Weeknotes 34 (Aug ’20): Video of a naked man on the wall
Yesterday marked our last Zoom taekwondo class. We hope! From this week we’re back in the dojang, or training outdoors. We honestly don’t know what we’ll do if there’s another lockdown that prevents these activities, but the mood is different now, so I’m not convinced twice weekly Zoom sessions will seem the answer. Twice a week we have been moving our furniture and setting up the laptop, and when the session finished yesterday and we put everything back, we were able to put back some art that had felt too fragile to move repeatedly, and adjust the sofa to reduce the space we’d been using, etc. Basically, it felt like we got our flat back. I hadn’t realised the extent to which having people view that space had stopped it being just a safe home environment. It’s good to have it back.
We managed to get to Tate Modern this week for the Andy Warhol exhibition. He and his work were far more interesting to me than I expected. Especially his film work, which I hadn’t come across before. I think I could genuinely live with a work of art on my wall that is a video of a sleeping man, with very small movements in it. Even if it is ever so slightly male homoerotic.
The Tate Members room was open and we had a cup of tea and a scone on the terrace overlooking the Thames. Just because we could, really. Two guys had set up with their laptops on adjacent tables in a prime spot. As I poured my tea, one of them left his table, but left his laptop and bag protecting the spot. By the time we were leaving, he still wasn’t back, and multiple people had turned away from the terrace because all the tables were ‘taken’. This stuff drives me mad. Someone could have used that table and gone again in the time he was gone. I challenged his buddy about it as we left, but wished I’d just moved the laptop and bag. Next time.
I’ve been doing two online classes that have moved from the physical world. Qi gong this week was broadcast from the west coast of Ireland. I wanted my instructor to just show us the view. And my yoga teacher changed his link, but nobody communicated that to the students. So Friday lunchtime consisted of me, my mat, and a ‘your host is in another meeting’ message.