AliceFraser

I’m back! (ish), and Salon 41 details.

Added 2021-11-27 23:55:52 +0000 UTC

Hallo lovely Patreonites.

Andy Zaltzman (of The Bugle) is in town for The Cricket (his one true love), and so he came over to record a podcast with me on Friday. It was very strange and nice. I also did ABC radio show Thank God It’s Friday that day (also with Andy). It was absolutely exhausting, particularly as the ABC radio show is recorded standing up in the studio and it turns out standing up for an hour is quite hard for me right at the moment. In sum, it was a delightful day, if probably slightly faster off the starting blocks of back to normal than I was really ready for.

It was my first proper work since part of my body turned itself inside out and produced a new person, and though five weeks on I’m still physically feeling the impact of that body-tornado, psychologically I am excited to be creating other things than just human life.

I have finally decided on a name, by the way, though I haven’t decided what her On The Internet Name should be, so do ply me with your suggestions.

Today would be my mum’s birthday, so with a baby who is a month and a bit old now, it is a day full of thoughts. My mum would have loved to be a grandmother. I will play some of her music to my baby today, from the cassette tape of her band Phaedra that I found in our house many years ago and recorded old school onto my computer. For those who listen to Tea With Alice, it’s their recording of Elsie Thompson that I use as my intro/outro music.

Here, if you want to listen yourself.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4qvbuvh4hufvhvb/AADV24ii6QePqP68VybNEvica?dl=0

Today is also the day I wrote on my calendar as the “End” of “Maternity leave”. I scare-quote those words because it’s all pretty arbitrary and I’m thinking about what any of that means in the context of the way I work,

On one hand, I’m an artist. I don’t get paid leave or superannuation or any of the things people with bosses get. In exchange I get extreme flexibility. I can start writing with a baby asleep on me (as I’m doing now), as long as my brain stays vaguely functional. It won’t disturb my coworkers if I take a call with a person attached to my boob, or if I smell funny, or if I have to take a break to change a nappy. When she wakes up, I can ask her what she thinks about my jokes and get her feedback. (Feedback is what I call it when she gets some sort of digestive something while feeding and vomits angrily onto my nipple - a degrading experience, if luckily quite rare).

She doesn’t think much about my jokes or writings at all, of course, still figuring out what her own face is, but you’re meant to talk to them a lot because parental speech helps with their brain development and I never know what to say. I don’t know if it still contributes to their brain development if you just switch on one of your own podcasts in the background and go make a cup of tea, and the Parents’ Helpline didn’t have an answer for me. I think they’re more geared to answe questions from people who are panicking about a rash or worried they’ll drop their baby in the shower.

Live work will become exponentially easier somewhat later down the line when I’m not on call as a milk bag/life support system. Apart from that it’s just figuring out the balance of how to make work I can be proud of, without neglecting this amorphous quality of parental attention that builds the fragile but essential invisible girders of the human psyche. Which is an ongoing process, forever. And you don’t really find out if you did it okay or enough until they end up being able to have nourishing secure human relationships as an adult.

That said, I have this gig on 9 December at the Comedy store in Sydney. Which I was stupid to agree to but am now interested in doing as an artistic experiment. The only survival instinct I had when I agreed to do it, apparently, was to put in the blurb that it would be a mix of new and old material.

So if you’re in sydney, do come along. It will be incredibly weird for me, and possibly incredibly weird for you too, depending on what comes out of my mouth. I’d advertise it as an improvised gig but I don’t trust my improv skills right now, when most of my riffing involves saying inane things like “this is your foot! Is this your foot? Yes it is! It’s your foot!” Which would make for a very existential show, but possibly not in the way that I’m used to delivering.

I did have a good friend ask me why I am rushing back into things and don’t just take the time to be a mother, and apart from the don’t get paid if I don’t work element, I think it’s in part because I got used to … keeping on when other things are happening? With mum, if I’d stopped my life when things at home were hard, I’d have pulled a handbrake in my mid teens and never moved forward. Jokes about comedians being forever children aside, that didn’t feel like an option then, and it’s probably pathologically not an option now.

I am lucky enough that I can podcast from home, writing jokes in the spaces in my day, and stretch out my work as those spaces open up more.

We’re back to recording The Gargle next week - I hope you’ve enjoyed the special collectors editions. I’ll be easing back into Tea With Alice at my own pace, and I’ll be doing a Salon this coming Tuesday for all you lovely Patreons. It will be in UK time to start with, because I feel more confident in being able to control my mornings more or less.

Salon Details

Tea With Alice Salon 41

Time: Nov 30, 2021 08:00 PM, London

Dec 1, 2021 07:00 AM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney

or your local equivalent

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86865441146?pwd=K2x2QUNBUTBuVjFWd1BtMlMwYS94dz09

Passcode to follow for Patreon subscribers closer to the time.

—-

As ever, if you like anything I do, please share my work around. It helps.