Party political hustle

May 10th, 2010 § 110

My ‘Hustle’ submission for Issue Zero of 48hr Magazine – I didn’t make the cut this time, but I will be back. Such a brilliant concept…

As this magazine goes to press, my country has no government. In fact, as I write these words, two bland looking men sit in a bland looking central London building trying to form one. How do I know? Because I was privileged enough to be present as an angry mob shouted at them through the window less than two hours ago.

You see, on Thursday, we had an election. The problem is that no-one won. No ‘Obama moment’ for the Brits…

What we have instead is much less sexy. We just have Dave, a true blue conservative, and Nick, a liberal democrat, dangling carrots of concession on policy and ideology in order to form some sort of Frankenstein’s government – a coallition stitched together with threads of promise in a back room of secret deals.

“Don’t sell out!” the crowd roars, as hands clap hands and boots stamp pavement. They are talking to Nick, they are worried about him. Dave is the heavyweight in the room, but he does need Nick’s party’s support. If a deal is struck he will have the majority that will make him Prime Minister. It’s still a two way hustle, but Dave is palming aces.

The problem is that Dave’s gang like nuclear missiles, but Nick’s isn’t keen. And Nick’s gang wants a fairer voting system, but Dave’s isn’t bothered. And Dave’s gang don’t like taxing the rich, whereas Nick’s would do just that. No-one could deny that these men are passionate about their politics and obviously ambitious – it’s not the sort of job you just fall into – but one or both of them are going to have to have to sell their soul if we are ever to shout “it’s alive, it’s alive!”.

Back in the mob, I ask a shoeless man next to me why he is here (although asking him where his shoes are does cross my mind). “To get their ear, you have to shout in their faces. Really loudly.” he shouts in my face. Really loudly. His two-shoed friend beside him nods sagely. Because a demo is also a hustle, but more of the bustle variety. Second cousin to the hurly burly of a riot, it’s an organised nuisance, an everyman stick in political spokes. Of course there’s suspicion that it might be ignored, but there won’t be a chance that it hasn’t been heard.

As our outgoing Prime Minister Gordon twiddles his thumbs in Downing Street, uninvited to come out and play with Nick and Dave, the hustle continues apace on both sides of the bland building’s window. A tall man in the mob starts a chant, his dedication to the cause diminishing his lion’s roar voice to a hoarse whisper within minutes, whereupon a small man with a placard opens his lungs and shoulders responsibility. It may take two to tango, and the demonstrators certainly haven’t been invited to dance, but they’re making damned sure they choose the music.

Farringdon station photo

May 9th, 2010 § 26

So, had my photo selected for the Alight Here project. Overly excited… Never had a photo chosen for anything before!

Farringdon lovers

Farringdon lovers

Street cleaners

May 9th, 2010 § 77

I don’t know how I came to be here, on this street. But, it feels natural. My companion is a french man and we chat amicably in his native tongue. Every few seconds static interference obscures his features and his face is reborn. Some I recognise, some I don’t. He does not seem to notice and I am unworried. The street we are walking reminds me of that which approaches Picadilly Station in Manchester, but there is no station at the end. It becomes clear that my friend and I will to wash the road. Our destination is an industrial area up a slight slope before us. He tells me to go and collect the hose from a warehouse on the left and I obey. As I approach the building through the gate, I cannot see the hose. There are wooden doors running the length of the warehouse with small wooden slopes leading down from them to the tarmac floor. I pause while I look for the hose and as I do so, the wooden doors slide up all at once. From the darkness inside tumbles large soft fruit; strawberries as big as my fist, peaches the size of footballs, melons like medicine balls. I understand immediately what is expected and start to fill my rucsac. I do not taste any of the fruit. As I fill my bag from the last of the slopes, I spy the hose, curled over a nail at the far end of the wall. I screw it onto a tap below and walk back to the road, dropping coils as I go. The Frenchman is waiting for me and together we mash the fruit into the road with our feet and hose it down. Sweet smells fill the air.

Sasha’s story

May 4th, 2010 § 28

Sasha stood at the top of the slope looking down into the pine forest below and waited for his twin brother to return home. Twenty years previously, by winning an argument Sasha had had lost more than he could ever have imagined and his heart had felt incomplete ever since.

He had always known that Misha was still alive, he felt it nearly every day. Sixteen years earlier, he had experienced joy so intense that it could not possibly have any relationship to the plough blade he was sharpening in his workshop. One thousand miles away, Misha stood at an alter, his new bride in his arms.

Five years later, Sasha had spent a week in bed, the pain in his chest twisting his spine and contorting his face into a mask. One thousand miles away, Misha was interrogated by the revolutionary soldiers over his suspected collaboration with the church.

Just one year ago, Sasha had felt sadness so profound and sudden that he cried uncontrollably, doubled over in the street, starting rumours that the heat from his forge was melting his senses. One thousand miles away, Misha wept over the bed of his wife, her body inert and cooling under the blankets, her lungs destroyed by tuberculosis.

Finally, in the previous six months, Sasha had felt his mood, normally as black as the anvil he pounded, lighten and his heart begin to heal.

That particular morning he had awoken early and, ignoring the stack of work filling his yard, donned his Sunday best and walked out of the village towards the rising sun. Feelinngs of apprehension, fear and excitement, memories of emotions from another life, swirled around him like the wind-whipped snow. He reached the top of the slope and stopped, pulling his coat around him, and squinted into the low winter sun, his eyes scanning the tree line. A moment later a figure emerged astride a galloping black horse, Misha’s unmistakeable whistle shrilling through the morning air.

Sasha’s story is fictional history.

(Photo via Flickr, courtesy of offwhitedog – Friedrich Engels statue in Moscow)

#1

May 4th, 2010 § 0

i reject ambition

The silent film project

May 2nd, 2010 § 48

A while ago we started making presents for friends instead of buying them. It is now something I look forward to immensely. At times, I thought we’d bitten off more we could chew for Ian’s birthday silent film, but I am more than happy with the result…

Babysitting made EZ from Pete Masters on Vimeo.

The snorer

March 22nd, 2010 § 81

snore v.i. to breathe heavily and noisily during sleep
snorer n. one who snores
snored in v. one who cannot escape one who snores

Listen to The Snorer

It started so well! The night train from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Introductions on the bottom bunks, someone that spoke English enough for conversation and everything I expected from the carriage. Cosy cabins housing snug bunks and a table around which we are sat. The corridor reaching down the side of the carriage, poised and ready for good guys to chase bad guys like in so many films.

Both my fellow passengers are in the theatre business, although what their business actually is with theatres I struggle to ascertain. A beer in the restaurant car is proposed and gladly accepted and an enjoyable hour or two passes. The man, drunk from an afternoon on vodka with some minister for culture or other, slurs his way pleasantly through tales of foreign travels, and the woman, via him, is witty and perceptive. A final vodka night cap and off to bed and I am really looking forward to the warm bunk and the lull of the rocking train.

And here is where things start to go wrong.

You see, my male companion is a big guy and by big, I mean huge. Thirty years of age but sporting a king sized middle aged spread accompanied by the back-of-the-throat wheeze of a serious smoker. At first, things are fine. I pass out, smile on my face.

But not for long…

Less than half an hour later, I awake, afraid. For a moment, my dull brain seriously believes there is a train on the train. Then sense prevails and I realise that the noise is, in fact, coming from my friend on the other top bunk. The noise is impressive and horrendous. Gas, fluid and solid are combining in this man in ways I never realised possible.

It starts like a large, angry ape rattling a soggy cage in his chest. From there a sewer pipe floods the length of his windpipe before being borne into the air with a noise akin to the final spurt from a sperm whale’s blow hole (this part accompanied by a vague puff of rotting gut stench). This is then reversed as the snore retreats, accompanied by a sucking reverb. I am wide awake.

I put headphones in but the volume required not to hear him hurts my ears. I cover my head with a duvet, but it’s the equivalent of trying to shush a heavy metal band with a finger to the lips. I try my whole range of meditation and sleeping tricks (which, admittedly, is limited). Futile, futile, futile. And the whale continues, regular and relentless.

At what must be about 4am I fall asleep. I dream of the snore. I am at a party and some sadistic bastard DJ is playing it loud and clear over the PA system. I drink to get drunk and smoke to get high and I do both to forget, to ignore, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works. And the worst thing is that the snorer is at the party, awake, and having a great time.

I wake up. It’s 6am and there is no change. Light is returning to the sky outside, bouncing off the snow and into the cabin. I can see him now, on his side with his back to me, like a monument to snoring, expanding and contracting in perfect rhythm.

There is nothing for it. I lie wide-eyed for two hours, at which point he wakes and sweetly offers to get me a cup of tea from the restaurant car. He is completely unaware of the pain he has inflicted on me physically and mentally. I say yes to the tea, but drink none as I am instantly and sublimely asleep right up until the train pulls into the Saint Petersburg platform. I can’t decide whether I hope I was snoring or not.

26 hours in 2 days…

March 10th, 2010 § 53

…making and exporting this slideshow. I really hope they like it. I would tell you about Russia but I haven’t seen any today. Tomorrow, however, the exhibition opens, the next day we get to work on the audio testimonies and the day after, I am on holidays! Cannae wait……….

Lots of couch surfing contacts. Gonna be a good week ;)

Slideshow me the way to go home…

March 9th, 2010 § 226

My eyes are screen shaped. I have been staring at this laptop fiddling tiny changes into slides and transitions for about 13 hours now. But I am getting there…

The space in the Winzavod

Saw the venue for the exhibition this morning – very cool place, galleries and spaces in all sorts of shapes and sizes roughly converted from industrial premises. Includes a cafe (porridge amazing – think they must add bran) and places to just be. Was described to me as the ‘Moscow Tate Modern’, but, while it is not as epic as the Tate, it is far more welcoming just to sit and relax in… The exhibition space is really nice and will see a lot of people passing by who hopefully stop and stare.

Also realised today that I am working on a piece to be exhibited at Winzavod, the Moscow Tate Modern. Was overly chuffed til I realised that that’s like a hod carrier being chuffed he built Big Ben… [which is cool thinking about it].

Other than that, I navigated the Metro solo (not sure what all the fuss was about, but then I did only did it sober), ordered my own lunch (pointy pointy throw cash hope change is correct) and met two photographers who were lovely (and shall feature more in tomorrow’s post).

Still only know two Russian words – Priviet and Spassiba* – which mean Hi and Thankyou, making me seem polite but incredibly boring for local folk I meet. Tomorrow I will learn something controversial to spice things up a bit. Now to bed.

The B Side Exhibition invite

The B Side Exhibition invite

* I know that’s not how you spell it.

Typical family life in Moscow

March 8th, 2010 § 3,997

I sit in the kitchen as the man of the house, big and deep voiced, prepares the meat. Lots of meat. After the meal, the lady of the house washes the dishes. We have been for a walk with their two boys dressed in identical red all-in-one snow suits, visiting Russian sculpture and a church in the park. Stereotypes fulfilled? Well no. Because Willem is Dutch (MSF head of mission) and prepares the meat to a Gordon Ramsey recipe and Martina (artist) is Greek and Swedish and ‘washes the dishes’ in the dishwasher with Wolfmother blaring from the MP3 player on the window ledge. The kids speak so many languages, I seethe inside with bitterness that my parents didn’t marry foreign people, then live in other countries throughout my childhood. Bastards!

The walk was cool, deep snow covering Park Pobedy (Victory Park), a museum in the middle, fronted by a huge spire with St George hanging from it, his spear poised to plunge deep into the chest of the dragon writhing below. I was jealous of the kids again as their snow suits enabled  them to roll in the drifts without a care (is it so bad being 30 and jealous of a 4 and 6 year old twice in a day? I don’t reckon).

A nice sculpture behind the museum commemorating Jews that died in the second world war: a queue of figures standing sad but proud at the front but buckling and breaking the further back they went until they morphed into graves and finally twisted matter at the back. Piles of abandoned clothes and boots lay around, peeking out of the snow, giving them a ghoolishly real quality.

I talked a lot with Willem and the work sounds exciting. I will help to prepare the multimedia element of an MSF exhibition in a space in the Winzavod, Moscow’s Tate Modern, and then make a web feature using audio and photos gathered from TB patients in Chechnya. Can’t wait to get my hands on the materials!

From Willem and Martina’s house we went to a restaurant (wish i could remember the name), where I met Masha, the MSF press officer for Russia who I will be working with over the next week. The place was beautiful; cosy and unpretentious. But the best bit was the toilet, which could only be entered through a wardrobe door; homage to The Chronicles of Narnia (the place was attached to a theatre), the animated version of which I used to watch obsessively as a kid.

Masha was lovely as well. She did her PHD on Russian folklore in the northern regions of the country which sounds really interesting although she wouldn’t tell me about it on the way home. She said tomorrow and I will be reminding her.

Back at the flat now, early start at the museum in the morning as they start to hang the photographs and we work out with the curator how the multimedia will work. This is artcovacy and I can’t wait.

Oh yeah, and I got two responses to the couch surfing request today…good times.

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