Season Changes

The weather in London is turning grim, and I’m applying for visas (yes, more than one at a time - it’s complicated - of course it is) and writing synopses and lining up gigs for Sydney in November and then London into December and January next year. A good recipe for some moderate existentialism.

Admin isn’t exactly my strong point - I can get it done, but it usually feels like I have to corner myself at psychological gunpoint. Particularly queasy-making is the kind of admin that involves putting together my own achievements in boastful document form and asking other people to write me letters of recommendation or guarantee. I don’t know why that of all things should turn my stomach, but it definitely does. The bit that generates most dread for me is the part of it that involves asking OTHER people to do admin, so it’s like a horrible chain of organisational contingency.

Also, I’m mid-edit of the Amazon special, and it looks like I’m going to have to cut the songs out of the show - when we went to record, they said they were looking for about 70-75 minutes of show. When I was running Savage regularly, it used to come in about 1hr and 6 minutes, which is longer than you want for an Edinburgh show. So in the recording, I let all the jokes breathe and added a few bits in that were usually either/or.

Anyway, in the midst of the editing process they’ve come back and said they want about 65 minutes (arg). So because I don’t think I did a particularly good job of the songs on the night, and they’re not plot-Central, they’re the easiest big cuts. Apart from the love song singalong, which is pretty important and I’m pushing to keep it.

On the other hand, a Banjo out of nowhere just for one song seems... sudden? The structure of Savage uses an “unloaded gun/loaded gun” dialectic - where I introduce an idea or theme in a trivial way, before bringing it back with the ammunition in it (for those who’ve seen/heard the show, think about the role Mark Abercromby plays in introducing themes of love, loss and the unfinished/infinite.) In that way, I introduce the banjo for silly songs before I use it for the love song singalong. But I think it can stand on its own for that... we’ll see.

And there you go - after rendering myself miserable with Administrative Paperwork, I’ve cheered myself up by thinking about obscure arty structural finessing. The human mind is an exciting wonderland of contradiction and surprise.

Let me know if you want more of me talking about the little frameworky things in my shows that nobody will ever notice.

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