The single most simple invention 2: TE-DEE
"The
single most simple invention" actually refers to that lengthy and often
mardy tangent I was involved in over at Chris Goode's blog, the one I
threatened at some point to try and summarize, the one I printed out
yesterday that ran to more than fifty pages of A4, the one where Chris
writes about "trying to reinvent" theatre and I get shirty and counter
with "but it's the single most simple invention known to man" thinking
I'm quoting "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" only it turns out
I'm not, because the passage I was actually thinking of goes like this:
""What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project."
"Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there."
"Difficulty?"
excalimed Ford? "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the
single simplest machine in the entire Universe!"
"Alright, Mr Wiseguy, you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should be."
...
and finally after two weeks of fractious debate over the nature and
definition of fiction, testimony, irony, God and cats, the tangent ends
as I said quite cheerily with me going "this is what comedians do, and
it's certainly not candour" and then Chris going "Stand-up comics, yes,
YES" and then Chris going "the perfect mix of prepared material,
technical facility, responsiveness, interaction, topicality,
entertainment, liveness" and finally "All we have to do then is: replace
the single figure with a group, preferably; lose the microphone; lose
the raised stage; lose the necessity of 'being funny'. But heighten and
intensify the sense of entertainment... I can see why you would want a
drink in your hand."
So sort of like I said, simple. And now
I'm putting the tangent down and I'm walking away from the tangent. I
just thought I'd bung a record of it up here on the blog because it's
all stuff I've been thinking about in relation to the now-upcoming Jonah
show I'll be doing in January... a show which I've often considered
trying to pass off as stand-up, but with longeurs, and hymns. I had a
very odd dream about it last night in fact (or rather this morning)
where my request to move the audience about and have the run of Shunt's
lobby and lift were sniffily rejected on, of all things, ARTISTIC
grounds. And then I thought, oh this'll make an interesting post. And
then I woke up. They were rejected in my dream by a man called Mischa
Twitchin who I've never known be anything other than totally supportive
of anything I've ever done... Except maybe the Primo Levi sketch - Maybe
that's what the dream was actually about now I come to think of it.
That wee fear. Mischa makes a lot of pieces about literature relating to
the Holocaust, and I've just written a sketch where Primo Levi goes
"Te-dee!" a lot and has his sleeping-pill-powered, imploding gin
bagpipes confiscated by the landlady. That's real. I'm back to talking
about real life now. But clearly I've left the writing of these
posts long enough for them to start acting like dreams, in other words
too long, because: A) They do seem quite confused and boring in
hindsight, for which I apologize, but also B) You think you've been
concentrating on one thing and then you start writing and it turns out
something completely different floats to the surface, like a dead polar
bear in a film star's pool where you were expecting William Holden. "Oh
Primo!" was finally recorded on Monday night, after I called Nigel to
say yes. Apparently the producer recorded himself in the bath for one of
the sound effects. Isn't that lovely. It's one of three sketches I have
so far got round to writing for Laurence and Gus, and I'm very very
pleased with how they've been going. And that's all I'll say for now...
I'm not going to complain again about how corridory Broadcasting House
is. Although it IS awful. It's awful. Like a check-in desk. You can't
take plastic cups in, you've got to pour the BEER BACK INTO THE BOTTLE!
And there are only two urinals! That's not liminal! Unless a huge queue
of men hanging round the door of the gents - the GENTS! - at half time
can be considered liminal because it means "threshold"... So I'll leave
it. A friend of mine got married at the weekend. It was lovely. That's
what I'll write about next...
P.S.
Anyone whose interest was piqued by yesterday's garbled post about
David Rosenberg might find a visit to his website
http://www.iwake.co.uk/ both useful and illuminating (heh-heh-heh).
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