Today felt like a series of remarkable alignments.
Up at Sprite one day I remember It was standing at the edge of the walled garden talking to Jon and someone hadn’t shown up to one of his corporate gigs. At the time I was doing what I thought was right to build my skill and my contacts. I look at it now and I know I was working too hard for nothing. But back then I remember learning what the actor would have been paid, and wondering how the fuck they wouldn’t show up.
Jon clocked my indignance and he was misunderstood on the Sprite job as well. The director was putting energy into waste, and making it harder for him to turn in the excellent performance he turned in. We became friends in his adversity.
Jon started using me for the corporate gigs. Then when he decided to drop it, the baton passed to Ffion and I. And there we were today. Ffi and I are sufficiently different that it works. We are both absurdly busy at the moment but we’ve managed to just just just make everything that everyone needed for the thing today. It is an extremely positive creative partnership. We piss each other off but we love each other and we are both pointing the same way and we allow space for each other.
They wanted all sorts of AI stuff. We presented them with a script. We built it, I paid Lou to make a crucial costume, Ffi brought her sister in. Outside of the two of us we employed three actors today.
I even made Canice learn and deliver a sonnet. “That’s the first formal acting I’ve done for ten years,” he says. And he is fucking brilliant, every time, always. And this is the joy of the address book that I’ve got now. Joanna as The Wall, with a wall of really hard text, and not only is it learnt, it is learnt with attack because she is Joanna. Claude with sonnets and a clear legit and authoritative delivery. Ffi and I are there for the ease around it being a first gig like that for most. I kept my mic on to do occasional Voice of God, as the client kept moving the timings and the requirements.
Then home. A very happy client and jobs for those we love. This is how it should be.
An evening zoom to Australia, and another collaboration being discussed. Old friends coming together, this is an alignment of the mystic, crossing the world. Deep deep things and wonderful possibilities, and yeah, actually, this is what I signed up for. I never wanted it vanilla. I never wanted it easy. I wanted it to be weird and bright and forever fresh and possible. I was cash broke for decades while I looked for it. Now I’m here, still only just threading it together but doing so with expensive tastes and so long as I have time to pull that fucking ridiculously expensive Canterbury storage out then things are manageable in this damn city. Just about. Within reason.
