Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Happy Birthday, William Blake!


The Guardian remembers him and Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac has a brief bio.

For me, as a brief side note, a great thrill in my life was my first (and only) trip to London. We had flown all day. We were tired of traveling, sick of the airports and the waiting and the sitting and the fact that across the Atlantic we were near the bathroom and the fact that I'm tall and quite often the beverage cart would ram into my knee. We slumped our bags in our hotel room. "I'm going to take a nap," my wife said. "I'm going to find The Tate," I said. And off I went to try and find it (the old Tate, not the marvelous new one). I entered the museum and asked a security guard, "Where are the Blake's?" The museum was going to close in fifteen minutes and I didn't want to have to search the rooms for them. He pointed. I scuttled as fast as I could. I entered a room. Nirvana. Blake paintings everywhere. I studied each and every one as much as I could with the time I had. "We're closing," a security guard said. "But, they're Blake's," I said. "They'll be Blake's tomorrow when we open, too."

No comments: