I'm going to write a post-performance offload of the Headfuck piece I did at the IMT on Friday 12 Dec. I attended only two rehearsals, so I started a day later than everyone else and had to be the new person for a while. Soon enough we were all at the same point and the other performers were all very interesting people.
I wrote earlier about the score being rudimentary. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was the most complicated thing I have ever played, but, having said that, after a few rehearsals my brain began to assimilate information in a new way, and I was progressing toward success rather than the perpetual failure of the first attempts.
For just a few minutes afterwards, my ears had a new way of hearing. I was able to discern new sounds amongst the cacophony of urban noises on the bus to the station. The sounds had always been there, but I had become newly aware of their order and sequences as I’d been listening in a different way during the Headfuck rehearsals. This soon faded as my brain assimilated and ignored as usual the wealth of ambient noise.
It was a battle when performing the piece, in the sense that you were trying to listen to certain people (who you needed for triggers) and trying to ignore those you didn’t. Normally one tries to listen to the whole (including oneself) and play your part according to the feel, etc. And we weren’t supposed to be playing ‘with’ each other, but outputting purely what the instructional score dictated. Nevertheless, there were some quite nice moments, in the conventional tuneful sense (although this is not the point).
Having an audience made the duration of the piece contract, we'd been consistently playing it for around 20-30 minutes, I was concentrating so hard each time the minutes passed quickly. They all started shuffling around the ten minute mark and then settled again. Even the performers had difficulty knowing where the end was…but finally there was some applause.
A day of results.
My application to Axis has been accepted, excellent.
I also got in to the Margaret Harvey Open, good.
Also, I've started testing my phototransfers on linen, and reminded how I love working with physical things, unlike computers, where everything seems unreal. I feel like I'm Doing, however, there are two bad habits that have tended to surface.
The first is that by simply doing, I am making good work because the toil is there. DANGER!
The second is that being surrounded by artists materials is that I start buying into the persona of the Artist, and get carried away imagining my virtual smock and beret….'look at me I'm an ARTIST!' oooh look at all my lovely paints and brushes. This is similar to a feeling I sometimes get when doing practical work….'look at me….I'm DRILLING!' etc. Not good, ego derived.
Both these things disrupt and can hijack the creative process in a bad way.
December certainly seems to be already a month of contrasts. I've visited Christina Bryant at her studio whom I first met doing a very inspirational talk at Wysing. I'm looking forward to keeping in contact with her.
I've finally been sent the (somewhat rudimentary) score for the Headfuck piece that I'm performing with the Wrong Ensemble on Friday. Very excited to be doing an oboe performance so unlike what I am used to, without conventional notation or playing/improvising with 'feeling'. And with a composer and performers I've never met.
Three pieces have gone off to the Margaret Harvey Open, which was a bit of a trial with parking and traffic. Mounting the pieces was a shambles so I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Not the way to operate really.
At last I've a chance to do some process testing with my latest project (shamelessly motivated by cash, while awaiting funding outcomes for other projects). Good to get my hands dirty again!
I've had a brainwave about making an ergonomic china mug, just need to locate a pottery drop in now.
Then what do you know, I have to drop it all to earn a crust copywriting for my main client.
