HeadSpill

I’m writing my new show. I’ve been promising myself for years I’d go to Edinburgh and now have the venue, and more importantly the cash to do it. Even though I’m doing a free fringe show, after accomodation, advertising and expenses I’m probably looking at a couple of grand for the month of August. At the minute I only have about five to ten minutes, and two preview dates, but even now at the back end of Febuary I’m little excited. I don’t have any rose tinted visions, it will be work, and I intend to keep my mind clear of expectation…

My history of doing a show is as follows:
Manchester fest 2005 - no one came.
Leicester fest preview 2006 - technical problems halfway into show.
Manchester fest 2006 preview  @ Comedy Balloon - large Success
Manchester fest 2006 show @ Zumeba - A week before the festival the venue is sold and turned into a trendy wine bar.
Frog & Bucket Edinburgh Preview 2007 - Too much teching, not enough stand up. An attempt to do something different, but a bit of a failure. Plug pulled.

The new show is very personal. I was thinking about doing it a year or so ago, but felt it was biting off more than I could chew which in hindsight is ironic considering I went on to put together a show that was all interactive multimedia. What I probably meant was I was too afraid of looking at the history of my eczema condition for the pain it might cause, and then not be funny.

There’s lots of work to be done writing and research, but in the few gigs I’ve done, openly talking about eczema, it’s been quite a soul feeding excercise. So far so good.

Sometime last year I think I fell out of love with comedy. There were no signs, I didn’t see it coming. Everything in my personal life was great. better than great. Comedy was work, good work, but work all the same. I moved in with my girlfriend, and that was, and still is utterly splendid on many levels. In hindsight it’s a simple trap I suppose, sex vs the adrenaline rush of comedy. Why go to a gig for that fleeting but massive adulation of a job well done, or on occasion feint praise and a three hour drive, when there’s a steady flow of love at home, like having a lounge bar in the front room. I got sloppy, was making notes, but not really writing and over the relatively short space of 6 months my set became unpolished and flabby.

When I was single I was singularly motivated, I went to gigs and worked, and when I wasn’t gigging I went to gigs anyway as it was better than sitting at home.
Living with someone else changes that. It sounds obvious, but you don’t quite know how and what shape you’re life will take until you’re in that position yourself. You can’t just do stuff when you want like before, you just get in each others way, or don’t each other at all.

I read that back and it sound’s terrible, but it’s not. When you live with someone in ‘togetherness’ your stuff and her stuff start off sitting next to each other on bookcases, but eventually overlap, and when there’s no room left, you have to assert that that space on the shelf is for your Beat Takashi films, and not her Monkee’s DVD’s.

In the five months since moving in there’s a facet of me that wasn’t there before, well rounded isn’t the word, a difficult birth of compromise and assertion, tolerance and aggression.

There’s a difference between what you want and what you need.

When I was single I had a point to prove, a good point, but a point nontheless, comedy was my passion, and performing my outlet.

Finding your bestest partner, and someone who loves you regardless, I forgot the point I was trying to prove, and the dawning horror that I might not have actually had a point to prove at all, I just liked making the funny on stage.

I never planned to get hooked up and settled, it just kind of happened. I once said quite loftily ‘a successful relationship is by it’s nature compromise’ and still think that rings true. However a good relationship is also life experience and experience is good.

I’ve started writing loads again, I’ve started writing a about something very close to me, which might be quite painful in places, but it isn’t born out of proving a point, just wanting to live life better and more than I currently do. Not that anything was bad before, by my actions and experience I’m just a little more defined.