A story of validation - review
I think I better start at the beginning after all it is a pretty good place to start.
As mentioned in the piece its self I didn’t really know what I was doing here. Sure I had sent in a proposal but it was really fluffy. It proposed a sort of non-action with story telling to validate it the nature a which meant I was still writing the fucker in the pub 10 minutes before I turned up.
This meant I had to read it from my laptop but we’ll get back to that later.
The space was not what I had expected, the organisation was not as I expected, the fact that I did know what to expect was not expected. This made me nervous. I was also trying something new which made me more nervous.
All the points above as well as the reading made Awkward. The awkwardness was heightened by the self-questioning and the self-questioning was heightened by the awkwardness in an endless streaming of mumbling and self-doubt.
Of course it was bound to be awkward though, I wasn’t doing anything sat in a room full of people expecting more from me.
The beauty of this awkwardness manifested itself in both the beginning and end of this performance. At the beginning I just started talking – telling my story to a reluctantly listening crowd that didn’t know what to expect. At the end I pick my stuff to leave a spill bear all over the sofa and my laptop. The crowd are silent.
‘Anyway… next performance’ the host says trying to move on.
Awkward awkward awkward!
I loved this though - a strange kind of endeavour that I was never going to fulfil because I wasn’t doing anything. Awkwardness was enveloped in it from the start (even without the random opening and the beer spillage).
Anyway back to the reading from the laptop – the nature in which I wrote it meant that that’s the way it had to be. However talks about me learning how to tell a story and not relying on a script were still had. This would mean I wouldn’t stumble over the words as much and probably make it seam more genuine. Is this what I want though? To be honest I still don’t know. I don’t know how much either aspect (genuine or awkward) is integral to what I am doing. Does either matter in the grand scheme of things? I should probably work this out before I can continue …
