A Voyage Round My Father

During the summer I had wanted to see A Voyage Round My Father, which was playing at one of my favourite theatres - the Donmar Warehouse. However, the run was completely sold out and I left London disappointed. As luck (and demand) would have it, the play transferred with the same cast to the West End and I was able to see a performance last night.

The play is essentially John Mortimer's autobiographical account of his relationship with his cantankerous father, played by one of the remaining British stage legends I had yet to see - Sir Derek Jacobi. The Times review summed it up quite well by describing the play as a touching confession of posthumous love. The play itself was sporadically brilliant (but what is consistently brilliant, really?) and had some killer lines in it. But the best part of the evening was watching Derek Jacobi who was breathtakingly good. I actually feel honoured to have seen him perform and I don't say that very often.

My Fulham First

Last night I went to my very first Premiership football match. I have adopted Fulham as my local team. It was either Fulham or Chelsea, and I opted for the underdog. This harkens back to the late 80's when I started going to Vancouver Canucks games and they couldn't win a thing. The shock of a win induced an unbelievable euphoria - like last night as we won 2-1.

Some small observations: the pitch is much smaller in reality than it is on television; the smell of the freshly cut grass was wonderful (and then rudely interrupted by the scent of cooking sausages being prepared for half time); and apart from one particularly crass and unmistakable refrain, I cannot comprehend football chants. But admittedly, the best part of the evening was discovering that the Fulham mascot is....a badger. Those of you who know about my well-established badger obsession will understand (and probably wonder at) my excitement.

Things I Currently Love v.2

• Listening to Toronto Maple Leafs games on my computer as I'm falling asleep. Even lying in bed, I thrust my fist into the air every time they score.

• How I shocked the bejesus out of a woman on the tube today. Standing on the platform, I said: You're from BC. She stared at me: How on earth did you know that? I explained that when she opened she wallet to retrieve her ticket, I had seen her BC drivers license. In the hot, teeming tube station, we smiled at each other with the secret knowledge that we were both from the most beautiful place on this planet.

• That Arthur, my new aloe vera plant purchased yesterday, came with instructions that said: In winter, reduce watering to nil. It's like a kill-proof plant.

• The look on my father's I-just-got-off-a-ten-hour-flight face when I surprised him at the Heathrow Express this afternoon. If I can't visit home, the next best thing is home visiting me.

Thanksgiving and Thanks for BitTorrent

• This week I experienced my last first-day-of-school. I used to love this day - new teachers, new classes, seeing friends again, new resolutions. But now I'm just kind of tired. Sure, I enjoyed the school supply shopping, but after 23 first-days-of-school (Montessori through PhD) I'm just about done now. I had my schedule for this year's work approved by my supervisor and to see the actual end in sight is an enormous relief.

• I'm flying to Toronto tomorrow for Thanksgiving weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing friends and sleeping in my big queen-sized bed and drinking real filter coffee, but what am I the most excited about? The beginning of the hockey season and the baseball playoffs which are now in full swing.

• I acquired a reader's pass to the British Library and have been working there over the past couple of weeks. Imagine a huge room full of at least 200 desks, each one a large size, with comfortable chair and individual light....and a little signal light that flashes when the books you have ordered are ready to be collected. And the best part - even a sneeze will induce looks of death from the silent masses. You really could hear a pin drop in there and I love it.

• I have been faithfully downloading the American tv that I can't get over here. Hello Amazing Race. Hello Grey's Anatomy. While it will be nice to watch these shows in real time when I'm in Toronto over the next few days, there is something comforting about crawling into bed with my laptop, turning off the light and having a flickering screen of illegal images send me to sleep.

Kandinsky at the Tate

Yesterday I went to see Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction at the Tate Modern. I'll tell you what was abstracting - me, after dealing with the enormous crowd in the gallery. I went with the same friend who toured the Hermitage with me, and it wasn't exactly the same treatment.

I wasn't particularly enthused about the show, but this may have been partly due to the mistake of going to an exhibit on a Sunday afternoon and partly that I'm not hugely fond of Kandinsky's work. (Though I will say that, as per usual, the Tate Modern did a fantastic job of acquiring such an enormous volume and wide range of works.) It isn't that I don't get what Kandinsky was trying to do with abstraction, but it eliminates a lot of the individuality of each painting for me. Then again, this theory should purport that I feel the same about Rothko's work, but I don't. My friend perhaps said it best: (As we both stared at a painting in front of us), "God, that's the perfect visualization of how I feel when I'm nauseated."

A few years ago, I had to buy a card for someone important to me at really short notice. I dashed into a corner store and had to pick something that didn't have flowers or a cheesy greeting on it. The only banal, yet colourful one that fit this category was a Kandinsky print. I found myself walking around the exhibit yesterday thinking more about this person than about the paintings on the wall. What does this say about Kandinsky? What does this say about me?

Comic Relief with Mom

Hunting for a flat and dealing with the British way of doing so is super stressful. My mom, thankfully accompanying me during this task, is comic relief.

Mom: The flat we're going to see today is right next to the Natural History Museum.
Me: Oh.
Mom: You've been there.
Me: No I haven't.
Mom: Yes you have. I took you there when we came to London during that Spring Break.
Me: I was seven.
Mom: Well, we should go again. They have great animals there.
Me: Animals? In the museum? (Pause) Are they dead?
Mom: Well, yes. But they're really nicely stuffed.

Hopping The Pond

I'm sitting in my loft, it's late, and I'm trying to get my head around the fact that I'm moving to London tomorrow. The 17 pound bag of articles and files that I'll be carrying on the plane with me tomorrow is helping. But my Zoodles and Swiss Chalet sauce packets and nalgene water bottle are packed and I'm surprisingly ready to go. Posting here will most likely be sparse as I deal with this whole homelessness issue. As in, my homelessness. Until then....cheers!

The Perfect Day

It was pretty much the perfect New York day on Wednesday. A deli bagel breakfast, shopping on Fifth Avenue where I bought a gorgeous suit, lunch in the lobby bar at the Four Seasons, an afternoon in MOMA and then an entire evening watching tennis at the US Open.

From our front row seats we saw both Sharapova and Roddick's matches, the hottest couple on the circuit at the moment. (Reading the The New York Times this morning, it referred to them as "Rodapova". God, I'm sick of the name fusion fad.) Roddick looked very good, so much so that I'm picking him to win the men's title. And I'm going for a wildcard for the women's and taking Serena. I was prediction perfect last year.

But the highlight of this year's event for me happened before the matches even started. I was wandering by the practice courts, which are covered in mesh netting, though you can peek through the cracks in the fence to watch. A guy was standing there peeking through and I asked him who was practicing. "Connors and McEnroe," he said. I snorted with laughter. Except that he wasn't kidding. So I watched these legends fool around on the court together for about ten minutes - something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime again. Photos taken on Wednesday night in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

(And as I have just been standing and pacing for the past 35 minutes in my loft watching Agassi play such an unbelievable and nail-biting match, I can't even imagine what I would have been like if I'd been there. Vomiting, probably.)

Agassi's Final Bow

One of my favourite, quirky possessions is a tennis ball from the US Open 2002 Final, widely considered a classic match. It was here that Sampras beat Agassi to win his 14th slam and he retired soon afterwards.

Tomorrow I fly to New York for the Open where Agassi will be playing in his last tournament before retiring himself. I feel so fortunate to have seen Agassi, not only in the prime of his career, but at every slam I've attended. Maybe I'm his good luck charm and he doesn't even know it.

Dubai Bound

I'm beginning to feel a little stressed. I'm moving continents in two weeks, I don't have anywhere to live when I get there, and I have to complete an enormous amount of work on my thesis as soon as I arrive. There are no clear surfaces in my loft - everything is covered in chapter drafts and academic articles and books. Upstairs my floor is a mound of clothes and shoes and bags that I'm trying to fit into two suitcases. Today I dropped $100 at the drugstore on things I can't get in the UK.

While waking up at 2am and having my mind race with things I have to do is not an unusual phenomenon, I'm looking ahead at my calendar and not seeing an end to the stress. What to do? Well, create my own end to the stress, of course! So tonight I booked a five day trip to Dubai at the end of October with my favourite travelling companion. Now while I'm whirling in the chaos of moving and working, I can dream about lying on the beach and getting lost in the souq.

The Ultimate Stones Mix

The BBC announced that (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction is the UK's favourite Rolling Stones song. Predictable. Having seen the Stones in concert four times and owning every Stones album made before 1981 (not to say that the albums post-Tattoo You aren't worth listening to, but they aren't exactly rush-out-to-purchase records) I am often asked to make Stones mix albums for friends. And I don't even put (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction on these mixes. You Can't Always Get What You Want is the best Stones song but I will say that the poll's finding of Sticky Fingers as the best album isn't a bad choice. Want the best Stones mix album? Here it is:

1. Brown Sugar
2. You Can't Always Get What You Want
3. Gimme Shelter
4. 19th Nervous Breakdown
5. Sympathy For The Devil
6. Midnight Rambler (live - from Hot Rocks)
7. Under My Thumb
8. Wild Horses
9. Angie
10.Tumbling Dice
11. Happy
12. Can You Hear Me Knocking
13. Miss You
14. Emotional Rescue
15. Shine A Light

4:48 Psychosis

Tonight I saw the Sarah Kane play 4:48 Psychosis at the Summerworks Theatre Festival. I first encountered the work of Sarah Kane in 2000 during a theatre course in my MA program at Kings College London. In 2001, the Royal Court Theatre ran a season of Sarah Kane's work and I saw almost all her plays here, including 4:48 Psychosis. It was one of the most riveting moments of my life - I did not realize I was crying until the lights came up and I was overwhelmed by the rawness and emotion and beauty of such a stunning piece of theatre. In a sentence, the play is a chaotic meditation on the disintegration of the mind from mental illness.

The play is almost like a long poem, and I suppose can be interpreted in a few different ways. But the way this director interpreted the play was just...terrible. The original production had three actors who assumed various roles (patient, doctor, witness) and rotated as such. But the Summerworks performance had the actors take specific roles which they maintained throughout the play - patient, doctor, and the witness that was portrayed as some kind of blood soaked zombie. By assuming static roles and having tremendously long monologues throughout, the intentional chaos of the play wasn't communicated at all. The play was also overacted, sometimes embarrassedly so, and this stripped the beauty out of Kane's words.

The Royal Court performance made wonderful use of props and lighting - a large mirror was hung on a slant above the stage, which reflected a second mirror that lay on the stage. As one actor counted the serial sevens, another wrote the numbers on the mirror - but backwards, so the hanging mirror displayed the numbers in the correct form. It was a beautiful portrayal of the delicate nature of chaos. Tonight's performance, on the other hand, had a transparent plastic curtain smeared with fake blood and a handheld flashlight. Sigh. I won't go as far to say that this performance was a disservice to Kane's work, but it was appallingly disappointing. For a better idea of how brilliant the Royal Court performance was, here is a review of it.

I wanted to quote some of 4:48 Psychosis here and have spent over an hour trying to choose a passage. I could just reprint the entire play, but in the end I chose this:

Sometimes I turn around and catch the smell of you and I cannot go on I cannot fucking go on without expressing this terrible so fucking awful physical aching fucking longing I have for you. And I cannot believe that I can feel this for you and you feel nothing. Do you feel nothing?