Limmy

[shiels]

Where are you from washyourhands?

 

[yyaldrin]

never heard about him but i just checked a few ones and i like the stand your ground one but mostly this one:



not sure if i can explain how funny this is to me as i met a singer recently in a pub that sang exactly like that and was dead serious about it. i kept thinking he was trolling me but he even gave me his youtube page so that i could check out more of his music at home. i think i wrote about it before in another topic. who started with this voice? nickelback?

 

[luka]

So much of what he does, specially Dee Dee, stems from being at home alone going mad, for days on end, or is drawing on those experiences in retrospect, so it's quite appropriate for now. Unemployed, isolated, paranoid, talking to yourself

 

[luka]

How he uses his face is very powerful too. Specially the blankness. He photographs himself in states that we all experience but want to hide even from ourselves. Washed out. Flat. Affectless. Aging. I like that a lot. It's very brave.

 

[luka]

Most of us here, the ones over 30 anyway know what it's like to be on the scrap heap, totally surplus to requirement. Middle aged man, comepletely undesireable, no juice left, might as well kill yourself. I like the unflinching presentation of that reality.

 

[luka]

Those pale blue washed out eyes. That thin, stretched grimace of a smile. The lines on the face.

 

[luka]

This fits in with the unemployed going mad in the house thing too. Drawing on daytime television. Transmuting all that dross into gold.

 

[shiels]

Yes absolutely. This grim, grey working class surrealism that’s very aware and contained by his own limitations. He’s got his ways, his lines in the sand and he sticks to them and that interacts brilliantly with a sick imagination

 

[luka]

Most of us here, the ones over 30 anyway know what it's like to be on the scrap heap, totally surplus to requirement. Middle aged man, comepletely undesireable, no juice left, might as well kill yourself. I like the unflinching presentation of that reality.

Or he'll do that smile that can't light up the face, that can't believe in Itself, can't get the old juices flowing. The way he dramatises that. Trying to get the spark going and it's not there

 

[luka]

You've known magic you've had the nights on the E the telepathy the empathy the one mind you've had the trips all that. You know what it should be like but you've been locked out you can't access it

 

[luka]

Looking at yourself dying in the mirror

 

[shiels]

Or he'll do that smile that can't light up the face, that can't believe in Itself, can't get the old juices flowing. The way he dramatises that. Trying to get the spark going and it's not there

Gervais as Brent mastered this, the strain in the face and cheeks and defeat in the eyes

 

[luka]

That hair won't grow back those lines won't disappear. The eyes pale and flat and lustreless. No one wants you here. You've had your time. There's no point you still being here taking up space.

Who else presents such a brilliant picture of what it's like to be middle aged and by definition, more dead than alive

 

[luka]

Gervais as Brent mastered this, the strain in the face and cheeks and defeat in the eyes

Limmys is more generous though cos it's not presented as some one to laugh at. It's a real human being. It's him. It's me. Gervais acted it well but it didn't have the same courage and generosity

 

[shiels]

Couldn’t agree more about Limmy’s generosity and integrity but I think gervais put a lot of himself into Brent too, hiding behind a character yes but that can allow you to say certain things too

 

[pattycakes_]

Gervais is just being himself

 

[shiels]

 

[luka]

There's a lot of talking to yourself in Limmy. He's very good at getting that internal monologue down. Capturing those irrational trains of thought, those borderlands of schizophrenia and drug psychosis.

 

[shiels]

He’s inner critic and inner prophet both very strong and interesting

 

[luka]

It works against that thing that social media has put into overdrive, where your self presentation is carefully mediated. that policing of the face and body, always aware of the messages you're giving out.

He's very good at finding and displaying all the stuff that is carefully deleted from that feed.