Tempus Fugit

My goodness, October has been busy! So busy, in fact, that I haven't had the chance to write at all. My first three weeks of term were spent writing three 2000 word essays on various bits of theory and general history of art, very exciting, I know, but one doesn't want too much of a good thing!

In order to alleviate the stress of essay writing, I went on some little weekend trips to various bits of the English countryside to visit friends. First, I toddled off to Kent to see Ian and his lovely family (including his fantastic sister, Suzanne, who is a plotter like myself and who is immense fun). Ian's parents are very nice and we all five of us had a very nice jaunt around various bits of Kent on the Saturday. We visited Lullingstone (an excavated Roman villa), Down House (Darwin's home), and a very nice teashop which overlooked an enormous statue of Winston Churchill. I definitely should not have eaten as much clotted cream as I did that afternoon...

The next weekend I headed to Ely, near Cambridge, to see my friends David and Mark. Ely has an amazing cathedral where David sings and we were fortunate enough to be there for the Feast of St. Etheldreda (an important benefactor in the history of the cathedral). David's academic daughter Naomi was also up for the day so I had a hearty helping of St. Andreans which I thoroughly enjoyed. Mark cooked a fabulous dinner for us Saturday night (even making his own pesto - well done!) and there was a lot of really good academic and music chat throughout. I am especially grateful to Mark for his very helpful advice regarding further study. Sometimes (all right, most of the time) I feel like academia is a sort of labyrinth which I can't make heads or tails out of, and it is always nice to speak to someone who understands how things generally work and can shed some sort of light on the whole issue.

In between all that I had a birthday on which I turned...25. Oh dear. I baked some amazing cupcakes for the occasion (apple sauce is the key...no really) and went with my MA class (and Jana and Rebecca) to see Wicked. We were sitting very very high up (15 pound seats) but I found it enjoyable nonetheless. The Galinda wasn't very good, I have to say, and the actors were all English, which I found to be not surprising (when I actually thought about it) but a tiny bit irritating. I think I'm just too fond of the Idina Menzel cast. I feel very happy with my age at this point (not panicked and terrified, as I was when I turned 22 which seemed like such a nothing sort of age); I am doing what I want to be doing, and I am trying my best to do it well. I don't think I could expect much more from myself than those two things.


Next up, Halloween. I'm on a costume binge - last night I was a flapper, tonight I'll be Joan from Mad Men, and Saturday...well I haven't gotten that far yet. Pictures to follow...

   

Evensong at the Abbey

Met up with my friend Will this afternoon for a quick coffee and gown exchange (Will is now a teacher so has much more use for it than I do seeing the Courtauld is not at all a Royal and Ancient University, or, come to think of it, even a particularly old institution. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no support for reckless gown-wearing there. Shame). It was very nice to catch up with him; as he said, "It's been six years since we started St. Andrews. Can you believe it?" The short answer is no, I can't.

Afterwards, I walked over to Westminster Abbey to meet David, a fellow St. Andrean chorister, for 3 o' clock evensong (which, for those who don't know, is just what it seems: songs in the evening, or in this case mid-afternoon). I have been planning to attend a service in the Abbey since I arrived for several reasons, primarily as the entrance cost for students during non-service hours is 12 pounds. The general aesthetics of the place aren't bad either.

On the menu for the evening:
Introit by Thomas Mudd (d. 1667)
Preces and Responses by Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656)
Psalm 13 by Edwin Monk (1819-1900)
Psalm 126 by Percy Whitlock (1903-1946)
Magnificat and Nunc in D minor by Thomas Attwood Walmisley (1814-1856)
Anthem by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
Hymns were Let the Round World with Songs Rejoice and There is a Land of Pure Delight

Obviously we went to hear the Anthem. I always feel with Stanford that I've wandered into an opera/almost pseudo-Gilbert and Sullivan masquerading as a church service. It's fantastic. The text follows:

For lo I raise up that bitter and hasty nation which march through the breadth of the earth
To possess the dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful,
Their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves.
Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves.
And their horsemen spread themselves, yea, their horsemen come from far.
They fly as an eagle that hasteth to devour,
They come all of them for violence; their faces are set as the east-wind,
And they gather captives as the sand. Yea, he scoffeth at kings,
And princes are a derision unto him. For he heapeth up dust and taketh it.
Then shall he sweep by as a wind that shall pass over, and be guilty,
Even he, whose might is his God. Art not Thou from everlasting,
O Lord, my God, mine Holy One?
We shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained him for judgment,
And thou, O Rock hast established him for correction.
I will stand upon my watch and set me upon the tower,
And look forth to see what he will say to me, and what I shall answer concerning my complaint.
And the Lord answered me and said:
The vision is yet for the appointed time,
And it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie,
Though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come.
For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
But the Lord is in his holy temple: Let all the earth keep silence before Him.

       

Habakkuk 1: 6-12, 2: 1-2a, 3, 14, 20

If you can get your hands on a recording of Standford I highly suggest acquainting yourself with his music. Just fantastic. Below is a You Tube video of New College, Oxford singing the anthem from evensong this afternoon.

I haven't forgotten about the short shorts men and will post on them just as soon as I can find enough time to adequately stalk them; this will most definitely not be until Wednesday as I am in the throes of writing a 2000 word essay at the moment on theory in art history. Sadly, this is much less enjoyable than church hopping and coffee drinking but apparently necessary to get the elusive degree in the end. So back to the grindstone I go!

A Perfect Day

My entire day has been devoted to obtaining library cards. You might imagine that it would be possible as a student to obtain one library card for at least all the libraries in the federation which makes up the University of London; you would be incorrect there. Ahh well. We all have our crosses to bear.

I started off at the Courtauld with a library tour of a library I had already enthusiastically explored. Never mind. Took out some books which I need for my first essay (due a week on tomorrow on the topic of the concept of the 'viewer' in Roman and Byzantine art). It's pretty much a non-question, or rather a question with no real answer, so obviously I'm looking forward to spending the weekend dealing with that.

Post-Courtauld, some of the girls on my course and I ran along to the Senate House Library where we found an absolutely enormous line of people all waiting to get their Senate House Library cards. I find having my picture snapped (normally at very short notice) very distressing. In my SH photo I'm making a strange pursed lip face which I refer to as my 'research' face. It's actually just my 'please don't take the picture yet, I'm not ready, but I'm too afraid that I'll sound vain if I actually ask you to wait while I put on some lip gloss' face. No, a photo of the photo won't be making it onto the blog.

Then I went to the absolutely fantastic British Library which bizarrely pretends to be a welcoming open institution but which is, in fact, a very well-protected fortress full of books guarded by bossy dragon-lady receptionists wanting to know exactly why you need to use their collections and why you haven't consulted every other library in London before bothering the poor staff at the BL. Managed to side-step any unpleasantness by insisting quite firmly that I needed to see two 8th century manuscripts which I then did not bother to stay and see. Well, there's always tomorrow. And the entire rest of the year.

In my next post, I intend to discuss a rather strange phenomenon which I have encountered recently while walking along the Embankment on the way to the Courtauld - middle aged men in short shorts jogging in packs during their lunch breaks. I intend to provide pictures; this may very well involve actually pretending to also be a runner so as to capture them in their natural habitats. There may even be video. Until then!

I heart Easyjet

One of the best parts about the UK, and London especially, is its proximity to Europe; and one of the best (or worst?) things about London’s four airports is that Easyjet and other similar budget airlines fly out of all of them. I flew into London Heathrow from Memphis on the 7th and left from London Luton on the morning of the 9th. A day and a half in London is not much to write about (the main - failed - goal of my time was to find and purchase hangers for my wardrobe) so more on London in another post.

On to Florence! I flew into Pisa which is only a little over an hour from Florence by train; The flight is so easy (a very short two hours), and I honestly can’t complain about Easyjet’s service (I mean, I only paid something like $120 for the flight). Thank God they were late leaving by an hour; when I went to bed the night before my flight, I didn’t realize that I had set the clock on my mobile to the 24 hour setting, leading to a mad dash to the airport. At any rate, I made it before the flight left. Tuscany, to someone like me who had never seen it, comes over as such a magnificent thing, all rolling hills and farmhouses and wash hanging out on the line. I met two Americans on the train, one of whom knew a St. Mary’s girl in the class above me and had been to her wedding. Truly the world is a small place. I finally arrived at the flat (to Mother’s cries of “Where have you been?”) and had just sat down when I noticed her sort of leaning forward in her chair looking at me like a small child who has just heard someone accidentally say ‘ice cream cone’ in front of it. She was ready to get out into the city. I was tired from traveling.

So out we went...and honestly, I wasn’t really that impressed. I mean, I love 5 euro pashminas as much as the next person, but where was the city she had promised me? That everyone had promised me? All atmosphere and romance and ‘just something in the air’? Mostly I spent that first day wishing I had been able to convince her to go to Rome instead. I didn’t understand until the second day, when we walked close to the Duomo and had a good look around the piazza. I can see how the green and white marble could seem garish, but the effect of the Baptistry and the Duomo together really is so fantastic. It’s a very specific way of dealing with the texture and color of marble which I really love, and it’s bold, in a way that the Florentines themselves were and still are.

We braved the 431 step climb to the top of the Duomo on a lovely sunny day. Obviously the views were amazing, but a really astounding aspect to the climb was seeing the internal workings of the dome, and realizing the extraordinary mental and physical capabilities which the Florentines (and, obviously, others before them) used to build such massive and impressive buildings without modern technology to help them along.

As I had never been to Florence (and had never really contemplated going there), there was nothing on my list to see or do. Mother knows her way round without a map, so we wandered through the city seeing churches and architecture and eating (lots of eating) and then on some days making our way to some out of the way places, two of the best being Fiesole and the Piazzale Michaelangelo, both of which are just slightly outside of the city center.

 
To get the Fiesole, we took the number 7 bus up the hills overlooking the city. Fiesole is a lovely little hillside town that had been a rival to Florence and had actually been dominant over it at one point, (this according to the guidebook I found in the flat which had been left by some French tourists who had prepared for their trip by actually buying a guidebook, albeit in French). It also boasts Etruscan and Roman ruins and a convent at the very top of the hill which Camus visited and to which Albert Einstein’s daughter (or granddaughter) Margot gave a very Earth Mother looking statue which sits in a niche in front of the modest museum on the grounds.

Piazzale Michelangelo was similarly interesting and lovely. The church of S. Miniato sits on a small hill overlooking the city, and the white facing of the building can be seen from the city center if you know what you are looking for. It has a 19th century cemetary all round it, with these interesting columbaria in one part, very Roman. 

 

The Byzantine aspect of this church is so interesting, and the juxtaposition between that and, what I take to be a very Florentine/rural Italic ceiling, makes for a slightly jarring but unique interior.  

I love this pulpit and detail from the wall separating the choir and apse from the rest of the church. Is that fish Jesus fighting the devil? I think that’s what I heard a guide telling some other tourists.

We had some initial trouble finding the church when we arrived on the bus that morning. Most of you know that I have been taking Italian lessons all summer from my lovely tutor Beth (thank you Beth!) and the day we tried to find the church of S. Miniato was the day I first felt brave enough to actually use my faltering Italian on real Italians (‘vino grazie’ and ‘gelato’ don’t count). I asked directions from several different people and actually understood and responded in a somewhat coherent way. It was extremely exciting if all a bit rudimentary. I am looking forward to finding a way to continue learning Italian; it is such an expressive and accessible language and I have really enjoyed spending time with it so far.

The day before we left Florence, we had drinks with my lovely friend Gaby, who went to St. Andrews and now lives in Florence. I can’t write about our trip without mentioning what a wonderful time we had with her. It is so heartening to see someone really making a go at living where they really want to be living and doing what they want to do with their life. More about London soon! I miss all of you in Memphis already (though I’m not sure I miss the craziness of Memphis). Travel and London are wonderful but there’s nothing like family and friends in the end. I hope you are all happy and well (and if you are one of the people who promised to come and visit, get on that now!) x

Can you hear me now?

Testing. One. Two. Three. Four.