Big and boozy
Haven’t we gone slightly mad? We’ve made a Christmas cake. We are now making it drunk. Regularly, twice a week, with brandy. It took us good two hours to get the ingredients ready, three more hours to bake, and now half an hour a session of methodical feeding it with booze. For this is the cake to have for Christmas rather than those dry and gritty popyseed rolls. The smells it gives off while it’s baking make us want it now and again.
We like to make our Christmas cake a couple of weeks in advance and then ply it with alcohol to keep it moist and boozy. Brandy is the spirit we use, because we think its flavour works well with the fruit, but whisky would work, too. To get the booze into the cake, we pierce the underside deeply with a knitting needle, or skewer, or thin screwdriver, then pour a little brandy into the holes. We wrap the cake tightly in greaseproof paper and then in foil or clingfilm and place it in a large container. Covered, it will be fine for several weeks. To get moist, flavoursome results we feed the cake every three or four days for two weeks.
the king of pop
I went to this concert. It was in this city with these people. Some of them wore those white shirts, which was a bit strange for a rock concert, I thought. Well actually, it wasn’t a rock concert, they call it trip-hop, whatever that means. First your trip then you hop, I guess. A bit unusual – normally you’d expect a fall after a trip, not a hop. Well these people …
Anyway, the king of trip hop came, they say. So I went to see the king. I quite like they guy, his music that is, not him. But I would never say he is a king. Tricky, that’s the guy’s name, a king? No way. Well, actually he’s no Tricky either, he’s Adrian Thaws, born 1968 in Bristol, England, musician. Well, and actually not even that, you could hardly call him a musician: he is noted for a whispering sprechgesang lyrical style – that’s what Wikipedia has to say about him and I guess they are right. The guy can’t sing, he only speaks. Surprisingly he’s got no rhythm either (I had a chance to find out at the concert). Not bad for a world-famous artist. But there’s one thing this guy can do – he can make good use of other musicians, and in that there is hardly a replacement for him.
But these people. I think I have a problem with them. When he sings, pardon, says his stuff, they stand motionless, emotionless, absent-minded, white-shirted, jaded, spoiled with money. But when he says a nice word to them or lets them shake hands with him, or just brush against him, they treat him like a king, more, like a superhuman, a saviour. If Jesus was jealous he would probably envy Tricky such respect. That’s pop for you.
But I ain’t get fooled. Tricky’s just a boy, a kid. I know it. He knows it: Tricky Kid, Knowle West Boy* these are his own words. So I tell you: no king of trip-hop, pop, or any other. Just a kid, but tricky.
*Knowle West is a district of Bristol of poor reputation
(michał_t)
Feathered mayhem in full flight
Planty on an early morning in November. On the ground whitened by the first frost, a flock of crows raking rustling leaves with their claws in search of food. Like menacing black blots on the ochre carpet. Far too many of them, scary they look. A sudden urge to watch Hitchcock in the evening.
What exactly is “The Birds”, one of the oddest of his films that makes a compulsive viewing now and again?
“The Birds” opens in San Francisco with a brief flirtation in a pet shop between Melanie, a beautiful but spoiled urbanite, and a handsome lawyer, Mitch Brenner. Intrigued by his patronising manner, she follows him up to the coast to Bodega Bay, where he lives with his widowed mother, Lydia, and younger sister, taking with her two caged lovebirds as an ironic gift.
But nature, implacable in its needs and demands, has no time for irony, as the film makes clear. Melanie is attacked by a savage seagull when she approaches Lydia’s house, the first blow in a vicious struggle. The conflict soon engulfs the whole town, as thousands of enraged birds attack every human in sight. In the end Lydia seems victorious, and the film closes with an almost catatonic Melanie being carried from Bodega Bay among the strangely silent birds.
Hitchcock never explains why the birds launched their assault. Are they part of his vision of the universe where an idyll can turn any moment into hell purely by accident? Or, do they represent the exploited nature, finally taking its own back on ruthless humans? Or, perhaps, the attacks are an external display of the mother’s repressed sexual frenzy, a hysterical outburst that jumps space, time and the species barrier in a way that all great mythologies would have understood?
Curiously, Hitchcock disliked birds, and kept away from them during the filming. However, the birds had their revenge. Released at the end of the filming, fifty crows refused to leave the studio and roosted in a tree near Hitchcock’s house, soiling his car with their droppings until the tree was at last cut down.
Sound into wave into show*
7.25 cold Friday evening mad rash around house spread evenly improvised dress improvised meal without dressing running from bright cold into dark cold cold war between my time and bus times speeding up short steps passing old lady barking dog breaking the cold of the evening slowing down steps getting longer getting on the bus stop bus stop step into the bus relief gallery refilled flyer on entry artists reveal themselves white walls minimal décor two tables tons of toys two minds mind the gap gathering go ahead …
The impression I got after the 30-minute noise concert was that I had attended a modern guerilla meeting, or listened to a new kind of punk music. The ideas behind the latter seem to be the same – rawness, unpredictability, rebelliousness. There is no compromise nor surety. It was the first minute of the set that was its essence for me. Pain Jerk started with a sound that broke into me in the most violent and abrupt way. A war-like (in its every measurable aspect) sound shook the walls, crushed the ears, rocked the body with every change he made. The experience of the sound was dualistic – it encapsulated both the beauty and monstrosity of human nature. The sonic waves flowed through the body like water or wind. Or they crushed like rock, pierced like bullets. The first sound like a bungee jump, or the first kiss. The first sound like murdering someone, or running naked into a church. I wanted to scream, driven both by primordial pleasure and terror.
(tomek_t)
*Zbigniew Karkowski/Pain Jerk in concert, Arsenal Gallery, 24th October, 8pm
Dancing days are over
We saw Wierszalin’s Bóg Niżyński on Sunday, a piece of passionate theatre that forcefully gripped the mind for the next 48 hours, perhaps much longer.
Dostoievsky’s words come to mind – “It is not by confining one’s neigbour that one is convinced of one’s sanity.”
What we saw on the stage was an asylum cell turned into the temple of a madman dissecting his own life. Watching him wildly dance his past and reach some near-shamanic trance, could have left few in the audience feeling complacent about their sanity. A few others, however, could have discovered to their horror that all reason they possess implies only a very questionable absence of madness in them.
Similarly, few of the spectators, occupying the darker part of the temple-stage, may have cringed at seeing Niżyński come to realize he was a Christ-like figure. For others, watching him lift his skinny fingers like antennas to Heaven could have meant recognizing a similar gesture of their own. The silence that followed the closing scene was for that gesture to sink into minds. Or, at least, for some in the audience to find out in wonder it is the point some of them reach after they have madly danced their life away. Just about the only thing they have ever done.
The question remains: how can we hammer out some sense out of our time and place? Is shaking the ass all life going to change a damn thing?
Francisco Goya
Fully recovered*
tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah tah …
*Last Saturday, on the eve of Warsaw Marathon, a pair of legs representing Global Village covered the half marathon distance from Białystok to Supraśl through the forest. The run clocked in 1 hour 32 minutes.
The runner’s happy to have sacrificed three toenails.
(Repetitive motion injuries are wear-and-tear injuries that occur because of repetitive activities that we perform at work and at home or during sport acivities. These injuries are due to repeated strain to muscles, tendons and joints in the hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, back and neck.)
Good bye, Horton (5)
Then … ONE DAY
The Circus Show happened to reach
A town way down south, not so far from Palm Beach.
And, dawdling along way up high in the sky,
Who (of all people!) should chance to fly by
But that old good-for-nothing bird, runaway Mayzie!
Still on vacation and still just as lazy.
And, spying the flags and the tents just below,
She sang out, “What fun! Why, I’ll go to the show!”
And she swooped from the clouds
Through an open tent door …
“Good gracious!” gasped Mayzie,
“I’ve seen YOU before!”
Poor Horton looked up with his face white as chalk!
He started to speak, but before he could talk …
There rang out the noisiest ear-splitting squeaks
From the egg that he’d sat on for fifty-one weeks!
A thumping! A bumping! A wild alive scratching!
“My egg!” shouted Horton. “My EGG! WHY, IT’S HATCHING!”
“But it’s MINE!” screamed the bird,
When she heard the egg crack.
(The work was all done. Now she wanted it back.)
“It’s MY egg!” she sputtered. “You stole it from me!
Get off of my nest and get out of my tree!”
Poor Horton backed down
With a sad, heavy heart …
But at that very instant, the egg burst apart!
And out of the pieces of red and white shell,
From the egg that he’d sat on so long and so well,
Horton the Elephant saw something whizz!
IT HAD EARS
AND A TAIL
AND A TRUNK JUST LIKE HIS!
And the people came shouting, “What’s all this about … ?”
They looked! And they stared with their eyes popping out!
Then they cheered and they cheered
And they CHEERED more and more.
They’d never seen anything like it before!
“MY goodness! My gracious!” they shouted. “MY WORD!
It’s something brand new!
IT’S AN ELEPHANT-BIRD!!
And it should be, it should be, it SHOULD be like that!
Because Horton was faithful! He sat and he sat!
He meant what he said
And he said what he meant … ”
… And they sent him home
Happy,
One hundred per cent!
Indian summer
No harsh sounds disturb this quiet Saturday afternoon drenched with the thick September light. The sultry air fills the room through the fully open balcony door. In the distance, ten massive hot-air balloons rise above the park and float in a slow motion just above the treetops. In the room, a dish of trifle lands on the half-cleared table.
Here’s how it’s made. Crumble about 200g of sponge fingers into thumb-sized pieces and place them at the bottom of a large dish. Pour enough muscat, or any sweet wine, to soak the sponge thoroughly. Slowly whisk 300ml of whipping cream to the consistency of, say, cotton wool. Fold half the cream into 250ml of custard. Crush four or five handfuls of perfectly ripe raspberries with a fork and drizzle the pulp over the sponge. Pour the cream-custard mixture over the raspberries and let it merge with the juice. Finally spoon the remaining whipped cream over the top and scatter a few whole raspberries over the snowy surface. Chill for a couple of hours.
Trifle’s short, voluptuous life ends before dusk, before the balloons have disappeared from the sky, and is all about unbridled self-indulgence.
Horton sold to a circus (4)
And the first thing he knew, they had built a big wagon
With ropes on the front for the pullers to drag on.
They dug up his tree and they put it inside,
With Horton so sad that he practically cried.
“We’re off!” the men shouted. And off they all went
With Horton unhappy, one hundred per cent.
Up out of the jungle! Up into the sky!
Up over the mountains ten thousand feet high!
Then down, down the mountains
And down to the sea
Went the cart with the elephant,
Egg, nest and tree …
Then out of the wagon
And onto a ship!
Out over the ocean …
And oooh, what a trip!
Rolling and tossing and splashed with the spray!
And Horton said, day after day after day,
“I meant what I said
And I said what I meant …
But oh, am I seasick!
One hundred per cent!
After bobbing around for two weeks like a cork,
They landed at last in the town of New York.
“All ashore!” the men shouted,
And down with a lurch
Went Horton the Elephant
Still on his perch,
Tied onto a board that could just scarcely hold him …
BUMP!
Horton landed!
And then the men sold him!
Sold to a circus! Then week after week
They showed him to people at ten cents a peek.
They took him to Boston, to Kalamazoo,
Chicago, Weehawken and Washington, too;
To Dayton, Ohio; St. Paul, Minnesota;
To Wichita, Kansas; to Drake, North Dakota.
And everywhere thousands of folks flocked to see
And laugh at the elephant up in a tree.
Poor Horton grew sadder the farther he went,
But he said as he sat in the hot noisy tent:
“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant
An elephant’s faithful – one hundred per cent!”
txt
i’m waiting outside the cathedral
can’t join you
it’s pissing down here
hmm it was surprising
your call
it seems we still know
little of each other
stay cool
you can meet us at thomas becket
in orange street
if you feel like
pity
just left town
on your way home
take shortcut
to see cathedral
and full moon
very sorry
any chance we could meet
tuesday or wednesday
around 12
have had a rough nite
will explain
how about 7 dials
at 7.15
hey
7 dials
can we say 7.30
walked away
with real sadness
would like to see more of you
next time
always enjoy
our brief interludes
have a safe flight home
some important words
spoken last night
thx
