I am currently breathing one huge sigh of relief. Both birthday parties, the Aquaphonics pool event, and the notorious April 20th gig, are all done. The pool event, delayed by a week and preceded by the impromptu car park gig, was unexpectedly successful – 6 musicians turned up, and 20 audience, which was beyond expectations.
We’ve come away with 100 still photos, half of them taken underwater by my son, and 8 hours of video, which we have to edit down to 15 minutes for Helen’s degree presentation.
The sound was almost diastrous. On my little 4 track mixer the record light flashes when it’s recording, so assumed this was the same on our digital WAV recorder … but no, red light flashing means “paused”, so we only got about 6 minutes of soundtrack that way. Never mind, the video cameras were recording sound too, and the quality is OK. Got some underwater sound, too.
The day itself was mad, up at dawn organising flowers and balloons for my Mum’s party. Had the brainwave of recycling the flowers as gifts for musicians at the gig. Then off to the party venue to arrange tables, chairs, flowers, balloons. Found a CD player there containing a CD “Favourite love songs from the war”, which made the ideal background. Then greeting family arriving from around the country, making teas and coffees, then the food arrived and was eaten, followed by a long stint of washing up. As soon as we had locked up the pavilion and waved everybody off, leapt into the van to collect video equipment and Helen, and then directly to set up for the gig.
My son (who swam around with a snorkel and underwater camera for 2 hours), and I were totally knacked the next day, and just lolled about in the garden while my partner made us tea and hot chocolate! Such a treasure. Then Monday came and I realised I had just 36 hours to prepare for a gig whose content was still a mystery. Cobbled together 3 experimental pieces; Monday evening managed to recruit a musician from the Improvisers to assist, and then Tuesday rehearsing.
Some parts of the gig were very successful, especially the poetry, and some parts prove a point – that the techniques I experimented with will probably work well in a ritual context.
What next? A little less intensity. I’ve resumed the computer work, facing up to the customers I’ve been neglecting, and apologising profusely. They’re all charities, though, very forgiving, many of them support the environmental and social aspects of my creative work, and a couple even came along to the gigs.
I’m fascinated by the images coming out of Aquaphonics. This is a totally new way for me to make images, and many of them are breathtakingly beautiful. Now I’ve taken my ritual work into the realm of conceptual art, I need to spend some time thinking the other way – how can I take these techniques, especially the imaging, into my ritual work?
Unravelling all the video and sound, and posting the choice bits on the net, is a part time project for years to come … I daren’t devote myself wholly to the task, or I wouldn’t get any new work done for years!
I also want to return to the pyrotechnics. The ACE bid for research funding wasn’t successful, mainly due to the small audiences involved. But I’m not about to increase my audience size – if you’re getting your audience to participate in dance and movement in the half darkness with pyrotechnics around, there are clear health and safety reasons to keep numbers down.
And there’s the improvised mountaineering idea too … still mulling it over, waiting for the key idea that will pull everything together. But I’m going to have a bit of a rest, first – and tomorrow, I’m going to be attending someone else’s project for a change. It’ll be nice to watch someone else sweating in the limelight for a bit.
