Flag-waving in Buenos Aires

My first trip to Buenos Aires coincided with a public holiday called National Flag day to commemorate the creation of the Argentinian flag by Manuel Belgrano in 1812. Very appropriately you could see the pale blue and white striped flags waving in their thousands throughout the city and displayed on buildings, cars and people. However, I think this had more to do with the fact that the country is united behind their soccer team in the World Cup. Whether the team's success so far contributed to the good humour and friendliness of the Portenos (residents of Buenos Aires) or whether they are always upbeat,  happy and helpful, it was still impressive.

The city is grand and ornamental. On the tree-lined Avenida de Mayo, I felt I was walking down Boulevard Haussman in Paris, complete with its art-nouveau iron works and its sumptuous literary Cafe Tortoni.  To me, Buenos Aires is "Paris but with graffiti".

Highlights included the Palermo Viejo district with its unique boutiques and quaint village feel, the Latin American art at the Malba museum, the gorgeous bookshop within a stunning theatre, El Ateneo, and the winter roses of the Rosedal Gardens.


But behind the facade of the neoclassical buildings with their bold Italian French flair, there are the scars of the economic crises that strike the country every six years or so.  The once elegant and famous pedestrian street, Florida, is now a mixture of tacky tourist shops and street vendors, luxury shopping mall and abandoned department stores such as (the once great) Harrods.


And if the Argentinians are upbeat about their soccer team they certainly are not about their arts and culture. Having proudly acquired tickets for the ballet at the newly refurbished Colon Theatre for our friend's birthday we were told it was "suspendido" due to the unions' strike. "Manon" will have to be for another day, another theatre, another city. But, meanwhile, Maradona is putting the smiles on everyone's faces and the optimism back into the country as they rise majestically to the challenge of the nations.

Surreal dreams

The Surrealist collection at the Tate Modern was inspiring! Our dreams and unconscious can bring such imagery to the canvas and here we saw them in colour, metal and objects that conjure strong imagery. I am determined now to paint my next dream visions and bring them to a Freudian or Jungian psychotherapist for interpretation. What those dreams would include would be journeys through multiple rooms, escaping obstacles and weaponry and an eventual victory over evil before arriving into a beautiful garden of peace.

I hope this is a good dream vision although my reality today was something as banal as an England World Cup match against USA that ended in a disappointing and humiliating draw. One goal each is as good as it gets for our national team. One point each on the league table and one point towards the last sixteen. I am determined now to forget the banalities of football scores and to concentrate on the meaningfulness of my dreams and to learn from their powerful imagery, like a Pollock, Burra, Picasso, Bacon and Miro.

Visions and visionaries

The New York City Ballet put on a "dramedy" in their new season of "Architecture in Dance" and I was so delighted that I got to see this just before leaving on my travels. Firstly the Lincoln Center in New York is one of the best places to visit and admire in the city and a wonderful venue for ballet, opera and the cultural arts.

Here, we were entertained by the dialogue and dance of this piece that sets out to tell the story of Las Vegas, which was the brainchild of a visionary gangster who gave all his heart and his money to both the project and to his girl. With the subtle set designs, costumes and choreography you are left marveling at the risks people took in those early days to turn a run-down town in the middle of the Nevada desert into the opulent gambling paradise that it is today.

How clever also to bring in the talents of famous architect and visionary, Santiago Calatrava, to design the sets and use his soft flowing, watercolor imagery to the stage of dance. A brave and successful collaboration.

The next morning, my bags were packed to leave on the early flight to London where my itinerary will include the Surrealist Visions at the Tate Modern as well as supporting the English team in their first World Cup match against the USA in an exclusive members club in Soho. Now why was I asked who I would be supporting this time? It's not just my citizenship but my strong English patriotism that qualifies me as an England Fan. I'm afraid my love for New York and my place of birth cannot supersede this though I do have a vision of building a piece of England in the middle of a warm, balmy island in the Mediterranean. How about the vision of England raising the Jules Rimet Cup high on July 11th? 

Two worlds

"After nearly 50 years in the press briefing room, Helen Thomas' tenure as a White House press correspondent has come to an ignominious end: The 89-year-old resigned on Monday in the wake of her controversial comments about Israel, in which she said Israelis should "go home" to Poland, Germany, and the United States."

Is this how an aging mind interprets complex issues in our ever increasing  complex world? Can Ms Thomas even remember her history? Israel's history is not to be discussed or judged lightly. Too much is at stake and too many times, pepole can be seen to sublimate their anti-semitism for anti-zionism.

We saw a Yiddish play yesterday, written by An-Ski in the 1920s about unfulfilled love and broken promises, a powerful philosophical look at love, life and death. In its Cabbalistic way, Der Dybbuk takes you on a journey of the Real World, the Beyond, the Divine and the Holy. It explains the importance of living life in its purest, holiest form, and shows how the perpetration of harm and transgressions can manifest itself through dead souls and reincarnation. "A worm only enters the apple when it is already rotten" says the Rabbi. Is punishment really only meted out to the deserving and is there a divine judge out there?

A dybbuk is an evil spirit which possesses a living person, a phenomenon that exists in many religions. In this play it is a young man who possesses his beloved before she marries someone else. Their destiny was supposed to be joined together in life but, instead they are eventually joined in death. I saw in this tale of conflict, of these souls torn between two worlds, how their deep psychological unrest could have been solved by intelligent mediation, dialogue and agreement.

In Israel today there are people for whom the exorcism of dybbuks is something very real and a divine and intelligent mediator is needed more than ever to solve this global conflict.

From "Golden" to "Sparkling" Girls

It seems we are forgetting why the television and movie industries were created. Like attending a live football or baseball match, it brings people together to witness and share an experience that exhilarates, entertains and lifts us out of everyday banalities. From the aural shock of Chaucer's Tales to the visual theatrical plays of Shakespeare and to today's screen offerings, people have been either amused or appalled by this media throughout the ages. For sure, there is a wide variety that caters to all tastes, cultures and education.

Today, I read with sadness the passing of "Golden Girl" Blanche Devereaux, aka Rue McClanahan. This actress played a sexually liberated woman in a popular TV series who enjoyed life to the full despite her advancing years. A woman in her sixties openly flirtatious and promiscuous was quite a revelation in the '80s! It was raucous fun with well delivered dialogue. Blanche was teased by her fellow housemate when told "your life's an open blouse".

Now we have the "Sparkling Girls" of the noughties.  The four glamorous ladies from "Sex and the City" have just been attracting hordes of young ladies to their local cinemas for almost three hours of giggles and uncensored enjoyment. Most of the audience were able to identify with the lives of these New York ladies in some form or other, whether as a lover or whether as a mother - they were just staying alive! (Words reminiscent of another iconic New York movie from the seventies, Saturday Night Fever).

So it was in a crowded cinema last Friday, I joined in the collective, fun-loving psyche of a New York audience. How can you NOT enjoy a talented Liza Minelli doing a wriggling rendition of a Beyonce number or a star Karaoke performance of a liberating female song or outrageous gags that make us all reticently smile widely. Yes, call it ghastly (at least in fashion terms) and demeaning (if you really want to feel threatened by such frivolity) but please, all you critics out there, stop telling people not to go and see it! Do I detect envy at its huge popularity and success? The series and the movie has wrapped New York City in an enticing, transparent chiffon gown with bows and ribbons. It draws in the tourists much the same way as the guards at Buckingham Palace with their traditional red tunics and bearskins.

Like "Mamma Mia", this movie is pure entertainment, musically, visually and sentimentally.

Oh, and for those of us who live in this world of conspicuous consumption and western values, the moral of the story is to find a way to be content with what you have and not to keep looking for eternal "sparkle", even and especially when you have made your own dreams come true.