August 19 2005
Fellow Pilgrims,
Well, my brother
was released from the hospital a week ago, after undergoing surgery to remove
rust and paint from the hole in his foot, which was causing the infection. The BBC was shooting a documentary at
the hospital and Erik's operation will be one of the features when it airs in
the Spring. He's now on crutches instead of rollerblades, but seems to be
making the best of it, waiting for the wound to heal so he can resume his
acrobatics. My mom had been
considering coming to visit for a week but was back and forth on the idea. Erik's lame condition finally tipped
the scales however, so she caught a plane from Vancouver and for the past week
has been staying with us and picking up some of the slack, handing out flyers
and offering her expert managerial advice on all things Fringe-related, while
taking in as many shows as she can.
Otherwise, the
Edinburgh Festival ploughs ahead.
We have put on sixteen performances of The Rap Canterbury Tales, and
have eleven left to go before the festival ends. Audiences have recently been in the 50-60 range, which is
nothing to sneer at, but we can do better. Some shows just manage to entertain the crowd and little
more, while others seem to reach a fever pitch and create something
transformative, depending on my energy level and the chemistry of the audience;
the difference is subtle, but I feel like I'm evolving the act each day. We have also been going to see lots of
other shows and meeting other artists and producers and performers along the
way, which is easily the best part of this experience. Sometimes I can't hear myself think for
the clamor of opportunity knocking.
A highlight: a
few days ago we finished up the show and headed straight to the rail station
for a day trip. We took a train
two hours north to Blair Athol and checked in at a Bed and Breakfast, and the
next day took a tour of the town's thirteenth-century castle and traditional
home to the Murray of Athol clan, who are distant relations on my mother's
side. After soaking up the
crossbows and coats of armor and tapestries and ancestry for the better part of
a morning, we caught the train back to Edinburgh just in time to put on the
show that afternoon.
A lowlight: C
Venues, where I am performing, also runs cabaret events and other entertainment
after hours, and last week they had a comedy showcase. Well, a few weeks ago
the organizer of the night asked if I wanted to do some stand-up comedy to
promote my show. This sounded a
bit strange, because I'm not a comic and have never done stand-up, but I
thought screw it, what do I have to lose, and took the gig. I guess she had seen me perform some
raps that she thought were funny and decided to give me a try. I had been
reading Bill Hick's "Love All the People" which was giving me a new
esteem for comedy as an art form, so I was inspired. The fact that I didn't have any jokes or other stand-up
material didn't phase me, because I'm pretty comfortable as a public speaker and
can usually talk a good game, so I thought up a few themes to riff on and took
the stage at 1:30 a.m., ready to improvise. Reality check: I've been spoiled and made soft by too many
friendly crowds. I was no match
for the dozen or so heckling drunks that were my audience and I totally lost
the plot. I tried to fall back on performing
some of my supposedly funnier raps, but the lyricism and punch-lines were
wasted on their short attention spans.
After a painful ten minutes the audience lost patience and started
yelling at me "tell a joke! tell a joke!" so I told a dildo joke I learned
when I was fifteen, which cracked them all up, and I left the stage to
enthusiastic but embarrassing applause.
At the time this
had the quality of one of those terrifying "trapped naked in public"
dreams, but I can still laugh at myself, even if I'm alone in doing so. It may not be the last time I do
stand-up, who knows, but it's definitely the last time I do it without anything
funny to say, or at least to fall back on. This is the nature of my learning curve - dive in, hope for
the best, get stung, retreat, come back smarter, dive in again. The only thing I really had to lose was
my dignity, but who needs it?
All the best from
the Edinburgh Comedy Festival,
baba