how to get the arms race rolling

1946. The A bomb has been dropped. Scientists working at Los Alamos believe their work is done. They are exhausted, morally, physically, emotionally. They inhabit a remote part of New Mexico. There is little or nothing to do there. Their motivation is spent. But the Cold War has just begun. The struggle must go on. The H-Bomb, a hundred times as powerful than the Atom bomb, is waiting to be developed. A psychiatrist is brought in to advise on how to improve the working environment. He recommends jazz bands and... professional wrestling.

Six years later, Mike is tested. A Pacific island removed the map. The H Bomb is born.

little boy

If you chose a pretty kimono when you dressed that morning
At seven say, with much to do in the day, just to get by, you
Would have found the flowers on the print of your kimono
Etched into your skin, by eight, if you belonged to the lucky.

If custom stood you on the wrong side of town, which was
Most of town, hurrying to get to school or work or - you
Would have found yourself carbonated, mid-thought,
Pretty dress, too pretty for me, why is life –

If your eyes survived to see a sight they could but
Comprehend as the predicted end of all things
(Which it also was), then the maggots that will roost
Within you testify. To the endurance of life.

a star is born

sleep

Strange how unattractive sleep has become. In this year of increased sobriety, the tendency to fall asleep fully dressed has diminished. (It returned last night after a rare bottle and a half of wine). Insomnia has receded, even if it hasn't quite thrown in the towel. Sleep asserts its rights. But in the hours after midnight, as sleep creeps up, the instinct is to keep it at bay. As though the unconscious is not that safe haven it used to be. As though, in dream, some jaguar might sink its jaws into your neck. Every space these days, and the spaces keep changing, is like some night spent on the plain. There are shadows out there, smothered in moonlight. The fire needs to be tended, kept alive.

All balderdash. For this is not the plain; the stars are out of sight; there is a roof over my head and no real peril. There is no fire to tend. Just an instinct.

your situation

What's a situaton except for this. It is a diamond.
A refracted space of light which appears manifold
But is in fact rigid, as tough as old boots, sprung
Like a trap. You can look at it from different angles
And it always seems different but there is no alteration
To be made to it. This thing, this situation, which is the
Shape of the soul you inherited, you grew into, which
Span its wirewool around a core you would not know you
Possessed. A brain, or a nerve or a spinal column, a limb
Or a muscle or a nail, that thing which is the you which
Is inalienable and around which the atoms swirl, composing
The thing they will say is your character, is you, is un-
Undoable. You are that diamond and that situation and all
The readings and misreadings cannot alter what you are.
So when people urge you to change, when they say, will you
Not learn your lessons, you fool, you must try to filter
That which you should learn can be altered, and that which
You should learn can never be altered for it is what makes you
You. Fool that you are.

tropicalia (a piece by lygia clark)

stranger

Gone midnight. The number 12 was mercifully prompt. He was about to wrap himself up in Micah P and watch his night city drift past the windows. The bendy bus was not full. He recognised the woman sitting next to him. She had been at the birthday party too. They hadn't exchanged a word and had never met. Someone had told him she was a photographer.

He removed Micah P. They went through a few preliminaries. All expectation of that lulling movie of a city trip suspended. She was also headed for Peckham. So much small talk already. Talk of films and projects and futures and pasts. Surely they were all small talked out.

She was from Brasil. The South. He guessed, Porto Alegre. She would photograph his friend's rehearsals soon. They talked of how they met their mutual friend. Fuundraising and then... Why not? Do it all in Spanish. Merge in a second language. Make another movie. Talk Tropicalia, curation, politics. On a bus bound for Peckham.

+++

The devised piece, In Transit, is set in an airport. Two strangers meet, exchange. What has been striking about rehearsals is how hard it can be to make that breakthrough. That human communication. Cut through the insulation in which we are wrapped. This must be societal. In other worlds, more fragile, the need to talk is paramount. Travellers talk all the time. Information should be shared. Trust built. The warmth of human contact savoured.

you go this a way

FUS

So, mused Maldoror, Jeffrey Lewis. Inheritor of the beat, punk, folk tradition. New York songsmith to the core. Instant throwaway classics. Bridge builder from The Dolls to the Dylan of Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues. And a thousand other acts in between. Nods to the blues. Theseus of the complex heart and the communist revolution. So good he deserves a tragic death with open heart by-pass to the hall of immortals.

Only one thing struck a false note to Maldoror’s ear. Lewis, he mused, possessor of wit, talent, looks, charm. Lewis, he mused, a man who writes songs about his inability to attract women. Ummm. Maldoror scratched his chin… Another disturbing case of FUS (false ugliness syndrome).

where to head for when all else fails

the title's curse (2)

The lovers were on tour. They knew the gods had granted them something out of the ordinary. Star crossed lovers. So often, this play, and every other play they'd seen by Shakespeare, had been bastardised, dull, the juice sucked out of the text. They had been blessed. They strolled on stilts through cavernous theatres, criss-crossing a continent. A cast of half a dozen, climbing in and out of the crazy car which they drove on stage. A production which made the play sing, clown, cry.

Each night the lovers went merrily to their deaths. Their love was so beautiful it had no trouble being born again. It was so innocent it could somehow get away with the fact that she, the actress, could be visibly pregnant with his, the actor's, child. The copy of the lovers' love, their love embraced love with the same beauty that the writer's lines secured immortal for the creatures of his mind. A love so beautiful that their stage names spoke of nothing but love.

The actors basked in this congruence. If anything, it seemed perhaps their love might even eclipse their characters', whose love was condemned to be killed night after night.

Yet, in spite of the child that was due, it began to cross the actors' minds that in the act of death, Romeo and Juliet enshrined the incorruptibility of the love they shared. A love that can never be tainted, or sullied. They saw, some days when the tour was dragging on too long and both longed just to be home, to be free of their shades, that in death, their fictional characters had been granted the last laugh.

So it came as no surprise to either of them, that moment when their car veered off a jagged Brazilian road, came off the cliff; crashed into a tree; seperated from the way of life. One died instantly, and though the other lived a week or so, apparently comatose, they knew their obligation. The obligation to match the lovers' love. It felt right, in the midst of coma, to succumb to the pull of death; so they might know the full beauty of that thing the poet consecrated, that dream in life called love.

the title's curse

The Return is epic, Tarkovski-esque, baffling, deeply frustrating. It's blessed by two child performances which it's unlikely have been bettered. By anyone. The film ends on an island on a lake. The lake has sandy beaches, pine trees, rainstorms, big skies, wildflowers. The denoument is dramatic yet perplexing, in honour of its influences.

The first-time director, Aleksandr Novototsky won the directing Grand Prix at Venice. Tarkovski himself won the same prize for Ivan's Childhood, his first film. One of the boys is called Ivan. The other is called Andrey. In the original script one of the boys drowned in the lake. At the last minute, the director changed this ending.

Sometime later one of the child actors, Vladimir Garin, returned to Ladozhohskye lake, scene of his triumphant debut. He went swimming in the fine blue water, something he never does in the film itself. In that lake, Vladimir Garin succumbed to the fate his fictional character was denied.

trains

He was told about a country that possessed no trains to speak of. Several stations, all of them beautifully adorned with the best station cafes in the world, the finest station clocks, the most atmospheric of concourses, the most beautiful light. The passengers had nowhere to go, but they didn't care.

One day they got the trains to work. The excitment was intense. So intense that there was an accident, and not one, not two, not three... but seven people were killed.

And then they realised why they never had any trains.

soup

There's something more satisfying about making soup than eating it. Even though, given the right circumstances, soup is the most satisfying food in the world.

lines that look like they were written by a child