septembre 05, 2005
reliable dolls
Willo is leaving for Berlin soon, and Peter and I bought him a travelling companion: an 80 year old "Reliable Doll" ventriloquist's dummy from Canada. The night before he was presented to his new owner, I found myself holding him tenderly, grasping his tiny wooden paw and instructing him to take good care of Willo. 
The Dummy is operated with a string at his neck – no crass fistery is required to Make Him Talk. I don't expect to hear his voice for a long while yet, but he exercised his little jaw by miming to the radio, clattering gently and coyly through the Shipping Forecast for me. He was introduced to Willo at a picnic with supercalipygous Mrs Rockets, Peter and Uncle Rich in the Spiegeltent gardens, where we ate Brazilian delicacies and mini choc ices, and an epicene pixie in designer clothing stood in our midst and delivered a long, perplexed speech in nonsense, on the subject of "Mummy". It seemed to be a Lost Child, but we spotted at least a dozen other roaming tinies, so perhaps it was part of a tribe of missionaries spreading gibberish to the ignorant bibulous.
On Wednesday I took my Doubtful Guest, the sweet hearted Mr Deadwood Dickens, to meet Willo and the Dummy, as well as Christine and Uncle Rich, and we living went to see pretty-in-punk Lapsus Linguae and half of the Dresden Dolls at the Exchange. We missed all but one 'Guae song, and wept. The Lapsus minxes were wearing white and looked all wrong out of black leather, like Jor-El when he did the Daz Doorstep Challenge. Willo saw them in Glasgow the next night and returned with a soundbite from Penelope Collegefriend: "We are Lapsus Ling Way - we used to be an all-girl band called 'This is period'".
Amanda Palmer had been doing everything I should have been doing during the Festival: seeing Daniel Kitson, hanging out in The Forest and playing with Regina Spektor. She is Rosie the Riveter in kinderwhore paint. On stage, she pretended to be shy, and then crashed into her keyboard like a bomb in a doll hospital. Emboldened by the freedom of solo performance and the affectionate energy of the crowd, her teasing, taunting, keening and roaring were driven by the inherent clockwork of the songs and needed no further percussion.
Brian (pictured) left a whole. Having said that, the half Jack, half Jill sight of both of them crackles up the stage – they're magnetic like kissing frogs.
I was hoping for a few previews or test-drives, but was happy to hear the old favourites, which bash unaffectedly and with lusty honesty into the topics of infant sexuality, gender identity and loneliness. We were also treated to Bright Eyes' "Lua", a rusty "Hallelujah" (Cohen) and a new song by her new friend Nathaniel, "Hold Me", which is a ballsy singalong about the last man on Earth finding only a monkey and an all-girls' choir for company. Nathaniel formed part of the spontaneous Cabaret All Stars, along with trumpet playing Andy and tap-dancing Ruby, who had worked up "Coin Operated Boy" earlier on. Of course we also got "Amsterdam", which is a sexy as Britt Ekland in "The Wicker Man" and as drinky as the drinking song written for her character: "The Landlord's Daughter". Later on, Amanda got to maul a Real Grand Piano in the velvety mirrorshow of the Spiegeltent, but by then we were back at Willo's with Paul, who was manipulating the Reliable Doll into mischievous acts of exhibitionism and onanism, and gazing down on him with the prettiest maternal glow you ever saw. And that little Svankmajer moment was my Wonder Years non-epiphany.