Yet again, I’m feeling guilty for taking time out to write this blog. I suspect that’s the way things are going to be til the Edinburgh Fringe comes around. It’s that time of the year again: the time when you can’t meet other performers without being asked/ asking if they’re going up to the Festival. Then follows the inevitable polite, yet curiosity-tinged, “How’s the show going?”
This is the best and the worst question in the world. All you’re thinking about is the show. All you want to talk about are your ideas for the show. Even your bloody subconscious helpfully gets in on the act and sends you dreams about the show during your fitful sleeps. But you know that (a) no one is as interested as you are in your show at this stage and (b) talking about it won’t be anywhere near as productive as getting home and working on it. There follows a half-arsed genuine conversation about a nebulous thing, for not as long as it’d need to be to be informative and way too long for it to have been passing. Both parties are left feeling like the other’s concealing Osama bin Laden or ET or the end of the rainbow or something. You want to tell them. There are bits you could tell them. But you make your excuses and leave: after all, you have to get home and feed/ water/ torture your secret thing for information or it’ll die.
So your eyes glaze and you tell them a bit about something. Anything. Like how you typed it all out today. Or you showed it to someone. Or you finally sorted the tune on a troublesome one. Anything but the actual content. Not because you’re shady, but because you’re scared. You’re scared they’ll laugh at your endeavour or – worse, in this case – that they won’t.
There now exist tracks for 3 songs, a skeleton for another to be recorded early June, and 4 more to be demoed tomorrow. That means that today will be spent making sure that those four scan and rhyme where they’re supposed to, don’t go on too long (even if I like them) and genuinely have a right to be in the set. I’ve got 21 to work on: the set for the show will contain about 15. The fun bit, just writing the songs, listening to lots of varied music for research (that was a lovely bit), humming things on the bus and bashing out chords on my keyboard (headphones in; I didn’t want anyone to hear me), is over. Now it’s like a mixture of maths and critical analysis – two of my least favourite subjects. Ever.
But how exciting is it to hear someone who really can play an instrument (thanks Damian and Charlie) playing something you’ve til now only heard in your head and can’t play? Very exciting. That’s how exciting it is. Then to come home with a CD in your hot little hand that you can actually rehearse to – well, it all just seems a little closer and possible, somehow.
Bloody hell! I’m doing the Fringe! No wonder my head feels like it’s about to explode.
