AliceFraser
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Melbourne update, plus Salon details.
🕑 Added 2022-04-04 03:12:33 +0000 UTCRight oh! The clocks have changed again, so I’ll have to figure out better times for the salons. If you like attending the salons and have a time/day that’s most or least convenient for you, drop it in the comments and I’ll try to factor in as many people as I can when planning the new times.
Melbourne
I’m in Melbourne! Doing the comedy festival. It has been good so far, if extreeemely exhausting, and I’m only three days in, or four if you count the televised gala in front of 3000 people, which I guess I do, even though it was only a four minute spot. Ticket sales are hard work with a combination of pandemic hesitancy, not being allowed to flyer outside the town hall, and the venue I’m in being a building that doesn’t exactly invite walk-ups. But audiences so far have been very nice, which makes up for the fear of not covering your venue hire cost.
CHRONOS mark 3? Is an interesting show to do - it’s such a palimpsest. You’d think it would be easier to write a show you’ve already written, but it feels trickier. If it works, it’ll be like those patchy colour plates that you lay on top of each other and then suddenly there’s a picture. For the people who know the whole process, I’m hoping it’ll be like a Columbo episode; the pleasure in watching how I resolve it, rather than what the ending is.
The relaxing glitz and glamour of being in a hair and makeup chair at the Gala was slightly undermined by a milk emergency which meant I had to pump ( I think I prefer the more honest if more disgusting phrase “milk myself”. Takers?) and send a little bag of human milk back to Laser Fraser in an elaborate bucket chain of Ubers, friends and favours.
Man I’m glad I’ve spent a lot of my life being obliging, because I’m definitely calling assistance in from the universe now.
It’s interesting having special moments when you’re with a baby, because you know they won’t remember them. She is constructed by such infant moments, but the moments ‘work’ underground, as it were, in the substrate of personality, so it’s just you. I remember being confused as a child when my parents told me cute things I did as a baby, but I understand it better now.
I wonder if sharing private moments on social media alleviates the grief of when someone dies with whom you shared those private moments. Talking to widows and divorced people (divorcee sounds too jolly, though I know divorce definitely is a joy for some), it seems like one of the most grievous things is the loss of shared memories. That special moments, insights, epiphanies just evaporate into being in your own untrustworthy head alone. Something like how you need two people to speak a language for that language to be real - something about a shared memory that makes it into something else than memory. A communal narrative.
ANYWAY, Salon Details
Salon details this week are as follows!
Topic: Tea With Alice Salon 55
Time:
Apr 5, 2022 10:00 PM London GMT
Apr 6, 2022 07:00 AM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Or your local time equivalent. Stick it in the diary and I’ll see you there! Will send the link through on the day.
Xx
A
Comments
Mike Machin
I don't know why the idea of 'milking oneself' is disgusting but I have to agree that I don't like it. I suppose the idea of milking is an activity most strongly associated with cows, and to characterise a Woman thing as a Cow thing is definitely offensive. Your mention of the loss of shared memories took me straight back to conversations with an elderly neighbour who died some years ago. She used to say that for her the very worst thing about growing old was that all the friends and family that connected you to your past via shared memories started dying off. I'm aware in myself of memories of the particular phraseology or tones of voice or styles of story telling of my Dad's sisters - all now dead - which fewer and fewer people remember let alone cherish as I do. Perhaps audio or video recordings, or photographs or even letters (remember them?) would give some comfort, but they don't alter the fact that a specific connection between two human brains is no longer possible. Oh dear, I hadn't intended to start the week on such a mournful note. Thank goodness there's a salon to look forward to.
Thankyou! Fixed
Hey Alice - not sure that the dates can be correct for this - Australia is normally the day ahead of London...
