New improvised vocal and sound performance by me, tomorrow evening (I'm on at 7:00pm approx event starts approx 6:30) as part of the
Frivolous Convulsions (more info
here) show at
Turf Projects (
map) in Croydon.
My people are cowardly, supine;
Liars on official forms, to pollsters
And census takers
And I am of them
All those I know lucked into birth (we didn’t earn it)
And gummed the teat of state as soon
As we could draw a stolen breath
Oxygen dole snatched
From the striving lungs
Of decent folk.
The piece is a response to Rimbaud's prose poem
Bad Blood and also of course, as ever, to the Bike Cemetery inscriptions. As far as the Rimbaud goes, I was particularly struck by this:
Not a family in Europe I don’t know. – I mean families like mine, who owe it all to the declaration of the Rights of Man.