The Republic of Užupis was to curate The Curfew Tower for the year of 2020.
The Great Pandemic stepped in the way of the curatorship happening.
The Curfew Tower very much hopes that it will be curated by The Republic of Užupis in the year of 2021.
The Curfew Tower awaits.
And while it waited statues of The Curfew Tower were built in The Repulic of Užupis. Above is a photograph of one of those statues by the River Vilnelė.
Live From A Wardrobe is a performance by Tam Dean Burn recorded live in a wardrobe in Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland sometime in the November of 2020.
The performance is of four Forty Second Plays by Tenzing Scott Brown.
These plays have the collective title of The New River Four.
These performances can be listened to below:
The Glorified Walking Stick
There Is An After Life
The Public Execution of Pop Stars
The Nik Kershaw Minifig
Elvis Loves Bill is a Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown.
It was written on the 3rd of December 2020, to mark the 52nd anniversary of the ‘68 Comeback Special and Bill Drummond’s boyhood love of Elvis Presley.
It was to be performed with Neu! Reekie! at the Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 18th of December 2020. But the Great Pandemic had other plans.
The play was published by Caught By The River on the 10th of December 2020.
No Music Day 2020, was marked and celebrated in two European locations.
One was in The Republic of Užupis, where Gleb Divov, the Minister for Culture and Innovations, positioned posters around the Republic to announce their marking of No Music Day. These posters were in both English and Lithuanian. Lithuanian being the mother tongue of those living in The Republic of Užupis.
The other location was in Tabakfabrik in Linz, where the short film My Name Is Art Not Innovation by Scharmien Zandi was screened.
No Music Day 2021 is to be marked by The Republic of Užupis building international bridges.
And…
By Scharmien Zandi staging her Silent Opera.
Further information about The Repulic of Užupis building international bridges and the staging of Schamrmien Zandi’s Silent Opera will be made known via the Penkiln Burn site in the early days of November 2021.
On each 21st of November for five years between 2005 and 2009, Bill Drummond promoted and celebrated No Music Day. After that he let it lie. But he did not switch off the No Music Day website, he had decided that should remain as a museum piece.
Since 21st of November 2009 and early in November 2020, he did not think about No Music Day once. Then he received an email from someone in Vienna, who announced to him that they were going to be celebrating No Music Day this coming 21st of November.
This someone is called Scharmien Zandie.
Although Bill Drummond no longer marks No Music Day, he has in his private world established a music free life.
To document this fact Tenzing Scott Brown has written one of his Forty Second Plays. It is entitled A Music Free Life. It features two characters. They are Music and the other is Bill. This is it:
Music:
What the fuck?
Bill:
What do you mean?
Music:
A Music Free Life?
I mean do you attend Music Lovers Anonymous?
Bill:
No, but…
Music:
For a start, I caught you listening to Gram Parsons on your Spotify app only last night, when you thought no one was in the house.
Bill:
Yeah but…
Music:
‘Yeah but’ nothing. I know you listen to more music now than ever.
Bill:
Yeah, but that is because everywhere I go there is a Spotify Play List playing. And…
Music:
And that is a good thing.
Makes the world a better place – something to be applauded.
Bill:
No!
Music only exists to make you do things you don’t want to do.
Music:
Wrong!
Very wrong!
I exist to make you do things that you didn’t know you wanted to do.
Anyway get the kettle on.
The End
And that is the end of that particular Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown. For further research explore the question ‘What is Music for?’
And…
Find out which way Scharmien Zandie is celebrating No Music Day this coming 21st of November in a world riddled with the global pandemic of social media. A pandemic that did not exist back in 2005. And one we as yet have not found a vaccine for.
Ragwort Week 2020 is being held between Monday the 12th and Sunday the 18th of October.
To mark Ragwort Week 2020 the very short film The Great North Road Ragworts has been made:
As with the previous eight Ragwort Weeks, 100 copies of the book RAGWORTS by Bill Drummond are being made available from Alimentation. Click HERE to buy. Or at least know more.
SOFA is the name of a Forty Second Play by Tenzing Scott Brown.
SOFA was written in response to Bill Drummond being invited onto the Thursday afternoon show on BBC 6 Music, to discuss the film BEST BEFORE DEATH.
SOFA was written while Tenzing Scott Brown sat on the sofa in The Best Gent Hair Saloon on Albion Parade, N16.
Bill Drummond performed a version of the play, but the version lasted over nine minutes, much longer than the forty seconds as proclaimed, thus way too long to be broadcast on a music radio station.
Listen to SOFA as performed by Bill Drummond:
Paul Duane, the director of BEST BEFORE DEATH was interviewed by Matt Everett for the said Thursday afternoon show for BBC 6 Music.
To know more about or buy a copy of the blu-ray version of BEST BEFORE DEATH click HERE.
Below is the Post Script to the play FORGIVE ME NOT by Tenzing Scott Brown.
The manuscript to this play was first made public via the Twitter feed of Rob Manuel. But without a Post Script.
To read FORGIVE ME NOT on Rob Manuel’s Twitter feed click HERE.
To read the missing Post Script read on:
Post Script:
It is now two days since I typed up the above Forty Second Play and hit send on it to Rob Manuel. He has already pushed it out there to begin its life in the world. But re-reading it now there are a couple of points that I feel the need to clarify – they are:
I don’t think the Presbyterian outlook on the Universe, to be better than any other outlook, and I’m aware that as an outlook it has brought much friction into the affairs of mankind. It was just the one that my childhood was drenched in.
Also I am one of those Guardian readers, whose only experience of the confession box is what is presented to us in certain films. And it was the Young Man who stated that the confession box was used as a “cliché” in a certain strand of American films. This was prompted by me (the Old Man) asking him, if he thought confession box scenes were a trope? He explained that trope was the wrong word but these clichéd scenes were used to get into the thoughts and fears of the protagonist mind, in a way that that regular dialogue would not reveal. He then gave me a number of examples where these confession box scenes had been used in films he had watched.
At times Bill Drummond is asked to pass comment.
At times Bill Drummond responds to being asked to pass comment by instigating one of his other selves to write a Forty Second Play.
One of these other selves takes the name Tenzing Scott Brown.
Four of these Forty Second Plays were written at the corner table of the New River Café, N16.
They were written over a period of four days in early September 2020.
The titles of these four plays are:
The Public Execution of Pop Stars
and
But…
In March 2020, Bill Drummond wrote a Forty Second Play, entitled Questions, Questions, Questions.
Questions, Questions, Questions was written as the introduction for a book entitled questions.
questions was written by Andrew Shaw.
questions was published by The Silent Academy in Port Townsend, Jefferson County in the state of Washington, USA. For further information about questions or to order online click HERE.
The Glorified Walking Stick is a forty second play by Bill Drummond.
The Glorified Walking Stick is set on a blue skied Monday morning sometime between the spring of 1968 and the autumn of 2020.
The Glorified Walking Stick features two characters, Tenzing Scott Brown and Kristina Bruuk.
Tenzing Scott Brown is one of Bill Drummond’s other selves trying to break free.
Kristina Bruuk is an imagined poet and artist. She has been imagined by several generations of loner women scattered across Europe.
Kristina Bruuk is originally from Helsinki in Finland.
Each of these loner women are unaware that there are other loner women imagining her.
Kristina Bruuk and Tenzing Scott Brown have been friends over several decades and various continents. But they have never been lovers.
Kristina Bruuk once recorded an album of her own songs. It was titled Between Heaven & Helsinki. The record company never released it.
Some say that Kristina Bruuk ended her life with an overdose of heroin. Others think she is now an aged lady living out her life in a two-roomed apartment in Naples.
But for the purposes of this play, she is of an uncertain age and is walking down a tree-lined boulevard in Paris, taking in what the day has to offer. And wondering why she burnt the hand written memoir she had spent the past seven months writing.
As for Tenzing Scott Brown, he is sitting at one of the outside tables of a street café, taking the last sip from his second café-au-lait of the morning. There is a white plate on the table. On the plate is a scattering of crumbs. The crumbs are those of a fresh croissant that Tenzing has just eaten. As usual he had spread the freshly baked croissant with Normandy butter and blackcurrant jam. This is what he has every morning, at the same table, at the same café, on the same street, in the same French city. Or has done since…
There are some pigeons on the ground close by, hoping for these crumbs to fall to the ground. There is a lone crow flying across the Parisian sky, surveying the scene. Tenzing is also imagining a lone red balloon drifting across the same Parisian sky – but there isn’t. He imagines this most mornings.
In his hand Tenzing is holding a copy of Should We Meet At The Crossroads, Keep Walking by someone calling himself The Perambulator. It had arrived in the post earlier this morning, it was addressed to him personally. There was no covering note inside the package – thus no explanation why this book had been sent to him. The postage stamps on the package were Finnish, the postmark said Helsinki.
Tenzing Scott Brown has been reading it without a break for over two hours at his table at this street café in Paris. He is captivated by the words, the flow, the atmosphere. It’s as if the book had been written for him. He had just read the last sentence of page 211, the one that reads “I catch Rena’s eye and look down to my feet” when he stops to look up at the sky to see if there might be a red balloon floating across it – there isn’t.
But…
Instead he sees Kristina Bruuk approaching.
Kristina Bruuk is always approaching even when she is almost disappearing.
Thus…
This is where the actual Forty Second Play begins.
Kristina Bruuk:
Hey Tenzing, what are you reading?
Tenzing Scott Brown:
I think it is a novel, but maybe a memoir.
Hard to tell these days.
Set in Helsinki and it seems to feature you.
Kristina Bruuk sits down on one of the chairs across the table from Tenzing Scott Brown
Kristina Bruuk:
They all feature me, even when they don’t know it.
Any good?
Tenzing Scott Brown:
Twisted.
Kristina Bruuk:
Twisted?
Tenzing Scott Brown:
Yeah, like any great book set in Helsinki should be.
Kristina Bruuk:
And the walking stick?
Kristina Bruuk is referring to the hazel walking stick with the honeysuckle spiral, leaning against the table.
Tenzing Scott Brown:
It is my version of The Glorified Walking Stick.
Kristina Bruuk:
Is that supposed to mean something?
Tenzing Scott Brown:
If you read the book…
Anyway, any news on the release of your Between Heaven & Helsinki album.
Kristina Bruuk:
Not until after I am dead.
The End
Although that is the official end of this Forty Second Play called The Glorified Walking Stick, Kristina Bruuk orders a café-au-lait from an unseen waiter
Picks up the copy of Should We Meet At The Crossroads, Keep Walking
Flicks through the pages
Puts it down
Picks up the glorified walking stick
Admires its honeysuckle spiral.
And while this is happening we the audience – whoever and wherever we are – hear Pleasant Valley Sunday as performed and recorded by Kristina Bruuk playing on a Spotify playlist for the lost and the lonely.
Fade to grey…
Post Script:
Should We Meet At The Crossroads, Keep Walking by The Perambulator is to be published by Hesterglock Press in late 2020.
Between Heaven & Helsinki by Kristina Bruuk was recorded in Helsinki in 1997 for Kalevala Recordings, it might never be released.