Alberto's Report from "Insects," 9th Nov 09

SpokenWord is every Monday now and we started with a Genò-cide of mosquitos, in French, “J’aboie à la lune”, then David’s tribute to Derek Mahon with “A disused shed in county Wexford” with worms, spiders and cockroaches. Michele keeps on spinning his “psychedelic washing machine”, that’s sure, and Money D. brought his essay called… mmm…something ending in –fagia, that means eating bugs. Colin translated and remixed Boris Vian, then our guest star Marie Claire Calmus performed an excerpt of her show: Corps et Mots. Poèmes, Chroniques, Chansons. M-m-m, “Minced Meat Marty” plunged us into a throbbing swamp and Sam, for the last time, into Secretionopolis. Alberto said goodbye to Sam, reading a poem “Memories are skidding bulls” they wrote together once, while doing the laundry. It was the last time for Stefanos too, and he left Paris tuning a sad song with an happy melody, written in prison and played with accordion. Mischa read a poem about the “Fèe verte” who inspired generations of Parisian artists, the greatest Swiss invention after the cuckoo clock, I’m talking about the absinthe. Charlie closed the first round: “That’s not about insects, but war bugs me, so…” And he switched to Iraq a poem originally written for Vietnam.

After the break, Onur opened singing a very frantic Turkish song, and Jan improvised a dynamic body performance, killing a cockroach on stage. It was Beth’s birthday: “My name’s not hidden in the sea, nor in the rain”. Bruce’s love letter: “ You don’t know me. I don’t know you, but I’ve been loving you, since before I knew the word”. Laureen Moore revealed another secret: worms were sucking her blood when she was nine. Piirko, aka Kokodiva, aka 5ieme ex-femme du president de la republique francaise, during a shocking act, gave birth to a puppy dinosaur on our stage, Luc, songwriter, played a chanson douce “17 years old, our parents still together, back then, life was so simple”. Johannus remembered it was the Berlin Wall anniversary with “No Man’s Land”, Polina explained why being a New Yorker from Manhattan, she’s a breakfast goer, Will offered a “bullshit he wrote when he was fuckin high”, Michele, when was 18, “sucked the pussy of a rocking horse” and the crowd was nearly crying. Een picked up from his I-phone the in-famous “La cigale et la fourmi” (greatest hit: recited by memory by the whole French audience), and then opened our second seasonal bottle of autumnal Baudelaire: “Une Charonne”. Hubert said he was experiencing stage fright, a thing that never happened to him when is on stage as a musician, hidden behind his keyboards, but “men invented word to hide their brain”. Charlie was experiencing hangover and that tall, once long-haired guy, called Sam closed the night with his last poem, leaving the spoken word to come back to Australia. See you soon. Next Monday.