Eish! London 26 August

Wednesday, 26 August – I saw 4 performances and went to a lecture

Actual diary entry:

12pm, Costa Coffee, Prince’s Mall, Edinburgh. I treated myself to a cuppa Blackberry Tea at Costa for £1.60. Unfortunately Blackberry tea from a cardboard cup doesn’t taste as good as from a non-disposable mug. A sad truth for the modern take-away world we live in; and once again I’m writing in a restaurant.

After a lovely sunny day yesterday I woke up to rain today. I battled to motivate myself to wake up and get going. I woke up in a state of I-don’t-know-what-to-do-right-now. So I went to Facebook, there’s always something going on somewhere on that site. Yes sir, I logged in and there was my motivation: Shelly and Lucille had replied to my Facebok status saying how awesome it was that I was at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! How right they were; I couldn’t sit on my rear at Nina’s computer when I had Edinburgh outside the door! What was wrong with me? I had to sort myself out. I looked at the schedule I had drawn up; I had already missed the first show. Nuts!

I think my lack of motivation came from the shows I saw yesterday:

1) A self-indulgent, ex-homeless (twice!) American who thought he was funny. Hardly anyone laughed, I didn’t, and the ones who did were well on to their next drink. Then the man had the audacity to look at me, point and say: “You hate me.”

“What, me?” I asked; taken aback, thinking ‘hate’ is a strong word.

“Yes, you, you aren’t laughing, you hate me.” I’m thinking: What the? The guy is more of a freak than I thought!

I politely said: “No, I don’t hate you.” and left out the: but I cannot believe I have sat hear listening to you tell me about how you date disabled people, live in office blocks, get evicted from houses and think you are funny for stealing other people’s writing to make money. The worst part of it was I don’t think he was making up his story. I didn’t hate him, I felt really sorry for him. I think I put 20 pence in the ‘donations’ bucket for the ‘free’ show.

2) An Irish dancing show with only 2 performers. I decided there is definitely an excellent reason for Irish dancers to be en masse when they perform, that’s the skill and talent and audience ‘wow’ factor: Amazing moves in synchronization. Two people can only do so much I’m afraid. They were well rehearsed and very talented, but there was no plot. Their performance was a random expansion of four scenes where they decided to incorporate basic modern physical theatre movement and a form of body weight transferal with far too many hand gestures thrown in the mix of their Irish dancing. In other words think: Queen Elizabeth’s traditional dress that a ‘designer’ has randomly splattered neon paint all over. It simply didn’t work for me and I couldn’t see the point. Having said that, they did have a brilliant scene where the two of them were sitting opposite each other (at what I think was a representative breakfast table) and they had this full blown argument with minute, fantastically timed hand gestures, the rhythms they created with hitting the table was exceptional.

3) This show was a One Woman Act. A long One Woman Act, by an artistically passionate Japanese ‘actless’ (no, I’m not being mean about her performance she could act, she just couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘r’, red was ‘led’ and sorry was ‘solly’…). She was very ‘chalismatic’ to watch, but ‘unfoltunately’ she wasn’t fluent in the English language translation for her Japanese play, and this did get ‘illitating’. The ‘stoly’ she acted out was quite bizarre. It involved a Koi Fish dying and becoming a woman, who in turn dies and comes back as a red horse, then a lake, and then finally comes back as an angel. The weird part was that each new birth remembered the old character and all of them were in love with the same man ‘Angelo’. Like I said, bizarre; but she played the reincarnated beings and the man and other ‘extras’ very enthusiastically, and changed costumes for most of them behind a little screen, whilst dodgy sound and lighting effects invaded the room. She had lots of motivation and passion, but the execution left a lot to be desired. All I can say is that the woman certainly had loads of coulage! Ur, courage!

Having had these experiences, I’m not as excited as I thought I would be to be here. I’m also still adjusting to my no-sugar / wheat / gluten / dairy diet as best I can, and that is possibly dampening my enjoyment too. I do feel like the change is effecting every part of me, I feel like my emotions are heightened, and I feel sadder than usual and I feel like my body is changing too. The worst part is that I generally feel like I’m not appreciating where I am and the opportunity that I have at my fingertips and it’s frustrating me that I can’t give myself a kick to just get on with it…