Showed up at The Cockpit with a bunch of stuff. A top for the puritan minister. A slitted black doublet and hose with boots for me. And a death cape. The label inside it says “Bill”. I’ve had it for ages now, that cape. And it has been in Bergie cos I use it as a blanket. I’ll be wearing it soon, finally. While banging a drum. It has arms and everything. I forget what I’ve got, a lot of the time. But I think I’ll be able to have a place for it in London for a while. I might be able to make sense of it yet, friends and rates and deal dependent.
These people are great. Running mates. Most of them I’ve crossed paths with before but often unawares. We are all still here though, doing this ridiculous thing.
Ellie and I met in the early noughties doing a thing best forgotten with a load of people best remembered. The money man was running the project, making what he considered to be art in a well loved space. He employed a couple of dozen young actors – he was the money man so he was looking for people he could attach his stuff to but didn’t have a great deal of instinctive discernment. He found a brilliant company by mistake by Sylvia.
The most impressive thing about it is that pretty much every one of the actors is still in the game decades later. It was the beginning of many great collaborations and friendships. Mel and I met on it, even if we forget that now. Ellie and I and ditto. Annette and I, but she inexplicably stopped using me or responding. Dan and I – we still see each other often, employ each other. So many others that I’m in loose touch with or could pick up very easily. I don’t want to list them any further as there are so very many and I still hear from most of them. Very few have quit, which is the point. Some are doing mad well. And obliquely, (precisely because it was a tasteless mess), the tasteless event we did led to Jon spearheading the corporate stuff he and now I have been doing ever since. The leader of that particular project would have made an enthusiastic mess of that so he blew his shot. No taste or understanding. People aren’t idiots.
This weekend I’m going up to Luton to do a powerful piece of theatre with an extraordinary small group of genuine creatives. And I wouldn’t be doing it if it hadn’t been for that odd thing we all did decades ago that introduced me to Ellie. “The problem with Al is that he says yes to everything,” my agent was quite rightly told when I signed. I’m getting better at that now but I still do it… “yes” leads to life, to colour, to mad joy. Without these things, why would we weather the waiting?
But it’s 11pm. The next few days are gonna be full on. Bedtime, I think. Night night friends. And if you are anywhere near Luton on Sunday, I think I’m right in saying that this round is free. We will be back in October. But if you want to be part of some sympathetic magic in a powerful place, this is the best link I can find…
Sleep well my pretties!!!
X
