Aug 17
I am feeling dispirited this morning. I woke up and looked at my thin, bruised arm and thought 'How many times have you woken up and felt like this? An awful lot.' I'm not on heroin by the way. That sounded ambiguous, eh? Yesterday I had my reviews and I thought “Oh well” which is the correct response. I also went down the “what do they know” line. All this is well and good, but they're the people writing the reviews. Of course I'll carry on and try and gig across the country when I can actually afford the train fare, but these reviews don't help me. They may resolve me to be defiant or to think “Well, they're not correct” but all I wanted was a quote where one of the reviewers actually said “This was funny.” They didn't mention that once. They laughed. I have jokes in my show. You wouldn't know it, would you? All they said was “likeable.” I don't know what to do. I felt very calm about it all yesterday, so I knew a backlash was coming today. Of course, I may just need some cheese on toast and a cup of tea. That will take care of my immediate discomfort.
I think that if I had stormed yesterday's show, it would have put things right. But I didn't. The audience were lovely and there was no reason why I shouldn't have given a great show, but I didn't. It was all right, but I'm doubting the material or my performance of it. I don't feel inspired. I'm not sure if I'm improving or going backwards. When I had my Ku Klux Flan show, I was getting pretty hefty laughs. I think it helped that I could improvise more, have more banter, chop and change etc. But that has its boredom too. Madelaine, who has been struggling with her show, apparently just sat in the audience at the start and then started heckling nobody, asked where the person was who was supposed to be doing the show, then convinced someone to get up and do some jokes, then she announced herself, did loads of banter, and got people up to do some painting onstage. She came back with the biggest smile on her face. I need something like that. Doing a free-ranging club set over an hour is unsatisfying but doing a themed show is just plain hard. I wonder what happened if I were just to do one show where I just talked to people about what they were afraid of and just stuck some jokes in there once in a while. It would at least give me a break from padding through the material.
My inspiration was Helen Keen, who did an hour on the space race, did it a couple of times in Edinburgh, and then had it turned into a radio hour. Do I have to write an hour on a period of history to get looked at? Does hiding behind source material make me just a presenter of things as opposed to a comic? I bet it's a skill in it's own right, and yet another one that I don't have. Maybe I should get all racist so we can put this “winning personality” thing to bed. “Winning personality.” I can't quote that. They might as well have said “He knows how to hold a microphone and talk.”
Zeinu came to the show. He didn't laugh much. If the crowd had been in hysterics, he would have been laughing. I asked him about the ticket business and it turned out to be a girl that he has been pursuing for a little while, so he's not so silly for buying the ticket. He told me about a party at Beverstone Road where everyone was up and off their boxes for a couple of days. I didn't want to hear about it. Drugs are for people who earn money and have leisure. I'm becoming bored of the whole concept. I would like some mushrooms on a day off, but that's it. I don't have days off. I don't have days on. I don't want to go back to the flat in Brixton without a plan. I can't take the silent panic. It's not healthy.
This is all morning mind splurge, so I'll stop now. I slept very oddly and just feel plain tired. Always a great start to a day when I've got an hour show at the end of it to a Saturday night crowd. Apart from underwhelmence (new word, yeah?), yesterday I saw Paul Foot improvise beautifully at Set List. He's outstanding. I will admit that Daniel Sloss is very funny, but he's got nothing on Paul Foot. A performer in a different league yet playing to fewer people than Sloss. Of course. There's nothing to fill stadiums like observations on Ikea.
Oh, yesterday I managed to get some laundry done, so every cloud...
Right, fuck this. I'm going to walk up Arthur's Seat and have a rage amongst the granite. It's obviously time.
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