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Saw NT Live's Medea this evening at the small Lunario theatre tucked behind the massive Auditorio Nacional. (Nice place, reminded me more of a jazz club with its tables and drinks).
It was brilliant, very intense - even on film - and with an absolutely stellar performance by Helen McCrory. Of all the scary characters in Greek tragedies, Medea is surely the scariest. Having helped Jason get the golden fleece and born him two sons, she is abandoned by the cad for another woman. Her fury knows no bounds and she stalks the stage like a wild woman, dreaming up the most dreadful revenge. There are moments when you think she won't carry it out, that she will see reason, that a mother's love will prevail. But no, she poisons Jason's new bride on her wedding day, then knifes her own children. That showed him. (Good music by Goldfrapp, incidentally).
Lost, and then found, my iPhone today. It was in the office all the time, but through a series of tragicomic events (picked up by one colleague, passed to another, then on to a security guard, and then to a cupboard under the stairs), it took 9 hours to find its way back to me... in between which someone had switched it off, so I couldn't ring it or trace it online. Anyway, it had a happy ending. It's extraordinary, and a bit pathetic, how helpless I felt without it.
Having visited Coyoacan last saturday, we went to its neighbour, San Angel, today. They're similar. Both have a bohemian atmosphere, lovely little market squares & cafes, and Rivera-Kahlo connections.
Today we visited Casas Gemelas (Twin Houses) which Rivera built for them both in 1932. His is white, Kahlo's is blue, famously connected by a rooftop bridge, and with a fabulous cactus fence separating them from the street. They were designed by Rivera's friend, Juan O'Gorman, and are probably the first examples of anti-ornamental Functionalism in Latin America. Rivera's studio is 2 storeys tall and full of light. He painted some 3,000 works here, mostly portraits. His bedroom, by contrast, is tiny.
Kahlo's house is smaller, almost claustrophobic. And yet she painted some important works there including Lo que el agua me dio (What the Water Gave Me) which she painted while sitting in the bath, a curious Bosch-like work. The bathtub is still there.
Can't say I loved Casas Gemelas. A bit too austere. I prefer the other Blue House... to which Kahlo returned after the death of her father in 1941.
Forty-three students went missing in a town called Iguala, just south of Mexico City, today. All very confusing, but seems to involve the police, a crime syndicate, the town's mayor and his wife. Stuff like this does happen here, corruption & cover-ups are endemic, and drugs are often at the bottom of it. But this one is particularly disturbing...
I picked a bad time to start work here. Our office has been a building site for the last two or three weeks and it looks like remaining so for several more. Rather than move out en masse into temporary office space somewhere, we've attempted to move ourselves around within the building, huddled in serried ranks in the back room, grabbing whatever tables we can find or simply working from home.One colleague has set up office in Starbucks.
Power cuts are frequent. This morning Lena & I were interviewing for a new post and all the lights went off. First time I've ever interviewed someone in the dark (unless you count Philip Glass in the bowels of London's Colisseum). Not ideal. You can't see the candidate's body language. Still, she took it in her stride.
I'm reading Independence Days - the Story of UK Independent Record Labels by Alex Ogg. It's pretty thorough - 600 pages covering everything from Topic Records in the 1930s to the present day, but mainly concentrating on the extraordinary period between the mid-70s and mid-80s (similar in range, then, to Simon Reynolds' excellent Rip It Up).
So we get Chiswick, Stiff, Rough Trade, IRS, Beggars Banquet, 4AD, Factory, Cherry Red, Mute, Postcard and scores of lesser known labels (but with larger than life owners). Ogg - now there's a name - interviewed over 150 people (count them, they're listed) and it makes for a fascinating read. It was an amazing time. Punk really did change things - if not musically (most bands played what was basically old-fashioned RnB played at double speed), then certainly in terms of setting up a genuinely independent record 'industry', though the term has to be in inverted commas given its wonderfully amateurish methods of operating. I was around at the time, dabbling on the edges of it all and knew some of its key players, and feel privileged to have experienced what was - yes, really - a significant cultural era.
My only slight criticism of the book, published by Cherry Red five years ago, is that it could have benefited from a decent editor. But a minor gripe.
I'm here on a visa run. Mexican Immigration finally gave me accreditation, but it now means I have to leave the country, get my visa changed at a nearby Mexican Consulate, and come back in again. It could have been anywhere, but Bogota was as good a choice as any, and it gave me the chance to visit its British Council office.
Nice dinner with David C, at Central Cevicheria, a fish restaurant downtown. I had patacones which are essentially flat (traditionally stamped-on!) plantain patties with sour cream for starters, and cherna (a fish - wreckfish it says here - from Colombia's Pacific coast) with plantain, coconut & ginger.
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