COMFORTABLE SEATS:
TAKE TWO
2008, performance
Staged at Spike Island, Bristol on December 2, 2008 as part of the Kill Your Timid Notion tour.
Posthumous title for a blunderful mix-up including an uptight technician, neglected details, resulting chaos and improvised solutions.
“I’ve always admired musicians above filmmakers found their talents slippery, transitions thrilling sense of timing, essence and rhythm directly expressed, clearly heard less compromised than making a movie now, here at home, working on this performance, piecing it together,
writing this text, thinking of the musicality of the moment
in the room where you are now, where I’ll be soon, I picture the pulse, the play of spilling light, layers of sound plot out what comes first, falls after cook up tonight’s medley routine
although I will never know how it really works out in the moment, which is what you are presently experiencing and which I’m sure will feel different for me then than it does behind the camera as I shoot the final title card and say good night.”
“Dear Barry and Bryony,
Many thanks yet again for inviting me onto the KYTN tour. I’m honored and excited to participate. In response to your request for a description of my performance, it might just be easier to say a few things that the show will not be: 2 hours long, a string quartet, a Sunday afternoon in the country, an impressionist painting, available online, improvised or scripted, on par with the 2008 summer Olympics opening ceremony, overly practiced, served hot in a flaky pastry crust, based on the collected writings of Jack London, broadcast on BBC 2, non-narrative, intravenously fed, smothered in cheese and green chiles, starring Alec Guinness, a love story, a period piece, a silent film, a thunder storm, starting on time. Oh, and there are no animals,
Thanks,
A.”