Two guys in the Japanese restaurant, both in business suits, one railing the other with rhetorical questions to help him make his point.
How does fiber function as an armour?
He asks, the other guys says nothing, picking at sashimi, waiting for his colleague to continue. How does metal function as an armour?
In a bar two days later (think morning sunlight and filthy windows) the interactions are even less readable. Speaking languages you cant start to guess the meaning of, with a surfeit of gestures that somehow remain opaque the guy in the Everlast sweatshirt confronts the woman drying glasses at the counter. If it's a friendly conversation or not, you cannot tell. At some point in the undubbed movie he proffers a photograph - visible from where you are sitting - the face of a child. Bar-woman looks blank, goes back to her labour. The picture is his daughter, the presentation of it a simple uncalled for intimacy? Or the child is missing, a trail he follows with detective incompetence, a rudderless ship? You can't know. Will never know. Leaving, the guy grins with cigarette in teeth, but his eyes are still probing the clientele, still looking for something, then he's gone.
*
Final cast for Drama Queens at the Old Vic tomorrow (Sunday 12th at 7.30) was announced a few days ago - remember you can get all the old news here first. Joseph Fiennes, Jeremy Irons, Alex Jennings, and Lesley Manville join Kevin Spacey in the project of Michael and Ingar (Elmgreen and Dragset) with a text by me.
A picket line of workers (miners, clerical staff, teachers etc)
De-mobbed soldiers
a throng of people near a stadium (occasion unknown)
9.11 re-enactors in their outfits and ‘masks of shock’, bags of pre-bought ashes and faked up office document-detritus in their pockets and shoulder bags ready to throw skywards when the cardboard planes strike the replica towers. Kids look on, bored, restless. They saw it all before before. A band strikes up – that song they played on Titanic but hacked up in some generative/interactive/download-only remix by Protocol9 or HawkerSiddley.
A sturdy guy but somehow unstable there’s some kind of random ungainly thing going on in him. Under the surface (or more like ‘all over it’) you check curious shifts of weight, dips in gait, semi-lunges, hidden twitches, the whole of this, a rough equilibrium, somehow contained in the general direction of his motion, deliberate moves mixed and matched with unpredictable impulses, the combination threaded round the axis of his spine, the bloke always steadfast and balanced somehow, moving forwards but rolling, only his facial expression letting slip, from time to time, his own surprise, by startled eyes, at the movements he makes, riding the frame of himself.
*
Or on the street in London:
First thing I saw this morning when I looked out of the window was [inaudible]. I thought oh yeah, this is England. The sunny days are over.
Ant sent this yesterday, vaguely re The Broken World, which he'd just finnished reading, but also somewhat in line with the apocalyptic markets meltdown we've had crashing around our media eyes and ears these last few days. I hadn't come across Don Patterson before - I liked this quite a lot and I'm about to start looking for more.
The Scale of Intensity / by Don Patterson.
1. Not felt. Smoke still rises vertically. In sensitive individuals, déjà vu, mild amnesia. Sea like a mirror.
2. Detected by persons at rest or favourably placed, i.e. in upper floors, hammocks, cathedrals, etc. Leaves rustle.
3. Light sleepers wake. Glasses chink. Hairpins, paperclips display slight magnetic properties. Irritability. Vibration like passing of light trucks.
4. Small bells ring. Small increase in surface tension and viscosity of certain liquids. Domestic violence. Furniture overturned.
5. Heavy sleepers wake. Pendulum clocks stop. Public demonstrations. Large flags fly. Vibration like passing of light trucks.
6. Large bells ring. Bookburning. Aurora visible in daylight hours. Unprovoked assaults on strangers. Glassware broken. Loose tiles fly from roof.
7. Weak chimneys broken off at roofline. Waves on small ponds, water turbid with mud. Unprovoked assaults on neighbours. Large static charges built up on windows, mirrors, television screens.
8. Perceptible increase in weight of stationary objects: books, cups, pens heavy to lift. Fall of stucco and some masonry. Systematic rape of women and young girls. Sand craters. Cracks in wet ground.
9. Small trees uprooted. Bathwater drains in reverse vortex. Wholesale slaughter of religious and ethnic minorities. Conspicuous cracks in ground. Damage to reservoirs and underground pipelines.
10. Large trees uprooted. Measurable tide in puddles, teacups, etc. Torture and rape of small children. Irreparable damage to foundations. Rails bend. Sand shifts horizontally on beaches.
11. Standing impossible. Widespread self-mutilation. Corposant visible on pylons, lampposts, metal railings. Waves seen on ground surface. Most bridges destroyed.
12. Damage total. Movement of hour hand perceptible. Large rock masses displaced. Sea white.
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