Edinblog Days 23, 24, 25: The End

Last night, the notorious last Monday of the fringe was so lovely. I was expecting a tiny tiny quiet audience of exhausted festival goers who had run, long ago, out of laughter to give. Monday’s a whimper to go out on, rather than a bang.

Instead I got a lovely warm audience and a whole bunch of artists, which nearly made me cry.

It means a lot when other artists come to see my show - I don’t identify as one of the cool kids, I don’t have big representation, I haven’t been finger gunsing at the artist bars, it was just kind supportive people being lovely.

In honour of having people I wanted to impress in the audience, I totally fucked the placement of a major chunk of the ending, which was meant to be put at about the 50 minute mark to pace two thematic ‘train colour’ bits by holding them slightly further apart and keep two other heavy bits from accumulating intensity through proximity to one another, which might make the end feel too overwrought. Instead I scrambled to drop it in at the 55 minute mark and it sort of arrived too late to feel deft - I think it came across as a bit overstuffed.

THAT SAID, the bright and glorious energy from the audience was SUCH a nice way to end the fringe. I was feeling pretty isolated and exhausted and didn’t expect other artists to come support - after all, I haven’t been able to see that many things this fringe, because Laser Fraser is a whole life on top of the work. I don’t know, I’m just overwhelmed with love for the good people in my industry.

I feel like there are two different professional comedy worlds. The insecure, emotionally immature, cliquey gossip mongers. The contrarians who could never get a union together, because they’re all such solipsists. I feel like you have them - an exhausting species who are focused on external validation and markers of professional success, and getting laid and getting paid and devil take the hindmost and then…. You have the other ones. This thread of glorious generous collaborative kind warm people who dropped in to my flat because they knew I wasn’t going out to the artist bars.

The people who don’t smell like ‘what can you do for me’, or ‘impress me’ or ‘let’s spar to sharpen our swords against each others’ wits and impress the audience of whoever else is here’. The people who feel like warm rocks in the sun on a crisp day. I’m very glad I know some of those ones.

Normally this post here would be a sappy rundown of highs and lows of the festival, with shoutouts to names you wouldn’t recognise. My tech who was there every night with a smile and a bottle of water and an unwaveringly supportive demeanour, his backup/understudy who made me feel equally safe on stage. (Sometimes it’s just nice having someone who saw the show last night and can tell you that the audience were weirder tonight). The team of people who put up posters and sent out flyers and organised comp tickets, the venue staff, my family gang who enthusiastically agreed to come hang with me in edinburgh for ‘fun’ and made the most basic logistics possible by minding the baby when I was on stage and also blessedly at 6am, giving me an extra hour of sleep.

But I feel like really my sort of gushy meta narrative is more relevant than the Oscar’s speech version. The kind people. The ones who feel rare - somehow in the midst of not feeling very good at networking, I’ve built a web of people I love knowing are there around me, and it’s a ridiculously nice feeling. I want to kiss you all.

Because of course, the Patreon gang also counts - having people who care, coming along on the journey with me, from whatever distance. Whether you’re one of the people who comes to the salons for a chat, a little lifeline to the outside world, or just silently subscribed, reading the posts feeling like you’ve got a vested interest in how my work goes. Like I’m not just a tree falling unwitnessed in a forest, but instead… like you’re all the other trees and you matter and who needs a passing philosopher to validate this, I’ve lost control of the metaphor and I should get a little more sleep.

I’ll either edit this out of sheer embarrassment when I wake up or leave it up as a sort of archival monument to how maudlin I get after a month of unrelenting work and love.

(I wonder if this excess of gooshy love for all the wonderful people has to do with the work of parenting, where your job is just to pour out love and appreciation and enjoyment and attention for the baby, in unstinting quantity; and instead of switching into nice clean professional meta-analysis brain for this post I’ve sprung a bit wet sap-leak of gooshy emotion cause I’m too tired to fully code switch.)

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