Thursday 11 January 2018

BAD BLOOD - TOMORROW IN CROYDON


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.