Typical Monday

Monday 14.5

Today was a day of rain and reduction

+

Frankie went to the dentist.

We sat in the carpeted room upstairs thinking today is not the day so we made some music (with 1 x recorder, 1 x melodica, 1 x guitar) instead. Songs about Nelson Mandela’s Dream (…) and other songs too. When Frankie got back she played bongos (+ 1 x bongos).

It felt important to play together.

Out of tune (if there was one to be identified) composition saying:” There are rainy days and on those days you might just want to stop worrying about progress and make songs with the people you normally worry about it with.”

Kind of a thank you. Not silent, but in disguise never the less.

In the afternoon we decided not to have any pets in our performance. Not even a little chicken = chick.

(…shame)

  

Playing…

We try and interrogate this city, discover a way of building it, using it, explaining it, finding the faces of the people who live in this city, what do they need? what do they love? what scares them? what matters?  

Are we the builders? Are we the architects? Do we live here?  What do you do before work?

Struggling to find a door in, are our stories too personal?

Finding a language to communicate with the audience, who are these four people in front of you, who is the man sitting next to the sound desk? How do they relate to each other? Who is calling the shots?

We play using a violin, recorder, guitar, melodica, red light bulb, milk frother, tin full of stones, a pile of scaff, scaff clamps, shopping trolley and reels of LX tape, what will our city look like in the end?

Building. Failing.  Re-building. Getting Better (we hope)

Present Attempt

11 Days Ago…

A meeting in Swiss Cottage, London, 9am. It is spring, the sun is shining. They pull street names from an envelope to decide their journeys, their goal, to visit parts of the city they’ve never been to before. They tried to reframe the city, remove themselves from the picture, so they could see it for themselves.

They saw adverts, abbreviations, construction, uniforms, newspapers, DLR, smoke, bridges, TESCO™, parks, churches, forest men, TFL, graffiti, yellow lines, red lines, blue skies, hats, ice-cream vans,  Metrogym™, sales, queues, CCTV, ‘make tea not war’, kisses, pie, mash, an empty square, traffic cones, tunnels…

Present Attempt

Some Questions…

What happens here?

How does this place make you feel?

What’s missing from this street?

What happens here when it gets dark?

Where is the most uncomfortable place in this city?

Present Attempt

A few beginings…

They met and agreed to play together. Played in offices, on ships, in cupboards, on bikes. We played at searching, we lost nothing, we found plenty. They travelled together. Journeys became important; tours, guides and hidden cities. Discoveries were made. ‘This is a game, play with us’.

We wanted to be tourists in our own city, curious, seeing afresh. Chance encounters and happy accidents. Who’s city is this? Who is it for?

I write 10 street names on a piece of paper, each one a new story, a love affair on Ariel Way, a murder in Dickens Court, a lonely man on Bishops Road.

Present Attempt