Mesdames et Monsieurs:
I saw Quidam last night. I didn't know it was going to be scary.
A prepubescent girl is being chronically ignored by her self-absorbed suburban parents. While they're too busy reading the news to remember she exists, she takes a bowler hat from a headless, raincoated passer-by - Quidam, the embodiment of everyone and no-one - and sets off on a journey into her own unconscious. It's hideous in there. It's this horrible dystopia (I suppose you don't get nice dystopias) full of delirium and fetishism and dead or otherwise broken people.
They suspended shrouded cadavers over the stage (by their necks, I think) - you can catch a glimpse of one in the background here.
There was an aerial silk person whose body was lit up blue like a drained corpse. I found the death imagery so compelling that although I know they've all done it a squidgillian times, throughout her act I was thinking that we could just be watching that one freak performance when a performer falls and breaks her back. I found I almost wanted her to fall because I wanted to see what would happen. Finally she wraps the silk around her neck and hangs herself - I mean really, she hangs by her neck, her face covered by the silk, so she looks like a suicide, and a man comes and takes the body down and tenderly carries it off stage.
I tell you what though. You see summink like the Cirque and it fucking takes the piss out of the limitations by which most people live our lives and which we impose upon each other. I don't just mean because they can make a living out of doing something artistic so why can't we all. I mean the physical limitations - or what a human being is literally capable of. We have ambitions but most of us tell ourselves we can't fulfil them because it's too hard - we're told it's unrealistic. Kids are brought up to assume they won't be capable of remarkable things - school's just a preparation for how to get by when life doesn't go the way you want it - rather than to try things and find out how remarkeable they can be.
Unrelated to the above:
Tomorrow an experiment begins! It's called Lights Out. If it's any good I'm gunna have a go at pitching The Idler with it.
So, you know how I believe that society is fucked up because we don't live in accordance with the seasons or the sun or the moon? And how because we're always doing battle with time it's no wonder folks is stressed and depressed?
Well, I'm aware that in order to live in harmony with the seasons and the sun, I'd have to make some pretty horrifying changes to my lifestyle. I'm very fond of being awake at night, and I fucking hate the morning. But for a week (possibly to be extended), I have to be up by dawn, in order to maximise access to the sun - and I'm not allowed to use artificial light. (Although I'm still going to go to work, which will mean being in a building where electric light is being used.)
I'm not boycotting other forms of technology during the experiment - this isn't an Amish thing, it's simply a question of timetabling; learning to be up when the sun's up. Today has been the Spring Equinox, so tomorrow seems a good time to start. Sun rise is around 6am, that's when I'll be up. I'll be making a little diary of how I get on - it might not be very exciting but I hope it might be funny or interesting or something.
This isn't last night's routine, but it's a woman doing silk things:
I saw Quidam last night. I didn't know it was going to be scary.
A prepubescent girl is being chronically ignored by her self-absorbed suburban parents. While they're too busy reading the news to remember she exists, she takes a bowler hat from a headless, raincoated passer-by - Quidam, the embodiment of everyone and no-one - and sets off on a journey into her own unconscious. It's hideous in there. It's this horrible dystopia (I suppose you don't get nice dystopias) full of delirium and fetishism and dead or otherwise broken people.
They suspended shrouded cadavers over the stage (by their necks, I think) - you can catch a glimpse of one in the background here.
There was an aerial silk person whose body was lit up blue like a drained corpse. I found the death imagery so compelling that although I know they've all done it a squidgillian times, throughout her act I was thinking that we could just be watching that one freak performance when a performer falls and breaks her back. I found I almost wanted her to fall because I wanted to see what would happen. Finally she wraps the silk around her neck and hangs herself - I mean really, she hangs by her neck, her face covered by the silk, so she looks like a suicide, and a man comes and takes the body down and tenderly carries it off stage.
I tell you what though. You see summink like the Cirque and it fucking takes the piss out of the limitations by which most people live our lives and which we impose upon each other. I don't just mean because they can make a living out of doing something artistic so why can't we all. I mean the physical limitations - or what a human being is literally capable of. We have ambitions but most of us tell ourselves we can't fulfil them because it's too hard - we're told it's unrealistic. Kids are brought up to assume they won't be capable of remarkable things - school's just a preparation for how to get by when life doesn't go the way you want it - rather than to try things and find out how remarkeable they can be.
Unrelated to the above:
Tomorrow an experiment begins! It's called Lights Out. If it's any good I'm gunna have a go at pitching The Idler with it.
So, you know how I believe that society is fucked up because we don't live in accordance with the seasons or the sun or the moon? And how because we're always doing battle with time it's no wonder folks is stressed and depressed?
Well, I'm aware that in order to live in harmony with the seasons and the sun, I'd have to make some pretty horrifying changes to my lifestyle. I'm very fond of being awake at night, and I fucking hate the morning. But for a week (possibly to be extended), I have to be up by dawn, in order to maximise access to the sun - and I'm not allowed to use artificial light. (Although I'm still going to go to work, which will mean being in a building where electric light is being used.)
I'm not boycotting other forms of technology during the experiment - this isn't an Amish thing, it's simply a question of timetabling; learning to be up when the sun's up. Today has been the Spring Equinox, so tomorrow seems a good time to start. Sun rise is around 6am, that's when I'll be up. I'll be making a little diary of how I get on - it might not be very exciting but I hope it might be funny or interesting or something.
This isn't last night's routine, but it's a woman doing silk things:
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
aesirr:
Intriguing thoughts and thats one bizarre show.
ollyp:
Well, there are apparently no original ideas left in the world, so I don't see that it invalidates your idea at all - and of course not only is The Good Life fictional, but it was also broadcast in the 70s... a lot has changed in the last 30 years.