The performance is over. I’m reminded of something Fassbinder wrote: what happens when the credits finish rolling, the audience leaves, and you are left with yourself in shadows. You realise that, while you may - hopefully - have left an imprint on others, you can only feel emptiness where the words and images had lived in your heart, slowly filling up like a dam with the next emotional current to feed on. It’s a bit like wandering into a desert where the eye of a lake has been burnt out, feeling the horizon sun brand your lips with its memory.
There is nothing you can ever do to feed the hunger of
‘remedial child’. I’m not brave or
courageous at all; I’m just a car driven by a memory of pain that is
remorseless in its desire to voice all the things it sees a connection with and
wants to reclaim.
4 years ago, on my first visit to Japan, I woke up in the
early morning, crying in abandonment, with the memory of my grandfather choked
in my mind. I had no idea why I was crying or why I was thinking of him. On my
return home, I discovered that the man I never saw in my life or previously
gave any consideration to, would walk through Farringdon meat market every
morning, just as I do now, and his first name was given to me as my middle name
– the one I like to use with my friends. So there I was, thousands of miles
away in a country he never visited, thinking of him as though the closet person
in my life had died. I suddenly caught a glimpse of the deep DNA link we have with our
ancestors; a water well, frozen in space in time, while we stagger in thirst. And
so, the performance was dedicated as a gift to him, just as the ideas in it
were gifted to the audience in whatever way they wished to receive them, to
generate an energy that might break through the ice, a ‘source’ banana to feed
new action.
It’s time to finish writing the script now – or at least to
say there way one – and put it away in a box on the shelf. What next, my
friends ask? Social shiatsu, canary freedom and fusion, are all dear to me though
perhaps beyond the remit of Foyer Federation. Of course, there are many ideas still
to come, just as there will be many other people running down different tracks
with fresh vision. I only know that I’m moving on, flourishing with my remedial
mind…
Check out the story from the 6th August show:
