Gardening, contemporary dance, opera
My November in a nutshell
This email is long so better read online or in Substack app as your mail clients will cut it. Also - please join me in helping a family friend Maro Mikoyan who’s bravely battling terminal stage cancer here in London; her full story is here and please pay some monies here. If we each give a price of a flat white, it will already make a HUGE difference. I want to see her on the other side of cancer and I know she’ll make it there with our help.
I’ve read roughly 20 books about gardening over the last two months. I am a proud owner of a Barnet library card and am a very frequent visitor to said library in Church End, it’s a 10 mins walk uphill from where we live and there’s a Little Waitrose next door, what’s not to like?
My family thinks I am in a very dangerous manic state (I am NOT, I am just one of those people who can be completely taken over by an idea - remember my singing last year? I still sing but less often, which is SANE, and gardening will also soon stabilise itself in a SANE rythm, but so far bear with me). Best books are finding its way in my hit parade below.
The Winter Garden by Naomi Slade. I am linking to Naomi’s website - while buying from the author directly, you’ll have it signed!!! Insanely beautiful tome, I think I’ll end up buying a copy for myself - gorgeous photography, very practical advice, a hymn to winter, a season I ADORE. Must say it’s been a couple of cold days here in London recently, everyone around me is deploring their fate while my daughter and I are thrilled as we love winter, the snow, the cold, real Russians that we are. Dress in layers, ditch cotton, people, choose wool, tuck your underpinnings in, and you’ll be fine! I come from a country with four seasons and I love all four of them (spring the least, autumn the most, then comes winter followed by summer).
To Stand and Stare: How to Garden While Doing Next to Nothing by Andrew Timothy O’Brien, the wonderful author of Bramble And Briar here on Substack. A poetic calm and tender hymn to gardening, full of zen and quiet wisdom. No rush, tons of respect to nature and plants and a childish joy that I am sure Andrew experiences every day. Again, I’ll be getting my own copy and gifting to friends, as this is one of those books that are not solely and only on the given subject but are much more than that. Another example of such book is Fermata by my dearest friend Alexey Munipov - his conversations with contemporary academic composers, which is to be reprinted, yay, and I SO hope will get an English translation.
The Gardener’s Palette by Jo Thompson, whose Small Garden Design course I am doing and whose insanely huge bulb giveaway I’ve just won! This is a gorgeous tome of colour combos for the garden and I am just looking at the abundance of flowers listed and pacing myself as the course tells me to for I have to plan the garden first and only then buy things.
This one I’ve actually bought and preordered Jo’s next one, The New Romantic Garden
I’ll list many more but you might be bored by now so I’ll switch.
Everyone’s raving about Francis Bacon show at the NPG; I have a confession to make: I don’t love Bacon. He is of course an artist one probably cannot love or like, but I vividly remember how physically ill I felt at his show in Pompidou in 2019 - I think I need a certain mood and resolve to go in the NPG one. Mind you, when saying I don’t love him, I don’t mean I do not appreciate his absolute greatness. It’s just he is on such a different level for me, I probably am afraid of him? Great art gives you these complex feelings often, and I need time to unpack mine. Will OF COURSE go to NPG, but with a strange mood: “am going to see something I don’t love”. To be honest, it’s a good state of mind for art viewing sometimes. It’s on view until 19 Jan 2025, don’t miss, I guess!
I didn’t go to many concerts/opera/theatre in November as was supposed to be away - away did not happen - I was consumed with, erm, gardening, which felt great. The only thing we went to as a family was Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring in Sadler’s Wells, and OH MY GOD was it magnificent! This was my first Pina; the production was refreshed by a collab with Ecole des Sables in Nigeria, and the paganity of Stravinsky score with all its oh so dear to my heart Russian folk melodies, no matter how cruel these are, suddenly took a whole other dimension. Stravinsky became pangaian, ever relevant, no matter what part of the world you are from; and visually the dark skin of the dancers, their very particular plasticity, the white robes with one red blot of the one to be sacred, the dark soil of Wuppertal (did not know they bring the soil from Pina’s hometown everywhere they stage the Rite!) was one of the most powerful experiences Victor and I have ever lived through. We couldn’t stop discussing it for days.
My next outing is next week and it’s about time I donned my opera attire as it is Covent Garden and my absolute beloved Juan Diego Flórez in Tales of Hoffmann. Flórez is I think the greatest tenor alive today and I so so so hope to experience him in glory as heard him in Werther earlier this year and I do not think it’s his repertoire at all! Or maybe I just don’t like Massenet. Of course, the tenor is in his 50s now and I doubt he’ll ever return to La Fille Du Régiment, but listen to this, just LISTEN TO THIS!
With this I sign off. My goal is to start thinking about gifts next weekend so will probably start a list - do tell me in the comments below what would you like to get this festive season? Absolutely ALL ideas welcome. I need tons of inspo.
With this I bow out,
Anastasia.
I want a set of knitting needles, an Amish wool winder, a hobby level vinyl cutter, Apple Watch, and a 3d printer. And I won’t ask for any of these because I won’t have time to use them and will be upset about it :( and by the time I will have time all the new models will be released so I will be upset again!
How lovely to read all your London cultural doings, from up here in rural northern Scotland. It allows me to indulge in a bit of vicarious culture. Your book recommendations are perfect. I have such a long spell of 'winter garden' that it's an important factor to bear in mind while doing Jo's course. And Jo's book is certainly on my wish-list.