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Sunday ~ Dickon Edwards's Blog
20.07.2008
My Sunday at Latitude seems to be about words. New uses for words, board games with words, and how best to keep an audience on your side when words let you down.
Thanks to chatting backstage with the Bears in the Cabaret Tent, I've learnt some new expressions. I knew that a 'bear' is the gay slang for a large and hirsute gentleman. But it goes further than that, at least in the US gay scene. A hairy guy of leaner dimensions is known as an 'otter'. A hairy and rotund chap of advancing years is a 'polar bear' (think about it). A younger bear is called a 'cub' (which makes sense). But best of all is the epithet for a plump fellow who is not hairy at all. He is... a 'manatee'. Well, I suppose it's a Sunday School education of sorts.
At noon, Joanna Newsom takes to the Obelisk Stage, and all is suddenly well with the world. Her clear, purling harp has a Pied Piper effect, drawing a vast yet uniformly attentive crowd. Judging by conversations overheard from my tent, she's made a significant amount of new converts too. 'Oh my God! Did you see that woman with the harp and the funny voice?'
One of the boons of reviewing Joanna Newsom is that one feels duty bound to break open the Casket Of Flowery Adjectives. I could describe the lyric-heavy songs from her second album 'Ys' as 'verbose' or even just 'wordy'. But instead I'm going for 'prolix'. It's just that Ms Newsom's album encourages a certain stepping up to the bar: an unabashed striving for newer and more interesting way of saying things. Indeed, is there any other album in recent memory that
includes the word 'spelunking'?
But words can also turn against you, as she discovers during 'Sawdust & Diamonds'. Yet Joanne Newsom forgets lyrics like no one else. She pulls an incredible series of mortified grimaces, bashful smirks and makes little-girl yelps when the song eludes her for the umpteenth time. And the audience adore for it: it only endears her further. I have friends who aren't keen on Ms Newsom's records purely down to her unusual (if admittedly divisive) singing voice. To them I say: go see her live, then judge again.
Afterwards, I wander about the main arena, catching snippets here and there. Passing by the Literary Tent, I take in a single random sentence from a Lorrie Moore story, read by Juliet Stevenson for Word Theatre: "I'm interested in internal bleeding." Quite. Then I walk across to the opposite corner, to find more verbal antics: Scrabble Sunday, where people languish on the grass - I really have to use the word 'supine' here - playing the famous board game.
Over to the Cabaret Tent for Patti Plinko & Her Boy. The Boy in question plays guitar and wears a gas mask, while Ms Plinko sports a polka-dot 40s vintage dress and matching hairdo. She sings in a raspy, drooling blues style while strumming a ukelele (an instrument undergoing something of a renaissance: it's everywhere this weekend). I'd say she's a bit Ute Lemper and a bit David Lynch. She provides her own comparison by covering a Tom Waits number, and it sounds like one of her own.
Time for a quick name drop. During our final DJ set of the weekend as The Beautiful & Damned, Miss Red and I spin a song or two from 'Bugsy Malone'. Among those dancing is none other than the daughter of 'Bugsy' director Alan Parker.
Crossing the main bridge afterwards, I'm stopped by two young men.
Thanks to chatting backstage with the Bears in the Cabaret Tent, I've learnt some new expressions. I knew that a 'bear' is the gay slang for a large and hirsute gentleman. But it goes further than that, at least in the US gay scene. A hairy guy of leaner dimensions is known as an 'otter'. A hairy and rotund chap of advancing years is a 'polar bear' (think about it). A younger bear is called a 'cub' (which makes sense). But best of all is the epithet for a plump fellow who is not hairy at all. He is... a 'manatee'. Well, I suppose it's a Sunday School education of sorts.
At noon, Joanna Newsom takes to the Obelisk Stage, and all is suddenly well with the world. Her clear, purling harp has a Pied Piper effect, drawing a vast yet uniformly attentive crowd. Judging by conversations overheard from my tent, she's made a significant amount of new converts too. 'Oh my God! Did you see that woman with the harp and the funny voice?'
One of the boons of reviewing Joanna Newsom is that one feels duty bound to break open the Casket Of Flowery Adjectives. I could describe the lyric-heavy songs from her second album 'Ys' as 'verbose' or even just 'wordy'. But instead I'm going for 'prolix'. It's just that Ms Newsom's album encourages a certain stepping up to the bar: an unabashed striving for newer and more interesting way of saying things. Indeed, is there any other album in recent memory that
includes the word 'spelunking'?
But words can also turn against you, as she discovers during 'Sawdust & Diamonds'. Yet Joanne Newsom forgets lyrics like no one else. She pulls an incredible series of mortified grimaces, bashful smirks and makes little-girl yelps when the song eludes her for the umpteenth time. And the audience adore for it: it only endears her further. I have friends who aren't keen on Ms Newsom's records purely down to her unusual (if admittedly divisive) singing voice. To them I say: go see her live, then judge again.
Afterwards, I wander about the main arena, catching snippets here and there. Passing by the Literary Tent, I take in a single random sentence from a Lorrie Moore story, read by Juliet Stevenson for Word Theatre: "I'm interested in internal bleeding." Quite. Then I walk across to the opposite corner, to find more verbal antics: Scrabble Sunday, where people languish on the grass - I really have to use the word 'supine' here - playing the famous board game.
Over to the Cabaret Tent for Patti Plinko & Her Boy. The Boy in question plays guitar and wears a gas mask, while Ms Plinko sports a polka-dot 40s vintage dress and matching hairdo. She sings in a raspy, drooling blues style while strumming a ukelele (an instrument undergoing something of a renaissance: it's everywhere this weekend). I'd say she's a bit Ute Lemper and a bit David Lynch. She provides her own comparison by covering a Tom Waits number, and it sounds like one of her own.
Time for a quick name drop. During our final DJ set of the weekend as The Beautiful & Damned, Miss Red and I spin a song or two from 'Bugsy Malone'. Among those dancing is none other than the daughter of 'Bugsy' director Alan Parker.
Crossing the main bridge afterwards, I'm stopped by two young men.
'Excuse me. Do you know how long ducks live for?'
'Um. Is this the beginning of a joke?'
'No, we're genuinely keen to know. And you look like someone who knows things.'
I sense they're half mocking me for looking the way I do - the bleached hair and the suit - but also half intrigued. I think they want to say something to me - anything, and 'Why are you dressed like that?' lacks imagination. Particularly on this Wordy Sunday. I first think of shrugging the boys off and walking on, but then I realise I'm actually curious about the duck lifespan answer myself. So if their approaching me was a joke at my expense, it's backfired and mutated into an unlikely moment of shared curiosity. The Latitude effect, perhaps.
'Well... I don't know how long ducks live for. But I can find out for you if you like.'
Which is true - I'm on my way to use the WiFi at the Press Tent.
'Okay', say the boys, stepping aside to let me go, like bridge-guarding trolls from fairy tales. 'But you have to tell us an unusual fact in its place.'
'Right.' I think for a moment. 'Do you know what the American gay slang is for a fat, hairless man...?'
(P.S. I know that sounds like I'm making it up, but the above encounter really did happen on the Latitude Bridge on the Sunday. And I did find out how long ducks live for. It's 15-20 years, depending on the species.)
