July 2013 - Perfs

Cleaning out my bag today, of flyers, receipts, impulse-bought journalism, and that white stuff at the bottom that could be bits of mint, or rock, or - What is that stuff? - I found an advert for the film "The Selfish Giant". Everyone gave it five stars (by the time you reach five you really do have to count - five is so many stars) and I thought "Oh yeah, everyone said that was beautiful. I wanted to see that. Or I meant to see that. But I didn't, and now it's not on. This unattended stuff builds up. Maybe I should just cut and run..." which is what it feels like now I've reached this summer of exciting bits and bobs, about which I suspect I have very little interesting to say now, so late after, even though some were highlights of my year...

I mean, I had an excellent time working again with Hannah Ringham, on "Ghostphone", but what's that?

And it was brilliant working with Desmond O'Connor, Zoie Kennedy, and Jonny Woo on "Life By Misadventure". But what's that?

Well, it meant I got to go to Latitude. I've never been to a festival before. (There was that near miss with Anthony Neilson, whose lesson - "Let's never ever work ever with or for the bored" - played a huge part in then accepting Des' invitation... But then I also traveled up with Ian Leslie's "Before they Were Famous" and great as that was, Ian is to boredom what Keanu Reeves is to whatever it is Keanu Reeves is good at.)
And it meant I got to sing, and play an angry child. Epic, neck-deep, freedom-fighting fury. A real labour of love amidst all Des and Zoie's other labours of love. 

 

And then I found out that maybe I don't like festivals. I was waiting for some money to come in. I was running around looking for meal tickets. I liked the woods, and the tents we slept in, but not the bigger tents so much. There could be no mistaking them for a coming together at the end of the world. There was nothing like a community, even though we all wore 3D specs for Kraftwerk.

And there were no jokes being told in the big tents as good as the jokes we told each other, and no music as unifying as the clanging of the communal bogs.