Folk
Did one of my readings. In Belfast, for a change.
It wasn't the best reading I've ever done. I wasn't reading fiction for the first time and I was suddenly very aware there was a seven minute time-limit. Normally when I'm reading there comes a point where the words jam like sticky keys on a manual typewriter. Usually I relax into it: I take a long "character" breath. I play about with pronunciation, add a few popping plosives. It buys me time and helps to get back a sense of the dizzied nonsense that I read so well in practice.
Yeah, I know. I practice. What a nerd.
The time-limit thing got stuck in my head though and I gabbled, I sped up, I stumbled. I made it to the finish line with scabbed knees, a sweaty vest, and hobbled by my own leathery, lizardy tongue. Another problem was that it wasn't funny. I'm not sure I realised how much I depend on the crutch of merry laughter. Every thing else I'd ever read was meant to be funny and did get laughs. You can gauge what you're doing when they're laughing, it gives you an interaction with the audience. You know that they're there. Not being able to bounce off snorts and chortles was tricky. For the first time I felt like I was dying on my arse. I read the bit where I described Herne the Hunter wearing "a dead animal for a hat" in an exaggeratedly arch way, sign-posting that I was puncturing the wobbly pretentiousness of the first paragraph with a bit of safety-valve bathos. The tension in the room would then be released and we would all start to relax knowing that I was a safe pair of hands. Some embarrassed titters. A cough. And I started to speed up.
This reading had a couple of half jokes but I think the tone was confusing. It was written in the personable, presentable tone that I imagine will stand me in good stead on some BBC4 Arts Strand: somewhere between Meades and Andrew Graham Dixon, with a smattering of Paul Morley's eighties meditations on boredom. The sort of television that they don't really make any more and certainly won't be making in the future if the government has its way. Reithian edicts are so last century: why inform, educate and entertain, when you can show tattooed idiots on lilos pawing at one another? Give 'em what they want. I can't help it. I am a product of the 20th Century, and worse an autodidact, so I am desperate to show off whatever meagre learning I have scraped together. So I put in long words and loaded references, respecting the audience enough to assume they know what I'm talking about. That's how I learned: people refused to talk down to me and I nodded and took notes and later I found out what it was they were actually talking about. Its a reasonable system.
Anyway. It finished. I made it sound as if I could understand the words I was saying. I went two seconds over the seven minute time restriction but no buzzer sounded and I wasn't dragged off with a shepherd's crook. As soon as I sat down a chap behind me, a very nice one, politely pointed out a number of factual errors I had made. He was an academic and this was his field. We had a chat about Red Shift, Penda's Fen and The Changes. Yes, it sounds pretty boring to you but I never get to talk about this stuff.
I then drank some wine because by god did I need some wine and listened to some poetry. Later I was presented with a tote bag. Which has never happened before.
It wasn't the best reading I've ever done. I wasn't reading fiction for the first time and I was suddenly very aware there was a seven minute time-limit. Normally when I'm reading there comes a point where the words jam like sticky keys on a manual typewriter. Usually I relax into it: I take a long "character" breath. I play about with pronunciation, add a few popping plosives. It buys me time and helps to get back a sense of the dizzied nonsense that I read so well in practice.
Yeah, I know. I practice. What a nerd.
The time-limit thing got stuck in my head though and I gabbled, I sped up, I stumbled. I made it to the finish line with scabbed knees, a sweaty vest, and hobbled by my own leathery, lizardy tongue. Another problem was that it wasn't funny. I'm not sure I realised how much I depend on the crutch of merry laughter. Every thing else I'd ever read was meant to be funny and did get laughs. You can gauge what you're doing when they're laughing, it gives you an interaction with the audience. You know that they're there. Not being able to bounce off snorts and chortles was tricky. For the first time I felt like I was dying on my arse. I read the bit where I described Herne the Hunter wearing "a dead animal for a hat" in an exaggeratedly arch way, sign-posting that I was puncturing the wobbly pretentiousness of the first paragraph with a bit of safety-valve bathos. The tension in the room would then be released and we would all start to relax knowing that I was a safe pair of hands. Some embarrassed titters. A cough. And I started to speed up.
This reading had a couple of half jokes but I think the tone was confusing. It was written in the personable, presentable tone that I imagine will stand me in good stead on some BBC4 Arts Strand: somewhere between Meades and Andrew Graham Dixon, with a smattering of Paul Morley's eighties meditations on boredom. The sort of television that they don't really make any more and certainly won't be making in the future if the government has its way. Reithian edicts are so last century: why inform, educate and entertain, when you can show tattooed idiots on lilos pawing at one another? Give 'em what they want. I can't help it. I am a product of the 20th Century, and worse an autodidact, so I am desperate to show off whatever meagre learning I have scraped together. So I put in long words and loaded references, respecting the audience enough to assume they know what I'm talking about. That's how I learned: people refused to talk down to me and I nodded and took notes and later I found out what it was they were actually talking about. Its a reasonable system.
Anyway. It finished. I made it sound as if I could understand the words I was saying. I went two seconds over the seven minute time restriction but no buzzer sounded and I wasn't dragged off with a shepherd's crook. As soon as I sat down a chap behind me, a very nice one, politely pointed out a number of factual errors I had made. He was an academic and this was his field. We had a chat about Red Shift, Penda's Fen and The Changes. Yes, it sounds pretty boring to you but I never get to talk about this stuff.
I then drank some wine because by god did I need some wine and listened to some poetry. Later I was presented with a tote bag. Which has never happened before.
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This was the last time I went out. Bloody hell.
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