WARNING: more etc than poetry.
At the Avignon Festival, people are watching a new production of _Ubu Roi_ ,
shivering in "dramatically" low temperatures; the production is staged on a
gigantic hand made of plaster; the first time Ubu ,"cette figure
emblèmatique de la sottise humaine et de la violence absurde", utters his
catch-word, "merdre", the plaster fingertips fall off: the Old Order is
crumbling (Your old road is rapidly agin'...)
Think of Berlusconi staging his appearance in Genoa before a building
sanitized by a tarp simulating a building & banning washing from the windows
in the vicinity. Merdre.
There is a wall in Genoa (rhyming with a wall in Berlin & [still] a wall
running through Alexandra Park in Belfast separating the Prots from the
Papists); it won't crumble so easily when the demonstrators press through
the streets, it's protecting and protected by "law and order". Today the
immigrants have their demo; tomorrow with the anarchists (violence?) and the
pink demo (sottiseries) the festival temperature will rise. All the world's
a stage: M and his camera team have not only been filming interviews with
WTO luminaries, critical conferences, street happenings & the P whenever
possible, they've been in touch with The Living Theatre ~ yes, alive and
well after all those years, rhyming for me with their appearance in my mail
to the list not so long ago ~ filming their preparations for performances
also to be filmed & if things go well to be put on the Web in streaming
form, so watch this space for the link. And in la bella Roma on the 15th
July the young designer Francesco Barbero (ba-ba-ba, babariol,
babarian)presented the first (?) overt Nazi-hommage fashion statement, a
picture I may not attach here (merdre) but can forward to anyone interested.
M. enjoyed a little bit of improvised theatre at a dinner to which he was
invited by the BBC last night: "plain clothes" P, already encountered by N &
M on the streets, were sitting at another table dressed in their "hippy"
gear with earrings & M, well-trained, held out his passport to them and
grinned stupidly in conciliatory fashion, annoying the buzzing P no little.
A friend eavesdropped on their comminatory hissings & told M they were
describing to each other in "disgusted" tones (plus ca change...) the way
the unwashed Other Side in their tents, oft-worn clothes etc were unhygienic
& stinking. Merdre. Join in everyone: "For the times they are..." (really?)
Merdy