Oh! To be Human

Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, August 4th, 2018 - 15 comments
Categories: the praiseworthy and the pitiful - Tags: , , , , ,

I’m about to provide a entertainment review. This isn’t something I’m known for doing. But before I start to explain how good the entertainment was last night, I really have to explain the circumstances and my mood last night to provide the required sense of scale.

After exercising my freedom of expression at a protest about these historically illiterate Canadian racists  at the Aotea Square last night 1, I was reluctantly dragged off in my usual friday anti-social [usual post week of coding] mood to find some food on the way to the Q theatre up the road.

It really was a pity that the future corporate lackeys were getting dressed up in ridiculous costumes from a bygone era and their proud parents were hogging all of the eating and drinking establishments [the damn students were getting capped yet again!].  How often do we have to put up with this nonsense. I’d point out that I usually got the lump of paper for my degrees years after I completed them. Actually after I finally got around to paying the library fines.

So by the time we’d located a table by the inevitable cones denoting the building works down at Burger Fuel and started to wait for a burger [that didn’t arrive before we had to leave], I was starting to get a bit tetchy. Of course the 15 kilos of assorted computer gear [2 laptops, usb screen, mice, power supplies, etc] that was in my backpack from work that I was lugging around didn’t help.

But after a hard day coding followed by some time listening to fools with a sound system, no food or even a soothing drop of alcohol, I was on the verge of saying we should can the exercise of being around the permanent construction site of central city and just go home.

Fortunately I didn’t manage to raise the matter of getting home where there was an uncrowded supply of food, even some booze, and a sofa on which to start to relax. Instead I amused myself  by baiting commenters on this site for a while whilst waiting for everything.

Finally I got reluctantly dragged into the Q and seated for what was billed to me to be a “circus”. It is. But it really wasn’t. It was a combination of circus and burlesque performances performed with some well chosen music. It certainly dragged me off to an alternate world for the rest of the evening.

It was one of the most engaging performances that my jaded and saturated sensibility has seen in a long time. Since I’m nearly 60 [how in the hell did that happen?] my sense of wonder has been reduced to “been there, done that, have the tee-shirt, can we go now” for a very long time.

But this highly choreographed performance with some amazing humans who jerked me me right out of my curmudgeon mood within 15 minutes of it starting.

When you watch freaking vertical dancing way above ground by single and multiple performers who’d obviously stretched their training beyond what this sedentary programmer had thought was possible, set to some well chosen music, and simple non-verbal story lines – then you suspend belief and watch with a open mouth like a child.

I could describe it, but I’d fail to do it justice. Besides, you really have to see it and I suspect  anything else that The Dust Palace decide to put on. Don’t take your kids – they don’t deserve it.

Human is meant to close at the Q Theatre tonight. It is a fundraiser for and by The Dust Palace:-

Human kickstarts a drive to fund a new The Dust Palace circus hub to be opened in 2019. The fitted-for-purpose training and production venue will give kids, the community and artists a collaborative space to build their physical and creative skills. Audiences will be investing in the arts and helping grow the wild and wonderful world of circus performance through ticket sales to Human, donations and patronage.

It is a performance art and well worth the price for my ticket. I am exhibiting a deep regret about wasted money I have shelled out to see absolute crap at the movie theatres recently. If you can scratch up a ticket for tonight then do so. Otherwise hope that they put this one again and you find out about it (their Contact page has a news letter signup).

But overall, it’d be way better value for those fools who’d want to pay to sample the ignorant and shallow slogan laden bile of our greedy Canadian pests, and a much better use of our privilege of freedom of expression.

I don’t get a lot of time to be at the Auckland International Film Festival. But I am looking forward to the single performance I did book. At the Civic watching Buster Keaton in The General.

Buster Keaton, the stone-faced genius of silent-era comedy, at his funniest and most thrilling in an exquisite new digital restoration of the most serenely locomotive movie ever made. Accompanied by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra performing Carl Davis’ excellent score, conducted by Peter Scholes.

That should get me back into the mood to write ultra reliable complex c++ code talking across multiple systems on Monday. Especially since it is a film that I have never seen, meant to be one of his best, and which appears to be performed under optimal conditions.

  1. Joe Carolan was in his usual fine form. Along with the many of the other speakers I heard 2 3, he was busy trying to enrol everyone there into causes of particular interest to him and to few others. While I realise that saying this stuff is important for some, I really wish that they’d stick to the point and get to the point a  whole lot quicker without so much extraneous garbage. Especially on cold evenings when I’m carrying a frigging heavy bag,forgotten to pick up my warm jerkin, and there is no close coffee.
  2. I particularly disliked the legally ignorant and dimwitted speaker who claimed the Labour government should  ban the historically illiterate fools from Canada. The UK had good cause to ban one of the Canadian racist morons because being caught in the act of  handing out racist leaflets in Luton on a previous visit. Our government has to act according to the current law which requires that there be acts or a high expectation of such acts occurring within our jurisdiction. You cannot simply ban a person from entering because they are a raving lunatic or have opinions that they are clearly too young and stupid to be able to justify. Otherwise we’d have to ban most politicians and diplomats for being schizophrenic, and most young entertainers for their insane life styles. Then how would we get cheap entertainment for the media to drone on about?
  3. I was impressed by Marama Davidson from the Greens. I can’t recall ever having heard her speak before. While her speaking appeared to ramble, it was from the heart and sounded to be directly from experience rather than some kind of repetition of principles and ideologies that I learnt by heart decades ago (and didn’t agree with then).

15 comments on “Oh! To be Human ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Incognito 1
    4 August 2018 at 10:43 am

    While her speaking appeared to ramble …

    I do like a good cliffhanger even when it is in a footnote 😉

    • lprent 1.1
      4 August 2018 at 10:53 am

      Opps fixed.

      Problem with editing a computer without a compiler is that you don’t have error messages popping up about the bits that make no logical sense – after you go off to fix something else.

      Oh! Where is my grammar and content checking AI?

  2. veutoviper 2
    4 August 2018 at 10:54 am

    You old curmudgeon, you!

    I ROFL reading this, as I don’t remember you ever writing an entertainment review before, so the Human circus obviously impressed you beyond anything you have experienced for many a long time.

    After picking myself up off the floor, I followed your links to Human and The Dust Place and they blew my mind. Trapeze etc always fascinated me but was well beyond my capabilities and to find that there is now somewhere in NZ that people can learn these skills, including children, is fantastic. I know a number of children and youngies who are into gymnastics etc and would love to do this, so will be busily sending off the links to their parents in the next few days.

    Thanks for this, just wish I was in Auckland and could go tonight.

    Between this – and Jack Tame’s Open Letter to Molyneux and Southern this morning on Newstalk ZB * – what will the rest of the day bring as it is not yet even 11am?

    * never usually watch, listen etc to Tame as consider him a useless lightweight, but was urged to check this out by someone else so did. Will post elsewhere on TS soon.

    • lprent 2.1
      4 August 2018 at 11:01 am

      I don’t remember you ever writing an entertainment review before…

      I can’t either. But in my 900 odd published posts here, I have a niggle that I have done at least one.

      …so the Human circus obviously impressed you beyond anything you have experienced for many a long time.

      It did.

      Of course one should always think of the alternate hypotheses as well.

      • It was a irritating evening beforehand – it could just be the contrast.
      • I’ve been a bit starved of real entertainment this year after spending about half of it sweltering outside in some very long work weeks in the tropics.
      • I haven’t seen the circus for a very long time. It might just be novelty value

      Etc…

      But each of them means that I need to expose myself to it again to find out if any of those are true.

      Joy!

      😈

  3. adam 3
    4 August 2018 at 11:58 am

    I for one am glad you went to the show and enjoyed it. I thought your baiting of me was way below your usual standard, I guessed somthing was up.

  4. greywarshark 4
    4 August 2018 at 12:19 pm

    adam
    You are one of those people who just seem to attract baiting. Perhaps that is your karma.

  5. gsays 5
    4 August 2018 at 1:10 pm

    We went to the dust palace here in palmy last weekend.

    I can only echo your sentiments, it is not often I am left mouth agape.
    The strength, dexterity, courage and discipline on show is surprising.

    Hopefully the show I watched is the start of many more to come.

    We loved it here in the provinces.

  6. greywarshark 6
    4 August 2018 at 1:13 pm

    I have been putting some comments about exercise and using natural strength etc in Open Mike.
    This link might match fit in with what has interested commenters here. 6.17 mins

  7. WILD KATIPO 7
    4 August 2018 at 1:22 pm

    Curmudgeon. That’s me too.

    Anyways,… nothing related but absolutely awesome is this young blokes voyage of discovery .

    Dingo: Wild Dog At War – YouTube
    Video for Dingo: Wild Dog At War you tube▶ 57:11

  8. Chris T 8
    4 August 2018 at 2:23 pm

    “After exercising my freedom of expression at a protest about these historically illiterate Canadian racists at the Aotea Square last night”

    Oh the irony

  9. Morrissey 9
    4 August 2018 at 4:56 pm

    Molyneux and Southern are horrible, but they are by no means the most pernicious or vicious people to come to this country from North America.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/national-video/news/video.cfm?c_id=1503075&gal_cid=1503075&gallery_id=190523

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/national-video/news/video.cfm?c_id=1503075&gal_cid=1503075&gallery_id=192610

  10. Incognito 10
    5 August 2018 at 3:17 pm

    This bit was a trigger for me and I’d like to zoom on it, if I may:

    When you watch freaking vertical dancing way above ground by single and multiple performers who’d obviously stretched their training beyond what this sedentary programmer had thought was possible, set to some well chosen music, and simple non-verbal story lines – then you suspend belief and watch with a open mouth like a child.

    You and will never be trapeze artists; our saggy, shapeless bodies would not have it. But it is amazing how even an old/aging body responds to mild exercise, even after years of neglect. First, it protests with DOMS but then it starts to adapt quickly and then more slowly. As children we used to play, climb, jump, hang (and fall), sing & dance, etc. We easily forget these things but the body hasn’t. From recent personal experience I know how, over time, simple physical exercise at home without any weights or whatever, has made things possible that I previously only dreamt of.

    It is no different with the mind except that I don’t know what the equivalent of DOMS would be 😉

    Both body & mind respond to (external) stimuli and if you don’t use it, you lose it, or you will never experience the heights that anybody can achieve, mentally and physically. Over a life time we tend to forget many things, although they are still stored inside us, but over generations we really lose things. Some argue that this is a good thing, that we adapt to the changing environment (society).

    This forgetfulness doesn’t occur only on an individual basis but perhaps even more so in a social/collective dimension. After more than a generation of neoliberalism we seem to have forgotten how to do things together, work together, help each other, etc. Paradoxically, we have become “infantilized” (cf. https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-05-08-2018/#comments with many thanks to joe90).

    There’s no substitute for doing things collectively! The buzz of playing sports together or the spine-chilling sensation (with goose bumps) when playing music together. And you don’t even have to be all that good at it! It is most definitely not exclusive to elites of top athletes or top musicians, for example. My point is that anybody can experience these feelings of euphoria when doing pretty mundane activities together.

    When exposed to the right stimuli we respond in the right way with the right actions & feelings (emotions). And vice versa …

    We all are capable of much more than we hold for truly possible; self-limiting (self-defeating) thoughts and behaviours can and do hold us back, individually and collectively. The sky is the limit but only if we believe it and believe in ourselves and in others as well …

    To me, this is what it means to be human.

  11. greywarshark 11
    5 August 2018 at 4:16 pm

    Hi lprent while you are looking.
    Is there a problem with the search button:? If I want to search for my own bits I get one heading dating back to 2014 ‘Marching in the Streets’.

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