The Shed - Howl in the Hole

Many will have missed the Shed on the first take, never mind a double; its establishment as Dublin's newest road-less-taken venue was shortlived, but gracefully brilliant in its brevity. Billed as 'a private workspace aimed to experiment new participative and creative ways to socialize and communicate through the arts', it certainly delivered before the fun police called a halt an hour early due to health and safety or fire regulations or some other fun-inhibitor. They the two dressed in shirt and ties not seeming they belonged, certainly not seeming they enjoyed creativity, and checking their watches wondering how long a piece in experimental music might go on for. Though for all else it was what one might have hoped for from any one night stand.

The Shed is just a shed, a backstreet dead-end alley, exposed concrete blockwork, timber trusses and corrugated-iron roofing, a large room scattered with paint cans, pieces of timber, and on Thursday a clutter of artisans and patrons, some installation art and video projection and the before mentioned experimental musicry. The art concerned an installation by Amy O'Meara called 'Slow Children', a physical performance by Lorna O'Neil (which this blogger unfortunately missed), and music by Colin Wright and Rory Grubb. I've attended a number or Grubb's acoustic setlists before, tonight was very much more about his experimental inclinations. He rounded out the night by taking us on somewhat of a journey, creating meandering loop-based electro-acoustic sounds from various instruments and objects to a crescendo wherein he used all five-hundred songs on his keyboard (including machine guns and screaming ladies) as well as his guitar and bicycle wheel, which itself he found three ways to make music from - a true epic of a music piece.

For its first and only night, the Shed with its debut 'Howl in the Hole' was a wonderful success fusing art with raw urbanism, the north-inner city today perhaps among the less likely places to have found it, Henrietta Lane just off Bolton Street, the Kings Inn pub even less unlikely for such an after pary when it more accustomed to Racing Post readers, naive trainee barristers and the engineering boys of the DIT. In any event, a great pity the Shed ceased to exist as soon as it was born, though its curator did promise its re-realisation in some other form - the art will find a way, in the interim however check http://aroomforimprovement.com/thith for a taste of what you inevitably missed.

Carpe Diem

Escape the trappings of nostalgia and a prospect waiting room, the inglorious unfolding rhythm of the space-time continuum, linear in presumption, lost in all reality, clear in all clarity, indignant disparity, now is dreaming, tomorrow is nothing if today is found unravelling, undulating, inundating, scream liberating the throws of winter’s melancholy, spring’s zoology, summer’s psychology and autumn’s withering, philanthropic philosophies, lonesome day wholesome day someday a while away...

Eviction

Consider 1845, a hard up British landlord teasing the last of a helpless Connemara family's worth to feed social extravagances in London, consider him sending in the sheriff on Her Majesty's errand, consider the smell of the burning thatch, women wailing on the barren roadside, the men threatening obscenities, and the scramble of anyone able off of this God forsaken island.

Consider 2010, a hard up banking CEO teasing the last of a helpless Clondalkin family's worth to feed his already fat bonuses, consider the arrogant sheriff yielding to the Free State, the smell of negative equity, a baby's soiled nappy, a five-year old's lunch box and a mother's kitchen, the men shout shenanigans, they all shout rescue plans, and anyone able may note a discrepancy in the migration trend but sees it reassert its 160-year inclination as a low-fare flight takes them somewhere off this God forsaken island.

Might the Beatles have been Irish? Might JFK have been Taoiseach? Wayne Rooney an inter-county hurler? Was it for this the Wild Geese fled? Success somewhere else for it'll only be begrudged here? There was a time the island at the edge of Europe was the forerunner of modern technology; as the continent dealt with the plague, it was Ireland who helped guide her back to the light a thousand years ago. Now we put Intel in their computers and Viagra in their... Ahem, some immigrants are leaving, and our own emigrants are going too, if only someone might shout stop we could spare a generation having to go off and fight for Troy and taking the long way home.