Tonight we make show

I know that there will come a time when the bones ache and the joints creak so that I’m no longer able to do this.  Or maybe before then the desire shall leave me, the odd compulsion; or perhaps the songs will simply cease to come.  Until then, as best we can, we must make show.  We must play from the heart and howl at the moon.  We must laugh and dance and drink and shake and kick and bite and scratch and do whatever we must do to bring our songs to life and to make our lives sing.  We must share with the audience that we find the world as frightening and strange, absurd and mundane, as cruel, hilarious, brutal and beautiful as I imagine they all do too but, primarily, and perhaps most importantly, this must all be passed off as entertainment and nothing more.  We must do this accepting that we are there to be taken or left and that we may wake up from the song to find an empty room, audience long gone, off to find some other kind of fun.  We must accept this because although the Show is everything the Show is also nothing at all.  However, never mind; tonight we make show.

-A New International play Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh on Wednesday November 6th and The Circle, Cumbernauld on Friday November 8th.