The Decline and Fall of Ed's Festival Part V!

I was just walking through Queen's Drive next to Arthur's Seat. It was really dark. That's what you get in Edinburgh. Darkness. London never goes dark it goes dark orange, but never black. It was black. I was walking in a field. Like being in London 200 years ago. Then some fireworks started up and it was like I had them to myself. I stopped and gasped and felt grateful. Then I realised that they came from the Edinburgh Tattoo. Nightly showings of Disney War. Troopers prancing around in military dress on a nightly basis for appreciative tourists. That took away the magic, they made that gratitude seem self-indulgent and I was out of the moment. Possibly the moment was only made in the first place because I had just consumed a cheese burger and was on a blood sugar high masquerading as existential balance.

I had a conversation with my brother yesterday. He said to me "Maybe Edinburgh isn't stressful. Maybe you just find it stressful." I tried to explain how it was basically set up to be stressful, but he stopped talking and just smiled very slightly. He does that. Sometimes I feel like my brother is Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock and he's trying out new negotiation tactics on me. He is right in the sense that no event is emotionally charged per se and that your reaction is the cause of the emotions - but if you were to argue that to its logical extent you might surmise that a shark attack is a matter of attitude as long as you don't get eaten. The Vietnam War would have been a picnic if people didn't take it so personally. Aside from anything else, one of my friends is having her first Edinburgh as a performer and says she has never been more miserable. It's what non-performers don't and can't understand. Gladiatorial battles in the Colosseum were a right laugh a long as you weren't the one getting stabbed.

"What time is it? Five seconds to charm!"

I have no ill feeling towards my brother, however. Aside from my obligatory love for him and completely voluntary friendship, he made my Monday show a success. He flyered it full of people and when the microphone cut out and football commentary came through the speakers and I was about to have a breakdown - banging on the window down to the bar like it was a scene from Midnight Express - he ran around and disconnected the speakers and, somehow, what happened was a good show. At the end he said "You need to change the structure" and for a second I felt a bubble of rage, but only because I had been spinning plates for an hour. People don't realise how taxing an hour of comedy really is. Sometimes straight after the show I can barely hear. The blood is pumping through my ears, my synapses are burning. Other times it's just taxing for the audience.

All the people who have lots of success, or even a small amount of success, work stupidly hard. There is a science comedian who said to her fiancée: "You live life on easy setting." Why would you ever live life on a difficult setting? I think the basic life setting is difficult anyway - once you get older and the stabilisers are removed anyway. So why strive for what's difficult? Why is a worthwhile life one in which you believe you must consciously and constantly challenge yourself? Is that real meaning or is it just 20th century capitalism talk? Before my brother died, my mum would say: "He takes the path of least resistance" - but that was through fear and doubt - not through because he was playing ukulele on a Hawaiian beach. There's nothing wrong with hard work, there's nothing wrong with wanting to achieve something. But it also suggests that those people have a deeper knowledge of what life is all about when they don't. If anything, it suggests a personal defect. No natural animal works harder than is necessary. Why would it? People who are addicted to hard work seem to believe that they're incomplete without validation. That they are nothing without striving. But there is no meaning in that. Either everyone's life is innately worthwhile or it is innately pointless. Busting your arse won't change that. Achievement is about status or a present discomfort. Nothing more.

Stephen Hawking said that without working hard, his physical condition would have made him desperately depressed. People say "Wow! How does he do it?" I'm not knocking the man's mental resilience, but the question should be: "How do any of us do it?" After that we can ask "Wow! How does he do it?" 

This is probably how I am justifying having 15 people in my Rome show and then pulling the evening one because of lack of people. "I don't have the inner emptiness necessary to do loads of flyering and show promotion!" I'm intellectualising laziness!

I am drinking a gin and tonic. Edinburgh makes me an alcoholic. A few nights ago, I drank until 3am on my own. Sounds bad? It's okay. I had a script deadline. See? If you write, you can drink a lot of booze. I drink a beer on stage at 1.45pm. It's the Festival. I'm allowed to drink, even though because the Festival is stressful and undermines my self-esteem. It's like Christmas. Every morning I wake up and feel jet lag. My running shoes are in the same position in the warehouse as when I got here.

I just felt okay today. Fine. Having my brother here, even for two days, is very nice. Even if we don't skip down the road hand in hand, my animal soul likes having one of my pack around. It softens the edges of this place. I don't understand how it is the 19th already. It has gone so quickly. Usually, it is so painful and so long. Usually I have more riding on this festival. This year, I don't feel like I do. At the beginning of the festival, it felt like I didn't know why I'm here. Now I realise that it doesn't have to make any sense. It just is. I could get a five star review or a one star review or noticed or ignored. It doesn't matter. The festival is a remarkable thing. It's a strange thing.

Today, I heard a girl say "Free sketch comedy at 5pm." She said it like an announcer, but she also said it with a hesitancy in her voice. It's like she had selected a pre-formatted template which is supposed to sounds like: "See? I'm okay. This is really good. I understand life" but her delivery was off. It came out like "This is really hard. No one is paying attention. Why did I come here?" She also said these words to me after I had passed her. She couldn't even look me in the face. When I have to flyer, I can tell when someone is going to take a flyer immediately, but so much depends on the delivery of the most basic words "Free comedy at 7.45pm" or "Is your life better now than you were a baby? Find out tonight!" and if I feel the easy flow and confidence, I know they will take a flyer. And if I falter or it's forced, they will not. And that's what it is on-stage. The same words. Entirely different outcome. Sometimes you are delivering a tray of delicacies with a flourish and a wink. Sometimes you are dropping luggage down some stairs.

I can remember getting off the train and waiting in a square on the grass on the 2nd August. It is a lifetime ago, and it doesn't feel like my lifetime. My brother said that his friend Nick Mohammed is an excellent performer because he feels disconnected to the Nick Mohammed onstage. I am just me onstage, pretty much. I feel disconnected from me in reality. Perhaps that doesn't make me an excellent performer but an excellent liver. Not literally. I am destroying it with gin.