CEZAR TAKES YOU HIGHER

“Love is so deep / And it makes my life complete/ Like a mountain in the sky/ Love is high, so high”

Christian Faur’s excruciating lyrics to It’s My Life tell only half the story.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Rupert Everett swallowed Susan Boyle?

Cezar, in Romania’s entry to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest provides the answer.

He is the first countertenor singer in the history of the competition. This means that it wasn’t only the mountains in the sky and love that are so high.

This is one of the most extraordinary vocal performances you will ever hear:

THOM YORKE’S INGENUE (X 2)

In the first video for ‘supergroup’ ,Atoms For Peace , Thom Yorke gets his dancing shoes on again.

“Ingenue” is taken from the band’s debut album, Amok, and Yorke performs with beautiful contemporary dancer Fukiko Takase.

This witty and stylish piece was directed and choreographed by the same team that gave us Radiohead’s ”Lotus Flower” .

It was directed by Garth Jennings  and choreographed by Random Dance founder,  Wayne McGregor.

DAVID ICKE’S MAD DREAMWORLD

Last week on a newstand at my local train station in Cesena, Italy, I spotted a copy of a big fat paperback about ‘the lies behind 9/11′  by David Icke, entitled ‘Alice nel paese delle Meraviglie e il Disastro delle Torri Gemelle’ (Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Centre Disaster’).

If you are a Brit of a certain age, this author’s name will be forever associated with a notorious interview on the Terry Wogan show in 1991 where he claimed to be the ‘Son of the Godhead’.

Well, to be fair, he didn’t actually say this in so many words; he just didn’t deny that this was his calling when the question was posed.

Not surprisingly, the British public were not prepared for the second coming to be announced on prime time TV by an ex-sports presenter wearing a turquoise shell suit.

The fallout from this interview was immense and immediate. Icke, at that time a soccer correspondent for the BBC and Green Party spokesman, was subjected to a massive level of ridicule.

It wouldn’t have been surprising if, after this experience,  he had gone to ground for ever or fled the country. Instead, and against all the odds, he weathered the storm and has gradually reinvented himself as a  visionary figure whose self-appointed role is to awaken global citizens from a living nightmare of false illusions and mind manipulation.

DARK CITY : MIND MATTERS

DARK CITY directed by Alex Proyas (USA, 1998)

The strangers in Dark Star

‘The Gentlemen’ from the classic ‘Hush’ episode of  Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

My favourite ever episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is ‘Hush’ where a ghoulish group known as The Gentlemen invade Sunnyville and steal everyone’s voices so selected victims can’t scream as their hearts are cut out.

These scary figures look similar to the pallid hairless aliens known as ‘the strangers’ in Dark City and move the same way; floating rather than walking to seek out their prey.

This movie is a neo-noir fantasy sci-fi horror mystery by the director of The Crow. It shares the bleak underworld vibe of his earlier cult classic without the same killer soundtrack. It looks very stylish but lacks any real sense of menace – more like a weird dream than a horrific nightmare.

FEED YOUR HEAD

The BBC Horizon documentary ‘The Creative Brain – How Insight Works’ written and directed by Kate Dart offered food for thought on how to get  the mind working to its maximum potential.

One neuroscientist says that even though the creative  ’eureka moment’ may seem to be a flash of inspiration out of the nowhere, the process that leads up to it is actually more likely to be a slow and meandering one. The direct A to B route doesn’t allow enough scope for the kind of divergent thinking that gives the best ideas nor will it help in seeing problems or challenges  from a lateral perspective.