Hoarding Your Past Self

Coming up to my final performance of "Like You Were Before" in the UK until 2015 (I can't believe I just wrote that down. I guess now I've committed to it) on Friday, I have been thinking about our past selves. All the baggage, layers upon layers of ourselves that we deal with (and in my case, memorise then perform.)

It seems like several areas of my life have been contributing to this thinking. Yesterday, feeling unexpectedly ill when I was meant to be tutoring and then rehearsing, I decided to rest for a couple of hours in bed and watch my first episode of the American reality television show "Hoarders."

It's a border-line dangerous premise for a show - taking a psychological problem and trying to solve it (at least on the surface) in two days time by hiring a crack team of personal organisers along with the very short term help of a psychologist. Not least because the people featured on the show are often from poorer parts of the United States and can rarely afford to keep seeking the professional help that will keep their hoarding at bay in the long term. The episode I saw supported this thinking by rote - of the two hoarders, the one with more disposable income was able to make a dent in her long term problem through continuing to seek help, whereas the more willing of the two but less affluent went from a sparkling home at the end of the episode to a paragraph that said that she had not continued to get professional help and that her hoarding was back and worse than ever.

Also. Watching "personal organisers" grapple with somebody who has a psychological condition. I mean oh my gawd. Really? Is that really what television is? And yet I was thoroughly entertained by the program and (she says guiltily) may well watch it again in the future.

(Oh gee. Oh man.)

And then this morning, with the initial goal of making a sketch to start my day, I came upon an old sketch book of mine filled with mostly terrible snippets of writing. I had the impulse to tear them out and start the sketch book fresh, but then... I couldn't. They were layers, small photographs of me - cloying, clichéd, and doing my best. This past made me pause - I lost all impulse to make something new and instead began reading.

So weirdly - Here's something I just found in that old sketchbook. This may be one of my very very few attempts at verse, and possibly with good reason:

There's a place in a town that's not far away
A place riddled with saucers, old socks and decay.
The place looks like many I'm sure you may know,
Circled daily by a family of musical crows.
Nestled deep in the valley, overlooked by a hill,
A few city landmarks, the brewery and mill.
Where would we be, in what kind of plight,
Without the dear presence of the town's garbage site?

It's filled with old treasures and once loved beer bottles.,
Food gone to waste, old airplane models
And things you forgot about, your future in tow,
Or things you remember and decide to let go.
Object upon object, feeling sad and dejected.
Seagull upon seagull, hungry and infected.
It's a sad lonely world for an old piece of junk.
Enough to put belongings in a bit of a funk.
Unless of course you consider one little spectre -
That man we call Joey, the garbage collector.

Joey sees garbage as more than just rubbish.
He's read torn up letters good enough to publish.
On a day things are slow he'll comb through the piles,
He'll trudge through a smell that spreads miles and miles,
And sometimes find something of value or worth
And sometimes just relish in the sweet stench of mirth.
His wife doesn't like it, she calls him a "hoarder"
But Joey just calls himself "King of the Sorters."

He's sorted through old papers, laundry and bills,
He's taken home boxes, and church bells and tills.
His wife, who's named Nancy, gets cross as a skunk.
She shrills, "What will we do with all of this Junk?"
But Joey just chuckles and smiles like a martyr.
Her tone may be sharp, but his wits are sharper.

And so it was...

Well here we go. On July 28th I set myself the challenge of writing in my blog every day for the next month. It is now August 28th and, excepting a couple of slip-ups, by and large I met the challenge. It's nice to mostly keep a promise you made yourself. Even a small promise. It makes you wonder what else you can do.

Yesterday was the last day of our artistic programme for Edinburgh 2011. Today at 4pm there was a townhall-style meeting to help plan for Forest's future. Some really constructive ideas were thrown around - including an idea of mine that Harry Giles came up with a catchy name for - Forest Champions. Based off of the marathon model, a group of 50 people or more agree to do their best to raise £1000 for Forest by writing to 100 of their friends and families, explaining what Forest Café is, how unique it is and how important and unlikely it is in the Edinburgh arts ecology, and then asking them to give £10 each. If 50 people can harness this generosity and care from the people who love them most, care could buy the building.

Yesterday I had some bad news which I hadn't heard about yet because of the all consuming nature of working in Edinburgh during the festival. Jack Layton, Canada's major hope for a political leader on the left, died of cancer. I don't think of politicians as being able to die of a disease and this loss in particular shook me to my core. It may have been exhaustion, it may have been the wine, but when someone told me about it at Forest's closing party last night and I stared at them in disbelief, I started to cry.

Perhaps I know that we're stood at the centre of a shift or a struggle because suddenly simplistic binaries - "good guys" and "bad guys" seems like a real thing. Those who fight on the side of freedom of expression, kindness, generosity and equality, versus those who prioritise greed, money, fear, and exclusivity. Relatively recently I would have scoffed at how reductionist this thinking is, but now there's just no other way of discussing it. There are those who are caring and there are those who are selfish, and we all have the capacity to be both and are constantly being asked to choose between the two. It's a tremendous pressure. But to my mind Jack Layton was one of the good guys. Forest Café are the good guys. The building is huge and beautiful and overpriced and unsellable. It is in the centre of the city. Price Waterhouse Cooper have decided it should be empty for the unforeseeable future rather than occupied by a rent-paying community arts space. Those who see this emptiness as a fact of life rather than a perversion of a deeply flawed and unsustainable system are stuck in so deep with the bad guys that they can't see the Forest for the timber.

It's been a long and transformative month. I've had barely any time off and felt privileged when I've managed to sleep over 6 hours. I've worked in the knowledge that I personally won't be coming back to Bristo Hall next year, regardless of what happens, because of commitments I've made in Canada for next summer. I've given myself over to every moment in this knowledge and it's never occurred to me that this should lessen my desire to fight. Forest Fringe and Forest Café have shown me the beauty of collective ownership - of being part of something, and of it belonging to you entirely, but not exclusively. The hard work starts now. And I'm up for it. Because it's not just a building any more. It's a principle. It's one of those rare moments when you know the good guys from the bad guys. This is when you fight until you can't. And this is where we find our metal.

Forest Café...

Is not over, it's fighting. Money isn't the only kind of influence, and together we will rally to save this space.

In other news, I finished the HInterland today and it was unbelievably wonderful. I don't want to tell you what happened during the last canto for fear of making you jealous, but let's just say, it paid back the time and effort I put in. And considering how much time and effor that is, it is no small achievement.