Unexpected

Dear Blog,

It's me, Celine. Yesterday was unexpected. I went to the same cafe yesterday morning that I've been going to almost every morning since I've been here. Then went to the Slade to have coffee with the director, Susan Collins, who knows my mother from Columbia. She was a lovely person, and had a lot of helpful things to say. Unfortunately, she's also a very busy person, so our interlude only lasted about half an hour. I then went to the Camden Arts Center, where there was a very interesting show up. The curator was former Turner prize winner Simon Starling (who I think I saw at an opening once, incidentally...) and some of the curatorial decisions were both unexpected and confusing, but overall a satisfying show (I will write much more about it later-- the ideas are still ruminating). I ended up staying there the entire afternoon, going through the exhibit, milling around in their fabulous bookstore, and having a large and protracted lunch while I watched the sun slowly set over a construction site. As I was leaving, a man came up to me and asked if I was going to another gallery- I answered that I didn't have one in mind. He said that he did, so we chatted and walked there together. It turns out he was an art student from South Hampton, returning to school to get his BFA after fifteen years. He was a pleasant, friendly man, and he ended up accompanying me to the ICA for a screening of the contemporary independent film Slakistan, a story of Pakistani twenty-somethings Islamabad, graduated from college and unsure what to do with their lives. Today, I'm going to try and find a pair of lace up boots in Oxford Circus. Also going to revisit the Saatchi gallery, the Tate Modern, the National Gallery, catch a lecture at the ICA on 'The Trouble with Contemporary Sculpture" and meet Iain for a drink at the Houses of Parliment (he works in the building, how cool is that?). It's going to be an epic day. We'll see how much of it I actually get through.