Sunday 18th January
Had a lovely day in Lahndahn Tahn yesterday with my Mum. We had our usual long lunch and went to see a selection of Neo-Expressionist paintings from the 1980s in Tate Modern and took in the Rothko late work retrospective at the same time.
Rothko was as expected seriously busy but having the Tate card we rebelled at the order of things and wandered against the flow of gallery goers making snarky comments as we went. That's right, queue to read something that is in the guide YOU ARE HOLDING IN YOUR HAND. Yesss...
My Mum was able to appreciate the very large works from the Seagram mural commission; the largest room was impressive filled with the rich red and maroon canvases; she could see the small variations in each and understand how this was important. Go Mum. I liked this room very much but also really liked the super inky sepia and black work where you could just barely make out the variation in colour.
My Mum is very worried about life at home with my Dad and my brother; my bro is looking for a job to take him out of the family home and away from my tyrannical Dad but somewhat unsurprisingly given the economic difficulties the world finds itself in of late, this is proving a harder task than he imagined.
She is (rightly) concerned that my Dad will chuck my brother out and she has said that if this happens then she's going to leave too. It's a potential nightmare of epic, family-splitting proportions and I feel desperately sad that my Mum has to live with it. I don't feel like its my place to encourage her to leave my Dad and I know that at sixty years old it is probably financially impossible to make a break on her own.
All of this is nothing new really, but with my brother living at home and my Dad nearing retirement (in just a couple of months) a potential disaster is rapidly approaching.
SIGH.
Anyway, I had a really good day out and saw some good art and some bad art. The weather was good until darkness fell and by the time I was back in my county the rain was falling in sheets that were most certainly not being blown dry by the strong gusts of wind that battered at my bedroom window. I switched on my fairy lights, lit a candle and snuggled under my blanket for an evening listening to Marvin Gaye and watching the return of Battlestar Galactica.
BSG- Depress much? The identity of the final Final Five Cylon was not that much of an Oh My Gods moment, but the suicide of one of the major characters certainly was.
The return of Battlestar renewed my love and respect of Edward James Olmos- Watching him drunkenly challenge his newly-revealed-as-a-Cylon First Officer to blow his brains out when he wasn't able to do it himself was really sad but awesome at the same time.
The idea of an eternal conflict between tribes/humans/Cylons is an interesting one and was unexpected; I guess its a little like that part in Terminator 2 where John Connor talks to the T-1000 about how humanity isn't going to make it and that we're destined to eternally fight each other.
John: [Watching two little boys playing war with toy guns] We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.
Terminator: It's in your nature to destroy yourselves.
John: Yeah. Major drag, huh?
Mother of Fighting Children: Break it up before I wring both your necks.
Back to something lovely...
After The Dance
Marvin Gaye
9Mb
http://rapidshare.com/files/185531653/mg_a_a_d.rar.html
