What a wicked day that was in London, when I saw Dizzee Rascal perform live on the thames in support of David Blaine's big come down. Talking of which, I must see the David Blaine documentary to see if you can hear Dizzee Rascal singing in the background. I was too tired to stay up for them at Christmas.
The day before was good too, we went to a fantastic exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery - Paula Rego. Then to Sketch to watch a film, saw the egg shaped toilet cubicles. The film was projected onto 4 walls, 3 times in a row & there were leather chairs in a square in the middle.
I had brought some acrylic paints with me and painted a view from Stephen's flat. It tured out quite eerie.
we: ->went to the White Cube in Hoxton & got our on the way to work books signed by Damian Hurst (one for Stephen). The exhibition itself wasn't that impressive. Upstairs, there were these many fly pictures made of "flys on canvas" - They Stank & I almost retched. It was quite exciting, & scary. Rather embarrassing as we are bad at meeting people at the best of times. I told him I liked his book very much and then was really embarrassed. He looked at me like I was a mentaller when he said goodbye. (~Damien drew a picture of a skull and cross bones on my book.)
->went to the Boyle family pavement exhibition, which was very impressive. Impressive sterio too - Bose, the one advertised in magazines. I noticed it, so it must be good. I mean, how often do you notice sterios?
-> went to London Hospital to do some filming
-> Walked accross Tower Bridge, massively crowded all the way along & then all the way along the river there was a really frenzied atmosphere at David Blaine. He stood up & then fell over the other day, the news said, so people were hoping for a bit of excitement. We got a little shopping from Borough Market and then home to cook and we drank Stephen's bottle of Cava he'd left for us. Then to
-> the Francis Bacon film, Love is the Devil. A very good film - interesting, though provoking and artistic.
After that, home for a banana smoothie with milk and banana.
After Love is the Devil, we decided we might as well go to David Blaine's finale. We saw his box being lowered. There was this loud mustic at 9.30 -10 & we didn't know who was playing it - at first I though it was the theme tune to David Blaine's come down (american stadium style) but you could hardly him speaking. It turned out it was on a boat, & it was Dizzee Rascal doing a live concert from his boat. You could see him on deck with these huge speakers. The police boats chased him around & around Tower Bridge. The music echoed very nicely under the bridge. They didn't let David Blaine out till 9.40 (because Dizzee Rascal upstaged him?) and there was dust flying everywhere as it had been incredibly dry summer. Afterwards, most people left, and just a few of us stayed watching Dizzee Rascal & the police chase. People were saying, "is it dizzee?" "it's dizzee" because he was singing "Dizzy Rahs-kall!....Dizzy Rahs-kall".
I told my brother about this, and he gave me a cd of Dizzee for christmas. I liked look sharp at the time, and liked the David Blaine song he performed from his boat, but not so keen on the album.
The above typed out from my diary of the time, inspired by reading Undercurrent's Dizzee Rascal : Cold Beat Platter
ps, a strange thing happened in the Tate Modern when we went a few days before this. We were going round the exhibition and there were loads of school children sketching the exhibits. In the small Paul McCarthy room/corridor were a series of sketches, featuring a man punching himself in the face with one boxing-gloved hand whilst masturbating with the other (the preliminary sketches or story board stills for his film showing on a small television screen in the same room. Oh yeah, in the film, the man was covered in blood). Three children from a school party sat facing these sketches, each had selected one to copy. A girl was drawing the most explicit of the bunch. I looked at her picture - she'd drawn his erect penis, with boxing gloved-hand on it, and was just putting in the boxing gloved-hand punching head. What the f++k are her parents going to say when they see that drawing?