London, Day 1

I have a new umbrella.  Of course I packed one, since I was coming to London, but I foolishly believed the weather report suggesting that there would be no rain today.  My new umbrella is a lovely color wheel, perfect for gray days.  I’ll figure out how to get it home later.

The umbrella came from the shop at the Tate Modern.  I keep going on about Mark Rothko.  He inspires me.  It is hard to capture the quality of his works in photos because there is a subtlety to the color that makes the paintings almost glow.  They have a whole room full of his works.  I found them to be like a series of doors or windows, opening onto possibilities.  Oddly enough, when I read the “official” interpretation, he intended the works to have a sense of windows bricked up, forcing introspection.  I like my interpretation better.

On my walk to the Tate, I saw another example of the architecture of anachronism (look!  I just invented a fancy term for my own concept!). I love how the pub cuddles in between the glass buildings.

The new Globe Theatre is a different sort of architectural anachronism.  It is a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s theater near the original site.  (The original site is covered in a block of flats put up in the 1830’s and thus untouchable.  An area of colored bricks in the car park marks the site of the archaeological dig that uncovered a small portion of the original foundation.  I did not go look at it.)

Scholars and historians and all sorts of people came together to create the reconstruction to be as faithful to the original construction as is compatible with modern safety standards.  There are fire sprinklers.  There are more than two exits.  The floor where the groundlings stand is concrete rather than a mixture of clinkers and hazelnut shells.  Also, pissing on the floor is no longer permitted.  Nor is throwing things at the actors.  So it is not quite an authentic Elizabethan theater, but close enough.