Life in London Towne

So after a couple weeks of routine here at school, I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what life is like, or will be like, for the rest of the semester. I’ve got my own room, so when no one’s visiting, I do a lot of quiet things, such as lots of reading (3 and a half books down, about 20 more to go) and lots of writing (2 TV shows, 3-4 short films, and a graphic novel concept that’s so epic it might not be done in my lifetime…no, seriously). I enjoy doing the quiet things because I feel like I haven’t done them at all for so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to just sit down and get lost in a novel for hours, or to be able to actually stay in my room and write, without countless interruptions.

Despite the precedence of these pursuits, I’ve split my time pretty equally between them and getting out and seeing the city. As I mentioned earlier, four days of touring it covered about a quarter of it—it’s absolutely enormous. But in the past week I’ve put a pretty big dent in it.

Saturday was our first field trip as a class (all of us Biola students here are all in the same class, which, yes, takes occasional field trips). We started out at the Tate Britain, one of London’s premiere art galleries. The guided tour was a nice addition to my normal practice of simply walking through and making the best of it with pamphlets and a spotty memory of Art History.

From there, we took a boat up the Thames to the Tate Modern, also a top gallery, not just in London, but the world. After a brief visit there, we went to see Howard Brent’s “In Extremis” at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. It was an amazing introduction to London’s reputation as the top theater city in the world, needless to say. The theater itself has the only truly thatched roof in London, and, while an exact replica, is built a few blocks from where the original stood.

After the field trip, a group of us hung out at Oxford Circus, a shopping center/trendy area where my buddy Ted and I were thankful to find a kebab stand at the exact moment of our need. Amazing. That night, I picked Alison up from the coach station, and we commenced our week.

Monday saw a return to the Tate Museums before making our way through the streets to the Barbican Arts Centre for a late-night showing of Martin Scorsese’s newest film, “The Departed”. If you don’t like Mafia movies, don’t even think about it. If you like the best ensemble performance of the year from one of the most powerful casts assembled within recent memory, see it. Now.

But backing up: earlier that day, we were walking, as usual (we always seem to walk everywhere: either we love burning calories, or we’re just cheap) from the Tate Britain to the Tate Modern, and the path there goes through Parliament Square, right next to the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and such. We noticed in passing, an absurd amount of policemen milling around at one end of the Square. Drawn, of course, by the same innate human instinct that makes you stop and gawk when you see a car crash, we ambled over to check it out. Sure enough, it was a demonstration, with all the ingredients for a fantastic revolution: lots of terse-looking cops, lots of unhygienic protestors milling around in a circle, and lots of onlookers shouting “Scum!” at the police.

Great, right? Except for one thing. They’re British. Unlike South Americans, who, I think we’d all agree, know how to have a revolution, these protestors just kind of sat there. They didn’t even chant anything. Not a peep. Maybe that’s the “proper” way of doing a protest, but next time, take a note from the South Americans and start throwing stuff. You people burn soccer stadiums down over lost matches, and you can’t even chant against war? C’mon!

Another highlight of the week, and probably my life, came two days later. Both Alison and I had been wanting to see Wicked, the “Broadway blockbuster” which has been brought back to it’s roots here in the West End (the original novel was written here), and we were finally able to get tickets for 20 pounds (about $36)! That’s pretty much unheard of for a musical that was sold out every show during its Broadway run. And a small price to pay for such an amazing show! I’ve never really been much of a theater guy, but this semester just might change me for life.

All of that to say, it’s been an amazing few weeks here lately. Lots of world-class arts experiences, from the art galleries, to the Globe, to Scorsese’s latest, to Wicked, I’ve been able to taste a sampling of one of the greatest arts scenes available on this planet. And I couldn’t be happier.