Yes, I am hungover. What is more important than any performance is what you do after, which usually involves stripping the bar of anything worth drinking like vultures with their heads stuck in the still-warm carcass of their dead host.
And the host was almost dead, or at least partially comatose from a wildly flying shoe while Patti Smith ripped up ‘My Generation’. Additionally, there was one walkout – the excuse was it was too loud, we flatter ourselves by believing the naked body of Tom, gaffered to a Chair and well enjoying himself was the straw which broke the camels back. Speaking of acres of glistening, shimmering, finely muscled bare and naked flesh, the body count was a paltry four, but there was nothing like watching Anna struggle for life, lips turning blue when Erik started channeling Marlon Brando doing Streetcar Named Desire. Yes, we all felt very guilty at the potential loss of life, but my what a fetching shade of blue, and what a perfect corpse.
Somehow I ended up operating sound for the show, which allowed my truly despotic and megalomaniacal self to emerge avenging and murderous, eyes dripping with madness, and damn straight I will go straight for the exposed throat of anyone who comes too close to my space, because “Thith ith my space” (and it’s really embarrassing me).
Besides the occasional, easy-to-avoid “I’m professional but do not handle stress well (and where’s my valium, bitch)” moments, a pointless rehearsal – where I gave a gig to Nigel as my rehearsal director (I am nothing if not magnanimous), the sunlit hours were spent again beside the river, eating icecream, sleeping, laughing talking and generally doing very bloody little. “I like warm grass under a shaded tree in summer. I like the feel of new grass and the smell of dry earth…”
But the secret is out, and now all these pesky dancers, choreographers, and other desperate hangers-on are coming here and reading this then quoting it to me in self-referential, post-modern chunks at unexpected moments. “Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich”, as John Malkovich would say.
So, here is a photo of two of your beautiful selves. Yes, I have horrible ones full of compromising positions, and will endeavour to blackmail you for something in the coming weeks when you are far away, but for today, the sun is again shining, the coffee blanketing me in a soft, warm stupid haze, I didn’t get my sad ass either to breakfast with Hans, or to ballet and it’s all almost over.
