Cough
it up
The anxiety has landed. I’ve been suspiciously chill about how hard and fast the Fringe is coming at me until just a few days ago.
I had a little distraction the other night when The King’s Theatre had a big re-opening party and I got to go because they held 20 tickets for local artists and I asked if I could have one and they sent me an invite with instructions for picking up my ticket. It’s been here for over 100 years but has been in reconstruction for as many years as I’ve been in Edinburgh. I don’t have a frame of reference for a before/after reveal, but it’s lovely now and I enjoyed the opportunity to see inside.
I don’t dream (or remember my dreams?) as often as I would like, so when I do have them I pay attention. It’s rare that I will have bad or scary dreams, but apparently that was the doorway this anxiety walked through and now it’s crawling around just underneath the surface of everything else I’m feeling as I move through my days.
In my dream my show was the first show of the day on the first day of the Fringe, and people were lined up outside the venue to get in to see it. There was so much excitement in the air. My mind was totally blown, where did they come from? How did they even find my show amidst all the other options and the fact that the venue is a little out of the way? Someone else was there to help open the doors and manage the folks pouring in while I set up and got all prepared behind the scenes. But when I entered the room ready to start on the momentum of a group that large, there were only like 2 or 3 people waiting awkwardly.
It was like all the air got sucked out of my lungs, and I was trying to recalibrate inside myself really fast. I felt embarrassed that I’d gotten it so wrong, and I was confused because all those people streaming in and buying drinks and heading into the room, had they just evaporated? They were no where else in the bar, so did I just imagine them? But I still had two or three people in the room, and I couldn’t show anything other than gratitude for their presence even though I was dying of embarrassment inside and hoping I could shake off this feeling to still do a good job. The dream ended with me thinking to myself how tired I was of being grateful for crumbs. And the thing was, I WAS genuinely grateful that anyone had come at all, but I was also reeling from this other thing I thought I had - or had and then lost - or made up completely - or just got totally wrong. Reconciling those things in a moment where I was being watched and evaluated felt really confusing and shitty and scary.
Even though my cold is better, I’m still feeling a new weird symptom that wasn’t present with my head cold. I have this itchy tickle that runs inside from the notch at the base of my neck down the centre of my chest for 5 or 6 inches. It makes me cough, but it’s just a dry, weak, cough that produces nothing other than total annoyance to me and anyone that has to hear me hack nothing up.
Maybe it’s the stories, itching to come out, ready to be given voice. Maybe there are other things that are wanting to be said that I’m holding too tightly.
I can think of at least one other situation in my life where there is a clear example of this happening, but that’s either going to be a story for another day or no story at all. And I feel like I’m trying. I feel like I keep putting myself out there and trying even though nothing is actually coming out of my mouth in the way I think it will or that is typical for me, so where is this irritation coming from and why is it hanging around?
I don’t know about that yet, but I do know that I am pretty stressed about this week. I’m all over the place, excited and hopeful and terrified and overwhelmed at what’s on my plate over the next few days. I will live, the things that need to get done will get done. And it will probably be great if I let it.
In the last few days, I’ve had two complete strangers tell me that they recognise me, that I’m familiar but they can’t place where or how they know me. I’d love to believe that it’s from my flyers, but they’re not up and around enough for that to be true. I notice this happens to me when I carry myself a certain way. It’s not necessarily postural, but has more to do with how I’m holding myself inside myself. It’s a good thing, but it comes with the acute sense of the weight of the responsibility of my own purpose that makes me feel vulnerable which makes me want to shrink back into invisibility. That sentence feels ridiculous to say outloud. Luckily there is more of me that no longer cares about that anymore. Unfortunately, there is still more of me that is bothered than I’d prefer.
Guess I’ll just keep coughing til it all comes up.
Fringe Cringe Fundraising - IT STARTS ON THE 8TH - OMGGGGGGGGG
I’m doing my show, The Spider Witches of Appalachia, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and that means I’ll need to wave this cringy little fundraising flag for the next several months. Since the beginning of time, creatives and artists of all types have been waving similar flags within their communities. If you know any cash-solvent patrons looking for creatives to support with loads of money and resource and connections, I’d be happy to bother them instead of you.
https://www.paypal.me/baerjenna
https://wise.com/pay/me/jenniferlaurenb
Every day (except Mondays) from 8 August to 30 August at 3:45pm I’ll be performing a show at a venue called The Outhouse. I’m pretty sure this is where they put new performers when they’re willing to give them a shot but still think they’ll probably stink.
The title of my show is The Spider Witches of Appalachia, and it’ll be listed as theatre but delivered mostly in a traditional oral storytelling style due to the fact that the venue is a bar that is willing to set up the barest black box style theatre situation in one corner (this is every Fringe venue unless you’re already famous and can fill an actual theatre). You can see my Fringe listings on the Festival Fringe website or the PBH’s Free Fringe website.
The story is about five generations of women in my family, and it explores the ways we pass things to and through each other and what happens to those transmissions when connections are broken or fragmented.
My biggest costs now will be for advertising and printing because I am solely responsible for gathering all of my own audiences for 20 performances. Fringe flyers and posters are already starting to go up around the city, just a few here and there for the big names with big agencies and big budgets and big ticket prices. This is not quite the echelon I’m working in yet, so it’ll be up to me to start plastering my own face on any available square inch of city I can find. Then, in August, I’ll be out on the streets with the other thousands of artists, and/or the folks they hire to do the flyering, handing out flyers to anyone who will take them, trying to convince folks to go off the beaten path up to my little venue to hear my little story.
So here I am, posting the QR codes and links to Paypal and Venmo and Wise, and hoping you’ll help me print my flyers.
Isn’t this so insane?! Thank you for being here. I love you.