I’ve been struggling with two paintings that have been in progress for seemingly months. Of course, that is partly because I’ve been traveling a lot and having lots of company and then I fell behind on writing for the same reasons. Over the past week or so I’ve caught up a bit on the writing part, although I have to say that the travelogue sort of posts are a different kind of prose. They are more focused and require me to spend time with the multimedia elements. In a lot of ways, I think I like the ones that are more random.

The painting that has been sitting around the flat the longest is one that started out as a photo of me and Jerry Fried standing in front of nearby scenic alleyway. I got the two figures done fairly quickly, although I’ve been fiddling away with them ever since and then had to come up with a background that looked a little like the alleyway without being so busy that it distracted from the main subject. I eventually finished a background, but there wasn’t enough going on, so I added some wall signs and sandwich board, which helped some. But it still wasn’t right. Here is where I was on it:

You may recall that I was complaining a couple of blog posts back that this painting wasn’t either realistic or impressionistic and was really more cartoonish than anything else. I decided to go with that idea and bought permanent ink black pens and drew on top of the painting. The result is below. I think it is an improvement. I’m still thinking about adding a figure in the middle distance, but I’m going to leave it for now.

“Wild”: On Brexit Referendum Night, we were off to see “Wild” at Hampstead Theatre with Kathy and Jim. It is new play by Mike Bartlett that is inspired by (but not exactly about) the Snowden leak of documents. It opens with a Snowden-like figure sitting in a Russian hotel room a few days after the leak, his life utterly turned upside down. He is visited by a woman (played by a mesmerizing Caoilfhionn Dunne–and that’s not a typo) who seems to be a representative from a group that will help him. But is she? Does he want to be their spokesman? Who can he trust? She leaves and a man visits, saying he is the representative and she isn’t. Who is lying? Maybe both of them? Should Andrew (the Snowden guy) be worried for his safety? They seem to know everything about him. Does he have any privacy? Does anyone? The play goes on like this and sometimes got a bit talky and was not always completely coherent. At one point, the woman actually stabs her hand to prove herself to Andrew (which didn’t really make sense) and to get him to join them (whoever they are), but when she returns later with the man, there is no scar. It was all a fake. And then it turns out that not just the phone in the hotel room is a fake, the whole hotel room is a fake. This leads to an incredible bit of stagecraft as the man and woman spectacularly dismantle the room, which disappears piece by piece before out eyes, leaving a black room. The completely shaken Andrew then has to deal with his world literally turning over as the stage begins to rise up at one end and then keeps going and the entire box set turns on its side, leaving Andrew sitting on a chair (somehow) facing down at the man and the woman. The man leaves and the woman is trying to get him to come down and join their organization. She then pulls out a large pin and point it at herself. There is bright flash and explosion and she disappears, leaving pieces of paper fluttering to the ground as the play ends. Frankly, this whole ending was so amazing and such a mind-boggling scene of spectacular stagecraft that it almost didn’t matter that the play itself was slightly incoherent. It was really quite fun overall and Ms. Dunne, who had the best part and pulled it off very well, led a very good cast.

Scottish Power: No this isn’t about Scottish politics. It is just a story. When we first moved here, I discovered that we got our utilities from Scottish Power for some reason. I dutifully called to change the account our names and could barely understand the very nice Scottish lass with a thick brogue on the phone. A month later, I got a bill in the prior tenant’s name, so I called again. By this time I was better at understanding the local dialects and managed to get the account changed. A few months later, I got another bill and noticed that I was only being billed for electricity. So called and asked if I had a gas account. I was told that there seemed to be some problem and that they would look into and get back in touch with me. I not only never heard from the them again, they stopped sending me any bills. I finally got a letter last week telling me that I had to sign up for an account. I called back and gave them the number of my electric account and was told that they would call me back in an hour. They never called. So I called the next day and finally got someone who was able to navigate their billing system. He told me that I already had both accounts and that I had been switched to  digital billing (but it turned out that they had misspelled my e-mail address, so they never told me.) He advised me that there was some reason why my gas account, while set up, could not be activated. He said that they would work on it. (I doubt I will ever get billed.) A few days later, I finally got an e-mail asking me to pay my outstanding electric bill. I did and got an e-mail thanking me for the payment, but it was addressed to the prior tenant. I asked them to correct it, but it seems to be losing effort.