Hola a todos,
Hay mucho que me ha mantenido ocupado últimamente.
Spanish Poetry Slam
We went out to what we thought was going to be a typical Spanish poetry slam, not that I knew what a typical slam would look like; regardless we were not prepared. The poetry really was amazing, all in Spanish, some Catalan. Even with out a translator, it was possible to find meaning in the words. The real entertainment started once we traveled upstairs for the second act. There were three performances, each one more unique than the one before.
First up was a man who started with, ¨you spend 10€ on this much whisky (opening a fresh bottle and pouring a good 12-16 ounces of liquor), I am asking you to spend 10€ on my poetry.¨ He then drank the whisky. The rest of his performance was just as entertaining. Again all in Spanish, he referenced a screen behind him which displayed visual interpretations of what he was yelling about on stage. Topics included politics, modern art, and Flash (computer terminology).
Next up, a black haired woman entered the dark room, she was going for the creepy look, having what looked like alphabet soup letters glued to her body. In hand she carried a black plastic bag. With eerie music playing in the background she walked around the audience, three times she leaned into an audience member and whispered something and then handed them a piece of fruit from the bag. Performance continued, once on stage, the audience watched as she threw herself on top of a pile of soil. She ate it, she rubbed in on her face, in her hair, she threw it up, she pushed the limits of interpretive soil dancing. Being covered in soil, she washed herself with water, which lead to a loosely fitting dress, becoming even more loosely fitting. Its a good thing this was considered art, otherwise it probably would have been an uncomfortable moment for both the performer and the audience. The music dyed down and so did the performer, quietly walking off stage. Applause.
The third performance, on some level was mind-blowing. A man a woman, a bass player, a video technician, and an audio technician gathered on stage. To summarize, it looked and sounded like a elementary talent show, each performer proud of what they could do, but at the same time, not actually a talent, or impressive. It started with PAJOROS, a central theme...The video technician loaded a .wmv, while the audio technician pumped up the jams with some techno. The man stood at the front of the stage, in Spanish, rambling on about PAJOROS. PAJOROS. PAJOROS. The woman joined in at times, to support the discussion of PAJOROS, while the bass player jammed to the tune in his own head. A solid 20-30 minute performance, and the crowd applauded at the end because it was over.
(Even our friend, the poet, who we went to support dozed off towards the last 10-15 minutes of the performance. Only waking up, because she was the closer, sharing some impressive opera and poetry to end the night, a true round of applause followed.)
Live Music
BFIS is home to a lot of musical talent. The majority of the male staff play guitar. Our HS chemistry teacher, Matt Monaghan, plays an acoustic guitar with group called Radiosepia, an authentic acoustic sound with the support of a viola. Quoting one of his emails, ¨We play a kind of rockey-folkey-indie-hash with predictable lyrics about monkeys and quantum science and lost pirates.¨ Worth taking a listen to.http://radiosepia.com/ They can also be found on itunes by searching Matt Monaghan.
I´ll update with a few other events soon. Just takes awhile to get it all down.
