The Best of Both Worlds by Rupert M Loydell

The marriage was a write-off from the first night.

After the plumbers, builders and barristers, comes

the most exciting contemporary art show in town.

 

Images and sounds, and how they go together,

turn out to be an artistic narrative of a wounded

young man with yesterday’s empties on the ground

 

or abandoned on windowsills. The music scene

is exploding, the best of both worlds, though

less of a bonanza than expected. It’s no surprise

 

that boys should rebel and break loose, then

cordon off the other. Adolescent transgression

is a richly painted surface that appears to have

 

some kind of extra dimension. There are quaint

optical effects, professional struggles with

tragedy, and still one last act to come.

 

Spurt Splat Thwump Splish. Blessed with

an extraordinary ear and new-found prestige

this is less about the past and more about

 

the future. Performances begin this weekend.

This is music without sound, a spectacle

which generates sticking-out ears and lines

 

that morph into the sound you make in your head.

You read as you hear as you look, only to find

yourself coaxing a fragile soundtrack out of

 

a prolonged struggle with nerves, hysteria,

colitis, stomach cramps and migraines.

Glassy letters shatter like cat’s teeth,

 

giving an unregulated feel to dance events

scissored straight from the pages of cartoons:

bleak communist blocks in pale grey skies.