The Octopus

One of my favorite aspects of living in the world class city that is Sydney is the accessibility of artists who would otherwise never cross cultural my radar. Last night, I saw one of the most challenging performances I have ever witnessed, and by that I mean it was difficult for me, as a member of the audience, to experience. By the end of the show I was emotionally exhausted, my sensory perception strained to the edge of my tolerance.

Grant Collins is billed as a ‘one man percussion orchestra”, a phrase that completely understates the spatial-temporal complexity of his music. I don’t usually think of drums as ‘musical’ instruments – in my mind they are more like the skeletal framework that supports a harmonic structure. However, under the command of his remarkable neural network, the 80+ pieces of his drum kit produce the range and interwoven subtlety of a full symphony.

In between songs, cheeky, energetic and perhaps a bit scattered, he attempted to explain the science and methodologies behind his performances. I was quite excited to hear him discussing neuronal plasticity and hippocampal pathways, but I was completely unable to comprehend what it meant to play a rhythm in 9/16. I did understand that he is able to control each of his limbs in a different time – such that one foot plays 2, the other plays 3, while one arm does 5 and the other 7, but when I tried to observe that knowledge during his performance, my mind spun out of control as each limb blurred into an independent cacophony of movement.

It often requires all of my mental capacity to get each my limbs to do the same thing at the same time.