Sunday, January 31, 2010

Daniel Kitson as the Perfect Panacea in Melbourne



This is a mini, late(ish) night, thesis procrastination post that barely revolves around balcony gardening (sorry). It is also the second form of procrastion for the evening, the first being an enchanting visit to the Arts Centre to see Daniel Kitson's 66a Church Road followed by dumplings in chinatown. While the dumplings brought more than their fair share of pain and regret, the show was, as Kitson so often is, wonderful. I went in with a headache, a pain I'd endured since last night which seemed incurable, and came out feeling like a mellow and contented cheshire cat. His wordsmithery astounds me (and yes I realise this is not a real word, but time has hit double digits in the evening so I am past caring.) If only I could borrow his talent for 10 minutes I could convert this thesis from a pile of vague assumptions on narrative, memoir, self and the Third Reich, to something that has both substance and lilting prose.

His show covered home, or at least the varying concepts of it, memory and on occasions nostalgia in the truest sense of the word. He conjured impressions of the emotive responses we have to the inanimate, and indeed the ensuing animating of such entities to suit our persons and soul. Of course the few mentions of garden, whether it be dreams of his own future flora or peering into his neighbour's cultivations captured the imagination of my green thumb side. All in all it was fascinating. Its run has ended in Melbourne but I think Kitson is off to Brisbane and Perth so go along if you want to see panadol in performative mode. He cured my headache and got me thinking about nostalgia, a good combination for tonight's study fest. I promise a more garden oriented post in the morning, if I survive the writing binge!

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