Just a scattering of youngsters this morning. They weren’t students, I could tell. Their faces were small, naïve, made blank by alcohol. A scattering, a smattering outside The Academy and a clustering around the town clock. One, a girl, in a cream sequined mini skirt and maroon Dc Marten boots and another in a halter neck top and trousers and white platform shoes. I watched her cross the walk street from The Angel to a doorway under some scaffolding. A boy followed her. She looked triumphant, proud, until moments later he left to join his mates huddled by the pub’s entrance. She remained where she stood and stared, boring into his back. A line of taxi cabs, their engines idling, waited outside New Look. Down by the harbour a car parked, its headlights shining hard against the railings opposite. The tide was high, waves crashing onto the road, spilling salt water everywhere. A lad got out of the passenger seat and ran across to the railings, leaning over them to look at the water. He stood as if counting. Then it came. A huge wall of water, up and up then down breaking its fall unrelentingly upon his back. He crouched and curled inside himself taking the lashing of wet for some seconds before scuttling off back to the car. Was it a dare? He would’ve of been drenched. But even so I understood it. It is magnificent. Such power. A potent force. Just to be part of it, baptised by it. I understand.
It was a throwaway remark delivered as I laid our shopping on the conveyor belt. Did you have a good Christmas? I don’t celebrate Christmas, she replied, stone-faced. Should I of left it at that? Why not? Are you Jewish? I asked rather apologetically. Her face remained dead-pan, hard to do when your hair is a home-dyed tinge of green and there are fat, metallic braces across your teeth. No, we just adhere closely to the Bible. I try to find my bearings. Are you a Jehovah’s Witness? No, I think they celebrate Christmas. I tried a few more, Quaker, Mormon, Non-Conformist? She was having none of it. Cagey. Do you go to church? I continued. No, she replied, it’s just me and my family. She thanked me at the end for showing an interest. Was she in truth rather irritated? Should I have let it go? Most people aren’t interested, she said. And I was, am. In the car he tells me of an occasion a week or so back when he been in there and looked for an open till. This same girl had been available. Oh, you don’t want her, one of the staff had said to him, she’s hopeless.
It is only difference. That’s all.
It’s about the ordinary. Embracing the ordinary. Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. It seems that if I could let go of my need for public approval or recognition I, and my work, would be much happier. I shall do it for myself. All of it. The writing, the making, the performing. I am the only audience, the only recipient. It is enough, isn’t it?
I feel a bit crook today. Don’t go for a walk, he said, stay at home with me. But I can’t. I must keep going. First a booking then it was cancelled. Did I wake you? she asked. That’s OK, I replied.
See the detail, the beauty. Change your perspective. Breathe. Let the work be what it needs to be. It is enough. You do not have to be good.
But you are. You are.
