Houyhnhnms and Yahoos

Okay, I'll admit it, I've never read Gulliver's Travels. Which makes the title for this post officially pretentious. I confess it. Forgive me.

I just couldn't stop myself from drawing the connection, because my recent weekend trip to London was filled with lofty, logical, socially-enlightening events, as well as silly, crazy people. And horses. Lots of horses. I'm starting to think that the recurrance of horses in my life indicates some kind of synchronicity.

It started on Friday:

After sleeping in because I stayed up late writing emails to people saying that I'd be gone Friday, I ran around quickly packing only what I needed for my trip to London (Ah, London! London! our delight...). From there, I dashed off and arranged for money for London, but, more importanly, for the horseback riding lesson that I had rescheduled for that day. I hadn't been horseback riding in two weeks, and I was missing it, and on top of that I felt bad for the girl who rode with me, who had to pay for the taxi by herself last week, and who had her fees hiked at the stables because she was the only person at the lesson. So, off I went on a BE-A-UTiful day to ride horses.

Sadly, we were inside, again. And I was riding Ginger, again. And Ginger was still itchy from having been groomed, again. Oy. On I hopped and we began the lesson.

I do feel that I actually did get something done. I finally got trotting, though my form obviously could always use improvement. I've started to realize and correct some of the ways that I've been sending mixed messages to the horse while controlling it, which might be one of the reasons I never get any respect from Ginger in the first place.

HOWEVER

I only really started doing this after Ginger had a serious Come-To-Jesus with the instructor. Before that he was walking around, disobeying what I wanted him to do - "kick him, kick him!" my instructor would should, and in my head I'd be saying "I am kicking him!" It got to the point where Ginger actually began moving around without listening to me. He started trotting when he wanted to, turned when and where he wanted to, and I was really just there for the ride. I didn't fall off, and he didn't kick me off, but the instructor noticed and started coming over. THEN it became Ginger trying to get away from the instructor, and I was a middle-man in the arguement. She eventually took him by the reins and verbally scolded him - and odd punishment I thought, and then gave me her switch. She told me to use it if I needed it. That freaked me out.

I did end up using it, but only when she told me to. It wasn't a full-out, jockey-at-a-race-track-smack-on-the-behind, instead I held it with the reins in my hand, and when she told me to, I tapped him on what would be his shoulder. I imagine it hurt more than a tap, but that's what happened. I stopped needing it after a while.

After the lesson, I got down off Ginger and made sure to pet him a lot. This was, after all, the horse that had rubbed the whole length of myself, from toe to head, with his head because of a good lesson once. He watched me go, and I felt a little uneasy.

Taxi ride back, in which I had an amazing conversation with a really young taxi guy about how England was crazy. He told me where the word "chav" came from too: "CHeltenahm AVerages." These were average-joes from Cheltenham in the 18oo's who wanted to be like the fancy rich people, and so they dressed up like them and paraded themselves around, trying to fit in. So, the rich people referred to them as "Cheltenham Averages." Anyway, post-taxi I went to a late train to London with Clay von Carlowitz. We almost missed it, actually. We were in line for the 1:54 train at 1:52. It was intense.

Arrived at London, dropped our stuff off at the Vicarage yet again. I discovered that my mobile was running out of batteries, which sucked, because I had rather complex aspirations to hang out with two lovely people who were in London at the same time: Charlie Cromer (BADA), and Sean Bye (semester break). I ended up kind of jerking Charlie and Sean around most of the weekend, because we'd try to meet and then things may not work out, but I did eventually see both of them, and it was great, as you'll find out if you read on.

We tried to meet up with Sean AND Charlie at the Waterloo station, because Clay and I were on our way to the National to see War Horse, but there were a few issues. We missed Sean entirely because I suspected it would take less time to from Notting Hill to Waterloo than it did. Poor Charlie was waiting out on the bank of the Thames for a while, but he met up with Ken, who was also supposed to meet us there, and then Johanna and Rick Carrol as well, so they all went to dinner. Clay, Stephanie Reiches, Meghan Gibson and myself all finally made it there with about half an hour before we were supposed to be at the National. Charlie and I had an intense catching up over coke and a sandwich, and I also tried to catch up as much as I could with Rick. Kenyon, however, is still a distant and misty kind of place to me, though, despite visiting Charlie. So much has probably happened there while I'm gone - but more importantly I got to grill him on his adventures in BADA, which are both plentiful and interesting (but then again I think a class is counted as an adventure, I mean, when you have classes 9-6, one of which is an intensive Shakespeare course). We reminisced about past games, talked of potential games in the future for senior year, and of course the usual - shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings ...

Off to War Horse. It's actually based on a children's book about an English boy - Albert - who manages to raise and befriend a horse he names Joey, just before World War I. But, Joey ends up being sold to the British Cavalry (the British started out using cavalry until they discovered German machine guns. This discovery, sadly, happens onstage. Reversal: they die.), and Albert, after much deliberation, ends up running away from home and enlisting, despite the fact that he is under age, in order to find his horse and bring him back. Both Joey and Albert go through their own adventures in No Man's Land, encountering new owners, crossing political lines, and trying to survive in a hell of modern warfare.

Sounds good, but the plot isn't the best in the world, there are deliberate coincidences - fortunate and unfortunate - that are really there just for pulling on your heartstrings. At the same time, the only play that has made me cry more is Godspell. And there's a darn good reason for that. The plot, while not perfect, was good enough, and the spectacle in the show was down-right amazing. Joey, of course, is a HORSE, but look at how well he's done:





This is Albert, played by Luke Treadaway, and Joey. The man you see holding Joey's head is a puppeteer - I tried to find out the name from the cast list, but obviously there are several people manning Joey. This man you see takes care of Joey's head, along with his neighing (done as a stylized discordant yell with one of the people manning Joey's legs), his snorting, and all the fine-tuned body language through his head and neck. He, I suspect, is holding a trigger somewhere that controls Joey's ears, moving them (independently) around in circles, or up and down, into whatever position he wants them to be in, essentially. Besides the head man, there are two people that make up Joey's body, one controlling his front two legs, one controlling his back two.

Joey is ridden. Joey gallops. Joey is whipped, shot at, and sometimes wounded. Joey has a general blown off of his back by a cannon. Joey takes part in a cavalry charge. Joey pulls artillery and carts, he kicks people, he sneaks around, he rubs up against people, he has conversations with few words, and he has an itch on his leg that he's often reaching down to scratch. At a point in one of Joey's adventures, his German owner who has taken him in is shot during a raid, and he is confronted with the new Western artillery, and has to stand up to it onstage:



This picture REALLY doesn't do it justice, but he faces down the equivalent of a panzer. It's a stunning moment.

Stunning is a good word, overall. War Horse isn't the best plot in the world, and one could easily describe it, sneeringly, as "sentimental." And, like I said, there are a few times when the script specifically toys with the audience's emotions (one of them is at the climax of the show, so I don't want to give it away.), so in some ways, it earns that jibe. As a whole, though, it seems to me that these are minor defects in a larger, greater piece, which isn't sentimental, but simply emotional. Overall, I'd say it's absolutely breathtaking - a good enough story with outstanding design. It has heavy amounts of incidental music, all drawn from the era - the songs of the Great War, but also country songs. Joey and Albert, after all, (GET THIS) live in Devon! Joey even has a line about having a bike stored in Exeter. And the acting is darn good, all around, and Treadaway does justice to Albert's wide-ranging story arc.

I've been saying I need a good cry for a while. I think I got it, or something close to it, with War Horse, and, of course, it made me want to go back to the Oakland Stables and give Ginger a big hug.

Saturday morning, we had yummy Vicarage breakfast (poached egg, toast, yogurt, orange juice, corn flakes, hot chocolate, sausage, a tomatoe, and English bacon). We went to the Tate Britain, where a friend of Wendy and Read's gave us a tour summing up British Art History. He brought us by a George Stubbs painting, featuring - get this - horses. George Stubbs, as it turns out, studied anatomy so he could paint horses correctly. The friend of Read and Wendy said it always made him think of Gulliver's Travels, how all of Stubbs' horses reminded him of Houyhnhnms, the rational and calm horses that Gulliver meets. Again, haven't read it, I'm pretentious, but that's what he said.

Saturday afternoon we went to see Othello, with EWAN MCGREGOR as Iago, in the Donmar Theatre, which is small. I was in the first row of a balcony, center-house. I was, probably, within 50 feet of Ewan McGregor, and I was at the perfect monologue-giving height, so if he looked up, I was THERE. The show itself was okay, I suppose I don't much care for the play. I found that there was a lot of yelling. The actor who played Cassio was very good, and the design was simple enough (beds, cushions, etc. combined with a French drain upstage that had water in it in Venice, which people could splash in, and which dried up in Cyprus. There were a few lighting gimicks, with monastary-like portals in two walls that light spilled in from, which were replaced with Middle-Eastern screens, with interweaving lattice-work.) Roderigo was also pretty good. But I nodded off sometimes, I confess.

For dinner, we met up with Charlie again and went to Waggamama's, Wendy treating. Waggamama's is a chain of noodle-restaurants throughout England, and they are scrumptious. Dinner with Charlie again, and then we went off to see Absurd-Person-Singular by Alan Aycbourne. Charlie got ready to depart, but Read offered to see if he could get a ticket for him at the last second. Not only was there one available, there was one available right next to where we were sitting. I had tried to work something out with Sean, but it didn't work out, and he met me outside the theater. We made plans to eat lunch together on Sunday before I left town, which happened, though not without further complications.

BUT, in the meantime, Absurd-Person-Singular was certainly funny, but as far as I can tell it didn't have much of a plot, or if it did, somehow it illuded me. Funny though. And afterwards, we got to go backstage and have wine with one of the actors, who Wendy was friends with, and who's going to be in the movie Valkyrie, which is coming out soon. That was fun, though we were cut short by the backstage requiring that people leave by a certain point.

After that, Clay, Charlie and I adjourned to a pub called "The Volunteer" on Baker Street, which was pretty okay, and we hung out until 12:30, when the pub closed. We bid Charlie goodnight, and as Clay and I wandered towards the bus station, we were accosted by two partily-dressed and presumably inebrated teenage girls. The disccusion went something like this:

Girl 1: Excuse me, excuse me, do you know where the bus station is?
Me: Yeah, I think there's-
Girl 2: Where're you from?
Clay: America. (indicated to himself) Ohio. (indicating to me) Pennsylvania.
Girl 1 (in an American accent): America? That's totally cool.
Girl 2: We're heading to Paddington.
Clay (to Girl 1, sardonic): That's a great impression.
Me: Yeah, well supposedly there's a bus station somewhere down here.
Girl 1 (to Clay): Really?
Clay: Yeah, it's like, Valley-Girl.
Girl 1 (to Girl 2, impressed): Valley-girl...

Then I think they ran away to the bus station nearby, because they saw a bus for Paddington leaving. Clay and I processed this peculiar run-in and decided it should go like this:

Dramatis Personae:
Mr. Subtle: Clay von Carlowitz
Mr. Obvious: Griffin Horn
Yahoo Girl: Girl 1

Yahoo Girl: Where're you from?
Mr. Subtle: We're from America
Yahoo Girl (thick, fake American accent): Oh my gosh, America? That's, like, totally awesome!
Mr. Subtle: Oh, that's a great accent, there.
Yahoo Girl: You think so?
Mr. Subtle: Yeah. It's a great version of a Southern California Valley accent.
Yahoo Girl: Wow.
Mr. Subtle: You're talented. We've got to go catch our bus.

Mr. Subtle and Mr. Obvious leave. Mr. Obvious stops and turns back before he goes.

Mr. Obvious: WHORE!

Exit Mr. Obvious. Curtain. End of Play.

They're probably perfectly nice girls, in reality. Our little play is pretty mean-spirited, but this kind of run-in happens so often, it seems. I like to think I'm not really reacting to them, I'm trying to deal with that kind of run-in through humor. Sean mentioned that one of his friends told him "British people'll make fun of your accent, but they'll be secretly jealous of you because you sound like a movie-star." But, this did give Clay and I the idea of forming a two-man comedy troupe, Mr. Subtle and Mr. Obvious. Someone earlier in the weekend suggested we have our own radio show.

Sunday morning, another tasty Vicarage breakfast, and sadly the last one I'll have on K'Nex, because we're not going back in to London as a group again. I had friend eggs this time.

We hung around the room for a bit, Clay, Ken and I, and finally took the Tube up to Morningston Crescent, where we were meeting Sean. We got there early and had lunch - Clay was videotaping a bunch of things on his digital camera, and I accidentally almost broke it when I bumped into him, which was scary. Then we met up with Sean, but Ken, Clay and I had already had lunch, meaning that when we did get food, it would be Sean eating and the rest of us full. Big cock-up on my part, cause Sean made clear the night before that we'd be meeting up for lunch, and since
Sean is a regular reader of this blog, it makes it even more of a cock-up because I would feel bad not reporting how much of a cock-up it was. Cock-up.

Anyway, we went through Camden, the part of town nearby Morningston Crescent, which actually had had a huge fire the night before in its main market. Luckily, this had not hit the part of the market with the comic book store that I, at least, had wanted to hit up with Sean. I got a fairly mediocre story arc of the X-Men called "The Extremists," which was just slightly less disappointing than the Ultimate Galactus plot that I had read in the Devon Library earlier that week (which SUCKED). Ken, however, bought a book called Iron West (I think?), about a bunch of robots in the Old West. Sounds weird, but it's not only wonderfully drawn, but it's a great, funny little story. Perhaps even worthy of the phrase "graphic novel." I'd recommend it and I only read the first third.

Then on to second lunch, where we all hung out. Then off to a train and away to Exeter. I got a little further in G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. It goes through human history, and combined with my reading done while I got there, I've made it to the dawn of civilization.

Anywho, I don't know quite what to make of the repeated horses this weekend. Maybe I need to get in touch with my passionate side? Maybe I need to open up to the concerns of people around me? Who knows. If it is synchronicity, though, it will acausually connect to some kind of meaning.
Think dream-logic and meaning. Any thoughts?

Peace out cub scouts.