Last night I went to The Golden Hour, a performance night at The Forest Cafe. I had to squeeze into a chair in a corner, and my “Crowds annoy me!” thing started to kick in, but I stuck around ’cause my new friend Sandra Alland was performing in the second act.
Sandra’s a poet (as well as another ex-pat Canadian), but last night she was trying something a little different, combining her poetry with music provided by her friend Y Josephine. Together they called themselves “The Zorras”, and the end result was something I can only compare to the work of Laurie Anderson — beats and music and thoughts and emotions, raw but breaking easily and often through to humour, tickling and hooking my ear with sound patterns and original thoughts. The set was a polished and high-energy treat, and the room broke into cheers and whistles and applause when they finished.
I know it’s cheating, but God it’s easy to love my friends when they demonstrate how talented they are at something they care about.
The Zorras were followed by a large, stringy-haired guy in thick glasses who called himself “Pockets” and came up onstage with a ukulele held together with shipping tape with red words on it — not “Fragile”, but something like that. My initial response was “Ohhhh-kay,” but then he started to play that thing like it was a proper guitar, and he rocked the house.
Actually, he started his set by saying, “After I play this first number, you’re going to want to go out and buy a ukulele tomorrow.” And he was right.
But I’ve got other stuff to do. Ooh, like get ready for my citizenship ceremony.
