Edinblog Day 7: how did I lose two days?

My goodness. Wednesday was an absolutely wild day.

The internet was so slow it wasn’t even letting me send texts on messaging apps, and I was facing down the barrel of both a Salon and a Gargle. I pulled the salon (sorry!), but the gargle employs a number of people, so I couldn’t just take away their work for the day. Which meant a frantic scramble to find a place that was both quiet and had good internet, packed (what I thought was all) my things up, fed and put the baby down for her nap, and then bolted out the door to record at the (not as quiet as I was promised, but sufficiently well connected) Underbelly Artist’s bar.

Also it turned out I’d forgotten my notes, my script, and my batteries for the microphone. Mid way through the recording my computer shut down, and lost the file I was recording. All in all, I’m grateful that Ped is an editing wizard, and we ended up with something that can be put out.

I desperately wanted to collapse in a heap all afternoon after that, but Unfortunately for me, I’d lined up a number of catch-ups with people, all of which were individually very nice and cumulatively like a cosh to the head. When you’re resenting a friend you haven’t seen in years for keeping you away from a precious nap, or answering interview questions in the way that you think might be annoying enough that they won’t ask a follow up question, I think you need to pull the plug on the afternoon. That said, everyone on the business side was very nice and professional and on the social side, I GUESS I’m happy I got to catch up with people I love.

The show last night was lovely, and there was an interesting experiment in crowd dynamics. I left the door to the outside of the venue open because it was boiling hot, and I’d rather have my audience comfortable and physically capable of laughter than prop up the illusion that standup comedy happens in a black box with no doors and the lie that sunlight cannot exist in the same universe as theatre lighting.

Then of course a drunk man stuck his head in the door and shouted something incoherent (I imagine something like “I wasn’t properly nurtured as a child, so now I seek attention in dysfunctional ways!”), and then my lovely tech Joe shut the door, and the temperature went up immediately, and within 5 minutes had halved the volume of laughter coming from the lovely audience. Such comedy physics. The audience was just as on-board with the show, they just couldn’t make their bodies laugh as much! (This is not delusion… i don’t think) If anything I got points for dealing with the drive-by-heckler in a chill way. It just got above that temperature in which the ecosystem of laughter can thrive.

Sorry again for cancelling the salon. I now have a week to find a dongle, or a location in Old Town with a high speed wifi password.

Xx

A