October 14, 2009
Filler 57
Given the long gaps between posts these days, you might imagine that they'd have some decent content when they eventually do roll up, but alas that's not the case. These banal scribbles don't, clearly, take weeks of careful crafting. So I'm not entirely sure why I'm not posting more often, just tossing up whatever useless drivel happens across my mind every day or two. Isn't that the blogging spirit? It used to be, at least.
In any case, here's a few bits of catch-up fluff to keep things ticking over.
As mentioned in passing last time, I went to see Pere Ubu, oh, weeks ago now. They were at the ICA, performing Long Live Père Ubu! a rather literal musical adaptation of the Alfred Jarry play from which the band took their name. Lead singer David Thomas, of course, took the role of the grotesque Père; and also, due to the indisposition of Sarah Jane Morris on this occasion, sang Mère as well. The remaining characters were played on an ad hoc basis by the rest of the band. The result was quite fun, in an incredibly shambolic way, but it was overlong and spent far too much time on the not hugely interesting script, only really taking off in a few of the songs and on the occasions when Thomas -- always a powerful presence -- went off-script and started being himself; or at least the monstrous stage self he has constructed for these purposes. Oddly, being tied down to a single narrative made the whole event seem much less coherent than Thomas's more usual bricolage of story fragments and impressions, ideas and Americana. It was no Meadville, that's for sure.
In other news, my research continues apace, or at least it would if "apace" meant "hardly at all". As David Thomas said at some juncture late in the evening:
My enthusiasm for this project... wanes.
Meanwhile, I am saddled with an assortment of other CoMPLEX responsibilities of kinds that I really must learn to refuse. These are rather variably burdensome, often demanding almost nothing from one month to the next, but one particularly poor choice has me co-organising a conference in December, which is currently causing no end of grief and likely to get worse. I wish we could just cancel the whole thing, but sadly that's not an option. Quite a lot of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments is in prospect over the next two months. Who knows, some little incontinent dribbles of vitriol may even find there way onto these nowadays undervenomed pages.
On a more pleasurable note, the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships are in town. I spent about 10 hours yesterday in the O2 arena watching the men's qualifying competition. This was, I think, my first time at a major sporting event, and though it was inevitably a bit plodding some of the time just out of sheer logistics, much of it was quite thrilling. I foolishly elected not to take my camera; I won't make the same mistake for the all-around final tomorrow night. Should any decent pics result I shall post them. Indecent ones too, perhaps...
Posted by matt at October 14, 2009 9:42 PM