A beautiful combination of vagueness and super-concrete detail in Tony White's great new story at 1001 Nights Cast, Barbara Campbell's project which I wrote about already here with some thoughts about my own most recent contribution. In Tony's story Ahead in the Line
men whose names you don't know are telling tales that the narrator can
only half-remember as they wait in some kind of line for something that
you don't really get to the bottom of but which you intuit is probably
horrible.
Most
of the time you're filling in narrative blanks, running scenarios in
your head about possible contexts/ relationships/contents. All the
while you're addressed as if you were a visitor from far away, for whom
common sayings or phrases need gloss and explanation. Even the
narrators voice might best be called enticingly unsteady; oscilating as
it does between thick and thin, contemporary and slightly antique. But
there's really more than enough in the constellation of details coming
out of the fog, and the constant gaps in information, for your
brain to get to work with.
"There was a funny story too – I can’t remember. Something about a
woman and her daughter. I think the daughter was this guy’s niece. Who
was telling the story. And this was when those wretches were going from
door to door. And they had no respect at all."
This one reminded me, although it's very different, of M John Harrison's stories for the 1001 project, especially his first, from the prompt Cocking A Snook,
in which the narrator seems to overflow with details about a situation,
but on the other hand utterly neglects to give any kind of overview. He
generalises a lot too, in description, which is beautifully
disconcerting - "a man" arrives in his room in a "long house", "figures
in authority" do certain things in the corridor just outside and a
radio plays "the local music", where we can't possibly know what kind
of music that means or what kind of authority these "figures" have over
what. Very wonderful and funny and deadpan. Taken together its a
picture that's totally in focus some places but murky and blurred in
others. You're aware of vivid detail, but lack much solid framework to
put it in. The world comes out of fog, or emerges through a
constellation of points and shadows, or is discovered like a gift only
half unwrapped, or an object wrapped hastily and inexpertly in rags -
in some places you see precisely what's there, other places you can
only make out forms, shapes and structures that must be guessed at.
"It was impossible to calculate how many rooms there were in the
long house. This information was known only to the figures of authority
who often squatted in a line along one side of the corridor eating a
vegetarian meal."
Watching Bloody Mess last night in Toulouse I felt like I'd forgotten so many
things. At the end I walked around the stage and took more pictures of
the shredded tinsel, strewn popcorn, spilled water and beer, boiled
sweets and other stuff that's littered everywhere - detritus of the performance.
The popcorn, sweets
and tinsel against the black floor look so like galaxies.
my main impression of the audience was a constantly changing glow of
faces lit up by their mobile phones as they were checking the time. I
found myself whimpering like an 8 year old at one point in what felt
like a free fall of lack of interest - but a couple of vodkas in the
bar nearby seemed to help - a bit.
F. describing life in general at the moment:
no big stresses besides the usual bike
falls, benzine flares, lost keys, learning how to be
loved, shopping at german discount shops, etc, etc...
Some spammer/robot inserting random text after the usual gif with info on unmissable Cialis/Viagra/Stock Exchange Options:
We are the civilian contingent - representatives of the town intelligentsia and merchants.
The caller can disable this behavior by setting bit 3 in DX.
I've written a short text for Humus 3, a book on the 30 years of the Kaaitheater, about the extraordinary duets by Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion - Both Sitting Duet, Quiet Dance, and Speaking Dance. The complete text, titled Brecht might have liked it, is below (and continues after 'read more'). An edited version of it will be in the book, which comes out in September.
Kind of similar-looking but for sure not identical, semi-bald blokes in identical or nearly identical clothes are sat on chairs right next to each other and doing things. Mainly it’s movement broken by stillness – a lot of hand and arm action, some of it recognisable as versions of everyday gestures, the rest of it more abstract or more dance-like. There also seems to be some interest in sound; the noise that comes when the slapping palm of a hand makes contact with a knee, or the sudden exhalation of breath when they both slump forward in a posture of exaggerated rest.
In the next piece they lose the chairs and move around instead, sometimes together, more often alone. They are pacing paths back and forth, walking circles repeatedly. With these paths and circles they make sounds; a long ‘aghhhhh’ or ‘aaaahhhhh’ for instance, which although done without noticeable emotion still invokes a notion of falling, dread or non-specific fear. Sometimes, moving down there on the black floor of the stage, they look like claymation – simple-figure-humans with a comically (or tragically) small vocabulary of action and sound. They are creatures living within a limit, two men caught in some skeletal scenario, an encounter whose pieces have been disordered, dislodged from continuity and causality.
In the final of the works they go back to the chairs and make yet more sounds – speak words and sing even. The words run simultaneously - going with and through each other, side by side, over and under, point and counterpoint. The words are mostly describing movement; movement that could possibly be dance or could possibly be something else. Run. Run. Run. Stop. Run. Run. Run. Stop is all I can immediately remember. It’s fast, vivid exhilarating.
All of it messes with your sense of what’s simple and what’s complicated. Mostly it starts at a place you’d call simple, very simple, but then they pattern it zealously; repeating, overlaying, looping the sequences, moving in and out of phase with each other and altering the time so that what maybe began as something you could teach to eight year olds, ends up more like Bach. A lot of maths, a lot of counting. Strangely virtuoso, for all its insistent aura of banality.
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Most
of the time you're filling in narrative blanks, running scenarios in
your head about possible contexts/ relationships/contents. All the
while you're addressed as if you were a visitor from far away, for whom
common sayings or phrases need gloss and explanation. Even the
narrators voice might best be called enticingly unsteady; oscilating as
it does between thick and thin, contemporary and slightly antique. But
there's really more than enough in the constellation of details coming
out of the fog, and the constant gaps in information, for your
brain to get to work with.
Watching 
