The trail of breadcrumbs

I’ll start where I left off last week, and with the possibility of a new start. 

It’s been a rollercoaster week of learning and creating and I have to say I am back on form after my dalliance and dance with the black dog.  Several things brought me out and I want to tell you about them.  I had some uplifting emails and I am so grateful for those who sent messages of hope and encouragement.  People who had really thought about what I’ve been saying and knew where I’ve been.  One of the best things about us humans is our capacity to be there.  I’m not sure about empathy.  I have a friend who says ‘a problem shared is a problem doubled’, which is funny and true because it is funny or maybe funny because it is true.  But being there and showing up for someone going through mental health challenges is a lot more helpful honestly, so thank you.

It all launched me on a search for what it means to be creative and my guru in the search became Elisabeth Gilbert, by way of her TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius ).  I downloaded her book ‘Big Magic’ after listening to her talking recently with head of TED, Chris Anderson, about being overwhelmed by the coronavirus.  That journey took me also to the thoughts about what I have been good at in my life and what I could explore in the way of following Ms Gilbert’s ‘trail of breadcrumbs’.

I responded to an email from someone I knew years ago when I ran The Clocktower, the training and education centre I founded in the heady days of the early lottery.  She founded and now runs an arts charity in North Wales and was looking for a project to launch and rebrand the Charity’s work.  The long and the short is that I’ve been helping with that as a volunteer and have been creatively involved with developing a project for 18-24 year olds who have been effected by the constraints of lockdown and feel isolated and a bit lost.  Like us all really but we oldies have at least had the huge advantage of a pandemic-free career to look back on, reflect on, remember and feel good about.  And unlike half the world who, as well as all those feelings, are also suffering, starving, homeless, disenfranchised and desperate.

So I am following the trail and I must say it IS fascinating.  It’s not about a new career, though the thought of earning a penny or two from it at some point is a vague possibility.  It is about doing something for the others again.  'Storing my grain in the belly of my neighbour' as Ms Gilbert quotes. And I must say that thought is uplifting and energising. I am finding a new energy and enjoying all the new ways of co-working now far more technologically than they ever were in my day, but clever and useful and matching in some ways the workings of the human brain.

The project would be a four week online (how could it be anything else) project for young people interested in discovering their creativity and working towards a career.  There’s a psychologist also in the brainstorm (sorry – blue sky thinking) team and I am finding the process hugely rewarding.  Wherever it leads.  There is the possibility of a live event (or whatever might be possible under the emerging guidelines for human:human contact) or a video showcase at the end and mentoring young individuals in their personal career journeys.

In many ways it is a reflection and realisation of some of what I have tried to do whilst on tour.  I’m thinking of the many, many young people who always seem to be ‘hangers-on’ (wrong phrase, I know) to the show in almost every place I visited.  How easily that has stepped into the past tense! They were mostly open-minded thinking people who become fascinated by what I do and end up being drawn into the ‘big magic’ of it all.  I could list them now as I have learned their names over the years and it has always fascinating to catch up with their journeys annually as we met and met again.  I have watched many grow up and have children of their own. The project is a way I can stay involved with learning (another life-long study and fascination), community development and, hey, let’s not be humble here, the future of the human race, the planet and existence itself.

Because in all this I can only do what I can do from the perspective of lockdown, shielding, video conferencing and old people’s shopping hour.  And a bit of practice of close-up magic for fun and brain exercise.  But these local and neighbourhood processes and actions are virtually all we have.  Funny how the word ‘virtual’ has come to mean something very different now.  But the virtual is at least far better than nothing.

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

Mr Alexander

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

‘What might have been and what has been...

Point to one end, which is always present.’  TS Eliot. 

I am writing this chapter on what would have been my first day of shows - Hereford Steampunk Festival - Summer 2020.  If only I’d had a 20:20 vision of the truth of what has been. 

How I already miss the face to face.  So much of my life I have avoided the call of the small screen which, apart maybe from the fame it might have brought, I have always eschewed. I have always said quite honestly that the reason I love what I do grows from the personal closeup immediacy of live performance. Immediate responses from people fashion the detail and nuance of my shows, whether a fully choreographed performance that I have presented in the same order every weekend, every season for forty-five years or a brand new micro-closeup routine for one or two children, presented impromptu at the end of a long day.

And all now gone perhaps never to return without prior sanitisation, a safe six feet and the issues, for me at least, of age and immunity. The government saying it will be a long time before older people will be allowed out in polite society without masks and rubber gloves. 

But it’s probably too soon to know the truth of what time future might be.  There are many things none of us want back.  Or maybe we dread them coming back and we’re not quite sure how to stop the inevitable.  Maybe it isn’t inevitable.  These many moments of isolation must have taught us what is important and though no-one would swap a virtual hug even for the memory of a real one, the things we have learned will stay with us forever.

As for me, I am learning very fast.  I have put the stage up in the workshop and have recorded ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO0MKPENfPQ) - the first (I hope of many) short ‘divertissements’, which I am calling ‘an autobiography in performance’.  Of course there will be magic and manipulation, merriment and mayhem.  There will also be moments of meaning.  Well, maybe meaning.  Enough of the alliteration and on with the show.  Learning this new craft is taking up my every waking moment, well, almost every.  I baked bread today for the first time in many, many years.  And wow how delicious it was, warm with best butter and homemade rhubarb and ginger jam bought last year at the West Show in Guernsey and tasting of pre-covid sunshine and optimism.

I have also discovered an old cabinet treadle Singer sewing machine in a forgotten cupboard here at my workshop.  A little internet research found that it was made on the exact same month and year of my birth. (October 1949, if you didn’t know).  Parts are still available and I am thrilled to report it is now oiled and up and running and I sewed the new curtains for the front of my lorry with it.  The lorry is resplendent with all manner of new accoutrements, far too many to list and I am loving living in it in my yard in the peaceful Cheshire sunshine.  Life is a joy.

And so it will go on.  Watch out for more blogs than of late and links to my collaborative Facebook shows with Greg Chapman (search Facebook for him and Felicity his lovely, sanguine, reflective wife) and my solo efforts which will be not so much show (you need a live audience in front of you for that and let’s not pretend anything over the internet is live)… not so much a show, but a reflection of a life spent in live performance of one kind or another.  I have many ideas and if you have any requests for things you have seen me do live and for real in front of your very eyes, please do let me know through the usual channels.  I’m not a great purveyor of social media but I do respond more or less immediately to emails (david@mralexander.co.uk) and I love hearing from you.

All the best from a road, safely more than six feet away, from you,

Mr Alexander

A time of change (again)

Well it has been a real change all this for all of us.  All my events cancelled or put on hold.  The government saying it will be 18 months before 70+s will be allowed out. Some terrible things.  Many millions of people dying or made very ill.  All the things we thought of as permanent now shown to be completely ephemeral.

And some wonderful things.  Sublimely quiet streets and foxes and deer coming back into our everyday lives.  Birdsong every morning uninterrupted by human interventions.  A clear sky.  The ozone layer returning.

We are having to rethink our lives and for the better.  It will never be the same, hopefully.  And we must be hopeful. 

And as for Mr A.  Well he’s not going to be the same again.  Grown a beard.  The first of my life apart from a very sorry attempt years ago.  Actually I had to this time.  I was being ID’d in the queue at Sainsbury’s old people hour.  At least I look my age now even if I don’t behave it. As you will see if you manage to read this before 15:00 today Sunday 19^th April as I’m doing a special guest appearance on my friend Greg Chapman’s Facebook Show.  Here’s the link -  https://www.facebook.com/events/221643285849511/  but if the day is past then Greg’s own Facebook website should contain a copy of the show here:  https://www.facebook.com/GregandFelicityAdventures/

I do hope you can watch it.  I enjoyed filming it and am planning to do some more.  Maybe I will yet become a star of the silver screen, as I’d always dreamed.  I have put the stage up in the workshop and it has become a small scale TV studio.  I have learned a great deal about video and sound in the process, much thanks to my ingenieur and friend Ralph in Wallingford (how I will miss BunkFest).

And how I will miss being on the road, especially if the 70+ edict becomes law.  Those boffins better hurry with the anti-vac. It is amazing to think that my first booked gig would have been next weekend.  So the season would not have even started yet.  Martin Orbidans, my brilliant accompanist, would still be in Cairo, which is where he is staying, hunkering down in the heart of the Souk.  Rather him than me, brave soul.  He sends his very best to all of you who have come to know and love him as I have.

So let us end optimistically and hopefully, as we began.  Let’s enjoy and embrace this change.  Let’s enjoy the peace and the moments of great joy we can find in these days.  We will remember them as being moments of epiphany.  Let’s remember those who have given and go on giving to make this world a place suitable for civilisation and humanity.

I have learned so much and go on learning.  I’m rehearsing every day and doing yoga.  Cooking wonderful concoctions in the lorry and I have everything I need.  Later today I’m having a Zoom meet up with my family.  Up until recently I didn’t even know what that was, now I’m so looking forward to embracing the brave new world.  It’s a beautiful one.

This morning I listened to a podcast recording (Rumble Strip if you’re into podcasts) and a recording of a balcony performance of ‘What a wonderful world’ from somewhere in America.  It said it all and will bring tears to your eyes as it did to mine.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

My seventieth year begins…

It’s not my seventieth as a performer although I think in my very early years I discovered the calling.  My debut leading role in the Sunday School drama ‘Little Tuck’s Dream’ (I was little Tuck and five years old) propelled me into a life of loving the ring of laughter and applause. So I guess I can claim this is my sixty-fifth season in my seventieth year.

But that’s enough of that.  The season has started and I am writing this in the lorry at the Hereford Steampunk Festival in the intriguing and historic Hereford Waterworks Museum.  And a cold, blustery and wet start it was with a thus-far unnamed Storm disrupting set up day and a very difficult access problem, eventually solved by a friendly woman with a tow bar who was able to hook up the trailer and we manhandled it into the right space so the real business could start.

The Hereford Steampunk Festival is a noble affair supported by the great and good of the Steampunk world.  I love all things Steampunk.  The people are warm-hearted, eccentric, imaginative folk who have found a niche in this meeting of all things quirky Victorian with Jules Verne science fiction, and a touch of Philip Pullman for good measure.  I hope I don’t sound patronising. I don’t mean to be. A fabulous melange and some superb costumes, concepts and contraptions.  Last night I co-hosted an evening of such performance with my good friend and steampunk entertainer Greg Chapman and a superb, if sadly under-supported event it was.  The forty or so steampunk souls were rather swallowed in the cavernous and impressive Hereford Shire Hall, but it made no difference to the power, creative energy and genius of those performing on the programme.  The soiree was a rip-roaring success, topped by a solo performer whose extraordinary talent, musical virtuosity, raw energy and profound observation of humankind took us away from our daily struggles and strife.  Captain of the Lost Waves.  Google him, Youtube him but best of all go to a live event where he performs.  When I first saw him, whatever I was expecting from this diminutive, top-hatted soloist rapidly vaporised as his energy, musicality and genius emerged.  He worked the tiny crowd and by the end we all danced with him, accompanied him to this other world seduced by wry perception, superb tunes and rhythms and sheer exuberance for life.

It is by witnessing such talent that makes me understand, yet again, why I am in this business.  And although the aging coil aches in places where it used to play, I find I can still amuse with all the strange antics in my repertoire so I shall carry on.  I have told friends and family, and I tell you all here, that I shall give it all another five years before taking some time to contemplate the following five.  At this time of life, contemplating eras in bunches of five years seems sensible and profoundly pragmatic.  Not that I’m known for my sensible nature.  Although I said I wouldn’t, I have resurrected the three chair balance and it is there, beckoning with a strange somewhat macabre look on its face…

I also have a new dance.  Inspired by the fabulous and nostalgic film Stan and Ollie, I have found a choreographer prepared to stifle her sniggers and teach me a few moves.  Set to Maff Potts’ short, sweet celebration of his son Herbie’s birth, it finishes off the third show of the day.  I would welcome your critique of it.  Anyway I love dancing it so I hope that comes over even if I will not be winning Strictly with it.

And some new close up magic and last, but by no means least, the addition of Martin Orbidans and live music to accompany the show.  Persuaded back from early retirement in faraway exotic Eastern lands, Martin brings his amazing musical virtuosity to the show this summer.  I look forward to my seventieth year and sixty-fifth season with enormous pleasure and anticipation and look forward to seeing you somewhere during it.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander