Just back from a book launch in West Greenwich. Lots of energy in and around Trafalgar Square, musicians and artists in full swing, streams of people on the steps of the National Gallery. I went in for awhile and pondered some masterpieces, amazed at the details and nuances, the stories behind them. The immense rooms that accommodate these treasures are also works of art. At Tate Britain, the Van Gogh exhibit is remarkable in its arrangement, how it charts the influences of the artist in his beginnings, intersections with contemporaries, and his legacy carried on through other artists after his death. In long walks through the city, on bridges and balconies, in cafes and pubs, I imagine London as it might have been with so many ghosts whirling around, bringing alive the present.
Even as it transforms, the city is as Dickens said, “visible and invisible,” with many faces. Yesterday is held fast in today’s eye—remade by everyone strolling through, imagining how it might have been. The city blooms in version after version of the same song. In the Churchill War Rooms, survival and sacrifice play out well beneath the surface—another world to inhabit for a time. Then walking through St. James’s Park, past the lake into the bright afternoon, I feel a resurgence rise up from the grass—it is the beginning of summer and everyone I pass seems at once young and ancient, familiar but far away.