Zan Zendegi Azadi continued...

 Yesterday I met Faren (not pictured) and her friends and colleagues in Trafalgar Square to join a human chain across Wesminster Bridge in support of the protests in Iran. October the 29th was also Cyrus the Great day, so I thought about researching him before writing this, then realised it probably wasn't that necessary, but I'll still research him after I've written this. I've got Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe open next to me right now.

 

 

  

 Whitehall had been busy. The March of the Mums had made front pages earlier that day, and there was also a Ukrainian protest outside Downing Street, with which we ocassionally intermingled. "Down with tyrants." A lot of the chants were in English, but we were also taught "Azadi! Azadi! A-zad-i!" the Farsi word for freedom. And I finally learnt how to say Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, meaning Women, Life, Freedom – as taught to the people of Hastings by Omid Djalili here, and written across the Jason hockey masks of some protestors. Others hid their face behind David Lloyd's Guy Fawkes mask, now associated with Anonymous, possibly unaware of the seasonal appropriateness. Others still were dressed as zombie nuns, but I'm pretty sure they were just cutting through.

 Our numbers grew as we walked down Whitehall, sometimes side by side and filling the road, sometimes holding hands in single file to form the human chain, (which I couldn't photograph without breaking of course). There hadn't seemed to be as many in Trafalgar Square as a month ago, but now we were on the move we were closing roads. This was my first march. Faren said she hadn't felt as safe as she'd have liked at the last one, because people had started shouting "Down with the BBC", believing the corporation hadn't been doing enough to support the protestors, or that reporting the deaths of students was bad for morale – meanwhile the very fact of Faren's employment by BBC Persian has seen her upgraded by the Iranian Government from spy to terrorist – but on this demonstration however, I only saw the one sign with the letters "BBC" dripping in blood, and Faren had her friends around her now. She seemed happy. She was loud. "I'm letting out a lot of anger." I realised I'd only been throwing my voice. Pretend shouting. Shy.

 

  Posting some photographs of the protest on Instagram that evening, I wondered for the first time what my phone is actually up to when it says it's "finishing up" after the loading bar's filled, and I had flashbacks to Arthur Pewtey at the Marriage Guidance Counsellor. I don't really know how well I've fulfilled protestors' requests to "Be the Voice of Iran". But I know what I can do if it's okay with you, and that is to sign, and ask you to sign, THIS PETITION to whoever's Home Secretary when you read this: to drop an already twice rejected Public Order Bill that would make criminal offences of everything that happened yesterday – "interfering with key national infrastructure" for example – in other words, closing roads – and "locking on" – in other words, holding hands. If not for me, do it for Cyrus the Great.

 

More Strands

 

 Sweet flipped birds of freedom. Here.

 And yesterday footage went online of riot police joining an anti-Khamenei march. I must remember it's the absence of fear here that's so uplifiting, not the absence of danger. A week ago, a day earlier in the same day that the first student protestors were beaten and fired upon in the Sharif Univeristy in Tehran, my BBC Persian friend Faren shared an Iranian video of a white-haired badass turning heads on the tube by slapping the crap out of two men complaining about her uncovered head. Stills don't do the video justice. You can see it here. I asked Faren what the onlookers were saying at the end and learnt some colloquial Farsi: "Pashmam" very loosely translates as, "Well, blow me!" But its literal translation into English is: "My hair!"

 

. برای زن، زندگی، آزادی

  My friend Faren is almost finished packing. Moving tomorrow. As I mentioned before she's had a testing  fortnight, and I offered to help with her boxes, but she asked me to go to Trafalgar Square instead. So I went and I took these videos and photographs and far more.

 

 A demonstration was being held to honour Mahsa Amini, the woman murdered by Iranian police for her inappropriate headwear. People were calling for revolution, and saying her name, and angry and smiling. It was glorious. It had the quality of glory. The Square was in full bloom.

 

 I saw a new statue on the fourth plinth, which I thought had been reserved for the Queen. But this was of Malawian preacher and freedom fighter John Chilembwe. It had gone up three days ago.

 

 The work of sculptor Samson Kambalu, it recreates a photograph taken in 1914 of Chilembwe refusing to take his hat off in front of the white colonialist over whom he now towers. Now he was looking on. Chilembwe would later stage his own uprising in Malawi.

  I remember when Boris Johnson was mayor, he tried to turn this plinth into a war memorial. Without meaning a shred of disrespect to the late Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park, I'm happy that didn't happen. Particularly today. As I say, full bloom.

Strands

 

"For Mahsa Amini" by Faren Taghizadeh

 

  It's been a busy week for me, but busier for my friend Faren. She's moving flats, which is always quite emotionally draining, and also working 12 hour shifts as social media correspondent for BBC Persian – a job which condemns her to immediate arrest as a western spy if she tries to revisit her home country of Iran. Last night, while I was continually reloading iplayer to see if I was on EastEnders, she was covering a possible revolution.

 

 

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A post shared by BBC NEWS TÜRKÇE (@bbcturkce)

 

 Here's Faren explaining for the Turkish Service some shows of solidarity for Mahsa Amani, the Iranian woman who died last week after being dragged into a van and beaten by "morality police" for incorrectly covering her hair, a death which coincides with the failing health (and rumoured passing) of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenie, as well as a meeting of the United Nations. The UN is now calling for an investigation into Amani's death. Iranians are calling for more. If "calling for" is the right phrase. 

 Content warning: vast outnumbering...

 

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A post shared by bamdad esmaili (@bamdad_esmaili)

 

 Hence the 12 hour shifts. These scenes are extraordinary. Faren's very busy. I asked her to translate the chants. In hindsight that probably wasn't the smartest thing to ask someone with parents in Iran over a messaging app. 

 I'm going to offer to help with her boxes.

 

Horniman, Presepe, Gorgon and Queue

 Today I returned to Sydenham Hill. 

 Here's a video. See if you can find the white triangle to press to make it play...

 

 

 Bella (real name unknown – originator of the "Woodlouse or Moth?" round) had invited me the Horniman Museum, to be among butterflies.

 I am an idiot for never having been in a butterfly house before.

 The pyschedelic antiquarian decadence of these animals' final act upstages any flame, and made me want to redecorate. 

 I also loved the remains of a "gorgon's-head brittlestar" in the Horniman proper, and took a picture to celebrate Natalie Haynes' new book.

 

 Elsewhere, in the newly re-de-othered World Gallery, an Italian nativity scene – or presepe – showcased foot-high likenesses of the late Queen flanked by Michael Jackson and Silvio Berlusconi...

 

 It was getting quite cold by the time we took the train to Blackfriars to see The Queue. After all, it was there.

 I'd been told it moved fast, but I was still surprised how fast, and genuinely envied those in line. I would have loved to know what it was like to be in a queue that fast. Maybe not for the full twenty hours, but I couldn't say when the excitement would wear off.

 However nothing about it struck me as "uniquely British", apart from the accents. Isn't lying in state quite an international thing? Don't they all have queues? Does this not happen at Mecca? I wonder if what's actually uniquely British is mistaking community spirit for patriotism. Probably not even that. Parliament Square was closed to traffic. As people had reported, a lot of "just being there together" was happening, which is what I like to think should happen in a public space. I love a good pedestrianisation.

 

"Tantum Fortunam Meam!"

 

 September 10th

 

 

 September 12th or 13th

 

 I know, Charles, I know. It's awful and stupid. Nothing fits now, I know. Still, grumpy kings are a fairy tale staple too, aren't they? But should we pack all this in anyway? Otherwise, you're staring down the barrel of it until you die. You're meant to love us too now. But why should you love us? We still have those tapes of that private conversation where you joked about being reincarnated as the new Queen's tampon. "Just my luck!" the transcript reads. I know what you mean. I wouldn't love us. Commiserations.

 

Happier days (source – there's one of him in a bin there as well.)

 

 Hey, I just did a search for "Prince Charles" to find out how old you were!

FLASHBACK - 20181020_153931.jpg

 Last night, I looked through oldish photos that Google had saved without me noticing and, coming across this image taken or uploaded on the twentieth of the tenth Twenty-Eighteen, I felt like I'd found a photograph of Atlantis. Or of Lord Krishna revealing his true, planet-munching self to Prince Arjuna. How had I managed it? Photoshop? Or had I photocopied thousands of people, then cut them out and stuck them on cardboard and pins like the Cottingley Fairies? Was I even aware, in twenty eighteen, that I wasn't taking a photograph of Trafalgar Square at all here, but of a crowd? 

 I couldn't have been. 

 Somehow, this was normal.

 I've been a little worried recently about how many people I've seen out and about. I'm less worried now. 

 Click to enlarge.

See the Audience Trigger My Browning Snippets

 Here's me reading everyone's favourite dramatic monologue, Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess", interpolated into a live composition by Lillie Harris as part of the London Symphony Orchestra's 2018 Soundhub Showcase. The audience milling about the auditorium are moving in and out of spotlights as instructed, triggering snippets of the ten or so different recordings we made so that I never had to worry about delivering anything definitive. Always nice to have my voice employed upon a mellow new creepiness.

 Speaking of which, Darkfield's "Coma" can be experienced next month at King's Cross, together with the company's two other shipping-contained pitch-black spectaculars "Flight" and "Seance". Tickets are here.

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in... Oh we are?

Thanks to this pinterest account.

 Continuing my celebration of youtube essayists completely obsessed with theme parks, here's Kevin Perjurer's "Defunctland". The first two series pesented beautifully researched info-dumps about extinct attractions from Kevin's (and my) own childhood, but series 3 goes back even further, to the childhood of Walt Disney and a golden age of fevered Can-Do-ism that gave the world the Ferris Wheel, the Eiffel Tower*, and "Elecric Park": In 1900 the Brothers Heim had spent the then equivalent of three million dollars on a tram to bring citizens of Kansas to their brewery out of town, but when it turned out nobody wanted to take a tram to a brewery they shelled out even more on the introduction of lightbulbs, roller coasters, actors dressed as mermaids, alligator wrestling and the world's strongest magician, resulting in both a roaring success and a decisive inspiration on the tiny Walt (as well as, I assume, on The Simpsons' Duff Gardens). Enjoy the full history of this wacky Xanadu below, including tales of airship crashes, escaped carnivorous animals and "hooligan loop" accidents, all with zero causalties.

 DefunctTV's six-part documentary on Jim Henson is also hard to beat.

* And apparently, before settling upon the Eiffel Tower as its centrepiece, the 1889 Exposition Universale had considered a one-thousand foot tall guillotine, while proposals put to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, charged with topping this, included a five-thousand foot tall tower from the top of which visitors could toboggan to Manhattan.

F.T.O.D. (my rubbish Thank You note)

 

 From 2015 (trigger-warning: Mogg)

 Well, we saw.

 Again.

 This election should never have been agreed to while so many of its participants were under investigation, but it was agreed to, and the self-styled "Grand Wizards" now have their majority. To everyone who campaigned against them: thank you from the bottom of my heart. But if it's any consolation, I don't think the Wizards won because they named themselves after the KKK, I think they won because most people are scared of free broadband. Honestly. And they won because their campaign was the issuing of a simple three word sentence followed by an unprecendented fucking off, while the opposition's campaign insisted on being a narrative centred around its most obviously off-putting not-fucking-off-er.

 As the exit poll came in last night, I was talking with my mate Tom about performing in front of crowds without a demographic, and he noted that, yes, people are superb when they're paying attention. Jeremy Corbyn however was an attention repellant. Every wonderful, brilliant, compassionate canvasser for Labour knew that his name was a handicap, they heard it again and again, and reported back, but the man himself never seemed to care... And, wait, I love.... I love... that he addressed how abominable things are for so many... that he noticed, as just one example, postal workers are now penalised for standing still, nobody else was talking about that! But... as I also noted when I first voted for him in 2015, he does love telling people off, and people really do not like being told off, and while I'm repeating myself, he was also... is also... a terrible, terrible boss. If only his claque (a clique that claps, true word) could have brought itself to get behind that motto of the London Olympics: "This is for everyone." But no, it had to make gospel the caveat "Not the few", and whether that qualification was simply tone-deaf or pitch-perfect dog-whistle, it was never going to win an election, ever. You cannot spearhead a popular compassionate campaign with threats. Momentum also enjoyed telling the electorate off of course: austerity was Tony Blair's fault now (just as the Tories had argued) - why would you vote for Tony Blair, you stupid idiots who voted Labour into office three times in a row! So I hope Momentum get in the fridge too. I am excited by that prospect.

 Similarly exciting is the fact that both main parties promised an end to austerity... although voting for a lie doesn't make it true, so who knows what will happen next? We have our Nixon now (not our Trump, that's potentially Rees-Mogg), and Johnson is absolutely incompetent enough to let this country slip into civil war, but I've no idea who he'll have around him with this majority, maybe this larger pool will provide a greater chance of non-maniacs in office, a group less Steve-Bannon-y. And even if it doesn't, there is still the law. And there are still lawyers. Things change, is what I'm saying... although that's easy to forget while watching yet another Labour leader take to the podium and, just as Miliband and Brown did before him, blame the fucking media. Well no, hon, you chose to post that appalling Celebrities Read Mean Tweets video when you're not really a celebrity and those weren't really mean tweets, and you can't really read. You chose to make this election about you, when so many feel threatened by you, not just because of shitty political coverage, but because of literal threats continually being issued by your defenders, upsetting the work of the thousands who played nice.  

 Here's why I'm writing though. It's not because I have anything new to say (hence all the links). I just think that now that the campaign is over - and I count myself so lucky not to be terrified, so it's easy for me to say this - we might stop filling our feeds with nightmare worst-case scenarios, just for now. Nobody in the history of talking ever "won" an "argument" anyway*, and twitter's not a hole in the ground to scream into. It is the exact opposite of a hole in the ground, in fact; it's possibly part of the problem, so we should probably stop feeding it. We can't hate the electorate. Fascism Thrives On Division. People are simply scared of free broadband, that's all. And they don't like being told off.

 And thank you again to those who played nice. You make me happy, you give me hope. And when Corbyn goes, oh my goodness, the hope then...

 What she said. Again.

* Update: This was not a reference to Corbyn's  "We won the argument". That was published the following day.

"Santa, we found someone even creepier than you."

BOO! It's the annual running of the Krampuses.

 If the Christmas Doctor Who doesn't have a Krampus, it's missed a trick. Krampus is of course Saint Nicks' shaggy, old-religion, child-beating-after-it's-put-them-in-a-sack assistant. As Christoph Waltz explained to Jimmy Fallon "there's an old medieval tradition that is still kept alive in the mountains, where the young men... put on sheepskin and huge carved wooden masks and cow bells, and they get drunk... and storm like the riders of the apocalypse, through the village." The Austrian kids seem to love it. 

 

Really though, I'm just looking for some context in which to post one of my all-time favourite Christmas clips, see below. It too features children beaming inexplicably at a horrific, What-Am-I-Please-Kill-Me costume and is if anything even more terrifying than Krampuslauf, because in this clip the kids are now sharing a car with it. Where are its eye-holes? Has it seen that dog? Will the howling of the siren ever stop? Ably heckled by Mystery Science Theatre 3000's Kevin Murphy, Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett under the "Rifftrax" banner, here is the finale from probably their greatest find - Pirateworld's dismal promotional feature: "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny". Enjoy.

"Putting Gaston in his Place": Attitudes towards Animism, Predeterminism and Liminality in that youtube video

 Here's a very charming video of a theme park actor enjoying four minutes of actual acting. I know, from working in the London Dungeon, that in a job like this – normally all character and no drama – a heckling child who totally buys into it can be water in the desert.

  #NOTALLMEN

  But the real reason I'm posting this video is because of  the comment Neil "Ned Mond" Edmond made below, which I think is brilliant and useful:

"What I mainly like about this is that the girl's relationship with the characters and narrative matches what I hope eg. a pre-Christian norseman's relationship with a god might have been: The story is both finished and ongoing, and intervention is meaningful even when the result is predetermined."

See also: playing with Star Wars figures.

I had not heard of Kenny Strasser

... and nor has the News. Therein lies the secret of his power, the power to make appearance after appearance on local news networks masquerading as a reformed junkie and "yo-yo master". Everything Shunt-wise is a bit up in the air right now (just as something falling off a cliff might be said to be up in the air) so until it lands, let's sit back and enjoy K-Strass and his demons in action. Actually you sit back, I still can't get through this in the one sitting:

Thanks to videogum for putting me onto this. And more here.
Oh, and I've just received the call: Money is definitely booking until the end of September, and all of a sudden we're selling out so good Yay. Meanwhile for the Lounge it's business as usual, i.e. we're closing. I think Saturday's the last night. Suddenly. Again. How terribly state-of-the-nation.

Yeah... 's hard.
 

UPDATE: This is of course, I realise years later, Mark Proksch.

Day 3 of my exciting election blog! AN INVITATION TO JOIN THE GOVERNMENT

 I started following Jennifer Ehle on twitter today (cf "Who I'd like to meet" on the homepage) and learnt thereby of the proposed gathering in Trafalgar Square calling for electoral reform, so thought I'd head over. You know, Jennifer Ehle! She wasn't there though. Morris Dancers were there. Even the statue of Sir Keith Parks had buggered off. Confused, I took a call a from my sister to let me know everyone had now moved to St. John Smith's Square where Tinyteeth and Clegg were deep in something or other and the real action was. But again I arrived too late, there was no Jennifer Ehle. I thought of calling out her name but didn't know how to pronounce it. Billy Bragg was there though, which was nice, giving out free hugs, and a few protesters still hanging around looking very happy, but mainly now it was just men from the telly. Men, no women.

 

A BBC piece to the camera in Arabic. "Gosh, of course there might be a scuffle" I heard one onlooker say. Nope.

 

 And I have concluded the following on the train home: The Libdems would be mad to settle for anything less than electoral reform in a deal with the Conservatives. BUT the Conservatives would be mad to grant it. BUT everyone would be mad to settle for a minority Conservative Government when what's called for is stability. BUT the Libdems would also be mad to form an alliance with Labour if it meant Gordon Brown was still PM. BUT Labour would be mad to change him for a leader with an even smaller mandate, again when what is called for is stability... So the only possible resolution? Nick Clegg as PM EXACTLY AS I PREDICTED! God I'm good.

It's Singles' Dawn here at the Ole Unattended (We'll always have Paris)

(originally posted on myspace here)

Five thirty-eight ayem you guys. In two hours I'll be cooking myself breakfast and heading off to the Dungeons once more. I remember my first Valentine's day there. That was - What the Hell? -SEVEN YEARS AGO?! No. No wait I'm glad I stuck it out this long because of course that is where I met - well what should I call her here? I can't keep calling her my baby so let's fire up that right brain, start making sounds with our mouths and just see what happens: Lilly Bambazaan? Transboundy Gal? Mima Nunahangamban? Lass Booms? Mm. Anyway I'm up this late/early/stupid because I was hoping to finally squeeze in a little post about my trip with Miss Transboundy to Paris what with this being Valentine's Day and me now proudly tamed. But that clearly hasn't happened so here's what I call "the better idea". A little shout out to the singles.

Hey, look at you, singles! This day is yours, you get that right? I mean, you can't have a day for couples! The very nature of a "couple" (uyergh, just listen to that word: Couple. Khhhuahaharphul! Aclk!) precludes any celebration, for "celebration" surely suggests a coming together of people in numbers GREATER THAN TWO. Don't we couples know that true love WAITS? Don't we know that life is PAIN, HIGHNESS! You get it. You've read at least the first half of the Female Eunuch. You don't want to wake up one day and find you've turned into Don Draper / nearly-every-woman-in-fiction. No, there is a WORLD out there! And YOU are it's hero. Well you're my hero anyway. And this day, o singles - hey this whole WORLD - is nothing but your party. At our expense. 

(Okay actually I'm not sure if anyone in this picture is single BUT imagine how much more fun they'd be having if they were. And I'm pretty sure looking at them they were all at least FEELING single the second this photo was taken. And that's how you feel ALL THE TIME, SINGLES! And might this song below be your anthem? Probably not but boy can that guy dance! He's single, right?)

I LOVE YOU FOREVER SINGLES, BYEEE! XxXxXxXxX

Mood: None. Related Topics: None

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

Hello. I'm posting this from my phone again, from outside the machine which I think is now complete. I think. It's got bunting and a bell. And I feel I should post this because of course last night we opened, and that's a thing, and we're having a photoshoot, sitting around in towels with nothing better to do. (The costumes arrived yesterday but we're still going with just the towels, apart from Tom who having missed the towels note has shown up covered in clay and feathers with a shaved head. Good old Tom. But also, good old towels.) So how was last night? Well it felt like the first time I'd actually earnt my money, but the show itself, now I think about, reminded me of Zack Snyder's Watchmen: I - ng - liked it, but oo there was a lot missing... missing here not from the original, but from the sum and, when we were lucky, product (maths joke) of the past six months' settling of ideas, decisions and enthusiasms. Whole swathes of theme that it turns out just aren't there now. And what's interesting about that is this was evident last night even though the playing was crisp and the crowd jolly. But now let's see what we've got, less is still probably more. Already today we've axed the steampunk detox and the misunderstanding about the pen. And good. My voice is a three amp fuse right now with thirteen amps of quarrel run through it. Don't kiss me, I taste like a farm.

Ah, I've got to a computer now. Great. So here's a short animation I came across illustrating just some of the themes which didn't make it into last night's show. It's also ideally how I'd like to us to end it (I mean Germaine Greer's coming on Friday. She'd eat this up. Imagine.) Go!

posted from a phone

(originally posted on myspace here)

Well that was brilliant. I haven't seen Daniel Kitson before and, long as it's taken me to do get round to it I'm quite glad the first time that I see him should have been in a park at midnight. A large crowd, but my initial begrudging of the laughter that greeted him opening his mouth lasted about empty seconds - I meant forty seconds, predictive text. No he said he felt like spending the hour just congratulating us for showing up, and by that point I would have been very happy with that. Instead he read a story from a stool, lit by the lamps through the trees like a moomin, and that was fox too (wow, I meant to type excellent and see I've typed fox. That's incredibly predictive.) And I listened to much of it only drifting off to try and remember when I'd last written a love story, and to wonder how on Earth I'd go about trying to write one again... i don't know how to do paragraphs on a phone... New paragraph... And now I'm sat by the American Embassy in a break from walking home. I've never been here before. I've just a had cool, refreshing all-day-breakfast packaged sandwich and it's two in the morning. Pimm's o' clock. I'm tucking into maltesers now and living the dream. Not a proper dream, mind, the kind you have once you've pressed the snooze button (I have to, the tune my alarm plays is soporific to a fault) then find a spare room beyond the bathroom, and a whole other house beyond that, and a design magazine on the floor, and you know it's French because they're giving away an inflatable woman tucked into the pages like a free scent, and you pull it out and wonder shall I? and then the alarm goes off again. And you wake up and fall asleep.

And it gonna be on wheels...

(originally posted on myspace here)

Just a quick breezing in while I'm sat at monitor 11 sending off last minute re-writes of a premiseless, twenty-two page sketch about the Elizabethan Conjuror John Dee to Laurence and Gus for tonight's final recording: We did some Shunt in front of people last night, and finally SOMETHING was there, audible, visible and playable. It feels very good. No trap-doors opening, no smoke, no penguin masks painted black, just door-knobs, tickets and a split audience to play with. "Finally we've got a wheel!" said Nigel, "All we need now are another three and we can stick them on a car." Yep, because all we had before was a drawing of a car we were waving in audience's faces while making brrrm noises. On the train home some teenagers threw bits of crutch at me, which I threw back to show I was down. About twenty onions lay crushed in the middle of the road outside my block. Might use that. Oh, just have.

Gemma on the machine's top deck, ages ago, with shambles.

Hawkins' First Hadrosaur

DO NOT WATCH THIS:

 

 

*update: Oh. You can't.

 

 I wish Hesketh would get a shift on and forward me that strand of a hundred insults because "Jesusophile", as he terms himself here, lacks them all. Lack. Exactly. It's a lack. He should have them because it's a lack. (Sorry, you'll only get that if you've seen the video, which you mustn't). Videogum drew this Shitwizard to my attention after he posted an argument for the okayness of inflicting pain on women during sex. Someone else then posted a video where he demonstrated AIDS passing through a condom with some off milk and a strainer, at which point I smelt a rat and went and did my own research. It was the interview above that convinced me he was actually for real. Except he isn't. It says so on his youtube channel. Oh curse you, Internet. "You obviously have no idea how evolution works."
"People always tell me this. It's such a weak argument." Okay so he doesn't exist, and he's Dutch, but I didn't know that three hours ago when I had to walk him off, and a good thing too, it was a beautiful day and I ended up at the Natural History Museum. Passing the animatronic T Rex I was struck for the very first time by how bare not only he but most of the other reconstructions seemed to be, and became thrilled by the idea that dinosaurs had once been covered in feathers, not a new idea I know but one it became impossible to shift. Every animatronic now seemed very obviously plucked, and how would we know? I thought of those brilliant medieval bestiaries in which geese grew on trees and all that's known or cared about the crocodile is that it weeps after eating a man.

 ("Meh, that's a crocodile, yeah it'll do. Might have got the wings the wrong colour but sod it, it's a naturally occurring allegory, no need to sweat the details.") And I passed an illustration of a T Rex sinking its teeth into a hadrosaur and thought - Yes, if we've got that wrong, then that's exactly how we get it wrong: Take what we know about something and paint it killing something else. And for the first time since I was probably ten I yearned to visit the Cretaceous period and find out what it was actually like, which was GREAT because until that point all those post-Jurassic-Park, CGI "reconstructions" had pretty much seen off my childlike di-curiosity. But THIS, seeing the bones, remembering how wrong we might have got it, gazing at a scene of antlered hadrosaurs gathering at the water-hole, all this suddenly made me want once again to see not a clone, but THAT SCENE. I wanted a time machine. I wanted to step out of a time machine and see a T Rex at dusk trailing feathers like a peacock and scavenging some long-dead carcass while the hadrosaurs were left to butt heads in peace. Bliss. 

 

   original

 

 One of the best things about my stay in Crystal Palace was that the train pulled up right next to Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' placid - downright pekinese - dinosaur enclosure. Googling "hadrosaur" I found an illustration of Hawkins in his studio in New York working on new wonders. Yes, New York: Apparently there was going to be a Paleozoic Museum bang in the center of Central Park until the evil Boss Tweed broke all the molds. You can read about it here, lots of nice pictures... Now when I used to work at Quinto's the second-hand bookshop - sorry if I've already told you this - there was this anti-semitic, ghastly-headed twenty-something, Joe, a bright and polite former monk with some very bad ideas. Among these was that "the Passion of the Christ" was "accurate", and that the world was six thousand years old. I took him up on this, and heard his thoughts on dinosaurs. They'd drowned in the forty days of rain caused by the bursting of Earth's original meniscus, an ozone layer of water that made all carbon dating useless. He believed in evolution and "Survival of the Fittest" but when pressed had no explanation for coal, or caves or tectonic plates. Shortly afterwards he was dismissed following a chat with our Spanish manager about Franco. But if ever you meet a creationist don't raise the subject of dinosaurs. Surprise them with coal, or stalactites. I mention Joe here merely to explain my gullibility in the face of Jesusophile, and I post Jesusophile's video up even though he doesn't exist, and isn't funny, because this is the internet and I'm an atheist and it appears that that's what we do, we like to make ourselves mad.

Finally here's something I wrote for "Money", which fits fine here:

'I want to show you something. I want to show you what we will look like in 200 thousand years time. And before I do, remember: survival of the fittest does not mean survival of the best at running. It means, or did mean “Who fits here? They can stay”. Okay. Behold. The man of 200 thousand years time... And they say variety is dead. And they’re right. Because look around, look – we didn’t adapt to this. We adapted it. Evolution can stop now.
Variety is dead.
It’s “Where fits us?” now, not  “Who fits here?” Where fits us can stay. And the rest, the deserts, the tundra, the bits with snakes, they go. And on their remains will be built a city without frontiers.
And it will be very expensive.
But we’ll be able to afford it.
That’s the other thing about the future. We’ll obviously all be able to afford it. Something to do with technology. Thank you, man of the future.'

(Man of the Future comes courtesy Paleo-Future, another cracking source of odd and ahh.)

The Shunt Niche (with karaoke and the transvestite stewardess enclosure)

 

I'm afraid you've missed this now. Sorry I should have said. For the past two weeks seventy-four empty, wooden frames have hung to form a false perspective in Shunt's long corridor, their distance from each other and diminishing dimensions perfectly calculated by Tom Duggan. They looked great. And to the right as you came in there hung a piece by Kathy Hinde, the working guts of a prepared piano with a video of birds alighting on a wire projected on the underside. A white line passed steadily from left to right across this image and every time it hit a bird a note was struck... It's been a rich programme this past fortnight. Problems with the license meant I ended up performing Nijinsky Karaoke twice to plug some gaps, once on Thursday as planned, and another shotgun showing of it in the Arena on Saturday which turned out to be far more successful. It took a while to get going but from about 11pm onwards I didn't have to perform at all, or any way I decided this time not to intervene, and it was fine. People were perfectly happy to sit and natter and listen and then, most importantly, cross what I had feared was an intimidating distance to a lone chair three arches down, tap a stranger on the shoulder and take the mike from them. I still get a kick from watching these changeovers. Occasionally the volunteers wouldn't read from Nijinsky's diary at all but perform Cyprus Hill or the opening credits to Beverley Hillbillies, and I was fine with that; despite its name, all "Nijinsky Karaoke" really needs to be is an oppressively isolated open mike, comfortable seats and a crowd happy to take turns (and they always returned to the diary in the end). I enjoyed Saturday. It got me thinking. And I think most of these thoughts I then put down on the following strand of Chris Goode's "Thompson's" blog regarding his allusion to some inherent ideological flaw in the Lounge's make-up.

So in brief... Me: "Am I sort of right in saying that the ideological problem for you is the space's remoteness from the surrounding reality... the very fact that people upon entering might go 'Fantastic'? A theatre company should have a 'quizzical' relationship with a space this patently -- non-domestic, this ostentatiously alien in your view, and 'Shunt are the benevolent dictators' presumably because people are unable to make themselves at home here, is that it?... But here, re: works of art and paying attention, what is it you pay attention to? It is never going to be, and therefore should not be, just the piece. You pay attention to each other as well. And, while not really 'my scene' whatever that is, the Shunt Lounge matches and probably surpasses any venue, show or indoor event I can remember in the opportunities it gives its artists (and frankly in the pressures it puts upon them) to pay attention to their audience and allow their audience to pay attention to each other as part of the work... I mean really joining in. Audience then becomes the wrong word. 'Crowd' is fitter. The Shunt Lunge is very much about the Crowd."

On Wednesday we didn't even have the documentaries, so Amber Sealey was projected in their place before two columns of plane seating and a dirty mesh, while I paced disconsolately around this enclosure in a pink wig and the rags of a stewardess' uniform. Again, it was fine.

Now, Chris: "I think the best way to describe it is in relation to recreational drug use... One of the things I regret about the recreational use of, for example, ecstasy, which generally seems to have a positive effect in making people happier and calmer and more open and more readily available to genuine experiences of love and intimacy in relation to others, is that on the whole users seem to tend to ascribe these positive effects to the drug alone... So, your mind is blown by Shunt? What do you do with that? You look forward to going back to Shunt again another night."

And this is the image I bore in mind while I knocked about that transvestite stewardess enclosure with the punters peering in: the horse that slowly approaches you from the other side of the fence, and then stays there.

Finally, me again: "To be clear, I am not arguing that the Vaults is the perfect model of a theatrical space. I'm not sure one single place can ever fulfill that Function. What I do believe is that it is a useful and beautiful mutation, rather than a dangerous placebo... the response I hear more often than any other from people entering the Vaults for the first time is - and it's why I love the place - 'How did they get hold of this?'... Why don't you ever hear that asked in, say, a space like the Tate? Is it because the Tate is immediately baffling? Because it is. But this question, to me, sounds like a person having their idea of what is possible suddenly enlarged a little... I don't mean people have asked me this knowing I'm 'in'. I mean that I constantly witness people enter and yes go 'wow', but then also go 'how did they do this?' and the excellent and important thing is that this isn't a magic trick, because it isn't a secret! Which is why this isn't a dictatorship. It might be a compound, yes, or a haven - although not my idea of one - but I'm fine with that because everyone's invited and we're around to show our working if anyone's interested... 'We are monarchs of all we survey' is the inherent message of the place, for me, while the subtext is 'Go and do likewise'. And in six months time it will all be handed over to the sandwich barons anyway and Shunt will have to build somewhere else. None of which is to detract from your assertion that this build is a project which should not have been embarked upon in the first place, and all of which boils down to my love of theatre almost solely as a medium for amateurs. And builders."

Oh and another thought I've had since: Great Art should not, contrary to popular belief, necessarily get us talking. What Great Art should really do is shut us up. 

 

(originally posted on myspace)