Whose lines are they anyway?

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Here’s some of the lines I’ve been dishing out to punters at Shunt this week, to varying effects.

The brief was to perform poetry “When no-one is listening” and to also be inspired by Shunt’s unusual setting, history and other art installations.

So I’ve been wearing a wireless head-mic and approaching customers in the bar, asking them, “Do you want a line?” and then offering up some of the following:

Skinny lines:

“We’ve had some baggage handed in at the cloakroom. Has anyone lost their inhibitions?”

“Can I have your attention please? Mine’s run out.”

“When no-one is listening, you and I can still stop. And look.”

“If I could talk to the animals…I’d have a boyfriend right now.”

“Ladies! Remember! You’re only ever 3ft away from a rat!”

“George Orwell’s clothes had an ‘antique patina of filth’. Bit like yourself.”

“My stars said: They’d sent down one of their own. And here you are. To twinkle at me close up.”

 

Big fatties:

“One of us in this room is a murderer.

Actually, that’s not strictly true, whilst sounding dramatic. Some of us in this room have been murdered.

A Blitz bomber vapourised the prior people here.

You can see them too…if you drink enough beer.”

 

 

(to the rhythm of She Sells Sea-Shells)

Shunt shows underground art, to be sure

By how long underground does it stay for?

When the mass understands what it’s for,

Shall-we-need underground art any more?

 

 

“We’re gonna party like it’s 1899.

Eons-old arts of rhetoric and rhyme are stirring in this crypt.

But don’t be afraid down here. Out of darkness comes light.

From the past, a presence.

And if just one of you tomb-ravers leaves tonight with a new synapse in place,

Then we subterranean show-folk, we lyrical lab technicians, will have done our work.”

 

 

“Lines written at the last minute lend an urgency to my language tonight. Like soufflés pulled too quick from cooking, the sentences collapse into tastelessness.”

 

 “Lines from the art column in last night’s Evening Standard: fucking chair, fucking debris, fucking rectangle, fucking artist, fucking unbelievable.”

(copyright Brian Sewell 2009)

 

“Throwaway lines litter the floor of this bar, having drifted like pigeon fluff from puff-chests.

Chat chucked aside. Disposable dialogue that makes a compost of conversation and feeds future shoots, so that tendrils of talking will once again curl up these walls and click to the brickwork.”

 

 

Count your Blessings or Viral Well-Wishing: The Pull-Ups. To be spread amongst punters, generously.

1. May your lips twitch twice-daily with merriment and may good humour slow-dance with you.
2. May your twinkle toes be never pinched in Primark plimsoles, but be paraded in Faberge flip-flops along life’s promenade.
3. Lose not your cool in an argument, but may you recall all those funny put-downs you were going to say but usually don’t remember at the time.
4. In life’s gaudy theme park, may you travel serenely through a tunnel of eternal love.
5. May you feast on infinite Hob-nobs from the bottomless biscuit tin of universal consciousness.

 

Nose-bleeders:

Lines not to say on meeting someone for the first time, number 92: “I don’t think paedophilia’s as bad as it’s painted, do you?” 

 

Laughter lines:

“What cheese can you use to hide a horse? Mascarpone”

(given by Nancy)

 

“Being here is like being in Parliament.

There’s ‘Order, order’ all the time.

You need photo ID to get in.

And if you look up there, there’s Mr Speaker.”

  

 

 

“Apparently this is a Big Art Week in London. So have you got a Big ‘Eart?”

 

******

 

I may have a future in writing Christmas Cracker jokes. Or I may not even have that.

tagged under: Brian Sewell.George Orwell.Mama Tokus.Shunt