and so i take you…
from my balcony view, to the Círculo de Bellas Artes *one of the biggest cultural centers in Spain*
in the Salón de Baile (http://www.circulobellasartes.com/ag_profesionales-salas.php?ele=2
and then my darlings, on with the show!
xxx miss varjack
p.s. generally i keep this kind of thing to excerpts from pieces. but the madrid incarnation of domi’s sad clown was so elaborate i decided to end with it, in its entirety.
Meet The Band
Smoke & Mirrors on Portuguese National TV
There were TV cameras present at our Lisbon show, and now we found out why: we were featured in the latest instalment of Câmara Clara, a cultural programme on the national channel RTP2. You can watch the episode by following this link; the section about the nascent Lisbon poetry slam scene, and our visit to the Music Box, starts around the 49 min mark.
So, TV! I fully expect paparazzi to show up at my door. Any day now.
- Bohdan
Lisbon & Lyon
More pictures here.
sit back, relax… as we unveil our next act
and then… there was video.
sometimes i’m so forgetful of my past life as a filmmaker that I don’t even remember to take my tiny video camera along to gigs. But I think after Bohdan teased that I had sort of mentioned I’d be documenting from the beginning, yet managed to consistently forget to pack the camera, finally for lovely Lisbon, I got my act together.
Now please don’t see the following youtube clip as any mark of my editing skills, I’ve just cluttered together some highlights. And this is only part of the adventure dears, I’m afraid if you weren’t there, you’ll miss out on the daytime of meandering up and down hill streets, marvelling at pretty much everything, and constantly daydreaming about moving from our respective cities and resettling.
Oh lady Lisbon, we really did fall in love with you…and it was definitely at first sight…
But I digress.. ah yes, My fellow smokers, and the mirrors they gaze into, here is a taster of our night out in a much loved town.
and here’s where I borrow Bohdan’s bullet points for description
- Sound check and teaser of a new piece from Bohdan and Ludwig
- Walking from our penthouse (not joking) to the venue, conveniently located next door (with a strip club across the street, apparently the venue used to be a strip club too, the whole kiez used to be redlight-tastic)
- Making it past the velvet rope (not only are we on the list mate, we’re on the flyer!!!)
- Back and frontstage before the show
- the show!!! (We were on at midnight, followed by a fabulous set by Lisbon’s own spoken word band “the social smokers” after which we could have stayed to party, but were too exhausted by the day, so opted for three hours sleep in the penthouse before rushing off in a rollercoaster ride of a taxi journey to the airport.. after all we had a gig in Lyons the following evening…
its not easy being a spoken word super star. but gosh darlings, we do make it look ever so good.
xxxx miss varjack
7th march 2010, london – memory card remixed
Passing Clouds
1° mov. – allegro con brio
through the doors and up the stairs we see the walls the bricks the corners getting round and smooth and thin we see through them we twirl in circles on a wave a turning vase upwards towards the falling sky above our feet is london town we see her skin peeled off inside she is a sunny tangerine who mechanically smiles
2° mov. – adagio molto e cantabile
upstairs the clouds aren’t white but sofas caressed by curry-curtains and elephants blowing bubbles glasses mirrors smoking penguins with sunglasses Ludwig feeds his musical animals we plounge in green pools of words and breathe some paper chords that Laura made Bernat is thirsty the audience has arrived the show has started the sun has stopped Bernat takes a bottle the world has taken a coffee break a death by chocolate dreams Laura while Bernat slowly opens up the bottle the microphone pops out at the end of the night is a white sofa where Sergio listens to the poets hammering and tongueling and Michelle and her plume de nom and the cheering clouds gathered here tonight all around
3° mov. – scherzo: molto vivace – andante con moto – presto
all of a sudden Ludwig frees a little musical animal with blue stripes who jumps on liquid vibraphones and a round one who plays his fourth nose – you can think of it like a happy painting of hyeronimous bosch: the bad clown there making the clouds shudder faking laughs, the acrobats flying deep down in the stock market cracks, the ventriloquist’s puppet who gets up stands up for his right and the tightrope-walker safely falling in the abyss of darkness on her way to tesco safely frying her fish fingers without butter safely selfishly on her own on her rope – then a percussive musical animal bangs his concrete cubes on his back while the knive throwers are killing all the poors until everyone is dead outside and burns in a cool light blue fire – in the bowl of the fortune teller is snowing fake corn flakes and everyone is swimming in the naked mediterrenean milky way with no hurry no gravity but with lucy in wonderland and alice in the sky with diamond rabbits everyone dreams of white chocolate pillows drinking coconut milk cherry syrup strawberry juice among luxurious allucinations we take their money and run.
—
bonus materials: hammer & tongue , bubbles & elephants , passing clouds , the garden of earthly delights
Warsaw Gig – Pics & Report
Hey all! First off, pictures – just click here.
Next, here’s a brief account from our Warsaw show; I’ve promised myself I’d post one before we go to Lisbon and Lyon, and, well, my bus leaves in like 6 hours, but it still counts as before. You will, however, have to make do with bullet points – no time to edit a full-blown travelogue anymore. Here goes:
- We had a meal in the Lorelei cafe; this counts as a success, because (as my friends run the place) I knew the cook had recently gotten drunk and wandered off for a few days, then came back with a black eye and a story about how a girl beat him up. The food was good, though, so I guess he receovered.
- Domi, Paula & Ludwig tried to change their train tickets to stay longer, and experienced first hand the power of an old lady protected by a sheet of glass. Tickets were not changed.
- Ludwig stated officially the sound technician at the venue was one of the nicest he had ever worked with; which was great, because this was the same guy who had helped me out way back when I was running the first poetry slam in the country. Way to celebrate the 7th anniversary of slam in Poland.
- Towards the end of the soundcheck, people were already trickling in, so we took turns hiding behind Ludwig’s DJ table to mutter our texts to ourselves nervously.
- The place was packed – there had been quite a lot of media coverage beforehand, so we got a local news station doing interviews and a guy making a documentary for a film school project. Ah, fame.
- Our first group-of-three-poets show went really well. Smoke and MIrrors are rockstars, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.Poeple reacted very positively, and I had good fedback even from the kind of friends who I know would have criticised us (constructively!) if there had been any grounds for it.
- We then sat through a slam in Polish, which was more fun for some and less for others, although not necessarily the way you think.
- The evening ended with a nice meal of Polish specialties, and as it got later the conversation grew more and more surreal. Good times were had by all, as evidenced by the wild scramble to catch the train on the morning after.
Roll on Lisbon!
07/03/10: Passing Clouds, London, England
arrival london stansted, train to liverpool st, michelle introducing the show, extracts from the show, chilling with django after the show, laura sergio and ludwig at a jazz bar (but its not us playing and singing)
*ludwig
04/03/10: Klub Powiększenie, Warsaw, Poland
just a few recordings:
driving through warsaw, sitting in the cafe, walking through warsaw, before the gig, after the gig in the taxi with grzegorz.
*ludwig
