la-la land

An almost perfect New York weeekend: shopping, friends, drinks, MoMA, Central Park, dinners, movies, sunshine, blossoms, more drinks, dancing and boys! Could this get any better?

After a couple of false starts, spring seems to have finally arrived, and it's just gorgeous. I took a stroll through Central Park with Christina on Sunday afternoon and the trees and blossoms were so pretty. We sat by the lake at the Boathouse and had a g&t as the sun slowly descended over the apartment buildings of the Upper West Side. Amazing. Earlier in the week, I'd had a margarita and dinner with Elisa at Riverside Park (where Detective Munch from Law and Order SVU was also eating). Apparently, I'm all about stylish drinks by the water at the moment. And why not?

Earlier on Sunday, Christina and Clare and I went to MoMA and had a great time at the Jeff Wall exhibition. We stood for ages in front of each amazing, huge, crazy photograph and talked about all the random stuff he packs into each one. I've rarely felt so engaged in an art museum before. And then later that night, Clare and I went to see a couple of documentaries at the Tribeca Film Festival which were interesting but not great. Much better was the programme of short films that I went to this afternoon with Lisa. I should have been writing but I feel like I have to take these opportunities as they come up. After all, I may only be in New York for another month, which is starting to make me very sad! I know I'm living in a kind of fiction at the moment, but I don't want it to end.

not in kansas any more

So it seems that due to a last-minute script rewrite, Dorothy was beaten to the Emerald City by a week, but the main thing is she followed the yellow brick road and of course looked fabulous in her ruby slippers (care of John Fluevog in Soho). What movie she ended up in is harder to say. Possibly Bambi. Squirrels, rabbits and jayhawks frolicked gaily around the pretty suburban streets of Lawrence, Kansas where I just spent the weekend visiting my friend Jorge who I had met in Baltimore at the start of my trip. And after week upon week of late winter in New York, bright sunshine and temperatures in the high 20s made Kansas something of a relief. And it has to be said that Jorge played the perfect hostess, driving me to see local sights, making breakfasts and cooking a very yummy paella. On the Friday, I pottered about the town which is actually really pretty and quite interesting in a mini-Berkeley kind of way. Lots of kitschy antique stores, cafes, second hand clothes, all catering to the large student population. And as you can see from the picture of Jorge's house, the streets have this classic American charm that looks to an outsider like a movie setting.

Saturday, we went for lunch and window-shopping to Kansas City's hilariously faux-Spanish but authentically aspirational shopping mall (complete with a small scale replica of Seville's landmark tower). Amongst a whole lot of beige men in beige shorts and teased-up bottle blondes in platform slides, Jorge and I didn't quite belong. But there's nothing like being the most stylish two in the crowd. By far. I got a serious up-and-down-and-up-again checking-out in Banana Republic - twice - by a straight man who was there with his wife. Or perhaps he was just deliberating where to aim the first shots of the hunting rifle he probably had back in his Hummer.

Then that night we met up with two of Jorge's colleagues, who were an absolute hoot, had tapas for dinner, and then hit the town (if that's not too grandiose an expression here). First, we went salsa dancing at a Latino bar in a strip mall where there were approximately six other patrons but, unperturbed, the four of us got up on the caramel-tiled floor and worked it out. Earlier, Jorge's friend Yajaira had concluded that I was "the right kind of white", but even though I had some serious snake-hip action going on, my stomach muscles and I started to wonder if I was in fact the wrong kind. A quick Salsa 101 tutorial from Yajaira and I was working a pretty efficient, if basic, set of moves. I'm not sure if the Latino guy staring at me suspiciously would have agreed. Next, we jumped back in the car and went back to the centre of town and, on a whim, snuck into a nightclub via the back door to avoid the $14 cover (Yes, $14. In Kansas.) Within two minutes, a staff member had busted us. I should add at this point that Jorge and his friends are all college professors in Lawrence and all the staff at this bar are students. I guess this is what academia can drive us to.

Back to NYC last night where the weather has finally turned decent. Everyone has been going a little bit mental with the late winter but in the four days I was away, the temperatures have risen from 8 or 10 degrees to high 20s and blossoms have magically appeared on trees everywhere. And I feel very confident the spring is going to bring more well-earned positive changes. Stay tuned.

the met

Yesterday, I played tourist. I've hardly been to any of the museums or tourist sights this time so I decided a Saturday afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art would be fun. As did about five million others. But the place is so huge that the crowds don't so much matter. I went to the Met the first time I was here in 1999 and I knew that it was amazing but I had forgotten the feeling of being overwhelmed by how amazing. I was walking around sighing and gasping in some rooms. There was a beautiful and fascinating exhibition called Venice and the Islamic World which was perfect because I love Italian Renaissance art and I love Islamic design.

Then I went into the permanent collection of Renaissance work and worked on my fetish for religious iconography and portraiture. Lots of sighing and gasping here. Room after room of astonishingly exquisite pieces. I didn't want to leave, and must have spent close to an hour in this state of bliss. After I broke away, I wandered randomly through some of the other sections. Like at MoMA or the Louvre, there are so many major pieces of work that a kind of blurring factor happens and you just can't process it all. So after about three hours in the museum, I found myself gliding almost complacently through rooms full of Picasso and Rembrandt and Vermeer and Caravaggio. And this is only the European painting section. After the blur factor took hold, I started amusing myself taking sneaky photos of people in the galleries. It's kind of a cliche to go to a museum and photograph people looking at the art but it's fun.

On Friday night, I realised I hadn't been to any performances of any kind either, so I took myself to a contemporary dance piece in an old church in the East Village. Some of it was quite impressive - not much, I have to say - but I don't really know much about dance so it's hard to judge. There was a lot of running in circles around the stage, a lot of writhing around on the floor like a cockroach trapped on its back, and occasionally one of the performers would verbalise into a microphone. The one male performer's main role seemed to be to wheel a big pot plant around the stage a few times and then stand and reflect on it. But I did enjoy the experience of it. It struck me as very New York.

Very not New York, I imagine, will be Kansas where I go on Thursday to visit my friend Jorge, which I'm really looking forward to. I'll be sure to wear my Dorothy shoes.

presence of greatness

Today I saw Julianne Moore on the street, collecting her daughter from school over near the Meatpacking District. She has amazing hair.

boston and back

I'm gladly back in New York after spending Wednesday through Saturday in Boston. It's a whole lot more interesting than Baltimore but it's very definitely not New York either. It seems pretty conservative overall. Maybe I didn't see the more interesting neighbourhoods, but nobody seemed to stand out or do anything interesting with outfits. Lots of bad jeans, I seem to remember noticing. But I'm very glad I went - it's quite a beautiful city in many parts. There's obviously a real commitment to retaining and making a feature of its architectural history, especially the colonial buildings which are a big part of the city's very proud Patriot involvement in the Independence movement. I met Sam (from Sydney) for dinner in Harvard and he gave me a quick tour of some of the main buildings in the yard, including the library which is astonishing. It's not unlike the public library in New York in scale and grandeur - and this for students! Unfortunately, it was way too cold to be wandering about so my tour was brief. But the Harvard Yard (below) has a movie set feel to it - it's the classic, picturesque US campus setting that features in so many movies, many of which probably use Harvard itself. And sure enough, when I got back to my hotel room, Legally Blonde was on TV and there it was.

My conference was a bit of a dud so I only attended two days. My paper went really well, however. I had a lot of really positive feedback and genuinely engaged questions. Who knows what, if anything, that will produce. But the standard of work at the other sessions I went to was not great, and in some cases terrible. So I decided I wasn't making a good use of my time and hit the city to sight-see instead. Again it was just too bloody cold to be spending too much time outdoors but I saw some great stuff. One clear highlight (thanks to Christina for the tip) was the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which is the private art collection of Gardner in her home, which she built in the style of a Venetian palazzo. And it is amazing. The building is stunning and the collection is pretty amazing too - a Rembrandt here, and couple of Botticelli there, a few John Singer Sargent, etc. Then another unexpected highlight turned out to be the Boston Public Library which has a number of beautiful murals inside, mostly painted around the turn of the 20th century.

I had planned to see some Boston nightlife on the Friday, my last night, but the bitter cold and the pesky last remnants of my flu made me change my mind. So I went out for a quick Korean meal, then settled into the hotel and ended up watching An Office and a Gentleman on TV which is about as embarrassing as it gets.

I jumped off the plane from Boston on Saturday and wasted no time in getting back into NYC life. Megan's gorgeous girlfriend Lisa arrived from Sydney the weekend before to stay for six months, so the three of us went out for drinks Saturday night to celebrate. The end of the night is probably best forgotten but we had lots of fun until then! And it's wonderful to have Lisa here.