Of course that should be "recommend" in the last post. I kept the
misspelling in to communicate a sense of urgency. How do you think I
did?
And where was I?
Well
a year ago now the house caught fire, but nobody died, not even Kato
the cat. It was kind of fine. The place has double-glazing now, although
you can still make out the scorched paintwork above what used to be my
windows - see? I took the above photo when I went round to Morgan's
to pick up post. He lives next door. He always has. That was in...
August? I had a swimming pool in August, I may have mentioned. I was
living here:
Real
twenty-first century stuff. It was called "Osprey Heights". That's my
room at the end of the corridor. Then there was Cesar's, but he moved
out, and then this room, as seen:
No
permanent occupant, but every two weeks a different Israeli in his
early twenties would move in. The first one asked to have a television
installed. I was always welcome to watch it. None of them ever unpacked.
They never shut the door. They all slept with the light on. I didn't
mention the show to them- Hey we also had a gym! And it was eighteen
storeys tall. Imagine the view! Don't, it's here!
Down a bit...
Down a bit...
That's your lot. Sorry but the windows are a bit narrow- And we had a sauna! And gates! Big gates! All it lacked was a garden.
So in October the lease ended and I moved out. And into Morgan's. That's really the point of this. I'm in Brixton again.
With Morgan and his paints and the sign that says "Sea View" and the
little Easter Island statues he sticks into alcoves of the Ritzy. And a
nice guy called Ed who makes synthesizers from kits. Oh, and Kato!
Morgan
painted that for me when I moved in. He's out at the moment, working on
a totem pole. There's a chain-saw on the spare fridge in the kitchen,
what the place lacks in bannisters it makes up for in carnivorous
plants, there's never a shortage of crayons and this is my new view if I
look down:
...
which I prefer. If I look a little to the right there's a garden with a
telly in it and a family and the faces we chalked on the bathroom wall
for Fin's birthday, back in - wow... 2000. Yeah. It was time I moved.
And
look at the mess he's made. We're back rehearsing "Money" again after
another break, this one three weeks long. (Here are some shots of us
before then, brainstorming in the yard while the levels for the End of
the World are unceasingly tweaked within. We are, as you can see hard,
at it:)
So
listen, while everybody's not looking I think I'll pop off to Paris for
a couple of nights. I'm not bringing the laptop but I promise I'll
catch up when I get back. No, the only reason I'm suddenly getting back
in touch so hurriedly is that the That Mitchell and Webb Sound show
airs tonight on Radio 4 and this is just the kind of place where I
should be telling people about that (oh and all the stuff I wrote for
the telly should now be up in a playlist on my profile.)
Apparently I've written the opening and closing sketches of this first
episode and they're both pieces I'm really pleased with. In fact the
final sketch - if it's about tycoons - was directly inspired by the work
done on "Money" so yes the spoof will now air before the show that inspired it.
What this also means however is that you now have only about, well,
none hours left to listen to some other stuff I'm quite proud of which
aired on Laurence and Gus'
final episode last Tuesday in a towering seven minute sandwich of sick
whimsy towards the end. But look that's my fault entirely. Still, quick!
Ah Nige's back, looking very handsome.
As is the Yard:
As are we all. All so handsome. Hello Nige. Goodbye you.
Yes, moon alert: Tonight's full mooon
will loom larger in the sky than it has since 1993, although peering
through the blinds tonight all I see is cloud. Actually I should put
some curtains up. Venetian blinds are all very well for a two-fisted man
of letters keeping faith with Ridley Scott's vision of 21st century
living, but it's getting quite cold now, and the bonsai tree by my brass
bed's beginning to smell ill. Seriously it took me ages to locate the
garlic odour.
On the subject of the moon, here's a short animation made by Paul Barritt accompanying a story by Suzanne Andrade; she stands in front of it, looking eerily like Jean Charles Deburau but with sexier hair, in their show "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" which I saw last night at the BAC:
They don't do cabaret any more. That's a shame because
an hour of this on its own can look a bit phoney, whereas a
fifteen-minute invasion of the stage of the Battersea Barge, say, is
awesome… That's a terribly ungracious judgment for me to make however
because I was sitting right at the front on my own, with a bad neck, and
hadn't even paid and paying always gets you in the mood. But this was a
Big Christmas Treat from the Battersea Arts Centre, you see, who'd
invited me along to a "Brainstorming Session". I felt like a real
player. After the show there were probably about two-hundred of us sat
around tables with crackers and lasagne, two-hundred who had all, we
were told, been "put on a list". Lewis was there (of "Alf and…" fame) and personal favourite Julian Fox.
Crackers were pulled and tiny pairs of nail-clippers sent flying across
the hall. And then the time came to "round table" some subjects, and I
joined the round table that read:
ONE ON ONES
… firstly because of The Books of Soap
and Interview Room H, but also because I found the name very pleasing
to the eye and couldn't quite work out why. At this table the BAC's
joint artistic director tabled the notion of a "one-on-one theatre
festival" which sounded great. Then he suggested this festival might
answer a demand from a public finding themselves in a "post-capitalist,
post-Blairite, post-spin" era, hungry for honesty and "energized by
Obama" etc. and I thought "Who? What? Oh no..." But it prompted Lewis to
make what I thought was the most interesting and important point of the
evening, namely that this demand for "one on one" theatre wasn't in
fact coming from the public at all, but from us artists. It's us who
want "the house-lights turned up" as he put it, far more than our
paying or non-paying house. I love Lewis. And it seems to me a very
important distinction for an artistic venue to make when deciding on its
focus, and indeed for commentators in general. Art doesn't change
direction because the public want it to but because the artists do; but
artists are also of course the public - they're seeing stuff as well as
making it, and chances are they're making the stuff they want to
see. In other words, you don't necessarily need all these feedback
forms. And the idea that the Battersea Arts Centre is somehow a
barometer of national public interest is, when you think about it for a
second, bonkers; what the BAC can I think genuinely take pride in is the
interest they generate from the large number of artists wanting to
produce work there. Dedum.
So anyway I walked home well-fed,
clearly knowing everything there ever was to know about my chosen
medium, found a DVD of "Planet Terror" in the living room, bunged it on
and was immediately reminded how much I clearly wanted to DO THIS! THIS!
MOVIES NOT THEATRE! THIS!!! Gah:
