Melbourne update, plus Salon details.

Right oh! The clocks have changed again, so I’ll have to figure out better times for the salons. If you like attending the salons and have a time/day that’s most or least convenient for you, drop it in the comments and I’ll try to factor in as many people as I can when planning the new times.

Melbourne

I’m in Melbourne! Doing the comedy festival. It has been good so far, if extreeemely exhausting, and I’m only three days in, or four if you count the televised gala in front of 3000 people, which I guess I do, even though it was only a four minute spot. Ticket sales are hard work with a combination of pandemic hesitancy, not being allowed to flyer outside the town hall, and the venue I’m in being a building that doesn’t exactly invite walk-ups. But audiences so far have been very nice, which makes up for the fear of not covering your venue hire cost.

CHRONOS mark 3? Is an interesting show to do - it’s such a palimpsest. You’d think it would be easier to write a show you’ve already written, but it feels trickier. If it works, it’ll be like those patchy colour plates that you lay on top of each other and then suddenly there’s a picture. For the people who know the whole process, I’m hoping it’ll be like a Columbo episode; the pleasure in watching how I resolve it, rather than what the ending is.

The relaxing glitz and glamour of being in a hair and makeup chair at the Gala was slightly undermined by a milk emergency which meant I had to pump ( I think I prefer the more honest if more disgusting phrase “milk myself”. Takers?) and send a little bag of human milk back to Laser Fraser in an elaborate bucket chain of Ubers, friends and favours.

Man I’m glad I’ve spent a lot of my life being obliging, because I’m definitely calling assistance in from the universe now.

It’s interesting having special moments when you’re with a baby, because you know they won’t remember them. She is constructed by such infant moments, but the moments ‘work’ underground, as it were, in the substrate of personality, so it’s just you. I remember being confused as a child when my parents told me cute things I did as a baby, but I understand it better now.

I wonder if sharing private moments on social media alleviates the grief of when someone dies with whom you shared those private moments. Talking to widows and divorced people (divorcee sounds too jolly, though I know divorce definitely is a joy for some), it seems like one of the most grievous things is the loss of shared memories. That special moments, insights, epiphanies just evaporate into being in your own untrustworthy head alone. Something like how you need two people to speak a language for that language to be real - something about a shared memory that makes it into something else than memory. A communal narrative.

ANYWAY, Salon Details

Salon details this week are as follows!

Topic: Tea With Alice Salon 55

Time:

Apr 5, 2022 10:00 PM London GMT

Apr 6, 2022 07:00 AM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

Or your local time equivalent. Stick it in the diary and I’ll see you there! Will send the link through on the day.

Xx

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