Birthday and Other Reflections

This week I had a birthday. On Wednesday, after spending a wonderful afternoon with Sarah Waters' novel The Little Stranger (shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize; I totally recommend it), I thought about texting some of my friends to meet for a drink after class, but it seemed too late. Instead, my delightful new friends had planned a surprise birthday dinner for me and greeted me at the door singing happy birthday in masks of the royal family. What could have been an anticlimactic day ended up being one of the best I've spent here. I'm reminded constantly how lucky I am to be here and to share my experience with these phenomenal people.

Culture this week? The National Portrait Gallery on Friday. I hadn't ever been there before, but I found it really interesting. The chronological structure to the galleries gives a nice overview of British history and, for this American girl who hasn't covered much of this since college, it was a good refresher. Start at the top floor with the Tudors and work your way down to the 21st century for the best look at the collections. We didn't buy tickets for the special exhibition "The First Actresses," but there was a free extension of it called "The Actress Now" that caught and held my attention for a long time. Including both photographs and paintings, it reminded me just how many of my favorite actresses are British. Particularly amusing for me was reading on so many of the mini-biographies a variation of this sentence: "Known for playing _________ in the Harry Potter movies."

Jane Austen

Wm. Shakespeare

But what struck me most at the National Portrait Gallery was the shift in focus required of the viewer. Generally when I'm at an art museum I'm focused on the artist who created the work, not necessarily the person shown. The Portrait Gallery all but requires your attention to be on the sitter rather than the artist, and I often found myself not paying any attention to the artist's identity at all. It was only when I looked at Andy Warhol's portrait of Elizabeth Taylor that I really recognized what I had been doing. Paying attention to the sitter allowed me to focus on the historical context of the work and the connections between the different subjects of the portraits, but also allowed me to totally overlook the person creating the work. I feel almost like I owe the artists on exhibit another visit so I can pay them more attention. Additionally, portraits have never been my favorite type of art; I'm usually more drawn to scenes from nature or something more abstract. Yet when I found myself faced with portraits so familiar, particularly those of literary figures, it felt a little like coming home. That happens to me a lot in museums: when I suddenly come upon a work I know so well, it gives me a feeling of comfort and contentment, as though all is right with the world. Even though portraits still aren't my favorite, I can't overlook that feeling of sheer satisfaction that came from seeing some of these works in person.

I had planned to get some pictures of Sunny in Trafalgar Square playing with the pigeons while we were there Friday, but instead I found Trafalgar Square had been taken over by the NFL. This was a touch surreal. I've never been a huge NFL fan (growing up in Nebraska requires one to tend toward college football rather than professional), and I had no idea that the Chicago Bears and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were playing at Wembley Stadium this weekend. Apparently it's a thing (here's the website). There was a fan rally in Trafalgar Square Saturday afternoon including bands, cheerleaders, and food. I did not go. There have been several small things that have made me miss America in the month I've been here, but this wasn't one of them. I'll be honest: I usually turn on a football game on Fall Sunday afternoons, but most of the time I nap on the couch while it's on. Fortunately Trafalgar Square is only about a ten minute walk, so Sunny will have more chances to play with the pigeons.

Living in Bloomsbury is a really wonderful thing: not only is it so central that I can walk almost anywhere I wish, but there's really no reason to leave on a regular basis. Everything I need is right here. Instead of the NFL rally on Saturday, I went to Russell Square to check out the Bloomsbury Festival. The festival took place at several locations within a few minutes of where I live, but I went to Russell Square because so many events were happening there. It was a pretty chilly day yesterday, only about 55 and windy, but Londoners are a hearty people and bundled up to enjoy the cultural events, exhibitions, food, and live music. Probably my favorite part was the Poets' Path. Festival-goers were encouraged to choose three words from three poems of different eras and put them together to make a phrase (sort of like the magnetic poetry I have on my refrigerator); then the phrases were hung from the arbor and people could walk in and amongst them, becoming part of the poetry themselves. Sunny and I didn't create a phrase because there weren't many interesting words left to choose from; they had already been well picked over by the afternoon. Plus, it was really crowded within the arbor with so many people jostling to create phrases and hang them up. It thrilled me in a dorky, English teacher way that an event centered around poetry would be too crowded for me to want to stay and be part of it.

So now I'm 34, I have wonderful friends, and I live in an interesting place where creating poetry is a popular thing to do. What more could I ask for?