This melancholy London

London can get me down.

My general guideline is: I'm not happy unless I can run for 10km or less and be out of town, in nature. London, at 1,759square-km, doesn't qualify. It can take over an hour and a half to get from Paddington station to Harry's house in South London, crawling darkly and anonymously down the Northern Tube line. This is the same amount of time it takes to get to London from Bath, on the other side of the country.

The Tube is a brilliant idea brilliantly executed. And I think the Tube is the main reason for my problem. I don't know where places in London actually are, I know where they are on the tube map. I have no idea what the stretch of city between King's Cross and South Kensington looks like, except underground.

Which is why this weekend, I empowered myself over London. I brought my bike, and didn't use the tube once.

Suddenly, streets and neighborhoods have real, physical meaning, beyond coloured lines on a modernist map! There is light, there is connectivity, and, my goodness, there is nature. Nearly every neighborhood has its own preserved reserve of green, a place where, even in the midst of over seven million people and buildings forever, you can breath.

And there's no congestion charge for bikes!


"No one is healthy in London, no one can be." -Jane Austen

Extra extra

When you're an extra for the BBC, they feed you on a bus. There's a double-decker bus that's full of tables and doesn't actually drive anywhere and you go there, with all the other extras, and eat all the great, free food they give you to make you not feel bad about just being an extra.

There's going to be a program on BBC1 soon called Bone Kickers. It's like a British/Welsh/female version of Indiana Jones, or so I'm told. And one of the episodes has American journalists in it. And, because I'm Canadian, I sound American, so I got to be one of them. And eat on a bus.

And buy the first (and most likely only) business suit I've ever owned. Because they feed you well, but you provide your own skirt and jacket, thanks very much.

Sorry Tim, sorry Brad-Scott.

I probably owe an apology to my many violin playing friends. They are, for the most part, good, kind, smart people. (For the most part.) So, I'm sorry I may have insulted them on BBC radio this morning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/articles/2008/02/
finetuned_feb08_feature.shtml

Mind you, I'm not sorry about tricking our drummer into promising me cake.

Drum cake!

The best room

This is lovely.


The best room or interpretation of a poem

And now tell it to me
in other words,
says the stuffed owl
to the fly
which, with a buzz,
is trying with its head
to break through the window-pane.

—Miroslav Holub

Retro-Modernism

Who's sick of Postmodernism? Who's sick of the all-encompassing, oh-so-hip, fool full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? We all are. Surely, we all are.

And even if you think you're not, surely you are sick of hearing the phrase,

"That's SO Post-Modern!"

or worse,

"That's SO PoMo!"

It's over, dead. I'm declaring it. And in its place, may I introduce the advent of:

*Retro-Modernism*

These times are very like the Modernist times, I think. Science is fast advancing, but it's ruthless and its forecasts are more scary than inspiring. The security of religion is something few of us take solace in anymore. We eye Postmodernism's carefree hey-day with an eye of cynicism similar to how Modernists eyed the Romantics.

And so, here in the brilliantly cold intellectual wasteland, we stand nostalgic for when things had meaning. We stand against tradition but sad without it. We are

Retro Modernists!

How exciting. Let's make up some stickers.










*Turns out there's a style of interior design and furniture making called this too. This is irrelevant to our cause. Okay? Okay.