London in a nutshell (now with pictures!)
October 23, 2005
London was all about seeing friends and feeling at home. I stayed with Yaz in her mother�s apartment. We made wholesome, home cooked, vegetarian meals, and poured our hearts out to each other like we never had in high school. Yaz is/was going through a really, really difficult time, and I was just feeling a little mixed up in the heart. But by the end of our five days together were both breathing a little easier, and I was so glad to be able to be there for Yaz as she got ready for yet another transition in a year that has been full of transitions.
But it wasn�t all heavy stuff. In fact, in wasn�t even mostly heavy stuff. After our first night together, snuggled under her mother�s freshly-laundered blankets and talking into the night, we went out and had a lot of fun.
We met up with old friends from Kuwait in Soho for lunch, and then later in the week one of those old friends cooked us a meal that couldn�t be beat, and we sat around drinking beer and wine (like we never really could in high school), and told each other the things we never could in high school.
Leave it to four (I�m behind the camera) Muslim kids to find, and be highly amused by a place called �Mecca Bingo�...
...And a place called Shoot Up Hill. Uhuh.
Other than the time spent with high school friends, I met up with Yaz�s old friends from her university days in Edinburgh, for dinner, drinks, samba protesting, and sonic pong. Much like Yaz herself, all her friends are really artsy, activist types. But not annoyingly so. One of her friends, a German woman named Julie, works a couple months out of the year in London as an architect, making enough money to spend her springs and summers in Bulgaria, working on her gorgeous little farmhouse there. Yaz�s ex councils survivors of the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia through music and art. They all do cool things like that, but none of them are up their own bums about it. They�re also all really into table tennis/ping pong. Nina, another German friend, was in the process of building an outdoor table tennis table to be put in her neighborhood park.
On Saturday, September 28th a large protest was held starting near parliament and ending in Hyde Park.
It�s been a while since I�ve participated in an anti-war demo, and this one was really fun. (Is that okay? For a demo to be fun?) For about 4 years now Yaz and her friends have been going to demonstrations throughout Europe and playing Samba music. The group we marched with in London was called Rhythms of Resistance, the idea behind them being that Samba music was resistance music for slaves in Brazil, much like spiritual music was for slaves in the American south, and also that Samba really gets people going. It�s true. Before we found the band in the huge crowd that was out for the demonstration, Yaz and I were really dragging and feeling kind of sluggish and lazy. But once we joined up with the band we were in high spirits again, and didn�t realize how far we had marched until we got to our stopping point in Hyde Park.
I'm with the band
Yaz with drum
Later on that day, after the demo, Yaz, her ex, and I made our way to Crystal Palace for sonic pong. Basically, one of Yaz�s friends had this ping pong set up where the rackets are attached to microphones so you could hear every hit as you hit it. There was also a lot of cool stuff done with lighting and such, and, whatever, it actually made the whole ping pong experience that much more fun. On the wall behind the ping pong table there was a sign which read �Sonic Pong.� Some of the letters had circuits underneath, and if you touched the right two letters at a time (using your body as the electrical conductor), the circuits, which were wired to loud speakers, would emit a range of musical sounds. If you and another person linked arms and touched a letter each, then the electricity would pass through both of you, and have the same effect. Anyway, it was really cool.
Let the electricity flow through your body
Yaz vs. Dan (with two people creating a circuit reflected in the mirror)
After sonic pong, we listened to some music by a friend of Yaz�s who had just gotten back from Morocco and was experimenting with some news sounds, and then made the long bus ride back to Yaz�s place and snuggled in to watch Bride and Prejudice which was a lot of fun. (My favorite line was the one where whitey says something along the lines of �Yeah, Indian dancing looks easy. You pretty much pat the dog while screwing in a light bulb.� Ha!)
I spent Sunday doing some shopping and walking around enjoying the sunshine (yes! Sunshine!), while Yaz packed up her belongings to make the move back to Scotland the next day. At night I went to dinner at Anood�s. Monday morning we rushed around trying to get Yaz on her train to Edinburgh, and after seeing her off I met up the high school friends once again to say one last goodbye before I had to head to the airport and back to Dublin.
London was a much needed respite with old friends. Even though, with the exception of Yaz, I was never really that close to the friends I saw, there was something about the time we spent together that felt like going home.
In any case, I think the rest of my trip throughout Ireland was made that much better as a result of the relaxing downtime I had in London.