(Hmmm, it seems that myspace rejects the idea of paragraphs now)
Next Gig - Hyena at York (Picturehouse) - Bad Book Club show Sunday 19th September
Robin Ince's Blog
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Chapter One - Chapter One
“It is for you to place the beneficial yoke of reason round the necks of the unknown beings who inhabit other planets – still living, it may be, in the primitive state known as freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them mathematically infallible happiness, we shall be obliged to force them to be happy” These are words from the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, not an excerpt chronicling the memory of a 1997 cabinet meeting in A Journey. Unsurprisingly, Zamyatin was not popular in his home of Russia being exiled by both Tsarist and Communist Russia. We is not the first book of my one chapter undertaking, partly because it is not broken up into chapters but records instead. Once I’ve eased myself into this I might attempt books that shirk the conformity of chapters. I have read the first chapter of The Diversity of Life by E O Wilson. Anyone who has read Edward O Wilson knows that he is one of the finest writers of science and is fascinated by ants. I am far more interested in ants than I was as a younger man. To take an interest in ants or termites is a sign of growing up. When you are young you want wildlife documentaries about mammals that roar and tear, the older you get, the smaller the creatures you want to see in a documentary. Many people in their late nineties will only watch documentaries if at least 72% of the episode is taken up with slime mold. In Chapter One of The Diversity of Life Wilson writes of one night in the Amazon Basin and the ideas that flickered through his mind as he sat waiting for a storm. “In the Amazon Basin the greatest violence sometimes begins as a flicker of light beyond the horizon” He writes of the darkness in the Amazon, so lush is the darkness that you can barely see your own hand. For any of us living even 30 miles from a city, it is hard to comprehend that without the bleed of a thousand distant streetlamps, falling into ditches would be far more common on a late night journey home. “animals are masters of the chemical channels where we are idiots” Wilson praises the majority of beasts who find their way around via scents diffused from tiny glands, though he goes onto write that despite our smelly gland deficiencies, we are much better on the audiovisual side. Soon we are on to ants, Wilson wonders why some organisms are so good at survival and proliferate while others fall towards extinction. Ants are the dominant subgroup of social insects. In the Amazon rainforest they are 10% of the biomass of all animals. I am fond of biomass. I am impressed that scientists work out the weight of different species on the earth, that is using mathematics for good not evil (and interesting good, not goody good good).As ants work together and are content to make sacrifices for the good of the whole, they appear to have come up with a more successful system than the solitary creature (in the world , SKlub7 would thrive while Morrissey could be endangered. Actually, that’s not what would happen at all, Morrissey would suck them of their life energy and leave them as wrinkled husks, somewhere between the films Lifeforce and The Hunger). Wilson writes of the scientists desire to be the first to make a connection. “our goal is to capture and label a process, perhaps a chemical reaction or behaviour pattern driving an ecological change, a new way of classifying energy flow, or a relation between a predator and prey that preserves them both, almost anything at all.” Red Howler Monkeys also get a look in once the storm begins - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO2KHggo4oc Words I had to look up from reading Chapter one of The Diversity of Life Eidetic – extraordinarily vivid recallNotothenioid – fish that can live in very cold waters due to anti-freeze proteins in their blood Then I watched Chapter one of the The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things DVD. This is based on the short story collection of JT Leroy, a Truman Capote like squeaky voiced young man who apparently had experienced a childhood of truck stop and trailer park hideousness, but who turned out to be a female author in her 30s when writing, and when appearing in public was played by that author’s partner’s half sister (wonderfully named Savannah Koop). It had that contemporary Gus Van Sant almost home movie look and I suspect it would becoming increasingly upsetting as an unbalanced mom (played by Asia Argento who also directed it) made he son do unspeakable things. Before the first unspeakable thing happened my computer insisted it needed to skip a bit due to surface damage. Then everything jammed. I looked the look of the aerobics show that was on in the background where after each move of exertion you had to declaim “Thank you Jesus”. (NOTE: as with all my blogs, I have failed to reread this due to running out of spare time. There are bound to be spelling mistakes and moments of ghastly punctuation. There are no prizes for pointing these out. Well, let’s see how this experiment goes)
Next Gig - Hyena at York (Picturehouse) - Bad Book Club show Sunday 19th September -
Chapter One - The Introduction
Away from touring The Book Club and preparing for Infinite Monkey Cage and Nine Lessons and carols for Godless People, my next sideline project is Chapter One. I have far too many books and DVDs and not enough time to get through them all due to the brevity of life and the allure of so many more things every time I go near a bookshop or internet store. Therefore, I have decided that everyday I will read the first chapter of one of the books from my shelves and watch the first chapter of a DVD (that’s the first chapter after the title sequence). I will attempt to get through 365 of each before the next Edinburgh Fringe festival. I have no idea what use any of this will be to my life, my mind or whether it will be any use in writing a show. I think it will start today with chapter one of the film The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by Dario Argento and EO Wilson’s The Diversity of Life.
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A smattering of solo shows February/March 2010
Hello, I’m not planning on touring for a bit, but I will be doing my new solo show in a few places around the UK. It’ll probably eventually be called Robin Ince asks Why? 13/2 Firebug Leicester – a mere £5 http://bit.ly/bAfole 28/2 Hyena, York - http://www.thebasementyork.co.uk/event/143/ 5/3 Gateshead – http://bit.ly/6oM3Hp 6/3 Leeds – http://bit.ly/axBrZm 19/3 Glasgow – http://bit.ly/ckNznJ 27/3 Whitby - http://bit.ly/9cOJAW plus Newcastle Science festival on 17/3 I’m also still doing my work in progress solo shows at Camden Etcetera – 23/2 & 9/3 -
neverending days of transition
Happily had time to pop into the Glee Club post gig to see the excellent compere and Morrissey fan Andy Robinson; Worth it to hear him use ‘Rubenesque’, a word underused in stand up clubs around the weekend.
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Currently listening to a packed carriage discuss their feelings about Evita which has been in some Birmingham theatre or other. It seems that it was a film with Madonna and is based on a true story.
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I deleted my previous blog as readers, including my father, found it rather bleak. I didn’t think it was bleak after midnight, but I know that I am a little overly analytical and tear most gigs into shreds in the space of a train journey. This train journey is 100 minutes, so who knows what tatters tonight’s show will be in by the time I walk into the house.
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It was lovely performing in the Electric Cinema, an arthouse cinema that used to be an almost porno cinema. By almost porno I mean that it mainly showed filmed made in Britain where dollybirds occasionally ran off naked or sat motionless in saunas, but Roy Kinnear and Christopher Timothy popped into scenes too. Apparently the cinema basement still has many reels of Horny Hospital and Confessions of a Taxidermist holding up one wall.
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I am not sure quite where new my show lies at the moment. Some nights I think it is the best solo show yet, others I think it might have just too much leftie fury and not enough jokes. I will be playing around with it for some time before it goes on a full tour. Both on the Edinburgh and Camden Fringe it would go from great receptions to stubble stroking reactions. Sometimes the stubble stroking nights appeared ultimately more effective than the ones with louder laughter. Every solo show I have put together seems to be part of a transition. I imagine my final show before I die will still seem to me as another awkward transition show, just one where the awkward transition from movement to stillness followed by smelliness. I rarely leave a gig without feeling that some people are cross, maybe that is the way it should be. Even during club sets I build up an image of the front row as looking like the angry faces of a colonel in an antiquated punch cartoon, only to look down at the end and see their smiling faces.
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90 minutes without a break from a caterwauling, damp man in a cardigan is still pretty long though and I hope to have injected more new ideas in by Sheffield and Manchester next week.
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Wish I could remember how I fitted in Feynamn’s discussion of jiggling atoms tonight, but I can’t, so that’s that. I’ll find other ways of letting my mind out to get Feynman and jiggling in next time.
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Oh and I think I might have been wrong about Years of Refusal, though not musically or lyrically the greatest Morrissey escapade, Robinson has rightly pointed me further into its direction. I think Morrissey should use a quote from Altered States – “he sees everyone as nothing more than transitional matter” – for his next A side.
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My son has a new model steam train with a dull and repetitive nearly tune, he seems as annoyed by it as we are, this is a good sign. He still prefers PJ Harvey.
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I wonder if anyone apart from Richard Feynman worked on theoretical physics in topless bars? How much physics happens in Spearmint Rhino on a Friday near Slough? What small particles are discussed near a dancing nipple?
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I have just scribbled “evolution betrays the male feminist” , I don’t know what it means now, but in the backyard of my mind I think it is somehow meant to turn into a routine of some description.
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I always enjoy your blogs Robin and it would be rude to point out any errors but I really would appreciate it if you could put it into smaller paragraphs to make it easier for my old lady eyes to read :-)
'Chapter one - Chapter one' ...reminded me of an episode of Duckman where Duckman is going through a box of old possessions, and he finds a flyer from the pornographic video shop. He reads the adverts aloud "Just in 'Just In' ...coming soon 'Coming Soon'".
The howler monkeys rule.
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I just wonder why we write monkeys and not monkies.
I should read Howler's Modern English*.
(*there you go Robin; SOMEONE is still on myspace making very slightly intellectual jokes for you
First.