The way we were

I think this may sound as though I’m being circled by the black dog again but I’m not.  I remain hopeful.  But my sanguine cynic is saying how different things are and are going to be for a long time. The way we were may never come back.  As I tell this story that you may have heard before, you may have watched before, try, as I have, to replay it under the new post-Covid rules of social engagement.

My favourite closeup magic involves a child, a silver dollar, a small pink silk and a crystal. I love/loved (how the addition of that final 'd' feels so portentous) performing the routine, often to a wonderful and evocative piece of music by Nick Webb of Acoustic Alchemy, called 'Positive Thinking.' A song for our times indeed.  A lot happens in the routine in less than four minutes.  There was a hidden story and the props themselves spoke as they changed, appeared and disappeared, from empty hands back to empty hands.  It was a story without words and the child was made central to its plot, witnessed by the audience.  I was proud of the routine which developed and grew over many years.  I performed it with a child stepping up into the arena with me and a very close, unspoken relationship grew between us which was key to its success.  We breathed the same air and occasionally touched as I guided her hands to join me in the magic. Choosing the right child was central and was usually a girl, though not always. Shy children were always preferred as there was an opportunity for them to grow within the experience.  Someone wrote to me about watching the routine and although I have quoted it in a previous blog chapter, here is that review again:

‘We witnessed and felt a moment of pure magic during the Malpas Yesteryear Rally this year and I am writing to you because it occurred during your final show of the weekend. At the start of this performance of your close up magic with coin, crystal ball and handkerchief you chose a little girl to assist you. It was a silent performance so I don't think we ever knew her name.

The moment that little ball vanished and the sadness on your face at its loss we were both drawn to this little girl. The sadness she shared and worry for you was palpable and in all honesty from that moment I'm not entirely sure what magic you were performing as I was, without exception, captured by the absolute focus on her face. This changed from worry to concentration and hope then wonder when she was guided to waggle her fingers in the direction of your closed hand and then she realised she was going to be part of the actual real life magic and make something appear from nothing. No words will ever be able to express that expression we saw but it is something that I believe will always stay with us and I'm not ashamed to say that along with goosebumps we both welled up a little at how adorable this moment was. We are convinced that she will go on to have a fondness in her heart for magic for the rest of her days and quite possibly will have started learning magic for herself already.

We have been captured by the warm embrace of your shows for many years now from the very first time at Hollowell Steam and Heavy Horse Show seven-ish years ago to Malpas this year. I hope that everyone who experiences your show has at least just a moment, even a flicker of the magic that little girl expressed so openly on her face. If they do, there is hope for wonder in the world once again.’

How would all that happen post Covid-19?  It just couldn't.  The child's parents would have to give permission for it to happen.  We would both have to wear masks, stay 6ft 2 ins apart (as would all strangers in the audience) and we would all have to sanitise our hands after the experience. Of course I'm joking.  But am I?

So I have been trying to capture some of the magic on video but have failed terribly.  Not only because of my inexperience with the technology although certainly there is a great deal to learn. I curse as I fail often to get anywhere near a performance I can feel proud of in any way and then the technology fails leaving me angry, frustrated and desperate in a way I never am with the child in live performance, no matter what goes wrong with the presentation, as it has from time to time.  So here’s the rub.  It’s not about what I do.  What I do is why we are there at that moment, the child and I, but the success of what happens is who we are in the human dynamic of that live relationship, captured forever in that moment.  It can never be achieved via a camera and screen.  Not ever. As King Lear says, ‘Never, never, never, never, never’.

So what I need to know is whether there is any point in even trying.  If you have some suggestions and ideas do please write to me.  I will reply.  All my instinct says the way we were has gone, maybe forever, and even trying to recreate it on video is not right for Mr A.

Many people (myself included) may hope for a return to that different kind of normal I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, where live performance in the close proximity to others can begin again but, if I am being totally honest, that hope is shaky at best. I feel I would be better employed once again, as I have done a few times through this extraordinary life of mine, to think again, start again and decide where I am travelling to next.

All the best from a road, on the other side of the screen, near you,

Mr Alexander

Never forget you’re an artist

I have a good friend, Greg Chapman, a magician, juggler and all round shaman who has taken this time to think about his performing persona, as we all must from time to time.  Regular readers of this blog will know I have been through my fair share of persona analysis, some of which has been aired and shared here.

When I was director at The Clocktower, the major lottery and Arts Council funded project which saw me through many of my best middle years, we developed programmes for young performers giving them skills and motivation to grow and learn.  I am still in touch with many of them and some have continued with careers in the business, and many others have spoken of their time in Mostyn with fondness and affection.

One of my overarching mantras to them was the title for this blog and I have been giving more thought recently to this notion. Important while none of us in our section of the arts can practice our chosen form.  We can rehearse and imagine of course but with no live response it makes it very different and in many respects a great deal harder. And we’re not earning anything which of course stretches the ‘garret on a crust’ artist notion to the nth.

Do we stop being an artist if a central tenet of our form is denied us by Corona? It certainly changes it fundamentally.  My friend and many others of my acquaintance have taken in earnest to the video and internet form with degrees of varying success in my opinion.  I have dabbled myself and will continue to do so, but it is by no means an easy road.  Translating pieces whose sole raison d’etre depends on a live response from another human into a medium which is anything but live (however hard some may pretend that it is) makes for an almost insurmountable challenge.  Not that I’m against insurmountable challenges.  I juggle knives while balancing on three folding chairs on a table and currently I am learning to ride backwards on my electric unicycle. But the form is so different.  No matter how much we play to that piece of wonder that is an iphone camera or webcam, it is not the same. Of course some can make it work wonderfully well.  If you can, check out ‘Captain of the Lost Waves’ and his regular ‘live’ Facebook shows.  And then maybe you’ll think an artist is an artist is an artist and the form is irrelevant. For me I’m not so sure.

In any case I have never fully believed that anyone can call themselves an artist.  It seems to me to be a statement of overblown self-importance, and signally lacking in humility.  You can say you are working in an arts medium but let posterity and others decide whether that epithet can be inscribed on your blue plaque.  For me, inscribed on my blue plaque, alongside the front door on my lorry, is ‘Entertainer’.  I prefer it, though in my heart, body and mind I strive to be an artist.  I try to let that notion pervade everything I do.  Not just the development of the performance and all that goes into it, but in lifestyle and the daily activity of living.  This requires a perpetual consciousness and a scrupulous attention to the detail of everyday thought and action.  I’m not pretending I’m good at it.  I’m striving, I’m not there yet.  Maybe it is the journey, not the arrival. But it is a road I decided years ago to travel and I do know it, or I thought I knew it. Then the Virus came along.  Maybe I should have been prepared, like the good yogi, for whatever, but…

And of course the good thing is that it has made us all think about what is important.  For me, I knew previously what was important to me.  Performing live to you. So now I have another major re-think in process.  Like my friend Greg who has discovered the magic of a magic wand, of being not just a showman but a shaman.  I have yet to finish the thinking and I will share the process with you here.  At the same time I will struggle with lighting, colour balance, auto focus and aperture.  Not to mention editing, deciding content and uploading to an internet which struggles to reach me in my lovely lorry. 

One day this week I edited until 3.00 am and put the results on a usb stick for first class guaranteed next day delivery (faster than my internet connection) to the people at Camp Quirky where I would have been performing for the first time this weekend.  If you have time my three short videos are being premiered this afternoon at their Virtual Camp Quirky;

https://www.facebook.com/events/610770992849581/

The event is for people who hand build their own camper vans.  Sound like my kind of folk.

All the best from a road, on the other side of the screen, near you,

Mr Alexander

The Pandemic – a view across the plateau

If the climb was strange, unexpected and life-changing, the plateau looks almost more so.  I can’t see live events being part of our lives again any time soon.  The weekly live event of clapping an invisible but fundamental heroic performance from our doorsteps whilst being essential, life-affirming and necessary, leaves me feeling I somehow missed the main show. And how I do miss my show and being on the road and all the wonderful people I met every weekend for the last however many, many seasons.

Like almost everyone in the UK I met the initial challenges of isolation with two weeks of manic cleaning and tidying.  Putting my lorry in order.  I added shelves, delved into and purged murky cupboards, discovered props and magic books I had completely forgotten.  I made do and mended, some on the new old treadle Singer.  I added a rediscovered DAB digital radio to the lorry cell and now enjoy Classic FM in wonderful clarity as I write. I plan shopping expeditions into Older Person’s hour in Sainsbury’s and eke out provisions.  I bake. I listen to birdsong and love walks through my bluebell wood in the grounds of the Big House. I do daily yoga.  Somehow the climb to the top of the plateau has been worthwhile.  I’ve learned about what is essential.  Not just, in Saint-Exupéry’s words, is it ‘invisible to the eye’, but the essential has been below the surface and for so long hidden by the need to earn, to own, and to keep on…

And wow has this re-learning curve been steep.  Painful.  Stoic. For me non-stop days of tidying, burning all the accumulated dead leaves, separating the hard from the ocean plastic.  Storing the latter in eco bricks for later inclusion in a wall somewhere. My wood-working neighbour at the yard went bankrupt just before all this and left a ton of detritus which I have separated and filed for future use appropriately.

And in the workshop alongside, my stage is now resplendently established. Mr Alexander’s Youtube Studio.  Another learning curve in prospect as I watch ‘how to’ videos on editing, green screen lighting and titling.  And review my own complete inadequacy in front of a camera, as anyone watching my amateur efforts thus far will testify.  But they will improve.  It is hard, not having a director and having zero experience.  What I thought was genius turns out on screen to be crass idiocy.  How true of the attempts at a creative life is that!  But as Elisabeth Gilbert in her wonderful TED talk ‘Your elusive creative genius’, examines, the most important thing is that we ‘show up’ and get on with the job.

And that is what I shall continue to do.  This new stage in my performing adventure will begin in earnest as I plot a path across the pandemic plateau (how I like a nice alliteration). I have a plan to use the studio not just as a performance space for mini shows to the strange invisible audience in my head, but also as a contemplation of the lifetime of a performer.  I think the two will be alternated in ‘a series of indefinite length’. I’m champing at the bit now and will film the first contemplation in the next few days.  It will be my first proper edit too.  What an exciting proposition. So I can only echo the moving analysis of our current situation by Sonya Renee Taylor -

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalised greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return my friends.

We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.

What we have been forced to leave behind we needed to leave behind. What is getting us through is what we will need to take forward, all the rest is up to us.

DREAM. While you have so much time. DREAM of the life you want. DREAM of the world you desire to exist in. Look for the places in your new dreams that have parts of the old world and remove them. What is the dream then?

From there we can add to the collective weaving of whatever it is that is next.

All the best from a road, on the other side of the screen, near you,

Mr Alexander