I went to London at the weekend to see BabyMetal, quite a last minute decision (again!) but I saw it being advertised when I saw Ghost at the o2 and thought it would be fun if nothing else. I had an incredible seat, it was in amongst the VIP tickets although I didn't pay those prices and I suspect had been held for some kind of media purpose before going up for general sale (as it was not a re-sale). I'm starting to think these last minute tickets are the best! In the past two months I've been to more concerts than I've been to since 2020, which feels good actually and I feel like I've found a way of going that feels more accessible to me than previous concerts have. An exciting development!!
I'm not that familiar with BabyMetal, I know them obviously but they're not a band I really listen to or would list as a favourite, yet I ended up getting really emotional when they came on stage for some reason. I wasn't sure if it was because it reminded me of my time living in Japan (they are a Japanese band and perform in Japanese), or if it's because they're 'cute' women taking up space in the metal scene and I've always been made to feel like such an outsider in both and feel like I have to separate sides of my personality a lot of the time (and BabyMetal have faced a lot of their own backlash for that too!) Maybe both, either way I absolutely did not expect to be crying at their show but they were happy tears and I'm so glad I went. The only drawback were the cameras and drones which were really obnoixious, and you can see in the videos as they were everywhere and blocking literally everyone's view. It's because they were livestreaming the show to Japan.
I stayed the night in London, which I didn't really have any purpose for doing other than wanting to elongate my time and have a proper trip to try and recreate the energy of when I went to London to see Ghost and Aaron Tveit last month. So trying to think of things to do, I went to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Barbican Theatre the following day. I'd never been to the Barbican before, it's a huge brutalist structure containing many different businesses and entertainments (art galleries, the theatre, a cinema, etc) set across many different levels, and trying to find the theatre was an absolutely bewildering experience as apparently I entered from a weird direction so it was like a maze. But I enjoyed the show itself and I'm glad I caught it as it's a really limited production, I think it's only running for 6 weeks.
Although I live away from the city now, I am originally from London so when I'm there I often have the mentality of 'ugh, tourists'. There's whole entire parts of London I've never even been to despite the city being my home for half of my life because 'ugh, tourists'. When I was in Copenhagen and figuring out what to see and do I saw people posting the usual disdain of "I want to do what locals do", which strikes me as strange really. Like, you wanna go to work? Because speaking from experience most people who live in cities are just trying to survive as unless you're mega wealthy living in a city is a hard lifestyle to maintain. You go places because they're cheap, because they're on your route, not necesserily because they're the best. When I go somewhere I want to do the tourist stuff because it's popular for a reason. And that prompted an 'oh!' not just because I'm right, but because I should be adopting that mindset when I visit my own city! I don't live there anymore so I don't need to hustle and keep my head down and just run errands like I usually do. So I visited Westminster, a place I'd never been to before, and you know what? I had a lot of fun! I saw Big Ben in the flesh for the first time ever, Westminster Abbey, walked past Downing Street (not that I'm a fan of the government, but you know, history). I didn't plan myself too well and my chronic illness was really illnessing in the morning so I didn't get to do as much as I'd have liked, and I'd like to actually go inside places like the Abbey sometime, but it's not like I don't go to London often enough and it's nice knowing I have a lot to explore in the future.
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