the emotional rollercoaster and 1 year in!

this week is definitely a good example of how being a streetperformer is one, and no bloody mistake! we havent done shows in nearly a month and getting back into it has been difficult - the west piazza has yielded challenge after challenge. crowd control is the big one. its SO important to me (probably too much) and affects me SO much if we dont get it right but its the first thing to go when we have a tough show and the most obvious thing to ruin status if it goes wrong. i need to improve my barriers for this, definitely.

tuesday was one such show, it wasnt a total shocker but it just wasnt there and i for one, couldnt quite work out why. this is part of my battle of getting this right y'see, i want to treat it like a problem that can be fixed and it just isnt that simple - its a subtle and intuitive process that you cant just sort out with gaffa tape and superglue. not what im used to. then we get to stages where me n haze think that different things are wrong or have different ideas on how to progress, which is fine and we always communicate effectively but having another stage of question is hard, especially for something this emotional. shes got a lot more experience than me too, which is never used to make me feel less than one equally important half of a doubleact, but it does make me doubt myself in my own head. we cant agree all the time though, and like i said, stuff just gets tried and we see what happens as a general rule of thumb. which is great.

we've been doing this a year now, and in a lot ways we've done really well but in others, i cant help but think i want to be further down the line. my solo show is definitely one of them - i stupidly decided that the best thing to do tuesday after feeling a bit rubbish was to get my kit, go to trafalgar square and do some solo shows. or attempt to. or at least go there and look at the pitch and see what happened. guess which one of these options i ended up choosing...which only made me feel much worse. still, i came home and re-wrote my hatting speech which im really pleased with. essentially though, i should've done way more by now. im in the north hall next week and ive got booked shows because to be honest, if theyre not booked, i dont think ill have the bottle to do them. especially if there are no other performers around. itll come, but shockingly, im being an impatient shit about that too ;)

on the other hand - we've been doing this a year now! woooop! i still cant get my brain round what an awesome time ive had or how much my life has changed. i literally couldnt be happier with whats going on, itd be nice to not worry about money every day and itd be kinda nice if it was moving faster but big picture: this fucking rocks. ill be back in edinburgh later this year, we can start to think about travelling with it pretty soon and gigs are starting to crop up both for me and with haze. if youd told me a year and a half ago that this was my life id have probably laughed in your face but secretly been really wishing youd be right.

and so to wednesday, we did the 10.40 show, first show of the day and it built from literally nothing. we were playful, relaxed and focussed and it all went down beautifully. felt on top of the world coming off and to top it all off it was a freebie (show that noone else wanted) so we had another one at 4.40 that afternoon. the week continued nicely, we managed to get a REALLY early show off on the friday (the 10 o clock) which once again, built from a basically empty market. i think we may well find ourselves continuing to enjoy the early shows now that we've done a few. its just so lovely and quiet at that point in the day and as we dont use mics, that really helps us. plus there are a lot of families around and our show gets a good response from the kids. when its the early people really want to be brought into the day and feel part of something. theyre awake, cheerful and theres loads of anticipation. lovely.

the run finished on saturday as hazel went back to cardiff and yesterday, i did solos again. 2 shows on the southbank and then (drumroll please....) my first one in the north hall! it was pretty quiet but i managed to get a crowd. was extremely nervous but i already like that pitch a lot for working on my own as well as with hazel. its just nice as a space and (despite the high ambient noise) has a lot of focus. i felt really good after that yesterday, i made a reasonable amount of cash (not owing to the fact that im any good yet, but obviously i dont have to split it with anyone!) and genuinely did what i set out to do. i failed my first one on the southbank but i tried again and succeeded twice, and that process of developing resilience is whats gonna get me there....not the ones where its easy.
so next....

....also well worth a mention is the charity gig we did on friday with hazels new walkabout idea - the bearded lady and the strongman. we basically just talk to people in a russian accent and do a bit of acrobabalance. which was great fun, especially as out of all the roles ive ever done including henry (my role in the streetshow) this was the first one that felt truly natural and easy. i wasnt nervous, i just kinda talked to people. and that was lovely.

so yeah, proper emotional rollercaoster. its all a bit mental this, every time i feel good about it it takes me down a peg or six and every time its going badly and i wonder if ill ever manage to be solvent with it i have a show that reminds me of how hard we've worked to get to this point. essentially though, its all good. its happening and it feels right. 

at this point its definitely time for me to say how much love and respect i have for that doubleact partner of mine. theres no way i couldve started doing this on my own but also, now i know a bit more, so few people in the world i can imagine doing this with. 

the same goes for pete, the delicate balance of pushing and support i get from him is something rare, special and nigh-on impossible to get right. you rock lots and i love you both xxxx

confidence and the changes in me

ok, so its 3 in the morning and im supposed to be helping someone move house in about 4 hours time but my brain, unfortunately, wont entertain the sleeping thing so i figure a publicly accessible brain-fart is clearly the way to make it all better. or at least, bring the unsuspecting readers of this blog in on my internal dialogue. which i guess is what its for anyway, right?

anyhoo, its becoming increasingly obvious to me that deciding to become a performer has many, and interesting side-effects to one's life. most notably currently being becoming much more sensitive to the events and feelings of those around me. now i am, by my own admission, a bit of an emotional robot. i do objectivity and rationality very well which sometimes, admittedly, can make me a bit intolerant or unempathetic to people and their insecurities or difficulties.

recently though, ive had a few things happen (the aforementioned 'events') and a few things said to/about me (the aforementioned 'feelings of those around me') which have been different. i wont go into them because 1) they are many and various and 2) its the blanket effect of all of these things that im talking about and am trying to get to the bottom of. im encouraged to think this through, not because i dont welcome the change you understand, (if its gonna happen its gonna happen) but because these events have completely pulled the rug from under me in ways that they never would have before. the autumn and winter of 2008 was one of the most horrible parts of my life to date and it led straight into be starting this whole new life without a break. though 2009 was amazing, it was a bit of a rollercoaster journey to say the least, especially when held up against the bit before it. lots of great stuff happened but it was by no means an easy road and the things that have happened in the past year and a half almost feel like theyre happening faster than i can process them. i had a lovely break in south america which you can read about in my other blog but even the time i had there, while it gave me lots of time to process the show and feel much better and relaxed about it since, appears to have had other, more subversive effects.

in the other blog, i describe some time spent in a peruvian hospital getting treatment for an infected mosquito bite which, for various reasons i didnt get treatment for early enough in the day - this basically resulted in a proper fever and being pumped very quickly full of some pretty strong antibiotics which gave me nightmares the like of which ive never known. and ive had some nightmares.....the result of all this has basically been me going back a step in so many of the things i spent this past year getting over and learning about myself. i was left thinking it all over again and it all coming to the surface. it was like someone chemically opened the little box in my brain that i put all the difficult stuff in once its dealt with but generally dont open again. its very odd. and its only now, a few months later that yet more things are happening and im realising exactly whats going on in my head. couple that with a whole year of show-related intense self-psychologizing and analysis (sounds narcissistic doesnt it? i wish...) and theres a whole strange melting pot of wierdness coming out of the other end that its most unlike me to experience. residual guilt, self doubt and a distinct lack of assuredness about all the things im doing.

so, for i digress, setbacks aside - what the giddy fuck is going on? from what ive been told about drama school and the whole holding-a-mirror-up-to-ones-personality thing, it doesnt sound that much different. cheaper maybe, and a massive shortcut by comparison. im not one to have a guilt reflex usually and although no-one is crazy about how they look, ive not usually been one to have a low self-image or kick my own arse too much about stuff i cant do or cant change. but the effect of feeling the need to dissect my personality from the inside and try to look at what really is and isnt likeable about me, the person i am and the things ive done has had me hating myself on more occasions this year than i care to remember.

but i do remember. not consciously, but in my actions. something will happen that i wouldve dealt with easily before - i could compartmentalize the events and aspects of the events, work out why what happened happened, why i reacted to it in the way i did, and why i was wrong or right or any mixture of the two. not so now. theres this new background level of doubt about me as a person and my interaction with the world and how im seen in it both as Arif and as Henry. its fucking wierd. some would probably say that overall, it wouldve done me good to be taken down a peg or six in the first place. that may be true, but i reserve the right to question it when it happens....especially when it really feels like its altering me from the inside out. even reading this back im starting to feel like im being melodramatic, but this whole process and my interpretation of it as melodramatic is an example of what im talking about! did i mention overthinking wasnt really something i was given to before either? ;)

im still trying to figure out whether all this is a good thing or a bad thing cos at times, it hurts. and the (large) black-and-white bit of my brain says hurt = bad rather than hurt = possibly learn stuff. but how much does it need to hurt for you to feel like youve learned enough? theres some bonus philosophy for ya ;) i guess most people in my position at my age have at least *some* performing experience so they get gradually used to this whereas ive been dropped into a pretty intense thing right out of the bat without even a drama a-level to my name. ive never had an audience properly like or dislike me before now or even a director telling me i was shit or good. even the music gigs i played were mostly for friends (which was great, dont get me wrong - but unbeknownst to me it could only ever have been a rose-tinted view of what it was gonna turn into once i got out there into the real performing world.) 

maybe i should give myself a break, this is part of the process and i shouldnt worry about it. its only feeling like this because of the type of person i am (was?) and the lack of experience i have. maybe its just that a few big things have happened in the last few months coincidentally and im overanalysing it because i have a blog to do it on? i guess that overall, i wasnt prepared for the level of carry-over that this was going to have to the rest of my life. i welcome it, really i do and i hope that its making me a better person to be around. constantly wondering if ill ever manage to do this as a career will mean ill keep putting in the effort, and thinking im too old to ever be even a half-decent acrobat (i AM too old to be a really good one i think...though plenty who know more than me will disagree) will make me train harder cos thats how my brain works. hopefully, a knock in confidence and self-image will make me more the sort of person that people can relate to and feel connected to. ive been told on more than one occasion that im most approachable when im vulnerable, which isnt that often. fringe benefit? i dunno.

the upshot is, lots is changing. but then, i wanted it to and its all very awesome now that it is. essentially im gonna do what i always do, dig in, get on with it and do my best. its not gonna beat me, this shit, but its definitely mkaing me think. its gonna have peaks and troughs, and i need to accept this. still cant cry properly though. its a wierd one that....
*shrug*

Ist proper compere gig

Photo Courtesy of Planet Angel

NYE, a warehouse in Hackney and enough bass to make your throat shake. sounds like a 4 day squat party with dogshit and techno, right? but no...this was the fantastic Planet Angel, a place where ive met the most amazing people over the past 8 years and without it would certainly not be doing what im doing today.

tried comapring here before, years ago with no experience and ballsed it up right royally if i do say so myself. having gone off and actually got some relevant stuff under my belt and with them being good enough to give me another stab at it i was understandably a *little* nervous going into it.

it all went really well though, the crowd is like nothing ive ever experienced before. as pete said having dine it himself loads of times "kinda like opening a furnace door" wicked. 

i got to announce custard, the drummer from my old band Crossfader playing a live drum set and Sly One vs Juranne (aka graham and jim, g was in the band too) making their live debut. all of whom i love lots, am very proud of and respect enormously. probably meant a lot more to me than anyone else but was definitely a privilege to be up there alongside people of real talent doing what they do best.

the year of shows has just made it all comfortable being onstage in front of people. the butterflies have gone and if something goes wrong, like a mic cutting out or something, theres no panic. i always had trouble with the filler between songs when i was gigging with the band but more stagetime and experience just means ive got over it. this was probably the first thing ive done other than streetperforming which id done before i started and did better as a result. lovely.

was also fantastic to do a VJ gig after so long, the lovely JamieB and myself used to do a lot of visual gigs when he was trying to make a career out of it and i was assisting and along for the ride. that all stopped being serious sometime ago but he asked me to come along on this one and help so i happily did. it was a stress-free rig and derig, the setup looked great and we were mostly laughing about how we used to carry 2 towers and 3 CRTs to each gig. now its a laptop and 6 inch monitor screens. heh. was a lovely bit of nostalgia to be climbing up stupidly high y-frame ladders and hanging projectors with the usual obsession of mine about alignment and jamies...shall we say...'alternative' attitude?

loads of fun. leaving in a bit to do a booked inside show in covent garden. ive had a proper sleep too so i shouldnt be too shaky and useless from the gorgeous houseparty i went to after PA ;)