Imagine what it would be like to be the one who stands at the piano during a recital and turns the page of music over for the pianist.*
“I am aSSuming to begin With that you feel there is inherent in this Situation something wild Or interesting, at least worth noting and, hopefully, mutually understood as an unusually odd place and situation to be in, this, standing there p0ised to turn, and that you can see as pleasurany eVident, as part of the fabric, the unwritten set of ideas relating to standing there, about havmg nothing to do for a while, until a time specified by a certain kind of nod, a kind of nod incorporatable into the general angular head-position-emotions they tend to go through during, and in response to, the piece they are playing. And so this nod WOuld be directed to them and they w0u|d turn the page in a movement that had to go right and which I have never seen go wrong and which, incidentally, I would like to W see practised more, and
which may well be a form T
step forward, With the
involvmg a Step 0' ‘3 59m" lM N l N A
hands probably coming
out from behind them or, N I N at the very least, their I sides, a small move, an N G . amputated stump of
ballet.
Then there, for those seconds, they would move and it c0u|d be anywhere around the bottom of the page, the time the pianist feels he knows the bit around the corner well en0ugh And it has that freewheelin’ spacey- type feel, that moment while the page is being turned, the musician is Without its gUidance. And incorporated is the idea that there is no real danger, surely, because they must only be using it as gUides, the music, by now, at this stage, surely And yet they do have it there, so what w0uld happen if they turned two pages or turned and there was a note there from the pianist that he wrote to his Wife to remind her to have large bosoms and to gun throwmg her pistachio shells at the TV? Yes? What would happen? W0uld the pianist lose it?
And at this pomt, there is a moment or two that resemble the time a bagpiper’s mouth can spend away from the end of a pipe while he can continue to produce the n0ise of music And what is it like to be this entity of stillness, standing there unused for almost all the time? Who are they, What is their story, etc; Whether they volunteered, or work regularly With, or did it as a one-off, a series of fav0urs in a platonic anglo-erotic way to spend time around the gorgeous erotic beast, With those beautiful, powerful, feline hands that move over his keys in a way mine never can, alth0ugh I can play a wonderful
4 THE lIST 24 Aug—7 Sep 2000
tuneless ’Moonlight Sonata’ here, now, in clicks, typing. Will he ever stand over me as I write, admiring my phrasmg? No.
SOme might say that this is the ultimate pomtless way of livmg, to wait and do nothing and then wait a bit more, like Hitler at a cocktail party, to a p0int you know you are approaching, but do not decide yourself, mixing memory and deSire, iust waiting and then domg inherently nothing, and haVing to stand in close among all that music, right there by the beast’s loud open shouting mouth, With all that passion, gushing around you like in a sinking ship. And no matter what you feel, you have to remain still, impassive, not into it too much, no closing of the eyes and swaying and being right up there and havmg to stand borineg and, With the softest form of the black agreement Just to be kind of inVisible to everyone, and to be party to that negation. In other words, to be part of an excused nihilist existence, allowmg y0urself to be sensibly, Justifiably ignored.
And What of it? Better to be in close around y0ur god and his music than in some kind of bedSit m0urning, longing from afar,
unrequned and yearning. A Here, at least, i have the forced rigidity of my role. L l have not the ch0ice of mooning my eyes at him or having to chit chat and T hold his gaze. And the R E mUSlC, aha, better to be C here under it, like the , back of a waterfall, Where I can dream, than anywhere else, even married and among the bagpipers Who I heard the other day: from a distance they sounded like they were trying to pin the tune down With high-speed rivet guns, like the tune was rising up as a song, trying to escape the flattening and be an expanswe melody once again, and they were afraid, and the drums kept riveting it down so it could be contained and marched to
I Phil Kay is playing at
the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh,
70.30pm, 24, 26 and 28 Aug
ROlSlN McCLOSKFY
Famespottin Michael an
Mark Polish
Who they? The new fraternal filmmaking partnership. We’ve had the Coens, the Farrellys and the Wachowskis, now meet the Polishs. Michael and Mark are two 28-year-old identical tWins, Whose debut, Twin Falls Idaho tells the eerie story of a pair of coniomed tWins (played by themselves) and the beautiful woman Who enters their lives. The Siblings struggled for several years to interest finanCIers in their proiect, going through the humiliation of being gawped at by members of the public during screen tests, until a private investor from Seattle prowded the necessary money. Are they conjoined? No, Which posed some unusual challenges during filming. ’The contraption we had to wear meant that we cOuldn't get up and move qUickly,’ explains Mark. 'We originally wanted a softly-lit setting, but it became a dark mowe partly because the darkness helped hide certain body parts.’ What’s their film like, then? American critics have invariably likened Twin Falls Idaho to the films of DaVId Lynch, The brothers, who finish each other’s sentences, admit: ’The film has a strange narrative. There's a fairytale aspect to the drama. It’s not about what happens next. It’s more a meditation.’ For Michael, a fine arts graduate, the main cinematic inspiration was Krzysztof Kieslowski. ’Three Colours Red was a big influence, partiCUlarly for the way strangers deal With one another and develop a relationship,’ he says. 'But we also referenced a lot of paintings by people like Edward Hopper and Vermeer.’ What's next? ’If you go out to bat and don't get a home run the first time,’ Mark smiles, ’then you get suckered.’ But With the finanCing for their second feature, North Fork, in place, the Polishs Will be making another trip to the baseball diamond, I Twin Falls Idaho opens Fri I Sep, See review
Peter Mullan, see page 6