A Tea with Shostakovich

A sparklingly inventive review of personal experience. Tramontano revels in a rich and imaginative layering of imagery to build a moving and intimate self portrait. He writes of the genesis of this work: 'A Tea with Shostakovich is a dream with that "special chaos" of a dream, which, for William Burroughs, was the hidden secret of Mexico. A "special chaos", because everything - sometimes weirdly, sometimes eerily - is ever fluid in a dream, and, whatever happens, nobody blinks an eye during it, never. It is absolutely normal to start your day on a bridge in Prague and few minutes later - or few centuries later, because Time does not exist in dreams - being Along the soft banks/of murky Mekong, watching a beautiful and cruel harlot. Why is everything so normal and so logical and why are you completely comfortable with it? Shakespeare, as ever, has the answer: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep".'