like falling from a great height

Yesterday was our first "Medicine Show". It was crowded and uncomfortable and emphatic and difficult. It was the way it should have been ... but, I keep thinking about when Momo first mentioned the idea of a variety programme: I imagined an amalgam of Monty Python and The Flight of the Conchords and Eddie Izzard, and thought, "Fuck, yes! We should do that!"

Last night, I sat under the shade of the staircase for our act. The performers - my friends and repertory members - braced an audience that giggled, looked aloof, yawned, gargled their wine, over-reacted, or paid very close attention. There was applause ... I mean, there is usually applause, because that's what people think to do, like putting a full stop at the end of a sentence. But I wondered about what we had done. What was it? Improv? Malarkey? Entertainment? ...
And what did it mean for us? I think we've always been in control of most of our performances and the readings at The Attic. We know what we're doing, there is a sense of purpose to most of it and the confidence that it all makes sense. We are on our feet.

I think that last night, with the crowd and the conditions at The Living Room, some of us felt suspended from a height, with our feet dangling below. And at that point, all you are really thinking is, "I hope I fucking land okay". This is what being a performer is really like. If there was nothing at stake for an acrobat, no risk of falling, we might all stop going to the circus.

And this morning, barely ten hours later, after conducting a rather unceremonious improvisation that left a deep impression, I thought this:

Performance is making your way from fearlessness to fearlessness. The first is the fearlessness of ambition - of staring at something in the dark or writing in your head, of singing in the shower or practicing in front of a mirror. At that sweet time you have nothing to fear, really. You will not imagine falling down because it is not part of your act - why would it be?
Then it happens ... because, well, everybody falls down. And you begin to sense this vertiginous drop every time you have to do it again.
But the resolve is that we will get to a point where there will be a new kind of fearlessness - where you know what the falling is, because you've experienced it, and it doesn't bother you, or maybe it even thrills you. And perhaps then you have reached somewhere as a performer.

I don't know, really. I write all of this while suffering an embarrassing lack of wisdom. I just hope we fucking land okay.

P.S. On the subject of heights, do watch James Marsh's documentary Man On Wire, if you can find it, and watch/listen to this beautiful song by The Postal Service.