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London Pt. 1: Everything, Everywhere, Out of Order

Upon descent into the greater London area, I sat up from lying horizontal in my empty row and opened my window shade to see rows of clouds and a slice of rainbow in the sky above.

I was staying in Marylebone, a neighborhood I chose mainly for its proximity to the park, various transit stations, several points of interest, and the fact that it looks like this on pretty much every side street.

Though everyone told me what a good time to visit I’d chosen, I was trying not to be anxious about the weather. I had accepted that it would probably rain a little bit every day. It was not so. The skies were mainly clear during my visit and the temperatures increasingly warmed each day. There were times I actually started giggling out loud because of how beautiful the weather was, in this notoriously gray place. No wellies or brollies needed to make an appearance this time.

Meanwhile, in New York, it was thunderstorming.

All of London’s window boxes looked very vibrant and well-maintained. This is cineraria, displaying one of the most VIVID shades of purple I’ve ever seen.

During my visit, I went to The Wallace Collection (see following entry), The National Gallery (pictured here), Sir John Soane’s Museum, The Museum of the Home, the Tate Modern, and the V&A. That is a lot of museum-going in four days. Some spoke to me more than others, but I couldn’t beat the gratis price of all that culture.

The Carlo Crivelli gallery came highly recommended, and I’m glad I was able to spend some time here.

I ambled over to Sir John Soane’s after having lunch in the Cafe in the Crypt. I first found out about this place because it was listed as a “Sympathetic Institution” on The Museum of Jurassic Technology’s website. As longtime readers are well aware, I will travel to the ends of the earth just to spend one hour wandering within the nooks and the perilously narrow crannies of a house-sized wunderkammer.

I also touched something in this museum that I wasn’t supposed to. Oops.

Back out in the world, I went to Cecil Court and made conversation with the eccentric proprietor of an Alice-in-Wonderland-themed shop about Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde.

He asked where I was from. “New York.” “Oh, yes, we call that ‘the other city.”

Next door was a metaphysical bookshop with a Thoth-patterned carpet.

London Pt. 2: The Wallace Collection

Upon learning that I was traveling to London (and staying in Marylebone), many people enthusiastically recommended seeing the Wallace Collection. I made it my first stop off of the plane, and I ended up staying until they closed. I was not prepared for how beautiful and labyrinthine this place was.

Each room was a jewel box.

Communed with “The Swing” for as long as I could (it was being appreciated by many) because I was struck by how sinister this painting seems when you really look at it. There is a crazed look in the eyes of all the individuals. The statues of cherubs all look anxious or are turned away from the activity. The faded foliage in the distance gives the appearance of both a raging thunderstorm and plumes of smoke. The gnarls of the branches to which the swing is attached even look like faces crying out in pain. Anyway, that’s just my perception of it. The more you look, the more you see.

“The Kiss Given” and “The Kiss Received.”

Communed for a long time with Canaletto’s paintings of the Venetian waterfront. Was so struck by how the tiny tiny lines and dots convey so much expression and intrigue, even in a “day in the life” scene like this one.

I turned the corner into this grand hall and was hit with a wave of emotion. My heart fluttered as my eyes filled with tears. I gave thanks and tried to just be here, in the space, without fighting with myself on the meaning of it all.

Shortly after, I realized that I forgot to turn my work notifications off of my phone.

London Pt. 3: So This Is the New Year

On the evening before my birthday, I headed to Brixton to this striking venue called the O2 Academy. It has a pretty interesting history. It opened in 1929 as the Astoria Variety Cinema, then it was converted into a discotheque in 1972, then reborn as a concert hall in 1983.

The interior of the theater is also incredibly enchanting. Nearly 100 years ago, it was constructed to be England’s first “atmospheric” cinema. According to my new favorite website, historictheaterphotos.com:

The design followed the trend of the Atmospheric theatre design whereby auditoria were designed to afford patrons the sense of being seated in an exotic garden or courtyard, watching a performance sitting under the night sky with stars twinkling above. The design concept was originated by John Eberson in the United States in the mid-1920s.

An editorial in the London Sentinel of 20th August 1929, following the theatre’s opening, noted that “London has a real American cinema at last”. It went on to say “It is done in the subtle Italian type of architecture, that gives the effect of a garden – in fact, it was exactly like sitting in the open air. […] There are tall trees along the sides, blue and pink lights twinkle everywhere, and the ceiling of sky blue gives a background to twinkling stars”.

Naturally, this is leading me down an “atmospheric theaters” rabbit hole that I will be needing to explore at length here another time.

I loved the concert so much. It felt very special to be there. The band played two incredible encores - one of which was accompanied by several circus acrobats. Apparently Beirut’s latest album was commissioned to score a Swedish circus.

I looked up the set list afterward and turned it into a playlist that I’ve been listening to on repeat.

Alright, skipping ahead a WHOLE DAY (a very nice one that I spent mainly in Shoreditch), I had dinner in Mayfair at a restaurant called Sketch for my birthday. I have been wanting to go to this restaurant for as long as I’ve known about it. For the vibes, obviously. Designed in 1779, the building has previously served as the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the London atelier of Christian Dior—the restaurant opened in 2002. I was smitten immediately with the luxurious mystique of this whole place and they took very good care of me. (I dined in The Gallery this time, but would love to have brunch, high tea, or cocktails in the venue’s four other rooms when I visit in the future)

My dinner (grilled Dover sole with pureed potatoes and herb butter with a side of steamed veg) was excellent. And I had a two-course dessert. The first, pictured here, was the Sketch 055: orange confit, cocoa sorbet, crumble, praline and manjari chocolate roulade, mascarpone, and almond paste. Yes, I did look this up quickly before ordering it because the description raised far more questions than it answered.

Needless to say, it was scrummy.

The second dessert was a slice of lemon poppyseed Battenberg cake (not on the menu!) with a candle and “happy birthday” message. It was very sweet (literally and figuratively) but I couldn’t resist polishing it off. I saw quite a few of these coming out of the kitchen actually - lots of May 9 babies were in the house that night.

And when they brought the check, they plucked out two pear-flavored, sugar-encrusted gummies from a jar for me. I took a bite out of one but was hopelessly overwhelmed with sugar at this point.

And then an obligatory trip to the restaurant’s bathroom to gawk at the rainbow ceiling and the egg toilets. What I was not prepared for was the LOUD bird chirping piped in to hide bathroom sounds. I’m now so annoyed that I didn’t Merlin ID it.

Self-portrait in a convex mirror (with egg toilets)

It was still light out upon leaving the restaurant, and I felt determined to continue squeezing all the birthday juice out of this friday night that I could. What I really wanted to do was ride the double-decker bus aimlessly and appreciate London architecture at eye-level well into the night. I instead took it to the Tate Modern where I had kind of a frantic time trying to take everything in before it closed. Oh well!

The next morning (my last in town), I went to Regent’s Park and spent a few perfect, peaceful hours basking in the rose garden.

Said a final goodbye to the blackbirds and wood pigeons. Until next time!

KitKats from Japan: Mt. Fuji blueberry cheesecake (v sweet!) and purple sweet potato (less sweet, mildly nutty).

Remaking the world with a dear friend over pistachio sponge.

if you, like me, have been gripped with off-the-charts ennui lately, a trip to Poster House in the Chelsea/Flatiron District will (usually) cure whatever ails you. Or at least give you something unexpected to commune with.

During today’s visit, I was drawn to this group of four posters in the just-opened exhibition Fallout: Atoms for War & Peace. This series of corporate propaganda posters for the aerospace and defense company General Dynamics was designed by Erik Nitsche in the late 1950s—each poster represents a potential application of atomic energy. In particular, I couldn’t take my eyes off the piece in the upper right-hand corner, titled “Worlds Without End.”

From the exhibition description: Technology from General Dynamics’s Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program was used during the Space Race as part of numerous NASA launch systems. In this humbling design, a minuscule Atlas rocket skirts by a black hole and several galaxies, underscoring the infinite promise of space exploration—truly “worlds without end.”

What grabbed me about this piece was the intense blackness of the black hole. It reminded me of Vantablack, a shade of black so dark, it disappears details and makes objects look like two-dimensional cut-outs due to its nonreflective quality. Whenever I seek out images of Vantablack, my stomach does a little flip—I feel that I am looking at something that I am not supposed to see. It is so unnaturally dark, swallowing light like a rip in reality.

From the exhibition copy: To achieve the intense depth of black in the composition, Nitsche instructed his printer to pass each poster through the press multiple times.

I wished this poster were displayed at eye-level so that I could stare into it a bit longer.

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