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One of us has been invited to a party. A girl she works with is djing there and she has put our names on the list. We walk up to the venue and it is definitely a “club”, complete with big angry looking bouncers, a velvet rope, a queue of anxious and excited looking people, everything. It looked like the kind of place that was once a music hall and was later converted, when the word “crisis” was the last on anyone’s mind. Apparently, super club Pacha used to be there.

We walk in and say we are on the guest list, and are given a little receipt that says we get two free drinks, or wait maybe three?! Two shots and one long drink… and a bunch of other little tear off tickets, for what I can’t work out.

When we get inside, it is heaving, and on stage is what looks like a band only, they don’t actually seem to be playing anything. Some house-y music is playing, and they, this make believe band, looking like their average age is about 17, they are mucking about on instruments, a drum machine and other electronic things. But whatever they are doing, is making no real difference to the soundscape we are hearing.

The other girls I’m with must be thinking the same thing, because we are all staring at the stage with strained confused expressions. 

Finally one of us says

“Are they actually playing anything…?”

We look back to the stage, still none the wiser.

“Drink?”

The other girl asks. We walk quickly to the bar in unanimous agreement.  I notice something. The bar only serves Jack Daniels. This strikes me as strange, not the strangest, but there is something else about it that is odd, and I can’t, I’m not sure what it…?

The bartender serves me a double jack and coke that tastes like a triple. It would be more accurate to call it a Jack Daniels with a coke top. (Dash of coke? Misting?) Does he smile when he takes my drink ticket? I can’t remember, but I notice his Jack Daniels t-shirt. And the other bartenders Jack Daniels t-shirts, and the bar shelf with light up Jacks Daniels logos. Still not so weird, brands pay for stuff these days, normal. After all, I am living in a city where the central metro station was renamed “Vodaphone Sol”.

I take a generous sip from my jack and coke, in a tall Jack Daniels glass, and the band… the band…no wait, the instruments…. they are ALL branded. 

There is a Jack Daniels drum kit and a Jack Daniels keyboard and a cute indie girl photographer taking pictures of it all, wearing black skinny jeans and a Jack Daniels t-shirt.

 

We go on a wander and find ourselves in a line to get a group picture, and just as we are about to have it taken, I get it, the pictures will be printed for us to keep… ok cute, and then what? Projected on the wall? Why? I look at the stream of pictures projected of others at the party, wearing variations of Jack Daniels t-shirts, and over them a hashtag for a certain whiskey…

We are thinking about getting another drink and notice our tickets get us other things. A t-shirt?  With what on it? Let me guess…

We see a guy dressed up like a beekeeper… pouring shots…? Free? Ok great! Sure! 

“What’s with the outfit?”

One of us asks.  He sprays some dry ice out of a little machine and laughs. I ask if he likes the job. He says yes. We get shots, honey flavoured… right….. We are running out of little tickets.

 

Above our heads, TV screens with Jack Daniels logos, strobe lighting in a variety of florescent hues. I realise we are now waiting in a queue, for what? Free customising of our t-shirts. What…really? One of the girls says all they are doing is adding eyelets, and decides against it. (Smart move) I walk over to check out the “customising “ in action.

On a long table are two rent-a-hipsters, one in each gender. A broad shouldered bearded guy in a buttoned up check shirt taking t-shirts into a little machine that adds studs, and a midriff baring, skinny jeans wearing peroxide blonde with a pixie cut, adding eyelets and cutting off sleeves. I find this hilarious.

“This is nuts, I’m going for it, let them customise my branding.” I say, and one of my friends decides to stay with me. We are looking at the room around us, getting dizzy by all the Jack Daniels logos on display, when a very petite girl beside me says something.

I look down to her, she grumbles it again. I explain in broken Spanish that I don’t speak Spanish. She then tells me in perfect English

“This is a line, I have been waiting here for one hour, you can’t just walk in”

A Spanish girl has just schooled a Londoner on queuing….

She is calm and yet quietly furious. She must have been thinking this for the last fifteen minutes, because it had been at least that long since we have been the line.

“ You have been waiting here for an hour to have your Jack Daniels t-shirt customised….?”

I look down at the black t-shirt she is proudly clutching to herself

“Yes”

She says huffily.

         “Ok”  I say “ sorry… “ My friend adds

“ Its alright, we’re not bothered really”

We walk away. I look back at the long queue incredulously. Ok… ok. that girl has been waiting AN HOUR for her piece of live in advertising to be studded by a rent a hipster.  And she isn’t even embarrassed to admit  it?!!!. What is wrong..?! What is wrong here?!

Now the alcohol is starting to hit, and I am feeling a bit delirious, and concerned, concerned that no one in the room seems to be aware they are in living breathing commercial, a dancing all drinking immersive advertising experience. And no one looks bothered by it. People are enjoying it.

And the worst part is, it feels like someone in youth marketing has gone, what do young people like? Electro bands! Hashtags! Printed photographs! Instagram! Customising! Who is cool enough to customise? A peroxide blonde and a guy with a really bushy beard! Now lets its put it all together, add shit loads of alcohol, disco lights, and chuck a bunch of logos over it!!!

Does no one else find this wrong?

I make jokes about this to my friend Jenny, who does find it funny, but is perhaps not feeling quite as disturbed by it as me.  I need to tell people what’s going on! I need to tell…. I notice a brunette with perfectly straight indie fringe standing next to me.

“Hey!” I half shout at her over the blaring music (I don’t even think it occurs to me she won’t speak English”). She smiles at me. I smile back at her and say

“ This is totally weird right?!”  Her smile wavers.

“What’s weird?” she says

“This event. This party. This scene”

“Why?”

“All the branding. I mean I get it, sponsorship, sponsored events, sponsored festivals, logos in bars even. But this is too much, This is weird. In London where I live, people would find this really uncool. in Berlin where I lived before that, no one would want to be here, this wouldn’t happen. I mean it’s over the top, don’t you think?”

I’m rambling, she hasn’t said anything. Her smile has tightened across her face until she’s almost grimacing. She says to me sharply

“But everyone here knows it’s a Jack Daniels event. Actually, I work for Jack Daniels marketing.”

(Now a normal person would have left the conversation now, but for some reason I persist)

“Yeah ok cool, but what I’m saying is…You work there, but you seem cool, I mean, I get that this is your job or whatever, so you have to support it, or pretend that you do, but come on, I mean seriously, (I gesture around me) “ this is heavy handed brand promotion. Right? “

She is not nodding. She is glaring…at me.

I realise…I am in my first party in Madrid… and I have made my first enemy.

The next day, the hangover I have is legendary. My great grandchildren will tell their children about it as a bedtime story. It is absolutely mythical. The black t-shirt with the white logo stays in the back of my shelf.

I swear to myself…

I will never drink Jack Daniels again.

An open letter to my blackberry....

Dear blackberry,

I wasn't going to write this letter, but today i've woken up so annoyed at the horrific timing (I have applied to loads of jobs recently, and am leaving the country for a short trip on Monday)  that  *another* one of you has chosen to die … So this is what I need to say … And it is said in the spirit  of one who respected you.

It is in fact the case that your potential talents have been obscured by faulty hardware. I have looked past this in the past, for one major reason: I love keys. I like writing on phones: texts, emails, poems, I even composed parts of my dissertation on a phone.  I never liked or was convinced by writing on touch screens.

Your manufacturers don't give a shit about you, or any of us. You will end up on a scrap heap while 'they' will be sunning themselves on their yachts in Antigua, which they bought by selling your body and you will find yourself very alone. All the more true when you unwittingly give the impression you don't give much of a fuck about yourself. No one who cares about you could support your being pimped … and that includes you yourself.

Yes, I'm suggesting you don't care for yourself. That has to change. When we met You were initially awkward, but became amazing. I put in the work, I was patient in learning your completely non intuitive interface. Now after FOUR MONTHS you just decide I don't need certain keys anymore. That the letter x and number 8 were superfluous. It will take 3 weeks to fix, at a very bad time for me to not have a phone. Fuck you.

For the last few years, as almost everyone I know has joined the cult of iPhone, I have abstained and defended you. After the second phone this has happened to, I am finally done. You have failed me. Whether I like it or not, I have to finally admit that you are a faulty inferior joke. And an expensive one. As much as it pains me to say this,  I am finally going to get an iPhone.

Regards,


 Paula Varjack


Ps. I am sorry it had to end like this, but it's not me, it's you...

a pretty way to recycle a notebook

Years ago I was lucky to have sponsorship from a very cool berlin fashion label called missing ling ling. They made a bunch of very chic clothes for me to perform in. Later they disbanded to pursue other things.  

Now, one half of the duo, my friend Tash, has embarked on a project that combines her pattern making skills, with her love of art and performance. She has been constructing a jacket from one of my notebooks. I never really understood how it would work, or how I could wear it, But I knew if anyone could make it, she could. 

Last week I was in Berlin for a couple performances, and I met up with Tash for a fitting. There are still details she would like to add, but the result  thus far is stunning. And also in true cinderella fashion, from first wearing it, it fit  me perfectly. 

As for what happens next? The idea is we will collaborate on a short fashion film to showcase it. So we are currently brainstorming ideas. Will keep you posted as this project develops 

xxx p

the guy in the pink shirt

In the morning when I went for my daily walk, I passed a guy in a pink shirt. A young man, a man about my age, maybe a couple years older maybe a couple years younger. I knew him, or I knew him once. His name is Louis. When I passed him on the street this morning we made eye contact, and I saw in his eyes he didn't recognize me, he gave me a look as if to question why I had made eye contact at all, maybe he had even looked away nervously, shyly. Maybe he thought I was checking him out. But I wasn't checking him out, I just looked at him thinking:

I sort of knew you once.

I knew him from six years ago but it might as well have been sixty. I look pretty different from then. I knew he wouldn't recognize me. I never really knew him that well. he was a regular at the club and a friend of lots of my friends. He used to hang out with my friend cormac, maybe they even dated? But I wasn't even really friends with Cormac then.

In that brief moment of passing, looking at him, remembering that whole strange era of working at the nightclub, remembering it in the instant of making eye contact, and a quick slideshow of him and my friends and the club, it was my life then, that place, I thought all this, felt all this seeing him, and in thinking it I wondered if despite all the changes in my appearance, he might see something familiar and remember. But he didn't. His experience was much less complex I'm sure. He would walk on and think why did I look at him in that way, and probably not think of me again.

It happens often that I see people in east London from that time of my life. I pass them on the street and wonder if there will be a glimmer of memory, but also knowing there won't be. Part of me is disapointed, part of me is happy to have successfully transformed to something else. Thats the funny thing with me and scenes, I am attracted to them, but I only stick around long enough to pass, to fit, thats the part I am interested in, once I feel like I am part of a scene, not long after I want to move on again.

It's never very nice to not be remembered. I used to be great with names and faces. I used to never forget anyone I met. It wasn't always natural, I had to work at it. But nowadays often I forget people. Specifically I forget the people I meet briefly. More specifically I often forget the people I meet after gigs who tell me they liked the gig and then don't talk about much else. There is no sticky factor, there is nothing to make me remember them, but I still feel terrible when someone comes up to me and says we've met and I don't remember. I try to cover it sometimes. And it is true that sometimes talking to someone will jog my memory. I might not remember their name, or what we talked about before, but looking at their face long enough, sometimes I will remember how I met them.

every memory is fragmented into everyone's individual impression. What I take as relevant someone else might not keep and vice-versa. I am always thrown off guard when someone reminds me of something I've said or done that has influenced them that I don't remember. I don't know why anyone listens to me or takes me seriously most of the time. I can hardly remember a lot of things I've done and said. I seem to have a far better memory for my low moments, my bad moments, but I suppose everyone is a bit like that.

For ages when an ex of mine and I broke up. I would dread running into her. For about a year I would avoid parts of town that she used to frequent. I hated the idea of this conversation we would eventually have. I hated even the thought of the awkwardness. Just the thought of it. Isn't that ridiculous? Then two years passed, and when I did run into her it was the most uninteresting non event. It was more than fine it was.. I was.. ambivalent.

But the funny thing about all of this is. The sequence of these thoughts has been inspired by another non event. Running into someone I don't really know. Someone who doesn't really have any connection to my life. That reminded me of a time. A period of time lived that I no longer have connection with. But in that moment of reverie and thought,, the funny thing that strikes me is... his version of the story. Which is of course, no story at all. 

the great escape

I was on a train to Inverness when I saw her. Her bag was almost as big as she was and nearly twice as heavy. To get it down the aisle of the carriage, she had to stand it on one end , her whole self wrapped around it, as she walked it along with slow deliberate steps. The carriage was shaky. It was tricky to keep moving the bag along, but she managed.

He might follow her. She wasn't sure if she cared if he did. He was turned away when she got up from the seat and left. He didn't watch her walk away, as she struggled along with her bag. He was keeping himself to himself, trying to remain calm.

She made it through one carriage, and then the next, and then the next. She didn't know where she was going, only that she had to keep moving to get there. She found herself in the luggage compartment between carriages on the far side of the train. She propped her bag against the others. Across from her was an old man, a young mother and  small child all waiting to use the bathroom. I was stood on the other side.  I stared at her for a moment too long, before looking away.  She steadied her bag again.

What was she doing here? What was she doing?  She found a little space for herself beside the window and pulled it all the way down. She pushed her head out above it as far as she could. She watched the landscape rush by. Lush valleys led to lakes and rolling hills. Even as it rained it was beautiful. She wanted it to calm her. She wanted...

He was there now, standing behind her. How long had he been there? She heard him say her name. His voice was unintelligble.  It was as if someone  had knocked a radio between two frequencies. She looked at him, saw his mouth moving, but couldn't make out any words. She turned away.  He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. She bristled, shrugged it off. He, visibly wounded by this, stepped back, turned away. Softly he called out her name again. People around them were watching now. She knew he didn't like that.

She pushed her head forward out the window again. Greedily sucked in gulps of rain soaked air. She wanted to inhale the landscape. She was trying to breathe. She was finding it hard. He had gotten louder, he was standing behind her now. He was going on and on and she heard someone else ask when they would get to the next stop. The conductor saying, half an hour. 

Outside it looked peacful. Outside she could surround herself with sky and breeze and hills, all she wanted was....The train suddenly stopped. There was an announcement of flooding on the tracks ahead. They would be stuck there for an hour, at least. Her boyfriend touched her on the shoulder again. He said

"Come on..."

She nodded. pulled open the latch of the door she was leaning on, jumped forward, door slamming shut behind her as she ran. Ran fast through fields thick with tall green grass, whispering to each other as she passed. It had stopped raining. Her flaming red hair streamed behind her. She had no idea where she was going, but she was desperate to get there.

On the train, her boyfriend stood silently amongst the others. Someone went for the conductor, asking for help. The police would be called. It;s illegal to run off of trains between stops apparently.  He... stood where she had. Leaned against the window, and strained to see a hint of red amongst all the green..

start up meets. start up: overheard in a kreuzberg cafe

I l ove it when you don't even need to satirise a situation, because the subjects serve up themselves. I overheard this conversation in a cafe in kreuzberg. This is exactly what was said.

word for word.

Most of the time I see art in Berlin…And I don’t…understand it… Artists here have no incentive to sell. They don’t need to, because they have Hartz IV…Its all so.. The art here it’s not.. idealistic or conceptual its its… self entitled.

mmm (sage nodding )Have you thought about holding talks? I mean consulting? Consulting on social media? We thought about it… But it became a side project… and we have like 800 side projects now… So just go and run with it!… Right.. right..

My thing is bad English. It like kills me. ..There is a big difference between writing something in german? and putting it into google translate and sending it? Can’t you just pay someone ten dollars to write me a paragraph?? …Something that needs to be accepted is that everyone speaks English, so there is a certain level that has to be... accepted. If you create a phrase and it;s not exact..It's just one statement to get right.. It's important. That’s it… That’s one of my big things…

I can’t I can’t can’t…. You can’t take someone seriously if they don’t know how to check something before sending it. I mean if you have a web site up? That text on your website…? Should be… correct. I’m not saying perfect but… Yeah I agree I’m not saying perfect but… I go to museums here all the time and their text is terrible… I mean their translation text is terrible! In a museum… ? That is embarrassing…

Yeah that is embarrassing. …

Yeah..

Yeah..

Yeah well I think this is going to work. We really like where you guys are at. You’re like.. normal.

Yeah we’re not hipsters

(they all laugh)

We’re not naïve but we’re not pushovers, but we’re not bad people you know?

Hey.. (noticing someone at another table)

Oh god everyone knows everyone here!!! This is the place.

Oh I’m meeting him um (checking watch) now. Hi…

Well thanks guys. This is going to be great!!

the power of art, intention and consequence

I like my work to be entertaining, being entertaining is a force that often drives my writing. Creating work for performance, particularly in the audience led world of poetry slam, means a lot of thought and consideration goes to the reception to your work, to what others think. This is very critical as far as comic work is concerned. If you write something to amuse, and it fails to amuse anyone other than yourself, you go back to writing it again..

Now, moving cities has made me go into one of my existential "what does it all mean" states.


I've been asking myself a number of questions: What is the art I am making? What are my themes? Why do I care about them? and perhaps most importantly, Why make art anyway?


There is a danger as a performer, of falling into a trap of writing what audiences want, or more dangerously, what you you think they want. There is a balancing act between going outside of yourself enough to escape self indulgence, while expanding the audience perception of what they are ready for. When you really nail it, you can change the way people think. This is one of the most exciting aspects of making work, and a difficult thing to achieve.

Recently I've come across an artist who has been successful in doing exactly that. His name is Mike Daisey. I've been making more use of my twitter account lately, and a post by beardyman led me to this podcast. I was utterly captivated by this twenty minute excerpt. His story and the telling of it moved me, enough that I became deeply interested not only in him and his play, but in the responses they generated.

This piece of theatre, adapted for radio, instigated a level of investigation in working conditions he encounters, that had thus far had little coverage in the mainstream press. This was not new news. I have a friend who is a political activist, who told me that many things, such as the matter of the suicide nets had been written up on socialist websites years ago.

What made it news now, what generated an outpour of interest, was a story, and the performance of it. The story and the art of storytelling, had humanized the issue for the public. A public who had been unaware, but now cared and wanted answers. What had instigated all this? A piece of theatre. Yes I thought, art has power.



I have since gotten hold of a number of recorded monologues by mike daisey, and seen video clips. Unfortunately being so far away from New York, I can not see him perform. But from what I've heard, the excerpt from his new show is the most powerful. And I don't think it is only because it is his most recent, and thus from the top of his form.

I think it is partly to do with him having a sense of responsibility to deliver a message. A sense of responsibility, not just as an artist, but as a human who has compassion for other humans. His talents as an artist just serve to better deliver the message. Once again, art has power.

As artists, particularly struggling and emerging ones, this is easy to forget. What you put out there has weight. This doesn't mean everything you put out has to be weighty, but maybe it is worth it every so often, to not just think about what you want to say, but about the affect that saying it, has on others.

Ages ago, I can't remember when, I kept hearing rumblings on the internet about a rap collective called odd future. I like to get in on music people like to rumble about. I like being an early adopter of new sounds. But the problem with odd future was, every time I saw a comment about them being the most exciting avant garde group in hiphop, it would be coupled with a footnote saying they were really overtly homophobic and misogynistic.

I love hip hop, and there may be a lot of it that is both, but i don't listen to that. I can just about tune out the n word and overuse of the word bitch (but hey even girl mc's i like drop that) but when lyrics sink into rape fantasies and and musings on killing f**gots I have to draw the line.

This is why, as much as I appreciate he has a great flow, I have never and can never buy an album by eminem. Yes I get that there is a character, that many lyrics are meant to shock, are not sincere. Odd future may be similar. It is notable that only press comment to ever have offended Tyler the creator is being called a homophobe. But I'm not sure how that makes it better. Spout enough that is hateful, and you have the power to incite hatred. Art has power.

I have said before that I am only responsible for what i say, not for what you understand. I still think there is some truth in that, but I now think a little thought as to how something could be understood, never hurts . In any case I was happy to ignore odd future, even when in the summer I felt their empire building, when tyler the creator got signed. The reveiws still didnt' make me excited about the music.

Then there were new rumblings about the impossible to google group
the internet



they were an odd future off shoot made up of producer matt martians, and the crew's only girl member syd the kid. I had so avidly avoided the hype about odd future, that I had never noticed they had a female member. How did that rhyme with all the misogyny in their lyrics? Before i could question that further , I read on to see she was an out lesbian. What?? In hip hop? Any debate about the fact was apparently settled by their latest video. which due to gema I couldn['t play.

Until now Syd the kid has happily been in the background of Odd future.

Now in a very short period of time she had become the subject of scrutiny not just because of fame, but for being the lone female in an all male crew, and lesbian. But these facts also piqued my interest, so I am guilty of the same. More importantly, she is a talented beatmaker, engineer and singer, who is very clear on the music she wants to make. She takes her craft seriously. Interestingly, after the live performance debacle of Lana Del Rey, all questions about when the internet will tour have been met with this reply from Syd: after I get more vocal training.

And autotune or not, it has to be said, this girl's voice is something else..



I fell in love with their sound. Pychadelic soul they call it, and it fits. Although just for fun I'd describe it as Sade and Aaliyah making out to the Neptunes. So a week ago I bought the album, and I've been listening to it pretty constantly ever since. Reviews have been mixed, and every one I read was taken aback by this video I couldn't' see. I stumbled across a blog that suggested it had angered some of the queer community. I wanted to make up my own mind, so i finally tracked it down.

Internet (OFWGKTA) "Cocaine" Music Video Dir by Matt Alonzo from Matt Alonzo on Vimeo.

Ok... I don't completely agree with the blogger at after ellen. I'm mystified by her presuming the "intended audience are obviously men." ???? I can see that the intention of the internet is clearly meant to make taking drugs look bad. No one could watch this and want a line of coke. From reading Syd's tumblr it's clear that promoting use of drugs or negative portrayal of gay women is not her intent. By making her character in the narrative a girl who likes girls, she is attempting something like empowerment. But then there is a power to visual media that can be underestimated, when the failure of intention can become problematic.

I think in the passion to show an out gay character, and to pass on the message that drugs are bad, other signals have been lost in the mix. Like the fact that the syd character in the video with all her cool swagger, cooly discards women. Sure the point is that the other girl takes a risk and faces the consequence. The track is dark enough to underline the message. But then at the end syd gets away unscathed. And as much as I love her talent and sound and look, It does irk me that her, being more boyish, more conventionally lesbian in appearance, is the one shown discarding a woman in this way.

Of course queer people can be just as mean and messed up as anyone else. It would be stupid to say we are saints. But maybe part of why the video has caused such a furor, is when there is so little queer representation in media, what little there is, people want to be positive. But if there was more representation in the media in the first place, there wouldn't be so much pressure on what there is to be representative for all. You can't ever represent for all.

For the internet, who had full creative control of concept of the video, they may have thought that syd's character being queer in the video could be incidental. Unfortunately, another reading of the video says that women are disposable, and/or queer people are predatory and abusive.
I don't feel that seeing it, but I can understand how that can be an interpretation. I was most disturbed by comments on one site regarding the video: Syd got some swag!!!.

Odd future's answer to criticism has always been, our words are meaningless, you are stupid to take us seriously. Syd the kid has said the same. I guess she needs to feel that way in order to connect with them. But while it is true that the more you hear a word, the more you can be numb to it saying "It's your fault for taking us seriously" as a defense, is seriously lame.

Yes we as artists have a right to make work in our own way, with our own intentions. But as soon as we put that work into the ether, audiences and critics have a right to respond. Yes journalists can play cruel games of taking our words, and placing them in context otuside of our intentions, but as soon as we are interesting enough for journalists to take interest in us, as soon as we enter our work into the public realm, this is the game we play.

Internet (Odd Future) "Fastlane" from Matt Alonzo on Vimeo.

As artists we must not underestimate the power we have not only to entertain and engage, but to influence and affect change. So as I'm going all introspective, I'll be carrying forward into my work a new sense of care about my themes and their meaning. I will be much more aware of the power of and intentions behind my work, and the form that responsibility takes.