a friend told me about this (thank you, phil bloomer). a late junction session in which the performance poet / rap artist kate tempest plays (for the first time) with the elysian string quartet. largely improvised after a day's rehearsal, i think, it's quite extraordinary. made me a little tearful in parts, esp. 'where the heart is'.
if you're very quick you can still podcast it.
putting aside trivial matters such as this morning's possible capture of colonel gaddafi and the violence at dale farm... kim gordon and thurston moore have split up, thereby possibly heralding the demise of sonic youth. which makes me really quite sad.
(though this particular photo fails to capture mr moore's (r) extraordinary height)
new forests company have evicted 22,500 people from their homes in uganda. it'll take you 2 minutes to read about the situation and send an e-mail via oxfam to the chairman of the company, robert devereux.
you're probably more likely to click on the link if i offer no explanation whatsosver. but it's going to be a very fine thing...
i'm doing two things at the crunch festial at hay next month. a talk / performance, flying and swimming (saturday 3:30), which i recently did at the playhouse, oxford and the ilkley festival. and a round table discussion, new awakenings, about creativity, with susan hiller and josie 'o'rourke, chaired by john tusa (sunday 4:00).
i contributed some amateur enthusiastic opinions to a short programme broadcast last week about eliot carter generally, and his third quartet in particular. it's part of what promises to be a very enjoyable series, 50 modern composers. me, i feel uncomfortable listening to my own voice, but i seem not to have made a fool of myself and you never know, you might be tempted to seek out a bit of carter yourself. the short clip of carter himself speaking is wonderful. such a combination of fierce intelligence, good humour and self-effacing generosity. 102 and still composing...
there's an ongoing tussle, in my head if nowhere else, between granta magazine and mcsweeney's. mcsweeney's is always going to look better (granta is never going to be pubished as 5 separate mini-volumes held together by a magnet) though granta often has wonderful photoessays. the literary content fluctuates inevitably, however, and whilst granta went through a rather grey patch over the last few years it has been edging ahead by several lengths recently, not least because of the pakistan issue (no.
... from my parents cupboard under the stairs. of which a very very small gas attack themed selection...
more later. plus some of the magic lantern slides if i can find a way of copying them.
(excellent linocut by zack, 7)
