THMC Opening Weekend, Tick

THMC opened last weekend at the Perth International Arts Festival's outdoor music venue, Becks Music Box.

It's Wednesday and I'm still knackered. How was I feeling beforehand? Tense, queasy, nauseous, and like I'd rather be anywhere else before the show goes up. Easier just to pack up and run, of course. Is it a viable option to pull the plug on all the hard work invested enthusiastically by a heap of people for this project? I think not, not unless I want to be run out of town.

Weeks of stuff, getting, making, fixing, arranging, learning, writing, driving, meeting, building, thinking,and then doing it all again, tweaking tweaking tweaking. At the end of all of that, I'm stuffed, completely. Nothing much left but excitement, fear and massive reservation. Then you have to do is the damn show!

Friday last, bumped into the outdoor venue. My reserve of performance energy evaporates, as the wind blows forcefully about the venue, threatening to tear the secrets from the board and reaping havoc with my carefully designed How-To cards and hand dyed paper for the typewriters. It's easy to have a bad feeling about all this, 'so not how it was in my head'. Others around me, Malcolm and Fiona, communicate their faith. Eventually, nothing left to do but the show.

On the first night, after a slow kinda shaky start, we ended up getting more secrets than the display board (meant for the whole season) could handle. It got very busy.
I didn't feel like a freak with nothing to offer. I didn't feel like that kid still looking at his bemused parents for approval. (thought about him a fair bit during the building of this show, actually.) It felt like the show did have something to offer for those people who were up for interacting with it. And yes, the more peeps drank the more they seemed up for it. So, lots of take-the-piss drunken secrets.

One damp one that I could tell was soaked in beer, claimed to have been soaked in piss, nice, not. One, and I quote, "I'm gonna rape you like a shoe". The mind boggles.
And then The Gift happened. Well that is to say the gift I received from the show.
OK, the show, Tawdry Heartburn's Manic Cures, is about an exchange of gifts, a manicure or palm reading in exchange for a secret donated anonymously etc etc.

Lots of interesting conversations and anecdotes with and from people, shared opinions and insights maybe, but I didn't realize there would be more than that coming my way.
These days it seems that palm reading is the thing that will get men to interact with THMC, and interact they did, both Saturday and Sunday nights. The first night a guy and his girlfriend were hanging around a little tongue tired and shy till Fiona and I had practically finished packing up. "Like I'm not trying to hassle you or anything but could you take a look?" They had had all night to ask and had even turned down the invitation to make an appointment earlier. Maybe they were just more comfortable at the end of the night. No wux fella. So, I do the reading as he and his girlfriend listening on, completely oblivious to the state of their faces. They were giving me that look. I found it shocking. OMFG how come I hadn't been prepared for that?

So on the second night the same thing again. even from this one fella and his mate, late twenties maybe. I give him his reading based on the study I've done and speak as plainly as I can. After, he says, 'Look, I'm scientist and I don't believe this stuff ever. But you were 95% accurate with everything you said'. And he gave me that look too.

So, what is this unexpected gift, this look I'm talking about? People who think that you are a unique and vital source of information, people who think that you know stuff about themselves that will change their lives irrevocably, and for the better, and people who have maybe had a few... these are the people that give you a look of unfailing openness and attention.It's like you get access to some inner part of people through that look because they are so focused, so intent on making sense of and remembering everything you say. I understand what they mean by a person hanging off every word you say. Powerful and needing a lot of respect, it's a big responsibility that look... It is a gift that look. It's a gift equally commensurate with all the secrets people have given THMC. Those secrets, now all piled up on the display board at Music Box, as I have said before, make me feel connected or rather not alone. They remind me of the stuff, not always clever, or poetic, and sometimes base and banal, but stuff nonetheless that I have burdened myself with over the years. The secrets remind me of all the stuff that I have often thought was nobody's but my own and how so much of it is seemingly so common to many of us.