A good evening at the Crypt

A Paul and Michiko night, not as crowded as I expected although it was Bank Holiday weekend. Talked with El Milonguero Terry about the dynamics of evenings: how one can be pleasant and another difficult. This was a good one: not too many people, some of the best London dancers, and anyway it was a wedding reception, cake, champagne and all. The bridegroom an Argentine tango singer living in London, generous and friendly -- but then I said he was Argentine. He sang a vals for us while dancing with his bride. Not so many of the partners I usually dance with, but some I hadn't seen for a while, since I haven't been to the Crypt for nearly five months: very enjoyable.

BM on Sunday morning: not the best time for the BM. The Egyptian paintings, more fragmentary than I'd assumed, but still marvelous. The clear ochre line, the precise drawing. Such a wholehearted celebration of the fullness of life it takes your breath away to remember that they are actually from a tomb. Remembering the best bits of life, and like a prayer that the afterlife should have all the best bits. I note that the flute player alongside the dancing girls is frontal: everyone else is profile.

Photography grows – and grows. Wonderful that everyone and their granny was taking/making photos in the BM. The Rosetta Stone like Madonna surrounded by paparazzi. Ways to remember, be reminded.

Art and death: the earliest portraits I know of are the encaustic Egyptian tomb paintings, 5th century AD I think, predating European portraits by 1,000 years. Painted for a death, for remembrance, absence. I never believe talk of the death of anything, tango included, remembering talk of the 'death of painting' some years ago. I saw an exhibition of paintings by Dutch/South African painter Marlene Dumas recently. Each painting recalled something that was supposed to have died: the death of painting, the death of the author, the dead poet, death of the maiden, the death of history ... the list went on... and on. It was at the same time macabre and funny. I enjoyed the paintings, especially 'The Death of Painting'. The 'death of tango' didn't figure but it could have done.

Famous dancing girls in the tomb paintings, and I'd never seen so clearly the Nereids are dancers too, their movement carried out into the space around them by their flowing garments. Weightless, and in marble.

Gandhi statue framed
by flowering cherry
planted for Hiroshima.

Return in a gray-green landscape, white splashes of hawthorne.