October 1st - October 7th 2001
Sunday Red Laurie, Yellow Laurie
Saturday Mentl
Friday Joy Joyce
Thursday Poetry day
Wednesday Very me
Tuesday Unintelligent artifice
Monday Alluvial
Sunday 7th October 2001
Is it possible to be a fan of a musician and yet not be particularly taken by their music?
I fell in love with Laurie Anderson ten years or so ago at one of the earliest Mediamatic conferences in Amsterdam, where she gave a thrilling talk about music and technology illustrated, naturally enough, with a handful of songs. Or, hmm, was in Cannes, at Milia?
Whichever, there was a moment a little later, when I looked across at her over the crowded floor of the congress, and our glances locked, and her gaze was so intelligent, so intense that - baddabing - love at second sight.
I played with her Cd-Rom, Puppet Motel, and I visited her exhibition when it docked at The Royal Festival Hall a few years ago. But somehow, after her first few CDs, I managed to miss most of her music.
Attending her Royal Festival Hall concert with Jonce on Friday, I didn't appreciate how rare it is for her to do a greatest-hits show. Worse, I didn't even recognise that these were her greatest hits. (Though even I recognised O Superman.)
So I found the evening slightly, but only slightly, disappointing. For one thing, the sound quality, vitally important for an artist like Anderson, was rather fuzzy (and our box was sited directly in line with one of the RFH's massive speaker rigs.) For another, there was little overt techno-magic on display (though I noticed that there were at least as many technicians skulking in the shadows as there were musicians on stage.) And there were no, repeat no, visuals.
When she spoke though, ah, when she spoke - the old magic was there sure enough. Talking about an early British ambassador to America, a notorious transvestite, and quoting him as claiming "I am here to represent Queen Anne, and I must represent her to the best of my ability." Talking about the way the French push their push-chaired children off the pavement and onto the road "like traffic-testers."
And, best of all, dedicating her show to "the recent events in New York and the tremendous oportunities for change that they present." (I quote from memory, but you get the idea.)
Perhaps it's that old trope: I don't want to appreciate Laurie Anderson, I want to be her. She taught Egyptian architecture. She worked at McDonalds, just a few months ago. And she was commissioned by the Encyclopaedia Britannica to write an essay about New York. How cool is that?
After the show, and a quick drink with Paul and Jonce at the Retro Bar, I hurried myself down to Sleaze at Crash. Nothing that happened there can be reported here but let me just say it was wonderfully, thrillingly, frightfully filthy.
Saturday 6th October 2001
Tightly topical programming on ITV this afternoon, as a woman fearlessly disguises herself and goes deep under cover to discover the secrets of a tightly-knit group of fundamentalist students, only to fall in love with a man with suicidal tendencies: Yentl.
Friday 5th October 2001
Be sure to see Philo for a photo-filled report of the Folsom Street Fair complete with truly fabulous hair, the biggest hula hoop in the world and, my favourite, the leather clown.
American readers may be forgiven for knowing nothing of Yootha Joyce a rather bizarre-looking British actress who began her career working with Joan Littlewood and ended it appearing in some dreadfully low-rent sit-coms. What I didn't know, until the documentary I saw the other day, was that she drank herself to death aged 53. And that 'Yootha' is the Maori for 'Joy'...
Several hours of pretty determined minkering with David last night ended up with us in Clapham, for some reason. But I still managed to get home in time to catch most of the double-issue opener of Action on Channel Four. Okay, so I was drunk, but I thought it was hilarious. Rather gay, too. Cult-viewing, I'd say.
A recent news snippet on the late night news, that nobody else seems to have picked up on, suggested that Peter Mandelson may be considering standing as Ken Livingstone's successor as London mayor. Intriguing.
I'm always intrigued by the speed with which sick jokes start cropping up after a tragedy: salutary corrections to the media's tendency to get pious on our ass at the drop of a hat, or a plane, or a bomb.
Few of these jokes bear repeating (though I admit to being both slightly shocked and mildly amused by the quiz team who chose to call themselves 'Concorde direct to your hotel' a year or so ago); the point of these jokes is rarely their laff-quotient, after all.
The thing that intrigues me most is the time that elapses between an event and its inevitable whispered joke-reaction. The events of September 11th seem to have set a new record in this respect: up until this afternoon, I think I've heard only one quip in the last four weeks.
(One sick quip, that is; several people have e-mailed me lame Bin Laden cartoons - Dusty bin Laden, bin Laden buggering Bush, etc - but those are operating on a different wavelength.)
Compare and contrast this with the Princess Di, where hundreds of jokes were circulating within days of her death.
One of the more repeatable of these was the (traditionally irrelevant) front cover of Private Eye which, under the headline 'Media to Blame', showed crowds outside Buckingham Palace whispering to each other: "The papers are a disgrace', "Yes, I couldn't get one anywhere."' "Borrow mine. It's got a picture of the car..."
Private Eye continued this posture with its recent cover, which shows a Bush advisor whispering "It's Armageddon, sir" and the president replying: "I'm Armaggedon outahere." Incredibly enough, the letters pages of its current issue are crowded with readers cancelling their subscriptions.
This afternoon, almost four weeks after the event, I received a photoshopped picture of a bespectacled nerd standing atop the WTC, a jet plane heading towards him, captioned "Missing..."
It will be interesting to see if this is a lone example, or some kind of watershed. But that is not, repeat not a request to send me more of this kind of thing. (Well, not unless they're really funny.)
Thursday 4th October 2001
Lured out of doors by sunlight, I bestirred my slightly blunted self to London Bridge. Emerging from the Underground, I found the clouds had crept upon me unaware. Shades of grey were everywhere.
Undetermined, on I sauntered through the streets to find the Anchor Tavern where, with just a few short upward steps, there the City lies spread all before you.
Determinedly concentric, the wooden O of Shakespeare's Globe seems to have turned its back upon the further shore. Post-modernist, I carved a slim slice straight through the walls, allowing just a glimpse of what was happening inside.
They say Wren lived just a few doors down from here. I thought of him, coming down each morning, watching the bulk of new St Paul's loom larger and larger over his breakfast egg.
I stopped to stare at the so-called Blade of Light, dulled now and still under repair. The scaffolding that surrounds each node of this infamously wibbly-wobbly bridge has a bundle of straw hanging from it - it's a bye-law apparently.
The sky was grey, the buildings were grey, the river was grey. I found myself wishing I could reach out with a paintbrush and dab just a few dashes of paint onto the grey stainless steel of the bridge. I knew just the right colour too - a washed out yellow with just the slightest hint of green.
And then, but only then, I turned and entered Tate Modern.
View-oriented as I was by now, I didn't want to look at any art. Or, rather, any Art. I climbed instead to the café on the second floor and out onto the terrace, hoping for a cigarette but lacking a light.
And then, far to the west, the sun dipped underneath the shelf of cloud and there was light - washing slowly across the city, glinting on the cross above St Paul's, rounding out the flat surfaces, bringing dimension to what had been mere facades.
Boats appeared as if from nowhere. A touring riverbus, faceted like a dragonfly. And a hulking slow barge, with a superstructure painted in just the shade of yellow that I'd wanted, carrying containers, oxide-red. And then, a rainbow.
Later, I took some time exploring the huge Munoz installation in the Turbine Hall. More views. All grey.
From there, continuing westward, the riverside walk creeps underneath three bridges at Blackfriars. Greyfriars? Three bridges, or maybe two and a half: the piers of the old railway bridge still process across the river like the Emperor's New Clothes, far too majestic to notice that they no longer have anything to support.
The rain came on as I approached the Oxo Tower. Beguiled by orchids bigger than butterflies, frozen in a florists window, I passed through the building to find what could have been another installation: a long glass-fronted hallway framing the prospect of the dilapidated brick walls opposite and, in between, sharp shafts of rain like pale lightning, dancing on the mirrored pavement, side-lit by a sudden burst of sun. And in the corner, a derelict, muttering.
Turning to leave, I found this was, in fact, the downstairs lobby of the Brasserie. And Bar. Why not? I thought. And went on up.
It's posh, but not that posh. And pricey, but not that pricey. £3.35 for a Tiger beer, plus all the olives you can eat. Sadly the river view is available only to diners, but I'd had enough of that for now, so I sat and watched my fellow drinkers instead. And, beyond them, the whole of South London spread across like broken tarmac.
The bar-staff seem friendly enough, and some were cute. One turned to another and said "...and when I click my fingers, you will turn into a chicken." Ah, if only, I thought, and went my way.
Cuddled up to the side of the Oxo development is the Coin Street craft market, a little bit of Camden dusted over Southwark. I didn't stop but strode on and into the National Theatre (pompous) and the National Film Theatre (crowded).
Pausing for a pee at the Royal Festival Hall, I discovered that at least one of the toilets now bears a sign: "For your convenience [sic] this facility now has a uniformed attendant inside." Undeterred, I went on in, only to notice an unaccustomed range of bottled perfumes lavished across the wash-counter, and a white-coated serf eager to earn a tip in return for a swift spritz. "How Bulgarian," I thought, I don't know why. I hope this habit doesn't spread.
The top floor terrace of the Festival Hall offers another spectacular view, placed right where the river wheels towards Westminster, now backlit under a setting sun. I sat and watched the drama leach out of the architecture and leap into the sky, where mottled clouds flared orange, yellow and then back to grey.
A grey day. But in a good way.
Canden? A meer slip of the fingers.
I say,
It's National Poetry Day today.
Hooray.
Wednesday 3rd October 2001
Everybody is supposed to have a 'type', their ideal man or woman. The range and exclusivity of other people's types never fail to amaze me: redheads, bubble-butts, black guys, hairy blokes, bald blokes, big blokes - truly, there is somebody for everybody.
I'm pretty clear about the kind of guy I fancy, though I'm less certain about how to describe it. 'Skinny youths' sounds a bit pervy; 'lean and coltish' rather too veterinarian.
But here's today's tv reviews in The Independent, and a puff for Memphis Belle, starring Matthew Modine who, it says, "has an 'aw shucks' kind of face; he radiates a clean-limbed decency."
Clean-limbed decency. It may not be what I get, but it comes pretty close to describing what I want.
Form an orderly queue.
Tuesday 2nd October 2001
I popped down to Surrey Quays to see AI last night.
I think the best thing about it is the title, which describes Spielberg's film-making talents to a T. The man is such an emotional zombie: he knows what empathy is, he knows it's important but, try as he might, he just can't pull it off.
(I have a vision of the Giant Spielberger, a huge emotional organ with stops marked Pathos, Horror and Lurve; you pull them all the way out, slide a cascade of dollars into the slot, pump away for all you're worth while the screen swells with moons, teardrops, and musical crescendo...but the audience stays resolutely unmoved. Because there is no-one at the keyboard. The Spielberger is an automaton, a player piano, an organola.)
The structure of the film doesn't help, of course. The first third is basic robot-comedy, with a mother-figure who might as well be a robot herself - Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver or Sissy Spacek might have pulled it off, but Frances O'Connor simply can't. Pitted as she is against the ineffable Haley Joel Ointment, there's no contest. Robots: 1; Humans: 0.
The second third, the Flesh Fair, comes from a spectacularly different movie - all thrills and spills, chases, helicopter rides and, yes, explosions. I liked Jude Law, but haven't we seen this movie before? Blade Runner, was it?
The final third, in Man-Hattan and after, seems to have been torn not only from a different movie but from a different planet altogether. Never mind the intrusive aliens (or are they mechas?) and the sudden 2000 year time-jump (?what!); tell me what the final scene is supposed to mean. If anything. (He loves her: we know that. She loves him, in her fashion: we know that too. And now their positions are reversed, kinda - he's as close to human as it gets, she's a construct. And your point is?)
I think you can spot the rot creeping in during the very first scene of the movie, where Professor Hobby says the point is to see if robots are capable of love, and his caring clever student replies that, no, the point is to see if it's possible for robots to be loved.
That is not the point of course, since love (in the Judaeo-Christian tradition at least) has never been held to be an affair of mutual checks and balances. But in the hands of an intellectually-courageous film-maker, it's not such a bad premise, a good place from which to move on to explore just what we mean by love, and to what extent love is itself a construct.
But for Spielberg, blinded by the flag, choked by apple-pie, love cannot be questioned.
Further hampered by his overwhelming itch to get apocalyptic on our ass, the film proceeds steadily to spiral completely out of control, leaving the poor sad corpse of its original premise twitching on the road behind it.
It would be silly to say that Spielberg is the wrong director for this film, since the story is, by all accounts, created as much by him as it was by Kubrick or, before him, Ian Watson or Brian Aldiss. Interesting thought, though - who could have handled this better?
Me, I'd like to see it made by the Coen brothers...
"Hey Ian, did you go to Hope last night?"
"Nah, I got as far as the tube station, but it was twenty to twelve, I wasn't in the best of moods, bit of an upset stomach, sore arse, money's a bit tight, the weather was crap, it's on the other side of London, so I went..nah, turned round and came home."
I must have had that conversation with at least six people at the RVT on Sunday. And, do you know, without exception, every single one of them replied: "Why have you got a sore arse???"
Apologies for erratic blogging lately, largely due to the relative flatness of my life over the last week or so, but not helped by difficulties in getting through to my so-called 'service' provider.
Monday 1st October 2001
It rains and rains and rains; my dear, it's positively alluvial.
Time to get an ark-kit from Ikea and start filling it with two of everything: two press spokesmen, two anorexic pop-stars, two stoic city-traders, two wide-eyed club kidz, two foul-mouthed single mothers, two accountancy students, two know-nothings from technical support...
OK, cancel that thought. I'd rather stay here and drown.
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