Travelogue #8: Museums.

What makes a great museum?

Is it the size of the collection? Or the depth of the exhibits? The marvellous architecture of the building? Or the quality of light, the layout of the internal halls? How big is too big? And how small is irrelevance? 

These are the questions I asked myself throughout my trip to the US, but especially in New York, where I visited the most number of museums and galleries.

For my money, MOMA had the greatest depth, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was overwhelming in its breadth and grandeur (reminded me a little of the Louvre), and the Guggenheim was the most viewer friendly in its pristine ribbon-like structure and continuity. 

And right now, I’m in Europe and ironically, I don’t plan on hitting many museums on this continent packed with art and museums. 

Travelling has taken a toll and I am eager to start “living”. Unpack, unwind, unload all that information I’ve gathered. Cook a meal. Read a book. Go through all my notes and photos. And of course, catch up on all the backdated travel blogging I have yet to do. 

Watch this space.  

Guess what painting they were looking at? 

Of course … 

MOMA

Guggenheim interior. 

Birds resting on the exterior. 

My tourist shot ;) 

xx doots

Travelogue #7: Memorialising loss

I wrote an essay for school once about how nations commemorate, honour and sometimes elevate loss into legends. In my essay, I talked about the design for the WWII Memorial in Berlin, the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance, and the soon-to-be-completed 9-11 Memorial in New York. 

Fast forward a few years and I found myself in New York on the 10th anniversary of September 11. For the most part, it was life as usual, and I liked that.

I like the fact that something so traumatic could happen, figuratively and physically scar a community, yet people still move on determinedly with their lives.

There were of course some reminders of the occasion: we could see signs of remembrance, personal and public memorials in parks and other public spaces. 

But of course, the most interesting of all was the newly opened 9-11 Memorial, still situated in the middle of a construction site at this stage. Some memorials glorify, others narrate, but the 9-11 Memorial does neither. 

You hear it first - the steady splashing of water flowing down into the North and South Pools, each representing a void. The water cascades further into a smaller square at the centre of each pool, creating a dichotomy of void and fill, motion and stillness, loss and hope, and above all - innocence, sorrow. 

Names of the victims line the perimeter of the pools. As you walk around, you can see flowers and flags left by family members next to certain names. It’s a strangely understated and poignant scene, and I was ever so glad city planners decided not to go with a more grand and glorified design.

Because watching water flow ceaselessly into the void of the two pools that day, it seemed to me that every other design would have been unthinkable, light weight, and inappropriate for memorialising this consuming loss.

And you can’t do much better than that. Props to the architect. 

Battery Park

Ellis Island - with the view from this window 10 years ago.

Memorial.

Lincoln Center, getting ready for the Memorial Concert. 

I heard they were playing Mahler’s 2nd. In case you’re not well-versed in your Mahlers, that’s the Resurrection Symphony. 

Aaaaah. Subtlety, eh? 

xx doots

Travelogue #6: Hi Mum!

I just realised I haven’t written anything substantive since LA, so here’s a whole lotta catching up. 

For our first two days in New York, it rained with the intensity and fury of a three year old’s supermarket aisle tantrum, and needless to say - we got wet, wet, wet. 

It was the kind of wet where you stand on the sidewalk, perfectly minding your own business, only to be splashed in the face by a taxi passing by. 

The kind of wet when your umbrella is blown inside out by a gust of wind and promptly falls to pieces, fluttering meekly against the onslaught of torrential downfall.

The kind of wet that leaves you so fed up, so distracted by the wet, shining pavements that you don’t even notice yourself walking straight into a ground-level fountain. 

Yeah. That kind of wet. Don’t be fooled by my squinty grin. I was wailing on the inside. 

But on the third day, the weather cleared up and looked like this. 

Immediately, New York became a different city.

The people were more cheery.

The streets were less chaotic.

The parks looked greener.

And the sights? Grander to behold. 

I won’t bore you with a laundry list of where we went and what we did. I’ll just pic spam you instead. Hurrah!

xx doots

(PS. Hi Mum!)

I normally don’t buy souvenirs when I’m travelling, because it has to be either exquisitely designed and locally made, or so hilariously tacky and made-in-China that I buy it just for laughs.

In my nerdy ways, I do however get a book for every city I visit, and so far, San Francisco, LA, New York and Boston have all gotten their own book. 

Can you guess which book belongs to which city? 

A

N

S

W

E

R

S:

San Fran: The Fall of America - by A. Ginsberg

LA: Mirroring People - by a certain M. Iacoboni ;) 

NYC: Washington Square - by H. James

Boston: Constitution of the United States with the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation - by … Americans

(Shut up. I’m still a law student.) 

xx 

I haven’t been to the US Open until I say this: EVERYTHING LOOKED LIKE ANTS.

INCLUDING ACTUAL ANTS. 

Travelogue #5: LA LA Land.

I’m falling behind with this travel blogging thing, partly because the fact of “having a life” has been a terrible inconvenience and gotten in the way, and partly because I just wasn’t sure what to write about LA. 

The truth is I didn’t want to go to LA. It seemed like it was going to be motorised, excessive … and let’s face it - crazy shit happens there.

My first impressions of the city lived up to these expectations as I sat in a bus and stared out into the endless motorways, palm trees and box-like buildings in plastic colours that lined the streets, each attached to a grey parking lot.

How strange and perplexing, I thought, that the good folks of LA would let their city be dominated by such distant and cold streetscapes and such hideous, temporary-looking buildings? Why not invest in architecture and public transport that could become more iconic and lasting? 

But of course, there were thoughtful public spaces and attractions in LA too: the Griffith Observatory, high on a hill in vast parklands minutes away from the urban hustle and bustle, so perfectly melded together science and aesthetics; the Getty Center, perched on another hill, was a nirvana of artworks, landscape and nature. Each room was flooded with natural light, each compound faced out onto a plaza, or endless lawns where people sat, ate and socialised instead of being forced to walk past endless paintings and sculptures with sore feet.

From then on, LA seemed to swing between extreme tackiness and extreme elegance; excessive richness and poverty lurking in the cigarette fumes of homeless men. Coldness and warmth. 

The final saving grace in LA was of course the people I met, fellow bloggers and blog readers. Thanks to Twitter, we live in a strange world where we often get to know what someone had for breakfast, how they did at school or how drunk they were on Friday night well before we ever put a face or a voice to the personality.

“How do you know they’re not all kidnappers?” Mum asked me as I told her my plans for the trip.

That, folks, is called a generation gap. 

On my final day in LA, I went to LACMA, which was surprisingly huge with a fascinating collection.

As I walked out of the compound, tourists were taking photos next to the “Urban Light” installations on the street front. Kids were playing hide and seek in between the chess board-like set up of the lamp posts. The sun was setting and casted a golden haze from the West over the city. It was the kind of goldenness that reminded you of stereotypical films about California where beautiful people ran in slow motion across beaches and smooched each other with the kind of intensity not seen since the fall of Nazi Germany. 

Right there and then, how could you not feel incredibly happy about life?

Thank you, LALA Land. I do think we’ll meet again. 

Travelogue #4: Colour your world.

Only tourists ever stop to marvel.