As someone who fluctuates between completely resigned to the nothingness of death and unduly terrified of the oblivion of it, memorials and graves fascinate me. In particular, the way that our entire being is reduced to memories and representations causes me to take interest in the spaces memorializing death, whether graveyards, monuments, or statues. Because we lose all agency over the perception of us upon death, I try and approach these memorial spaces themselves as places of agency, envisioning whether the dead would like their place of rest, and try and return to them some sort of agency at least within my thoughts, while doing my best not to take their agency for myself.

If I were to be buried anywhere within the places we visited, it would be the parks. The frequent green spaces within the city were full of people picnicking, exercising, and enjoying the outdoors. I frequently went to Russell Square park to do my reading. The hedges lining the park provided a shrouded atmosphere and an isolation itself shrouded in peace. The statues in these parks were part and parcel of the fantastical atmosphere of these parks, especially when I didn’t recognize the subject of the statues. As if the statue could be anyone. Stepping into these parks felt like stepping out of time, or out of the city, to anywhere, at any place.

But the statues I did recognize were wonderful too: especially the statue of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square. I think she would be happy with her representation in this memorial. From shoulder up, she sits on a plaque with her name, with an expression that can’t be mistaken for anything but abject horror at the world. Partially due to her statue’s lack of pupils, you’re forced to wonder what she saw to give her this impression. I have to imagine she would wittily respond something about seeing the world as it is, and everyone else being the odd ones for not permanently having an expression of horror carved onto their face. The cut of her statue is also rough, as if the work was made to look like it was done carelessly, or suffered excessive weathering. I think both are apt. I also think Woolf would have been unhappy with a more conventional statue, and might have chipped into it herself. But the tragedy of death is that we’ll never know her answer, and the representation will have to stand regardless of whether she agrees with it or not.

London’s blue plaques are the most common memorials I saw, placed onto buildings and commemorating people of historical importance. The vast majority of the blue plaques are placed onto nondescript buildings, making the historical feel almost contemporary, as if the people from the plaques might still be there and don’t wish to be disturbed. Many historical places don’t even receive plaques, including the bar where Marx originally spread his ideas in London, now a nondescript bar with no physical inscription of its history, only passed down to those in the know. If I had to guess whether Marx would like that bar to have a plaque, I’d unconfidently wager yes.

The Karl Marx plaque stood out to me, plastered onto a nondescript apartment where anyone could have lived, a fitting placement. The plaque itself contains little information, only his name, birth and death, and the years he lived in the building. While most plaques contain title such as “philosopher,” “advocate,” or “scientist,” his is left blank. I imagine any description would be divisive, so the easiest answer was to leave it without title. Immediately next to it flies the UK flag, garishly large, and blocks the plaque from many angles. The flag might have been placed out of defiance, or might be unrelated to the plaque entirely. I’m not sure if one is worse than the other. My favorite blue plaque we visited as a group was the demarcation of the murder site of Nancy in Oliver Twist, inscribed just below the mention of the surviving fragments of the London Bridge and its creator, on the same plaque. For me, this plaque is a physical sign of how literature and stories create a discourse of their own that add to, and even define locations. It’s also a testament to how stories of fiction can be stronger than stories of truth.

We also visited Westminster Abbey, another site of memorial and burial, where many heads-of-state, actors, writers, scientists, and other notable people lie. My first impression when entering the ornately gothic church was that I would absolutely hate to be buried here. The place was crowded, and the abbey was arranged so that one could only progress through it in a linear fashion, like one long queue surrounded by the dead. Many of the graves were on the ground, so that the tourist hordes literally trod on their resting places. Death was turned to spectacle.

But being spectacle doesn’t mean the site wasn’t powerful or thought-provoking. The intricate tilework, gothic archways, and flying buttress-supported ceilings challenge the notion that death is a true democratizer – not just anyone could be buried here. The vast number of royalty buried there – most of whom were notable solely for being royalty – confirm that. Past the royalty by the end of the spectacle-death-queue was the poet’s corner – for me, the most interesting part of the abbey. There, lay Lord Byron, Dylan Thomas, George Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, among others. Having read their work, I came here with the sense that I had some understanding of who they were. Seeing them as bodies under a grave made me recant that. I wonder if they chose to be buried there, or if they would like what their burial site has become. I think Charles Dickens would. The others, I think, would be unhappy.

The British Museum was a decisively different experience for me. While I might be able to appreciate the curatorial work that was done for it and the archaeological value of the items on display, I left feeling unsettled, and left after only 1 hour before I felt worse than simply unsettled. The controversy over the British Museum is not ground-break, and I don’t know if I have anything to add beyond my own subjective experience. But for me, the museum felt like a celebration of colonialism, or a continuation of it. Every room had items with plaques labeling them as from a country outside the UK, mostly countries outside of Europe. In fact, I couldn’t find an angle in the room that wasn’t primarily non-british items on display. Leaving the museum, I noticed a sign advertising “new acquisitions.” I couldn’t help but think of myself, being in the British Museum, as one of the “new acquisitions.”