10.12.13
I was part of a show at the Actress and Bishop in the Jewellery Quarter for Home For Waifs And Strays and it was brilliant.
If they put on anything similar then you have to go.Seriously. I had a fab time. There were live collages being created by Edward Wakefield, which was awesome. The piece he made inspired by my performance was a muscular arm crushing a heart and a snake with Gary Oldman’s head (and Gary Oldman is a snake, the Prada-advert-acting cash-whore, he can’t need the money, he was in Batman.) There was also a Meat Raffle in which two lucky winners were picked and then bound to one another with tape and wrapped like presents- simultaneously uncomfortable to watch and oddly erotic. Not that I have a fetish for wrapping paper. I simply don’t and that is an end to it.
I was also blessed by Laura Parrott, a passing dabbler in the holy and the supernatural, and then expertly and charmingly insulted by three girls calling themselves Strange Ways. There is a pic of me somewhere wearing a hat reading “porchmonkey.” I had to have the word explained to me. Oh the shame. Seriously though, I wish all my gigs were like this. My bit went well. People definitely weren’t too up for listening at first, perhaps because there was a lot of other stuff going on. So I did a few old songs, like A Beautiful Bride and Let Me Go, as well as a newer introductory passage that I’ve been using to bridge the awkward opening moments of the show, and Surprise Motherfucker, which has been turning up a lot recently. I made a couple of irritating mistakes in the set, but covered them okay. No-one would have noticed. (I think.) I chatted quite a bit between songs, and slowly won over a good portion of the room in my short set. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
After a refreshing Guinness I headed home. I was sad to miss Kate and Laura’s exorcism act, but I have been exhausted and down and sleep-deprived recently.
Not sleep deprived for any wild druggy rock and roll reason, but cos I’ve been waking up at about five or six most mornings and having strange, mild attacks – panic attacks or anxiety attacks I guess. Its just like a sudden avalanche of worry, and I get caught between struggling with my thoughts and wanting to try and sleep a bit more. Occasionally I manage it but usually just end up going to make coffee or, more often, getting stuck in a sort of feverish half-sleep where I’m not resting but not doing anything either, just stressing and overthinking. I hope this is not the beginning of serious illness. I would be interested to know: if I do have some sort of apocalyptic mental collapse, will I be able to tell if I’ve lost my reason or will I have to rely on other people to inform me?
So after a brief but decisive bit of conscience-wrestling I decided that it would be better if I took off. This was a double-blow because I met someone while watching one of the films put on as part of the evening and we had the brilliant idea of going into business together as expert art-watchers. The plan is simple: if any artist felt their work was too opaque, involved or esoteric for public consumption, they would hire professional art-watchers (like me and the girl I was talking to) to stand at the front, stroke their chins and make incisive comments. Gotta be a market for that. Something to fall back on if the performing doesn’t work out…
Blue On Blue 