London 2

October 1, 2010

I was right about Waterloo Bridge making me feel better. I crossed it heading to the Cottesloe to see a new play called Why Don’t You Just Kiss Me? Like War Horse, it is a piece done with marvelous puppets manipulated by men in black, who are not invisible, but whose expressions are so concentrated on their work that yours is too, WDYJKM is in one sense not a very good play– the professional theater worker in me was fussing about its scripting problems near the beginning– but that magic which sometimes attends upon the stage was afoot, and by the end of the evening I’d had one of the outstanding theatrical experiences of my life. I fought off sobs at the end, until I could get out into the anonymous night. Re-crossing the bridge walking back to Russell Square, I realized that I’d had one of those experiences Aristotle talks about, which people think is just high-toned blather until they have one for themselves. I had transcended pity and terror. Catharsis wrapped me in his arms like a warm wind. The play is about ageing and death, and since my last birthday those have been on my mind. In the middle of the play I felt something I have never felt before. It is hard to put into words. I felt the actual power in me to take whatever desperate or transcendent steps are necessary to stave off what I fear and dread. I thought of the water under the bridge, and it seemed no longer cold and dark, but a radiant plenum, an open door teeming with life. People talk about taking these matters into their own hands– I talk about it–but the actual power to do so descended upon me only that night. With the power to do it comes the end of the obsession with it, and one can get on to the next stage of life with a free mind and an open heart.

Drinks in the hotel bar that night, surrounded by shockingly handsome American men, in the middle of their years, businessmen in loosened ties and expensive suits, with that air about them of men who have always been big and handsome, and assumed their words would be attended.

The Victoria and Albert in morning rain. I took a cab, and the friendly cabbie agreed to take me to Gatwick on Wednesday, and as I had got an internet connection long enough to contact Steven, anxieties were falling like nine pins. I hadn’t remembered the V&A being so gorgeous, all shining dully with cream and gold, full of delightful objects. I must have gone through the wrong entrance before. It has the best café, too, and I drank my jasmine tea and watched the Italian kids and their teacher take pictures of each other. Spencer the cabbie grew up in East London, and has never seen a stage play. I told him he should see Hamlet at the National tonight and get a good start, but he said the Missus wouldn’t stand for anything beyond the level of Sex in the City. I didn’t go into it, but Elsinore makes them look like schoolgirls. Met Simon from Melbourne at the White Horse, somewhere between Leicester Square and Covent Garden. I told him I would come back to see him today, but I am not at all sure I can find the way.

Last night it was the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, Niobe Regina Di Tebe by Agostino Steffani. The music was standard Baroque opera, and the libretto was, of course, idiotic, but the production was lavish and innovative, the singing excellent. The show was boring and delightful at once, as those things sometimes are. The boring part I got past by falling asleep and running a completely different opera in my mind to the music provided. All the male romantic figures were countertenor sopranos, Mars was a woman, and everybody wore poufy full skirts, so one gave up trying to establish any gender norms. I was in the fiftieth balcony, up against the roof. The two people behind me had taken their mother out for a night at the opera, and their ceaseless fussing about whether she could hear and did she see the superscripts and was this and that all right must have ruined any enjoyment she might otherwise have had. At the V&A I was in the tea line behind a gaggle of old ladies who- I swear–took two full minutes each trying to get out of the way so the other could be first in line. I wished I had a camera.
I can go out on my balcony and look down on the Square and whatever street it is runs in front of the hotel. Sore and stiff, but not too sore and stiff.