Cardiff Pride Exhibit and other things
I found out only two days ago that there was going to be a Welsh Pride exhibit opening today (March 7th) at the Pierhead building in the Bay, the opening day of which included several activities and things as well as the actual exhibit opening.
Earth, of course, does not have a reading week this week like everyone else, so annoyingly enough I had a class directly in the middle of the events. The class in question often makes me want to stab myself in the head with a pencil (how many times in one hour can he say “so you probably have all known this since you were ten, but…”?), but I have missed it so often from oversleeping that I really felt I shouldn’t skip it on purpose. This morning, of course, I woke up too late to go to the beginning of the opening day, and only just in time to get to class, so that was that.
Anyway, the lecture (I did not injure myself with any school supplies, but it was a close thing) ended at 12, which meant I would be too late to talk to the people who were in the show “My Transsexual Summer,” which I kind of would have liked to, but oh well. (What would I say anyway? I haven’t actually seen the show or anything.) I should, however, have had plenty of time to get down there for the (free!) LGBT-themed play (free! LGBT! Play! How could I NOT be there?). I say should, because of course I was a complete idiot and did not look up what buses I could take, or whence and when they left, so I wandered around looking at random bus stops for a while, and then I followed some signs that pointed to the Bay, but of course they were traffic signs, not pedestrian signs, so I somehow ended up in the middle of construction-filled nowhere. Good one, me. Anyway, I ended up going in a huge circle for about 40 min, missing a bus that would have taken me where I wanted to go by about 20 seconds (not knowing at the time it was the right bus), and eventually ended up almost exactly where I started, and finally found a workable bus station. Long story short, I got to the Pierhead building EXACTLY when the play started, which was 5 minutes later than they planned.
(An aside: I have learned some things about myself whilst studying in Cardiff, two of which are that 1. I am actually very good at backtracking when I need to, and 2. I hate backtracking with some kind of stubbornly intense passion. So there have been an awful lot of unexpectedly long walks around the city recently, mostly after I realized that I had walked past my bus stop, was unwilling to go 20 yards backwards, and ended up walking another two miles instead. Not being afraid that I’m going to get lost is occasionally a problem that way. For instance, it was pretty obvious about 5 minutes into my following the signs today that I was not going the right way-they pointed to a sidewalk-free ramp-but I kept going anyway with the idea that I had a general concept of the direction I should be walking, so I should get there eventually. This is not actually always true.)
I’m glad I didn’t give up on my rather circuitous and self-inflicted journey, because the play was amazing. It was a two-man play about the WWI poets Wilfred Owen (part Welsh and author of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” one of the most memorable poems I have read, among other things) and Siegfried Sassoon (whom I had not previously heard of, but is apparently also quite famous). The LGBT portion of it was mostly subtext, as their relationship is not proven to have been that sort of a relationship, but the acting and the writing was superb. There was a lot of quoting of the two’s poems, which are kind of amazing (and I say “kind of” only because things of beauty tend to put me in a sort of awed and humble mindset, where gushing would seem disrespectful to the quality of the emotion, and, in this case anyway, any words of mine would be lackluster in comparison to the ones I was hearing). One of the great things about war poets is that you can’t shrug them off saying “oh, is he weeping after his lady-love again?” or “so it was nice out, and?” These men were in the trenches, freezing, watching their friends die, killing, and being shot themselves. And they came back and went back to the front, and wrote about how it was, and protested it. You don’t get much more serious than that. I had no idea before I got there that this was what the play was about, and I wasn’t expecting anything quite so grim or so heart-wrenching, but to hear poetry of that caliber being read aloud that well… I’m just very glad I was there in time to hear it.
After that, there was a Q&A with the actors, during which most of the audience was just sitting there feeling dumbly shell-shocked, and then I went to have a gander at the actual exhibit, which was upstairs. I took some photos (I didn’t during the play, although it seemed to be allowed, because my camera makes an annoying beeping sound and I did not want to interrupt it in any way), mostly of the building itself, which is quite lovely. The exhibit was a bit of a let down, possibly because it was nowhere near the level of the play. Pretty much a bunch of photos set up in a room, with text telling you who was in them, and how they were important to Wales, and in the case of the more historic people, what the evidence was for them having been queer and what the issues were. So, interesting but not amazing. They did have Russell T. Davies and Torchwood though, which I found amusing.
People were doing networking things back down in the main hall, and were going to go to a pub and stuff, but I didn’t really feel like I should be joining them, given that I’m a young American who’s only going to be here for a few more months, so it’s not like I’m exactly part of the community. So I went back to the city centre (by the most logical route this time, the bus station nest to the Millennium Centre is pretty obvious (side side note, when on the bus the radio started talking about Rick Santorum winning things, and I nearly flipped it off before I caught myself. That man. Gah.)), and decided to stop by the National Museum for a bit before catching a bus back to Uni Hall.
The Museum closes at 4:45, and I got there at 4:15, so I basically took a very quick walkthrough to see what kinds of things were there that I would want to go back and see in more detail (I picked up a map, but of course I didn’t look before doing so, and I got one of the ones in Welsh). I also took some pictures, although apparently you are only supposed to do so if you have signed a form thing. Whoops. Anyway, walked through the natural history bit, which had some pretty cool fossils and skeletons and things (and a bunch of very sculpted rooms that they clearly had a lot of fun with), but I could not find the mineral collection they are supposed to have somewhere. I will have to go back and take it more slowly. Then I went upstairs to the art portion of it. I don’t actually like art museums that much. One of these days I will actually remember that before I go into a random art gallery and feel obliged to look in an interested fashion at some paintings. I mean, I like some paintings, but the chances of my walking into a gallery at random and finding one is pretty low. I didn’t have time to see anything more before it closed, so I left and decided to take some pictures of Cathays Park because I had 20 minutes before the bus would come.
So, overall, time spent well. Avoided doing any of the actual work which I need to get done fairly soon, and also didn’t buy the rain gear that I will need on Friday, but I have absolutely nothing else to do tomorrow, so I am not feeling the slightest bit bad about that.
Have some pictures!
A staircase inside the Pierhead building. It was pretty.
Welsh Pride!
Gay is Good
Welsh LGBT timeline
Russell T. Davies!
Torchwood. Also, Sarah Waters (I didn't know she was Welsh!)
And now some skeletons:
Also a bison.
Earth, of course, does not have a reading week this week like everyone else, so annoyingly enough I had a class directly in the middle of the events. The class in question often makes me want to stab myself in the head with a pencil (how many times in one hour can he say “so you probably have all known this since you were ten, but…”?), but I have missed it so often from oversleeping that I really felt I shouldn’t skip it on purpose. This morning, of course, I woke up too late to go to the beginning of the opening day, and only just in time to get to class, so that was that.
Anyway, the lecture (I did not injure myself with any school supplies, but it was a close thing) ended at 12, which meant I would be too late to talk to the people who were in the show “My Transsexual Summer,” which I kind of would have liked to, but oh well. (What would I say anyway? I haven’t actually seen the show or anything.) I should, however, have had plenty of time to get down there for the (free!) LGBT-themed play (free! LGBT! Play! How could I NOT be there?). I say should, because of course I was a complete idiot and did not look up what buses I could take, or whence and when they left, so I wandered around looking at random bus stops for a while, and then I followed some signs that pointed to the Bay, but of course they were traffic signs, not pedestrian signs, so I somehow ended up in the middle of construction-filled nowhere. Good one, me. Anyway, I ended up going in a huge circle for about 40 min, missing a bus that would have taken me where I wanted to go by about 20 seconds (not knowing at the time it was the right bus), and eventually ended up almost exactly where I started, and finally found a workable bus station. Long story short, I got to the Pierhead building EXACTLY when the play started, which was 5 minutes later than they planned.
(An aside: I have learned some things about myself whilst studying in Cardiff, two of which are that 1. I am actually very good at backtracking when I need to, and 2. I hate backtracking with some kind of stubbornly intense passion. So there have been an awful lot of unexpectedly long walks around the city recently, mostly after I realized that I had walked past my bus stop, was unwilling to go 20 yards backwards, and ended up walking another two miles instead. Not being afraid that I’m going to get lost is occasionally a problem that way. For instance, it was pretty obvious about 5 minutes into my following the signs today that I was not going the right way-they pointed to a sidewalk-free ramp-but I kept going anyway with the idea that I had a general concept of the direction I should be walking, so I should get there eventually. This is not actually always true.)
I’m glad I didn’t give up on my rather circuitous and self-inflicted journey, because the play was amazing. It was a two-man play about the WWI poets Wilfred Owen (part Welsh and author of “Dulce et Decorum Est,” one of the most memorable poems I have read, among other things) and Siegfried Sassoon (whom I had not previously heard of, but is apparently also quite famous). The LGBT portion of it was mostly subtext, as their relationship is not proven to have been that sort of a relationship, but the acting and the writing was superb. There was a lot of quoting of the two’s poems, which are kind of amazing (and I say “kind of” only because things of beauty tend to put me in a sort of awed and humble mindset, where gushing would seem disrespectful to the quality of the emotion, and, in this case anyway, any words of mine would be lackluster in comparison to the ones I was hearing). One of the great things about war poets is that you can’t shrug them off saying “oh, is he weeping after his lady-love again?” or “so it was nice out, and?” These men were in the trenches, freezing, watching their friends die, killing, and being shot themselves. And they came back and went back to the front, and wrote about how it was, and protested it. You don’t get much more serious than that. I had no idea before I got there that this was what the play was about, and I wasn’t expecting anything quite so grim or so heart-wrenching, but to hear poetry of that caliber being read aloud that well… I’m just very glad I was there in time to hear it.
After that, there was a Q&A with the actors, during which most of the audience was just sitting there feeling dumbly shell-shocked, and then I went to have a gander at the actual exhibit, which was upstairs. I took some photos (I didn’t during the play, although it seemed to be allowed, because my camera makes an annoying beeping sound and I did not want to interrupt it in any way), mostly of the building itself, which is quite lovely. The exhibit was a bit of a let down, possibly because it was nowhere near the level of the play. Pretty much a bunch of photos set up in a room, with text telling you who was in them, and how they were important to Wales, and in the case of the more historic people, what the evidence was for them having been queer and what the issues were. So, interesting but not amazing. They did have Russell T. Davies and Torchwood though, which I found amusing.
People were doing networking things back down in the main hall, and were going to go to a pub and stuff, but I didn’t really feel like I should be joining them, given that I’m a young American who’s only going to be here for a few more months, so it’s not like I’m exactly part of the community. So I went back to the city centre (by the most logical route this time, the bus station nest to the Millennium Centre is pretty obvious (side side note, when on the bus the radio started talking about Rick Santorum winning things, and I nearly flipped it off before I caught myself. That man. Gah.)), and decided to stop by the National Museum for a bit before catching a bus back to Uni Hall.
The Museum closes at 4:45, and I got there at 4:15, so I basically took a very quick walkthrough to see what kinds of things were there that I would want to go back and see in more detail (I picked up a map, but of course I didn’t look before doing so, and I got one of the ones in Welsh). I also took some pictures, although apparently you are only supposed to do so if you have signed a form thing. Whoops. Anyway, walked through the natural history bit, which had some pretty cool fossils and skeletons and things (and a bunch of very sculpted rooms that they clearly had a lot of fun with), but I could not find the mineral collection they are supposed to have somewhere. I will have to go back and take it more slowly. Then I went upstairs to the art portion of it. I don’t actually like art museums that much. One of these days I will actually remember that before I go into a random art gallery and feel obliged to look in an interested fashion at some paintings. I mean, I like some paintings, but the chances of my walking into a gallery at random and finding one is pretty low. I didn’t have time to see anything more before it closed, so I left and decided to take some pictures of Cathays Park because I had 20 minutes before the bus would come.
So, overall, time spent well. Avoided doing any of the actual work which I need to get done fairly soon, and also didn’t buy the rain gear that I will need on Friday, but I have absolutely nothing else to do tomorrow, so I am not feeling the slightest bit bad about that.
Have some pictures!
A staircase inside the Pierhead building. It was pretty.
Welsh Pride!
Gay is Good
Welsh LGBT timeline
Russell T. Davies!
Torchwood. Also, Sarah Waters (I didn't know she was Welsh!)
And now some skeletons:
Also a bison.