Hangin In There

Fellow Americans (in light of the election I am not there for),

Blake here. Live from Zone 2, Shepherds Bush, London, United Kingdom. So since we last spoke, quite a lot has happened. First off, let me just say real quick, television is over rated. I have yet to watch a second of TV here other than a single music video at a friends house. Worth it? Oh hell ya! For those of you who are in the know, The Streets are a British Hip Hop group that has gained minimal fame in the states, but here they are the “White Gods of Hip-Hop.” I don’t know what that means either ok. Anyway, I just wanted to bring up the fact that I don’t even have a television in my room and its great. Besides, people in my house that watch television use antennas and even though I live a block and a half away from BBC headquarters, the signal is shit (pronounced with a sharp I, as it would sound when you said “I”). Now these is sheer bullocks (bullshit). How can one of the largest broadcast companies not have a strong enough single for it to come in clearly this close to their headquarters? British Technology maybe? Not sure, but I do know its lame. That’s for sure.

So now we're going to go back in time. No, not as far back as when television antennas actually worked (or did they?), but only back about two weeks ago. This would bring us to Wednesday, October 6th 2004, the Wednesday before Dax, Kris, and Dave came out to visit. I never talked about this seeing as I wanted to see what would come of it. I was walking down Portobello Road near Notting Hill when I stumbled across an art gallery where a show was being set up for that evening. Being curious and unafraid as I am, I poked my head in and took a look. I, in turn, received a few looks myself. Before there was any sort of altercation, or in other words, me having to lay down the law, I started to walk on past the gallery. One of the people inside came out and asked me if I needed something. I told him I was an artist and I had let my curiosity get the best of me. You see, artists have a thing with people seeing their shows in the midst of being set up. I respect this way of thinking because you do not want people to see your presentation different from how you intend it to look. If you do, you are not seeing the work in the light the artist intended. Presentation is 50% of the show. This is true. So going against everything I just said, I was asked to come in and check out the show. “Artist Privilege” I guess. It could have been that it was a show for the release of a book, but that didn’t stand in the way of the interesting presentation that had been nearly completed at this point. The group of about 6-8 people had draped the entire space floor to ceiling, a two story building, with pages from the book. The floor, the ceiling, as well as from the floor to the ceiling. Get it? That was a tough one to figure out how to write. Needless to say, I met the author and a few of the others in the room. They told me the show was later that night, so I decided I would go.

I had already made plans to go to a rock show at a local pub of a band who’s demo CD I got randomly from this guy on the tube. Deciding I would go to the art show first, then make my way to the opposite end of town to do a free shoot for this band I had never met, I headed out with my camera and tripod. When I arrived at the event, a large crowd of people outside the show’s front door greeted me. I walked up to a man in a suit that was holding what appeared to be a guess list. As far as I knew, I was not on the guess list. I told him this, and he didn’t seem to understand what I wanted…understandably so. I explained how I ended up coming to the show and somehow he got the idea that I was shooting photos of the show for the author. He then proceeded to let me in.

SIDE NOTE: You think that because you speak English you can come to England and understand people, as well as be understood. This IS NOT the case. Every time I ask someone a question, or generally speak to someone for the first time, they don’t have a clue as to what I am saying. After the second “what?” they end up realizing I am American. My first question is usually, “Can I ask you a question?” I enjoy asking this question, I find the simple humor of it hilarious. The response I usually get is either “Yea, sure.” or “No.” Either way, I win. They answered a question for me.

Back to the story. So I walked into the event, standing out like a 6’4” white man in Cameroon West Africa. (YO Allen!) Everyone seems to be fascinated with cameras and tripods, I would have to say it doesn’t bother me one bit, I like the attention it garners. Now for the best part of the story. Here it is, hold on:

OPEN BAR.

Wasn’t that fucking great. I thought so. Red Bull vodka for all! I waited in line for the bar, and once I got there I had already made the executive decision to get two drinks. You know, one for me, and one for my…uh…friend. One thing led to another, and after a little while I broke out of my shell. My shell is thinner than most, so this did not take long. I ended up meeting a bunch of cool people involved in the London art scene. Somehow, all these people do is go to art shows with open bars and hang out around really interesting people. This is now officially the crew I want to be a part of, but, I want to be the artist whose show has an open bar and a bunch of posh Londoners looking and buying. This to me sounds very ok. Maybe some day soon, watch and see. Or shall I say read and comprehend.

None the less, It became quite clear that this evening was not for doing a free shoot for an OK band I had never met, but rather for lubing up the social track that I am attempting to take a ride on.

One of the people I met was a New Yorker named Edward. He has been in London for nearly 3 years now, and is living and working here after graduating from Oxford with a masters. He ended up getting a hold of me the following day, after looking at my work, and I must say, he was stoked on it. He is not an artist, nor is he involved in the art scene on the business end of things, but he loves art and tries to surround himself with artists. Remember that group of people that “go to art shows with open bars and hang out around really interesting people,” yea, well, he is also one of those people. This is a great guy to know.

The following week, which would now bring us to Friday, October 15th 2004, I attended an art show called Scope. Scope has shows in the major metropolises around the world once a year. I received a call from Edward earlier in the week telling me he had a pass for me to get into the daytime art show, as well as getting me on the list to go to the party that would take place after the day’s events. I attended the show on Friday after running around trying to find this package that had been kept at some random “depot” in a crazy part of outer London. This is another story all together, and quite frankly, I’d rather not relive it. The show was interesting to say the least. It took place in an old hotel near Regent Park in Central London. Two floors in the hotel had been converted into individual galleries in single hotel rooms. Every room was a different gallery, each from a different part of the world, each showing work that was being exhibited in their gallery at the time. I walked around for a few hours taking it all in, talking to people, and getting business cards of the galleries whose work I enjoyed the most. I decided I was going to call it a day and go home to get ready for the party later that night.

I rushed home and got myself looking so very spiffy before I made my way back to the same place I had been earlier that day, Regent Park. I met Edward and his friend Samira at the party at around 10:00 and we made our way into the event. Samira was someone I had yet to meet, but I have to say, I am glad I did. She is a native Londoner and a painter. She is also quite attractive. As we walked through the party we were immediately greeted by a couple of performance artists dressed in Classic Greek attire. When you made eye contact with them, or as Edward found out, when you attempted to speak with them, they began making noises and blocking your path. Something along the lines of the flashbacks from Wayne’s World, “dododalu, dododalu, dododalu!” You get the idea. For Edward, this was quite a trip because Edward had gone to Oxford with the guy involved. We walked around for quite a while, looking at some pieces that I had not seen earlier that were hung in the common party area. After looking at a bit of Samira’s work in her small book-style portfolio, we took a walk up the stairs and went back into the area that I had seen earlier that day.

Somehow, in the mix of things I lost everyone and ended up hanging out in a room with an artist out of New York. His name is Adam Stennett and his work is quite interesting and thought provoking. His latest body of work basically revolves around inner city populaces that one normally does not give any thought to. Rodents and other small creatures that surround us in our every day lives, unnoticed. You can check out his work at http://www.adamstennett.com. I won’t go into detail, but that’s not to say his painting aren’t chalk full of detail (Allen, why can I not seem to get enough of this simple, extremely stupid humor? Who knows?). Along with the artist, I met the owner of the gallery representing him, his fiancé, as well as a few of his friends. They were heading out to some bars and whatnot, and they asked if I wanted to tag along…so I did. Nice huh? The rest of the night actually turned out to be pretty uneventful, but, it was great to be out with some artists who were actually making it.

The following day marked the arrival of Michael and Roxanne Brennan. These people are as close as you could get to being my parents, but due to obvious reasons such as their last name and the existence of my own parents, they are not. They are the parents of my all-time-best-friend Sean Patrick Brennan (who I doubt is actually even reading this, slacker). They were scheduled to arrive at their hotel at 2:30, The Kensington Hilton, which is about a 10 minute walk from my flat. I was their waiting for them but due to a fat tour guide and some annoying tourist they were with, they ended up getting to the hotel somewhere around 5:00 in the evening. Understandable. I made my way over to their room where we took a look at a few of Rox’s photos from their trip to Italy on her new digital camera. We then made our way down to the Concierge in an attempt to find a nice restaurant to eat at. After a few crap suggestions from the Italian Concierge who for some reason only wanted us to eat Italian, we decided we would go and grab some dinner in Leicester Square (pronounced Lester c ). We got off the tube and walked just across the street to a steak house. Dinner was delicious, Rox and I had Rib Eye Steak and Mike had a Bacon Cheseburger. All of us were extremely happy to be eating some American style food, too bad Mike had come down with a 140 degree (actually more so just over 100) fever and could only eat half his burger…luck was on my side seeing as I got the leftovers. I tried to pick up the bill seeing as I make more money than God, but they generously bought dinner for me. Mike decided he wanted to call it a night seeing as he was under the weather, and we decided we would pick it up the next morning.

The following day I was supposed to met the two of them for breakfast at their hotel, but seeing as I didn’t make it home the night before, I was too late to make it. When we finally met up we began a world wind tour of the sights of London, some of which I had yet to actually see. We started our journey at Buckingham Palace (again, for the morons of the group, this is where the Queen and the Royal Family reside). As we stood outside the palace, motorcycle and regular police vehicles flew by Mike and I. In the middle of it all were two posh Range Rovers with tinted windows. We knew it had to be someone of importance, and our thoughts were affirmed later when we saw the same vehicles in front of what we learned to be Tony Blair’s residence. Helicopters, armed officers, and police vehicles were everywhere at this point. As we walked a bit further towards Big Ben and the House of Parliaments we found that there was an Anti-War rally with close to 44,000 people under way through the streets of central London. I have photos of all this which you will see soon. We walked along the outer edge of the protest and at one point, as we crossed a bridge over the Thames, it looked as though we were about to be in the middle of a riot. The protesters decided that they wanted their revolution right then as they began pushing the barricades over. Deciding this was not the place to be, we hurried our way off the other side of the bridge. We continued down the river to a few of the other keynote sights, The Milennium Eye, London Bridge, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and the last standing Roman wall in London. At this point, we were all beat.

We took the tube back to Notting Hill in search of a place to eat for the evening. We walked and walked, and at that point, we decided to walk a little more. As if we had not already walked today for five hours, we walked a bit more. At one point we came to the conclusion that we would not find a restaurant along the way back to their hotel, so we decided we would eat there instead.

This dinner, can I say, was fucking delicious! We ate at a restaurant called Zen and after a dinner like this, I definitely felt enlightened. MY GOD WAS IT GOOD! It was so good that when I tried to tell my housemates and roommate about it, they stopped me mid sentence, not wanting to hear anymore about how spoiled I was. And I was indeed, spoiled. Appetizers, Soups, Main Courses, Deserts, man was it good. Did I mention it was good…yea, cause it was.

After dinner I made my way home. I decided to have another beer and watch Harry Potter 3 which I had just gotten from a friend of mine. It was really sweet to watch that movie again now that I have been here for a while. I actually recognized certain parts of the beginning where they are flying through the city on the big blue double decker bus. BRILLIANT!

The next morning the Brennans once again treated me to another meal. After we sat and talked for a while, we made our way outside to say our tearful goodbyes. No tears really but it was definitely a sad goodbye…as most are. I will miss them for sure.

So now it is Wednesday and I am trying to keep busy, just waiting for the next exciting thing to happen to me. It’s hard to stay level headed and positive though. It feels like one minute I am high as a kite, then the next morning I wake up a bit down on it all. And no Mom, and it is not drugs that are making me feel this way. I do feel good about being here though. I feel as though its just a matter of time before I get a break in the art world, someone to give me the chance I deserve and show my work to the right people. I am not going to give up, that is for sure.

Ok , well, until next time. Hope everyone is well.


Love You All I’m Sure,

B-Lake