what it means to head north

this is the beginning of a lengthy summary of my trip so far these past several days. i will break it up so as not to bore. also, i'm still in dublin and don't have my camera cord, so it'll be a bit before photos get on here. just use your imagination.

wow, i am looking at my notebook of points to include from the past week, and it is a bit daunting. here goes..

My dear friend Catie came to london last friday. our phones don't connect because she has irish service, i have british, so it was difficult finding her when she arrived in london, but she eventually showed up on my campus and we united in joy. We ate dinner at the pub, tried to make it to fireworks for Guy Fawkes night, but missed them completely, walked around parliament at night. Catie is doing an internship with the parliament in dublin, so she was curious about westminster and all. A few of her friends (americans) from her program in dublin were in london for the weekend, so we met them at a pub called O'neils in Leicester Square. For those who don't know about leicester square, it's mad. It's the area of Central London where much of the high end theatre (broadway type) and huge clubs are. Think loud, sparkling, shimmering, dancing, colors, chaos. so we went to this pub, o'neils, that i'd heard of but did not know what to expect. it was really expensive, three stories (one for traditional bar, one for jam-packed crowd and live band, everyone singing and spilling their beers, and the top floor for dance club and smoking deck. i was skeptical at first, but it was pretty fun. We managed to get home before the tube closed and got up early the next morning to catch a bus and a plane to Glasgow.

susan, my aunt jody's friend from childhood was waiting for us at the airport in glasgow with a sign. she brought us to her lovely home, we met her husband tom and their dog suto, which is closer to a human than a dog i think. the whole weekend, he would bark this deep growling and susan would yell at him to go away and he would just growl louder. so funny, it was like a child bickering with its mother. saturday evening, we just chatted with susan and tom for a while and they took us out for a nice curry in the west end of glasgow, the university area where susan went to school. when we got back, i watched a BBC drama with tom while Catie used the computer and then we went to bed. In the morning, susan had breakfast for us, so sweet, and then she drove us by my dad's old house in newton mearns. he lived there from about age 7 to 12, during which susan was good friends with his sister. it was strange to hear susan tell stories about my dad and my grandparents from years ago when they lived in scotland. strange to meet someone who knew my family long before i did. Then susan dropped us off in glasgow city centre, and we took a bus tour around town, walked through an old cemetery with beautiful view of the city, got off the bus at a pub, got back on, got off cause i had to pee terribly bad, went to use the bathroom at a gambling shop, watched a man watch a horse race on a tv screen, took the bus to the west end, went to a couple vintage shops, ate mac n' cheese, got a pint, talked to some nice scottish folks at the pub, got picked up by susan in the rain, showered, went to bed early.

well, i'm bout to leave here, so i'll finish this story later.

and i will get back to the theme that is the title of this post when i tell the rest of the story.

sorry no photos or visuals, no time. later.

x

reached the island

hiya,

i am in dublin now, staying with catie shawley, drinking guinness, partying with the irish folks.

it's quite a whirlwind, ten days of traveling, and then back to london tuesday morning in time to hopefully make it to lecture at 10am. we'll see if that works out. then i've loads of projects/essays to do next week, but hopefully will get back to this blog soon, as i have photos and words to put on about my trip around scotland and ireland.

it's been fun and funny so far. irish kids are funny. i never stop laughing at their jokes, until my face hurts. their accent is easier to understand in dublin than the londoners' which i didn't expect. they say 'like' at the end of sentences and they say 'zed' for the letter Z, just like the british. it is a good place, dublin. i feel safer than in london by far.

hope everyone is good,

cheers,
emily.

THANK YOU.

mr. stephen colbert.

coffee is ruining my life again..

right then.

i have forgotten to mention all the escapades of the past week, and the weekend (a very lazy weekend, indeed) has already passed.

It is in fact monday evening, and I will quickly recount all that has happened in the past week before finishing my reading for tomorrow.

well, last monday I went to the Tate Modern art museum, to browse at leisure before visiting again this week for my class project. amidst the masses of children and their mom's on break from school running around and screaming and taking up too much space, i saw some good stuff.

tuesday went to a gig in Islington, one of the trendier boroughs in london. Joe, my flatmate, has a bunch of home friends from brighton who are in a band and they came up to london to play. they were all really nice, music was great, drummer amazing. i talked to him afterwards and told him i thought he was great. he said it's basically all he has time for, he doesn't have a girlfriend, doesn't go to school, has a shit job and just plays drums all day, and loves it. i said, that's gooood. and i meant it.

wednesday steven and i saw a performance by Charles Linehan Company, a UK-based modern dance company. It was lovely to watch, but my mind fell very quiet during the piece. Not that I didn't get anything out of it, it was just not very clear. I want to know more. Here's a video i found of some work/play Charles Linehan does in general..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyG9aWQeN2g

thursday our flat had a big halloween party. i had soo much fun, almost too much fun, but fun nonetheless. a few of us went to new globe afterwards, because there was a halloween party there too. and the dj played all the right songs, i was singing and i was dancing. great time.

friday, complete laziness. saturday wandered around notting hill in search of julia roberts, stumbled upon portobello road market, famous for its antique jewelery of sorts. i almost bought a pocket watch.

sunday night, went out dancing to this club in soho called punk. i felt i was in one of those movies where there's a halloween party and everyone is dressed full-out in something terrifying and all are dancing to thriller with fake blood dripping from their mouths. this was that. it was AWESOME. there was a DJ and also this girl as his assistant who would randomly scream into the microphone during a song. i found myself bent-over laughing every time. just, pure madness. as halloween should be.

the website for punk is here: http://www.punksoho.co.uk/
I found out after going there that celebrities have also attended, like lady gaga!

here are some random photos from my camera:


The New Globe, exterior. pub on the corner, frequented by students.


part of St. Paul's Cathedral. Also, the ice cream truck with "MIND THAT CHILD!"...huh huh huh..


long strides, string bass, notting hill.


currently listening to:

zeppppppppelin duhhhhhhhh
18-minute drum solo man, it's caraaaaaaazy.

follow a stranger, and never let them go.

[[Do they suspect what I'm about to do? That guy is looking at me. Well I'll just wait here for a second and follow someone out of the station. That lady! She looks like a nice lady, like she wouldn't figure me out, she's got her headphones in and is on a mission...to the grocery store. Damn. Well I'll just wait outside and play with my phone a bit. Do do do. No big deal, just waiting for a friend. What are you looking at? Dum dee dum...Has she come out yet? Surely she must have. Did I miss her? Well she might've gone back on the tube anyway. Oh well. I'll have to find someone else. This girl. Fur jacket and hat seems a bit much for a day like today, but I like your pace. I can deal with this. Wait, did you just look back at me? I better stay further back. Oh good, yes, thanks dude, yeah, walk right between us, she'll never know. Alright, ok, this is a leisurely walk and you're not getting on a bus or anything, I like that. Because I'm not getting on a bus. But where are you going? And why are you slowing down so much? Is something wrong? Are you getting suspicious? You just turned your head again. shit. I don't think you've actually looked at me yet, but I think you know I'm here. I think you can sense I'm following you and have no other purpose but to follow you. If someone did that to me, I might in fact quicken my pace. Why are you not doing that? Do you want me to catch up with you? Do you want to see if I pass you? I won't. Oh, what, wait? You're going into a store? But why. Well, I'll wait for you out here then. No, I can't do this. She knows.]]

just a little excerpt from my journal while completing an activity for class: to stalk someone on the street.

interesting the way it makes different people feel, being a stalker. i've never been so paranoid. well, that's not true, but i felt uncomfortable the whole time.

we spent last class sharing our experiences with this, and some were quite funny. One guy followed his person for a long time, but lost him when he walked into a sandwich shop after the guy and frantically ordered a sandwich to not seem suspicious, not realizing that his sandwich would take time to cook, while his person's sandwich was a cold-cut. Another girl in class followed a man for almost two hours, and eventually lost him around a corner, cause she was keeping a good distance behind him. She felt a bit broken after she had become so attached to following him for so long. It is a dangerous activity, I felt as though I was in danger, as did most of my classmates.

We studied and tried to replicate the works of Vito Acconci and Sophie Calle in this exercise. Sophie Calle I find particularly interesting. Her projects seem to be generally self-centered and she is basically out of my league of practice/understanding, which is why I am so intrigued. I mean, she sounds completely mental. She once followed a man for several days, weeks maybe, followed him to work, home, out to eat, everywhere. She knew all his patterns. Somehow, they had a run-in and got to talking, he mentioned he was going to venice for the weekend. So she booked a flight to venice and continued to follow him there! A few years ago she did an exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (right down the street from my flat) involving the responses of a large variety of people of different professions (lawyer, linguist, artists of varying media) to a break-up email she had received from an ex-partner, so she could try and make sense of it. I mean, really.

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/sophie-calle-talking-to-strangers

umm, I refuse to make a post without a visual, because it's boring. So here is this. Not quite associated with Sophie Calle, but along the same lines of voyeurism, flanerie, le derive, observing people, etc. This is just one of the vast array of incredible photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson, a recent favorite of mine after seeing his work at the Art Institute in Chicago.