AlBarclay

It must be twenty years since I went to The Hen and Chickens. A little pub theatre at Highbury and Islington, right opposite the tube, Victoria Line among others. Easier than many pub theatres to get people to come and see the show. But the thing with pub theatres is it is very hit and miss. People put on plays for all sorts of reasons. God I’ve seen some bollocks over the years in these spaces. Back in the day I was IN plenty of bollocks. But I’ve also seen some of the best, most honest, most felt, most intimate and truthful bits of live story in these places. And I’ve been in some of those too, or so I believe.

It’s a play with five women. Thankfully I know some of these women. They are just brilliant.

Hanna the director has been a part of my life now for decades, sometimes overlapping more, sometimes less, always present. I remember her parents, got on very well with her brother for a while, went out with her best friend… She introduced me to Sarah, the writer, who also acts in it. Sarah is 27ish but somehow we understand one another. Similar neurodivergencies. I am trying to work out how to help boost her at this early stage in her career for the simple reason that to my ear she’s brilliant. Her writing is deft, witty but full of heart – a light touch into deep topics, and she has got to where she can be in it and be direct and grounded and clean in her delivery, which a lot of people still can’t do at my age. She’s written this play, Our Mother’s Daughters, a self aware piece of human life looking at things from the perspectives of five very different young women. It flies along under Hanna’s direction, and every one of the actors shines out when the play needs them to. I’m more than twice the age of the characters and male, and there was still plenty for me to empathise with, care about, laugh about, feel about. I can’t help but trust that Sarah has got a brilliant career ahead of her, but the shit bit about being first generation in the industry is that the only people you have to give you a leg up are the friends you make. And I know from too many very dear friends that, for all my complaints about how hard it is for little old me, this middle class white dude with a flat, it is still still still much much much harder for women. Despite 50/50, despite Me Too.

In The Hen and Chickens last night we all saw a brilliantly staged brilliantly written play about friendship and being a woman.  A reviewer put it better than I could.

There are further opportunities to see it. It’s at the Hen until the 30th, then it comes back to Playhouse East in mid June. Ticket link here.

Actors can’t really help actors. But I can send them audience which butters the toast, and I can try to introduce them to people who have been in the struggle longer than them, one of whom might have an insight for them. Many of the best moments of my career have arrived through recommendation. It’s a lovely thing we can do for one another. Go see this play.

Brian often works from home and he is very frequently on zoom meetings with lots of voices. From time to time these meetings start to get a bit heated and I listen to him as he tries to mediate them. I must have picked something up vicariously, as I am very rarely in such meetings but found myself in one this morning.

AI is changing the landscape, but still I was surprised to receive a clearly AI generated document ahead of a creative meeting for theatre. I smelt it right away. It was classically structured, with lots of good points being made – too pat to be human, and also, crucially, not written from knowledge, written by an aggregator of information old and new. It is hard to know what was a hallucination and what was not in all the lists it put before us.

The meeting appeared to be about going through it point by point, and annotating it so it could then be fed back into the AI. I have to admit my heart sank when I realised this was what we were going to be doing, but I also think such diligence is helpful. The man insisting on it was the money man, and he is older than I am. You don’t get to be the money man without being good at money. Even just a week ago I would have been resistant to this whole damn process. I would have used one of the obvious errors in the document to throw the whole thing out as slop.

But this festival I’ve just been to, and the company I was in, they both gave me pause.

I often say, in terms of tech, that we choose the hill on which we die. My parents generation mostly died on the mobile phone hill. Crypto kinda beat me – I’ve been horribly resistant to Bitcoin etc for decades, to my detriment, having thrown away a piece of paper once, and ignored a mining screensaver someone set up for me in the early days of it all.

This AI stuff is here whether we like it or not. So I was willing to go with the process and see where it took us. Others in the meeting were not so willing. And then there were some frustratingly wayward comments and assumptions being made about potential collaborators to the extent that I’m gonna check every (probably AI) document I get from this company (probably using AI) to make damn sure I’m not being made financially liable in some sneaky way.

Suddenly they were having a great big old zoom argument. I found myself having to mediate, and was very glad of all the times I’ve listened to Brian. This shit is common in the creative process, particularly when money butts up against ideas. I think I resolved it but for a moment it was like having two teenagers, both of whom are older than I am.

It ended cordially. “If you weren’t my dear old friend, that meeting would absolutely be the last I would want to ever have with this whole project,” I told him. For an earlyprocess meeting it better not be the shape of things to come.

After the meeting I downloaded Claude AI. I’m gonna see what use I can get out of it. Not gonna die on the AI hill, even if it turns out to be the top of a bubble.

It’s a hell of a tool. Stolen from creatives, forever a plagiarism, forever a disingenuous heist of almost impossible proportions, automatic, pat, tedious, overstructured. It will never have an original thought in a million years. But… Those of us who are small fry, we can’t afford to employ proofreaders or financial advisers or lawyers or what have you so we can get something better than nothing by going towards the semi hallucinated wanderings of this watersucking nightmare of processors all controlled by some hairless billionaire techbro with the social skills of a lamprey and the empathy of a rock.

Now I’m off to see a play. More on that tomorrow. Need an early bed so getting this done before.

Back at home, in my hot city flat with the cats and Brian and Maddy. There’s a fan running and a shitty air con unit, one of the cheap ones you put an ice pack into. It won’t make much difference but it sure is summer in the city tonight. At the festival at least it had the good grace to be fucking freezing at night. Makes for some variety. That said I would always rather be too hot than too cold and on balance it’s been a great temperature to get shit done. My body and my mind tend to work better when warm.

Revolutions happen in spring, when people can get back out on the streets in numbers after a winter stewing in their own heads. I’m having my own mini spring revolution, pulling myself back out of the hole I dug for myself with a short bout of the old malaise. The first trick is noticing. The second trick is consistency.

My foot looks like absolute shit but I got lucky as it isn’t on a weight bearing bit so mostly it doesn’t hurt me as much as it looks like it ought to. Still I’ve been sitting on my arse most of the day, doing loaf after load of laundry, chasing down things that might make my life a bit less or a bit more complicated, and making up my cue script for Maccers at Chalke Festival.

Here are my two rolls next to one another. The top one is Fluellen from Henry V – I can’t do a Welsh accent, I honestly can’t, there are many accents I can pull off flawlessly but I’m only ever gonna be “doing” Welsh and at that, not very well. So I’m happy to be good old Banquo this year. I think I can remember most of it already so it won’t be such a hot bitch of a learn, but to complicate it I’m going to really try and be a purist and work it in the company style. Hence the roll. It’s how they did it in the day. You only got your cues and lines, rolled up like this. It is the origin of the word “role”. OED.

So there it is, my roll again and I’m gonna make damn sure I’m fluent so I can enjoy Chalke as best I can without worrying about lines all the time. It’s a wonderful geeky festival and I want to learn all about flint napping and trench warfare and scrofula and whatever they have on offer – I haven’t read the programme.

It’s nice to be home. One more load of laundry and I’ll sleep. Might even make the chamomile tea now…

A beautiful festival. It has left me hungry to hold space. I kind of do anyway when I’m running my workshops, be they Shakespeare or Public Speaking or Voice or Science. I do in a one on one capacity when I’m part of an art installation giving people an otherly and joyful experience. But building a brand takes time and people trust brands more. My acting needs to be primary, always, otherwise I will implode into a singularity with a tiny pop. But in my vast collection of things I’m meaning to do loads of at some point it is the one that has bubbled up to the top.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to London though and get swept up in that. But yeah…

I walked out of a couple of workshops, not because I was bored, but because they felt unsafe. There was one guy, a pound shop Russell Brand with a dress on. He immediately opened by making everyone uncomfortable, patronised people when they asked for clarity. Then he gave his credentials which were basically that he had dropped out in Ibiza for a decade and walked the Inca Trail in his gap year. “Can you speak up please?” someone called, and he paused for a moment before continuing at exactly the same volume.

We all got a thimble of his Cacao – “it’s my cacao they sell at the drinks stand” he tells us and I make a note not to go there. Then he started playing with his shaky toy and we both couldn’t stand a second longer.  “Is it me or are British men generally just worse at holding space?” I asked this just now of Helen. They’re great at “This is how you build a fire,” and “Here’s how to operate this machine,” but “Come into this room and let’s look at your grief?” Nah. Lou reckons it’s cos men come from the head and women come from the heart. She went on to say “that’s a massive generalisation,” which it is, but where there’s smoke there’s fire. All four of the sessions I walked out of were run by men. This isn’t professional jealousy, I’m not far enough down that track or invested enough. But as a man who is interested in this sector with a highly developed skillset towards it and a sensitivity, am I able to transcend the ego that makes such a statement enough to run a safe space? I’m a helpful soul and if I think there’s a need I like to try and meet it. From where I’m sitting we need more good men holding space for people, be it about confidence, be it ceremonial, be it teaching fun things, be it dealing with hard things… The women are fantastic at it, but as a man I sometimes want to respond to a male energy. There are definitely ways to hold great male ceremonies. Aho Rob. Aho the Yawanawa I met this weekend. Aho Jamie Catto.

Anyway. The festival is done. I’m going back to be part of the art and to bring my new thinking into my work with the mystic Panda. Sorry guys, it has all been a bit woo woo recently. I’ll get back to shouting about stuff before long I’m sure.

I’m with Lou. A flying visit. Gonna sign off.

Ten o’clock and I’m trying to make a decent noise with one out of a wide selection of didgeridoos. The one I’m playing looks beautiful, feels beautiful, has a price tag on it reading £340, and right now is making a noise like a long wet fart. By half ten I’ve cracked it – I was trying to do the trumpet thing but this needs something different and forms a kind of seal around your lips as you raspberry. I’ll need to get back to work out how to vary the sound, not that I’m going to buy a didge. If I had a hill in the grounds of my stately home I’d get one and wander up there in the morning to practice and play to the gnus. But a flat in London is no place to improve didge skills. The didge teacher is great though. I bought a Dan Moi off him yesterday so I can make twangling noises in the right context. I’ve wanted one for a long time, once I worked out what Leonard Cohen was using. Dan Moi. Jaw Harp. Pour jouer? Weird translation errors. Somehow Jew’s Harp stuck. But it’s Asian.

I then roll over to enquire about whether there’s room in the hapé and sananga ceremony. I’m here for the sananga. That’s the one that hurts like fuck and blinds you for about five minutes. I wasn’t really expecting much from the hapé. That’s a terrifically strong tobacco and plant concoction that they blow up your nose and it makes you spit loads. They’ve given us all plastic bags. Just in case we purge. I’ve never purged with that stuff alone though. In an Ayahuasca ceremony it is helpful if you are really up there and need to start to ground as it can very effectively bring on a room full of people going “aaaaargh”. So yeah, it felt easy to say “strong one please” to the shaman.

I KEEP DOING THAT! Christ.

Yeah so I didn’t pass out but it took full inventory of my body. This is a common experience with all plant medicines, people experience a sense that as it enters your system it quite thoroughly scans you before getting to work. I went a bit wobbly and before long was crying the old laughing yark into my little bag. Not buckets here, I didn’t eat breakfast so this is closer to the retch you get when the medicine is already gone and its just the poison left to go. It’s always good to see that stuff go. Then we all danced and shouted. And then we lay on our backs and screamed while they made our eyes hurt. And yep, this stuff really works on me. It would be lovely if all I needed was a rescue remedy but we all have a thing and endurance medicine somehow helps me shift things in my head. I felt all that mess shift. It’s another corner turned.

Somewhere on my to do list is going into the rainforest and spending a month or two training with these medicines. I expect I’m never gonna. But from time to time one of them will help me solve a pain. I’ve had it a few times with Aya, once with Sananga, now with Hapé.

I’m blasted out now though. Need to just rest and lie down. There are saunas here so I reckon I’ll partake of them for a bit and use the cold showers to get clean while I’m at it cos I absolutely honk.

—

I didn’t. Went to some shadow work and got a splinter so big and deep in my foot they had to get it out with tongs and a bit more screaming. Probably the screaming wasn’t necessary but it was close to the surface and distracts you from the pain.

When we arrived here yesterday there was a queue for wristbands and we both jumped it because the lady giving them out is a client of my friend who I’m here with.

Everywhere we go, people come up to speak to her. It’s noticeable and lovely to observe. She has built something. “It used to be like this when I went to the theatre,” she said, and I remember all those times trying not to mention we didn’t pay for tickets because we were in a papered house, seeing all the young actors we knew, gossiping. “He went up for this you know?” etc. My friend still acts but she’s working primarily in the wellness space, and people absolutely need this stuff at the moment. I’m just here as her assistant. And we are old festival friends.

I like the name Soul Revolution more than Soul Survivor. We have been putting up with stuff, surviving it, for long enough. Time to do something about it.

I went to alchemical clown school for a bit. Afa ran a workshop where we did silly and tried to remember how telling the truth and being exposed is the best bit of being silly and the better we do it the higher the chances we will actually honestly affect someone watching rather than just make them think we are cleverclogs. I need to write down the workshop before I forget cos there is much great wisdom there which I would like to channel when I do my random workshops wherever.

Later on I was trying to stay focused in a sound bath but knew I was just gonna fidget so I rolled out under the tent flap and went towards the sound of a tent full of people screaming. Turned out it was a grief circle. They were on the rage bit.

I’ve told you before that mum and I used to hold hands and scream when the fast train came through. God damn, screaming from rage is good sometimes. They really let us go for it, playing some bangers to help the process. Load of grown women and men howling together bodies involved but the space held brilliantly by two young women who then, when we were spent, went round and touched all of our feet while we cried like babies. A strangely tender experience. Writing it down it doesn’t feel like everyone’s shopping list, but sometimes mummy feeds us vegetables because they are GOOD FOR US.

I feel so much better for a good scream and then shouting tears into the grass. I needed that. Then sniffling with my eyes closed while my feet were gently held. I think we all can benefit from a sustained bout of howling and having our feet held. Perhaps you can do your howling when the fast train comes through. Or, and believe me this is one I use a lot, in your car on your own in the middle of a long drive. Just be sure to try to send the bad stuff sideways. I open a window. Don’t want to shout out out and then drive through it. If you haven’t got a car, don’t use an uber. I bet it would work in a sport stadium or a crowded pub watching the football… So long as you time it right the noises are equivalent. Where else is good to scream without breaking the social taboo on suddenly screaming for no apparent reason? Answers on a postcard.

I haven’t worn shoes all day. Didn’t take me long to go full hippy.

Evening shift beginning. We are going to find dancing. It’s nice to be at a festival and know I’m not about to go bananas. But there’s still sober raves. A bit of whooping now. My voice is tired.

—

I found a hammock. I’m lying in it. I think these are elders?

Battery is becoming a precious resource. I left my plug at Lous so I might have to catch up on tomorrow’s unless I can find a workaround. Although I think I might just leave my phone in the tent all day.

I love these long long days.

I don’t really know where the heck this place is. Took about six hours to get there from St. Leonard’s and the air conditioning has packed up in Bergie. Everyone kept crashing or setting their vehicles on fire cos it’s a bank holiday. By the time we got here it was almost six and I was Sweaty Betty.

Festivals aren’t known for their shower facilities. But this is a small one and we are camping in crew so hopefully I’ll be able to find a hot one. I’m not totally sure though. The loos are already out of paper. It feels a little bit stuck together with tape and good-will. I like that about it. There’s heart here. It isn’t big brands and monged out teenagers trying to get laid.

My first time at this Festival. Soul something… Soul Revolution I think. Not survivor. It’s nice and small, how I like them, and booze free so you won’t get the lager lager shouting brigade. Everyone is chilled out and getting on with the business of expensive wellness.

I’m not even doing very much for my crew band. Drove here, driving back. Help out. Be positive.

“I wonder how many times we are going to get invited this weekend,” someone says in the crowd after we are all invited to breathe together. There’s gonna be a lot of that. Loads of overaspiration on speech and upflecting every fourth or fifth word, hands on hearts. I love all that stuff and it’s healthy. There’ll be God stuff, Great Spirit stuff, all shapes and all sizes of worship. I’m there for it. Did something with the formatting somehow and can’t undo it. Running out of battery in a tent.

I’ve been in fight and flight for a while. Mostly flight. Full heavy avoidance. But that can’t go on forever. Twenty years ago I’d reset myself around this time of year by going full nuclear into some improvised cocktail of uppers and talkers. Nowadays I don’t need that, I can just sit in a crowd and be invited to put my hand on my heart. I’ve already had a little cry and that was just as a moment of sincerity. There’s horse therapy here. ‘unndred pahhhnds probably, but hell, why not. They already had a fire horse for the Chinese year.

I’ll sleep now. This tent has held me well over the decades. It’s the worst I’ve ever pegged it so I’m relying on the high pressure to stay until I can find somewhere that’ll flog me some metal tent pegs. Also with two more festivals this season I want to dig out my dynamo lantern…

Perfect weekend for a heatwave for my purposes. And somehow the internet hasn’t gone down yet. It will…

Brighton night. Here by the sea. Tessy just made me groom her loads. And then more. That’s my job, as far as she’s concerned. The fact I occasionally feed her or give her her medication is beside the point as far as she’s concerned. I’m her brush bitch.

She will usually slut drop in front of me immediately. I then have a choice. Either I stroke her and she lets me for about ten seconds and then bites and scratches me enough to cause a scar. Or I get the brush out. In which case the routine of brush, stroke, brush, stroke – with pauses to clear hair – will go on until the heat death of the universe, and after a while she starts to try to help and when I know the tongue is out I can get into her big knots. She’s a ragdoll so she’s a walking dreadlock. And she will still yelp when I break into her dreadlocks, but I know her well enough to know when to dig in and when to jump out FAST. She takes no prisoners. If that tail twitches you get one semi-polite warning and then she will fuck you up with everything in her power. But when she’s in her groove with me she will let me drag her across the carpet. It’s a strange and fragile thing.

It’s nice taking care of a creature that is so completely boundaried. I usually have some sort of damage on my hand from miscalculation. She’s great.

How awful it would be if things did what we wanted them to do. Like parenting… The little fuckers are always gonna piss you off and go their own way, and if they didn’t they would be the most boring and pointless humans in the world. Society evolves like biology. And we move with it if we can.

Christ though the online dialogue at the moment… Even though it’s obvious that in America that guy is building a “ballroom” fortress for himself, nobody there is able to stop him. He’s experienced being correctly voted out once. He tried to stay where he was and he used all the guys who are now ICE agents to try and foment a rebellion in the capitol, and forgave them all to build his current shit militia. There is surely a core of people in the republican party who can see this coming. This ultimate grifter who will bring down everything to save himself.

And all the reactive dumb fuckers over here shouting about muslin cloth everywhere and Shania twain. That Yaxley idiot and so many idiots queued up behind him. Repeating what they’ve been told. And suddenly pretending to be Christians. No, you little tiny people. You aren’t Christians. You don’t even know what it means to be Christian.

This isn’t one nation under god. This is an older, wiser, better place. The Americans were copying our culture for a while. Now, “Britain first”, what do you think you’re achieving by copying them?

This inflated nonsense about immigration? It’s a mess, sure. Put about by idiots, sure. Reactive, sure… But idiots like Musk, with great reach, are propagating this idea that London is “fallen” (because brown people are bad etc). I walk the streets of London every day. It’s the same city it was thirty years ago. And idiots are still gonna be idiots. And that’s ok. It’s the world we live in.

Anyway. Maybe I needed to dump by the sea. I’m gonna plug into this hilarious cat friend I have. And I’m going to go to sleep with peace and care, cos I am trying to look after my fluffy friend who is likely to have her first morning for a long time without someone to care for her.

What a lovely day. This morning I groomed myself and assembled my Elizabethan costume. Then a Lime Bike into town to see Rebecca. We went to a peaceful place we know, then had coffee at Monmouth and then saw Jim Jack. Then to The Globe. I had the costume in a bag of course.

I’ve been running this new sonnet. It’s only a sonnet but the client only asked for it yesterday. I really prefer to have three sleeps on a learn.

It was a dinner for two in The Balcony Room, which is my favourite room for events. A sweet couple had booked the whole place out. She is a huge fan of Shakespeare. He is trying to treat her. We wanted to add to their celebration and we told them two sonnets we would certainly do and gave them the option for a third of their choice. It’s a nice flex where we aren’t too stressed about material, where we can extend our repertoire, and give them a chance to have a favourite. Problem is it came in yesterday afternoon. Number 23. “As an unperfect actor on a stage”.

We enjoyed learning and partitioning it, and had a little joke where the first line goes out and then a cue script needs to be consulted.

This is lovely work, of course. And romantic and satisfying. Working with Ffion is a dream. I’m lucky there were no kisses after the first scene when we did a little kiss. Because Kevin said: “Are you interested to try some of the Ukrainian delicacies?” And there was a plate of rendered pork fat to be eaten with raw garlic cloves and uncooked onion. I can still taste it when I belch. Healthy yum yums though. There was also something beetrooty eggy fishy that I want to take home with me and be friends with. It looks like seagull shit and it tastes like heaven.

I’m home now. Happy from a job well done. Off to a festival tomorrow. Life is good and I’m scattered and chaotic but mostly happy and getting busy again so a moment to stop and reflect is going to be golden. And oh yes, I’d best remember to charge my power banks as well as pack my pants.

The Chelsea Flower Show is taking place next door to me right now. I once went, in the company of Kitcat. We bought tickets from a tout. And didn’t really know why we were there. I think you need to have a big old home like Eyreton but maybe not in the awful Manx soil. Either way I’m living in a flat in London. I’m not gonna have a garden. But they are my landlords for the leasehold I think, still…

It means that right now there’s no easy parking outside my flat, there are loads of vans with tickets and loads of happy looking uniformed people who have chosen to be hideous people for a living, running around sticking tickets on incorrect cars. Many of the cars are correct and I’m ok with it as it is just short term. It’s a small price to pay for the fantastic work opportunities my parking permit makes possible.

This year is the first year since 2013 that Gnomes have been allowed in the show.

It is all so unuterrably alien to me.

For this show to have any sense at all you first need to have a property with a garden and then you need to care about what your garden looks like and then you need to be able to afford to get a ticket and look at things, and then you need to be able to action things you’ve witnessed. It’s a trade show for people who have already been absorbed by the establishment, or ARE the establishment. “Oh but you HAVE to use Piggles for your roses, they are just SO perfect for all your landscaping needs.”

Placement isn’t talent. Twas ever thus though. We do the best we can, and the good practitioner often watches and assists the idiot who is being paid more.

I’m not gonna go this year I think, unless someone has a freebie for me. I’m a long way from a house with a garden right now. Not sure I want to do it anyway.

I’m glad there are gnomes though. Through my whole upbringing, gnomes were considered somehow vulgar. The people who had them were either dull as fuck or rebels. As a child it is so hard to differentiate. As an adult it is easy, but I’ve been on very few gardens.