Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Edinburgh 2013 Week One
Edinburgh 2013 Week One
It’s nine o’clock on Saturday night and three of my housemates have just decided to have a nap. (In other, totally unrelated, news: the Edinburgh Tattoo with its fireworks that resound across Edinburgh every Saturday night, hearty as haggis, has just begun in earnest.)
This evening I have dragged myself away from the promise of pleasures abound to have a rest. I am weary. My skin has begun to protest against the diet of wine, cobbles and wretched anxiety in the form of a painful chin-based spot.
It was raining hard last Monday afternoon as we pulled up to C Nova, our venue in Edinburgh. Director Montse was already there, cowering under an umbrella. Ben, Dan and I clambered from the van and onto the Scottish sheened cobbles and, after checking in and not quite drinking a cup of coffee, we hefted my set into the studio theatre space to begin the technical rehearsal.
I had been brittle with nerves about the tech. Bright Lights is set around a reception desk with a telephone that acts as a loop pedal to record and play back my voice. All swishily simple, really, and something I can set up easily in my house with my stuff, but I had no idea how to plug it all into an unknown venue. I had never met Ash, the freelance technician I had employed for the run. I had no idea what anything would be like.
As soon as Ash bounded in he began sorting things out. Talking to the venue technicians, joking with Montse, plugging things, testing things and gaffa taping other things. Montse guided us all through the tech, sorting out all the lights and sound, I just stood in the whirlwind and mentally crossed something out on my Things To Be Terrified About In Edinburgh checklist.
We finished at about ten, and Montse and I headed back to our flat. Ben and Dan had already arrived, and had carted all of our stuff – cases, instruments, boxes of cables, set – up the seven flights of stairs. Lifts, apparently, are not the done thing in fancy Edinburgh townhouses.
Simply put: this flat is a palace. Last year we all nearly had to stay in a place that was reminiscent of the place where dogs go to defecate and die. This year we played the Fringe housing game and won gold. (Maybe silver, actually. For it to be gold standard it might have to have a lift.)
The large wooden coffee table in the living room was covered with an array of cheese, wine and small artisan biscuits, around which was an even better array of housemates. There was Ben and Dan, (whom I love and adore and respect and admire as humans and men). Then Tomás, who is performing a show called Tomás Ford’s Electric Midnight Cabaret, and Aaron, his manager. They are from Perth and are both the sort of people who make you laugh so loudly that you worry they think you’re a bit needy. Then there’s Fi, from Wanaka in New Zealand. Fi is funny, gutsy and cool, plays a mean guitar and is a whiz on the whisky. Alex, our final housemate, hadn’t arrived yet, so we all proceeded to bag the best rooms and spent a large amount of time laughing wildly and pointing out the castle to one another. “Look” someone would exclaim at least once every five minutes “at the castle! It’s right there!”. A collective, smug sigh would ensue, before someone else would point joyously in the other direction. “And there’s the SEA!”.
Between then and now all has been brilliantly, weirdly heady. I had the worst dress rehearsal ever, followed by two preview shows (one of which was awful and the other alright). Yesterday I felt like I finally, tentatively began to relax. “Oh, yeah!” my brain mumbled. “I think I might like this.” I have spent such a long time planning and worrying about it, and had somehow forgotten all about the good bit.
I have been wondering recently whether I might be better off just performing my songs. I feel comfortable on stage when I am just being myself, singing songs I’ve written and chatting away to the audience in between. I have played those songs so many times, even the new ones. I know the format of gigs so well that I am rarely fazed by them any more. But this is my first solo show. It is barely out of the packaging: shiny and not worn in. But quietly yesterday I began to feel like I knew it, and today I suddenly breathed and felt comfortable, to my enormous, unending relief.
Today and yesterday I have had good, biggish audiences. Yesterday I performed some songs and cello at C Nova, and tomorrow I am doing a spot on Pick of the Fringe at the Pleasance. I am going to begin doing my proper music slots next week. And I have had a review! Which is very nice and lovely, and was from the preview that nearly sent me under, so I feel heartened. Montse went home today, but she set me up and held my hand, giving me notes and support and being generally on my team in a massive way.
Now I can hear my housemates stirring and I want to go and hang out with them and laugh too loudly at their jokes. We haven’t quite been doing the all-out Fringe party, although there has been some carousing, drinking and seeing shows at midnight (we all went to Tomás’s show, which is insane and hilarious). Now we have been here for nearly a week and it’s starting to not feel weird and scary, it’s starting to feel like that thing that I do everyday. What luck! I can do this every day. I would prefer to do it without a spot on my face, but you can’t win them all.
I think maybe it’s all going to be fine.
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Saturday, March 4, 2017
Edinburgh Part One
Edinburgh Part One
The day before we went to Edinburgh I nearly suffocated in lists. Our flat was littered with small, desperate scraps of paper with scrawled To Do haikus on them.
Loop pedal (and lead)
Black dresses (one, two and three)
Ibuprofen (lots)
On the morning we left Ben made egg mayonnaise sandwiches for five people, while I checked corners for lurking fruit that might be ready to go dramatically mouldy as soon as the front door slammed shut. As usual I did not check my lists, considering a thoughtful frown in the vague direction of my luggage sufficient insurance against forgotten things.
Once at the train station we met Dan and stood amongst our metropolis of luggage. A cello, a speaker, a guitar, a loop pedal, a midi keyboard, computers, a snake nest of leads, a keyboard stand, a wooden board and two weeks worth of clothes and shoes. I may have been responsible for slightly more of the last two things than Dan and Ben, but luckily for me Sophie and Lowri soon arrived to even up the scores.
Having wrestled our suitcase city onto the train, we excitedly all ate our sandwiches way before lunchtime, gazed out of windows for goat-spotting and made jokes about what we were going to do next year instead of saving for six months to go and rinse our money trying to get people to validate us. "2013: Costa del Sol!" I remarked, hilariously, privately deciding to make it an in-joke for the rest of the trip.
Finally, after quite a number of "are we in Scotland yet?"s and "have you brought your passport?"s, some whole carriage conversations and sudden realizations that one of us had forgotten something vital, we pulled into Edinburgh Waverley.
Two taxis later and we arrived at the accommodation wed booked months previously. Loud music screeched from the battered, pebble-dashed flats. "Dont you just love the summer holidays?" one of us muttered in response to some howls that echoed from an upstairs open window. We sat on a wall and waited for the estate agent to come and let us in, everyone trying their best not to look like a snob and consider the over-a-thousand-pounds we had paid for a two week stay in this place where brown water was seeping down the walls and the hallway seemed dark and foreboding through smudged glass.
Eventually the agent loped into sight. He was tall, with a bald head and an expression of amused distaste. He gamely picked up a suitcase and lead us through the damp concrete hallway to our flat on the fourth floor.
I was heaving my cello onto the second set of stairs when I heard Lowri and Sophie being shown into the flat.
"Oh!"
It was an "Oh!" that could have been "Oh! An en suite!" or "Oh! A balcony!" or "Oh! A hot tub with a built in Champagne dispenser!".
I made my way up the next two flights to discover that, in fact, it was an "Oh! What is that smell that has just hit me round the face like a three-week old haddock?"(which you will certainly agree is a significantly inferior "oh!").
The flat smelled impressively bad. Like, horrifying, kneecap-tinglingly, retina-searingly awful. Later we decided that it smelled as though a dog, or possibly some dogs, had urinated copiously, then died and not been discovered for a few weeks. I do like to employ poetic licence sometimes (read: flagrantly exaggerate) but I promise I am not in this case.
The estate agent tried to tell us he would have it cleaned but we all went into simultaneous lawyer-mode (as learned from Ally McBeal circa 1998) and determinedly lugged all our stuff back down the stairs and demanded alternative accommodation.
After a short phone call ("yeah, no, it is really bad actually") he announced that he had an alternative for us. Taxis were called, luggage heaved once more and he said hed meet us there.
Again, Sophie and Lowri went in first. "Oh!" I heard one of them say. "A balcony!" I waited hopefully for the hot tub/Champagne dispenser to be discovered, but when it didnt happen I didnt really mind. It didnt smell like a canine mortuary, and for that I was immensely grateful.
It was a much nicer, infinitely nicer, stupidly nicer flat. It was further from town, overlooking the shore, but it meant our balcony had a sea-view, so we could watch ships do disappearing tricks and try and pretend we were on a proper holiday. ("Costa del Sol!" I said, to gales of disapproving silence.) We chose not to focus on the fact that the estate agent was clearly going to charge us loads of money for a dump when they had perfectly lovely flats available, and settled in.
That night we unpacked, drank wine and got excited, nervous about the following day, when Sophie, Lowri and I would start our show on the top of our bus.
Available link for download
Thursday, March 2, 2017
English Notebook One
English Notebook One
I went to England and now Im back again.
Listen. Ive realized that if I try to arrange the notes and photographs from the trip into a neat, coherent, chronological set of entries, I will never get around to showing you anything at all.
So Im going to post things as and how they occur to me. If you find the scattershot approach disconcerting, please consider that at least you are not trapped in my living room watching me click through slides while Dolores rests her head on your shoulder.
My very first note from this trip–scribbled after a stroll up Regent Street on arrival day–was this:
I know perfectly well that not every guy in England is fashion plate. But the tweedy peacocks of Central London reminded me of the joy I used to take in dressing myself, and while my closet hasnt been set on fire it has come under close scrutiny. Time will tell whether I improve myself in any significant way. It can be tough to do while living in a city where a nice, clean Ohio State sweatshirt is considered suitable for an evening wedding.
We took the train from Kings Cross Station
to Cambridge. I had never been there before.
My friend Liz lives there, and was graduated from Clare College, so she knows her way around. She took us places we would never have known to go, and told us things the tour guides would not have known.
This is Liz.
Shes a knitter (to put it mildly). The fantastic hat is by Woolly Wormhead and was finished while we were eating lunch.
Here are a few things we saw in Cambridge. (There will be more. These are the shots closest to hand.)
Kings College Chapel and some of Clare College, from the river. (Click to embiggen.)
Had it been snowing, this would have been the cover of my favorite Christmas record, A Festival of Lessons and Carols. I would like to thank Kings College, Cambridge, for looking exactly as it was supposed to look.
The Colleges of Cambridge put every other academic landscape Ive ever seen (and I have seen far, far too many) in the shade. You cant move five feet without finding something like this polychrome archway in St Johns College looming over you. (Again, click to embiggen.)
The Colleges, of course, are on the beaten path. Well off the beaten path was All Saints, a church only lately rescued from dereliction and neglect that was decorated by leading lights of the Arts and Crafts Movement. (There is a handy guide to the windows above the altar showing which designer–Burne-Jones or Morris–was responsible for which saints.)
There was a pottery sale going on in the church, and while Tom and Liz browsed I wandered freely and photographed things.
The walls–all painted and stenciled–were not to be believed, even those still awaiting conservation.
There was a time, you see, when artists didnt consider it a waste of time to apply their talents to the decoration of mundane things like walls. And there was a time, you see, when people hadnt been conditioned by the lazy brutality of Modernism to accept the ugly, inhuman, undecorated box as the only form of construction. (Dear Mies van der Rohe, I hate you and you can suck it.)
Theres more. But itll have to wait a little while. Ill aim for tomorrow.
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Friday, February 10, 2017
Especial Ray Harryhausen 9ª Parte Hace Un Millón de Años 1966 One Million Years B C
Especial Ray Harryhausen 9ª Parte Hace Un Millón de Años 1966 One Million Years B C
sinopsis:
Hace muchos años, en el principio de los tiempos... Tumak, miembro de la tribu de las rocas, es expulsado de ésta por una cuestión de dominio tribal; vagando, llega cerca del mar y conoce la tribu de las conchas, y a la rubia y hermosa Loana. El carácter aún salvaje de aquél provoca que sea también expulsado de la nueva tribu, más civilizada, pero Loana decidirá partir con él...
Ficha Técnica
Comentario
A mediados de los 60 la Hammer era ya una consumada productora en cine fantástico. Su especialidad, claro está, era el terror, pero por aquellas fechas explorarían otros subgéneros limítrofes. Así, la fantasía prehistórica les llamó la atención, y decidieron realizar una nueva versión del clásico (hoy, parece ser, imposible de ver) Hace un millón de años, que en los 40 protagonizaron Victor Mature, Carole Landis y Lon Chaney Jr. Según parece, la versión de la Hammer es absolutamente fiel al original, salvo en su final.
Para realizar los efectos especiales, Roach padre e hijo contaron con Roy Seawright y Jack Shaw, quienes emplearon el sobado recurso, muy poco convincente, de utilizar lagartos e iguanas aumentados de tamaño. Para el remake, la Hammer optó por contratar a Ray Harryhausen, especialista en el método de la stop motion. La primera criatura que aparece en la película es un lagarto aumentado, tal como en la antigua. Según declaraciones de Harryhausen, lo hizo para conferirle un aire de mayor autenticidad al film; sin embargo, yo creo que es más bien lo contrario: tras ver ese recurso facilón, después se nos ofrecen las magistrales creaciones del maestro, demostrándose ostentosamente superiores y convincentes a las criaturas reales. El trabajo de Harryhausen es el que da una dimensión tan atractiva a la película y, de hecho, es el único factor por el cual se la suele valorar.
Sin embargo, para mí, el film ofrece otras virtudes. Brinda, en efecto, un guión sencillo, como sencillos son sus personajes, más no por ello la película debe ser desechada sin más. Es una sencillez primitiva, elemental, que muestra a los personajes, las situaciones, en su absoluta desnudez, enfrentados a sentimientos y reacciones acaso vírgenes para el ser humano hasta entonces: la risa, el miedo, la furia, el deseo... Lo elemental de caracterizar a la morena tribu de las rocas como primitiva y salvaje, y a la rubia tribu de las conchas como civilizada y sensible no es tanto un recurso dramático como una metáfora para representar el acceso a la evolución paulatina de la especie humana -determinada por un tercer representante como son los prehomínidos de la cueva que los protagonistas se encuentran a mitad de camino, y que incluso a Tumak dan miedo-. Ese mismo primitivismo es fielmente reflejado por la magistral partitura de Mario Nascimbene, autor también de una composición que retrotrae a viejos tiempos como es la de la magistral “Los vikingos” (The Vikings, 1958), de Richard Fleischer.
Otro elemento que representa esa "elementalidad" de los personajes es el interesante recurso de ofrecer a los salvajes hablar una lengua inventada de escaso vocabulario, apenas unos pocos términos. Curiosamente, la crítica tomó esta opción de Carreras a mofa; años después, cuando se empleó igual recurso en la también prehistórica, y más realista, “En busca del fuego” (La guerre du feu, 1981), de Jean-Jacques Annaud, se recibió como algo originalísimo.
Hablábamos de realismo y es que, evidentemente, Hace un millón de años no pretende ser una película realista -el propio título ya supone un anacronismo-, sino sólo ser una fantasía ambientada en un mundo antiguo, muy antiguo, donde personas, animales y el propio ambiente reaccionaban a principios elementales, donde lo primero era subsistir, aunque luego se vistieran unas ropas dignas de las modelos que vivían esos tiempos terribles. Una joya más cercana al onirismo que al cine (pre)histórico.
Autor: Carlos Díaz Maroto
Fuente: pasadizo.com
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Friday, January 27, 2017
Epicurus VS The View host now believes no one came before Christians
Epicurus VS The View host now believes no one came before Christians
"The View" have done it again.
To start with I should remind you that the last time we ran in with the host Sherri Shepard on the view, she was admitting to not knowing if the "Earth was round or flat".
This time it started so promisingly. I totally support chat shows discussing "important" topics. It seems in this episode of "The View" they were talking about the excellent Epicurus - a near enough Atheist, and one of the first incredibly wise writers on why Religion, all in all, was a bit shit.
He said such wonderfully insightful comments as:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent.
Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
-- Epicurus
and
Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am
not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?
-- Epicurus
(Which I took from Jonathan Miller’s excellent ‘A Short History of Disbelief’ - but more can be found here.)
His insight is all the more the impressive when you realise this was 400 years before the birth of Christ.
As such, it makes the conversation that follows even more embarrassing - and after 2400 years of progress.
Weve let Epicurus down.
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