I drove up to Belfast this am- I left at 10 and got there just after 3- the trip up was un eventful but I was late arriving because I spent the last hour driving around Belfast city centre negotiating the traffic trying to access the car park.. this seems to be a recurring issue for me with these trips..
When I arrived, just a tad stressed, Day was finishing cleaning up his performance and I just had time to go get a coffee and get ready. In a way I would have liked more time but really I would have just been hanging around getting cold so probably just as well I arrived last minute.
I’d practiced of course, twice, and felt ok-ish about it, and had asked Jen to signal to me when it was 30 mins in and then again at 45 mins. Performance things didnt go quite the way Id planned, but I that is always the case Ive found, to date anyway. Id practiced the multi tasking aspect of things in particular as I was a little concerned as to my ability to talk non stop and go about miming my tasks as well. I was worried I would forget my stream of talk while trying to remember to make the task movements. I did manage to keep up the stream of talking but it was less abstract than I had planned, I ended up being more personal about my life and less abstract in the verbal stream than I had planned and I feel a little exposed as a result.. i did succeed in talking non stop more or less, for an hour, and my only hope is that the stuff I talked about was not fully taken in by any of the audience in attendance, There were about 20 people there which was just right for the space. I ended up talking ‘to’ the people there a lot of the time as opposed to to myself. There was laughter at times which I had not anticipated but I didn’t have the time or more the capacity to change my plan of action in order in increase/decrease chances of more laughter. I didn’t mind the laughter as such I simply had not anticipated it. I think the intimacy of the space and the people there were what made me talk ‘to’ them as opposed to them witnessing me talking. I did move around but again not quite how Id planned- Id planned to go through the actions of my day and then whittle out some and bring it down to maybe 3 movements which I was going to more or less repeat.. but I ended up haphazardly repeating them erratically. again the live aspect and the relatively unrehearsed nature of things was what resulted in this.
I wore a black dress which id bought in London in the charity shop in kensall rise when visiting Annie and fam- its a beautifully made dress and actually fits me- i knew I wouldn’t have to think about how I looked while wearing this dress.
I got to see the last performance by SineadOnArt which was a very powerful audio piece. Then I had the unexpected pleasure of Day Magee coming home in the car as turns out he lives near my folks- so I gave him a lift home. Nice to have someone to talk art to on the drive home. Jen and Chloe clearly put a lot of work into revision and are nice people- another reason as well as the sheer opportunity to make the work and to meet other like-minded people- as well as how much I always derive from these performances- why a 5 hour drive up for a one hour performance, followed by a 4 hour drive back, was worth it.
