#anyway the national gallery also blew me away

[arality]

london museums/galleries dump 😵‍💫

[folerdetdufoler]

about a minute after i pulled away from my house on tuesday i realized i forgot my pink face paint but it was already too late to turn around. doing something like that would cause the dominoes of delays to topple and i wouldn’t actually make my flight. for that sacrifice i was rewarded smooth travel, but that meant my friday was a little less...fredag-y. alas.

i woke up for the sunrise again, and was rewarded with a mostly clear sky. the weather was turning out better than expected, which was good because i was planning on some walking today. the night before jenn invited me to ett bord for lunch, so that was my first scheduled event for the day, but i had some stops i wanted to make for personal, skam-related reasons.

after a leisurely breakfast i got dressed and applied sunscreen. then i messaged with nadège to figure out where to meet up on my way to nissen. i wanted to visit the national gallery, even though it was closed, as just a final nod to the museum that inspired rule of seven. we managed to message a firm meet up and then completely miss each other on the street, but we got our shit together eventually and made it to the museum. it was a little sad, if only because another tourist came up to us asking where the entrance was, and we had to break the news that the museum was closed at that location. granted, it was probably confusing seeing us taking pictures of the building as if it were still an active site, but still less confusing than the instructions i tried to give them about visiting the new museum in 2020 (uhhhh wtf kerry).

we moved on. we went to the school for no reason other than to step back into that world for a little bit, check up on the benches. we went to the KB for a drink, and then walked to the restaurant. i’m glossing over most of this because a lot of what was said during this time made me uncomfortable, and it all kind of built up over the next few hours until i snapped at lunch. i didn’t speak out or anything, i just capslocked on twitter once and then tried to tune everyone out. for some reason the restaurant was playing exclusively ed sheeran songs, so i just listened to that instead. i plucked heads and exoskeletons off of shrimp and drowned myself in lukewarm pop music.

the food was good. it was the first time i’d eaten shrimp like that. i don’t know what i was expecting, ordering “norwegian shrimp,” but that was exactly what it was and i shouldn’t have been so shocked. but in general i powered through.

after lunch i went back to the hotel to change before the park. i didn’t have my face paint but i was going to wear a skirt because it was robyn and apparently “one step up from the bare minimum” is my love language. i fell asleep at some point in my preparations, and woke up with my thumb still scrolling through instagram. then i was late, and missed seeing girl in red. but i found my girls as they migrated to the next stage, and was blessed with an absolutely electric performance from christine and the queens. it was another artist i’d never listened to before but i instantly regretted that; she blew us away with her energy and attitude and message, pumping out songs that your heart somehow already knew. it was a good mood-lifter, which i sorely needed after that afternoon.

okay well hold the phone because it’s been weeks since i started writing this post and i definitely lost my train of thought. after christine and the queens we went to get food. after we found a table to sit at, jenni, taru, and kati found us to do some hilarious candy trades. i was not aware of how valuable reese’s are overseas. but the point of mentioning this is that i was being wildly rude to these women because i was not sure who they were, and thus acted very cold. jenn had actually introduced me to jenni the day before and i simply did not connect her to the person i had chatted with online, someone i already knew. so i just compartmentalized them into “oh these are jenn’s friends” and kept myself out of their conversations. it’s kind of a generally rude thing to do, to shut myself off instead of trying to integrate with small talk, but here it was extra rude because i seemed to be ignoring the fact that we’d already “met.” gah! also i’m not sure when i finally connected the dots, but it was late enough to feel deep embarrassment about it and not really figure out how to apologize about it. so i didn’t. i think i tried to be more friendly when we met up the next day but knowing me i probably wasn’t. anyway, i apologize both for how i acted and for not acknowledging it/apologizing for it in person. i usually have a good reason for being rude, but this time it was just...insecurities? ugh.

okay so...the rest of the evening was just ROBYN. we tended to always gather around the same location, stage right, not too close but decently close because i fucking flew to oslo for this. and with every successive evening, the crowds were packed in tighter and more likely to dance. i was still trying to get used to the general lack of personal space but pretty early on i just gave up trying to stand my ground, letting people push past me and not worrying about who i was pushing in return. like, no one was going to win the fight for whatever little patch of grass you were standing on.

it was also an interesting experience as someone who is very aware of how much space she takes up in this world (too much!), being forced to acknowledge that constantly by the pressure of other people against my front and back. it didn’t help that i was wearing a backpack. but most of the time i can ignore that “bigness” by only being in spaces that allow me to fit with ample air around me. (the closest i get to other people these days is my airplane seat.) at a general admission concert though, that doesn’t exist. so i would sing and dance and think about weighing 237 pounds. i don’t know if it was necessarily a bad thing, just a new thing, and it was probably actually good to have that constant awareness, to shrink my comfort zone. i dunno. the real fight was me going back and forth thinking “i wish i took up less space” and “you deserve as much space as any other human being.”

clearly the problem with waiting a month to write a travel recap is that it actually becomes a therapy session about things that could’ve been figured out back in the states. so let’s really move on to robyn. leading up to the festival i’d been lazily following robyn’s tour, watching her play new york city twice and eating up every fan video of “dancing on my own,” where she let the crowd sing it for her simply because they were going to anyway. i was so excited to finally be part of that crowd, to hear the music like that, in my bones. and i did.

i tried to get my picture-taking out of the way at the beginning, because all i needed was one clear photo that could prove i was there. i don’t think i actually got it, but the important thing was i put my phone away and just enjoyed the music for most of her set. i had it ready to go when her two hits started, of course, but robyn, of all of the artists i’d seen, seemed most focused on creating an atmosphere for everyone to just be in. we had billowing curtains and sensual dancers that moved the air around us, which moved us too. we all were encased in lace with ribbons in our hair.

at some point i noticed a guy off to my right who was holding his plastic cup, the reusable one meant for the festival, and it was lit up. he had turned on his camera’s flashlight and was amplifying it through the bottom of the cup. i thought it was very clever and was impressed, wishing i could pause the concert to get enough space to retrieve my cup from my backpack and join him. i wanted to sway and hold up my lighter too.

i think i pointed it out to nadège in that pantomime way, just trying to direct her eyes away from the stage and hoping she’d figure the rest out on her own. she, of course, was already aware, because she then pointed out everyone else at the concert doing the same thing. i don’t know why i didn’t see it before, why i thought only this one guy was doing it, but the rest of the joint was lit up like a candlelight vigil. (looking back at the video i took during her bows, i’m realizing i simply didn’t see it because i’m too fucking short. i had to hold my phone up over my head to see the rest of the crowd beyond the border wall of shoulders around me.) she had the whole crowd at her feet, keeping watch, sending out electro-pop prayers.

i got what i came for. i got the rush of nostalgia for bånder, the single, freeing heartbeat of everyone dancing on their own, and the press of bodies to remind you you’re not actually alone. i was in oslo, the lights were blue, and i felt the pulse that’s been keeping me company ever since the clip dropped. as uncomfortable as my body might’ve been, my heart felt like it was where it belonged.

ugh that was some purple ass writing right there. and now i have to follow it up with “and then i walked back to the hotel.” because i did. i opened a new tab on my computer, and like it’s been doing for the past nearly-three years, it directed to the skam homepage. tap, tap, scroll, and then bånder was playing, chris was dancing, and isak and even were learning what electricity felt like with just a single point of eye contact.

then i was probably too buzzed to fall asleep for another couple of hours which is always a good life choice when you’re already severely sleep deprived. but when i did eventually nod off, i did so knowing that isak and even were on their way to falling in love, and an entire park had felt it too.

[jamiebluewind]

Hello Strangers!

Hope all you guys are awesome! Everything with the move is going okay. Staying with a friend for now due to a goof with my voucher paperwork, but that just means that I can enjoy her company and local stuff. I mean, I've went to the Smithsonian three times now! ^_^

The first was the Natural History Museam which honestly blew me away. We went in when it opened and left when it closed and STILL didn't see everything. It was very interactive, I was able to touch an actual meteorite, the bones were fascinating (human and animal both), there were so many examples of everything from stone tools to pottery and early art to early inventions (like wooden sunglasses!), the minerals were facinating and beautiful (so many were in shapes that looked man-made!), and the ancient Egyptian exhibit left me reflective and a little sad. If you are ever in that area of the US, it's worth a visit (open all the drawers). I even liked their gift shops! No pictures though. It honestly didn't cross my mind while I was running around like an excited toddler XD

The second was my solo trip to the National Gallery of Art. When it came to the paintings, I loved the Van Gogh, Da Vince, and Degas the most, but a lot of the art wasn't my style. Still, I seen many beautiful pieces. The furniture was surprisingly beautiful. And the sculptures? Just... wow. Here are a few pictures I took (ones without any nudity of course)...

Sculptures with nudity that I loved were Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science, Amazon Preparing For Battle or Armed Venus, Diana and a Hound, The Reading Girl, The Greek Slave (far more amazing in person than the online pics I found), and several others I forgot to get the name of.

My third trip was to the American Indian Museum with my friend and... it was rough. A lot of it hit me right in the heart, especially since I have a good chunk of Native American in my bloodline. Seeing the artifacts mixed with modern Native art was refreshing as I was worried they would be treated as a culture long since passed. The genocide. The culture destruction. The child abductions and treatment. Manifest destiny. Poverty. Mistreatment. The terrible things still happening even a few decades ago... it was a lot. When we looked at some of the exhibits, I knew what some of the things were for. I recognizes symbols that I never knew had meaning. I seen a quilt pattern that my mamaw used. I would start talking and stop myself a lot because I felt like I had no right to because I'm too white. My dad's onyx hair and burgundy skin didn't get passed down to me. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Pale skin. I felt like I was intruding. All I knew was what my papaw (father's father) let slip here and there, but it was rare. My mother's father died long before I was born (and wouldn't have said anything anyway). All I have are a few arrowheads and a few stories. I honestly never expected it to hit me so hard.

The museams I still plan on seeing with my friend are the African American Museum, the National Zoo, Air and Space Museum, Natural History Museum (again because I love that place), and maybe the Smithsonian Gardens. Solo trips would be African Art Museum, Renwick Gallery (contemporary), Hirshhorn (sculpture), Freer Gallery of Art (Asian art), and Sackler Gallery (Asian sculpture). The American History Museum will have to wait a while. I don't think I would be able to enjoy it right after going to the American Indian Museum.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to interview for an apartment that I hope to get. It's really disability friendly (no required stairs, multiple decent sized elevators, nice staff, indoor mail system near an elevator that emails you if you have a package to pick up, multi-story parking garage that lets you park on your floor, small washer/dryer in each unit, decent sized stairs with good stable handrails, optional handrails for shower, easy open doors,...), accepts vouchers, energy efficient, and under my budget. The staff is also friendly and they have no pest complaints. Fingers crossed!

PS: I am sorry for being gone so long and that I still can't be active like normal. Between the move, migraines, friend time, museums, trying to transfer everything, applications, fun time with kitty earmites, and everything else, I just don't have the time! I'm even a month behind on tv, YouTube, and fics! But I'm really happy here. Really truly happy ^_^