More Moaning. Karl Pilkington
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Название: More Moaning
Автор: Karl Pilkington
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Книги о Путешествиях
isbn: 9781782117322
isbn:
TRINA: Do we look even? (speaking to assistant)
ASSISTANT: Stay in there, hold on!
KARL: Who?
ASSISTANT: Okay, now there is a space between the two guys . . . You have to tuck more down, Karl, you have to tuck more down.
KARL: Tuck more down?! Where? Here?
ASSISTANT: Between your chest and your . . . Tuck your head down, sweetheart, one mil . . . Okay, the head space is much better but there is still a space with Karl . . .
KARL: Mmmm . . . I can’t move my neck down any more. I’m not a flamingo.
Trina’s assistant asked everyone to hold still while she took a photo. ‘Click’ and it was done. I wanted to see the photo, but Trina said we had to clear the studio as our time was up. It was like a brothel being raided by the police as naked bodies ran about the place. I popped my clothes back on and she showed me the rough image.
TRINA: I am really happy with how the painting turned out. It looks great, and you were an awesome model even when your legs were going numb. You didn’t even complain about moving.
KARL: Because everyone else was sticking with it and I didn’t want to mess it up. Plus I wanted it to end. I was just thinking ‘press the button, take the photo!’
TRINA: I was feeling the same thing myself . . .
KARL: I am glad that you are happy because I wouldn’t be going back and doing it all again.
TRINA: You were very courageous, and you went for it, and I am like super proud of you and I really appreciate you doing that.
KARL: Well, thanks again for having us. Good luck with it all. All right, let’s get out of here!
When I got home I looked at Trina’s website to see if I could download the finished image, to find that she had done the image again. So I still don’t have a photo of myself. What a bloody waste of time that was.
PERFORMANCE ART
After being locked up in a studio all day it was nice to get some fresh air in Central Park. I love parks, and I’d say they do for me what galleries do for art lovers. It’s natural art that I like – trees and lakes, insects and birds. I’m considering getting a dog, though, as I get strange looks from people when I’m walking through a park on my own. Dog or no dog, later that day I was definitely going to be getting funny looks as the plan was to get involved in some performance art in Central Park. In performance art, the artist is the body, and the live action they perform is the work of art. I suppose it’s not too dissimilar to what I had been doing with Trina, except this time there was no chance to start again if it didn’t work out, as it would be in front of a live audience.
In London, I used to see a lot of performance artists in Covent Garden. Getting to the shops was like walking through Britain’s Got Talent auditions. Everywhere you looked there were jugglers, clowns on unicycles, sword swallowers, tightrope walkers, endless numbers of human statues and mime artists. I’ve done a bit of mime myself. It was when I was in the Peruvian jungle. I was in my tent and was really fed up, so I imagined unwrapping a Twix and eating it just like I normally do, biting the caramel off the top first and then the biscuit. It sounds mental but it kind of worked. After that I mimed eating an orange. That didn’t work quite as well, as an orange does more to your taste buds, but the upside was I didn’t have sticky hands. I did it again recently when I was thinking about buying a table tennis table. I stood there reaching for and hitting a nonexistent ball onto a make-believe table, but I got bored fairly quickly so binned the idea of getting one.
The performance artist I was meeting was called Matthew Silver. He’d been doing his art on and off for nine years. I met him at the apartment he shares with a friend and a cat. On first impressions you could think Matthew was a proper mental, or homeless, or a stand-in for Tom Hanks in the film Cast Away. A gangly, thin man with a mass of hair covering his head and a smiley face. He looked like a dandelion. He invited me in and made me a cup of tea. I quickly realised he wasn’t mental when he offered me a posh cinnamon herbal teabag. Not an official way to work out if someone is mad, I know, but then I’ve heard that one of the ways they work out if someone is a psychopath is by asking them if they like cats, so judging someone on their choice of teabags doesn’t seem that daft. I’ve never got into these types of teas as you can’t dunk biscuits into them. But I wanted to be polite so I accepted the offer. I didn’t want to drink much of this tea, either, as cinnamon sends my heart rate through the roof for some reason, and it was already pounding thinking about having to perform in front of strangers in Central Park.
KARL: How did you get into this, then?
MATTHEW: Well, I was the class clown, I was always one of those characters. I go very simple, I go very raw and just like (makes fart sound) or (makes chicken sound) and then just dance in my underwear. I use awkward pauses to create tension, and usually because they are complete strangers they start laughing. It’s freebase, it’s all improv, it just happens, I just do it. I have a little technique, but the good thing about performance art is even a disaster can look amazing.
I think everyone would like to have the confidence to do what Matthew does. Most people don’t take it any further than singing in the shower, but I don’t even bother with that since I’ve moved to a house with a water meter. I try to get in and out as soon as possible. What I do like to do is dance for the cat. I mainly do it when I’m hanging around for the kettle to boil. I count while I’m dancing to see how long I can keep his attention before he looks away or closes his eyes. He’s a tough crowd. I tell you, if Cowell ever leaves The X Factor they should get my cat in. Or do a version of The Voice – three cats, once they all look away, you’re out. Would be good that. I’ve gone off point, but all I’m saying is, we all like to show off and perform to ourselves (and cats), but it’s a different ball game when there’s a crowd.
Matthew handed me a pair of ‘lucky pants’. They were Y-fronts, dyed bright green with ‘LOVE’ written across the arse. He said we should go onto the roof so he could show me the sorts of things he does. I popped on the green pants and he stripped down too, and then I gave him some help getting his props up to the roof. These were mainly toys that he had found, along with a wobbly stick and part of a highway barrier. He put on a motorbike helmet and carried a sign with ‘LOVE’ painted on it. He then went through his method.
MATTHEW: I like to just come out with a silly movement, you know, something like (waves arms and dances on the spot), really stupid, you know, and when you do it, you look at people’s faces, make eye contact. You’ll notice that people are actually smiling. You’ll see people who are not into it, but then you’ll see people who are into it, and if that person is into it and they’re smiling, you can take it to another level. You could do my two favourites – fart sounds or the chicken noise. Eventually someone with an iPhone will start recording you, right? And then boom! That’s your opportunity to come closer to that СКАЧАТЬ