the final London post

So………………. my room is in complete chaos at the moment. I have to find some way of fitting everything I brought over plus everything I purchased here into two big suitcases plus 1 carry-on. Apparently the UK is more paranoid (yeah, impossible right?) than the US about bringing stuff on planes and you can only have one carry-on item. Which means….. I have this backpacking backpack that I need to fit into my suitcases along with all my other isht, or I have to try and cram my laptop bag into the backpack. Either way Im really not looking forward to the whole process and most definitely do not want to pay the 140 buckeroos to check my backpack as a third piece of luggage. Hells no. I might have to fork over some cash ($14/kg) because my bags are over the weight limit, but it wont be anywhere near $140. Hopefully.

Yesterday was the big IES fairwell. They bought us tickets to the Hyde Park ice-carnival skating rink and a couple glasses of mulled wine afterwards. This was a little comical as the ice rink was (like everything here) much too small for the amount of people on it and they made you wear these ridiculous hunter-orange plastic ice-skates that didnt really tighten correctly so everyone is skating around with their ankles wobbling…. I fell once, a little kid decided to cut me off and stop right in front. Gr… My butt is a little sore still, not only from the fall, but from trying to stay relatively balanced for 45 minutes in those terrible skates. It was fun though and Im glad they did it for us. We milled about for a good hour afterwards, talking with people and saying some awkward goodbyes to people that were leaving this morning. Its a bit strange, this whole disembarkment process, as there are so many kids on this program that I have a kind of middling aquaintance-ship with, but not quite enough to justify a full blown goodbye. But then it happens anyway and its awkward because you both realize that you didnt spend anytime together and maybe should have, but now its too late and…. and….. yeah. There are a few people Im going to be very sad to say goodbye too, but for the most part – it was only 3.5 months guys, give me a break.

Tonight a bunch of us are going out to “Chew the Fat” @ The End, Layo + Bushwacka’s club. The sound system in this place is supposed to be one of the best and most audibly safe in all of London – the club itself was designed around the system, not the other way around. Very cool. Im excited because a few kids are coming for their very first time (fitting, yeah I know, at the very tail end of the semester) and it should be a good one. Im slowly switching my sleep schedule around, last night I went to bed at 5 AM, tonight I hope to fall asleep around 7 or 8 AM, and then Saturday night, Ill just stay up all night until my flight at 8:45 AM and sleep the roughly (hm 8:45 AM – 3:45 PM, minus an 8 hour time difference = i have no idea) long, long time in the air and sitting in Chicago away. Thats the hope anyway. Im probably going to be absolutely miserable when we get to Seattle, but maybe that will help me readjust to the time switch, maybe.

After the winter-carnival thing a bunch of us IES students went out to dinner at a wonderfully cheap and tasty Chinese/pan-asian restaurant near Fulham Broadway. I couldnt believe that I had a full meal for less than 10 pounds – quite an anomaly in this city. Later we went to a bar down the street called The Trafalgar where I splurged a little bit and got a couple amazing organic ciders… mmm.

Today is for tying up lose ends and getting all my isht in order. I have to be out of the room by 10 AM tomorrow morning, but luckily Lauren’s mom paid for her to have another night in the dorms so tomorrow night will be a nice little slumber party for homeless Tacomites. Its strange to think I will be leaving this place in less than 36 hours – its amazing how fast you become comfortable in a new environ. I cant say that London has grown on me to the point of loving it, but I definitely understand the city and British culture in general a lot better now. Its going to be nice though to look out my window and not see people every once in a while…. that and sleeping without earplugs. Yes, indeed.

Well, I guess this is it then. See you on the other side I cant wait!

trip down memory lane

I spent this past weekend in Scotland, Friday and Saturday in Edinburgh and Sunday in Glasgow. This was a particularly important trip for me as I have been wanting to return to Edinburgh for ages to revisit the places and faces of my year as a little Scottish boy After much deliberation and anxious procrastination, I summoned enough courage to give the family of a close friend (albeit from when I was 9) in Edinburgh a call to ask if I could stay at their place. Luckily, Scottish people are uncannily friendly and talkative and the whole thing went down smoothly and un-awkwardly. So, on Friday morning I awoke bright and early at 5:00AM, hopped a bus and made my way to Kings Cross train station where I boarded and promptly fell asleep on a train to Edinburgh.

The most striking thing I noticed when I left Waverly station is that everything looked so much smaller than I remembered it. Prince’s street was this massive, shiny, posh shopping district with the grand Balmoral Hotel, the Disney store, and that giant Gothic monument to someone or another underneith the Castle when I was 9. I think part of the reason I ached to revisit this place is that my 9 year old self had glorified and intensified much of the city and the things that happened during that year. This trip was a sort of nostalgic tour of my past, but also a debunking of my often overactive imagination at that age – not entirely a bad thing, but a little dissapointing. The bus ride to the Bramley’s house was painless, and so was the 3 block walk from there. The re-introduction of self to Allison was equally easy and friendly and before I knew it, I had a cup of tea and was talking about old times like it was 1996 again. Apparently I have changed a lot in 12 years – I think I might have given her a bit of a scare at the front door, but I was pleasently surprised to see that my memory of their family had not changed much. Douglas has a beard now, and is much taller than me, but other than that looked very much like I remembered him. Allison and Glen didnt appear to have changed much at all, maybe a little older, but I guess my mental image of them wasnt as set in stone as people more my age were. I still had a good 2 hours of sunlight (!! the sun “rose” at 8:45 AM and “set” at 3:30 PM) so Douglas took me around the neighborhood and eventually down to the Botanical Gardens where we wandered some more until the sun had set and the cold had become unbearable. The old house, on Palmerstone Way/Rd? hadnt changed one bit – Im not kidding, it looked (garden and all) exactly how we left it, besides the Porsche in the driveway (apparently realestate has gone up in the area since 1996). We also saw the Lutheran Church, which also didnt look to have changed a whole lot in 12 years, the movie store (which is now a pet supply shop I think), the two green grocers on the way to the Meadows (nothing had changed! I was probably the same Indian man selling fruit and veges as well), the Meadows (the playground has been expanded about 3 times since then) and up through to Prince’s street. After the Meadows, the deja-vu slowed down and I didnt recognize quite as much. We must have driven a lot, or else my 9 year old mind only remember those things that had anything to do with me at the time. Probably the latter. The Botanical Gardens brought back fond memories though, especially the big greenhouse with the palm trees and cycads. Very cool, though we arrived almost at closing time and couldnt get into the rest of the houses and ended up wandering the outdoor gardens for a time before the park closed at 4 PM (aka darkness). That night I had my first home-cooked meal in 3 months (fish!), looked at some rather funny pictures of myself and Sarah at Preston Street school (I was a fat little boy!) and watched a bit of television, my first real re-introduction to British TV. All I can say is, British commercials make no sense and their comedy shows are much funnier. Sleeping in a comfortable bed, in my own room, was quite nice as well and I think I slept close to 10 hours that night.

Saturday was my big sight-seeing day. I walked from the Bramley’s back through the area me and Douglas had passed the day before in order to take some pictures (I bought a disposable camera for this trip since the lost one is not going to replace itself anytime soon….). I stood again for a little while outside our old house in the hopes of catching some familiar face, but sadly nobody was around at 11 AM on a cold, rainy Saturday and I had to satiate myself with the possibility of maybe seeing the girl next door get into a car across the street with an older, white-haired man. Was this Emma? It looked a little bit like what I remember of her, but could also have been her younger sister…. 12 years is a long time and who knows, that could have been someone completely different. I had this fantasy of seeing her again and asking if she remembered the love letter she slipped under our door the last day I was there…. I wonder where that ended up? Hm. Would have been funny though, awkward, but funny. 

 

From here I trekked on down towards Arthur’s Seat. On my way I passed Preston Street Primary School, where Sarah and I attended P3 and P5 respectively (or was it P4 and P6? I can never remember). Again, this was a little bit dissapointing, the school looked small and lonely on the corner, but more or less how I remembered it. The big cement structure in the playground area is still there, as are the little painted playground games on the asphalt. It was Saturday so there was nobody around, but I would have liked to peek inside and look around a bit. Im sure it would look even smaller inside. Ah to be 9 again… The Commonwealth pool looked very familiar, though they have taken the big spiraling water slide off the backside of the building. Sad. From here I walked towards Arthur’s Seat and the crags.

 

Of all the things I wanted to do while in Edinburgh, climbing Arthur’s Seat was the most important. This mountain holds so many fond memories about it from our time in Scotland – both physically and almost spiritually. To a little boy from the great flat land of S. Minnesota, this massive, ugly bulge of rock and earth was one of the most impressive things ever discovered by man. And that you could hike to the top in 20 minutes was incredible! I wandered this area for a good 2 hours on Saturday, walking up and down the crags, and to the top of the Seat where, with my arms stretched out, I could feel my feet lift off the ground slightly from the insane wind that was ripping across the top of that balding mound of solid rhyolite. I came down the backside of the Seat, towards Carlton hill with its tower and despondent, half-built Parthenon, and took a little detour over to the ruins of a small medieval chapel overlooking the city. I remember this place distinctly from when I was little, my mom and I found it one day (cant remember if Sarah was with or not, I dont believe so) and I imagined myself turning it into a sort of battle outpost. I took a little breather here and contemplated similar thoughts (it really would be a fun place to build a fort) before continuing my way down into the city. By this time it had really started to rain and couldnt have been much more than 35-37 degrees F out – I was a little cold to say the least. 

 

The idea at this point was to make my way down and over to Carleton hill, and from there wander towards the Castle. Did this happen? Nope. I am so terrible with maps in these little European streets where nothing is labeled and some differ by less than a single syllable (St. Andrew street, St. Andrew way, St. John Andrew way, St. Street Andrew Way John, and so on….). I ended up wandering out of the city center, into a district called Leithe, all the while hungry and wet and cold from the ridiculous weather that was building up above me in the slate gray sky. On my wanderings, I passed the new Scottish Parliament building, an ultra-modern complex of stone, cement, and steel that looks as though it is made out of mud and sticks. Weird, but very eye-catching and viewed from above (on the crags) the landscaping and lay-out of the structure is really stunning. One section is designed to look like the hulls of fishing boats, upside down. Im not too sure about this, but it still looked pretty awesome. After realizing that I was no where near Carleton hill, I made my way back to the center and followed Prince’s street down towards the Castle. By this time I was absolutely freezing and starved so I jumped at the first reasonable looking place to consume calories, a fair trade cafe below St. John’s Church. The food was good, but definitely not worth the price and I once again thanked myself for sucking it up and calling the Bramley’s. Free lodging is such a blessing. 

 

After reviving myself a little, I ventured back outside and down to the gardens and grounds at the foot of Edinburgh Castle. Nothing was really happening there and, as it was getting dark, I decided to visit the Royal Museum of Scotland, a natural history sort of place that I loved when I was 9 for its collection of taxadermological (haha sp?) wonders. This was the only place that didnt dissapoint in terms of space and size – it was huge when I was 9, it is still huge. Its a good thing this museum is free, because it would take ages to walk just one level and read/see everything around you. The stuffed animals are a little creepy and looked even less friendly 12 years later than they did in 1996 – apparently there have been complaints about the tatters, sour state of some of these preserved dead things and the museum is working on replacing them with less volitale, plastic dioramas. There was a really interesting exhibit on extinction with specimens of a variety of now extinct critters, including a Dodo, the Passenger Pigeon, and one of those giant hair birds (forgot what they’re called…). I wandered the galleries here for a good two hours before my legs started to complain and my hip began to ache (dont remember either of these ever happening when I was 9…). Exiting the building I was greeted by a veritable blizzard of sleet and rain and decided against the walk home, instead hopping a bus and shivering amidst an amazing number of other cold, wet, and miserable looking Scottish people. It kind of felt like the bottom of some child’s snow cone were dripping all over Edinburgh that night. Needless to say I arrived back at the Bramley’s soaking wet, hungry, and a little tired. 

 

That night Allison and Glen were off to a Scottish dancing event, sort of like square dancing in the US, with a caller and lots of complicated steps and movements in a group of partnered dancers. They spent much of the time before leaving reviewing various dances that were going to be played that night in a series of little, ancient-looking books passed down by Allison’s grandfather. Douglas and I got a bit of a kick out of this whole ordeal. After dinner that night, me and Douglas went to the Golden Compass at a nearby movie theater. Im not going to say much about this event, except that if you have any semblance of a soft spot in your heart for Philip Pullman and his amazing trilogy, see this movie with a massive grain of salt. Like all things Hollywood, the director ripped giant chunks out of the book, spent about two seconds on characterization and relationships, and enlisted an army of CGI and special effects goons to glitz and glam the movie into a watchable, moderately funny, cartoon of what is one of the most philosophically advanced children’s books every written. Sigh. Boooo hollywood, booo! I spent the rest of the night with Douglas in the livingroom watching this comedy show called QI and drinking wonderful Scottish beer from Edinburgh. 

 

The next morning I said my goodbyes to the Bramley’s and made my way back towards the city center to catch a bus to Glasgow. Neil, my good friend from Preston Street, goes to uni at Glasgow University and is in his 3rd year. He lives with 4 other people, 3 girls and a guy, in a flat a little ways out of the city center, but near to the school. The bus to Glasgow from Edinburgh is ridiculously cheap, about 12 dollars round trip. I really wish we had similar service between cities in America – greyhound is much more expensive. I guess its like the bus from Tacoma to Seattle, in length, but still… Lame America, lame. Glasgow is a really interesting city. From the little I saw of it via Neil and our wanderings around the University and the West end, it feels both modern and well-off, as well as old and dangerous. Glasgow has the most violent crimes per year of any city in the UK, with a particularly high occurrance of homosexual rape (weird). Neil was mugged his freshman year coming home from the University, but managed to get away with a black eye and a pretty nasty cut. He says that Glasgow is, for the most part, a great city and that the more violent, dirty aspects of it can be easily avoided if you dont put yourself in unsafe situations (aka walking home at 3 AM drunk ). From what I saw, this is mostly true. It felt like any slightly down-and-out American city, maybe Detroit or Oakland, parts felt a lot like Tacoma, but I guess in the UK, a city where people knife each other is a bit of an abnormality. Weird, that thing with knives here. Guns really havent made a big splash in the inner-city crime scene here, which is great, but recently there have been a few more shootings in London and everyone is freaking out that Britain is turning into the next America. Whatever, all I know is that I can walk back from a club here at 4 AM, in the middle of London’s so-called Bronx (Brixton) by myself and feel relatively comfortable. But I digress…..

 

After arriving I got a little tour of his University and the area around it, after which we stopped in the most amazing little tea and organic food cafe I have ever set foot in. This is in no way an exaggeration and I am a little angry that I cant remember its name for the life of me – Ill ask Neil and get back to you. It had a menu that was about 15 pages long and 90% tea – from everywhere: Africa, India, China, Pakistan, etc… etc… etc… I could have had 12 pound white tea from China, lotus blossom tea from Egypt, mate from Brazil – I was in heaven. In the end we decided to split a pot of the most ridiculous looking thing on the menu, called Mate Boom Boom, an infusion of mate, green tea, ginseng (!!), guava, brown sugar, mint and a few other things that I cant remember. Lets just say it went boom and leave it at that – freakin amazing! I managed to sit down and bump a big kettle of month old tea leaves and moldy water off a brass tea-fire-device-thing and spill it all down my backside in the hour we were at this place. Great, yeah and the back of my coat still smells like sour tea goo. From here we wandered down to Neil’s flat, a typically college-student-esque abode with five rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and central hallway region. Neil’s room is massive and I was provided with a delisciously comfortable couch to sleep on. Its funny how everything I’ve slept on during my travels this semester has felt 10x better than the beds at this IES dorm place…. For dinner, Neil, two of his flatmates, and I all went out to dinner at a pizza place where one of the aforementioned flatmates (Holly maybe? cant remember names for the life of me) works. I had a ridiculous amount to eat (a full pizza, two drinks, and a piece of apple pie), as did everyone else, but it only cost 10 pounds with her discount. After this Neil and I met up with his 5th flatmate at a bar where we where provided with more free food and lots of free drink (Chloe, the 5th flatmate, worked at this place) until about 1 AM when we stumbled full and happy back to his apartment and watched online TV until both of us passed out. Ive got to get myself a group of friends that work at bars/restaraunts – its so much more enjoyable when you dont have to pay/can pay 1/2 price for everything! This whole Glaswegian experience was a lot of fun and Im really mad at myself for not going up there earlier/more this semester. It brought back so many good memories of our friendship from 12 years ago and I really got along well with his friends. That, and it was refreshing to be around some real British kids in their natural setting – aka living in a situation much like my own back home in the NW. I was sad to leave the next morning, but the 5 hours of sleep and rather rushed journey back to Edinburgh to catch a 11:30 AM train to London helped give the reality check I needed and before I knew it, I was back at Kings Cross breathing smog and surrounded by the noise and humanity of everything that is London. Ah…. Home sweeet home. 

 

And so concludes my relaxing and (Halleuja!) problem-free, money-pinching trip to Scotland and back. As the capstone to my time here in the UK, it was everything I had hoped for and more. I feel oddly complete now that I have return unscathed from the land of my distant childhood and the year which I firmly believe set in stone much of the person I am today. In some strange way, I feel as though I can start this new leg of my adventure called life in 5 months 100% a new person, having come to a very satisfying level of peace with all of the issues that came out of that year abroad and the time after highschool. So bring it on life! Im here to kick your ass!!

Ill make sure and update you one more time before Sunday (aka leaving for home day). Things on the docket for this week: 3 finals, packing, ice skating, Tate modern, and Chew the Fat @ The End Club. Woooot!!!!!!!!!! T-minus 5 days and counting.

(btw Im not too sure what happened, but I pressed some random combination of keys on accident and turned parts of this into itallics and others bold. Sorry! )

another weekend – two more to go!

Ok, finally caught up here with all things-blogging. It will be a welcome respite to get back to lands where T-Mobile doesn’t charge me 2 bucks a second to call home. J Its Sunday, but really it feels like every other day here, now that I have very little academic pressure on my shoulders and the happy thought of leaving in exactly two weeks. Lets just say that I will be smiling as I board the plane at Heathrow on Dec 16th. Why, you ask? When London is such a “cosmopolitan” city with so much to do and see and experience and learn and…. Read on. You’ll see.
Friday I went back to Brighton to do some Christmas shopping. I mostly took this trip to go to one store that I didn’t have time to fully explore when my IES class visited and had some ideas for a present that needed certain information before I could safely purchase. As it turned out, I couldn’t find anything in said store that fit my holiday needs…. But, never fear, Brighton is a veritable cornuacopia of consumer pleasures. There must be a couple miles of little specialty shops, along with a massive indoor mall (reminded me of home) with all the usual British big-box stores. I spent almost 9 hours wandering the mean streets of Brighton, cold and occasionally wet, and very wind blown. I could have picked a better day to shop, but whatcha gonna do, eh? It was nice to be able to walk around by myself and see what I want to see and not what 28 other people want to…except that I spent all day shopping, and didn’t really see much of Brighton in the end. Oh well. It was too cold to be by the beach anyway. Ate lunch at a vegan café (waaaaaay too expensive for how much food they give you), got some chai tea, found presents for half the people on my list, along with (I know, it’s the one addiction I have/will never have any control over) 2 pieces of vinyl and two rare books about rave culture Id been searching for for years. I ate dinner at a nationally reknowned vegetarian restaurant (Brighton is full of hippy pleasures), also expensive but nothing like the lunch café. If you ever have a chance, check it out (but make reservations first, I almost didn’t get a table at 5 PM, early for Brits) – Food for Friends, Brighton. I had sweet potato korma with brown rice, a fudge pudding with Bailey’s ice cream and berries, and mint green tea. Yeah, it was good.
Last night I went to my last party here in the UK, Barely Breakin Even Records 11th Birthday Party. The line-up, the space, the price, and the night were all collaborating together in my head to make this a suitable closing party to my time in London. Sadly, and I should have foreseen this, as things go when you build ‘em up in your head, they tend to crash rather unnatractively into walls and all over your happy little conscience. Gr. I mean, who would have thought Giles Peterson, Joey Negro, Dimitri from Paris, Louie Vega, Osulundae, and DJ Premier in the same venue would = boring and soul destroying?? Im still kind of pissed about this, if you cant tell. Canvas, the club it all went down at, is a great venue – huge open dancefloors, lots of couches and chairs, ample bars, and two (2!) coat checks to make the end-of-the-night rush a little less hectic. Yeah, great if you don’t fill it to capacity, and still let people in! By midnight it took me 10 minutes to walk from one end of the club to the other – no joke. I couldn’t dance properly, had numerous drinks spilt all over my backside (if your ever in for a good time, ask me about alcohol and clubs….), and almost fell asleep for lack of anything better to occupy my mind/body. The number of times I was asked by sickly looking little Italian men if I wanted to by any x-t-c just topped it all off. What gives London? Are you so spoiled by a glorious history of raving, world class talent, and some of the best venues in Europe that you’ve forgotten why you started going out in the first place??? Ahhhhhh! Im so over this city. It has started to gross me out, more and more, every day. People can become so ugly when surrounded by nothing but concrete and money.
Today I went to an art exhibition at the Barbican (sweeeet Brutalist living/arts/education complex in N. London) all about sex seen through artists eyes, from Greek/Roman times through to the present. The whole thing was a little ambitious in my opinion, but did well with what they had to display and the space available. It is amazing just how consistent human culture has been on the subject of sexuality in art through the ages. Even during the Victorian era, when sex was a taboo subject and sexual acts were never depicted in art, people still drew dirty pictures behind closed doors. I saw little known pencil/pastel works by Picasso and Rembrandt, a gaggle of ancient Roman, Japanese, Chinese, and Mid-East paintings and etchings, video art by Andy Warhol, and countless other artists’s works, both modern and long-dead. By far the most interesting exhibit was of the French (maybe Italian, cant remember) surrealist Sade’s pencil drawings. If you have a chance, look some of his stuff up – really intricate line drawings that play tricks on the mind and morph and swirl and blur images of human form with death and rebirth, space, and imagination. Quite cool. Another incredibly interesting piece was by a photographer named Nan Goldin who took pictures of people’s intimate lives around New York and put them into a slide show to a piece of creepily beautiful music by Bjork. I was amazed by her attention to detail in these random people’s lives – pictures of people waking up, snuggling on the couch, having sex, walking down the street, looking in the mirror, taking showers. It was the most human piece of art I have ever seen and left me with a rare, warm and safe feeling about the status of this crazy world we all inhabit. That said, all these people were artists that she knew somehow and therefore had different living situations/lifestyles than the majority of people in America. It would have been interesting to see the same exhibit with random couples from all across America, maybe a few cookie-cutter soccer moms, trailer homes in Kentucky, billionaires in LA. I might not have felt so great by the end of that one, or not, who knows! All in all, a worthwile 6 pounds spent, and it took up 3 hours of my Sunday afternoon (which feels like night right about now, the sun set at 3:30 PM today – gross!!!).
Upcoming: I leave Friday for my journey to the muthaland (well sort of), aka Edinburgh. Hopefully some friends of my parents will get back to me about possibly staying at their place soon. Neil, their son, was a good friend of mine during the year we spent in the UK, and I am really looking forward to hopefully reuniting and having all those long drifted-away memories come rushing back full force. Other than that, I might do all or one of the following tomorrow: see a Cuban music show, go to the Tate modern art museum, and play the second to last Monday night poker game of the semester. *Tear*

the post that I never posted…..

hola – Ive taken to writing these in Word before I post them because my internet here is not very reliable. This post I meant to put up on the 28th of November, but forgot. Here ya are:

Ok, just to get this out of the way – I finished my last IES work last night (before finals) and the, final, ultimate! literature paper of my entire college career!!! Yup, that’s right, alllllllllll done. And good riddance too. Only one more short-fiction writing class and my English major is complete. Word.

There are only 9 more class session left for me here in London, and then finals week. Time is going to fly past me without saying goodbye, hello, or what’s up. But, as Ive said before, I wouldn’t want it any other way. It means things are happening, the world of sensual input is rushing past my being. And plus, it means that I will be home with the people I love that much quicker. I never thought I would say it, but I miss America something wicked. Its true what they say, you don’t realize you love something until you no longer have it. So very very true. Luckily, for me (and I love to rub it in all the poor other kiddies faces) I have but one 2000 word short story to write before I leave, and 3 finals to take (of which I believe that I am only going to have to study for 1, and maybe an hour at that). And so, with such ample free time, I have decided on a couple goals, to accomplish before boarding the plane (ah what a glorious moment that will be) on the 16th. These are: buy Christmas presents, do my stretch/yoga routine at least 5 days a week, finish reading the meditation book, and not eat any refined (aka sucrose in the form of white/brown/molasses/treacle) sugar. I see that smile…. I bet you’re thinking, “oh, right, no sugar…. for the, hm, let’s see, 39th time?” OH NO. This time, THIS TIME! Im serious. Too many things have been happening to my body related to too much sugar in my blood stream (reading about hypoglycemia was a little bit of a reality check, it may be too late) as of the last month or so and I am done being mean to my body. One of the greatest lessons that I have learned on my own here in London is, without a significant other to rub out sore spots, check your eating habits, and generally help you stay on the “love yourself” track, one must learn to respect their body, its faults and attributes, and enjoy things that, in the long run, equal greater happiness than short term indulgence would. Id ask you to wish me luck, but somehow that would just seem contraindictory. This is my game with myself. Don’t even try to get in my way this time world!

This past weekend was one of the most interesting I have had this semester in terms of music. Friday night was the Synergy Project, of which I posted a link to in my last entry. I was a little bit unsure about just exactly what I was going to find, the flyer said “indoor festival.” I thought, well, so far London really hasn’t done much to impress me, so Im not going to hold my breath. Oops! Me and Stephanie rolled up to the big tunnel next to London Bridge tube station around 11PM to the sight of what must have been at least 500-1000 hippy-esque ravers milling about in various lines, playing drums and dijeridoos and instruments, dancing in the street, spinning poi, and everything you might imagine a group of excited, nu-rave techno-gaia-children to be doing as their acid kicked in and the lines continued to grow. I had bought my ticket before hand, so I made my way into the relatively short line for ticket holders. Steph and this guy (name?) we met on our way to the venue did not have tickets and were ready to sit for who knows what duration of time at the back of a line about 2 city blocks long. I figured that they were not getting in and prepared myself for a long night by my self. Luckily, by some divine act of whateveryouprayto, the guy we met knew someone that knew someone (as is usually the case at these things) who was on the guest list and suddenly, they were right behind me as I waited in the security line. Woohoo! Rave on. The party itself? Like most here in London, it had its ups and downs. The vibe was better than any I have witnessed in London, but still doesn’t even touch the NW. Crazy dancers, people doing glow-poi, costumes, hugs, smiles, etc… etc… BUT, this is London, where 8 million people are crammed into a region about the size of Minneapolis (give or take), and when you’ve got a sold out show, there’s bound to be assholes galore. I get really really annoyed by big crowds of messed up people (weird, huh, right?) because usually I spend the night being bumped and shuved and encroached upon right and left and up and down, to the point that, as happened at this party, I get fed up with things (if the music isn’t good enough to make me stay) and leave. The music at Synergy was OK, better for the first 4 hours than Ive heard in a long time, especially this guy doing a live, world-music dub-fusion set with an MC (the MC was terrible, as usual). I got down to some salsa, reggae, jungle, and house with a rumba beat with this guy – wonderful! I wish more DJs stepped out of their comfort zone of 130 BPM and mixed the tempo up a little bit. Besides this set, the rest of the night was hit or miss. Seeing Gaudi, a local London DJ that has made a pretty decent name for himself in the states, for the 2nd time was fun, though he was playing for a much bigger crowd and his tunez weren’t as bassy or glitchy as I would have liked. I realized after his set that I promoted his first album last fall for KUPS – Gaudi + Nusrath Alli XXXX. Neato. The party was broken into 7 rooms, one each for psy-trance, breaks, dubstep/downtempo, world fusion, breakcore/jungle, food (and such GOOD food, I had a tofu and feta wrap with sweet chili and fresh veggies – I love hippies J), and this big space for fresh air. The world fusion room also had an artists station, where random ravers would take turns sitting in a chair while anyone and everyone sketched their portrait. By the end of the night there were quite a few, maybe 40 or so, completed pictures on the wall behind the model chair. I had never seen this before and thought it was super cool. One to add to my ever growing “what to do, what not to do” list for throwing parties. All over the venue there were booths with different political action groups, flyering for their various causes. I saw everything from the London bicycle organization to Greenpeace, to the ubiquitous “help so-and-so child in Africa” campaigners. This made it feel very much like something in the NW, though Ive never seen the political aspect played up quite as much as it was for this party….. In the end, most of the people here were too messed up to even notice the booths, let alone taking anything from them. I looked at a few, but am equally guilty, not for being messed up, but for being rather passive and unwilling to sacrifice 10 minutes of my oh so precious rave to hear what these people said. Not that I could have heard them anyway, but next time I will at least give a few a chance. I felt rather guilty afterwards.
We left around 4:30 AM, tired of the same old nu-skool breaks, stripped down techno-reggae, and some super weird Balkan band playing in the world fusion room. Oh, and the psy-trance room? Yeah… I really don’t understand that stuff. Everytime I go into a psy-room (besides the few Ive been to in SF, they know their psy!), it sounds like the same beat, over and over and over again. And no matter what people tell me, its way too fast to dance to. Seriously, people are kidding themselves with most psy-trance. All in all, I give this party a B+ for London standards, a C+ overall. Cool people, cool idea, too crowded, not very interesting music.

Sunday morning I awoke to the sound of sirens outside my window. Not an unusual occurance, as the IES dormitory is a block away from the Chelsea fire station, but this time it was enough to rouse me out of bed, to the window, and bam! It was (like one guy said later that day) as if Armageddon had begun, right there on Kings Road. There must have been at least 12 police cars, a couple helicopters, 5 ambulances, a whole gaggle of EMTs and police people, 6 or 7 fire trucks, and a whole bunch of gawking pedestrians. What in the world is going on? I thought. My roommate, Michael, and I watched from our 4th story vantage point as various people were carried into ambulances, some looking really really badly off. A section of a stone wall and iron fence was bashed in a block down and there was a lot of activity around a green Porsche. The next day, we find out that the driver of the Porsche had a heart attack, slammed on the gas, jumped the sidewalk and went careening into the side of said wall and fence. On his trajectory, the unlucky man managed to hit something like 5 people, pinning one between the fence and his car, seriously wounding 3 others. One person, a foreign nanny for some rich family in the area, later died from head trauma at the nearby hospital. Heavy huh? It was an intense way to wake up, lets just say that much. Brought back in a very sudden way some of my worst memories, and things were a little subdued in David’s head the rest of that day. Only in Chelsea does a vintage Porsche crash into a crowd of people at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Sunday night I went to a performance that was part of the London Jazz Festival. I heard this was happening a while back but, as is usually the case with me, promptly forgot about it until 2 weeks ago when all the tickets to the shows I wanted to go to were gone… I really wanted to see Joshua Redman, a famous saxaphonist, play in this funk-bebop fusion trio on Thursday night for Thanksgiving, but it sold out in October (London is great for bringing the big names, but sucks for the 8 million people you have to contend with to see said big names), and Bill Bradford (drummer) only had one spot left – for a wheel chair. SO, instead I took a gander and went to “Adventures in Sound,” 3 hours of experimental jazz combo action from around the UK, Europe, and the US. This turned out to be one of the best things I have done on a whim in a long time – it absolutely blew my mind. Every performer could play his instrument backwards and forwards, making some of the weirdest sounds come out of them, and could go right back into a sizzling bebop run as well as any pro standard player. Unlike traditional jazz, these players were going beyond simply playing with melody and sound, they were taking apart the very pillars upon which music is generally thought to be built. By the end of the night I had watched/heard/experienced a vocalist/beatboxer do a bebop improve set with a rock guitarist, a wind instramentalist play a wooden tube and flute with a blocked end, a pianist use his fist, arm, a comb, and wax paper to produce sounds both inside and outside of the piano, and so many other strange, yet wonderful combinations and relationships to seemingly normal instruments. There were definitely a few “um…” moments, but the majority of the 3 hours I spent in complete concentration, deconstructing the intense waves of sound and rhythm that these people were creating and throwing in our uninitiated faces. When people say that experimental music doesn’t take skill, they’ve never actually seen it done right. Not only were the performers at this show talented in a traditional sense, they were also, and most importantly, able to commit their minds and bodies 100% to the task of deconstruction, to ignoring all the rules that bound their eduacation and years playing normal sounds. That is a feat in itself and I am in awe of their mastery.