On loneliness #1

Thinking forward to the solo piece I want to make. Solo for a number of reasons not least because it is about loneliness, so being alone seems the natural place to start. Doesn't it?

Also natural for me because on the whole this is what I am, what I have always been.

Alone. Not necessarily lonely. The two are not the same thing. I would like to stress this now. I actually like being alone. I miss living alone; being sensitive only to my own rhythms, which of late don't seem to fit much with anyone else's. I liked being an only child. Other children don't always buy in to your imaginary world view and tend to inflict their own desires upon it. Plus, and yes OK I must admit it is true, they divide your parents' attentions leaving less time for you. Well who else should the world revolve around?

This is not to say that I want to be alone all the time. I have a lot of friends and family that I care very deeply about and I miss terribly (as most of them live hours away). It is more that I have always valued one-to-one relationships more than others. My mother was a single parent. My father dislikes crowds. I like to see my close friends separately if I can. And in love... I give a lot. I like to make that person the centre of my world (but I expect them to do the same in return - only child, remember?).

Even in work I find that I do my best work after everyone else has gone home for the day.

And yet, I think most people would describe me as sociable, companionable and a good team player. I think I am all of these things but my dirty secret is also that I really, really like being alone. I spend a lot of time listening to my iPod, walking around, enjoying my environment from the cosy room inside my head. Although I grumble about the distance and the traffic and the unreliability of public transport I like spending a chunk of my day on a bus, watching the world go by while the soundtrack to my life, subject only to MY moods, plays.

It will be interesting to see how this affects and manifests itself in a performance space, once I get in there. perhaps despite my intentions to make a theatre show I should be looking to make another one-to-one performance? But then again sometimes it's good to get out of ones comfort zone too.

Serendipity - another one I wrote earlier

In looking forwards I often find myself looking back. In trying to define myself as an artist and explain 'my practice' I need to look at my experience. I still don't know who I am or whether I have a 'way of working' yet. I am still putting the pieces together and I'm not even sure I have all the edges yet. Maybe the corners.

But here is another small piece. 

Serendipity 

"I gratefully accept what the Universe offers..."

As artists we often make work using or around found objects, enjoying those objects that excite and inspire the imagination. But what of those rare occasions when what the Universe offers is exactly what we were looking for?

During Locked-in with Stacy Makishi (at the Greenroom in Manchester, October 2009) we were asked to describe a performance fantasy to another participant. These duets of offer and response were an ongoing theme of the day. Enjoying a moment of free-falling, free association, I let the word 'fantasy' dominate roll around my mind and run wild. What I envisioned was a moment where I might be beautiful. Tall and elegent upon a plinth bathed in light, wearing a gown that fell all the way to the ground. A pause, before being flown off and swept away by the original hero superhero, with whom I have had a long-time love affair, Superman.

I had misinterpreted the task... this was not a real performance fantasy to be presented it was the latent fantasy of a child but the desire was real.

Later some of the group were hunting around to see what the Greenroom had that might be useful in the way of set when they stumbled upon some old wooden gym equipment including two tall boxes - the kind you used to suspend benched from - they looked like two high stools. It seemed too good to be true. My plinth had arrived. Standing a little taller than me they were perfect. And the opportunity was too good to miss.

The stage was set.

I was wrapped from head to toe in white toilet paper, which split and tumbled, falling in long ribbons as I walked slowly across the stage and mounted the plinth. These ribbons trailed almost to the ground. Once lit by a spotlight a microphone was lowered to me. I took it, brought it to my lips and from another spotlight a voice sang 'Feeling Good' by Nina Simone while lip-synced along.

Another moment of symmetry.

The song was agreed on, somewhat out of necessity, as it was one we had on an iPod so that the singer could listen to it and that we both knew the words to. But it is also a song that resonates for me and I had used before. It was the song my friends and I used for the make-up scene a piece called Im(art)ation in our third year at uni and that I had used for the striptease in Abbi, my dissertation piece based on the character of Abigail from Arthur Millar's The Crucible.Three moments of defining femininity and strong visual representations of my sexuality on stage, coming together, unified by a single song.

These moments of serendipity, the beauty in the unforseen and unplanned are what matters to me. The echoes that resonate with your own experiences as an artist and as an audience member.

I'm sure there have been more since - the death, displaying of the body and funeral of Jimmy Saville at The Queen's Hotel where we created and performed The Reservation as mentioned in an earlier post here for example.

Don't panic

I suffer from panic attacks, mainly when I home alone at night. I would have said 'suffered' until about a month ago when I had my first attack in 9 years...

This is a piece of text I wrote about my experience which was used in the performances of Wherever I Lay My Hat in 2010.


Panic
I used to have panic attacks. I’m not entirely sure when they first started. I think it was in the summer after my first year at University. One night when I was home alone I woke up suddenly, for no reason that I could see, feeling alarmed. I assumed some noise had disturbed my sleep. And I think that’s how it started. The years of broken sleep.

I realised as time went by that mother’s next-door neighbour often left the house at unsociable hours – for work or fishing? But I lived and died by the motion-sensor activated light in his back yard, believing it to be the signifier of my imminent demise. Mum casually blamed my love of Stephen King novels and it seems funny now. But then again, I don’t think I ever told her how bad they were.

In my second and third years at University it got a little better. I was rarely alone but then I went to Drama School. My landlord found himself a new girlfriend with more money and a nice, big house, and suddenly he was never at home. I was alone most of the time. Far away from my friends, family and the man I loved. I felt isolated and vulnerable in every way and at night I was convinced there was someone in the house and they were going to kill me.

I began to dread going to bed and as time passed I started to panic about having a panic attack. I was locked in a battle with the night. I felt small and helpless, exhausted by lack of sleep and the seemingly inescapable situation. As I went to bed I would check all the doors were closed and locked, sometimes taking a knife to put under my pillow. Then I would push the chest of drawers in front of the bedroom door, pull the covers over my head and pray for a quiet night’s sleep.

As they continued to occur I tried to combat them by forcing myself to confront my fear, get up and go downstairs and check that the door was locked and the house was empty. I would get drunk before bed if I knew I was going to be spending the night alone, a tactic only any good on days when I wasn’t working the next day, in the hope that I would pass out and sleep though. Though it was a gamble as it had a tendency to increase my need for mid-night toilet breaks. Otherwise I would stay up until I was exhausted and then crawl fearfully to bed.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the attacks stopped about two years later after I moved in to a small flat with an older male friend who was home a lot and made me feel welcome and safe. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that they were at their worst while living in the house of someone I barely knew during the unhappiest year of my life. What I have never understood is why they started in my old room, in my Mother’s house where I had lived for seven years previously and always felt safe and loved.

Thankfully I haven’t had a panic attack for eight years now.

Having beaten them once I know I can do it again but feels like a backwards step in my mental health and I don't think it is any coincidence that my moods have been very low of late. This time though I don't intend to try and do it alone. Next step, the doctors... Wish me luck. 

What he said.

Reading a recent Third Angel post in which Alex talks about the Inspiration Exchange a few sentences struck a cord;

"Performance in as much as we know what’s going to happen and they don’t; or, at least, we know more about what’s going to happen than they do. We don’t know what they’re going to do or say. We hope that they will do or say more than they would have expected, had we told them in advance, what was going to happen.

Their interaction is what makes the work. It cannot even be properly rehearsed without an audience member sitting opposite. Making the performance involves making the space in which the audience member is allowed - encouraged - to be active, be open, be creative. A space in which they feel comfortable enough to think about things, talk about things that at, say, 10 o’clock that morning, they hadn’t thought about for days, weeks, even years."

What struck me is that this is exactly how I feel about The Reservation. Ellie and I were recently asked to discuss our process and the intentions behind the piece for a zine I Stood Up And I Said Yeah and I wish I had been as eloquent as Alex. 

You can read the whole post on the Third Angel blog.

Christmas is a difficult enough time...

... for people who have lost someone. Holidays remind us of those we love and their absence, of happy times shared, and the adverts of all the happy families and adoring couples don't help much (they're not great for single people either but that is an entirely different issue).

I have to admit that the memory of James going into surgery to have a tumor "the size of an orange" removed on Christmas Day the year before he died aside, for me, Christmas is no more painful than any other time of year. At least it wasn't until X-Factor released a version of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah, in a bid for the infamous Christmas number one, couple of years ago.

Because this is the song that played as his coffin rolled into the flames.

And I can't listen to it without tearing up. It's not a conscious thing, if I hear more than a couple of lines it just kind of happens so I have to leave the room or turn the volume off (may never be able to watch Shrek EVER again).

So, this is where my problems start because now this bloody song is a Christmas single which means it gets played EVERY BLOODY YEAR!!! Along with Mad World by Gary Jules which was played as the coffin was carried IN to the funeral... (don't get me started on how much I hate him for ruining two perfectly good songs forever). It is no longer just playing on a loop in every sodding shop but the buskers are at it too. I nearly deafened myself turning my headphones up to full volume while attempting to run past the busker outside Next today, looking like some kind of nutter.

So what is my point? Maybe that we should think about what song we might like played at our funerals and not pick classic tunes that we might forever ruin for those we leave behind...

This one is for you

I found out about 90 minutes ago that my best friend's father has died. I knew it was coming and yet I am shaken. She's miles away and I cannot be there for her. Rationally I know there is nothing I could do even if I were. Her life has changed forever.

And the beautiful sychronicity of life is that today is my father's birthday. And I am shaken.

Today Jimmy Saville, who lived in Leeds and had a house in Scarborough where she and I met, had his coffin on display today ahead of his funeral in Scarborough tomorrow. And I am shaken.

Next Friday I will be performing in The Queen's Hotel in Leeds where Jimmy Saville's coffin was on display today. And I am shaken.

The show I made and will be performing in is about grieving. And I am shaken.

Death is everywhere. It touches every life. It is the only certainty we will ever face. And I am shaken.

This post is long overdue...

I must have started this some time in the week of the 22 August and it is now November. It is so long ago that I have no idea why I hesitated to post it at the time. Hmmm... Anyway. For all four of my followers - here it is!

Making The Reservation - we're in week two now so perhaps this post is long overdue. The deed is almost done. Tomorrow is the last day of rehearsals for now...

But it's been good, really good. Not easy but good. The piece has changed dramaticially since we scratched it at ARC and at Sunday Lunch Club in July. Many of the themes remain and the heart of the piece while having shifted is still an investigation in to grief, the sufferers of and the suffering from grief.

Will I still be dressed as an Elephant? Maybe, maybe not. Will I spend hours crying in a bathroom... No. Thankfully. I'm really not sure my throat could withstand it. Then again, I may not be 'in' it at all.

It will be a repectful and tender performance for one person at a time which I hope people will love. I am immensly proud to have been a part of it.