Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx The Quiet Man

This piece was first 'published' in Issue 20 of Extreme Voice.
The last printed edition cAugust 2001

Thanks very much for your photos and comment of the show, Brian.
Sounds like it was a perfect evening.
Hope to meet you again next year.

Andreas

Thank you! I wish I'd been there... In Genoa "The Quiet Man" reading was without images due to technical problems, and there was no time for a Q&A session, because of another show to follow. Well, while you lucky people spent the night with Mr. Foxx, I spent it with Mr. Conner, a friend's cat I was looking after while this friend of mine was away fort the weekend. Both the Foxx and the Cat are grey haired but the Cat (though adorable in its feline way) is not much interested in music and poetry. We can only talk about pet-food, mice, playing hide and seek and "catch the ankle, bite the hand"... a bit boring, in the end!

Meriseth, feeling very feline

Briefly, I thought it was an excellent performance - very moving and in a way, the most open and personal thing John has done to date.

Although it still is clearly a work in progress, there was a slight feeling of closure and completion, seeing The Quiet Man all finally start coming together.

I'll be writing a more detailed review (hopefully) for my site later this week.

Just got back from a fanastic weekend. Thank you Alex for your hospitality and letting me stay with you.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Quiet Man performance and it was worth the long trip up to Leeds.

For this event I decided to sit further back in the venue. It was a lot to take in, the video, music and the narration but it all worked superbly together. John looked very comfortable playing the piano and standing doing the narration. Looking forward to the completed Quiet Man project.


Leeds town hall is a first class hall for this type of event has it was for TCM last year.

Afterwards John came out into the foyer and chatted. I said to him that he has been invited to the film festival for the last 3 years and I hope you get asked again for next year he smiled and said "you never know". John is so approachable which is good for an artist. In the past I've always put him on a pedestall.

I hope you enjoyed shaking John's hand Brian. I hope you haven't lost the mystique of him. Not very often you get to meet one's hero's

It was nice to see everyone again, Alex, Alexa, Brian, Gem, (I enjoyed our chat in the back of the car (on the way back to Sheffield )). Mark, Geoff, Sarah, Mark, Tessa (hope you had a special birthday), Jeff, Criag, and Sarah .

Hope we can all do it again next year

Peter

the Q and A is interesting too, thanks Brian.

Good to hear John having the opportunity to talk about his creation with such knowledge and passion. Impressive that he is able to quote Shelley apparently at random, and link his work with great literary themes and ideas.
He talks a bit too about the strong thematic connections between Cathedral Oceans and The Quiet Man, (and The Garden.etc) and its when you hear this and begin to understand it, you can see where a lot of his work comes from and how it fits closely together, despite its different styles and the different media in which it is created.

Super stuff

Many thanks Brian! Great review and so much stuff for me to plough through (it beats working don't it?)

..or beats werkin' as someone once said...

Yes thanks to all for their contributions on the subject, especially vids and pics. Very grateful.

In his recent thoughts on The Quiet Man, John has mentioned that we are the only species that likes sitting in the dark watching images flickering on a screen. Take cats: they barely flinch at even the most monstrous special effects and surround-sound gubbins. They are politely dismissive, despite failing the mirror test. And prefer to sleep. But open a can with a cat on your lap and they jump slightly. They know what is real. Lucky them. I have often wanted to have a cat’s life – to have it so unbelievably easy and to plan the day’s projects without distractions (work springs immediately to mind). But how much poorer is that life if it cannot appreciate flickering images on a screen?

The Quiet Man appears to have something of the cat in him. His fantasy world is one we would all like to share, for a few hours at any rate. To have time for projects without interference, to have a self-imposed routine, to be able to search for the presence of the woman in the apartment somewhere in this four-dimensional shifting city. The real world however hovers all too closely in this fantasy and even The Quiet Man (subconsciously at least) is aware of this – the nostalgia of other people is merely around the corner in some other four-dimensional street, constantly dislocated. The people he sees are the past, but happening now and about to happen, and having just happened. “And so he plays the film, he plays the film again.”

John introduced the evening with his own feelings of nostalgia at seeing 30 year-old films of friends wearing the grey suit. You didn’t want or need to know what happened to these actors. “Here you are walking / This is the sun … How some have changed / Some of them gone now / Some still the same”. At other points nostalgia switched to glimpses of the future, like overgrown St Paul’s, all part of a huge mad quiet progression.

The Quiet Man is getting louder – the texts are beautiful as they are (and there are enough for a book! and I really must go back and read them properly) but they really leap off the page in their new surroundings, narrated against poignant soundscapes of piano and synth and illuminated by the coloured shadows of people method acting in their lives. I had not heard the Fulham voice before and an initial sense of disorientation settled quickly into a warm World At War style. John’s own voice worked well as an alternative to the other chap, as someone pushing through his own outline. The musical backing was always subtle but involving and it was nice to hear just the one Foxx/Budd original repurposed for this project.

To sum up, The Quiet Man was (and is, and will be) moving, melancholic, intriguing, beautiful, and totally absorbing. Cats, I pity your sense of reality! It’s just a ring pull for God’s sake …


Thanks to Brian for photos, conversation, and drinks to aid sleep and for telling the world the pub has not been called Baroque for years (we had a collective nostalgia there without even knowing about it!), and thanks to the usual (plus guests and partners): Craig, Peter, Sarah, Gem, Tess, Alex S, Ion-ah. Thanks clearly to John, Karborn and Steve. Birdsong, Andreas, Rob etc, you were missed. Hope to see you all again soon.

Meeee-aaeeiiiooww!

Superb. Thanks MArk