David Porter » Archive
The Waiting Game: Playing For Life’s Meaning in Literature
Most writers inspired by the theme of humans made to wait, have used it to say life is hopeless, pointless and futile. That could be seen as depressing. The human need or compulsion to wait, is both natural as a feeling, and obvious as a theme for literature and movies. Waiting is stronger than queueing. It’s not standing in line for rations, for a ride at a theme park; it’s a wait which can take years, and perhaps with no apparent purpose. ‘It’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive to disappointment’ is an old adage. Anticipation can be fun in itself, excitement about something pleasant can add to the joy. However, dashed hopes, the wait for something intangible or terrible is more appealing to creatives. The idea of getting justice or … Read entire article »
Filed under: Articles at Suite 101
GCSE: The Musical
Mini Mouth Youth Theatre at The Cut, Halesworth Abridged review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 12 December 2011 Full review published in the East Anglian Daily Times, 13 December 2011. After NHS The Musical, and musicals about Titanic, Thalidomide and Ofsted, the time has surely come for one about the General Certificate of Secondary Education. It comes in the form of an original piece written and directed by James Holloway, leader of the Mini Mouth Youth group at The Cut. The large open stage was a perfect setting for an energetic ensemble of thirty young to older teenagers. This group are being trained in theatre techniques and performing arts in their own time, and it is a joy to see some success stories of tomorrow learning their craft today, and mastering the discipline needed to … Read entire article »
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UK Christmas Number One Hits: Time to Grow Out of Them
Antithesis of seasonal goodwill, the Christmas bestseller is invariably controversial, often totally irrelevant to the season and now certainly out of date. Often seen as a badge of honour for artists, the race for the Christmas Number One single dominates news and record company/artiste planning for months on end. The Christmas chart used to last for two weeks over the Christmas/New Year season, so it was much prized in commercial terms, if not artistic. UK charts started in 1952, after appearing in New Musical Express; before that, figures were based on sales of sheet music. Once the charts began, the immediate controversy arose over how to measure the Christmas winner. The UK Christmas Number One was that at the top of the UK Singles Chart on the week before Christmas Day, based … Read entire article »
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Pop Songs and Band Names Inspired By Places, Names and Numbers
A great party game, or one to occupy everybody on long journeys: think of all the song titles about places, people, night, day, love, clowns, food, colours. From time to time, a band comes along with an original, unusual or plain weird name. Who’d have thought The Grateful Dead, The Kinks, The Mindbenders, Moby Grape, Limp Bizkit, A Flock of Seagulls or The Electric Prunes would take off? Other out of the ordinary, left field names, like Large Marge and the Tell ‘Em I Sent Ya’s or Dead Ant Farm are known by fans alone. Actual places have become common inspiration for band names: Alabama, Boston, Chicago, Europe, Asia, Bay City Rollers; while locality inspiration struck E Street Band, Kansas, Sugarhill Gang, and Backstreet Boys. However, it’s what inspires songs that is … Read entire article »
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Musicians of the 1960s: 21st Century Relevance and Respect
Many of those singer-songwriters, performers who used talents to launch careers four decades ago, can still speak with weighty voices to today’s youngsters. Jack Madani’s Pop and Rock Music in the 60s: A Brief History gave a concise account of the main artists, the movers and shakers who led up to the explosion of 60s’ music. Starting with the roots of rock and roll, before the decade began, right up to the early 70s, when the dream began to unravel. Many stars who shone, particularly in the late 60s, are no longer around for whatever reason. Their brightness has dimmed. Death took Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and John Lennon, for example. Who knows what they would have achieved musically if they had lived? Others are still doing gig circuits, … Read entire article »
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Thought Experiments, Mind Games and Creativity
As thinking computers and self-propagating machines are virtually imminent, there is more than ever need for creative philosophical debate and questioning. Between 1996-2003, director of the nonprofit group, Mind Justice, Cheryl Welsh received over 1,800 claims of mind control. She found “a strong case that the US, Russia, and major countries are developing and conducting classified mind control non-consensual experiments.” This issue is addressed by major legislatures, some human rights groups and the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). Her thesis considered cold war electromagnetic radiation and mind control weapons in the former USSR; previous experiments for weaponization; lack of legal protection for human subjects of state-secret experiments; and looked at various developments of ‘weapons to neutralize the enemy without killing’. All governments like to contain/control people, inside its borders and out, … Read entire article »
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The Blue Angel
Open Space Theatre at the Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft Review published in the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times, 28th November 2011 It’s always good to see a company taking on new challenges and pushing boundaries. To take Pam Gems’ stage version of what was a successful film, does Open Space credit. Set in decadent Weimar Germany the plot centres on an esteemed, but pompous, ageing professor who falls for a cabaret performer and seeks to give her respectability by marrying her. He is ostracised by his social circle and does whatever degrading or criminal things it takes to restore his good name. Emma Martin plays the brazen but vulnerable, ageless Lola, first played in the film by Marlene Dietrich. She makes an excellent, convincing job of it, as does Paul Baker, her infatuated, … Read entire article »
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Loyalty, An Old Fashioned Virtue Still Prized in Some Quarters
Has loyalty declined to merely a commercial exercise in customer building, or are some elements of fidelity still worth preserving today? The Free Dictionary offers definitions of loyalty as ‘The state or quality of being loyal. A feeling or attitude of devoted attachment and affection. Often used in the plural: My loyalties lie with my family. A feeling of allegiance’. However, there is little agreement on what one can or cannot be loyal to. Other people, institutions, places of work, belief systems, the personal family, the extended family, the criminal family, sports teams, the government, the country: all engage philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, marketing/media gurus, political theorists in debate. At one end of the scale loyalty is patriotism; it’s antithesis is betrayal/treachery. It encompasses regimes regarded as odious (like Nazism, the wilder … Read entire article »
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Male Baldness Need Be No Barrier to Success in Life
In an age of image obsession, technology to change appearances and to fight aging, strangely, baldness can be an asset, inspiring confidence and authority. There is an entire website devoted to famous baldies, or follicularly-challenged/hair disadvantaged as political correctness would have it, which lists, among many, bald actors (John Malkovich, Yul Bryner, Patrick Stewart, Telly Savalas); African Americans (Samuel L Jackson); musicians (Sinead O’Connor, Moby, Elton John); politicians (Winston Churchill, Gorbachev); and sportspeople (Duncan Mayhew, Michael Jordan). Clearly, in no way can their lack of hair have meant any shortfall in success during their careers. Bald Men Facing Fashion Issues In the article Embrace Your Baldness in 5 Steps, AskMen UK advised fashion conscious worried balding men to “embrace their baldness.” It said that “Michael Jordan made it cool for black men and … Read entire article »
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