“Everyone” is an artist..”

i have a weakness for journey films. they’re a tried and tested narrative formula, stretchting far back to fairy tales, fables and myths. Something about watching a character’s emotional journey. mirrored by a physical one, always kind of works for me. Towards the end of my own recent journey, back to the uk, i was invited to a preview screening of the film bunny and the bull. Its a road movie in a way, but also not at all,  as the main character, Stephen (Ed Hogg) spends the majority of the story unable to leave his house. The magical mystery tour that led to this self imprisonment, is revealed in a series of hallucinatory flashback, bringing us closer to understanding why he cannot leave, and if he will ever find the courage to face the outside world again.

Stephen is quiet, reserved, kind and afraid… of just about everything, He lives in an enormous flat, crammed with bookes and boxes and boxes of carefully catalogued collections of mundane objects most would discard: straws, plastic bags, aging ready made meals. But it wasn’t always this way. A year ago, Stephen went on a cross european trip  with his best mate Simon Farnaby) . The two are a likeable pair of polar opposites, all of Stephen’s awkwardness matched by Bunny’s charismatic careless ways. And nothing about this cross europe trip is ordnary in a touristic sense,  as Stephens’s incredibly strange guide book takes them through places most tourists would never take any interest in going.  for example, poland’s museum of cobblery, where one can eat in the cafe after and have the “authentic meal of an 18th century cobbler*” (why would you want to do that? questions bunny? Stephen isn’t given much of a chance to reply as Bunny drags them off elsewhere)

but not only is this a road movie that never leaves the flat. its a movie with scenes across europe, that is shot almost entirely in yorkshire. this is achieved by wondrous production design, mixing everything from stop motion animation, to studio sets that look so charmingly hand made, they are unlike any you’ll soon see again. this a low budget film that works its budget well by not trying  to seem bigger than it is, but rather exploiting its apparent limits. like the best british indie films its idiosyncratic and sure of itself. the characters are real and likeable and humman and different.  so well drawn that they are easily warmed to  (especiallly Eloisa (Veronica Echuegui) an adorably eccentric spanish girl, who accidentaly creates a love triangle by crossing their path)and anyone who is a fan of the mighty boosh, I.t. crowd, nathan barley will be delighted with the casting, and well down with the humour.

 so whats wrong with it then?

It does feel ever so slighly long. and after a pacey start there becomes a point just past the midway mark, where it begins to feel like there are one too many obstacles, and zany characters that they must come across. to reach the strange and painful climax. its almost as if the writers and cast had so much fun going throuh strange scenarios that they kept adding to them, unsure of when to say when. and the climax for me was definitely over the top. but then again somehow that kind of suits the mad journey that is the film.

so in short see it. maybe even make an effort to see it while its out in the cinema, it does look and sound very pretty. (the soundtrack is as easy on the ears as it is haunting) and will keep you entertained and amused for the ride. bunny and the bull hits cinemas in the uk november 27th, and with any luck after not too long, it may come and hit other places, like germany maybe

uh oh, i think summer kicked in late…i’m liking minimal techno again. on friday night at watergate, a club i swore i’d never go back to, on a night i swore i wouldn’t go out. I’m taking chemical cocktails that keep me up until the sun forces sunglasses on and everyone around me is losing it
the dj hands me a jug of jager and the promoter is cutting up lines with eyes with that glint that suggest he’s ready to seduce the young boy cub kids who may not be that straight after they knock, back the vial of the thing that some party with and others use as a date rape drug. but they’re taking advantage of him too. and they are a colourful crew. aged eighteen to twenty six.

one called himself a g-sexual. sexuality defined by that one particular drug he liked to take. i can hear accents cut through beats. the tourists from london keep coming. and at the end of the night i see a girl who has overdosed on that very drug my party friends were on. a drug i’d never heard about until friday. and i’m amazed how everyone around me gets together to take care of her, to shake her out of her daze. and its shoudl be more scarey than it is but its almost too unreal to be scary. i feel like i’m in a film. i can see the skyline in the distance. it must be noon or one , i’ve missed the sunrising, now its just day… but that was friday, and now its tuesday, i was going to stay in but thought i’d check out a jam session until i ran into a friend who was having drinks in the back of that all night place called baghdad where we enter worlds smallest smoking room
unless you count the one they”re building at luzhia. but no one takes that seriously. kreuzberg doesn’t take the ban seriously really. or will they this winter?

but anyways, i’m doing my best to focus. comprehending as much as i can of this group conversation in german, when this drunk skater boy with an open shirt rocks up, something retro calafornian about him or a seventies porn star maybe its the mustache ? but its not him i’m intrigued by, he’s got this super hot tiny asian chick wiht him wearing the greenest shortest dress ever which she lifts up to reveal even shorter cut off shorts. and then around the table i hear that he had a birthday barbecue earlier in gorlitzer park, only for some reason someone broke out pepper spray

i can’t process this. so i question are we going to the jam session?
no?
the blonde drunk skater who is wearing a flashing light necklace that says
hot
*no really i’m not making this up*
takes us tall to his flat aroudn the corner, by now there are like fifteen of us and as we walk out i see this irish boy i met at bar 25 or kept meeting at bar 25 every time i went there, my running joke being he never ever left
now i say to him congratulations, they closed, you got out
and he says he’s so glad its over, and i can tell he wants to find out where we’re going. it looks like a party in the making, but i don’t really know him so i don’t invite him and feel like he must have the impression i’m part of this big crew, when actually i only know like three people with me, and we this new born tuesday party massive walk and tease our friend who runs an illegal bar that we love, about creating this chaos by daring to close on our favourite night to drink there

we get to skater boys’ flat, its on the fourth floor because isn’t it always
the flatmate is friendly but maybe not excited to have us all stumble in but its early and we’re not that drunk, and anyway there are already like twenty people there. but the vibe is more after dinner party and our vibe is more.. party and then the drunk boy, he puts on music, he puts on that track sunshine which has been a bit of a minimal anthem all summer and cranks up the volume

and people are already ashing on the floor. and i listen to the beat and the repeating vocal, and think about how here, here in berlin, tracks that talk about being awake until morning, tracks about daylight coming are always goign to be anthems, they make you celebrate your party endurance, your commitment
the smiles you share with those you’ve never exchanged names or hello;s with. but kept running into thursday, friday, sunday, weekend after weekend, dancefloor to dancefloor, this the city where partying past sunrise isnt’ hardcore,, its just normal….

but the party we’re at now is not really a party . the music is turned down by the flatmate of drunk boy, so then we leave. walk down the stairs en masse. and the guy who invited us comes along. we get stuck on the corner by that place baghdad again. and i’m kind of wishing i’d left with that irish boy instead. he had said he was going ot an open air bar my friend works at. but now i’m just on a corner with people i mostly don’t know, getting quickly irritated by group dynamics where everyone is always responsible for at least one person. so when you try to leave someone says,

i just need to get
who just needs to get
who just needs to get
who just needs to get
until you’re a group again

we go to the jam but its too early so there’s a terrible band. self absorbed musicans wiht no soul, and an audience of onlookers who look too polite to walk out and seem scared of the stage. all standing as far back as possible

we
are now only four
we lost the others on the way. we stay a little . i have a good chat with one of my friends. then we all leave. but i don’tl go home because i run into another friend, who i pluck from the sidewalk bar he’s at, and wander somewhat aimlessly trying to agree on the best bar to have nightcap in but everywhere[’s too empty, too boring, too
tuesday?

we end up in a bar that was once a kind of divey kneipe. but is now frequented by hipsters, and we talk abotu love and sex and relationships and closure, and i drink my double whiskey far too quickly. so we walk out , go through pitch dark gorlitzer park, that i was warned to never cross at night, and then he must go one way and i must go another, by now my love advice has degraded to that of a frat boy.
i cycle off saying only .

ultimately we’re all rubbish (meaning women)
but then you all are too (meaning men)
and with those sage words i ride home, feeling civilised because at least its not

sunrise

its making me krazr
so i got this phone that is like exactly like my old phone which is special because you cant get it anymore it was this lilmited edition motorola thing which mattered before iphones and blackberries made all other phones redundant. anyways so i buy it,

maybe i should just take it back…

gosh, where do i even begin, so i’ve just settled back in the wonderland that is berlin and it feels a little like stepping from one world to the next. to those that have never had the pleasure of taking part in edinburgh’s fringe festival, for the four days i got to sample the pleasure i can only say its a little like the madness i’m used to in berlin, only with way more performances and people from everywhere. its a theatre/comedy festival on acid, where all your time is spent performing, promoting, trading contacts and taking in some brilliant entertainment and art from all over the world. Thanks to the wonder that is london’s spoken word programme UTTER, spearheaded by the ginger haired king richard tyrone jones, i journied to this magical scottish place of hills and temperamental weather and even a castle, a big pretty straight out of a fairybook castle. and though i met no prince or princesses, there were poets and poetesses and comics and performance artists and breakdancers and street performers, all doing all they could to convince the other performers, theater goers and locals that ours was the show they must see.

funnily enough the most fun i had was probably the last day we did promoting/flyering. myself, richard and dzifa benson (my new sister in crime) to0k to the royal mile and jumped up on bollards, bellowing oru prose to the passing public. you’d think it would be humiliating, but it was like taking my performance skills straight down, stripped down to grass roots guerilla level. if you can get a crowd to form around when you’re not protected by the safe confines of a stage, well you’ve got to be doing something right. *video of that coming soon.. oh dear. at one point we were bellowing beside this street performer, a silent ancient asian woman in blue face paint and a million piercings, i ran into her later at this venue and she very quietly and sweetly said she adored my poetry and to keep at it. ah the street performers and other promoters, like the really really hot girl with the whore sign who was out of flyers and just getting people to write the details of her show down.

i’m already thinking about going back next year, and what that will involve, but until then i’m having fond memories of meeting so many marvelous people. and i’m crushing on the city and its local spoken word scene hard. (it helps that all versions of scottish accents i heard sound so damn sexy to my cosmopolitan easyjetset ears
but you probably want some gossip don’t you? as i am the girl that likes to kiss and tell… well i’ll excercise some ladylike discretion and name no names or particulars. but i can tell you that much to my amusement on one night i saw a fantastic solo show by nyc comedienne desiree burch, that involved audience participation, and at one point left me with a rather large orange dildo in my hand… drinking and chatting after with my edinburgh hosts emma and wallace, i encountered several very hot boys. one of which wrote his name on my arm so i could stay in touch, only i washed it off by accident, anotehr of which didn’t write his name on my arm, but gosh i wish he had (although i do remember him taking my glasses off at once point and telling me i how beautiful i was, which made me all shy in a not very varjack way) and then emma and i snuck into this rockabilly club where i was plucked by the promoter/dj and swing danced all around the place. oh and then the following night there was attention from two gentlemen cant mention, but suffice to say the latter of the two resulted in a lot of very sexy flirtation.

and then it was soo late that me and emma had to go back to her place, where i could barely keep my eyes open, and in an hour she was shaking me awake and i was sleep walking into a cab, and now here i am in berlin again. nice one. xxx p

last week I saw a premiere of the film The 500 days of summer And no doubt it is a charming little film. It feels very much like a first film, or film school film, in all its breathless desires to pack as many quirky effects and styles as it can into ninety some minutes. This was the kind of film that me and all of my film school friends wanted to make in college. *(those of us that weren’t hell bent on being the next tarantino that is) and what makes it the kind of film we wanted to make? Well…
It has (in no particular order)

• An anonymous narrator unconnected to the plot
• Split screens
• Rotoscoping
• Disney-esque animation mixed with live action
• Black and white silent film sequences
• Choreographed dance sequences
• Flashbacks and flashforwards
• Gorgeous animated titles
• a moody brit pop soundtrack (which for American audiences gives it yet more indie cred. Cue the smiths, belle and sebastien which in the plot are given supreme character relevance)
• very now hipster styling which makes all the characters dress in a kind of modern day version of retro (a neutral classy mash up of forties, fifties, sixties)

for me, and anyone like me, who has this crazy idea that we are totally completely individual in all of our quirky ironic indie interests, after about twenty minutes one is glumly forced to face the fact that yes, i/we belong to a demographic. And that did get in the way of the film for me sometimes. It was like the film was in the corner of a house party, giving me drink after drink, while saying like me like me like me, I’m cool too! we have soooo much in common. But some of those people at parties irritate, and then there are others that you clock and think, yes, you’re a bit young and keen and overexcited, but you are cool. So you let them ramble on and give you more drinks and as soon as they stop trying to prove themselves, the real coolness shines through. So while I can’t say I loved the film, i liked it enough to give it a chance. And this is the coolness I saw shining through.

It does very well to tell a different kind of love story, that isn’t so much about love necessarily but postmodern relationships in general. It plays with gender roles very nicely as well. other than films/tv about polyamory, this is the first time I have EVER seen a film that deals with the matter of a “non=conventional” relationship. Especially, where it is the female character who is uninterested in commitment or labels. The writers definitely speak with experience, the story and characters involved are presented with sensitivity and bittersweet poignance.

The best part of the film however, is the casting of the two leads. Indie film it girl Zooey Deschanel and the impossibly adorable Joseph Gordon-Levitt are an utter joy to watch. the film is worth seeing for them alone. the way they relate and fail to relate to one another is genuine and real. There are many head noddingly accurate truths that are said and portrayed about relationships. (personal favourite sequence: after the morning they first have sex, and a split screen sequence about date expectation versus how events really play out) annnnd The art direction is fantastic. One of the cleverest ideas of the script, is making the pair work colleagues, in a greeting card company. This allows for some great visual jokes in shots, and a cheeky juxtoposition of the commercial representation of love and sentiment, versus the actual one.

So cast aside all the over the top style stuff, the heavy handedness about them LOVING british pop music (maybe this would bother me less if I was more American) and that matter of all of the characters bar the main two, being fairly two dimensional. (the best being the little sister of the male main character, she only exists to give her older brother advice, but it’s an adorable idea to have this totally together thirteen year old, coaching her moody heartbreak junkie brother). There are a few films that I love to see every time I come out of a relationship, or think about entering one. This could well be a film I add to the list. And though it may not be a date movie, date movies are kind of of over for our times aren’t they? when the concept of dating itself is overrated, maybe its time for more films like this where the equation is far more complicated than boy + girl = love.

i just finished watching one of my favourite films of all time, humoresqe. there are films i love that i watch so many times sometimesi pick up the dvd box and can hear it and see it beginning ot end, and then there are films like this one that hit me so hard, as much as i love them i can only bare to watch once in a while when i’m in a very certain mood. what an astonishing film this is though. its probably one of the best studies i’ve seen of the character of the artist/and/or musician ever, its also a brilliant breakdown of an affair, of the older woman younger man dynamic and for a film shot in the forties is right on point with the issues of fame and artisitic criticism.

i don’t even know what drove me to watch it tonight, other than i knew i had to stay in and i knew it was teh kind of film to keep me grounded and thinking in such a way i couldn’t just float out of the flat after for a drink (she says typing wiht a volumninous glass of rose’ by the mouse…) this theme of involvement with artists is suprisingly a new one for me. see i never really dated many artists before, creatives etc. but now in berlin my life is a dense tapestry of performers of all descriptions. singers, performance artists, musicians, performance poets, actors and actresses, comics. its rarely a day that goes by when i’m out and i’m not with someone who performs in some way

and we’re a funny lot. really. we crave attention to sometimes superhuman proportions, we’re as vulnerable as we’re brash and outgoing. and fueled by our vices of choice, destruction is often just out of reach. i cheated a bit when i went wrote my why you should never date a kunstler piece. i cheated in that i hadn’t dated all those artists. ok an affair and a relationship with two conceptual artists (not at the same time, that woudl have been insanity) and i’ve defo had too many affairs with poets, but the musician section was mostly abstracted from the experiences friends of mine have had. and oddly that felt the most true

humoresque like many brilliant films of the forties, is rife with cracking dialogue, but the line that stuck out and made me laugh out loud in my living room was “a french philosopher once cited three thousand ways to commit suicide, but he left one out, falling in love with an artist” how terribly true. the line is said as the joan crawford character walks out drunkenly from a bar. excited to pass a note to her lover with news that will change their relationship, she goes to his rehearsal. and when he comes ot a pause and reads her urgent note, he crumples it up and asks the conductor to go back to the beginning of the concerto. he doesn’t even look up to see her in the auditorium. its brutal. and she tells him later she doesn’t want to be second to his music. and thats the problem. one falls in love with the artist partly because of the art, and the passion for the art, and not long after one becomes jealous of that very thing. i’ve even been guilty of the same. and yet, now that it comes to me i have this joke i often make with my friends

given the choice of meeting someone tomorrow who i loved and loved me, or a personal assistant who would work for free. i’d take the P.a. no doubt. no question. and its a joke kinda. but the frightening thing is , i also know its true. i used ot be the girl who’s relationship was my life, and it made me very happy, and i’d given up on my career really progressing anyway. i find myself in reverse now.

and why do i think about all these matters? because i’ve been commisioned to write a piece authored by my doppelganger. and as i try to connect with that old self, before the madness of performing, before a kunstlername and alterego utterly eclipsed me and the life before, i’m left thinking, how could anyone really handle me now seriously as a partner, and for that matter, how coudl i seriously entertain the matter of involving anyone else…

i go away for a few weeks and what does berlin do? she goes all golden and grinning in my absence. gooood work! i’m looking at the sun flirting through my window and keen to get outside. its a good week for all things arty and performance poetry oriented. first off you will the first i tell that the next call for submissions for cinema rivalry has been chosen. The event will happen at kreuzberg’s one andonly ping pong bar in june, and this events theme is (drumrolll plllllease)

Trash vs. Style

so i’m on the look out for short films with slick aesthetics, or those who make trashiness an aesthetic, and when i say trashy, i don’t mean bad, i mean trashy in the realm of messy intentional over-the top ness. maybe you’re the next russ meyer? email me about it at paulavarjack (at) googlemail.com

but back to this week… kicking off with thursday, where i’ll be doing a feature set at lady gaby’s moving along with verses.

this is a kind of premiere of a new collective i’m a part of called:
skint but sexy. we being three berlin based performance poets and a musician from various parts of america and england. at the moment we’re plotting our uk tour/takeover but more on that to come, for now we’re just working out the finer details of our promotion (printed condoms? matchbooks? or maybe our own brand of ciggarettes?.. knowing the budget and tagline i’m thinking its gonna be matchbooks, but i’m hoping we can rock the condoms) annnnnnyways

friday i’m going to put my film-hat back on to document some performances i;m very much looking forward to. As beatstreet promises sets from that wonderful san franciscan ryan nash, and that scribe from the dirty fableland, Jonas Mccloud (aka Cloudfist Conceptz). But i can’t have tooooo crazy a late night after the show because because because… on SATURDAY
an event i’m very much looking forward to

A tribute night to that diva of dynasty ALEXIS COLBY.

i’ve got a vintage snake print jumpsuit i’ve been desperate for occasion to wear to, and the poem i’ve written for my performances is squarely in the sexual crush category. meanwhile I also love the poem Tom has written and i’m very curious to hear what Niti and Jonas McCLoud are stepping up with. But its not just about the poetry kids, there’s gonna be dj sets and drag, and performance art from Lady Gaby and its all going down in that arty illegal bar wonderbar, with those dangerous orange cocktails Gaby makes. …

i’ll see you there