Stay or leave

It’s tricky sometimes on a residency – you’re on the lookout for “the thing” and there’s a urgent need to justify your existence wherever you’ve decided to do your residency. It’s hard not to jump at the whiff of a connection!

At the last Derry City match I decided I wanted to stand on the far side of where I’d been the week before, watching the supporters in Block J going nuts. So hovering at the back of Block I (as close as I dared go) I switched my TASCAM on and very covertly popped in my earplugs. I was embarrassed to do this but I had the urge to, partly so that I wasn’t irrationally paranoid about my hearing, but also so that I could almost be a bit more present, or a bit more settled to enjoy the experience. There’s a recurring chant that crops up pretty frequently in the stands and I could not work out what this was. Finally some people near me were more clearly shouting “rewiarmy, reanwiarmy, redandwhitearmy, REDANDWHITEARMY” – it’s “Red and White Army”! (Apologies to any Derry City fans who are cringing through my very slow realisation) Anyway, you hear that and it’s hard not to think oh army…armour…Agincourt – there’s a link! It’s a silly example but I feel like you have to fend off a lot of that. In contrast once I put in my earplugs (which I was again embarrassed to do) I realised, oh this is a really interesting sensory way to experience the match, you can feel the drums vibrating in your heart, and when they drop out for a second everything feels distant with these faint voices coming from the pitch. Suddenly and accidentally I’m thinking about this as a slightly different sensory experience which ties in to some thoughts that I shared in my last post. I’m encouraged by these kind of connections. You have to hold your nerve a little bit and let them surprise you. 

I feel like I invariably want to mention Married at First Sight in pretty much every piece of work, and it’s happening again. I was thinking that pulling together a piece of work is like MAFS – you’ve got these relationships with different ideas and you’re trying to progress them, and sometimes it feels easy and you’re ready to drop the L-word and sometimes you really have to work at it. And you’re being encouraged to do that – “making art is hard”, “it takes work and effort”. And sometimes you persevere and you push through and you get somewhere, and sometimes for all the trying and the overthinking and the seeking the support of experts and asking your friends for advice, it’s just not going to work, and you’re relieved when you finally right LEAVE on that particular idea. I feel like I’m in the middle of all that at the moment, but I’m hanging onto the moments where it feels fun and natural. 

I will try not to mention MAFS again in these posts but we’re only about 10 episodes into the new season so I’m going to be watching it pretty much for the rest of residency. 

Apologies,

Peter