Monday, October 15, 2007

Een nieuwe lente door Herman & Inge

‘Een nieuwe lente en een nieuw geluid’ schreef Willem Frederik Hermans in 1823 waarmee hij zijn Lof der Zotheid begon, hetwelk een internationale bestseller werd en in datzelfde jaar nog werd verfilmd. Meryl Streep en Robert de Niro speelden de hoofdrollen en Stephen Hawkins had een bijrolletje als clowneske benzinepompbediende: het was hilarisch om te zien hoe hij vanuit zijn rolstoel probeerde de tank van Meryl’s Rolls Royce vol te gooien en het publiek kwam niet meer bij als hij daarna met z’n monotone stem ‘I’m
¶ sorry, I can’t really move anything’ zei en Meryl hem een duw gaf zodat hij in z’n rolstoel de berg afrolde. Omdat de zon juist onderging leverde dit een heel fraai beeld op: een zwarte vorm tegen een rode achtergrond. De kudde schapen tien meter verderop raakte in vervoering door dit schouwspel, sommigen zwegen, anderen begonnen opgewonden te blèten. Een bioloog die dit geblèt later –via een bandopname- te horen kreeg, was erin geslaagd de klanken te vertalen naar ‘Kijk de zon gaat onder en de man gaat ten onder, zoals in bepaalde menselijke poëzie, waarin de dichter zijn innerlijke gemoedstoestand koppelt aan de weersomstandigheid op dat moment.’ Halverwege de afdaling kreeg Meryl
¶ Streep echter morele wroeging aangaande haar handeling en rende de arme man achterna.
Ze struikelde echter over een bananeschil en brak zo haar nek. De daaropvolgende 8 maanden die ze in coma doorbracht werden later in haar herinnering vooral gevuld met de door haar beleefde vraag of dit ongeval als een ‘straf’ kon worden beschouwd, waarmee haar immorele gedrag vergoed werd, of dat het slechts pech-voor-haar was. Kampend met die vraag besloot ze een forum te formeren met specialisten uit diverse disciplines. Eén van hen was Rupert Sheldrake, die onderzoek had gedaan naar telepathie tussen mens en dier. Het telepathische element was van belang voor Meryl omdat ze graag met Hawkins had willen communiceren maar z’n computerstem gewoon
¶ niet begreep. Sheldrake was echter niet op de hoogte van het ongeval tussen Meryl en Hawkins en reageerde nogal ongevoelig, hij zei niets. Hawkins liet, via zijn stemcomputer, weten dat hij niet gesteld was op een verdere samenwerking, ‘Ik wil weg. Ik wil naar buiten’, maar er werd niet naar hem geluisterd. Hij probeerde het nogmaals: ‘Ik wil weg’, maar toen kreeg hij een epileptische aanval, wat een willekeurige reeks woorden opleverde, die –uiteraard- direct werden geïnterpreteerd door linguïsten overal ter wereld. Volgens sommigen van hen –de freudiaans geïnspireerden met name- drukten deze woorden een latent verlangen uit naar een versmelting tussen kunst en wetenschap. Óf juist de angst hiervoor.

Het kattenbontje door Herman & Inge

Er was eens een kat die toen hij stierf de memorabele woorden sprak ‘maar bewaar mijn bont.’ Dit volgde op ‘Vergeet mijn lot’. Historische intertextuele
¶ referenties waren de kat niet vreemd. Onder elke teen had de kat een asterix laten tatoeëren, die weer verwezen naar andere zaken. De kat zijn interesse ging voornamelijk uit naar interculturele communicatie en’ crossover’, zijn snorharen hadden alle kleuren van de regenboog en vaak maakte hij voor zijn plezier een choreografie, die hij demonstreerde aan derden, meestal musici en theoretici, die hier veel inspiratie uit putten, en artikelen aan wijdden.

The squirrel by Inge, Herman, Miriam and Olivier

‘Your sudden appearence frightens me’ the doctor said. ‘Does it, doctor?’ answered the psychopath giggling. The doctor looked for a place to hide and seeked shelter underneath his desk. Then his chair begins to talk, the psychopath is still
¶ giggling. The doctor is trembling all over.
‘Scared doctors, exactly what we’re waiting for’, shouted a squirrel who watched the scene from the tree that was next to the window. A very annoying thing to say of course, but so was the character of this squirrel. Not without reason: when he was young, he had always been the underdog, or, in his case: undersquirrel. Abused by both of his parents,
¶ no friends, beaten up by his pianoteacher, rejected by the International Scientology Squirrel Society and so on... Our poor squirrel could only live by irony or even sarcasm.

Until that day when he step into the school of micro-botanics where he made the only brilliant study and at the end a tremendous thesis about populating bonzaí, and actually making them bigger, .. even 10 times bigger then their biological characteristics can predict... so here he was... our poor little, stupid, little squirrel was fucking and cheating on mother nature
¶ what a crime in the Rabbit industry! Meanwhile in the office Jeremy Slater was facing another problem: what to do with all these unsold ‘bunny tails’. Jessica looked at him from across the room. She winked. He saw her lovely breasts,
¶ but even that could not stop him from worrying. He saw only one way out, but it was a dirty way...

Then, all of a sudden, the sky broke open, a mouth was visible.. he didn’t understand it. Then the sky closed again, as if nothing had happened . He did not know what to do. There was no way out.. only.. a very dirty way.. this was the way he chose. He opened his pants, pulled down his nickers, bent over and.. sorry I cannot continue, it’s to disgusting.

Jack's galery by Inge & Tafelgasten

Jack’s galery

Jack was rijk geworden in onroerende zaakjes. Hij kreeg zin in iets anders en dacht: laat ik een galerie beginnen.
¶ Jack zat alleen met een probleem; hij wist niks van kunst. Een niet te overzien probleem dus, want hoe ga je je gedragen in die kringen van mensen die kunst als gespreksonderwerp nummer 1 hebben. Maar niet getreurd.
¶ Hij hield zich voor het te hebben over een punt; een zwart punt op een groot wit vlak.

En in dit punt zou alle vreugde van de wereld zich –als het ware- verenigen. Er moest ergens een begin gemaakt worden. Alle toehoorders moesten zich concentreren op dit ene punt en dan zou het vanzelf gaan groeien, en na verloop van tijd zou het dan zo groot zijn dat alle ongelukkige mensen in dit vreugdepunt zouden kunnen
¶ wonen. Jack hoopte dat zijn lezing veel publiek zou trekken. Dat Jack zichzelf in ondergoed op de affiche had afgebeeld zou hopelijk ook wel helpen. Een lezing door een dame in degelijk ondergoed! Compleet met bril en aanwijsstokje… de cliché-geilaards zouden en masse toestromen. Thuis zakte Jack in een gedeprimeerde lethargie. Hij wist ook wel dat het één grote farce was.
¶ Maar hij moest zichzelf toch op 1 of andere manier vewezenlijken? Hoe deden al die anderen dat in godsnaam?

Jack besloot vuilnisman te worden en geen oog meer te hebben voor schoonheid. Dit werd zijn redding.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Untitled by Herman, Inge, Mirjam and Olivier

That night the Titanic sunk... Marie found a rescue-boat and met Joseph. They survived, got married, had no kids because Joseph was infertile, so they opened a
¶ chocolaterie instead. Marie started an affair with Josephine while Joseph did a carpenter-course. The embroidery-afternoons got a very different meaning from this moment. When Joseph came home, -not seldom with a table, or a chair he fabricated by himself-
¶ and asked Marie aboud the 'high-tea' with her friends, Marie had a naughty look in her eyes. Joseph
felt the hairs in his neck rising. But as he wanted to attack her with some vicious accusations he saw how somebody's arm had been bitten off by a crocodile
¶ and realized that that was a least a far more bitter situation than his last shot of the, as known as the original, Absynthe... No offence... there... But he dropped the magazine in the chair where his future mother was sitting... There he was... he met his mother! So here she was... she met her son
¶ er song... something like: la la la li! What a tube...

The melody was actually taken from Mozart's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik', but because the population wasn't culturally educated no one recognized it and everyone joined hands and danced the rondo, italian style.

Untitled by Inge, Mirjam, Olivier and Herman

The judge arrives in the courtroom, everybody stands up, some people give the judge a piece of paper, asking for his autograph. But the judge does not respond
¶ to these ridiculous proposals. 'I am a judge, not some David Beckham', he says. 'David Beckham?!' he squeezed it out of his mouth like an
¶ overdate meatball that was just forced down his throat.

But it was a little more difficult as he thought. He was only trained to swallow Pony meat balls and not a gunshot-like meat balls arrivals. But after few hours, he managed it and he jumped onto the weight machine, as martien called it, and won again, for the third consecutive time, the price of the most eat ball man in meat. Something like that.
¶ And, as ususal, after each competition he went to see if the meatball is
red on the inside. 'What? well done??' he shouted, and everyone around him knew what this meant: the whole kitchen staff would be fired. To the moon. In
¶ a spaceship. But as we all know, spaceships are just atoms, and we're all part of a bigger plan which is this:

I swallow a peanut, the earth swallows me, the ozon swallows the earth, space swallows the ozones. A spaceship is built out of atoms, E.T. points his finger to his nose and says: tuut tuut.

'Well well' by Mirjam, Olivier, Inge and Herman

'Well well, see, I can still be good at something,' she said, as she tied his tie. She disgusted him, but the problem was she knew and
¶ had even dyed her hair black to look more like the witch she tought she was.
But the witch she tought she was for few years... now was only because a child has spy once on her and
¶ was telling to her husband the following story:

In 1658, when the Russian Tsar Alexander the 3rd used his royal silver cutlery for the very first time, Janoushka, his second wife, had sex with their butler, followed by the gardener,
¶ the milkman, the housemaid, the Duke of poland and the royal Horse. Still her sexual lust was burning.
She desired and extra-terrestial lover, and imagined the red glowing finger of E.T. points at her. Since E.T. did not appear, she asked the milkman if he could -next time when he visits her- dress up
¶ like E.T. The milkman does everything to please her.

So when she tells him she actaully prefers cola instead of milk he doesn't mind bringing her black instead of white liquids. Her fresh pink blossemed skin makes him forget all about his love for milk, or his wife...

Untitled by Mirjam, Inge, Herman and Olivier

Bible class was always so boring. But his mother send him without mercy, because otherwise he'd never become a 'true christian'. When she said that he always had to think of Chris, the boy living across the street, he had
¶ been fantasising about for so long. His blond hair, those cute eyes...
his funny little nose, always running. So moving. She decides to call him, she walks to the phone. It's out of order. Then she writes him a note, puts it in a bottle. And that was it. The phone rings. 'How is that possible. Just a minute ago it was out of order, and now it is ringing.'
¶ She picks up the horn. A deep dark voice, poetry from the middle ages.

That inspires her, because medieval poetry has a very simple rhyme-scheme. That is A-B-A-B. Later this developped into more complex schemes like A-B-B-A, A-B-C-A-B-C or even (much later), the sonnet: A-B-A-B, C-D-C-D, E-E-E. Or something like that. 'Can someone please help me now!' shouted the newsreader, that had by accident swallowed his microphone, because they are so small nowadays, that when
¶ you try to talk close to them, you breathe them in. The newsreader stopped breathing...
ok, you kept this smell in your nose for few hourse... and start thinking that you are sick... really sick and then super sick at a point that you jump into the next taxi for the closest hospital and pretend that you had a smell attack by those stupid citizens of whatever nation... What! you said it... you are trapped... they catch you... here you are in your
¶ room... all alone... how stupid! next time you will brush your teeth!

He told himself. As he looked in the mirror, he got more and more depressed. Those yellow teeth, those great floppy ears, what did he think would come of this? Friends? A marriage? Of course nobody loved him. He decided to watch Oprah. Somebody once told him how she changes peoples lives, he thought it was worth a try. Then he saw she was black.

The Sad Story of Amélie by Herman, Olivier, Mirjam and Inge

Amélie once found a little box full of treasures from the past. She found it in her wall, behind a tile that was loose. 'oh,' said Amélie and thought of a nice filmscript, based on her, doing good to the world.
¶ 'Oh, no' said Amélie, 'no, no, no, that would be boring. Let's be evil instead'. And so she did:
She did something that even the university of physics and macro-physics would never experiment in any thesis. She did something that if you think of it would bring you directly to hell.
¶ But Amely was prepared for anything and she took

serious precautions. She decided to wear the non-sexy, but body-correcting underwear, pink lipstick, but not too pink, so it would not make her look like a total slut. Hair in a tail, classy yet
¶ sophisticated and she could always wear it down when things got hot...
The mans deep dark voice raised the temperature in the room. She wetted her lips, to cool down a bit. Something she learned from the animals, but
¶ more civilized of course. Staring at somebody with an opened mouth makes not a very intelligent impression. She

then decided that intelligence doesn't really matter, that in fact intelligence is like a disease that gives a very blurred vision on the world and that, in order to be pure and authentic, it's better NOT to be intelligent, but only sensitive, or even: instinctive, so, thinking all that, her conclusion was that it's better to open the mouth, drip saliva freely, lick the environment, why not?, so to become a ENLIGHTENED HIGHER BEING. And so she did...

Untitled by Olivier, Mirjam, Inge and Herman

And there she was. alone in the dark... again! With her nails, half done and her hair half blond. She was again waiting for the same moment. This moment when the electriciy is too low to handle the magnetic field of the fridge door. This moment when the firdge door is openin, all by itself, like if a ghost would have opened it, as someone would imagine it.
¶ And she was there, staring at the Yop bottle.
It dawned on her she would never get rid of this if it got to her like that. After all, Mary got a haircut last week and still looked fine. Imagine if everyone would stop seeing a hairdresser,
¶ how would we all look? She wondered, while drinking straight from the bottle now,

like miss Hanigan, from 'Annie', the movie. 'We will either look like angels, either as some piece of moulded cheese,' she thought. 'It's oké, I live in the moment, I feel an itch between my toes, but I don't care. I care for the animals. Animals are sacred creatures.
¶ Gee. Maybe I shouldn't drink so much.' She thought, 'I look like a cherrypie with ribbons stuck in it.'
'No, worse,' she thought, 'like a plate of spaghetti with goatcheese and cucumber'. The idea of the combination of goatcheese and cucumber made her so sick that she had to puke. And then the weird thing happened: everywhere that
¶ her puke touched the ground, flowers sprung up, leaving a beautiful field of color behind her. It was magic!

A baroque or whatever picture... here she was... She just finished her dream... her bed was covered with potatoes and cucumber... rabbits and everything... a little farm in her bed. But what a dream!

Ah by Olivier, Herman, Inge and Mirjam

Hgrm... Hmm..
Dear customers, as you know we have been really good this year and so will be the next one. All of my partners and me, personally, would like
¶ to thank you for buying....
This was a very commercial thing to say, so of course the communist movement responded quite strong on it. Which didn't really matter. In the meantime the King of France was having a bath. Finally. It had been 2 years he didn't have one and of course this produced a horrible smell. 'It's a Dutch tradition to receive
¶ guests while having a bath', said the king, while receiving Lorenzo de Medici.
'When you are rich and powerfull you don't have to be ashamed. Look at my body, it is a gift from God, look how well shaped my forms are, look how elegantly I can move the seperate parts...'
¶ One of the guests strated laughing, something the king could not at all apreciate.

As nobody seemed to notice his itching got worse and forced him to go to the toilette where finally he could let down his pants and scratch. Oh! that felt so good!
¶ Those idiots. They had no idea. He looked in the mirror, looked at every tiny freggle on his face. He loved that.
But, no way, he wasn't the guy they were looking for... he was more tall and used to carry a ball. He was lost, ... as those lines... Again he had a look in the mirror and... what a pleasure for him, he loved him! As he was reading Elle and smoking Vogue,... he liked
¶ his man life, as a new man.

The new man was like this: he had no fear for death, he approached people full of love, he only wore designer clothes, picked the color of his nailpolish with extreme care, he beleived in a higher being while at the same time being agnostic, the new man danced without moving his feet, he loved goat cheese but would never eat it with cucumber. Yes, it was quite hard to be 'the new man' but nevertheless it was challenging to become one.