How lovely to be working creatively outdoors in this long long lasting Indian summer. Joyful.
Mackerel sky at sunset. We met up at half past three at The Flask. Logistics with a paper maché chicken. I’m trying out material with myself and random passers by. Trying to blend facts with joy to create the right cocktail. I can swear as much as I want, and I’m actively encouraged to shoehorn politics into it. The wonderful thing about truth is that it is frequently madness. True stories can be told dry or messy and I find that the messy tellings taste better. “Two old men drunkenly squabbling in a carriage” is a more human view and just as true as “renowned essayist debating philosophy with celebrated doctor on their return journey to London”.
I’ve been thinking about death and bodies and vampires and psychics and philanthropy and love and heaven and hell. Bullets and booze. Hanging and housing.
I can’t drink at the moment cos of the metronidazole and I’m loving it. I get home light and airy. This evening we zipped through the pointers and then at the top of parliament hill, looking down over the lights of London, a group of Hare Krishna gave us tasty vegetable curry in plastic plates, and a semolina pudding that didn’t match the promise of the curry, but free and given with that kindness that marks an unusual but still very active group of believers. I couldn’t join as it’s too focused and limited, but there’s not much to choose between vibrating the universe through singing “hare rama” etc and vibrating the universe with “immortal invisible” “nam myo ho renge kyo” “om” whatever your noisejam might be. It’s all resonance and shared breath and finding the weight of the silences between.
I’m home now and thinking of the noises I’ll be making on the heath. How will we annoy the local residents this time? Which odd people will start to attach themselves? Will I manage to do it all without drinking? Watch this space kids.
Bathtime.
AlBarclay 