But is it art?

        I write, with scant minutes of July left, having just come back from
an event at the Stockton Riverside Festival. Now I'm not a great fan of art;
the family went out on a whim not knowing a specific event was taking place
(indeed, merely trying to find a programme of events, which I thought was
not terribly likely to happen in a journey starting after 9pm). However the
main Riverside road was blocked with traffic cones, so we parked in the
adjacent multi-storey car park and wandered off to a bloke at the roadblock.
He pointed Mum, Dad and me off to the Riverside path, where crowds were
lining a half-kilometre stretch (no pun intended), two or three bodies deep
at some places. By sheer good fortune we had arrived at maybe quarter to
ten and the parade of floats was due to start at ten o'clock.
        So I really didn't know what to expect. The sky was overcast and
threatening vaguely to rain, and a whole lotta nothing was happening until
after five past ten. We could see some dinghies whirring about vaguely, and a
confused heap of glass ship almost camouflaged on the other side, and some
boats bobbing about slightly uncertainly, but that was about all. No-one
really seemed to know what was going to happen on the fifty-yard-wide Tees.
        Then a buzzing noise came from over to the right, and lights started
to shine down. A few seconds later, and we could see the first boat in the
parade was decked out to be a large white swan. It was perhaps seven yards
long and five yards tall, with powerful lights about its feathers. On board
was the amplified blare of two soprano saxophones and an electronic keyboard.
The tune wasn't famous and was no more than muzak. The swan bobbed around and
floated upstream at about 1/2 knot. Not terribly impressive so far. Then about
five minutes later another, blander still, type of music started from my right
and another boat, which had popped out from nowhere, lit itself up. This
featured, atop the mast, a set of wheels within wheels. In the middle of
the wheels, a humanoid figure paced along as the wheels rotated. This wasn't
as pretty as the previous float, but the humanoid figure walking along in
slow motion was interesting. From a distance I couldn't tell whether this was
a particularly pretentious human or a superb feat of animatronics; as the
boat sped closer I was disappointed to see that it was a man who obviously
really had a high estimation of his own worth, as he stopped keeping time
with the spinning wheels and hauled himself upside-down onto a pole.
        So as the swan floated to the far end of the crowd, this second boat
kept our end of the masses entertained, and I remembered the contempt in
which I held performance artists. Thirdly, the camuouflaged boat-like object
started to glow brightly, bathing itself in blue light and issuing forth a
tune like someone learning to play the bagpipes, but less interesting. Then
it turned from blue to red in an innovative, challenging and different
statement of the fallibility of the British public's political opinion. After
that it started spraying jets of water. Alas, it was rooted to the spot and
didn't go anywhere - a fairly fundamental failure for a boat, I would have
thought. It looked like a greenhouse that had been caught in a small tornado.
        Next up was a boat with the motif of a dragon and an extremely loud
outboard motor. No, I tell a lie, a drum band. The drummers were playing with
some venom and physical skill, for a tiring and repetitive set. To add to the
fun, starting from the other direction, the swan floated back down, followed
by another boat decked out in a Chinese theme playing loud bells. Actually,
the music from this boat was actually fairly pleasant, being quick, melodic
and tuneful (though you couldn't dance to it). Definitely my favourite boat,
even if it did seem to get stuck half-way. More lights came on focusing on
its load, an absurdly oversized egg which started heaving and hoing before
hatching in a bizarre and exaggerated style. We ended as we began with the
swan boat, with no saxes but instead a lady singing. She sang pure notes and
tones, like a bird might in a slow motion mating ritual, as opposed to a song
(in the sense that we know it).
        All five boats were out, alight and aloud, then, suddenly, darkness
and silence for a moment, filled by uncertain but warm applause. The boats
lit up once more, for an encore, I supoose. And, er, that was it. Rather lost
on me, but then I'm a phil(l)istine who begrudges people public funding for
that sort of thing. Nice to get out of the house for a free evening's
"entertainment", and it didn't start raining until we were heading back to
the car. Certainly worth what we paid for it.
        It wasn't a total waste of time. I got to try the new Salsa Deluxe
burger from the drive-thru MacDonalds on the way home. Nice!