Christ Church and Oxford Gardens

I actually managed to get up at 9am, had a quick shower and breakfast at the flat (raspberry yogurt and a banana) then I headed out. I planned a route that took me from my place, which is on the western outskirts of the city, in an eastern direction around the southern ring road of the city. That part of the city is a lot of new construction, mostly flats, an Ice skating rink, and a gas station. My general plan was to head north into the center of the city where a lot of the University's colleges are.

I really wanted to see Christ Church, which is one of the larger and more ancient colleges, but since it is also a functioning Cathedral and the seat of the Oxfordshire diocese, it is open to the general public, unlike most of the other colleges. (If I feel up to it, I'll try to explain how the collegiate system here works-- I'm still pretty befuddled by it. Suffice it to say that the University is made up of many independent colleges, membership of which is usually required to enter the inner sanctum of their grounds. Most of the college are cloistered by old mossy stone walls topped with iron fences that make them seem really mysterious and romantic). Like this:Anyway, here is a picture of Christ Church's central spire as seen from the High Street.
[By the way, I recommend that you click on this and the following pictures. They are big files and you can see alot more detail at their full size]

The College is bounded on the east by a meadow that supposedly is used by English long horned cattle. I didn't see any The cool thing about Oxford is that it is bordered by two rivers that are prone to sever flooding (I guess that doesn't sound that cool). But it means that it makes it unfeasible for the city to expanded into the flood plains so surrounding area maintains a really rural quality. Here's the Christ Church Meadow.
It smelled really good. Now I get what Turner and Consatble were up to.

Here are some views of the east side of Christ Church opposite the Meadow.

I should mention that much of the Harry Potter movies were filmed inside Christ Church, giving it a kind of tourist celebrity (notoriety maybe a more apt word.) So when I was waiting in line for entrance and an American family in front of me asked the admissions clerk if this beautiful center of learning and religious devotion commissioned by Henry VIII "is Hogwarts, right?" I got too embarrassed for/by my fellow countrymen to go up and ask for admission in my nasaly Chicago accent. In short, I didn't go in. And I really wanted to see those floating candles. Oh, well.

I left Christ Church and started wandering (North, I think). I came to the Oxford Botanic Gardens. They happen to be my favorite place in Oxford so far. Here's the entrance.

And the hero of our narrative on the inside.
Bridge and boats!

Apparently, anything will grow in England; and it will grow better than anywhere else. Oxford is tiny. The whole place is probably the same size as my neighborhood in Chicago, Ravenswood. But the place is so dense and complex, and its streets are so crowded that it can feel as stressful to walk on the High Street as it can to walk down any street in the Loop at 5pm. But the gardens are the most serene place I've ever been. All you hear are the birds and the church bells and all the old flagstones have this really good wet and gritty feel under your feet. Everything was so still and I could have believed I was the only person there (I'm not sure that wasn't the case).


Before I left the house I made a hummus and cheese sandwich. I ate it at a bench with this view.

Another of Oxford's many canals runs through the Garden.

How do you like them apples? Seriously, do you like it? I imagine they frown on picking them--I restrained my self.

English bees are cute.

A lot of the buildings in Oxford have this weird brain-looking facade. I wonder what it's supposed to be. Coral? They're not so brainy here that they actually put brains on their buildings, right?

More plants.



Okay, I'm sick of sitting in front of the computer. It's about 7:30. I'm gonna try to find a pub.

It rains here...

Lots...

More Mundane Oxford Photos!

I took my camera with me when I headed out to buy food this afternoon, but I didn't realize that I left the memory card in my lap top. I got 2 pictures before the camera filled up and I was too lazy to walk back to the flat to get the card. The result is that the only pictures I have to put up today are from my immediate neighborhood and are a bit dull. Oh, well.

This is an exterior photo of where I'm staying. Mine is the second-floor balcony on the right. Nothing too fancy. This next one was taken down the street in my neighborhood.
Pretty English, I guess. This is Criple Road. It leads right to a foot bridge over the Thames. Also, In this part of town, when the wind blows from the west it brings in the smell of leaves burning in the heaths just out side of town. It's nice.

I'll have more (exciting) photos Thursday after I've done some more exploring. I've been tasked by other incoming student's with finding a good pub before they get here on Friday.

Oxford!

I arrived safely in in Oxford Monday afternoon after almost 10 hours on a plane from Chicago and another 3 hours wandering Heathrow and riding a bus out from London to Oxfordshire. I've got no pictures from the journey-- sorry. I was just a little too overwhelmed to be a very good tourist.

Things were a bit harrowing for a while. I couldn't find an ATM at the airport that would take my debit card, so I couldn't buy my bus ticket. I had to lug 100 pounds of luggage around for what seemed like miles before I could get some cash. Then when I got to Oxford I couldn't get on the internet or make any phone calls when all I wanted was to hear a familiar voice. Glad I got most of that stuff sorted yesterday. I still have some pretty bad jetlag. I've slept until almost 1pm both days I've been here so far. Also, when I left Chicago it was a warm 90 degrees, but the average here in my part of the UK has been about 55. It's a bit of a tough transition and I can't wait until I'm adjusted and can feel like a human being again.

I've got my self set up in my flat. Its just outside of central Oxford, separated from the city center by one of Oxford's many canals. The flat is small and I'll be sharing it with three other Shimer students. I'm the first to arrive in the entire building, so the place feels a little lonely right now; I'm looking forward to company. I think some people ought to be getting here Friday afternoon. Near as I can tell, most of the people living in my complex are either from the US or Canada-- our own little North American ghetto. Here are some pictures.





Today I need to go out and find a cheap grocery and get my kitchen in order. I've been living off falafel and hummus sandwiches from a kebab shop down my street, and while it's been delicious its also expensive. I've got to start cooking at home. It looks like my kitchen is pretty well stocked with pots and pans and such so I should be okay to cook.

All this is kinda dull, I know. Tomorrow I'm going to force myself to get up at a reasonable hour, have a traditional English breakfast at this little tea shop I keep passing, wander around with the camera, and maybe stop in at the Ashmolean museum.

Writin' about the Movies

Keeping up this new blog has reminded me of all the fun I had with my now defunct movie blog, so I decided to start recovering some of those old reviews (and who knows, maybe writing some new ones if I can get myself motivated) and posting them here.

Here's some stuff I wrote about Werner Herzog. Enjoy.

There is something strange about the documentary work of Werner Herzog—something that strains credulity. But, I should make it clear that these vague misgivings don’t come from a disbelief in the real world’s ability to supply stories of immensely weird and fantastic struggles, the likes of which Herzog chooses for movies such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly, or Grizzly Man. Instead, this skepticism comes from the imposing presence of a director that never allows himself a modicum of distance from his subject. In these films, one gets the sense that, at any moment, Herzog’s so called “ecstatic truths” risk withering away to reveal naught but a visionary string-puller.

I have to admit, however, that this tension between the revelatory virtuoso and the consummate liar that Herzog embodies is one of, if not the, thing that draws me to his work. It defines the obsessive madness and uncompromising quest for the sublime that characterizes both the Herzogian hero and the director’s own approach to filmmaking. But Herzog’s films are also about failure, they show us the fever dreams of illusions that his characters turn to rather than confronting the brutal horror of the truth. One gets the feeling that My Best Fiend is less about these kinds of failures and more an object lesson in Herzog’s own failure to confront the truth of his chosen subject—the death of his creative collaborator and (despite the film’s unfortunate pun) friend, Klaus Kinski.

To call the director of Fitzcaraldo controlling would be an understatement. Herzog maintains a maniacal insistence on authenticity in his fictional films and he demands that the events in these films be verifiably, visually real. Therefore, if his script calls for a hulking river ship to be manually hauled over a remote jungle mountain, then by god, Herzog will really drag a ship over some mountain deep in the Amazonian rainforest. The effect, we are told, is unvarnished truth. But what happens, in a case such as My Best Fiend, when the maestro of actuality isn’t there (at least in his godlike capacity as director) to capture and control the raw “reality” of his subject? Based on his assertion that “the only thing that matters is what you see on the screen” and his lauded visual truthfulness, we might expect a cinema vérité style documentary that comes to terms with the impossibility of direct depiction of its subject, but painstakingly and unaffectedly examines the people and places that influenced or were influenced by the subject. But this is not what we see. In fact, contrary as it might seem to the aesthetics that seem to inform his fictional films, what we see in My Best Fiend is of relatively little importance. This is because when Herzog makes a documentary, Herzog starts talking.

In My Best Fiend, Herzog’s voice, whether it is the sometimes-ersatz intellectualism of his off-screen narration, or the matter of fact exposition of his on-camera commentary, is the dominant feature. It tells about Kinski the wild man or Kinski the coward; we hear about Kinski as a sensitive romantic or the hypnotic powers of his insanity—but we only hear about these things. Sure, to illustrate the tempestuous rages and wild egocentrism of Klaus Kinski, Herzog includes a few archival tidbits of his bug-eyed star indulging in the kind of prima donna fits that I think we imagine most major film actors throwing simply for the sake of being handed the wrong brand of bottled water. But Herzog’s images are never on par with his assertions of Kinski as a nearly satanic wild man or as his antithesis in an almost primordial creative struggle. Most of the original visual material for the film has the feel of the negligible details that a liar uses to embellish his fabrication in the belief they will make it more convincing.

In this film, it is a though Herzog loses faith in both the haunting strangenes of reality and in the ability of cinema when it comes to rendering his mythic understanding of his relationship with his muse. That is the shame of My Best Fiend. Rather than eulogize a man he clearly loves and morn the loss of a creative partner with whom he most fully realized his gifts as a film maker, Herzog exploits Kinski as a prop in the making of his own legendary persona. I suppose it is still a testament to Kinski’s bearing and skills as an actor that his personality is able to function as a symbol for a kind of elemental strife-- one that Herzog wants us to believe he confronts in the process of artistic creation-- but it all seems somehow unfair to Kinski, the man.

Despite, my ethical qualms, My Best Fiend, is fascinating as a retrospective of the work of Herzog and Kinski, as a less than innocent interrogation of the moral obligation of the documentary, and as a testament to the power of the filmmaker. It is worth seeing, but will be more rewarding if you watch it from a distance that Herzog doesn’t allow himself.

Preparatory to Anything Else...

...I'm eating as much Mexican food as I can before leaving the States.

Behold the black bean vegetarian taco with homemade guacamole.

Ok, so chipoltle soy protein and organic tomatoes doesn't exactly pass as authentically Mexican-- I believe it's actually traditional fare of the illusive and little-understood "White Kids in Pilsen," traditionally eaten en route via Vespa to an Animal Collective show-- But, oh man, it's good.

Last time I was in England, I don't think I saw one Mexican place. In fact, I don't think I really ate anything that didn't involve some combination of tinned beans and toast.

Keep checking in to stay posted on my adventures with British cuisine.

Spending Warm Summer Days Indoors

So, while everybody else in Chicago was going to Cubs games or to the lake fron fo Lolapalooza, how do you suppose I spent the gloriously sunny weekend? If you guessed "haunting cool, dimly lit rooms, growing ever paler and more disconnected from fellow human beings," you win.

Whatever, it's my birthday.

I had to run down to Shimer to try to get my paycheck from my internship, but the campus was pretty much deserted. Rather than waste the trip down to the South Side entirely, I though I'd visit Crown Hall. I've been passing right by the building on my way to class for the past two years and just never seemed to getting around to indulge my curiosity about the big glass box. Anyway, I thought some pictures of the IIT's Bauhaus would make a nice counterpoint for all the old world masonry that I'm sure will be filling all my pictures from Oxford.

But I got to thinking that, despite all the vivid differences between Mies van der Rohe's minimalist glass and steel creation and the Gothic spires and ornament that come to mind when one thinks about the cathedrals of an ancient European city like Oxford, the two architectures seem to me to share at least one common feature. I am suggesting that, although they conceive of and execute it differently, both Crown Hall and the typical Gothic cathedral aspire to a kind of sacredness through the use of unified, uninterrupted space. Consider the sheer ingenuity both structures put into creating internal open spaces in which occupants' movements and gazes are unimpeded by structural supports.

Here's one of Villard de Honnecourt's 13th Century drawings of a flying buttress (thanks wikipedia):

The idea here is to direct the force of the mass of the Cathedral's walls outward, obviating the need for internal pillars and such.

Here's Crown Hall under construction:

In a way, these girders accomplish the same thing as their medieval forerunners. Suspending the roof from these external features eliminates the need for load-bearing walls on the inside.

Now obviously, in the case of the Gothic cathedral the tremendous open space afforded by the buttresses is directed upward; it is a place dedicated to a heavenly divinity, one designed to make the individual small before God. It says "elevate your eyes and hearts and minds and you will move from an earthly existence to a spiritual one. The key here is spiritual ascent.

Crown Hall turns this notion on its head, or at on its side at least. Where the cathedral's space operates on a vertical axis, Crown Hall uses a horizontal one-- wide openness on a human scale rather than vertiginous heights on divine terms. I would say that the building is a manifestation of the German expat Mies van der Rohe's post-war optimism about America. Rather than cultivating a connection to God, Crown Hall's open space seems to be about terrestrial transparency and ease of movement. It puts faith in rationality, utility, and accessibility. It is a temple to Democracy and Humanism.

What I think is most interesting, though, is the way that the import of both structures has been almost totally inverted by latter appraisals.

John Ruskin, for example, has a lot to say about the Gothic style in "The Stones of Venice." ( I can't put my hands on the book to quote directly at the moment because my copy is packed away and the closest I could come to it at Gurnee's public library was John Grisham) Any way, if I remember his choice of words correctly, Ruskin says that one off the hallmarks of the Gothic is "changefulness"-- it is characteristically grotesque, playful and variegated. He goes on to claim that this is because the craftspeople who built Gothic structures were individual, free laborers as opposed to slaves for whom each piece of a building must be made identical in order to maximize their efficiency. I guess the Pyramids or Greek columns would be examples of "slave architecture." I take all this with a grain of salt; historically, I'm not sure how "free" medieval laborers were and I'm pretty sure there is some research to indicate that the Egyptians didn't use slaves to build all of their monuments. But regardless, the point is that for Ruskin, writing in the 19th century, the Gothic Cathedral is a memorial to Human creativity, individuality, and freedom and not self-effacement before an all-powerful God.

The high Modernism of which Crown Hall is an excellent example would seem to be undergoing a similar reevaluation. I can say that anecdotally, people who spend time around the IIT campus (which was all designed by Mies van der Rohe) remark that the place feels "cold," "impersonal," and "sterile." And I think that the idea that, rather than creating a place for egalitarian and rational relations between people, buildings like Crown Hall actually reduce humans to mechanistic specimens was given voice in Jaques Tati's wonderful movie, "Playtime."

Just something I was thinking about.

Anyway, there was an exhibit of stencil designs of Louis Sullivan's lost buildings on display inside Crown Hall. Really gorgeous stuff the makes a person long to travel back to the Gilded Age. I got a couple pictures before they threatened to take my camera.

Latter I went to the Musicbox and they must have known it was my birthday. They were playing Godard's "Le Mepris" followed by a midnight showing of "Eraserhead."

I was especially excited about the Godard since I had previously only seen it on a shitty Chinese bootleg with mandarin subtitles, bad color, and a screwed-up aspect ratio. The Musicbox's print was pretty good, even if the second reel was kinda grainy.

Good Weekend.