15 August
A day off. Well, I did an early morning gig and just talked about my flatmate, Zeinu. Apparently he met a girl in Costa Coffee. She said she would like to go to Edinburgh. He bought her a train ticket and then she said she didn't want to go with him, so he suddenly had an expensive ticket to get rid of...I may be moody, angry and irritable, but in other ways I have the patience of a saint. He is due down on Saturday. I will have to try SO hard not to take the piss. I wonder how he will react to my material about him and me as a married couple. Seems pretty innocent to me. We'll see.
The rest of the day was pretty great. Went up to this beautiful spot overlooking Edinburgh under some huge pillars on a hill with Madelaine. The landscape is amazing. Even though these are the 'lowlands', it's still so dramatic. Because of the hills either side, sometimes Edinburgh reminds me of Rio – apart from the beautiful people, rhythm and vitamin B. We smoked two spliffs before going to some art galleries. Most of it was Renaissance stuff, which I'm not all that bothered about – but some of the faces were incredible. When artists use light just right, it's unbelievable. Faces come out of the painting and leer at you. I don't think the weed was that strong either. Art is vanity, really. Especially the portraits and busts. It was a way of saying “Check out my face! Look at these robes I'm wearing. This feather in my hat is boss! The book in my hand shows I'm all smart and shit. Don't fuck me. I've got a sword.” Who the hell wants a representation in marble of their own head? I've got a big head. Marble is expensive. All these people thought they were ensuring immortality, and they were. However, their immortality is that they bore the shit out of restless children.
The best thing was a description of an artist who did a self-portait and then presented it to his master. Yeah, great gift.
“I've got you a present for your birthday.”
“Nice. What is it?”
“It's a painting.”
“Wow!”
“Of me.”
“What?”
“What's the matter?”
“Well, I thought it would be of me.”
“Oh...yeah, right. I guess. Seeing as you're going to own it and everything.”
“Yeah.”
The descriptions under the paintings are worthless. They all read like: 'In “A Flying Bird” the artist depicts a bird, possibly in flight. Hence the painting's title.' The older I get, the more it occurs to me that the world is run by people who have no idea what they're doing. It's scary in some ways, comforting in others.
I had a quiet evening drinking beer, eating curry and reading newspapers in our front room. Our front room is only available for two days before someone else uses it as a bedroom. I had only slept a couple of hours the night before and it was clear that before I started 6 more days of web design, emails, flyering, show I would need one monster sleep to put me on the right track. Edinburgh may be a festival for a lot of people, but for me it's work. I am enjoying it though. I'm enjoying the sense of purpose it gives me. This could be the day off talking.
My mum called me up when I was in M&S buying filters for the coffee machine. I told her about the Scotsman and some of the jokes in the show. She laughed a lot. She related a conversation she had with an old primary school headmaster of mine. She said that hhe thought I was very brave, and though some people talk about doing things in their life, I'm actually getting on with it. I used to talk about things rather than doing things, and now I sometimes talk about things and sometimes I do things. The only times I won't talk about something is when I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm not doing it. It seems my Mum has finally accepted my pursuit of comedy as something I won't give up. Now I need to accept the same! This is not a path I have just fallen into. It's a path that always made sense to me, and yet when I think about how hard it all is I want to run and hide. The fact is that there is no escaping hard work and being driven nearly insane by what we do. That's just called life. If I tried anything else, I would be good at it for 6 months and then I would become utterly disenchanted. Occasionally I think “You should have started earlier” but that's rubbish. I've being doing this all my life, really. Well, in bursts. Sometimes I look at audiences and think “Ha! They think I'm a comedian!”
I had been talking to my mum for 20 minutes and realised the whole time I'd been doing laps around ladies lingerie. I think this is my unconscious mind dropping hints: “Ed, you should have sex with somebody soon or we may become dangerous.” Suggestion noted.
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