LondonTown Day Two: In which I enjoy the theatre (of Life)

This is St. James' Church, which I can see from my bedroom window, and whose chimes whisk me off to another century every time they ring.

After some purposeful wandering (planning out my evening's theatre), I began my journey to St. Paul's Cathedral.
This is not it. But I thought it was a cute little building. It's truly remarkable to me be in a city built before cars. You look at a map of London streets and it's like a bowl of spaghetti. Yet on every one of these tiny little streets, yards, courts, and places are people! I know, again, I sound like a hick, but you just don't have this kind of population density where I come from. Or at least, where I choose to live. The neighborhood I work in probably feels kinda like this, but then, I don't see MS-13 tags on every wall around here, so it's not really the same thing.

Who says streets have to be straight?
Public spaces means people congregating! The steps of St. Paul's. The cathedral is known as Christopher Wren's masterpiece, not just because of its aesthetic beauty (which is considerable) but also for its technical achievements.
Wren wanted a mural on the inside of the dome, but he knew that a concave dome that looked good enough for you to see the murals, would be too short to look good from the outside. So he built two domes, one inside the other. Brilliant! The trompe d'œil (or, as mummy says, "trumped oil") scaffolding is for the renovation and construction. It's going on throughout the city, making photography difficult.

Speaking of, they don't allow it inside, so I had to walk up the 530 steps to the top of the dome to get these shots:

Can you see the Eye? It was about this point that Lori's voice from Atlanta popped into my head. Her thing is, you shouldn't waste film on pictures that don't have people in them. "That's what postcards are for." Of course, my typically snide and pretentious response was, "But, Lori, where do you think postcards come from?" But even if my photos are never featured in Life Magazine, I like taking pictures. I like the art of it. I like the (now that we're digital) cost-effectiveness of it. And I like the idea that this moment in time, at this particular location, is captured in exactly this way by no one else but me. But fine, if you need to see people:
You may notice I'm wearing the audio tour. A good friend once told me that they couldn't stand having someone tell them what to look at and appreciate in a museum. Well that's all well and good for art students, but as a teacher I know that sometimes appreciation needs a little education first. And the way they make them now, you can pause and skip around, and all that stuff. I don't know much more about architecture than flying buttresses, so it was interesting and helpful at St. Paul's. When I went to the Tate later that afternoon, I bought it and never even used it.

Here is the view directly across the river. The bridge is the Millenium Bridge, a footbridge built to commemorate the, uh, I can't quite remember what, and that large building with a big chimney is the Tate Modern. Just to the right of that is Shakespeare's Globe. Maybe you can blow the picture up. These really look better on my computer than on the web, but I'm trying to save you loading time. Anyways, that's where we're going next.
Schoolchildren. They follow me everywhere.
I don't know, I've got this exact picture without the Yankee Noodle in the foreground and I think it looks better. That thing to my right is London Bridge (or maybe the Tower Bridge. I'll find out this afternoon). The bigger one, coming out of my ear, is Southwark.

One look back at St. Paul's:
Have you noticed how amazing the weather has been since I got here?

Into the Shakespeare exhibition, where I was once and for all convinced that Shakespeare is an invention. A nom de plume. But of whom? It doesn't take anything away from the beauty of the work, but it's just not possible that he exists as we say he does. How would he have such an intimate knowledge of Italian court customs and Venetian law if he never left England? And the source materials he used, a lot of them were in Latin and Ancient Greek. Where did he learn that? And why is his name spelled three different ways on his will? Anyways, there are esteemed scholars who can make this case better than me, but my vote's for Marlowe, who faked his murder and continued publishing under an assumed name.
The Globe's original site is listed, so they couldn't build this reproduction there, but they did take a whatever you call it sonograph survey thingie so they could get the exact proportions, and they built it out of the same materials in the same way, and groundlings still stand in the middle. It's pretty incredible.

I couldn't take pictures inside because they were in technical rehearsals for Antony & Cleopatra (copyright issues) but we did get to watch a little bit of it. We all got a giddy little thrill when the slave stepped on Cleo's toe and the language went from Elizabethan to French (as in pardon my).
Jane, a delightful English docent, told us with a sly wink and her upper-crust accent just how perverse theatregoing was in those days. I hadn't realized that all the theatre in London in those days was kept on the other side of the river with the prostitutes.

Once I again I went crazy in the gift-shop (I'm a sucker for Shakespeare) and then it was over to the Tate Modern. Upon looking at the map I thought, "well this isn't so big, I'll skip the exhibitions and I'll be able to whip through it in no time." Of course I was assuming this museum was like MOCA in L.A., where there will be no more than two or three works in a room. This place was decorated like my dorm room in college! There were literally hundreds of pictures per room! I saw some great stuff, but I was visually overwhelmed within forty-five minutes and had to retreat to the gift shop to spend some money and calm down.

Here is the only work I was able to capture before I was told not to take pictures.
Cool, huh? The materials are all found, in junkyards and the like, and the frying pan has been cut and bent up to form a steak. The steak, though, is in the shape of Africa, so there's commentary on the effect of foreign investment in the continent. I liked it.

After dinner I went to Leicester Square to see Avenue Q, last (last) year's Best Musical winner. I LOVED it! It may be the two vodka tonics (because they only had diet PEPSI) and two vicodin (what? You try walking up and down the St. Paul's dome and tell me your dogs ain't barkin'!) talking, but I was blown away. Tears of joy streaming down my face, I laughed, I cheered, I clapped.

For those of you who don't know, it's like a Sesame Street for people who are in their twenties, have graduated college and now have to face real life, and they make questionable choices while trying to find their way. Half the characters are people, and half are puppets. I don't want to tell you too much (I hate it when reviewers use someone else's jokes to spice up their narrative) because I want you to have the surprise and wonder I did.

I danced back home through Picaddilly Circus like Eliza Doolittle after the ball, and I know I promised you more pictures, but they're all out of focus so maybe later. The battery is almost dead now, so Day Three will have to wait until Day 5.