in time of

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

– e.e. cummings

I have no idea why I find this blog so hard to keep updated/going. After all I religiously posted weekly for the fifty-two poets project, and although my current diary of my year at UEA isn’t always updated twice-weekly as was intended, I have kept it up pretty well. But I still like the idea of this blog, so here goes resurrection number three (or is it number four?…), with two very different things I’ve enjoyed over the last fortnight.

First up, an exhibition of monotypes by Lino Mannocci at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. I’m a bit of a sucker for prints of any description, my favourite probably being etchings, since that’s the only type I’ve ever personally done. There’s something about the medium in general though that I find really compelling. Monotyping is a specific type of printmaking where the ink is applied directly to the plate’s surface, then printed, so it only creates one true impression and can’t be repeated. Mannocci’s technique also involves adding other sources to the print, creating these really evocative and dreamlike pieces. Quite a few drew from other famous works of art, or stories from the Bible; the annunciation, Susanna and the Elders.

Visiting the Fitzwilliam for the first time one of the exhibition postcards in the shop caught my eye, and I was so arrested we decided to go and have a quick look at the exhibition. I’m so glad we did – it was the highlight of the visit, for me. This is the postcard that caught my eye, and which I brought home with me:

Wednesday this week saw a rather less civilised jaunt to the spiegeltent that’s currently in Chapelfields, as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. The Bo Nanafana Social Club – organisers of the best parties in Norwich – had taken over the tent, filling it with music from a truly awesome big band, Fat 45, who played forties/fifties jump and jive, and a bit of cabaret too. Pretty much everyone was dressed up in a fifties Vegas style; even I got dolled up in fishnets, boa and heels. We got there too late for me to show off any of my hard-won swing moves – the dancefloor was packed from start to finish – but we had a great time. Dressing up + special (temporary) venue = superb atmosphere. Photos to follow…

Thanks to Simon and Gina respectively for the superb company…

]]> http://settheweatherfair.wordpress.com/2010/05/22/monotypes-and-mayhem/feed/ 0 kayvee May it be to me as you have said, 2009 Bo Nanafana at the spiegeltent http://settheweatherfair.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/puppet-grinder-cabaret/ http://settheweatherfair.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/puppet-grinder-cabaret/#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:24:04 +0000 kayvee http://settheweatherfair.wordpress.com/?p=49 ]]> I’ve been to the Little Angel Theatre in Islington a couple of times over the last year, but both times for the launch of a book of poetry rather than theatre. It’s a lovely little venue, and the photos on the walls of past productions have made me want to visit to see some actual puppetry. But as it’s geared towards children, and I have neither children of my own nor any I could ‘borrow’, I haven’t actually managed it.

But at the last launch (Mike Bartholomew-Biggs‘s brilliant Tradesman’s Exit) I saw an ad for an evening of ‘adult’ puppetry: Puppet Grinder Cabaret. It looked brilliant. Reviews were read (all very good) and tickets quickly booked.

So last Sunday, Malin and I headed down, unsure what to expect but hoping for the best. It was a brilliant evening: anarchic, rather low-fi, patchy in places but mostly very good and very funny. I wish I’d kept my programme so I could give you a full run-down but sadly, in a fit of trying not to hoard too much, it’s already gone in the bin. That’ll teach me.

Our compere for the evening was stand-up comic Dave Gibson, who was responsible for the great atmosphere and vibe (without him, I wonder if the evening might have been a bit flat). He set the tone – excited, funny, a bit rude – and got the audience warmed up nicely.

I now can’t remember the full programme, which included animation as well as live acts, but highlights for me were Clementine the living fashion doll, a shadow/paper cut-out animation of ‘Suck a thumb’ and the final live act, the Lost Circus, which was totally brilliant but quite hard to describe: basically a collection of found objects (feather duster, ski glove, etc) doing cabaret/circus tricks, all under the direction of a sock-puppet ringmaster. Very odd and very funny. The daredevil ski glove being shot from a cannon is my abiding memory of the night – just brilliant. So brilliant in fact that I can’t remember the other live acts that I enjoyed. I may well come back and add more details if I remember them…

Anyway the Puppet grinder cabaret is now on at Edinburgh, so if you’re up there, check them out – lots of very silly fun.

How children think of death is how the shadows
gather between the trees: a hiding place
for everything the grown-ups cannot name.
Nevertheless, they hurry to keep their appointment
far in the woods, at the meeting of parallel lines,
where everything is altered by its own
momentum – altered, though we say transformed -
greyhound to roebuck, laughter to skin and bone;

and no one survives the hunt: though the men return
in threes and fours, their faces blank with cold,
they never quite arrive at what they seem,
leaving a turn of phrase or a song from childhood
deep in the forest, bent to the juddering kill
and waiting, while their knives slip through the blood
like butter, or silk, until the heart is still.

It’s a fun play (comedy, with all the Shakespearean staples: dispossessed dukes, a forest, a fool, cross-dressing, bawdiness and falling in love) and one I hadn’t seen live before. We were groundlings (standing) and it all added to the fun, Saturday-afternoon vibe. The cast was brilliant – props in particular to Audrey, Jacques and Touchstone (the fool), who had the audience eating out of his hand.

And I have to say – the Swan bar, where we had a few reserved tables before/after the play and during the interval, was a lovely place to be on a sunny summer afternoon too. But I think I’m glad I made my excuses before the night got too messy…

With more classical music. Last night was concert number 10 in the BBC Proms series at the Royal Albert Hall. I got really cheap seats with a friend – we were way up in the last row of the circle, with a restricted view. The hall was probably only two-thirds full though,  so when it was clear no one else was going to be joining us on the last row we scooted right round and got a really good view of the whole orchestra (albeit from a long way up).

I love the Proms – a huge long series of concerts, a really diverse programme, and of course world-class orchestras, choirs, soloists and conductors. With standing tickets at a fiver it’s an amazingly cheap way to discover and enjoy a huge range of classical music.

Friday’s concert wasn’t on my ‘really want to see’ list (I haven’t managed to make any of them yet, but they’re all broadcast live on BBC Radio 3) but it was a lovely programme:  a mix of French (Debussy, Ravel), Spanish (Sarasate) and Japanese (Takemitsu, Hosokawa) music, ‘tracing musical cross-fertilisations between East and West, and between France and Spain’. It’s always a treat to see a full orchestra play, and Beth and I were wowed by the violin solo in the Ravel piece. Incredible that you can fill a hall with such a small piece of wood… although the violin in question did turn out to be a 1714 Stradivarius, which is in itself pretty impressive.

And we were rather hypnotised by the sound of the shō - a Japanese ‘mouth organ’ that, apparently, sounds like the call of a phoenix. I’d never heard (or even heard of) one before, and it was mesmerising – long series of chords that just went on and on (you can play it inhaling and exhaling). Beautiful.

(Interestingly, the two tallest reeds are silent, but they’re kept for aesthetic reasons – like two symmetrical ‘wings’.)

Here’s another try, though. I went to the most amazing concert last Friday, for my birthday, and it seemed just the thing with which to resurrect this blog. We went to see the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall (a home match as it were – they’re the South Bank’s resident orchestra). The programme was Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead – here‘s a fantastic introduction to the piece which you can listen to on the Radio 4 website; Mozart’s Piano Concerto no 23, and Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra – which apart from the opening part, was the one piece I wasn’t familiar with.

We had two boxes at the front, and it was so wonderful to have a view. Symphony orchestras are just so fantastic to watch – something like seventy violins, plus the rest! – and what a sound… Nothing compares to seeing music live, and that’s just as true of classical as any other genre. It was just – wow. The Isle of the Dead was probably my favourite piece – it’s so atmospheric. The opening notes had the hairs on my neck prickling.

The Mozart was a real treat too, of course. It’s a very familiar piece of music to me; I like listening to classical music when I’m working, in particular piano music, and I have a few cds of Mozart’s piano concertos, including the one we heard. The really exciting thing for me was getting to see a concert pianist play – I’ve seen symphony orchestras perform, but never a concert pianist. And this one was extra special – it was Leon Fleisher. Now in his eighties, Fleisher was a celebrated pianist until he lost the use of one of his hands, for something like thirty-five years. During this time he played the (somewhat limited) repertoire of one-handed piano music and established an alternative career as a conductor. Five or so years ago he got the use of his hand back, thanks to pioneering treatment (botox injections, apparently), and now he’s performing again. I first heard of him by listening to his lauded ‘Two Hands’ recording – his comeback cd from a few years ago, and it was so exciting to be able to see and hear this brilliant musician. There’s a lovely story in the Times here.

The Strauss was good fun (and of course has that fabulous opening) but I did find my attention wandering a few times; it’s actually not a piece I know at all, and sometimes familiarity helps. Anyway, hurrah for fantastic live music – and thanks to my lovely family for joining me, and making it a very special birthday.

To kick things back off, then, a special screening of David Lynch‘s The Straight Story at the Ritzy in Brixton. It was a rescore, done live by Big Chill friends and Sheffield duo Animat, and follows their hugely well received rescore of French animation Belleville Rendezvous. The Straight Story rescore included (apparently – I’d not seen the film before) a lot of the original score by Angelo Badalamenti, who has written the scores for most of David Lynch’s films, I think, mixed in with their own electronica compositions, plus tracks from the dj vaults. Given that it was a very scenic film, with lots of both close-ups of people’s faces, and panoramic shots of huge vistas, I think it was a great one to rescore, and sat well with Animat’s music. My only problems were the quality of the film – it looked like it was a dvd, which doesn’t look all that great on a cinema screen – and that the soundtrack occasionally got in the way of the dialogue. Other than that, enchanting stuff.

For completion’s sake, and then it’s done, here are two months worth of highlights:

December saw the consumption of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, Kenneth Branagh’s The Magic Flute, Disney’s Enchanted, the Lee Miller and craft exhibitions at the V&A, an inspiring talk by Jeremy Begbie at the LICC, comedy from Mark Thomas, dinners at Abeno and Canteen, the Barbican’s Jack and the Beanstalk and the Criterion’s 39 Steps, and Christmas atmosphere at Dennis Severs’ House.

January was much quieter, with a new purchase of an old Rufus Wainright album, Rufus Wainright (brilliant); a visit to the new gem gallery at the Natural History Museum (a little disappointing, with too many exhibits ‘temporarily removed’); the Age of Enchantment exhibition at the Dulwich Picture gallery (beautiful); and my first visit of the year to Kew Gardens.

I might as well clear February out of the way too, while I’m at it: two stunning films – both of which have recently won Oscars – No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood; a jaunt to Barcelona, and to go with it George Orwell’s Fighting in Spain (a very poorly edited – unacceptable from Penguin – extract from Homage to Catalonia); a surprisingly arresting read in Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent; a second visit to Kew; and last night, a spoken word performance from the ever-compelling Saul Williams. Absolutely thrilling.

Here’s to fairer blogging weather in 2008! The poetry project has got off to a good start; I’ll have to see if I can replicate my dedication here…

Following this great review Dan and I went to see The Counterfeiters, a German film set in a concentration camp where the prisoners’ dilemma hinges on whether or not to comply with counterfeiting the American dollar. It was fascinating, brutal, horrifying and totally absorbing – and based on fact: Operation Bernhard aimed to destabilise the British, and then American, economies by flooding the market with counterfeit currency. Krueger’s Men, published a couple of years ago, looks like the definitive account of the plot; here‘s a fascinating article about how the film came to be made.

A quick jaunt to Rome in the middle of the month: my first visit to the eternal city. The weather was beautiful – mild but slightly crisp – and it wasn’t too busy. The whole trip, though short, really deserves its own post (or three), but the two things that remain lodged in my mind are sunny walks just exploring the city and its architecture, and visiting the Basilica of San Clemente. San Clemente is not just a beautiful twelfth-century basilica with exquisite frescoes and mosaics, but is built on top of a fourth-century basilica, which was built on top of a second-century Roman house, which contains a Mithraic temple – and you can walk down into each level. Extraordinary. The day that we flew back news was breaking that archaeologists have discovered what they think is the lupercale – the cave in which Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf. My photos from the trip are here.

Back home, the Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 at the National Portrait Gallery. The photograph used for the publicity for this exhibition was so arresting that I decided I had to go and see it, and it was a great little show – just the right size for a Friday night, with some really compelling portraits. It’s on until March; below is the winning portrait.