Sunday, September 12, 2004

I love London

This evening I went to see the Pet Shop Boys and a full symphony orchestra play an original musical accompaniment to Sergei Eisenstein's great silent movie Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square. The film was being projected onto a large screen above the musicians, where was either attached or adjacent to Nelson's Column. Despite a little bit of a drizzle, a large audience showed up to watch this, and some members of the audience were quite creative in their choice of vantage point. (The authorities were quite tolerant of this, too). I have particular admiration for the people who waded through the square's water feature and watched the movie and musicians from the top of the fountain in its centre. The view must have been excellent, but I do wonder how long these people took to dry.

I was also struck by how much Russian (and/or other Slavic languages: I can't really tell them apart) I heard spoken by people in the crowd. London today is quite a Slavic place.

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