sb_04:

Home again. Came back to Hayfield last night via Method Lab in Manchester, saw a friend mine who just got back from the war. Can't remember walking home but I managed to make a cracking sandwich with two types of cheese, mustard, butter, tomato puree, and the last of the gherkins. I probably won't have another one for a while, but it hit the spot at 12.30 last night.
A strange week, but sort of productive. Met my Mum & Dad and Phil and had veggie sausage and mash for Breakfast in a Yateses. We re-took the old picture but they didn't come out as wonderfully as I had expected, so I've had to have a re-think. Had a bit of a funny turn up Blackpool tower, and had to come down again straight away. When Phil was looking for me after he walked into the amusement arcade and asked the attendant bloke if he'd seen me. He said "he was over there before, shooting Aliens." I wasted a load of them, but they finally done me in.
We went record shopping, I got an original Folkways Record by a mouth organ player called Sonny Terry, and two John Fahey Christmas Albums, which I've been writing in response to. We went for the best Fish & Chips I ever had at Yorkshire Fisheries. Great mushy peas as well. We went for a walk in the dark and bought some booze, went back to our B&B and got pissed in the room. Woke up at six and went looking for Carl Sandburg, couldn't find anywhere to do us a cup of tea, so we went back to the B&B, watched Just Shoot Me and Frasier, had breakfast, and went searching again. Didn't find Carl Sandburg. I should have loved being out and about in Blackpool but I pretty blue most of the time. Couldn't wait to get back. So I think my piece is about not really-being-there, Like I was never in Vreedenberg, nor in Scheveningen (although my Mum and Dad went). I was hardly in Blackpool at all.
I lost the faith a bit but I've just edited a version of the text together and it should be right for a walk-through on Monday. I'm going to give much away, I've got some tricks up my sleeve. Hope they work out. Like everything else, it's just ideality and imagine. The ideas are good, I reckon, but I don't know if they make a show. This time next week I'll be modest, slightly self-effacing, but charming with it, best suit on. Come on, feet! Come on! More soon.

Could It Be Magic?

Donna Summer at her best. Trawled through the istore yesterday for inspirational music. Found it. Chucked out some babies (not real 'uns), and picked up the tempo. It's a multilayered little bugger with some very speedy delivery required. I have decided not to drink or smoke until ... ok. I just had a good think about the rest of that sentence and working on the premise that one should never commit to the unlikley I shall complete my statement with the word "tomorrow night". It's not too far away and I'll have run a race by then. Neil says he's definitely in. I bet he goes off like a bloody firecracker. I'll try not to smoke again though. If I'm gonna be kissing people I don't want to smell some faggy old shitter.

Inspired by the comedy chracter photo opportunities where you stick your head through a hole, I am hoping to make a placard with people's heads painted on, so the audience looks at the bodies but can't see the heads. Do you see what I did there?

Better go and find myself a spangly dress. Won't be able to buy it though. Just gone over my overdraft limit for the second time since I've been here as still haven't been paid. If it doesn't come in soon I shall have to put my placard to another use. This is always the problem with the academic environment and the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith (singled out in this instance as they refused to pay me unless I provided a passport!). You have to  buy all your own props with your non existent wages, gather receipts (gypsies and spiritualist churches tend not to be happy with this type of exchange) and then wait for weeks to get reimbursed, all the while living with the creeping anxiety that you may be about to be charged 35 quid for the pleasure of having your bank tell you you're a tosser (again). 

Oh no. That rant just made me want a fag.

Anyroad up... I don't want to talk about the work and exactly what I've been up to in the Nuffield Theatre because an idea once clearly expressed in one form, needs very little expressing in another. Suffice it to say that if all else goes awry, and I end up in debtors jail/the canal, there'll be some really cool tracks for you to feast your ears on in my twenty minutes. Alright: I've basically been choosing music, improvising to it and then writing down the bits I like. It's a very useful way of switching your "attitude" in a flash. You know. Upbeat to sentimental and all of that.

Right, I'm off to put some tunes through the theatre PA system.

(Is it very bad to wish that someone were dead?)

Getting Your Hands Dirty

Its Friday, the time and the tides are passing me by before i have chance to hold my breath and think, okay what is it i am doing today?
Check the list, now it is all about practical things.
Today I am in the workshop, with Simon again. I dont have enough concrete to fill the mould that he has so brilliantly made for me. I get another 6 bags , hopefully that should cover it.

Just to fill you in , I decided that i would try to make a small sea defence wall, one that i could fit myself into for a time, become a little anchored or even 'bound' to. Bound to watch the seas, bound to feeling its rythm if i stay there long enough.

I would love to have the time to go to Ireland or Germany, to pick some Basalt, bring it home with me and lovingly shape it into a defence wall. But i cant do that so I opt for a smaller more workable solution- concrete. Now this material i could also get too fascinated about. Im really pleased that im making something that sits outside of my own body, a weight.

Its strange, watching someone else make something that is in your head. An image being born out of bits of wood and liquid stone stuff. I guess this is what it may be like to be a sculptor, who doesnt get there hands dirty. Im not sure how i feel about it. I want to get my hands dirty and to learn how to shape wood and stone into impossible shapes . Instead I make the coffee and ask too many questions. I feel like an apprentice, but im not even that. I do enjoy being in the workshop though and it makes me realise just how much i would like to have my own studio, to make a mess, to build things and to dance to Northern Soul in.

We will have the first uncovering on monday morning, when we take the mould away. Maybe it will just crumble, like an imaginary sea has just melted it away. Or as we both hope, it will stay in its shape , including the 'bull nose' that gives a beautiful overhang. Im not sure how heavy it will be , but it is pretty heavy.

The donkey has been approved today so thats has made a decision for me. I will go with the donkey. Ive been thinking about Joseph Beuys a lot this week and his Horse and his Coyote. I wont say any more on that really, i just think he does a good job.

I will continue through the weekend riding the crest of the tidal rythms- I will return to Blackpool on Sunday instead of attempting the 10km run with Chris and Neil. I need to see Riverdance and to spend a full day of tidal to-ing and fro-ing.The tidal highs and lows. The hills and aching legs can wait for another week, another race.

The Big 'Un

I have been to Blackpool and I had a bloody marvellous time. The weather was perfect, I wrote the entire show (pretty much) walking along the sands, I began to be able to see the ideas that were faintly crowding around me, and ended up in Anne Summers trying on some really short black PVC shorts from their "bondage" section. For why I have no idea. Oh no, hang on. I do know, sort of... or at least I can justify it. One of the rules is that the body or part of it must be bound or contained. Blimey. Doesn't the subconscious work in mysterious ways...

I suppose that I had been worried that dear old shabby seedy run down old Blackpool could only put me in touch with bleak(er) emotions. But, of course, it didn't because I used to go to Blackpool long long before the world I now know came into being. I went there when I was a kid and a teenager and had inflated  dreams of my own future greatness ... but mainly just enjoyed dreaming. And I remembered all the good times I had there. Strangely, it was the textures under foot which brought back the most concrete memories, rather than anything I saw or smelled... the hard ripples in the sand, the squishy traces of the lug worms, the warm concrete bits of sea wall, the planks on the pier that give slightly as you walk, the ornate and peeling railings that you can rest your  back against.

And I realise  now that I have dreamt these things ever since. And also that I am the same person now as I was then, because I noticed all the same things. Felt like an onlooker: other people's screams. Not mine. Which was oddly affirming. 

Yeah yeah yeah. Any road, I went on the Pepsi Max Big One at The Pleasure beach, which is fucking ginormous. It cost eight pounds and was worth every last penny. Finally! To have my insides matched with my outsides. To have emotion dwarfed by the physical. To have my body thrown about at such speed and with such unpredictable violence, that my heart gave up it's strong hold on my soul and I laughed till the tears rolled down my face... I have a souvenir key ring to prove it. It's massive, and so, in a land where worth is frequently measured by size (think prize winning leaks), I did quite well for six quid...

I bought a very important prop for the act and then went to see a Gypsy to have my cards read. She said that I had some opportunities coming up that I should seize. The "future" cards were the devil, the tower and temperance. So I'm gonna meet a randy fella with a great big pointy tail (I hope), give up drinking (not so sure) and chuck myself off Centre Point (er...)

So anyway the Blackpool "rule" has proved to be a turning point for this particular rulesieregger. 

I was explaining to my charming new friend only yester eve over a stiff gin, that I'm beginning to understand my process in terms of being a big fat sitting duck being shot at for several weeks by my own bad ideas... it's not over yet.

I was at a great advantage. Blackpool didn't make me sad because I was sadder than Blackpool. So it gently lit up, took the weight off my chest, and at one point, filled me full of pure and unadulterated joy. Blackpool Rocks.

05_nc: onwards

Wet sand is a very different material to dry sand. I bought some sand - it is drying. It can’t dry quick enough. I try to imagine dry sand, but it is just not the same.
Time is going faster than I could ever imagine. It is slipping away like sand in an egg timer. I can see it disappearing. Already it is Wednesday, and it is slipping away.
* * *
Morning never comes too soon
I can face the afternoon
But oh, those lonely nights.

So long sad times!

There will be goldust at my feet
On the sunny
On the sunny, sunny side of the street

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
Your cares and troubles are gone;
There'll be no more from now on

So long sad times!
Cloudy gray times
You are now a thing
Of the past

(And smile, smile, smile)

I want to be happy
But I won't be happy
(he won’t be happy)
Till I make you happy too.

There's a tear in your eye,
And I'm wondering why,
For it never should be there at all.

And your eyes twinkle bright as can be;
You should laugh all the while
And all other times smile,
And now, smile a smile for me.

For your smile is a part
Of the love in your heart,
And it makes even sunshine more bright.

When skies are gray
And you say you are blue
I'll send the sun smiling through

When you're smiling
The whole world smiles with you

When you're laughing
The sun comes shining through

But when you're crying
You bring on the rain
So stop your sighing
Be happy again
* * *
[Tell me did you hear music?]

sk: time and tides

Okay I have re -wrote this entry five times now. I am trying to respond to Bethanies last entry, but i think the best way to do that for the moment is to speak to her in the flesh, somewhere less public.
She has many points i wish to talk about, but not here, not now. I think the Blog is probably the hardest part of the whole process, at least today it is. It is the place that makes you the most vunerable. Indeed why should you expose those uncertain parts of yourself, but also why shouldnt you. Honesty: is it always the best policy?

Again it is all about the context and i dont feel as though i wished to be judged on my words alone. I will edit myself constantly in moments of insecurity.
So i will leave it alone for now, apart from a brief list of thoughts.
I haven't updated the blog in terms of keeping up to where i am in the present state of my work, im catching up with myself. Walking the boundary line seems ions ago now, yet here it is my last entry.
So much has happened, so much to tell, if you really want to listen.

For now here is small fragment of possible content or context.
Take what you will from it and make up your own performance with the items listed below:

Use the tide times as a structure to work around.

Coastal Sea Defence, made from Basalt that comes from Germany ( south part) and the Giants Causeway ( north part)
Become a wall of Basalt
Let the Irish Sea batter you down
let the Bass tickle your toes as the swim around you, hide behind you.

Paint a picture
A panoramic
build the layers up over time
Sand them down with an electric sander ( a sand blaster is too expensive at this moment in time)

Use the dust particles to make a beach
A beach that resembles the one in Normandy where the D- Day landings took place
practice on this beach before you go to Normandy
Hire 150,000 soldier to practice with you
choreograph a whole army
do it on a full moon
do it when the tide is coming in

really decide whether you want to work with donkeys or not.
present the beach to the donkey
find the music box you had as a child that plays ' little donkey, little donkey, on a dusty road..'

Got to keep on pushing onwards with my heavy load....

'Some things there are no words for, only shoulders to lean on, hands to hold on to, and hugs to comfort you as best they can. Because you're cared about so much please know you're being kept close in thought, and wished all the strength and comfort you need, today and in the days to come.'
*This message was inside a card labelled 'suitable for terminal illness'.

Just after I'd sat watching my Grandad die slowly and painfully from cancer of the brain, I phoned the doctors to tell them it was over, and the receptionist put me on hold to an instrumental version of Leann Rimes' 'How do I live'.

LDT.