Arms and the man....

Let me say that first of all, cops are the same all over the world.

There are a lot of different people in Istanbul.  You hear a million languages when you walk down the street. 

 I am in Beyoğlu, not in the tourist area of Sultanahmet where all of the historical sites 

are.  People here refer to Sultanahmet as Old Istanbul.  So much of it is overrun with tour groups, huge air conditioned buses and people with the audio guides that it can be a little overwhelming.  But we are all here to see the same things, so I guess that makes it easier.  Sure I could be a snob and say I am an artist and I have a better view of things but who wants to hear that, in 30 different languages no less.

So let me get back to the cops, or the polis as they are known here.  Like the police at home they carry guns but unlike the police at home they carry assault weapons.  Out open.  In the streets.  It is very intimidating.  You add to the fact that there is a very close relationship between the police and the army - essentially, they are the same thing.  So they walk around like they own the place because they kind of do.  The army has taken over the country to restore democracy a couple of times.  You really don't want to mess with these guys.  So when they ask you a question, you answer.

So I got up pretty early yesterday with a bad case of shin splints from walking the entire city over.  I was a little occupied wondering if I had sold some paintings to give me some additional scratch for my trip, which I may have to cut short because of finances.  I also was having some buyer's remorse about a rug I had bought.  I thought I would go for a walk and clear my head a bit.  I got a coffee (Starbucks IS everywhere) and a simit from the seller on the street and walked to Taksim Square.  The photos show Taksim, the Opera House and the Monument to Ataturk.  This is where I had a seat and started to eat my breakfast.

These two cops come up to me and say hello, in Turkish and I answer in Turkish.  Then one demands to see my passport.  I tell him I left it at the hotel, I had just come out to get some breakfast.  He tells me I don't have a hotel.  I ask him what he means and he looks at my outfit and grunts at me.  Granted I am not at the height of fashion, but it is 8 a.m. I have my mouth full and he is asking me questions and I am covering my mouth so I don't spit food on him (and I SO desperately want to spit food on him) and he begins mocking my gesture.  So I say to him, "Look, my name is Professor Steve Locke, I'm eating breakfast, I left my passport in my room at the Grand Hotel de Londres." and I smile that grin that every black man learns when a white guy with a gun is giving him shit.  It worked of course.  It always does.  Then I went back to my hotel, changed, and got my passport and my faculty ID.  Of course I didn't see the cop again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah he's just doing his job and I should have had my passport and all that jazz.  All that is true but riddle me this: If he's just doing his job, why is he making fun of the way I talk?  Public servant or prick, you decide.

After this I was very happy about the rug I bought.  At least I wasn't frightening people with guns.

Cause I'm a wanderer....

This is the view crossing the Galata Bridge looking back at Sultanahment.  That is Aya Sofya on the right on the hill.

Today I walked for about 10 hours and I did not get tired until I put the key in the door of my room at the Grand Hotel de Londres.  It was amazing today.  I have never seen such a place and I have never ever seen such things.  You see these things in books, or in the collections of a museum, but to see them in context.  It completely boggled my mind.  I found it very hard to take photos today because I did not want to distance my self from what I was seeing.  I heard someone say, "Wow, that's a great photo," while he was looking at something.  I thought, does he even see it?  It is right in front of him. (In this case, the "it" is the mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel in the secondary dome of Aya Sofya.)  At that point I really tried not to think about documenting or preserving.  I just wanted to look with my eyes.

I developed this plan.  I would take the time to go through a situation twice. Once without taking my camera out and the second time I would allow myself to take as many photographs as I wanted.  

So many different things today.  The mosaics at Aya Sofya and the Kariye Museum were astounding in their visual power, even in their ruined state.  The massiveness of the Aya Sofya on the outside compared to the empty soaring space on the inside.  The building is like a huge balloon.  I will go back and see it again (and again).  You cannot imagine the airy feeling of the place.  And it is made of ROCKS; lots of them in the Byzantine fashion.  The tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent and the mosque that bears his name.  The courtyard of the Blue Mosque filled with people answering the call to prayer.  Eating on the street just like I do in New York because the food is so good and so cheap.  Tea everywhere and every language spoken all over the place.

I got very lost and I did not care.  I crossed from my neighborhood in Beyoğlu into what I thought was Sultanahmet and got promptly lost in Fatih.  So many full sized billboards of women in headscarves and fashionable clothing that covered their entire bodies.  It was amazing to go from that to the stylish and beautiful women in other parts of the city.  

Tomorrow I have no idea what is to come.  I am thinking of having a tour, but it was so much fun and thrilling to get lost here I may do it again tomorrow.  I think I will stay on this side of the Golden Horn tomorrow and see what my neighborhood has to offer.  Although, I do want to go see the Basilica Cistern tomorrow, since the Blue Mosque is closed.

Leaving the Hippodrome today, a carpet seller chatted me up.  I told him I am from America and he laughed and said that he could tell.  He wanted to know if this was my first time in Turkey and I told him yes it was but it won't be the last.  He said I had a very kind and happy face.  I thanked him and told him that while I would love to see the carpets he had, I unfortunately had no money.  "No money, no honey," he said.  And we laughed and parted.

I think this might explain the staring.  At dinner at an AMAZING kofte house a number of people where staring at me through the window.  The waiter even commented, "Do you know them?"  I told him no, but maybe they want to know me.  He laughed.  Living in America, I am always on my guard against people looking at me the wrong way.  Maybe now, far away from home, I can walk around with a smile on my face and people respond to it.  Go figure.

Troy...the book is a LOT better

Anything would be a let down after Epheseus, but man, Troy is really hard to take.  First off, there is a huge wooden horse inside of the entry gate to Troy.  It is filled with laughing school children running around it and climbing inside it.  Parents surround the thing to get a photo of their moppet inside the Trojan Horse.  If you were expecting something regal and solemn (like Epheseus) here you would be sorely disappointed.  It is a theme park grafted onto a major archeological site.  It does not sit will with the visitor at all.  The entry is like Homericland at Turkey Disney.  It is a strange thing.

The archeology of Troia is amazing.  There are at least nine cities on top of each other and each one is built on the remnants of the one before.  It is not easy to believe what you are seeing is important since most of it is dun colored stone.  But they do a good job of explaining what you are looking at and there are a lot of artist renderings of what the site looked like through the centuries.

Our tour ends tomorrow.  We were supposed to go to Gallipoli, but our time here coincides with Anzac Day, which is becoming a larger and larger show of Australian nationalism each year.  The hotel we were supposed to stay at is overbooked so we have ended up in a hotel 50 kilometers from the town of  Çanakkale.  We are supposed to leave here at 6 am to go back to Istanbul.

I have grown quite fond of my companions.  The children actually behaved themselves quite well overall.  It is hard because they are the only kids on the trip and their mother (who is strikingly beautiful, I forgot to mention) has her hands full with wrangling them.  She does a good job with them.  I forget sometimes how an education can be a hard thing for the teacher and the student.  As much as it hurts to be asked some questions, I know that it is better that they ask me than someone else.  They have a fierce intelligence these two kids.  They are fortunate to have the parents they have and the brains they have.  I hope they look after each other.

As much as I will miss them, I am looking forward to Istanbul alone.  I want to know about the city as much as I can.  I just want to look and look and look.  I find myself getting caught up in figuring out tours and all that stuff.  Tomorrow I am just going to get lost and see what I see.

My city of ruins....

Nothing prepares you for Epheseus.  

It really is a place that seethes with life.  Not just the thousands of camera-toting, sunblock-applying, child-chasing, photo-opping, cell phone-chatting humans around you.  You are really catapulted into the past.  You walk the same marble sidewalks as people thousands of years ago.  You are under the same hard cerulean sky.  Your eyes hurt from looking at so many beautiful things.  Every time you turn a corner something more incredible awaits you.  You think, "Well nothing can be better than this!" and then you turn the corner and see Trajan's Gate, or the Celsus Library, or the Agora Gate.  It is hard to believe that one can see so much and still remain standing.

Turkey is essentially an open air museum of culture from major periods.  It's truly astounding to be here and to see these things.  The thing of it is that there is a strong presence of the Republic here.  You go into Epheseus and the two things that greet you are the Turkish flag and a picture of Ataturk.  You realize that you are in an Islamic country (secular, true, but you do hear that call to prayer, don't you?), that is the custodian of places sacred to the Christian, Pagan and Antique.  The Turks are clear on this: every sign says that this place is being maintained by the Republic.  It is a really interesting way to diminish the power of what you are seeing.  Even our tour guide sort of made fun of us for coming all this way to see stones.  I said to him, "Omer of course you must think it is beautiful."  He smiled and said that they are just stones but "these stones, unlike the ones we will leave, tell of the history, the personality and the mythology of a people."  I wonder what people will think of the ruins of the Trump Taj Mahal?

We saw the House of the Virgin Mary today.  Strange being there.  I went through quickly and was going to make my way back to the bus.  Then I started to think about my Mother and how she would have loved to see the house and how happy it would have made her.  So I went back and got in line to see it again.  I was going to light a candle for her, but I felt very awkward and stupid buying one, as if I was trying to look like a pilgrim.  There was a Christian Turkish woman and her children and she was explaining things.  I sat in a chair in back on one side of the door.  On the other side was a friar (a Franciscan I think from the robe).  He looked at me and nodded and I sat on the straw seat of the chair.

I miss my mother desperately.  I wish I could have brought her with me on this trip instead of bringing her memory and half of her DNA.  I tried to say a prayer, but it all felt rote and stupid, like I was trying to prove that I could.  So I just sat there and thought about my Mother in the house of Jesus's mother and started to cry a little.  It never really leaves you, you know.  It just gets smaller and more intense, like a mushroom cloud inside of that tiny silver ball.  She would have really loved being there so it was the least I could do to sit there and be a little uncomfortable and miss her with my whole heart. 

I thought Aphrodite was a goddess of love....

Well, things came to a head between the Indians and the Italians today. 

One of the things that happens on these tours is that you go to a site (in this case, today it was Pamukkale, Hieropolis and Aphrodisias) and then you get driven to a "special presentation" where you are offered high quality goods at a reduced price.  I am not certain if this is true or not, but the stuff they are selling sure looks good.  I am also sure that the tour company probably has some sort of financial relationship with the places we are stopping.  You can see busloads of tourists going in and out of these places, led from their busses like some sort or poorly dressed multilingual marching band.

Keep in mind that we are near the Aegean Sea.  It is hot and close here.

After the ruins of Roman cities and the AMAZING travertine landscape (click the slideshow to see the pictures of the landscape) we were on the bus to a leather shop.  Turkey is known for its leather goods from lambskin and they really were lovely. They had a fashion show (music:  Remixes of "What a Feeling" and a few heavy bass Turkish pop songs) and the models were very professional stunningly beautiful.  Tall and olive skinned and very chiseled.  They really were lovely to watch.  I did notice that we were locked in the room for the fashion show and the only way out was to go through the store.

Also, keep in mind that I am traveling with people who have an advanced sense of entitlement.

In the shop and plied with the apple tea that is ubiquitous here, we got down to shopping.  I tried on some jackets and became convinced that I really need to do something about my weight starting now.  Nothing worse than a chubby guy in lambskin, Mother used to warn.  The Indian contingent was not buying the prices convinced that they could do better in Dehli.  The Italians were shopping like mad and having a lovely time.  The minute the Italians began buying the music in the store changed to Andrea Boccelli.  They really know how to please an audience.

In addition, keep in mind that these are people who will complain about a $2 bottle of water but will drop hundreds of Euros on a leather jacket.

We ended up waiting over a half an hour for the Italians to finish and that is when the two Indian men went mad.  They really got in Omer's face (the tour guide, not the driver) about it and started yelling at the Italians to get in the bus.  The Italians did there best "no speakeh anglaise" but everyone knows that they do so it was not playing in Bangalore at all.  Once a few of the Italian women sat down for coffee it was ON.  The older Indian gentlemen started yelling and saying "Why do they get to sit when me and my family are rushed back to a hot bus?"  

The Canadian behind me on the bus took odds on the Italians.  I took the Indians because they looked scrappy.  I think they wanted it more.

I had a ball really.

One thing I was not ready for here was the staring.  It is not very common to see American Black people in parts of the country and people have no qualms about staring.  It is really discomforting.  I was sort of ready to disappear here, to fade into the scenery as it were but that is so not happening.  The Turks are kinds and lovely people, don't get me wrong.  The minute I tell them I  am from Boston their eyes light up and they get very excited.  The staring though, it really freaks me out.

Today at lunch I had to tell the little boy that there are a whole bunch of things that are happening in the world of the adults that do not involve or concern him and that when he was a little older, he would see that the world does not revolve around him.  I think this was news to him.  It was certainly a revelation to his family.

No one asked me why I am single today.

It's a small world...

The driver of our tour bus (Omer, not to be confused with Omer, our tour guide) is one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen.  I don't know what he is doing driving a bus of tourists around Turkey.  He should be a movie star. He smokes, like most Turks and I guess he doesn't want anyone to know. He is hiding his cigarette behind his back.

I want to go on record as saying I will never do another group tour like this again.  If one more person asks me why I haven't met the right girl I really may lose my mind.  It's not like home where I can just tell someone I'm a fag and be done with it.  These people exist on a very delicate surface called "travel," so nothing real is discussed.  The other day everyone was talking about the wonder of grandparents and the love of children.  I wanted to set myself on fire.  I kept praying that no one would ask me about my family.  I didn't think I wanted to be that guy who tells the truth at a cocktail party when everyone has agreed to lie to each other.  I hate being that guy.

Because children are the most important people in the world, my group has indulged the two children in our group.  They were playing a game on the bus (during our 7 hour drive from Ürgüp to Pamukkale) that spewed the song "It's a Small World" all over the bus.  There was no escaping it, so I put on my noise canceling Skullcandy headphones and listened to Branca Parlic and the Cowboy Junkies first album.  It matched the Turkish landscape perfectly and gave me a reprieve from the family hour on the bus.

Here are some questions that have come up:

Do you have grandchildren?

Are you married?  Why not?

Don't you agree with the church that Hillary Clinton would be a terrible President?

Why is your hair like that?

Were YOU a slave?

Did you hear the one about the Polish guy who wanted a burial at sea?

Really, you cannot make this shit up. I am traveling with 8 people from India (two older couples and a family of four) a couple from north of Toronto, a really delightful couple from Australia (she's a teacher, go figure) and two women who are traveling together; one from Santa Fe and the other Puerto Rico.  These are the people on the english speaking tour.  The rest of the bus is about 16 people from Italy.  We are in the back with our guide Omer, who has really been a love.  When the polish joke was told, he quickly stood up and talked about how men along the Black Sea area were thought to have little intelligence and were often mocked in jokes.  He said that the people along the Black Sea say that "We are so smart that we make up those jokes about ourselves."  He really did cool things down a bit.

The drive today was very long,   The country is beautiful.  The sights are truly breathtaking.  At a caravanserai, we stopped for a bite to eat.  The building was incredible and housed an open and covered market with a mosque on the inside.  Then we went to Konya to see the museum dedicated to the Mevlana, the founder of the Whirling Dervishes.  We know him in the west as the Sufic poet Rumi.  It was really an amazing place to visit.  No photos were allowed in the museum.  There is an enormous green cone over the center of the building under which is Rumi's tomb.  The calligraphic carvings are exquisite and the place was packed with people who were praying, not just sightseeing.  I was very captivated.  So much so in fact that the tour guide had to come and collect me when everyone was already on the bus.  Again, I hate being that guy.

Tomorrow is hiking in the travertines and looking at the natural rock basin carved by the springs at Pammukale, then Roman ruins at Afrodisias and then on to Ephesus.  

The little girl asked me if I knew Hilary Duff today.    

Balloon inflation, Cappadocia

Anatolian Balloons took a group of us on a tour of the valley via hot air balloon.  It was really an incredible experience to see the caves and mountains of Cappadocia from the air.  It was the most comfortable air trip I have ever experienced, including the landing.  Afterwards, we got flying certificates and the men from the company gave us a toast with champagne or juice.  The video is the crew inflating be balloons while we are waiting for a ride.  

P.S.  After admiring the shirts of the crew, one of them gave me the shirt he was wearing.

Dust in the Wind....

Here I am in the lobby of the Perissia Hotel in the Cappadocia Region of Turkey where the lounge entertainment is a young Turkish Man singing with an acoustic guitar.  He just finished a version of Kansas's classic and a significant number of the multinational crowd joined in with him - some in earnest and some in what I can only guess is high school reverie.  It's great to know that culture travels.  All of the culture, 70's anthem rock included.

I was in Ankara yesterday, on a group tour.  The first place we went was Anitkabir, the mausoleum to Ataturk, the man responsible for what Modern Turkey is.  (His image is in every place we go, humble or extravagant.)  It is an incredible place, over 200 acres dedicated to a single man.  (I just want you to know, that the guitarist is going into the Eagles HOTEL CALIFORNIA right now, completely without irony.)  It is a masterpiece of modernism, elegant, simple, severe and challenging.  It is said that a modern man should have a modern monument.  He got it all right.  The wall carvings of workers are clearly influenced by Soviet posters and the ornament is elaborate on the inside but is completely subordinate to the rectangle.  It is more a temple than a palace and like most temples you want to kneel the minute you come in.

I have noticed this a lot in Turkey and I am very glad that my friend Daniel Bozhkov recommended this country when I was writing the grant to the ART MATTERS Foundation.  The country is very focused on the future in a way I have not experienced.  The tropes of Modernism are all over the place here.  The gridded streets, the apartment buildings in the International Style, the obsession with technology all abound.  But these ideas are never really assimiliated.  For example, you will see a house that looks like something Le Corbusier himself built, but there will be the stuff of life all over the building completely destroying the Modernism form.  Satellite dishes, laundry rigging, abandoned furniture. barbecue grilles and rugs of every hue become the ornament of these buildings.  It is as if what is inside of the elegant box, the evidence of human activity, is forcing itself out of the architecture.  Even the signs for businesses add a garish vitality to the boxes on which they rest.  The failure of the modern ideal is all over the place.

That is not to say that it is not beautiful.  Quite the contrary.  Plus the people are lovely and very kind and thrilled to hear about Boston.  (To hear a Turk try to say "Parking the car in Harvard yard is really an amazing thing.)  They are very proud of their country and its achievements and really believe in the future, in things getting better, in the promise of Modern living.  This synthesis of modern austerity and Turkish ornamentalism has bred some amazing visual moments.

After Ankara we drove to Cappadocia, important for its connection to early Christian communities.  St. Paul began his missionary work here and legends of him abound.  Seeing all of the rock churches and catacombs where Christian his from their Ottoman and Roman oppressors was sublime.  You can see evidence of the very end of the Byzantine kingdom and the birth of the Turkish nation in Anatolia.  It is all over the travertine stone and the volcanic fields of wind and water shaped tufa that create a landscape out of Jules Verne.

Turkish turquoise, frescos from the Byzantine era, natural and man-made architecture side-by-side, oppression and salvation, catacombs and carpets and souvenirs everywhere.  It has been uncanny.  I feel at home and completely out of the world.  It's incredible.

Sometimes, there's God, so quickly....

Blanche DuBois certainly knew what she was talking about.

First of all let me say if you are staying at a hotel in the Notting Hill section of London, DO NOT LEAVE ON A SATURDAY MORNING!  The world and its wife comes to an open air market on that day.  Antiques dealers and pretend antiques dealers and people selling t-shirts that say "Don't Panic! I'm Islamic" are all over the place.  Walking down the street was tough. Walking down the street with luggage was a nightmare.  The next time I will stay over Saturday.  Then I can enjoy being a part of that press of humanity.

So I arrived in Istanbul a little bit ago.  It is a little after midnight.  I am exhausted and I think I got taken at the airport by a taxi company.  I was offered a ride and then told it was going to cost 100YTL for the service (this is about $80).  I let is slide because I was so tired.

I have to be up at 5 to fly to Ankara to begin my tour.  But even with the exhaustion nothing can compare to seeing Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque at night glittering in the hard cool air.

The Architect of Dreams

Peter Doig. Peter Doig.  OH MY GOD! Peter Doig. 

The show at Tate Britain was amazing.  I really have a hard time believing that one person has the abilities that Doig has with a brush.  He does things in painting that serve the image and frustrate it at the same time, allowing you the pure joy of looking at a painted surface.  The paintings are beautiful, tactile, haptic, and strange.  At the same time, they have the quality of dreams; that specificity that an image has when you are between being awake and being asleep.  Something concrete collides with something inchoate.  The connection between the two opens up a space of possibility and excitement.  This is beyond some of the silly notions that people have about abstraction and realism.  ALL PAINTING IS ABSTRACT.  What Doig does is work with illusion and substance and surface.  He is really making paintings on the edge of what painting can be.  All of this without compromising a sense of connection to a place, be it Canada or Trinidad.

The other thing I love is his complete irresponsibility in the use of photographs.  Sure he gets ideas from them, but he is perfectly free to invent and redeploy the images as he sees fit.  Too many artists get so caught up in what a photo is that they just end up reproducing a reproduction of reality, as if that is enough of a new conceptual trope to sustain the work (Ever hear of Warhol, Richter?).  Rudolf Stengel's paintings as awesome as they are fall into this trap.  "WOW!  It looks just like a photograph!"  In 2008 is that enough?  Is that even a compliment?

Doig uses photography as drawing material.  He translates the photograph through his hand.  This is part of what makes his work so amazing - his alteration of the source material and commitment to drawing through an idea. The photo is a schema or a plan, not a goal. 

I have to add to all of this that he is quite simply one of the most beautiful men I have ever laid eyes on.  The video they showed at the exhibition reminded me of his soft spoken confidence and seriousness about his practice.  It also showed the sparkle of a jester in his eyes.  It brought back the generosity and openness of his Skowhegan lecture last year.

I hope he keeps painting for a long long time.  As long as this guy is working no one needs to worry about the state of the art.

Why hats are popular in Trafalgar Square

You know, I like animals as much as anybody, probably more.  But I cannot stand pigeons.  It has a lot to do with living through the first part of the AIDS epidemic.  There is this parasite that causes an infection called toxoplasmosis that killed a lot of PWAs in the 80's and 90's.  There is a moment in the AIDS chronicle AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, where a young doctor finds a sheep farmer who has some experience with toxoplasmosis.  You see, this was an illness, carried by pigeons and cats in their excrement, so the young doctor was thrilled to find someone who dealt with it on a regular basis.  He asked the sheep farmer what one does with the sheep who are infected with the parasite.  "We shoot them," he said.  

That is why I don't like pigeons.

But, in Trafalgar Square, in almost every language spoken on the planet (I think they missed Latin and Esperantu), it asks you not to feed the pigeons.  It's pretty clear and posted everywhere. And yet all over the Square there are morons giving food to these carrion animals. I don't really understand it.  Are these people thinking it is all right for me to feed them and no one else?  Do they think they are invisible and no one sees them doing it?  Do they not see the CURTAINS OF PIGEON SHIT COATING THE SQUARE?  Honestly, I don't know what to say about this.  I am glad they found a treatment for toxoplasmosis.

I went to the National Gallery and saw so many things that I had only seen in books.  I came very close to  succumbing to Stendhal Syndrome from looking at too many incredible moments of art.  Carravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, Piero della Francesca's Nativity, Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding, Rembrandt's Final Self portrait and Balthazar's Feast, and Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks.  All of that in one day.  Plus the Vermeers, the Rokeby Venus, Titians, Raphaels, RUBENS!  It was an incredible day.  I started getting back spasms from looking.  There was nothing to prepare me for what it was like to be in the room with these paintings that I had seen only in reproduction.  The copies are NOTHING compared to the real things, man.  It was an exhausting day, but I saw some amazing things.  Seeing some of the Degas made me reconsider him.  To see Rembrandt's change in paint handling over THIRTY YEARS!  I can see why so many people come to London to study.  There are so many masterpieces in the National Gallery.  Painters I love like Parmigianino and Bronzino are in the collection.  I could live in that museum and still not see enough.

Michael took me to his place in Brixton (I know what you've heard and it is a very nice neighborhood) and I watched a bad BBC quiz show and fell asleep for a bit.  We went to Brick Lane for dinner and hanging out.  Part of the toxoplasmosis rant had to do with Michael telling about his partner who died.  So many people are gone and it is hard to get your brain around it at times.  

There's no place like LONDON....

Well, now I know why Sweeney Todd cut so many throats....

I'm kidding.  Really, I am loving London.  First off, I have never been here.  There are over 300 million people in England and I think I rode on the Underground with all of them today.  I was not prepared for the sheer press of people that you can get caught in here.  Everyone is on their way some where and I have heard so many different languages spoken it boggled my mind.  I had a great moment when a couple of people wanted to interview me about my feelings on the National Health Service.  I had to tell them I was not British, so my opinion didn't really count.  I guess I look British.

I know this blog is about Istanbul and believe me I am very nervous and excited to go.  But since it is a long trip and I have the time, I thought I would spend a few days in London coming and going.  First because some of the greatest art in the world is here and also because my greatest friend is here, Michael Mullen.

I want to say something about the way the English speak and what it does to you.  First off, they are convinced that they speak the right way (it is called "English") so when you are over here and you are speaking it, you are saying everything wrong.  Think of the way you say "Worcester," or "Holyoke."  Now the way you feel about people outside of Massachusetts pronouncing those words incorrectly is they way the English feel about you and the entire language.  You can't compete with it, so you have to start pronouncing things the way they do.  This accounts for what people think is Madonna being affected with a fake British accent.  If she doesn't talk that way, no one here will understand her.  They look at you like you are a freak if you don't talk like them.  It really forces you to assimilate.

(Note: The above does not allow ANYONE in the Americas to say things like "Happy Christmas."  Now THAT is an affectation.  It is positively sick making and should be stopped. )

We went to Tate Modern today and saw the permanent collection and an amazing Juan Muñoz retrospective.  I can only imagine the work he still had in him when he died.  It was a haunting and beautiful show.  We just missed the Doris Salcedo installation in the Turbine Hall.  Tate Modern really is an incredible building.  It was an old powerstation that got repurposed into the most incredible museum.  We also went to the National Portrait Gallery (Sir Thomas Lawrence... so GOOD!  Who knew?) and tomorrow we are going to Tate Britain to see the amazing Peter Doig's exhibition.