Hermit

My friend Ansuman Biswas is in the third day of enforced solitude at Manchester Museum, where he will be destroying an item a day form the collection. It's a fascinating process. Read all about it here, on the blog he's writing during his hermitage.

The Factory

I saw a great piece of theatre last night; a rendition of Chekhov's 'The Seagull', as performed by The Factory.

There was no script, and parts were divvied up amongst the cast by the audience before the play began. Each actor knew what would roughly happen; the rest was improvised. It was performed at the Old Boys Club in Dalston, which isn't known for being a theatrical space.



After the parts were decided, the actors had a minute to gather props, and decide which part of the space each act would be performed in.

The production really excited me. The performance was spontaneous, unpretentious, and dynamic. By putting themselves into this position, the actors were challenged far beyond the usual remit of a performer who has spent weeks learning lines and embodying characters. They'll be doing it again over this summer, as well as attacking other classics; click here to find out about what they're up to. Highly recommended!

Oh, we're going to Chicago..

Yesterday was the final of the London Teenage Poetry Slam, the end result of a process that has lasted over three months. I'm please to say that the team that I have been coaching, eight students from Kingsford School in Beckton, won. This means that the students, their teacher Marty Cook, and I all travel to Chicago in Autumn for an all expenses paid trip, where we will be working with Oak Park River Forest High School, school of Ernest Hemingway, Ludacris, and Ray Croc, founder of McDonalds (he didn't graduate). Nice one!

Here's a couple of snaps of the students, and the two poems which won them the title.



Caught without an umbrella

The weatherman predicted sunshine
Scorched skin
Bra strap graffiti on the brown of my back
So I left my umbrella at home
Only to be soaked
Drenched by his words
As rain trickled from the holes in his forecast

When I was six
The doctor diagnosed my aunt with cancer
Giving her a month to live;
Prescribed chemotherapy and anguish.
A six year old's splayed fingers reached forward into time
Into thirty days of blue skies,
And beyond those circling ribbons
Sewing in and out of those ebony rolling hills
On that vast blank canvas of an artist’s easel-
All I could see was darkness

The blind direct us to the unknown
Weathermen get it wrong
And doctors are casino croupiers,
Shuffling fortunes and dealing duff hands
Concealing all behind that expressionless
Poker face
Poker face
Poker face
We punch the walls of this house of cards
In anger of being lied to.
All fall down;
Shattered futures
Broken dreams
Every day begins as an unwritten page.

"Good morning.
Today is going to be a good day," said the doctor.
But at exactly 4pm it rained all over my world
Acid rain on cashmere skin
Tears of sadness
Tears of love

They said she had only one month to live
One month

She died an hour later

The cancer ate its way through her lungs like a starved virus
Spreading from organ to organ like a bushfire
Her last breathe fading away to emptiness
Before reaching the splayed fingers of the six year old before her

The weatherman predicted sunshine
He didn't predict hatred
Rage
Fury
Or how quickly night would fall
A Six year old daughter
Weeps into her pillow
Drifts into the void
The pillow supports her head
Prevents her from subsiding
Into the empty abyss
Of her mother’s sobs

Weathermen all over the world
Shrug their shoulders and apologize
But it's not weathermen
That are left cold
Shivering
Soaked

Alone.



Beauty and the Beast

(i)

I draw back curtains and light floods in
My eyes are windows encrusted with gunk
Jewels brought back from the land of fairy tales
I climb out my castle
Tip toeing over a blanket of Lego pieces and broken dreams
And face a face which looks like mine

From the glazed surface
Glares back a monster
Beauty's rejected daughter
A monster yellow-faced with polka dots
They call the mirror gazer vain,
But I christen her 'fearful' -
Fearful of a recurring nightmare
Her hair a curtain across a quivering smile
Hiding her from the world
And the world from her ugliness

I charm the mirror
I charm the mirror
Or secure the insecurity
She looks at me cold,
With fear in her eyes

(ii)

Sitting opposite me on the bus,
An old lady
Face a scrunched up paper ball
Hair bleached witch-white
She looks at me cold,
With fear in her eyes

This is what I want to say to her:
"I am the snarling black dog
The coffee skin night child
Who keeps you awake
When you close your eyes"

All of us are fighting demons

(iii)
As the tray closes, it all kicks off
You look at the screen, through your reflection
Pick up the controller
You see yourself backing away
A push, a slap, a shove, a hit
Achievement -
Proceed to level two

You get the courage to peer our of your room
One step, two step, three step, four
Peeking through the living room door
Your mother cries, before silence
Bang - dad slams the front door - he's gone
Achievement -
Proceed to level three

Mum fills her lungs with despair
Smoke fills the air
Our hearts weaken simultaneously
And then, smack
I collapse
Achievement -
Game over

(iv)
His name was Luke
But I saw Goliath before me -
A small, shivering David
With no sling and no stone
But as he (more monsoon than man)
Rained beats upon my head
I felt no pain, but instead
I became the Hulk
(no transformation necessary)
Vision red -
the red raw wound of mum and dad's divorce,
Triggering Beyblade in the arena

As I screwed my face and murdered him in my mind
I was dressed with a face so ugly
I could turn Medusa into stone

Now that's true beauty.

(v)
Let me tell you about looks which can kill
Dad stared at mum,
And I knew which fairy tale was going to get repeated that night
Argument
Fight
Mum getting hurt
Ambulance outside
The police coming to pick dad up
Me feeling like it was my fault

I remember calling my teacher 'dad'
Because at least, around him, I felt safe

My friend told me that when his parents divorced,
he used to get presents
I thought that when mum and dad split
I'd get presents too
But the only gifts I unwrapped contained ugly truths

Something cracks apart;
Breakdance on a broken heart

All of my ugly thoughts are wrapped inside a cocoon
And I'm afraid that one day,
It will burst

It's not maggots that come out of coccoons but...
It's not maggots that come out of cocoons but...
It's not maggots that come out of cocoons but...

Paris, Public Space, Pernod and Lemonade

A weekend in Paris saw Iram and I hanging with Angelbert Metoyer, the man who gave birth to Saul William’s alter ego Niggy Tardust, and his new wife, firebrand and all round ladygeezer Charlie Koolhaas. Angelbert’s a dude; a prolific artist, who was once commissioned by Ornette Coleman to paint while Ornette played.



We went to see the brilliant Mike Ladd, who performed with a sh*t hot dancer;



It was great to be in Paris; I haven’t been there for too long. It’s such a classy city, oozing elegance without trying, reflected in both its citizens and architecture. We stayed with Mathilde.



Her flat, in the 10th arrondissement, is classically French. Everything in it is beautiful and considered.



I particularly was drawn to this piece of art, painted onto a cardboard ‘canvas’ by French graf artist C215.



I love the fact that most people I know have little shrines in their homes, composed of a hotch potch of belongings they consider charged with meaning. Playful Indian gods; Japanese toys; rocks and feathers found in moments of inspiration; buddhas in repose; candles to bring light. Coming from a Hindu family, this idea of a miniature temple in your home is something I grew up with, but I enjoy seeing the idea remixed by 21st century nomads, who search for meaning in the world around them.



Occasionally the atheist in me snorts with derision at the way in which we search for something other than ourselves which is unseen and controls our destiny, but it’s an understandable human trait, and in some way allows us to connect with the world around us. What’s wrong with deifying nature? At least it allows us to recognise that mankind is not the sole architect of intelligence, but simply a single manifestation of intelligent life, which abound us in every form; every flower, every cloud, every insect, awe-inspiring and perfect in design. I love the way that often in North West London, you’ll see trees daubed with a spot of paint, courtesy of Hindus (perhaps the original graffiti artists); these ‘bindis’ are a marking to indicate trees as ‘sacred’. Perhaps an important lesson to learn, in these times when species are disappearing on an hourly basis! A message that Ansuman Biswas is getting across in a forthcoming residency, where he is being locked up in Manchester Museum and being given ‘free’ reign to destroy an object a day.

Paris was full of surprises, but my most pleasant moment was had in engaging with an old ritual; sitting by a canal, eating bread, ham and cheese, sipping a white beer, writing, and watching the world go by in the City of Lights.



Highlights of a day’s exploration included finding this Haring tryptich in St Eustache Church:



and a visit to LUV productions, a multimedia clubhouse of hackers, where I bought something emblazoned with the logo ‘Africa is the Future’.



Africa’s in the galleries; my homie the Right Honorable Ammo Talwar, MBE, brought the art of Lemi Ghariokwu to Richmix in London. Leni painted many of my musical hero Fela Kuti’s album covers, like this one, a treatise on skin-lightening from a Nigerian perspective:



The private view was a wicked affair, with live music from Dele Sosimi, featuring Tony Allen on drums. Here’s Ammo looking like a Punjabi junglist, with Richmix headmistress Pawlet Brookes.



I’ve been engaged with Richmix for a few months now, and it’s been an interesting journey. Ammo’s event was one of the first times I’ve felt the building as kicking, and alive, as it should be on a regular basis. Still, it’s getting there. Chris Ventriloquist and I ran one of Chris’s legendary Tongue Fu sessions there last week, featuring poets Anthony Joseph, Polar Bear, Tim Clare, and musicians Arthur Lea, Belle Ehresmann and Graeme Fox. Saul Walker’s done a nice review of it here:

Saulwalker.blogspot.com

I’d like to bring the worlds I work in together; to fill publicly funded institutions like Richmix with the inspiring, dynamic conversations that happen throughout Hackney, in grotty warehouses and reclaimed spaces. These are buildings filled with art encouraging us to converse, to think, and to play. They bypass conventional spaces and our notion that art should be confined to galleries, and theatre to – well, theatres… in Hackney, vending machines are filled with scissors and tape (instead of additive-intensive products made by multinational giants), and the art on the walls turns the world as we know it on its head:




This interactive table is a piece made by Evan from Seeper Productions. The Japanese duo pictured are playing with a game commissioned by Lemon Jelly.



But that’s not to say that conventional institutions can’t be inspiring. It just takes the right kind of creative teams working in these spaces to make juicy things happen in them. Just before I came across the dudes above, I went to see a remarkable piece of theatre called ‘For the Best’, at the Unicorn Theatre. It was a moving treatise of dialysis, families and death; site-specific and devised, the director Mart Storor worked with children to glean their stories of dialysis and weave them into a heart-rendering narrative. It’s only on for another week; go see it if you get a chance.

I’m continuing to have my preconceptions of theatre smashed by pieces of work like this. But what most people in the UK know as theatre happens in the West End, where tourists flock to see the latest blockbuster productions. Last week I took my dad and stepmum-to-be to see Billy Elliott. Its message was ‘Be Yourself’ – a funny message, I thought, when delivered nightly to a crowd of people who excel at confirming to norms defined by popular culture. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the satire of the show and the political backdrop the piece was set in, and as a theatre-maker (yes, that’s what I’m calling myself now) working in music, going to see a musical is always an education in design, narrative construction, songwriting, and more.

It was good to be able to spend quality time with Anju, soon to be my stepmum. I’m happy for my dad that he’s found such a wonderful partner.



Dad had a barbeque this weekend to celebrate his birthday. Family barbeques are a lot of fun; all 890 members of the Solanki brethren gather to chat, dance, eat, watch cricket, be racist, laugh, cook, eat more, and drink. My cousin Paresh makes 400 mojitos, and sloe gin, or perhaps Pernod, with lemonade (for the ladies). The men stand behind the barbeque, rustling up a never ending stream of kebabs, chicken, fish and prawns, all marinated in a special mix which leaves you smelling like an Indian, a vague curry whiff oozing from you for the next 48 hours, whenever you sweat, pee, crap, and even when you come (sorry, mum, but it’s true). My family is a production line; there’s usually a fresh baby for people to coo at and call cute, no matter how ugly it is. As we enter the 21st Century, kids names are getting more exotic. English people give their kids Indian names, but Indians take it one step further; My cousin Ricky has just called his kid Torres, after the Liverpool footballer, for Christ’s sake.

At family barbeques, groups coalesce and disintegrate like weather patterns, before settling into a time-honoured grid formation; kids sit around the tv sneaking alcoholic beverages and making jokes about adults, men stand around the barbeque and make jokes about women and foreigners, women sit down around kitchen tables and make jokes about kids and men (since coming to this country, most of my aunties have been plied with drinks [mostly by my dad] to the point of becoming bonafide alcoholics). There’s usually a smattering of white people looking a bit out-of-place. These unfortunate souls are Ambassadors Of White People Everywhere. It’s good that they’re here at the party, sampling what it feels like to be a minority defined by the colour of your skin.

Here’s dad and mum no. 2 feeding each other cake to celebrate their engagement. There was a comedy moment just after this when dad welcomed Anju’s son Sunil (my impending stepbrother!!) into the family, describing him as ‘a take-away son’…

Storm/Somerset/Stepmum

This week, I was privileged to be on Storm, a week long project organised by two theatre companies - Graeae and Push - held at the Hammersmith Lyric. Forty artists with diverse practises, ranging from poets, designers, directors, actors, writers, musicians, and dancers were invited to partake in workshops led by facilitators from across the UK. It was an amazing week, in which I learnt a phenomenal amount, and made a whole heap of friends and future collaborators. The week was designed as an exploration of the possibilities of what theatre could be.

My favourite workshops were led by Ferdy Roberts from Filter, Richard Gregory from Quarantine, John McGrath (currently at the National Theatre of Wales), and Lee Simpson from Improbable.

One of the greatest things about the week was working with people with impairmments. There were some golden moments; This rapper's performance was transformed by the signer next to him. translated his lyrics of 'let's get naked' into sign language.



The week had been carefully facilitated; beyond many conversations regarding the development of practise, we had our eye on the future; the last day was a brilliantly structured brainstorm called 'This is all very well, but what next?'. The event was carefully scribed by Manc artists Sketch City:




On the weekend, I bombed down to Somerset to stay with my partner in crime, Chris Ventriloquist, and his partner Mandy. Check out their amazing pad! I'll be staying there for a fortnight's writing retreat in August - I can't wait!



I returned to London on Sunday for a family dinner. My tardy arrival meant I missed my dad's proposal to his girlfriend Anju. I am about to gain a stepmother! I love the juxtaposition of these photos - tunnel vision, as I walk between worlds...




It was lovely to see dad. Here he is, engaging in a game of 'slaps' with my nephew, Ethan...


North West London - the only place in the UK where skips have religious symbols on them.



I also love this photo, taken on my cousin Sangeeta's mantelpiece; it shows her and her husband Rakesh at their wedding, and a photo of their two kids, Kieran and Alisha.

ketchup

When you walk between worlds, it's imperative to suspend judgement. The only thing you can truly take to the bank is that there are no definitive answers. And WTF can you do with that?

My band rocks. We supported Lemn Sissay, Shazia Mirza and Billy Bragg at the TUC conference centre at a gig organised by anti fascist magazine Searchlight, in order to raise awareness of the necessity to vote on Thursday 4th June, in order that the BNP don't steal seats at the European election. If you’re British and you read this (i.e. you, mum) – VOTE! For anyone (apart form the BNP, that is)!

The band also played at the Great Escape festival in Brighton. It was great to chill with the band outside of a work context; we've only had two rehearsals and a handful of gigs, and outside of this we've never managed to find time to chill, so a road trip to Brighton was great fun. I feel privileged to play with these dudes, who above being amazing artists are lovely, lovely people.

Beyond gigging, there've been a heap of cracking adventures over the last few weeks;

My partner in crime Chris Redmond played the music in Improbable Theatre’s excellent 'Panic' at the Barbican. I also saw Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics at Koko in Camden, and Punchdrunk’s stunning' tunnel 228'.

I’ve been inspired by some great visual narrative stimuli, including ‘La Jetee’, Gilliam's ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, Herzog’s ‘Encounters at the End of the World’, and two videos from the increasingly brilliant Bat for Lashes – ‘Daniel’, and ‘What’s a Girl To Do’. I'm also currently enjoying Mediastorm.

I attended an excellent barbeque at a very grand lodge on Regents Park, where my hosts Martin and Ilana served traditional German fare such as Thueringer sausages and sauerkraut, and I learnt about London Insight meditation.

Education work's been going well; I’m working on an interesting graphic novel project for Eastside, and preparation for the London slam is going well; check this article.

Suspension of judgement was vital when I worked on a weekend run by Eyeshine, where the lady in control Tiu believes in magic, healing and the power of love. The weekend entailed lots of parents learning to see the world afresh, through the eyes of their children. My responsibility for the weekend was hanging out with the kids, which was immense fun. We stayed the night out under the stars in a beautiful forest on the wild plains of Dartmoor.



From hippy platitudes to hip hop attitudes; a weekend in Berlin, primarily to support my double bass player Bellatrix, who WON the female competition in the Beatbox World Championships!



Congratulations Belle, you rock! I'm so proud of the girl... She beat the incredible Stef the Chef in the final after winning the heats and a number of battles en route... In the words of German host B’Lo, ‘Maximum Respect’.

The event was crazy; a crowd with mad energy and pure love, supporting a tight family of 140 competitors from 37 countries around the globe, making sounds out of their mouths like you wouldn't believe!

And of course, Berlin had so much more to offer; it was my first visit, but I friggin’ love this city and want to move here. It's clean, quiet and relaxed; artistically it's vibrant and cutting edge; the apartments are massive and airy. The bars are actually really pleasant spaces to hang out in (unlike the majority of London bars), and German people are polite, intelligent and open, devoid of the jaded, cynical been there/seen it/done it of London’s subcultural kids in the know.

Late night partying took me to a number of wicked joints; favourites include Luzia in Kreuzberg and Cafe M in Schoneberg.

It was a good weekend to be in Berlin, with a huge carnival on the streets of Kreuzberg. I also bumped into a protest by Tamils regarding the current situation in Sri Lanka.



It's funny how we react to news; recent British news has been dominated by weeks of anger at politicians playing the system for personal gain, which seems to have distracted the British population from what appears to be genocide, though strenuously denied by the Sri Lankan government. Despite the two month protest in Westminster, general awareness of the situation seems incredibly low. In Berlin, 150 buses travelled countrywide to protest in Berlin – a protest which also used theatre to illustrate what are undoubtedly crimes being committed by the Sri Lanka government in the name of purification. Strange to witness this in Berlin, a city which isn't exactly a stranger to racially motivated murder, as the Holocaust Museum and Liebeskind's celebrated Jewish Museum prove;





Liebeskind’s sharp angles and discombobulating spaces perfectly capture the sickening truths of the holocaust. And yet we complain about our politicians, whilst people continue to die...

I found this picture, taken at checkpoint Charlie, amusing.



This trip was educational in that I had to concede that Berlin is much better off with H and M, and Burger King, than it was in the Soviet-dictated regime before the fall of the wall in ‘89; this is reflected in the personal testimony of Berliners who were old enough to remember life before the wall came down. My concession that the commercial world is not the devil I have consistently painted it to be, is just one aspect of the many concessions I’m currently having to make, with regards to what I believe (currently, the only thing I know for true is I don't know what to believe).

I stayed with my good friend and old collaborator, Mark McCrae.



Mark is a diamond geezer and somewhat of a teacher for me. He's also drop dead gorgeous. It is disconcerting to see the effect he has on women, with his slim, tall build, chilled rock star persona and ubiquitous leather jacket. I try not to let my jealousy get in the way of the fact that he's a dude amongst dudes. He's been in Berlin for a year, en route to Rio or Barcelona. He earns his corn making music for ads and corporate films, which means he can live anywhere on the planet, and live well. Another of my personal beliefs begins to crack at the seams; my abhorrence of 'the man' keeps me rooted to a baseline of subsistence existence…

Fuck that. I want some corn. I want to sell my soul. I want Nike, coke, sweatshops, child labour, major record label, apolitical, Grazia-reading, advert-making, high def, plasma screen, plastic-producing unconscious money earning. Bring it on. I'm not sure how much longer I can be happy getting paid peanuts in the name of supporting political causes. I'm not sure how much longer I can do free gigs which begin with morning meditations where I have to hold hands with a patchouli soaked man complaining of feeling undervalued and unappreciated, and also of having to endure chemicals in his body for the first time in twenty years, having just betrayed his overweight temple of a body by necking a couple of Neurofen for a bad back. Hmmm – do I sound bitter?? ;)

Very much looking forward to starting the Storm programme at the Lyric Theatre tomorrow…

Attenborough kisses his teeth

I did an interview with Tom Robinson today for his BBC Radio 6 show. I arrived at the same time as Sir David Attenborough, who was doing a Radio 2 interview. As we both waited in reception, we struck up a conversation. I told him I was in to talk about the track 'Kiss Your Teeth'. He didn't know what this meant - so I showed him.

Yes - today, I taught Sir David Attenborough how to kiss his teeth! If I die tomorrow, at least I will die a happy man....

Recycling

I've been asked to submit a poem for a children's anthology. This is what just sprang out of me. Early days for this one, but thought I'd road test it here... is it too dark, I wonder?


Recycling

Driven onwards by a genetic imperative,
Guided by the earth’s magnetism,
The common plastic bag embarks on an epic journey
Which begins in your waste disposal unit
And spans tens of thousands of miles –

The humble tetrapak carton endures
Trials and tribulations
No human could survive
On its annual exodus -

How noble the liquid detergent bottle’s pursuit
To reach its distant Pacific goal –

A plastic soup –

A floating mass,
Twice the size of Texas,
Stretching from Hawaii to Japan.

That fertile terrain,
That perfect breeding ground;

Upon the banks of this evolutionary miracle,
Styrofoam cups display mating rituals
Before being impregnated
By polypropylene bottle caps.

Sometimes, sympathetic sea turtles
Act as surrogate mothers
Nursing bin liner fetuses in their stomachs
Before birthing complex hybrid hydrocarbons,
Which slowly begin their heroic migration
Back to our shores.

Walk along any beach in the world
To witness survivors of this saga;

Tyres,
Traffic cones,
Toothbrushes.

Polythene bags,
Polystyrene packing,
Polyurethane pieces.

And these are the lucky ones;
Others are not so fortunate.
Victims of Mother Nature’s cruel sense of humour,
Most maligned members of this plastic population
Disintegrate into particles
During their seaward odyssey,
Transforming into fodder for predators,
Like DDT.

Thankfully, even these poor souls
Will one day find their way
To their spiritual home.

Your Coke container,
Like a faithful PET*,
Will return to you –
Albeit having been swallowed by the sea,
Fed on by a fish,
Eaten by an albatross,
Pooped upon a passing cloud,
Recycled into rainwater,
Ingested by an animal,

And served

as supper

sometime

soon.


*Polyethylene terephthalate