Missing London
I have been asked so may times what I miss about London. After nine and half years there I know I must miss some things but I just couldn’t name them. We have just been so busy having fun and loving the colours and textures of Cape Town, the friendly and generous people here, the challenges of working that we haven’t had time to miss anything, but one page in a recent copy of the Weekend FT reminded me of some things I miss. I will try to sum it up.
The lead item on this page
was about the forthcoming surrealism exhibition at the V&A and the second
item was about a Tennessee Williams play showing in the great city. Both are
things that we would surely have got our hands on tickets for, and just as
surely would have loved!
The Weekend FT, fortunately, is something I can get my hands on here. I buy it every Sunday at Exclusives Books (rather sad to not have it delivered to my home on a Saturday morning, with its perfect companion, the Guardian, but I am certainly not looking this gift horse in the mouth.
Another reason I treasure my FT is that living in South Africa is not depressing, but reading the papers here is. Sometimes the news and the way it is presented is enough to make me lose the will to live! This morning, a case in point, I despaired when I saw the front page of the main Cape Town weekend newspaper. The first story that caught my eye was headlined Crime: Thabo Mbeki slams whites. Apparently, the outrage in SA about crime is just a racist issue among the whinging paler citizens. Well, that’s alright then? … Try telling that the parents of the children (many of them non-white) who disappear (one every six ours in South Africa, according to a story in the same paper) or are murdered.
There are so many tales of this happening in this and every other newspaper here that one can’t help but feel nauseous. But I digress. This is the context in which the lead story in the newspaper is … drum roll here please … South Africa winning its first game in the Cricket World Cup. Well, bully for them! Adults in this country, including the president, are whinging or denying, and generally bickering amongst themselves while children face all sorts of hell, but that’s ok because we are still hitting sixes off the bowling of (second-rate?) cricketing nations.
So, reading papers
is pretty grim but, believe me, living here is absolutely fantastic! Which
brings me back to the surrealism exhibition in London that we are so sad to
be missing. I have seen a few of the exhibits that will be on show, such as
a lot of the paintings and the Mae West lip couch and the lobster telephone
during visits to Tate Modern, Moma in New York and the Dali museum in Paris
(aren't I well travelled?!), but seeing it all here at the V&A promises to
be different. Like the Art Deco exhibition there last year, I am sure this
show will put everything in context in a way that works for the deco (or,
in this case, surrealist) cultist and the deco virgin alike.
The art is lovely and fascinating, but it is the context that is so intriguing. Art (and theatre) was such a big part of my experience of London and I miss it. It has been replaced by so much else and I prefer things the way they are, but I do, nonetheless, miss the luxury of gazing at, dissecting and appreciating elegance and sophistication just for the sake of it. In the case of this surrealist show, we would probably go with friends and would certainly talk to friends and colleagues about it, before and afterwards.
In South Africa people are busy with other things, such as survival/keeping their children safe and/or bickering among themselves, too busy for art to play such a big role in ordinary people’s lives. Maybe it is just the people I am mixing with, but the comparison I am making is between my circle here and my circle there (apples and apples, you might say). I think the two are quite similar, with a fair number of representatives from the straight world, with their family issues, and gay people, with their disposable incomes and love and fascination with things both pretty and tortured.
Talking of pretty and tortured things, the other article in the FT that made me remember what I missed about London was the review of three Tennessee Williams plays. Watch a TW play in London and you can expect that a fair number of people around you will know the body of his work very well and a lot of the others will have made an effort to read about it and understand it before the show so as to enjoy it as more than just a show. Context, context, context … I think that is what I miss. The context here is so different and my life is so rich in a very different way. It has taken me a little more that six months to miss London and I think that is a little surreal.
