Human

He has three hearts. He is hundreds of years old. When he dies, he regenerates into a new body.  He wasn't even born on Earth.

Yet all the qualities that we love about the Doctor are as foreign to us as love and hate.

A few minutes ago I finished the two-part story written by Paul Cornell for Doctor Who: Human Nature and The Family of Blood. Both of the episodes explored what is, to me, the most fascinating aspect of this series: the Doctor's character. While being chased by a family of shape-shifting aliens who wish to consume his Time Lord essence in order to gain immortality, the Doctor arrives in 1913 England where he uses a device to change his entire physiology - every single cell - to that of a human. The Doctor undergoes the transformation because the Family (the previously mentioned aliens) is able to smell him from a long ways off, due to his own alien nature. Cue David Tennant proving how good of an actor he is.

Dimensions

La Pietà is much smaller than I imagined. Could be the fact that all pictures I'd seen of it were extremely close up and I stood more than ten feet away from the actual statue, with a glass wall between. Perhaps the grandiose significance of the work makes it larger to the mind's eye than reality; having never seen it probably helps my brain give it greater dimensions. Whatever the case may be, I can't help shake off the bit of annoyance in me. This isn't the first time a work of art has disappointed me with its size.

Lantern in the Square

There's a balcony. That means there's a second floor. It's a spacious interior, adorned with a golden finish on the walls and columns - even the floor's low-key yellow feels luxurious. The seats are neatly arranged in rows, their muted red, maybe orange, color mixing well with the rest of the auditorium's palette. It feels like a time machine, transporting you to an earlier age of man from whence extravagance was almost required in architecture.

This place is fancy.

Sounds of Silence

Lights dim. Fog rolls in.

A cloaked figure walks across the stage.

He stands behind a small podium, three candles resting along the edge, flanked by two longer ones. He seems to flip through a book, but my vantage point partially fails me. The microphone is pressed tightly against his lips; his face is unseen, save for quick glances of his mouth every now and then.

Fog continues to roll in. Chanting. Guttural words. A pagan ritual?

Am I at the right concert?

Quiet Hours

I'm walking with Ann and Jessie on a cold winter night in Prague in search of a Coke. Actually, they're buying something else - I'm the one with the soda crave. There's nary a soul in sight, and the silence is deafening. There's no sound to be heard - not even wind.

If there were fog, I'd rename this city Silent Hill.

Lawnchairs in a Theater

Apparently, in Prague, one can buy a glass of beer and drink it while watching a movie at a theater.

That's what I saw tonight as three guys took their seats at Bio OKO, right before Black Dynamite (Černej Dynamit) began. Two of them also sat in beach chairs;  they must have preferred laying down as opposed to sitting in the velvet recliner-like seats. Personally, the regular wooden floor-attached seats were fine for me.

Interpretations

I've always found it odd how a play can be produced in a varied amount of ways. Multiple interpretations gleaned from the reading I can understand, but I always figured that it could only really be produced in a single way, as the playwright intended. This likely stems from personal grievances I can see myself having if (when?) my work is seen in a light different from what I envisioned. After all, it's my work, isn't it? That's probably my ego talking, though.

Last night, I attended a performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Alfred ve dvoře theatre, not far from Holešovice. It was produced by the group Blood, Love & Rhetoric (I only realized the significance of their name until I read a quoted passage from the play in the program), with the aid of the English College in Prague. It was an entertaining performance that furthered my love of the play's banter on existence, games, and death. What I didn't expect, though, was the sexualization of characters and situations.