Friday 22 October 2010

Tuesday 19th October 2010 - A History of Oneself in Some Random Objects

The main reason that it look a little while longer for this daily blog to continue unabated, is because of today. On days I've got seminars, I'm mainly focused on those, so don't really experience life apart from that. So I could write about The Revenger's Tragedy, which I read in its entirety today, my Making Theatre coursework or the presentation on Vsevolod Meyerhold I overprepared for. That was my life today; and little else, to be honest.

I sometimes wonder how I would have survived without the internet. I would have read more, watched more day-time television, possibly played more video games. This last one only really works if I would have been here about fifteen years ago. In the 1970s, I'd have been fucked. Not literally, I mean with ways of wasting my time. But they did have drugs then, and that was all fine in that age, apparently. If it had been the 1920s, I probably wouldn't even be here. Mainly for class-reasons. And because I'd have been a highly inept farm worker (you can't change some things) instead of a student, with a grant and full support by the government (to all government officials reading this blog: I do actually deserve this, I provide services to the arts, free of charge. You can't cut me! I'm like a cultural attaché for Dutch comedy! The highly rare and unmarketable sardonic style that is).

Speaking of me as a farm worker; I'm ridiculously inept at garden-based work. This is annoying, since I spring from a long heritage of farmers, who for at least 450 years have lived in and around the town of Jutphaas which is now the very sexy Nieuwegein (see! I can be ambassador!). Over the years, I've tried helping family members with activities like weeding and harvesting things. It usually ended up with me angry, panting (bad stamina) and hating all multicellular life. Including algae, who are shits. I hate gardening. I used to have dreams about me being sent to some kind of garden in hell, where I had to do weeding until the end of recorded time; with the roses stinging me and the ferns laughing at my ineptness.

Ironically, when I was at Steiner School in the early 2000s, I succeeded in getting my reaping-diploma. I'm now officially qualified to work the scythe. That will come in handy, cause if my artistic plans would fail; my official plan B is being the lord of Doom.

Speaking of Steiner School; reading about Meyerhold made me think about a book-sale I once organised at my school. It went fine, future employers, it was a victory of common sense over a meaningless and chaotic world (i.e. I am Best). Apart from ironic braggadocio (wonderful, wonderful word); in between the stuff we tried to sell, I found an LP with the title: Socialist Songs of Victory, by the Worker's Choir of Amersfoort.

The sleeve amused, scared and fascinated me in equal measure. Never having lived through a period of time where communism was actively working (arguably) in Eastern Europe (disregarding Belarus; which is a scary dictatorship (take that!)) and was therefore close, it was alien to me. This LP of overly earnest songs on it made by people who are now either dead, very embarrassed or very proud about having made it (there seems to be no middle ground with this kind of thing). I never listened to it, but was sufficiently fascinated by it, that I remembered holding this very alien thing in my hand, while reading about an equally earnest Theatre Practitioner. I've also gotten into BBC's A History of the World in a Hundred Objects. Although I doubt whether they'd let me write for the next series.

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