Sunday 11 March 2012

THE GOOD MEDICINE.


Sometimes, you have ideas, vague dreams maybe, whilst drifting off to sleep. They juggle for position with thoughts of what to do with lottery winnings, the oh so witty comebacks you never got to make but should have and imaginings of sun-swept coastlines. You ponder on them for a moment, then move on, dismissing them as fancies, tell yourself; "sure I'd never be able to do that! It would never work!"

But what if one day you thought; "fuck it! I'm going to have a go at doing the thing! It might work! Even just for a little bit.."

So, I decided to try... and on Thursday 8th of March 2012.... It worked!

From moment one (the vague dreaming) I had a sequence of images in my head of the night. It contained a completely eclectic array of performers who would be big and bright and stunning, the sound would be perfect, the night would flow, the spoken word would hook the capacity audience, everyone would get on, there would be laughter and tears of joy, banter, a brimming bucket, calls for "MORE!" and dancing.

There was at least as much as that and as I looked around the faces during the night, to see the most unlikely of Lismore's people with eye's closed, lost entirely in some hidden part of themselves, there was evidently more. Since then, people have been coming up to us saying things like;
"best night I had in ten years!"
"how did you get the bands to come they were amazing!?"
"the spoken word stuff is brilliant, it made the night totally different"

Everyone is a little bit shocked.. including me.

I have to of course thank all the performers who risked the first night and absolutely made it! All the lads from TORCAN (with a fada) and FEAR STALKS THE LAND were fantastic at mucking in together during sound checks, as there wasn't a huge pile of room and I'm no sound technician! All the lads are so professional though that they know their gear inside out and the sound on the night was just spot on. .. apart from the odd mobile phone interference from somewhere. Plus they were all genuinely nice guys and a pleasure to work with.

Massive appreciation to Rab Urquhart aswell, another all round good bloke, who did a huge service to The Sessions by being the first spoken word performer, a brave task to an uninitiated crowd I would say. I could sense that the audience was a little unsure as to the protocol involved in spoken word at first, their faces went something like this: is it alright to clap after every poem? Do you laugh when it's funny? Should we make intellectual faces whilst listening? what is this!?.. I think I like this stuff... hahahahahahhh! different stuff!... BOOM!.. got it.! LOVE IT!
Nicola Tull stepped onto our 'open floor' as the first 'open floorer', another brave gesture, especially considering it was her first time reading her poems publicly. Would love to eventually drum up more 'open floorers', but they are proving elusive so far, think I need to market it better.

It's taken me far too long to realise that IT IS OK TO TRY YOUR IDEAS OUT. I need to give MUTANT ARTSPACE  a nod here too, because I have had great words of encouragement from Moray along the way... and while I'm here, more than a couple of words need to be said about my lovely other half, The Ronald, who made the Medicine Room magic and generally propped everything/everyone up, and fashioned a projector screen weight from an old iron.

CHEERS! Vick.















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