We went to the Tate Britain and there was a room with all the people from the lives of the Bohemians, that book where I learned Arthur Ransome was one of them. Gwen John paints her friend doralia, and herself. Augustus John paints Gwen John. One of their friends paints Augustus John with another girl, maybe a lover. And that's what's so exciting about them I think, how they were all friends and lovers and cross pollinating each other's art and lives.
This was the same room with heaps of Sergeant's too, so good.
Then tonight I went to see the last performance of the threepenny opera. It was so vital, the people weren't even miked, just pure showmanship and that Weimar style. Real standouts were the owner of the hotel, and Polly his daughter. He had a hilarious simultaneously understated and campy over the top performance. And her voice got this perfect sweet tone at all the right place in his gritty atonal songs.
And at the end, after all the applause and they had left the stage, the people in the left wings suddenly gave this uproarious cheer and we all joined in and they came out again. The raucousness of arts here. It's so real and alive. Like living in a place where history is happening. Like art is your real life. I can't describe how good it is to watch people organically react like this to art. It's like the poetry reading. It is so good.
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