The Morning Shift evaporated: Toyah is so ill I brought her back from London and to her local doctor. The understudy is on for today's two performances. Toyah has pleurisy and, a trooper of the first order, has been working through it. But she spent the night vomiting and in great pain. Twice to the surgery, the Little Horse is now a Litle Bug, tucked up toasty warm with her elephant hot water bottle.
Back in World Central, our first through-view with ears open for stereo & sonic perspectives is underway. Hugh is upstairs completing the artwork. It won't be ready for me to look at until this evening, because "that's the way it is" says Hugh the Fierce. My suitcase is 90% closed and I am available to "Cirkus" until 07.00 tomorrow morning.
17.19
Incrementalising continues. During the coffee break I checked my answering machine. There was a message from Charlie at South By South West: ProjeKct Three's debut performance is on Sunday 21st. March, 1999 at the Electric Lounge in Austin. The personnel of ProjeKct Three are Trey Gunn, Pat Mastelotto & RF.
21.37
More incrementalising & Hugh's artwork, from a PJ Crook painting, is a winner. Between Shifts your Diarist hurtled into Salisbury's last open pharmacy, 3 minutes before it closed at 19.00. The Harassed Gigster's Travelpro Wonder Wheelie is ready for closing, once this Diary entry is completed and the computer packed.
22.04
The final entries to the now defunct DGM Guestbook, six months after the beginning of the Diary, are read and the comments taken in for digesting.
There have been many "sweet" comments and contributions to the Guestbook, but to the degree they they comment generously on me personally (in distinction from the exceptional & conscientious work of the DGM Team, & other Crim players) they mainly miss the point. This they share with the hostile postings.
What we see in others is what we know in ourselves, so generous postings tend to indicate the nature of the person posting. Nasty postings suggest the "nasty" poster has not yet recognised (and acknowledged) in themselves the unique spark which they possess (or, more accurately, which possesses them). Without this ackowledgement, their individual contribution to our common humanity is undermined. And we all lose.
This "nastiness", a form of (inappropriate) self-denial, manifests itself to others as a (seeming) parsimony of the spirit. A performer (anyone?) is more likely to find themselves nourished / encouraged in an atmosphere of generosity than of parsimony.
Adulation is perhaps more destructive than hostility: it encourages and reinforces what is lesser in us. Hostility is directed towards what is lesser in us, and can alert us to the insidious hold of our egotism. But sustained & directed negativity is likely to be destructive, and can only be neutralised by someone in a well-based, long-term practice; usually, for someone who works within a group. Very few people are called to this as a specific piece of work, and I am not one of them. But the question for me is, always, how may I turn this to my advantage?
Very little that I undertake is arbitrary. This implies that the Guestbook, and the Diary, are intentional pieces of work. Assuming this to be so, the only visitors able to make a judgement on what is "really" happening here are those undertaking a comparable piece of work in their own lives, that is, my peers; or those who have already done so, and are scanning the airwaves to check out what others are attempting to do; that is, our instructors / teachers.
This is a response to a wideband "broadcast" currently underway, and which we all participate in to the degree that we monitor / receive the signal, and have the capacity & wish to respond. Very little of that signal gets to the basement receiver, and when it does the reception is "distorted". This is because what we hear is not what is being broadcast, but what we believe is being broadcast. When we act on this distorted information, the action is compromised / misdirected.
22.32
The unreleased improv from Besancon, France (1974) is now leading into "The Talking Drum". The attentive reader will have noticed that we are now incrementalising "Fractured", Volume Two of "Cirkus".
23.01
The first through-run of Volume Two has begun.
23.32
"Fracture" begins, with a helpful shout from an audient: "Cat Food"!
00.16
Yo! "Starless" from Pittsburgh dies into the audience's "querulous simmer of enthusiasm". We are 98% complete.
00.34
We are beginning to dribble.
