“Everyone” is an artist..”

ok so i’m kind of melt-ing at the moment. and maybe that symbolism is derived from the fact that my last gig consisting of performing as part of this exhibition launch with the theme being_ a postmodernist queer spin on the wizard of oz. i’m sure i’ve had times in my life when i was this busy, the difference is before when i’ve been busy, i havn’t had quite so much fun. i seem to be working all the time now, and its defo work, but its also defo fun. for the moment i’m starting to feel a little on top of things. i had my stint at theatre performing my first 45 minute solo show at this theatre festival last friday, then saturday the exhibition performance, last night hosting a short film night i co-curated, this friday a slam, sunday, monday, wednesday gigs in london, more recording on the album,

then back to berlin for a slam then off i go end of march to chicago, more gigs, hopefully a workshop, onward the week after to newyork for hopefully more of the same (if i manage to organize it) and then all manner of other gigs when i’m back here again. last night i was talking to some poets i adore about a possible tour in september. only a couple weeks ago i was freaking out that booking as far as may blew my mind. thats the way it is.

clearly my darlings… its time for some comic relief. and what better than my favourite themes of dating and relationships. two takes on the subject- first my super talented painfully funny friend lizzy, half of the twosome that make up polsom and sankey. who will be premiering a show at edinburgh this year..

and then on to the berlin and male side of things, mutherfuckin’ david deary, aka b-ski. i may even have to post this one up again as i defo have a lot to say on the calendar of love concept..it’s soooo berlin.

in the small worldness (small… try *microscopic* ) that constitutes those various constellations that make up berlin society there is often the sense of two individuals circling, or maybe orbiting one another. waiting for the time of collision, of eclipse.

one quickly learns to reserve judgement of a new aqquaintance and to avoid burning any and all bridges at all costs. you will come into contact again and again with this person, and find a growing number of mutual friends, some baring connections you could never imagine.

at times an alliance is born from this, or scenes, or affairs, or very rarely, relationships. it is less a matter of courting or dating, and more a matter of the cosmos pushing you into contact again and again and again. maybe the first time you barely spoke, maybe you only just noticed one another. the next time, a nod. the next time, an introduction. the next time, an effor to remember names. the next time, a conversation. this is the best way…

the worst is when one or the other clashes from the start. or one dismisses the other totally. or one is outright rude. because then when you meet again, when your meetings rack up like the winnings of a good night at a casino, he/she that denied the other at first meeting is forced through an extended comeuppance. all translating back to the bottom line - now you have to deal with me.. and i have the upper hand. “ha… so now you want to date my friend?… oh did you realise i manage the list of this club… oh yes i’m friends with the owner of the gallery, oh you wanted to book me? oh you were hoping i’d book you…) and depending on the power involved or the necessity of the favour or trade off,  leading even the most arrogant and egocentric to somtimes.. beg.

then there’s the middle ground. those dalliances born out of one drunken evening, when two people connect so freely in the way you sometimes do with a stranger you never expect or plan to see again. maybe you even have sex that first time you meet. and then just as you wish to forever file that one night stand in your back catalogue, your repeated accidental meetings continue to haunt you with memories of that one night. and its not just like these meetings occur in warehouse clubs and decadent after hours like how you met. they occur in pseudo sophisticated gallery openings, and worse still at 4pm in the afternoon at kaisers… your basket contains whole milk, smoked salmon, eggs, a bottle of sekt, you’re grateful that you never leave the house without makeup. but you’re way too hungover for small talk.

and if you’re a performer of some description. if you stand out a bit, a way of dress, an accent, your skintone, ethnic features of any kind at all, you find yourself encountering people who *know* you. even though you’ve never really met. in order to perform i created an alterego. something to give me the courage to go in front of people and tell them really personal stories.  it was ok because *it wasn’t me*

but it doesn’t actually work that way.

because the audience doesn’t see a character. they see a person. talking to *them* and with an air of sincerity that suggests the stories they’re being told have truth in them. and off the stage, when the performer is seen out and about. they are still a continuation of this performance in the audiences’s eye. an ongoing embodiment of the character. not even a character.  the word privacy never really considered, just shrinks away.

what was i thinking? i guess i didn’t. i guess it never occurred to me that by putting myself out there, and doing everything i could to engage with people. to make them feel like i was inviting them into my private life, to make them feel like my friends, to make them feel like i was living what they were living or wanted to, that i would express what they may want to say but coudn’t , or wouldn’t dare, or wouldn’t know how to. i thought i could engage with people, and leave that engagement, that connection to the confines of the stage, or the hours of a gig.

but i live in a microscopic scene. and i stand out. i stood out even before i put myself out under stage llight after stage light to make myself stand out more. more and more strangers come up to me and make comments on the life i have invited them into via performance. more and more people have no idea that it is partly a character i have created for them. and its draining to be on all the time. i created paula to get away from me. this could be the point where i back away, or i make her even less like me. but as much as it may complicate my current need/interest for privacy further, the direction i’m now headed is to put even more of myself into this character to convey the work i’m interested in making, in writing in performing.

i need to put more of me into her to make her more 3 dimensional. i need to add vulnerablity to the rawness. and that is the point of this play i’m putting on on friday. and i’m terrified and excited.and now my small world is no longer just berlin, its the poetry scene of several cities. and i feel myself in orbit with several people in those cities, and i am very curious of how things will develop in repeat meetings.. .

Now don’t get this the wrong way, I don’t mean tracks that I want to hear when in bed having sex with someone, no I mean that if there was a way I could hook up with the track itself, these are the tracks I’d want to hook up with, and here is how I imagine it going down…The idea was inspired by an article I read in vice online   where writer Gavin Haynes fantasised about how he would hook up with his favourite gadgets if he could. The idea smacked more than a little of cheeky advertising but I liked it enough to do my own riff …. my reaction/inspiration with these tracks, is totally beat and tone driven, i’ve ignored the lyrics in the tracks altogether, that would have been too literal and not as much fun to write. So here we go, 8 tracks I want to hook up with.

Superstar- Benjamin Zephaniah vs. Rodney P
It’s the end of the night, we’ve stayed up til almost sunrise. He’s a lot older than me, and much taller. the whole night he’s been a perfect gentleman, and is incredibly well read and politcally aware and charming. He walks me to my door and asks if he can come up for a coffee. I try to take the euphemism at face value and we walk into my flat. We walk into the kitchen and he leans against the door frame as I get out two coffee mugs. . I pause for a moment looking down at them. And then he’s behind me, hands smoothing down my shoulders, lifting my hair out of the way to kiss my neck. I never get to make the coffee, but we do manage to make it to the bed…..

Ponderosa – Tricky
After a night out clubbing I’ve ended up with some people I met, at one of these ridiculously spacious loft style warehouse flats. There is this one impossibly beautiful couple sitting across from me. They are really tactile with everyone. They’re young and releaxed and smug in the way the beautiful, young and privledged are sometimes. I keep catching the eye of the boy and then the girl. I go to the stereo to change the music. Suddenly the girl is there. I love this track too she says. Then the boy is on the other side of me. So do I he says. And they lead me to a room adjacent. We shut the door, and turn up music and take off eachothers clothes while giggling. We end up kissing, and try to take it further. But we..re too mashed up to actually have sex, so we end up cuddling tangled up together, telling stories and talking nonsense until we fall asleep. 

Lovers and Crypts – Bunny Rabbit.
I’m waiting to order a drink at this really crowded hipster bar in williamsburg, new york. I’m getting more and more impatient, the cue is like thirty deep. I feel someone bump into me, I turn and she says “excuse me”, only she doesn’t seem very apologetic, she’s smiling. She’s petite and curvy and has features that suggest she’s mixed race of at least 3 different ethnic groups. Her lips are so full its impossible not to think about kissing them. “no problem I say” and she cruises me openly, I look her over just as directly. I’m shaken up a bit, I turn back to the bar, and then she’s right behind me. I turn my head to see her in my peripheral but she looks straight at the bar, a smile at the corner of her mouth. And as I wait the next twenty minutes to be served at the bar, I don’t care about my drink any more, because her hands are up my dress serving me…

Mysterons – portishead
Its 4am, I wake up next to this boy in this tiny grey flat in deepest darkest east London.. its raining loudly, percussively on the windows. Streetlight breaks through the the curtains projecting a line between the two of us on the bed. I sit up pulling the sheet around me, and look down at the boy lying next to me in the bed. He looks so peaceful sleeping, I shouldn’t wake him, we’d got to bed so late because of the kind of thoughts I’m starting to have again right now. And I don’t mean to wake him up. I just slide close to him in the bed as close as I can get to him. And then he turns to face me and I close my eyes. And we have sex in the way you do when you’re half awake, a little dreamy, not completlley there, your body on erotic automatic…

Sex dwarf- soft cell
Its this dark ginormous warehouse club. Some kind of fetish party, walk by a woman in head to toe red pvc, dragging ah naked man behind her, his wrists tied up in heavy rope. I find myself dancing with a group of burlesque girls, drift a way from them and end up with this beautiful androgynous girl. She looks like a very pretty boy. Or a boy who would have made a pretty girl. There is something wicked about he/she. I can hear the word “ darkroom?| murmered in my ear. But we never make it there, he?/she? pushes me back taking me behind one of the massive speakers.

Me and my imagination – sophie ellis bactor
She’s trying to get over her exboyfriend. I’ve suggested a girls night out in a poncy mayfair nightclub to cheer her up. 
But actually, I couldn’t care less about her idiot exboyfriend , tonight is the night I’ve been working towards for months. The night when I get her really drunk on whatever girly cocktails she wants and then convince her what would really cheer her up is to have sex with me. And then the moment comes, she’s on her fourth cosmopolitan or chocolate martini or something, and then she turns those big green eyes up at me and says. ‘you know sometimes I think, men are so rubbish, maybe I should have a go with women…. You said you’d been with women before…. Well (as she finishes her drink) maybe you could… “show me”… and before she can say “sex and the city dvd box set” I’ve got her coat and hailed a black cab. The moment the doors close and we drive off. I start to “show her”

Lies - Robert Koch feat Elle p - Trevor Loveys remix
It’s a massive open air party in berlin. The sun is blazing, Two giggly girls in fluoro bikini tops and cut-off jean shorts are doleing out mdma punch. Everyone is wasted beyond belief. There are people jumping into the canal,, splashing water at eachother. Someone decides to start a kissathon, the idea is to kiss as many people as possible. Well it starts out as kissing, but then it morphs ino this crazy drugged out hipster orgy. clothes strewn all over the canal bank. I have no idea how long it goes on for, time blissfully and confusingly elasticates…

Got it on Slow – Selfish Cunt
Something made me want to go out by myself and get seriously fucked up on whiskey. So I”ve been on my own in this really divey rock bar for hours. I’ve been eyeing up this guy the whole time I’ve been in the bar. He looks mean, but in a hot way. He’s there with a friend but every so often he looks at me. I get into conversation with some other guy who buys me another whiskey, and when I look back the two guys are gone. Some time passes and I walk into the unisex toilets. And I can hear something. I walk into the free cubicle and close the door. I listen carefully. There is a couple f%@king in the cubicle next door. They try to not make too much noise. But its forceful, the cubicle is practically shaking with their thrusts. 
Transfixed I focus all my attention on listening, getting more and more turned on by it. And then they’re done, and it sounds like, it may be two men? I go back to the bar and see that it’s the boy I’d been cruising earlier, and the “friend” hed’ been with. They pay for drinks and leave. I order another whiskey and light up a ciggerette, wishing I could have left with them.