Some Nearly Wordless Pics of Languedoc Until the Keyboard's Fixed

  

 

 

 

 Click to embiggen. And spot the dog.

The German Choir of London go "Oh God"

 Here's matter ghoul adjacent. Back in March I took an iPad out to where Spitalfields borders The City, to see if I could get anything useful for a little promo Big Ben said we needed to make now that the Americans were favouring Harry Potter Tours – which we don't do – over the more nuanced, site-specific contextualising of the tragic murder and mutilation of unaccommodated Victorian women provided by Fred Strangebone's Ripper Walks. "Well, this will look terrible" I thought as it started to rain because I knew nothing about what makes a street look good. 

 The iPad was a gift from the Musical Director of the Deutscher Chor London, Barbara Hoefling. When I came to cut the Strangebone footage together I found a whole file of recordings she had made on it in preparation for a lockdown Hallowe'en Concert. Barbara's developed her own method of directing amateur choirs: instead of training each singer up to the standard of a soloist, she concentrates on perfecting the coherence of their untrained voices into a single instrument, to produce a sound I've heard no other human choir make. I tried playing one of the recordings I'd found over the footage of our route, and was instantly thrilled by how devastating I found the result – far too upsetting to attract even the Canadians however. So I knocked together a new soundtrack from some library numbers, Ben provided text and sound effects – car horns, golf swings, that kind of thing – and you can see the final trailer here, if you like. But Barbara Hoefling's brilliant work is below.

 

Staying In My Lane

 Those old explanations of ghosts – echoes of a trauma baked into place – is it only human trauma that has that power? Might parks be crawling with the ghosts of worms? Is this river haunted by fish, fish ghosts targeted by heron, more than a millenia-worth? I'm trying to get into the Hallowe'en spirit now that the weather is proper October.

 

 Unfinished business – that was another explanation. Do only humans get to have that then? Wait, is that all a soul is? Business? Is it? I haven't been busy this year. Maybe. Have I felt like a ghost? A bit. And it hasn't all been unenjoyable, but I watched a youtube essay last week about the films of the Beatles which reminded me that being A CREATIVE FORCE is, you know, an option, and initially may require nothing more than just thinking to yourself "I'm going to be A CREATIVE FORCE" and then seeing what happens, and it's really picked me up. (Here's that video essay.) 

 

 In this case a bit of what happened appears to be me going for a walk and then posting shit phone pictures of it here. Well, good. You'll have to take my word for it that there were joggers. It's odd to me, by the way, that that that's what it's called: "jogging". That's definitely what it looks like, but it's not the aspect you'd think they'd want to advertise. Jogging's normally something you want to avoid, in case you scratch the record or spill your drink. How can I make running forward feel more like running into something? Jog!

 

 Are these pavement demarcations a hangover from the pandemic, or permanent now? And has anyone studied their effect on a pedestrian's mental health? I think I hate them. They just seem like another thing to get on the wrong side of. It's nice to have somewhere to record that though. It's nice to be A CREATIVE FORCE. The next paragraph contains swearing.

 

 I also hate seeing so many people right now take the side of a side, rather than siding with people – to see so many call for an end to Netanyahu's response to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holoocaust while not also calling - seeing as we're calling for things - for the safe return of Israeli hostages, as though we've finally run out of internet and there was just was no room for the Landaus. Well fuck that and fuck the war and fuck taking sides unless that side is Peace. Fuck Bibi. And fuck Hamas; buoyed by their actions, the Iranian Government announced last week it would be targeting Persian journalists working in Britain like my friend Faren. And, parenthetically (do go on, Simon) coming up to a year after the murder of Mahsa Ahmini by Iranian police for having loose hair I decided to search Xitter for any more news of protests, and found myself enaged in the following fun coversation about... let me check... yes, apartheid. Stick with it.

 

 

 

 I know, "mroe"...

 By the way, you can now find me on blue sky at @slepkane.bsky.social. 

 I really hope you're all okay.

Your Christmas Viewing or a better title to be decided later

 

 Let's catch up. 

 On Monday I joined friends to catch The Wind in the Willows Wiltons at Wilton's Music Hall, chiefly to see Darrell Brockis as Toad; it's amazing what a really high-waisted pair of trousers can do to a man's shape. The weasels were sort of bankers now, as was the book's original author Kenneth Grahame, who resigned as Secretary of the Bank of England in 1908 after either being nearly shot in the face during an anarchist raid, or – depending on which motive you ascribe to the enforced retirement – accusing the Bank's future Governor of being "no gentleman", so I've no idea whose side he'd be on here.

 

 (I have only my parents word for it that, many Christmases ago, "Toad of Toad Hall" was the first show they ever took me to. It was the biggest room I'd ever been in. They tell me the sheer scale of the room made me whimper, then the lights lowered, and I didn't like that at all, and then old man dressed as a mole stuck his head out of a trap door and shouted "Hang white-washing!" and I howled and we left and that was it.)

 

 Pleasingly concurrent with the fortunes of Toad Hall in this production were that of the baby otter puppet, Portly: It's always nice to see the inclusion of Pan, and "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" made a lot more sense as subplot here rather than just interlude. A lovely, lively, warm evening, and Wilton's Music Hall is an exciting space to explore during an interval. Do these photographs convey that? I don't know. Badphone finally expired on Sunday, alas, but I appear to have found a replacement with just as MySpace-era a camera, which was not my intention. I'll have to start hanging around more light.

 

 On Tuesday I caught up for drinks with an old friend who told me that she can get married in Saint Paul's Cathedral, a thrilling possible future theatre project. I also found the following extraordinary performace on youtube while searching for video essays on "Brimstone and Treacle". I'd never made the connection before between Dennis Potter's fable of Satanic Home Invasion, and Mary Poppins (OR HAD I?) 

 

 

 I just wanted to write a good part for Olivia Colman.

 

 And the TKA Smith Family Conservatory of the Art's family production of Poppins sheds little light on the banned seventies teleplay. But it does throw up a blisteringly confident turn from an uncredited singer in a role I don't remember as a rival nanny with a bun of grey hair fastened inexplicably to the top of her head, which the Conservatory has liked so much they've posted twice. In case you didn't manage to catch a Christmas show yourself this year I share both versions here, not for comparison, but to be played simultaneously to see if the resulting reason-shredding resonances open a portal to anywhere.

 On Wednesday evening we performed the ante-penultimate Love Goddess at the Cockpit Theatre. The weather was milder now. The snow had gone. I didn't walk home directly. Badphone's replacement took what it could.

 

On Thursday, well, I wrote last Sunday's post, but I also learnt that that ante-penultimate show had actually been our penultimate as one of the cast had fallen ill, although testing negative for Covid. We'd planned our cast drinks for that evening however as some people had to rush off on Friday, including myself, who would have to be up early to catch a flight from Gatwick on a day of border control and train strikes. Our producer Laura had booked a table at a pub called the Pereseverance, and I hadn't left the flat all day.

 As with the long walk home on Wednesday I found a refreshing solitude in that place. The barman gave me a Guiness in a weird glass, free nuts and sample of an unnamed Christmas cocktail he'd worked on. A lot was ending. Enjoying the uniterrupted ambience, it occured to me I could just try and go straight to Gatwick after the final show though and not worry about sleeping Friday night.

 

 

 I woke at midday, feeling finally Christmassy. The last night went ahead and everything felt new, which may not be unusual for a last night. As I said from the start, everyone's lovely, and while I may not have tried so much towards the end not to be too weird, it's only because that's what happens when you get to know people.

 

 Then that stops, and there's no getting used to it. The show's over. Almog's on another continent now, and I took the Thameslink to Gatwick however many hours ago it was and found a nice, small copy of "Pinocchio" at the airport bookshop. Its tone is very Vic and Bob. In fact Bob Mortimer would make a brilliant Pinocchio. I woke on the plane surprised to see the land up at the top. 

 

 Mum met me at Montpellier just as I received the message that the cast member had now tested positive for covid after all, but that was okay because Susy's tested positive for Covid too. We made it down. That's the main thing. Dad showed us "Creature Comforts" in the cinema (because it's important to be reminded just how perfect Aardman can be...)

 

 

 Tom put on the "Bottom" Christmas special. I'm about to put the presents out. I was meant to be cacting up on sleep but appear to haev written this instead. I hope you get everything you want this Christmas, ole unatendees. 

 Here, one more time, is Orson Welles. 

 

 Big ball to stick your head in by Arthur Handy.

Nightwalk in Xanadu

 Having skirted its making in my "research" for Love Goddess, today I decided to actually rewatch Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, which happily appears to be available on iplayer forever. The film seems timely now in a way it probably hadn't since it first came out. I initally wrote "frighteningly timely" but, if I'm honest, also quite pleasingly timely...

 

a reference to this

 

 Timely not just in its depiction of one of the richest men in the world maniacally throwing money away in an attempt to buy the love of "The People" and call it Democracy, but also in its depiction of the attempt to use money, and the media that money buys, to remake reality itself, and of the suicide-attempt-inducing nightmare of having to live inside that lie – the fate of Kane's second wife.

 

 Susan Alexander's story probably stands up best as a metaphor; in reality, billionaires' wives seem to be managing okay. Still, as the opening of the film makes clear, Citizen Kane doesn't take place in reality. I was wildly wrong before when I said it began with a news reel. Of course, it begins with this:

 

 In the ruins of the fairy tale that Kane retreated into, to the sound of the same sleepily growling horns composer Bernard Herrmann would later use to accompany Jason and the Argonauts disturbing Talos' gigantic jewellery box: lost monkeys, abandoned gondolas, an absurdly convex golf course, and the suggestion – confirmed in the film's closing shots – that this is just a taste of Xanadu... that you'll never be able to see the whole thing. Immediately, I was reminded of scrolling through my photos after a night walk, deciding what images to use, and how many, and what order to put them in on this blog. So actually, this opening does remind me of the real world. Or whatever you want to call what we're living in until the lights go out. That's what makes it the greatest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unposted Photographs of November 2022 in Chronological Order

 It's always fascinating to see who's worn your costume before you.

 

 First day of the tube strikes. Choreography starts outside while we wait for the person with keys.

 I see a lot of these signs around Marylebone. I'm forty-eight and I still don't know what American Express is. Is it a credit card? What is it?

 

 We prepare for the plinth. I'm pretty sure it's bigger than this.

 

 After finding out Pizza Express no longer does Veniziana, I start photographing barriers because they remind me of Keir Starmer.

Thoughtlessly shitty quick fixes, looking increasingly unreplaceable.

 We're in the space. We go crazy.

 I acquaint myself with the backstage of the Cockpit.

 

 Show report: I tripped. Where were the barriers?

 

 "Vibrating pockets can still be heard in a dramatic silence." Tickets here.

 

 The Elizabeth Line is not for trypophobes.

 I get lost in Hampstead, and find some cosy blocks with globes in the window.

 Walking home from shows now, I notice the night sky is often coloured in. 

 

 I can't tell by what.

 

  Loughborough Junction has new lights too, where they used to build sets.

 

 Coldharbour Lane is getting a tower block.

 That's not all that's gone up since I left.

 

 I don't remember this book nook. It has a copy of WHSmith's "Treasury of Children's Literature". I sit and read.

 Treasury is a good word for it, although I don't get far with C. S. Forester's "Poo-Poo Finds a Dragon". 

 

 I do consider what kind of brain comes up with protagonists named "Hornblower", and "Poo-Poo".

 

 "Eeyore's Birthday" is also included, the alpha and omega of great sitcom writing. I read it aloud to myself quietly in its entirety, marvelling again, and upon reaching "'Not mine,' said Eeyore proudly" actually get a little teary.

 

 I return to Notting Hill to find Christmas has started. A different vibe.