By: Hugin

We went to see Noises Off at the Old Vic for all the wrong reasons.  In actual fact, the sole reason we opted for that play in that location was because it starred an actor we all admire greatly: Robert Glenister.  The decision to travel 500 miles in the middle of winter was made before we even knew anything about the play.  It was only weeks after we had booked our travel, accommodation and (determined to “do the theatre experience properly”) tickets for the best seats in the house, that I began to wonder if maybe we hadn’t done things the wrong way around.

Our trip to London started off brilliantly, watching a film at the cinema in Inverness (a luxury at any time of the year but particularly in winter when the 215 mile round trip is not to be recommended), a beautiful train journey down the length of the country, and meeting my friend in the Royal Navy for the first time (which also doubled up as a fantastic – if speedy – tour of London!).  By the time Lydia, Ginny, Clemency and I had tucked into a delicious meal at our hotel, returned up to our eighth floor rooms, admired our sterling view of London At Night and dressed for the theatre, the play had a lot to live up to.

As anyone who has been to the Old Vic will know, the interior of the theatre is exquisite and, although our seats were hardly worth the extra £25 (each) we paid for them, we were pleased to have such a good view of the stage.  The play was immediately amusing, although the first act saw more restrained tittering than out-and-out belly laughing.  I was particularly pleased by the director’s decision to have members of the cast coming out of the audience, something that took me back to my days as an A Level drama student, although here it was done to far greater effect.

The interval came at the end of a promising first act which, although it provided a lot of entertainment, was also slightly too close to home for anyone who has been involved in amateur or small-time dramatics.  Ginny confided in me later that too many of the things in the first act reminded her of moments during her time with various amateur dramatics groups and I can’t help but agree with her.  During the interval we also sampled some extremely delicious ice-cream which can’t be faulted in any way other than that: a) it just didn’t last long enough, and; b) I was unsure as to how I was supposed to access the spoon!

It was really during the second act that the play ‘got going’ as far as I was concerned.  So many moments of pure comedy genius, delivered with fantastic timing by the cast, had me screaming with laughter, unable to stop myself breaking into spontaneous applause at the parts that appealed to me the most.  The play really went from strength to strength: the sequence with the flowers was hysterical, and Ginny had tears in her eyes from laughing so much when a cactus came in contact with Mr Glenister’s posterior.  (She’s a lovely girl.)  It really was a stroke of genius to set the second act backstage, especially as the set then reverted to its earlier layout for the third and final act, which was also so full of humour that we couldn’t stop laughing.

Every single member of the cast was superb in their roles, but I must admit to being particularly impressed by Jamie Glover.  Not only was his comic timing impeccable, but his excellent and untiring physical performance was both hilarious and inspiring.  I suppose I had previously identified him as “the son of Julian Glover” and so potentially it was for that reason that I was particularly impressed by his performance.  But I am henceforth far less cynical about his identity, having been more than convinced by his competence as an actor.

As Noises Off is still running at the Old Vic until the 10^th March, I won’t go into too much detail about exact moments in it, in case I ruin someone’s viewing experience!  However, what I will say is this: go and see this production of the play.  If you watch nothing else this year, watch Noises Off at the Old Vic.  It’s just the thing to beat off those vicious winter blues and set you thinking about just how many things in your life are actually a farce just waiting to be written!!!

By: Patrick

It was as I walked out of Hall Two at the Sage that I noticed that everything looked different and felt different. Dreamlike insofar as it felt in no way like my everyday perceptual experience of the world, yet so far from dreamlike in the way that everything felt so vivid and lacking in the ephemeral quality of dream states. It was as if I had never stood before in the cavernous atrium of the Sage and had never heard the ambient sound of people talking before. It was as if I had never really paid attention to the sound of my feet walking on the marble floors. If great art challenges the way you see the world, forcing you to reconsider the banal and everyday experiences that we take for granted, this concert had been a resounding success.

Anyone acquainted with the drone metal sound of Sunn O))) will understand that the use of the word ‘resounding’ above was used in such a manner that I might legitimately add ‘no pun intended’. Because one thing to understand about Sunn O))) is that they are extraordinarily LOUD! The programme had warned of this possibility but I thought this may just have been the Sage trying to warn its usual septuagenarian and octogenarian clientele against ‘taking a chance’. In reality, it was the loudest thing I have ever experienced – so loud that to say I felt it in the pit of my stomach would have ignored the fact that I felt it in rumbling in every throbbing cell of my body.

Dressed in black robes, filling the room with dry ice and tuning their guitars to drop A (most guitars are tuned to E and bands are considered ‘heavy’ if they use a drop D tuning), Sunn O)))’s live show is as much a visual experience as an auditory one (especially when the vocalist emerges dressed as a tree!). Of course when faced with this theatricality it would be easy to dismiss Sunn O))) as cartoon characters in a similar vein to Spinal Tap performing Stone Henge or Ozzy Osbourne biting the heads off bats. But there is something unnervingly authentic about the ritualistic elements of their live performance. It is not an experience that draws an audience together. It immerses each individual audience member in the sheer brutality of the sounds that are produced. It is not fun to watch a gig like this. No one smiles. No one talks. No one even stands very close to each other if at all possible. One audience member spent much of the gig swaying back and forward, frequently unable to open his eyes for fear that they might burst forth from their sockets under such pressure. It was me. While meditation immerses people in the silence of their inner world, this gig immersed the audience in the deafening intensity of their outer world. The effect is much the same – both are deeply cleansing and profoundly effect one’s conscious experience of the world.

At times standing there with my eyes shut, allowing the waves of noise to pulse over me (the frequencies were sometimes so low that you could imagine them visibly pulsating towards you, the surrounding air vibrating as it drew nearer) it was impossible to work out exactly what this sounded like – if it was possible to compare it to anything else. Perhaps an avalanche is the closest I can come to capturing the deafening, rumbling menace of the sounds – the sense that this was what terror, madness and even death could all sound like.

I felt fragile at the end. I was extremely glad that I had come by myself. I am relieved that the few people I had asked to accompany me as ‘it would be an experience’ had sensibly declined my offer. It felt inappropriate to clap – clapping seemed so frail delicate. I was grateful that I did not have to speak to anyone – the sound of my voice would have been absurdly inappropriate. Yet listening to the ambient noise of others talking as I exited Hall Two was inexplicably beautiful. I could not make out their words – it was just noise with no beginning and no end (or was I imagining it all?).

Why should it be that the world outside seemed so extraordinarily vivid? I can only suggest that the quiet of the night combined with the fact that I was basically deaf to the usual city sounds like the cars passing over the bridge emboldened my other senses – the feel of my shoes passing over the metal gratings of the millennium bridge and the serenity of the blackened water drifting below. On the drive home, I took immense pleasure in the sound the car made as it emerged from a patch of smooth tarmac onto a stretch of roughened concrete. I likened it to someone emerging from the tranquillity of the sea to catch a much needed breath of air. Suddenly the spell is broken and reality has to be faced once again. Until you dive down deep into the infinite peace of the ocean once again.

As I arrived back home, one of my friends was still up and asked me what I thought of the Christmas decorations she had designed and put up. I tried to speak but the words caught at the back of my throat. In the end, I whispered that I thought they were extremely beautiful. And looking around, I realised that in fact they were extremely beautiful – intricate patterns weaved from brightly coloured cardboard. Whispering felt pleasant – almost like a massage. So I turned to my friend and whispered again that I thought they were really beautiful. Then I smiled faintly at her as I had forgotten how to smile and I went to bed.

By: Patrick

I miss D. Boon. Although of course I never met him. I was only 5 years old when he died in a car crash. He was the lead singer of a band called the Minutemen – one of the most original and brilliant punk rock bands of all time. And this is not punk rock in the sense we now think of it – with a distinct style of music, clothing and world view. The Minutemen came into punk rock at a time before it had become stagnant and petrified. For them punk rock was about taking control of your life – about immediacy of expression, freedom of thought.

Double Nickels on the Dime (1984) is their magnum opus, a sprawling 43 track epic. I love the story regarding the name of the album: Sammy Hagar (of stadium rockers Van Halen) had written a song entitled ‘I Can’t Drive 55’ in protest at the lowering of the speed limit on the US motorways. Seeing this as rather a feeble statement of defiance, the Minutemen decided that they would drive at the legal speed limit (double nickels is apparently trucker-speak for 55 miles per hour) but that they would make defiant, wild music. As bass player Mike Watt pointed out: “the big rebellion thing was writing your own fuckin’ songs and trying to come up with your own story, your own picture, your own book, whatever. So he can’t drive 55, because that was the national speed limit? Okay, we’ll drive 55, but we’ll make crazy music.”

Double Nickels is an intimidating album – 43 songs! And despite the occasional humorous song titles (‘Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing’ and ‘The Roar of the Masses Could be Farts’), the lyrics are anything but superficial, dealing with everything from language to racism to politics to working class life. But what is it that I love so much about this album? Well, it is, as Flea from Red Hot Chilli Peppers has described it, ‘a cacophony of colours’. It is limitlessly creative. It is incredibly exciting. It is happy, inspired, alive. It is humorous, truthful, authentic. D. Boon’s guitar sounds like a cross between a buzzing insect and a dentist drill; Mike Watt’s bass lines are so elastic and imaginative and George Hurley’s drumming is so varied and intense. It is also painfully touching – Boon and Watt’s friendship shines through in songs like ‘History Lesson – Part II’, where Boon talks about the two of them playing music together as kids in the working class backwater of San Pedro – “we were fucking corn dogs”, he tells us. Elsewhere, Boon, a heavy set chap, takes aim at Watt’s wiry figure – referring to him as a skeleton, a series of points with no height, length or width. The tales of Watt and Boon arguing in tour vans over Marx’s Communist Manifesto or working peoples’ rights in Cuba are legendary.

There is a documentary about the Minutemen called ‘We Jam Econo’. This phrase sums up much of what the Minutemen were about – minimal expenditure, hard work, no pretensions, just getting on with things and creating your own world rather than expecting others to do it for you. This vision has inspired countless artists and non-artists since them. It is a vision that allows people to look beyond the mundane aspects of their lives to dream of creating something better – summed up beautifully in ‘The Glory of Man’: “I live sweat, but I dream light years”.

The music journalist Michael Azerrad wrote that the Minutemen ‘told stories, postulated theories, held debates, aired grievances, and celebrated victories – and did it in a direct, intimate way that flattered the intelligence as well as the soul’. For me, it’s all about the soul. The Minutemen offered a vision of freedom, of friendship, of loyalty and of creativity. In the midst of all the worrying about parenting that clutters our bookshelves, perhaps parents should heed a few wise words from the late, great D. Boon: “Create forms in which your children can learn the beauty of the world through the arts, so they can pass it onto their children”.

By: Elysia

To be found in the ‘Real and Honest’ aisle

We all have those songs which stop us in our tracks, whatever we’re doing. Well I do, anyway. It could be a song to make me want to dance, it could be a song to make me cry. It’s rare for a song to make me feel completely naked and vulnerable, yet this is what The First Days of Spring does to me.

It feels like that moment after you’ve cried so hard you can’t cry any more, then subsequently you’ve put certain things to bed in your head. There you are: facing the future, whatever it may hold. It doesn’t make me want to cry in any way, it just makes me feel like everything has been stripped away and dealt with, that I can be honest with everyone and myself. It doesn’t make me want to laugh either – but perhaps just smile ever-so-softly in an ‘it’s going to be alright’ kind of way.

To me, it represents an underlying optimism that can not be taken away. Perfect.

By: Hugin

The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane —
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

For anyone who knows me, my choosing to write of this text will seem unsurprising – repetitive even.  But even before I turned my attention towards the facts and legends of the Jacobite rebellions these four lines held me entranced by the poetic bluntness.  “Poetic” and “blunt” are two words that cannot often be put together, although perhaps Scottish literature is an exception to the rule!  The choice of the words is unfalteringly powerful, such as the idea of not only fighting, but also disdaining the English military power: we do not only dislike you, we laugh at you.  Words – so good at detailing events, people and places – have rarely captured feelings as well as they do in these four lines from an old folk song.  It could make even the hardiest of pro-unionists dream of an independent Scotland.

By: Elysia

You know what? I’m just going to come out and say it: I love this film.

It’s probably had more action than some of the DVDs I’ve had for three years. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry. It’s actually brutal in some aspects of its portrayal of certain types of women: the ultimatum, the ‘drive-bys’. It makes you cringe and nod your head at the same time because at the end of the day we’ve all know some people like those on the screen.

My love for this film probably also comes from the crowd I went to see it at the cinema with, and the fact I embarrassed one of the people I was sitting with by shouting ‘ha – yes!’ rather loudly at one point (at the ‘P.S.’ part – watch it and you’ll see why).

Ah, good times. I love it.

By: Alex

To be found in the ‘Songs To Make You Cry’ aisle

Hurt. The title itself should give some warning to the content. I loved the original back in the mid-nineties but it is the Johnny Cash version that sends a slightly bigger shiver down my spine. That said, both are simply perfect. The chorus is electrifying, the verses solid. This is one of those songs to immerse yourself in at any point but especially when feeling melancholic (and there’s nothing wrong with that folks, it’s all good); it reminds us what is real, the urgency gets under your skin. Especially in the Cash version, and the guitar work is mesmerising. All in all, I would suggest you listen to the Nine Inch Nails version first, then the Cash version. Then watch the videos. I believe the most haunting thing about this track is that each version delivers such emotional weight, yet for different reasons – Reznor about dealing with addiction, Cash about the end of his days, the losses and gains and the place of religion in this. Powerful stuff.

By: Patrick

It’s rare that a book makes you change the way you see the world. In the case of ‘Sight Unseen’, this book literally changes the way you see the world. While many people are acquainted with the beautifully observed case studies of Oliver Sacks, for example, it is very rare that the work of researchers studying brain functioning and informing the diagnoses of neurologists like Dr. Sacks is met with similar affection. ‘Sight Unseen’ is a noteworthy exception. Based on two researchers’ (David Milner and Melvyn Goodale) 15-year relationship with a patient with visual agnosia (more on this later), ‘Sight Unseen’ demonstrates how numerous small experiments can slowly unravel the mysteries of how the brain processes visual information and can lead to a conclusion so counter-intuitive that we once again experience that unsettling humility as we are forced to acknowledge the discrepancies between our conscious experience of the world and what is actually going on in our brains.

We generally believe that we have a single, unified conscious visual stream that we use to aid us in our interactions with the world around us. The phenomenon of blindsight has shown us that even patients with complete cortical blindness still have the capacity to discriminate objects presented in their blind field (although they would always claim to be guessing!) but the findings of Milner and Goodale are perhaps more unsettling as they suggest that in our day-to-day interactions with the visual world, we have two separate visual pathways – one (conscious) pathway dealing with perception and one (unconscious) pathway dealing with action. To quote them:

‘You might perceive the tennis ball that has just been lobbed over the net by your opponent, but you can never be conscious of the particular information that your visuomotor system uses to guide your successful return. This visuomotor computation happens entirely unconsciously.’

The patient they studied over many years, D.F., has a condition called visual agnosia in which despite being unable to make out shapes, when asked to interact with objects that she could not consciously see, she does so to a degree that was as good as people who could see the objects – effectively doing without seeing. Another neurological condition called optic ataxia shows basically the reverse (what neuropsychologists call a double dissociation) – so people with optic ataxia can see a cup perfectly well but when they are asked to grasp it, they tend to reach inaccurately or use an inappropriate grip or angle of hand. This double dissociation suggests that visual perception and the visual control of action depend on quite different brain systems.

Aside from describing their own work, Milner and Goodale also take the reader on a fascinating journey into the visual world touching on visual illusions, change blindness and consciousness.

It is very likely that in the frenetic world of brain research this theory will gradually be undermined as findings about interactions between the two fields become apparent but it is unlikely that any future theory will be as elegant and satisfying as this one.

By: Patrick

It’s great when you see a movie that made a really deep impression on you and then you watch it again and realise that it was not just the mood you were in first time round but that it is a really fabulous piece of art that will be a trusty companion for a long time to come. Such is my feeling having watched 35 Shots of Rum on DVD tonight. It is a very slow movie, not much of a plot, very little dialogue. It is ultimately a meditation on loss – possible losses, inevitable losses and how we deal with them. Do we use this fear to bring those we love closer to us or do we let this fear push them away? It is one of those movies where certain scenes stay with you: the scene where the 4 main characters are in a bar late at night dancing to ‘Nightshift’ by the Commodores is one of the most powerful scenes I have watched. There is no dialogue but entire histories and hopes and fears unfold for us. It is achingly moving. The director Claire Denis also touches on solitude. Why are so many people lonely nowadays? Maybe, as one character suggests, we are all afraid of suffering. We know that sooner or later those closest to us will leave us, so why bother? Why not just avoid painful attachments? One of the characters finds his cat dead – died in its sleep after 17 years. He responds by putting it in a bin bag (along with its toy). And why not? It’s dead – why mourn for it? We all die, we all lose those closest to us. These are the big questions that Denis poses. The characters in the movie provide a range of answers, including suicide. How are we to live? This movie does not shy away from such questions, but addresses them subtly and profoundly. It is an absolute gem.

By: Elysia

To be found in the ‘Makes Me Stop And Think’ aisle

Only about two dozen words (and half of them are paraphrasing Dylan Thomas) and only a minute long, but this is one of my all time favourite songs. Listen to it.