Saturday 18th of August, 2001
(Hey dude,
Up at 7:00 and sit (hurrah! I still have some standards, even surrounded by degeneracy and decadance. Catch up on the diary (this). Some practice on the SoloEtte and then I go out and about, with no especial aim in mind.
I wander down the Lothian Road and into the graveyard. Dead picturesque, with extensive (and very well preserved) gravestones which remind one that Death was to the Victorians what football is to us. Out into the garden proper – Nice flowers and so forth – and off toward the Ross bandstand to see what's cooking. I notice a gravestone, which turns out to be for "A Man of Letters", those letters being R, L and S. There is a story here, which if I'd bothered to give a guidebook even the most cursory read, I would know. What's cooking at the Ross Bandstand turns out to be a Wedding, with an orchestra. They may have done the Vow thing by the time I get there – the orchestra is playing something that sounds a bit like the music for E.T. – and the Minister quotes a poem with the line "Tread carefully for you tread on my dreams" (Hey dude, don't leave your dreams lying around where they might get broken). Then the orchestra strikes up the Mendelsohn Wedding March and they bring out the stretch limo, hug the guests (in the front row) and drive away. And I bet that at some point in the planning, someone said "It has to be tasteful". And I suppose it is in a way. Promise me that if I die at the Edinburgh Festival you hold the funeral on stage. With musical selections from whatever Secondary School production of Sweeney Todd is running that year. The batteries are running low (in the camera),which is why there's no shot of the floral clock. I stroll up to the High Street (Hell), and, wanting to see something queue at the Fringe Office before realising that I'd be better off going straight to the venues in question. I get a ticket for a show at the Komedia @ Southside called Let Me Out! which is the closest we have to a Ken Campbell show this year written and directed by Ken, performed by Nina Conti. Then I wander about some more. I get a sandwich from a shop (my choice of roll and filling pretty much decided for me by being what's left) and eat it in Bristo Square. The square itself has been colonised by skaters. Skateboarding is a symptom of the eternal victory of youthful enthusiasm and optimism over physics and experience. They approach the rails, steps and other challenges with such brio and vim, but with one of two alternative outcomes: 1. They fall off or 2. they just stick there until they disentangle themselves. They're very serious about it though, which must be good. It's probably all sublimated sexual drive. (Sorry, Dan) Back to the flat for tea and a bit of a lie down before setting off for Christie's on Grassmarket for the Big Word poetry show. Great show – Jem Rolls, Mark Gwynne-Jones and Francesca Beard. Jem is confrontational and political, Mark whimsical and Mancunian and Francesca sardonic and allusive. I am here mainly to see Francesca, who I haven't seen perform for a while, and who is quite marvellous if not as up-front as her co-performers. She does some of her older stuff – The Poem That Was a List, for example – her newer material is more conversational, blurring into stand-up at some points. Of all the poets that I saw at Bunjies years ago, she was one who pointed out what words could do, partly because the poems (although undoubtedly performance) didn't rely on the force of the presentation. One day I'll get on her mailing list and be able to see her perform more often than once every two years. I think she recognises me in the audience, perhaps not remembering where from. I only have time to say "hello" and disappear as she comes off. And give a thumbs up sign. I have no idea why I do that, it must me some physical tic I picked up in the distant past. Makes me feel like an excitable trainee. Over to the Southside for the vent show. Let Me Out! is a one-woman show about ventriloquism. Nina Conti (ex-Warp and Ken-trained) doesn't have the sense of subcutaneous incipient malice that Campbell has (which gives even his most innocuous routines an edge) but she can do a very good Ken without moving her lips. All Ken collaborators seem to be able to do a good Ken – Will G.Q. does a great one. Whereas I can only do a very poor Ken with full access to facial contortions, and am ex-nothing and fully untrained so probably ought not be allowed an opinion. Something about the show (perhaps the fact that it has cast her as a ventriloquism pupil) means that I am tempted to give her marks for the various aspects of venting – the sock, the character, the voice-throwing, the "traditional" doll, the demonic possession and so forth – rather than just sit back and enjoy the ride. That said it's impossible, even with the most advanced critical acuity, not to let the voice inhabit the doll rather than emanate from the vent's mouth. There's something promordial about venting, lending animation to the inanimate, and there's also the curious aspect that the vent has to flatten out their own personality to make those of the dolls seem more vivid, all of which is present in the show (hence the demonic possession) but not explicit, which is probably a good thing. And the tedious part of my brain wants a more systematic structure to underly the apparantly organic development. My original intention was to see Merri-May Gill and Des de Moor at the Pleasance Dome, but by the time I start walking home I realise that I'm so tired I might not make it. I get a cup of decaf from one of the coffee stalls set up in old police boxes (and if only all the machinery of law-enforcement could be put to such good use). The woman in the stall asks if I want sugar, and I reply that I'm trying to fool my body into thinking it's being kept awake without actually putting real stimulants into it.
I go to the shop over which I lived last year and buy a cheap (but not nasty!) watch and some more batteries for the camera.
I want to see Jane Bom-Bane, which is at one of the Pleasances, but I don't manage to identify which one – Pleasance Courtyard, which is unmarked and unsignposted. It could be anywhere. So I don't get to see Jane.
It did give me the opportunity to write the phrase "the demonic possession and so forth" though.
It doesn't work.
So I don't make it to the shows, but get to see a Channel 4 doc on Celebrity (essentially a Channel 5 doc on celebrity with a more pronounced sneer) and the results of This Is My Moment. The horror, the horror. The presenter (Mel B or C from the Spice Girls, I can never remember which is which. Whatever happened to Mel A?) convinces the winner to propose to his girlfriend on the telly (which is probably why so many people voted for him, to see that). I think he ought to say "Bog off woman! I'm rich now, I'm going to get me a proper girlfriend!" but he doesn't. Ordinary people let you down every time. They'll probably get married on Saturday Night TV.