Friday 13 September 2013

Now this is really special

This special organ - the only one in the UK - is up the road!
We're being given the chance to hear it and the experience of watching a 'silent Charlie Chaplin' done as it was intended next Saturday 21st at 7:30 at the Royalty Cinema.

As someone who can remember this kind of performance, it really is special. The organist can put a lot of 'ZING' into what one sees on the screen. It's great listening to the way this wonderful restored instrument can be used to help us get involved with others by direct contact with another human being - this time Paul Gregson as his fingers scamper all over the keyboard: something that is so often missing in our daily lives with highly remote mechanised 'perfection'.

Try it : it's the kind of thing that helped form we Oldies into the very different kind of people to the cardboard cutouts of 30 year olds and younger (with, thank God some notable exeptions) we experience nowadays. It's having 'real' people here in Ulverston that is helping us survive the onslaughts of officialese we get thrown at us in a take-it-or-leave-it attitude by local government.


3 comments:

Chris said...

Get close to the old Wurly's with Leslie Speakers they almost felt as if they were going to take off with the fan.
You can do that electronically but not the same as old Leslie Cabs.
Even in dreary old Ulverston there used to be a Carbon Arc projector that was help together with scotch tape and paper clips.
it had an old Hg vapor rectifer watching the fireball dance on the Hg seemed magical,drawing an arc from the Anode with a screwdriver magical.
Now cinema's are little boxes owned by corp dross,sad not even an iconic film magazine anymore,the last one was Cahiers Du Cinema,now owned by corp dross.
If you are in the mood for a truly magical movie,watch Cinema Pardiso it is a work of art and sadly works of art in cinema are now forbidden,we now have bang bang bang from corp dross from The Cesspool By The Sea.
Still waiting to hear your views on Big Pharma patents,hope all is well,I want to go to The Danelli and buy 2 puppies......However.

Geoff Dellow said...

Lovely to hear from you Chris.

Strangely: you're the voice of sanity in a mad, mad, world.

Here, the dreaded God: Health and Safety gone mad. We too have our word of the past with art and challenge and danger removed lest we suffer the slightest harm.

If he had his way there would be no danger - a landscape of flat, surgically clean landscape stretching all the way to the horizon with no living things in it. A land of total safety. A hell of endless boredom.

Spirits at an all time low.

Now to find my wonderful friends to drag me back up. I'm going to need them and thankfully : they are there.

Off to the allotment to find them. Thanks to my alternative God - The God of the Wurlitzer - sanity can be found there.

It's a place I can be on my own and crawl into the safest place of all - my innermost calm. Wonderful thought.

Chris said...

Health and Safety,cannot help but wonder what planet they hail from.
Even where you are there used to be a man called Mr Garnett,drove an Austin A35.
In his 70's he would run around rooftops replacing VHF 405 Aerials for UHF Aerials to pick up color and BBC 2 only on 625.
He was like a little elf running around the rooftops not a care in the world.
Health and Safety chimps would be penning mindless report after mindless report,after watching him.
He was his own Health And Safety expert never fell and knew what he was doing.
Have you ever read The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy?,Doug Adams had such a dry laconic wit.
In his book it was considered that the kindest thing to do with box ticking Health and Safety Chimps and their kind was to place them on a space ship that was programmed to fly into the sun.
I once restored an old Wurly jukebox built like a battle ship.
Have fun Geoff........