feeling a touch of withdrawal symptoms – home seems so empty and grey. It’s lovely to see Djelibeybi again of course, but no parents, no lovely new composer-friends, I just needed a little direction. So Djeli and I took ourselves off to the last day of the Diaghilev exhibition at the V&A. They really put together a great exhibition – as they so often do. We went to an exhibition of Ballets Russes costumes and so on in Canberra a number of years ago, so there was some stuff I’d already seen, but I was pretty impressed that most of the exhibition consisted of things I’d never seen before, including the Managers costumes from Erik Satie & Picasso’s Parade and footage of Nijinska’s choreography for Stravinsky’s Les Noces. An excellent antidote for the post-composition-indulgence blues.

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Skip, skip, skip

Well not quite. Today marked the one-year anniversary of my accident, so I’ve been doing some thinking and basically come to the conclusion that it’s been a positive experience. And I’ve had a great day working that out. I started out by writing a blog post about the good stuff that’s happened because of the ankle injury, some of which is pretty huge and even, dare I say it, life-changing. I made a Facebook page for my composition because I’m about to have to make one, I think, for the London New Wind Festival so wanted to know what went into it (answer: not much) and see if I can make it work for me. I bopped (on one leg) around the house a little to the Blues Brothers soundtrack which I haven’t listened to in ages, then made myself a cheese sandwich and finally took myself off to the V&A to make a start on the Diaghilev & the Ballets Russes exhibition there.

And ‘make a start’ was the right term! VERY glad I had already decided to sign up as a member. I suspected it would be big and I wouldn’t get round it in one go. What I hadn’t suspected was that it would be VAST and that I wouldn’t get past the first room of the first section in today’s attempt. I seriously think, with the dodgy ankle, that it could take me eight trips to see the whole thing! So it looks like membership has been a sensible way to go.

Then on the way home, I pulled out the score of the first-ending version of the quintet and did a bit of analysis. Harmonically it’s a bit messier than I can fathom with any degree of musicological confidence but the conclusion I’ve come to is that the nice tail I thought I’d have to cut should actually be able to work. It all depends on what surrounds it and what it goes on to. The figuration comes from earlier parts and the melody there, which I’d thought just wasn’t going to work, also has its roots elsewhere in the piece. What’s new is that the harmony is straight major harmony whereas everything else has had a hearty dose of other-key dissonance. But it’s comforting. Now I just need to get in there and make it work!

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Went to the Van Doesburg exhibition at Tate Modern

Some awesome stuff in there, but unfortunately they had major fail when it came to providing seating for the crippled – enormous exhibition, only 2 benches in the whole thing, as far as I could see. I didn’t quite get halfway through it so will have to go back again. At least once. Possibly twice in order to get through the whole of George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique. Why oh why include the whole of a 16-minute film, with only two sets of headphones and nowhere to sit down???

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Ventured into South Kensington

Djeli and I went to see the Wallace & Gromit Cracking Ideas exhibition at the Science Museum, which was fun and quite interesting – mostly about copyright and patents with and assortment of clever inventions which have since become essential household items. We dropped in to the Natural History Museum on the way home too – neither of us have ever managed to get there before so we thought we should see what sort of things they have. So we wandered through from one entrance to exit at another and – wow! They’ve got some incredible stuff! Especially dinosaur fossils and so on – and that wasn’t even in the proper dino section! Very much looking forward to going back.

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Went on a tour of the Tate Modern’s oil tanks

Yup. Oil tanks. They’re going to be part of the new development there and this was the last chance to see them before building starts. One of them’s going to be an auditorium – will be interesting to see how that turns out – interesting acoustics! We weren’t allowed to take any photos but I took some hopefully nice shots of St Paul’s etc from the balcony of the members’ loung afterwards. Also went to see the Pop Life exhibition which was pretty interesting.

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Saw the Corot to Monet exhibition

At the National Gallery with some friends. Some interesting work but overall not as exciting as other exhibitions I’ve seen there. Certainly nice to see friends though!

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Waited in line for four hours

… to get into the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition. Yes, it was definitely worth it.

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