Badphone in a Coma

 In its very last day at Canary Wharf, I finally got round to experiencing COMA, the Darkfield show in a shipping container I'd recorded back in 2019. Pre-plague. I had to remind myself of that when I heard my old voice expressing conern about being coughed at in the face.

 

 The pill in the little tray lay unswallowed at the back of my throat throughout the twenty minutes. That's the problem with lying down. But I managed to get the top bunk. Once the lights went out, all I could hear was me reading Glen's lines from an ipad; binaural radio's so much more prevalent than it was when we first made Contains Violence in 2008, or even Ring in 2013, and like that old film of the train pulling into the station, I don't know how much longer our brains will stay fooled. I guess I'm saying, it was more like what I was expecting than I was expecting.

 

 I'd actually booked for Saturday, but had dismebarked at the adjacent and preposterously similarly named "Canada Water" station by mistake, so missed my slot. The attendants were brilliant, but I didn't want to hang around on my own – Canary Wharf was making me miss things – so I decided to head back into town along Regent's Canal, as I hadn't walked that stretch for a while, but I got that wrong too, and turned off one rivulet too early.

 

 Heading north, I didn't recognise any of the buildings, but I'm used to that. A lot's gone up. 

 It was round about the time I took the above picture that I decided I should finally get a new phone. Not for its own sake, but because I realised I wanted a better camera. That was an exciting moment. I hadn't wanted anything in ages. I used to want to make films. I tried taking some video with what I had, and was happy with the sounds I caught. There was a party going on in a flat, coots and car horns, sirens, a solitary firework.

 

 And soon it was too dark to photograph anything. See? 

 This is a whole palm tree I found discarded on its side in a weir. I definitely didn't remember there being a weir.

 I also misread a message sprayed onto the unlit footpath as "some peace. some time." until I realised one e was an l, and all the o's a's. You don't get that in Notting Hill. But I couldn't photograph that either, so here are some swans I saw on London Beach on Friday. I think that's new. I guess the new King doesn't want them.

 

Sung Blog Sunday! "O, What a Spill"

 Look, nothing's going to beat "Je Suis Mermaid", I peaked too early. But ploughing on, here for the Ides of March is something older, sadder, and I've only just realised, also quite mermaidy. I came up with this dirge a few years ago while helping to devise shunt's The Boy Who Climbed Out Of His Face, a promenade through shipping containers inspired simultaneously by both Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (whose cover I notice strongly resembles what audiences saw of Tom Lyall above)...

 It wasn't for me, but a suggestion of something Tom might sing from his island at the end. The guitar loop's based on a passage from Rosinni's "William Tell Overture" most familiar for accompanying sunrises in old cartoons. And Tom made his own brilliant work from it, a hypnotic piece lasting half an hour during which he would slowly undress (to look even more like the cover) six times an evening. Maybe all that background's best forgotten though. Like the song says, no questions. This was recorded tonight, with renewed apologies for still using a laptop mic. Still, attempt enjoyment, listeners! Cover art by Lynn Hatzius.

 

A history of the water

More flotsam from the devising process for shunt's "The Boy Who Climbed Out Of His Face". The first line is taken from Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" which was meant to be one of the show's sources, and which opens a little further down the Thames. The final line is from Charles Kingsley's "The Water Babies", which was meant to be the other source. The rest is based on the timeline of Greenwich history that's pasted along the railings leading to the jetty upon which the show was performed.

 

A history of the water

This too has been one of the dark places of the earth.

The first stirrers are giant mammals. Facilities in those days were scarce or non-existent.  They wait for the intended replacements. Finally they sink.

A new gang.

When asked if they had come together, if anyone had been there to ask if they were together, they would have said yes. The first crude attempt at an apparatus is made. The size of a small shrine, it has no moving parts. They wait for the intended replacements.

A new gang. More stirring.

There are cesspits filled with fish. A waterside wall encloses the Northern settlement, protecting it from sea-faring marauders. Forests are managed. Straight wood is generated by planting trees close together. Curved wood encouraged by planting trees far apart. Hundred-metre-long fish traps span the water.

A new gang.

More stirring. The first wharf is recorded. A new apparatus is attempted, in the shape of a bridge, but the builders do not allow for the flow of tides so “bridge shooters” must be employed to navigate the rapids. They wait for the intended replacements.

A new gang. The beginnings of encroachment.

Waterfront property increases. Building into the water becomes commonplace. Water-bearers wear pointed shoes stuffed with moss. Pilgrims cast metal badges into the water.

A great frost.*

A new gang.

Another apparatus is attempted.  Water is pumped through pipes made from a series of hollow elm trunks. There are fewer than twenty public taps and it is forbidden to approach them with a weapon. “Plashy places” are avoided by the strategic placing of cloaks. A mermaid is discovered, a comb in one hand, a looking glass in another. A plague. More stirring. They wait for the intended replacements.

A new gang.

They live on boats to avoid the plague. Shipping thrives. Gibbeting sites are marked out where bodies of pirates are hung in chains until three tides have passed over them. Further encroachment. There is a five pound reward for any information concerning what’s happened to all the swans. A time-ball is installed. A certain flush with every pull. A man walks underwater for twenty feet wearing a soft apparatus covering his face, with two small bull’s eyes to see.

Its eyes are the colour of a peacock’s tale.

* Tissa David's animation for PBS' "Simple Gifts" (1977) - a passage from Virgina Woolf's "Orlando" narrrated by Hermione Gingold. That's some classy programming, PBS! I'd love to know if Sally Potter saw this before making her own adaptation.

February 2013 - Scifi

Continuing my exhaustive and punctual review of 2013, February sees us on the water again, cat-sitting in Canary Wharf.

There were these lamps outside our window, behind the blinds. We could never work out how to turn the heating off either, but it's a new environment, these are teething problems. There are worse problems to have in February, especially when you're between homes.

 

My Auntie Megan used to teach on the Isle of Dogs, back when they were putting in the light railway. I remember when it was all fields. Fields and The Sweeney. Some of it still is fields of course.

 

 This sheep's probably older than some of the buildings behind it.

Thirty years later, the land beneath all this new kit shows definite signs of not having behaved itself. Bricks have shifted. Don't be fooled by the scale of the enterprise; like Venice, there's not a right angle in the place. No bill stickers either. Imagine what it will look like in five hundred years.

We had a good time, I seem to remember. Every evening we stopped off for beer and sweets. There was a pool.
Maybe I wasn't between homes. Maybe I'm thinking of the London Dungeon, which was relocating to County Hall, while its permanent staff spent February being trained on the new scripts.
I'm not permanent staff.

We never did see the cat.