Visitors’ Choice Award for Juliette Losq

Juliette Losq won the Visitors’ Choice award at the John Moores exhibition! That’s terrific news. I was at the What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me exhibition in London recently and her work featured in that. She really is superb. It’s a great feeling recognising the hand of an artist in a particular piece one has never seen before, but heightened by knowing that the artist is creating, working, with us right now. Met up with her all too briefly before the exhibition. Hard to chat with two children to supervise…

Kate Bush back on stage

No, I didn’t see her. You should read what someone else has to say, this is just ruminating without any interesting content, a blog for blog’s sake, showing that I seem to have got back into the habit of writing just because I can. Which is not intrinsically bad.

Kate Bush is fascinating. For the theatricality, the quality of the music, the insistence on doing things her way. There’s a strong case for playing it straight on stage – black, simple costumes and minimalist staging for plays, or just standing in front of a microphone for concerts – but such a big part of going to a live performance is spectacle. I’ve long felt if you go to see someone, you expect something a little different to standing in front of a recording. I’m delighted to see from the few photos of the first night, that it was a theatrical show.

None of this is not to say I own stack upon stack of Kate Bush records. But I do have occasional binges. I don’t find her someone I just grab one song from, listen to, and move on from.

I think she may be more important now than ever before in a music world where an industry seeks the obvious, the immediate, the safe, and does not invest in growing artists. That way everything ends up the same. It’s going take young fighters and older champions to overcome that, but also examples – and she is one.

ALS & the Ice Bucket Challenge

It’s been such fun to watch the videos leap up over the Web this past day; from Stephen King to President George W. Bush, I’ve been impressed with how quickly so many people have decided to become a part of this campaign.

At times I’ve focussed so much on the glamorous people involved getting drenched, that I’ve forgotten the campaign… forgotten why it’s happening. Then I saw this video from a young man who suffers from ALS – motor neurone disease, and it tells me things I never knew about it. Enough to make me very, very glad I do not have it, nor does anyone I know that I’m aware of. And here’s this young man, looking after his increasingly immobile mother, succumbing to a disease that is already starting to claim him too.

So many of us are so very fortunate. It is important to be reminded of that. It is important to be reminded that many people are not. It is important to be reminded that many people are scared, with very good reason.

Robin Williams has died

Many years ago, I watched a television programme about Robin Williams, in which someone said something along the lines of, “He’s one of the five funniest people in the world; and I don’t know who the other four are.” There are many ways to define comedy even aside from personal taste, but I think that’s not an inappropriate or inaccurate tribute to make. He did seem to stand alone in terms of the sort of relentless energy and invention. There were others you could rank alongside him for many of his capabilities; but never all of them to anything like the same degree. He was the top trump. He also seemed a guy who strongly valued being nice.

I admired him for the fact his comedy was great when verbal and when physical, for his subtle acting, and for his impersonation skills, all things important to me. I can pick out in my memories a dozen vivid moments of Robin Williams that aren’t even the obvious ones – not from films, but documentaries praising other people, or interviews he gave; all clips I’ve watched many times. He’s a guy I will often mimic out loud on my own, because I love the way he delivered so many lines.

His absence, even only notional to most of us who never actually encountered him, is almost tangible. He was so much larger than life that it is very hard to believe he’s gone. Noticing the reactions to his death of those who knew him, I felt earlier today that adding my voice would be ridiculous, but this is one of those occasions where I feel I can’t not do something. Force of Nature. Bottled Lightning. Funniest Man Alive. I’d give him any accolade like that. It won’t be any quieter without him; there are plenty of brilliant comedians to mean it won’t be less funny; but it will be less fun. I mean – what a great smile he had. And those little quick movements! And the lilt in his voice! I could go on. I wish he had.

Cats is back!

Really great news recently about the return of Evita and Cats – the latter confirmed yesterday. I got a copy of the original cast recording for my last birthday, and have been playing it a lot recently. It’s very quirky, and catchy, and as I wrote on Twitter it’s like a concept album on stage.

Memory is the most famous piece from that musical, covered by so many people. I sang a version of it at school. I like it, but my favourites are numbers like Macavity, Magical Mr. Mistoffelees, and currently the Overture, which I keep humming. Lord Lloyd-Webber has apparently amended Rum Tum Tugger (changing it to a rap), and Growltiger. That last one always seemed powerful to me, so I’m intrigued to note he was dissatisfied with it.

I’ve long felt Andrew Lloyd Webber one of the best melodists of the 20th Century. For those who didn’t know, the lyrics are from original poems by T S Eliot, from his Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats. It’s going to be on at the Palladium in London for 12 weeks from December this year – for more, try the show website.

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