La sera del 31 dicembre è andato in onda su Radio 3 della BBC un recente lavoro di Peter Blegvad dal titolo Guest + Host = Ghost, racconto radiofonico a metà tra la claustrofobia e la deprivazione sensoriale, affettuosamente dedicato a quanti mal sopportano il peso di festini e festicciole di precetto a fine anno. Lettura a più voci per opera dell'autore e di Nick Cave, tra gli altri, con ambientazione sonora quasi impercettibile - prodotta dal Langham Research Centre - e una girandola di riferimenti da Cousteau a Duchamp e ovviamente agli ospiti equivoci e sgraditi di Edward Gorey.
This half hour radio play was made for the experimental strand on BBC Radio 3 called Between the Ears, and it features readings with a gothic frosting by Nick Cave. The play charts a journey into one man's isolation. Our narrator is consigned to a flotation tank in an attempt to beat the world record for sensory deprivation. He's visited by doubtful guests of the mind as his desire for solitude collides with his social instincts and thoughts of his lost love, Esperanza. The program uses Edward Gorey's Tale, the Doubtful Guest and other literary illustrations to explore the ambiguities of disengagement and using music concrète techniques specially developed by Langham Research Centre: in this configuration Felix Carey, Iain Chambers, and Philip Tagney.
"Between the Ears (Radio 3) is crackers. To be fair, that is its remit: to tickle the parts of the brain untouched by almost all other radio. At its best, the strangeness of the sonic adventures actually roots you to the spot. You feel as if you are suddenly able to follow something in a language you don't speak. That was how Guest + Host = Ghost left me feeling on Saturday evening. With its setting in a flotation tank, a perkily multi-layered text, gurgling, bubbling music, quotations read with a gothic frosting by Nick Cave, and script by avant-garde all-rounder Peter Blegvad, it proved a mighty bracing end to the year. It provided some cheery thoughts for 2006 ("if it were not for guests, all houses would be graves"), some pressing questions ("how long has it been since we have visited ourselves?") and some startling asides ("it's Jacques Cousteau!"). Dark, wildly meandering, and often funny, it offered the same possibilities as the sensory deprivation it was so fascinated by: "a hole in the universe, a door through into another world". (The Guardian)