Meeting with a Madyoke

Was in the Academy of Music today for a piano exam. Cakeman (instead of using letters for people's names as I had previously been doing, I'm now switching to using code names, just because I thought I might make the effort to 'spice things up' a little.... oh, i hate my life...) had our exams one after another so we went in together. Sitting in a hallway waiting during Cakeman's exam I ended up beside possibly the biggest Looper ever born of woman. 

No sooner had the door closed behind Cakeman as he went in for his one when one of her clammy talons grasped my shoulder, and turning my head I beheld the jibbering nutcase in all her desperate madness, gobbling down her fingernails and fumbling to open her music book so that she could show me what pieces she was doing.

This wasn't the first time I had encountered someone with a tendency towards insanity waiting for a piano exam; the Academy where the exams are held is just the sort of place where you might run into ex-convicts, child savants and the like. Often it's someone who found music on the back of a particularly unhinging mid-life crisis, but I suspect that the woman who accosted me today was of a more disturbing variety - she seemed like the sort of person who had mid-life crises for kicks. Hoping I could dispel her interest in talking to me, I did my usual act that I do in these situations: put on a vaguely interested smile and say things like 'yes, thats always the way', trying to be discrete about taking out my phone to check the time every fifteen seconds.

Oh she was a talker. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. How she talked! She was certainly one who liked a good chat now and again, though preferably now. She must've asked me was I nervous about 10 times, although she clearly saw me already come out from having my exam, and each time she put forth the question I let it be known to her in an increasingly pissed-off tone of voice that I had already done the fucking exam so what was there to be nervous about now, you stupid, stupid bat. 

I was becoming desperate enough to pretend-call my Dad to get her to go away and leave me be when she mentioned a name which drained the blood from my face - HG (for an explanation, read my old blog concerning this... creature) . As it turned out, this mad person was also a product of that annoying little rat! Turns out HG told this psychotic woman to look out for me:

Crazy: 'Ye theres this guy Patrick/wefklsl;dfslslkalallives around clonskeagh...woeihfio HG ye she saidnell ye golddkajlad gold medalsjfilsjls oh ye golden ye teachesnsepojf out in clonskeaghsehs'

Me: 'Oh ye?'

Crazy: 'Ye!jsiejfsljrwelsjklfsjl, kind of dark curly hair,aewhakldoingehwjkan exam todayasawbndvbn might runaw intu himdahakk;'

Me:'Oh ye?'

Crazy: 'Ye!sjksjkllives in clonskeaghgjsdsiojslk'

Me: 'Oh ye?'

You get the picture. It was sad really, because I had explained already what my name was, where I lived, what exam I was doing, everything... At one stage she did look at me and I could swear some small broken fuse in the depths of her distorted brain clicked and she realised that I was in fact the person she was describing. But since I never let on that it was me she must have thought it couldn't possibly be. Inside I was cracking up though.

I had a little more fun with her then, because by then I had realised the true depths of her disillusionment. I played along as she told me stories about her kids (none of which i understood, but it involved a lot of her slapping herself in the shoulder and wagging her finger at me) and showed me a photo of her piano, which she had brought with her to show the examiner(wtf?). When Cakeman was finished we made a speedy exit and shouted to eachother  all the way through town about what a madyoke the madyoke had been - she had shown him the photo too, and what pieces she was going to play.

I can't wait to tell HG what I thought of the madyoke

 

The things people do

Woke up today with a horrible sore throat so I stayed home from school. 

Unable to believe that when you're sick you sometimes just have to let your illness run its course, and that there's nothing you can do except to stay in bed and drink buckets of water, I sat on the kitchen floor and opened up all the cupboards trying to find the antidote, dosing myself with whatever seemed like it could have vaguely medicinal qualities at the time. Mostly this amounted to a pile of vitamin tablets and jar of honey, which I went through determinedly with a teaspoon. Of course, with such things there always reaches a point when something brings you back down to earth and you realise what the hell you've been doing for the past 4 hours; for me it was in the early afternoon when a call I got a call from my Dad and I looked down and saw that I was sitting on the hard, cold kitchen floor wearing a t-shirt and boxers having systematically eaten an entire jar of honey. I've probably contracted something worse now... next time I'll eat two jars... 

Missing

No sign of the famous artist today... I bopped into the art room today full of anticipation to be greeted not by a supremely talented young artist fast becoming recognised internationally as such (as he rightly should be), but to my dismay the only one to be found there was a cantankerous old gremlin-queen on a P.M.T related hissy fit about Michelangello (ah Mr. O'C, we love you really). I felt dismayed, but was determined to uncover the truth behind the absence of our 'guest speaker'.

I should explain: it was in fact said gremlin-queen (I'm going to stop referring to him as gremlin-queen now because I actually respect him a lot and think he's an amazing teacher... he can just be a bit of a bitch from time to time...) who had announced to us last Friday that on Monday Cian McLoughlin would be 'flying in from London', where he currently has an exhibition, to speak to the class about continuing a career in art. I didn't question the obvious absurdity in this because I figured since Cian Mc Loughlin is a former student of O'C's he was allowed to call in a favour once in a while. But when McLoughlin never showed today, and O'C was subsequently in a supremely 'trollish' humour, I began to smell a rat.

Inquiring as to the whereabouts of the missing artist after a horrifyingly boring art history class on the Cistine Ceiling, O'C snapped that he had been 'delayed', in a tone which suggested perhaps there were underlying causes at play; his manner put me in mind of an embittered ex-lover , perhaps, whose heart had been broken by some insensitive bastard along the way, or of a hurt and confused Ghilberti, teacher of Donatello, who was eventually overtaken by his more talented pupil. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the man (but mostly I just hated him for the shite class we had just had.. but anyway).

Now all I can do is hope that Cian McLoughlin will keep his commitment, if he's not jetting of somewhere else because of his sold-out high-powered money-spinning 'fame art'... Ungrateful little brat... I gave him all I had... And he discarded me like an old oil paintbrush that hadn't been washed properly in white spirits immediately after use... ahem.

Wow @ Artdude

Cian McLoughlin, one of my favourite artists ("and he's also a past pupil of my school - just throwing that out there, as you do... You know, I do a bit of sketching from time to time myself... What? Oh, these things?... Oh no, they're nothing special, just preliminary drawings really in preparation for a more major work of mine... Oh, you couldn't possibly think that! What? Why, yes, I'd be delighted to have you commission me to create a piece inspired by the the next up and coming dramatic production in the Temple Bar Arts Centre, though I can't for the life of me think why I would even be considered for such a prestigious commission as this, but you definitely will not regret this decision, my beloved patron..."), is coming in to speak to our class next week. I can barely believe it. I'm a little sick in my stomach. This is like how a normal person might feel if... Bono (as soon as I typed that I realised how embarrassingly uncool that would be and I'm about 20 years too late) came into give their class a talk, on the the virtues of carefully selected eyeware.

Just look at his stuff. It's absolutely awe-inspiring. It's like he a creates this dark room behind every drawing he does and has the figure emerging out of it into the light, making it all feel so real. And check out his website for more of the mindblowing same.

Gona' bake a pie, gona' bake a pie

We had apple pie for desert again today. My Dad makes terrible apple pies, and he makes them with unpleasant frequency. You walk into the kitchen and you just know - the warm, stale smell wafting, the green and brown apple skins piled up in the compost bin, the awful mess itself waiting in the shadows at the back of the low oven, growing crustier and crustier. It's become his stock-desert, turning up on the counter whenever a certain number of days has passed, or, you know, whenever he's just at a loose end for twenty minutes.

C and I talk about it in hushed whispers - we don't want him to know the truth. What can we do about it anyway? Coming right out and saying it would only make Dad go off into a sulk, probably baking several self-pity pies to make himself feel better. Sometimes one of us will remark, offhandedly, on how sweet and delicious the ones Granny makes are: 'One of these days we should really squeeze the recipe out of her', we chuckle desperately, pleadingly. But to no avail.

The leftovers are set to rest in the fridge, rotting gleefully. No one eats it except for S, who doesn't actually eat it, just puts it in her lunch box and throws it out when she comes home from school. When it's all gone the cycle begins again, like groundhog day. And we sit there, chewing away on the pastry dust and bitter, dry apple-goo, not saying a word to save his feelings... 'mnamnam, delicious, mnamnam'...

Oh how I would love to take a hammer to one of those pies.

Tidbit of Crap

I've just finished reading over the blog I wrote on Sunday, and it seems to me that it's kind of unsatisfactory (from a reader's point of view, of course: my writing was impeccable as always, being distantly related to James Joyce as I am, ye, 1st cousin twice removed, pretty cool eh? I think so... anyway...). I come back to blogging like this, all of a sudden, diving right in at the morbid end, with no explanation of any kind of what I've been up to these, I don't know, how long has it been, 6 months?

As a reader I was yearning, no, aching to know what I had missed out on in the supremely captivating life of myself over the past half a year. Really, it was tearing me up inside. So now, rotating back to the writer's point of view, I think I should probably write some sort of flashback blog or something to set the minds of my many, many fans at ease.
But then, another thought entered my mind, a four letter word which would send me on to write the insubstantial blog in front of you - trek. Who's bothered recording a whole 6 months of their life into a single blog? not me it would seem. Anyway, in the process of carrying out that unsavoury task I might realise how little I actually DO, and that wouldn't do at all. That would send me on a shame spiral so deeply coiled I might never, ever recover, and all my blogs would take on a real 'woe is me' vibe. No, that wouldn't do at all.

Instead, I've decided to give you little snippets of stuff relating to 'the missing months', as they're forthwith to be called, and hopefully this will give you an overall picture of what's changed and what's stayed the same, and give me something to actually write about in the absence of me having any kind of actual life. So here we go:

One thing that that has happened is that I've developed a bit of an interest in 'the theatre',
put in inverted commas for fear of sounding unforgivably gay. It all began with our 6th year play, in which I had a miniscule part and was the stage manager for (quite an honour really...ahem) ... I kind of regretted having signed up to do all that stuff sometimes when I was back after school every day doing this or that to help out, but the final product was completely worth it; seeing it all come together, seeing all the work everyone had done come into fruition, seeing the set I had helped to build, seeing the look on the faces in the audience - it was an unforgettable experience.
Since then I have been to see 2 plays, something I never would have considered doing beforehand because I had little interest, but now with an appreciation of the work that goes into them, the sense of intimacy and spectacle the finished work can create, I rushed headfirst into the first play that came my way. I'll give a brief summary of the plays:

The first one I saw was called Daily Bread, and was performed by the Dublin Youth Theatre company in the Templebar Arts Centre. I have to say the only real reason I went to this was because I knew someone who was in it. But it was absolutely amazing, really different to anything I had ever seen before (which is nothing I suppose... but anyway) . It was a play about the ratrace of the working world, with 7 work-weary work-orientated individuals talking about their lives in one long spiel, one persons speech running into the next, and the whole play was carried on in this way, in one long scene (this effect was so cool). I read a review of this play which said that because the cast were all in their late teens and early twenties, the play was an odd choice as the cast could not connect with the more mature characters they were meant to be portraying. This wasn't really a big factor in the end - I thought it was hilarious, and the actors definitely got something of the 30something officeworker across to me. One great line which I still remember, used by a highpowered, embittered, lonely executive woman to express her distaste for a waitress who tried to talk to her, had my sides splitting: 'I don't deserve to have an encounter with human misery just because I want some light refreshment'.

Right, so the first play was great, and I was hungry for more of the same. More of the same came along in the form of The Nose, which I saw only last night. This play, a post-modern production adapted from a work written by a Russian novelist called 'Gogol' (what a name!), was also on in the Templebar Arts Centre (as you may have guessed this isn't exactly a haunt of mine, I just saw the poster for The Nose there while I was going to see Daily Bread... yes, I'm a sham), this time in their main auditorium, which was really cool and dark and the set was absolutely incredible. The play was about a guy who wakes up without a nose, only to find that the nose has taken on an identity of its own and is causing mayhem for its previous owner. This sounds mental, and it really was - it was very surreal, but not too 'art' that it was pretentious or anything. The acting was particularly good, especially considering most of the 6 actors involved had to play at least 3 parts, and had some unbelievably rapid costume changes. The best scene out of the play was this one that was taking the piss out of t.v reporters, with one of the actresses playing this really over-the-top version of one. I couldn't stop laughing at her, she totally captured the whole t.v reporter bit, and she kept sitting down beside audience members and talking about them into her mic., which was absolutely hilarious.

So that's about all I can think to say about those, but hopefully I've got across the general feeling of what they were like. And I urge anyone who like me used to think theatre was a load of bollocks to give it a go. 'Don't knock it til you've tried it' as they say... As for me, I'll be looking out for plays meself, so if you hear of a good(cheap) one, tell me about it!

Don't forget to tune in again soon for my next tidbit of crap...

Ghostworld

After an long-extended break from writing in this, it seems a bit strange that in my first blog-back I would be writing about aimlessness... But I suppose it's down to aimlessness that I've ended up back here in this haven for the lost and loserly, recording my moanings so that you can all feast upon them from some safe and secret corner, your spotty, pale face, made even paler by the glow of the computer screen, your brow rising and falling ever so slightly as you read, indicating that yes, you do still have some semblance of a human heart left after bebo has had its fun with you and tossed you back down into dark abyss from whence you came, after even the most violent and despicable porn sites have become banal to your small, scrutinous, squinting eyes.

So ye... I'm just feeling in a bit of a nowhere place right now... Although I'm still in school (though only for a few more months, thank god) I feel like it's already over. I'm attributing this to that fact that I've been 18 for almost 6 months now (wow I just realised that); everything about 'growing up', all the rites of passage and all that just feels like bullshit at this stage, and I know that sounds terribly up myself but it's true. I'm sure once I hit college everything will seem fresh again, and there'll be a whole new set of occasions to look forward to. But right now, I've still got to go to school, fill in my homework journal and drink my little carton of milk at big break, and think about the Leaving Cert. I just feel like I'm in a transition phase, while logically I'm just heading towards an inevitable point, one for which I really should start getting ready.
Come to think of it this feeling is probably due to some subconscious fear of disappointment, I'm just opting out of the present so I don't have to worry about the future or something like that
fancier language. Oh deary deary me...

So ye I think this has been a pretty good return blog so I'm just going to leave it at that. I'll leave you with a quote from Ghostworld, the movie whose title I stole for this blog:

'I'm taking a remedial art class for retards and fuck-ups'...(it's a really, really weird movie)