Day 9: St. Paul's, Tate Modern

So some higher power is out to keep me from becoming educated.  Because all the art I really wanted to see is in the back room of a museum somewhere close by.  At the Tate Britain the William Blake etchings that I really wanted to see were not on display and after seeing an entire play about the Seagram paintings done by Mark Rothko I found out that they were at the Tate Modern and couldn't wait to see them.  Not on display.  Mark Rothko also had an exhibition at White Chapel that closed in February : ( I'll definitely call these places a week before I go and see if anything has changed but alas, cruel fate.  This leads me to my very strong feeling that as much as a museum wants to save face and present everything in the best possible curation and lighting, respect the audience enough to respect the fact that yes there are renovations and other exhibits going on.  Don't deny them the chance to see great art though.  Hundreds might pour in every day but odds are most people don't get to come back often.  Rant over, sorry.
I did get to see one Rothko which was painted before he really got into abstract expressionism.

Afterwards Leslie and I went to the Anglican services at St. Paul's.  That was an interesting experience.  I've been to my fair share of Catholic services and Anglican was similar in a lot of ways but the music particularly was very different.  It was much more macabre.  Call me a crazy hopped up Mormon but I think that religious music should be...uplifting.  At some points I wanted to just look around and see if people were serious.  That is the kind of music that would be played in a creepy abandoned church during a horror movie.  It was a beautiful service though in a gorgeous, gorgeous church, also huge.  Leslie and I enjoyed speculating on how hard it must have been to build.
A church has exited on the grounds of St. Paul's since the year 600 AD.  The building has been spared both the Great Fire of 1666 and the bombings during WW2.  When we were at the Museum of London I heard a man in a documentary say that he felt if the church had fallen during the bombings he though England would have lost their heart to fight in the war.
Despite there being a restaurant and a gift shop in the basement we were asked not to take pictures and complied.  So here's a link to some online.

Here's a video of the bells tolling.