Out, Damned Spot! (Or: some people have trouble letting go, an exercise in catharsis.)

I’ve been bottling this for a couple of days. It is, however, time to get this poison out of my system so I can get on with some of the many awesome things my life contains at the moment. Last Friday (3-May-19), I hosted a Hammer & Tongue Cambridge as usual. It was a fine night in many respects – excellent performers, including last-minute support act the divine Rebecca Cooney; pretty lovely slam; one of my favourite local performers won; I got to see one of my closest friends after a few months apart; we got decent numbers in the audience; and the headliner, Jah-Mir Early, did his usual breath-stealing, improvisational spoken word magic. Why am I needing to vent about it?

Well. Glad you asked. I’ve been running Hammer & Tongue Cambridge as the host since January 2012. Before that it was run for just over two years by another host, who I won’t name. If you know who it is, you know who it is. I started “helping out” in April 2010, which meant: doing front of house, scoring the slam, and latterly doing a great deal (if not most) of the publicity work. In that time, HTC has moved from tiny, dingy pub venues (which I would also have to set up much of the time, and for which I bought lighting, basic sound equipment, etc.), through a much nicer bar venue, to a local arts centre which is wheelchair accessible, clean, and pleasant to be in. Where I no longer have to set up the box office myself, hoick the sound and light equipment up two flights of stairs, and fight my way out with them at the end of the night through lairy drunks (and that was in the nicer venue). Where forty people in the audience was considered the giddy zenith, that’s our baseline now. Our regional final sells out. We have a decent social media following on multiple platforms. We’re proudly part of a larger spoken word scene in the city which is burgeoning all the time. We run on time, break even/ turn a small profit on occasion, and can afford to pay headliner and support act small but reasonable fees without any external funding. The audience and performers are as safe as we can make them from insults and threats of violence.

None of those latter sentences should be remarkable, really, but they’re stated in strong contrast to how things were before I took on the mantle after the previous host stropped off because virtually no-one was turning up to the events, and no-one offered him the requisite “respect”. The penultimate two events under his aegis were totally paid for by me alone (headliner fees, publicity, etc.), and I had to absorb a great deal of aggression and posturing from this stale breadstick before we could all move on.

So far so okay, Fay, what’s your point? At the last event, one of the Old Guard, one who used to come and slam/ watch on the regular under the previous regime turned up. He stood out from the rest of the crowd because he got increasingly intoxicated (I use this word carefully) and lairy, having to be repeatedly asked to shush while other people were talking. Afterwards, having been sought out to be praised/ thanked by various members of the audience and other performers for my crowd control skills (which really shouldn’t have to happen!), I made the error of talking to this chap outside the venue as I waited for the headliner to get back. I warned myself against the desire to mollify aggressive men, but there you go – part of me wants as many members of my audience to walk away happy as possible.

Among other jabberings, he took the time to faintly praise me for “carrying the torch” (sic) of Hammer & Tongue Cambridge. It took me until I got home to work out quite why I was so annoyed by that particular phrase (probably because it was drowned out by what happened next). When I wryly thanked him, saying we’d carried it but changed its shape somewhat, he took the opportunity to complain about how he’d felt tense and repressed (at least, I think that’s what the crouching body language and bouncing, palms-down hands implied) throughout. Maybe I’d noticed, he confided, that he wasn’t entirely sober by the end. Yeah, I had. He theorised about my hosting style being responsible for this tension. This tension that, as far as I could tell, only he felt. He then appeared to do an impression of me speaking, murmuring: “Mehr, mehr, mehr-mehr-mehr.” Then, as I barely responded past a side-eye from under my hat, repeated it: “Mehr, mehr, mehr-mehr-mehr,” complete with smirk and crouching little dance to complement his “feeling repressed” gestures of earlier. Yeah, I got it, dude – you think I’m a less than dynamic presenter.

I was able to pay the headliner and leave shortly after that. By the time I’d got home, after lengthy catch-ups with said beloved headliner and my other too-long-unseen friend, it turns out I’d let this fucknugget get in my head. “Mehr, mehr, mehr-mehr-mehr.” – the sound of a softly-spoken, female-presenting person doing their job. “Mehr, mehr, mehr-mehr-mehr.” – the sound of a mean schoolteacher oppressing the God-given rights of naughty men to be as loud as they want while someone else is talking. “Mehr, mehr, mehr-mehr-mehr.” – the sound of someone who’ll never measure up to the shouty posturings of a third-rate poet and tenth-rate event host who used to drunkenly insult me from the stage and, I discovered years later, buy/ sell drugs in the carpark during the tediously extended intervals, taking up disproportionate swathes of time on the stage with his own repetitive work. My nights aren’t perfect. I could work harder at getting more people in, do more publicity, make more of a spectacle of it, but I’m never going to get loud just to suit other people – I decided long ago that that course of action gets you nowhere – they’re just going to have to lean in to hear better.

Last year a headliner calmly told the audience that he wanted to stalk me, and they seemed to lap it up. Certainly no-one told him off or offered me support afterwards. One of the audience, in fact, told me afterwards that I loved the headliner for it. I didn’t remonstrate with either of directly (too many years’ training of “mollify the man, soothe him in case he hurts you”?), but I’ve written a poem about it, so that’s all right. {eyeroll} It’s still a tough world as a female-presenting performer and MC. For every ten people or so who think I’m doing a good job, and loves what I’m doing as an artist and a host, there seems to be one who thinks I’m fair game for stalking, pervy comments about my voice, claims that my voice is “fake”, off-stage racist diatribes they think I’ll support, or jittery banter about my unshouty hosting style. “Mehr, mehr, mehr-mehr-mehr.”

Carrying the torch? Fuck you, buddy. How about ditching a toxic legacy? How about transforming the event into something welcoming and professional? How about feeding and transporting that guttering flame and building a hearthfire? How about soldiering the fuck through with no support from my predecessor’s Old Guard? How about nearly four times the length of service in this event alone compared to his? How about the fact that I run a stage at Strawberry Fair that’s dedicated to spoken word and brings people in from fifty miles around? How about my five-star shows at Edinburgh Fringe? How about my BBC and other commissions? How about my national reputation as someone who works to raise and safeguard the spoken word scene? How about my national reputation as professional, hardworking, and talented? How about my well-known propensity to make every performer and audience member feel welcome unless they’re a hate-mongering douchecanoe? How about my small press, my open-hearted open mics, my fund- and awareness-raising for local charities, my groups set up to encourage and foster peer support among the spoken word community?

(Do you know how hard it is to write all the above without the likes of these Mehr-mehr-mehr arseholes’ voices chiming in my head telling me off for showing off? The lifelong legacy of making myself smaller that I have to actively resist every time I leave the house, let alone this?)

For some people you’ll never be other than the last (or first) time they saw you. For some people I’ll never be other than the victim of bullying at school, whichever part of that experience they were part of. For some people I’ll never be other than that administrator who was always late to work. For some people I’ll never be other than a certain person’s pathetic ex. For some people I’ll never be other than the quiet one who lost so spectacularly at whichever slam they saw me lose spectacularly at. For some people I’ll never be other than the nerdy sidekick of a misogynistic poseur. For some people I’ll never be other than a classical singer and choir conductor. For some people, I’ll never be other than Melody Starchild. For some people, I’ll never be other than the person who encouraged them to get into spoken word. For some people, I’ll never be other than the person who wrote that poem for their anniversary that made them cry. For some people, I’ll never be other than the first person who taught them about clerihews. For some people, I’ll never be other than the first person to publish them. And for some people, presumably, I’ll never be other than the Glastonbury Festival blogger 2019.

Tough breaks. You’ll forge your own destiny and some people will want to keep you down, cling onto the old version of what you were. Oddly enough, that was the subject of one of the first performance poems I ever wrote, way back in 2007, striving to survive on a scene that depended on the goodwill of the people still labelling me that person’s ex, the interloper, the Welsh one, the “failed lesbian” (true story). The crab bucket will always want to cling onto you, keep you chained, call you by your deadname, keep you from the light. The best thing for these remnants is to let them go with love, knowing that the shit you went through was one of the things that forged the stronger person you are now, but that you owe it – and these nostalgia hounds – absolutely nothing for the joy of finding your own path, your true name, the clothes that fit you far better. Let them go, and use your energy to cherish the people who’ll expand their first image of you into something complex and spectacular, and will help you find that joy. And let one of those people be yourself.

Photo of Fay Roberts hosting Hammer & Tongue Cambridge - (c) Nikki Marrone

The Selkie, Self-Belief, and Asking for Help #theselkie

By the time this gets posted, I will have just started my first full performance of The Selkie in front of Actual People in nearly two years. I think it’s fair to say that I’m nervous. I’m also launching my fundraiser, and that’s pretty scary as well, but for other reasons (namely: I’m crap at asking for help; help!).

Two years ago, I finished tinkering with my first solo show, The Selkie: A Song of Many Waters. It’s an hour-long show that celebrates a modern life mythologised, where nearly all the characters are mythological, fairytale, or everyday creatures. I wanted to explore what it meant to be someone who know that they’re different, but not how or why, and the journey they take to discover that. Using the analogy of a selkie – a Celtic sea creature that looks like a seal until it sheds its skin to look human – that didn’t know that its transformative pelt had been taken from it at birth. The Selkie in this tale grows up able to do amazing things with its voice, but also somewhat shunned as an anomaly.

At the end of nearly two years of development I had a show I was proud of – people seemed to enjoy it, using some very complimentary terms (and some technical language that was new to me) to say how much it spoke to them, how much it moved them.

I had created something that dipped and weaved between performance poetry, storytelling, and song, with elements of the traditional weaved with the modern. It made people laugh – for which I wasn’t entirely prepared! – and cry – about which I felt a bit guilty, as well as expressing all sorts of emotions in between.

After some previews, I performed it for a week at Edinburgh Fringe, after two weeks of running other shows, came home, and abruptly got ill. Very ill. I lost my voice for nine months; lost far more weight than I could easily afford, unable to eat much. I couldn’t sleep unless I sat up, and even then only for snatches of time before I stopped breathing. Every night for months.

Frankly: it was a bit rubbish. Also: somewhat frightening, to say the least. And, on top of that, I’d lost – I thought, perhaps, forever – one of the things that informed my identity – made me… me…

The real irony was that this came hot on the heels of performing a show about a creature whose power – and weakness – is bound up in its voice, while watching my career as a vocal artist vanish.
As I started to recover, I got the news that The Selkie had been shortlisted for a Saboteur Award for best Spoken Word Show. In case you don’t know: this is a Big Deal in the spoken word world, and I was over the moon!

Luckily, I currently have a better handle on my health, and my voice has recovered somewhat. I’ve decided to bring The Selkie back to life – give her a voice again. I’ll be performing the show at Edinburgh Fringe 4th-11th August at 52 Canoes, Grassmarket, 12:30pm every day except Wednesday 8th, and – for once – I’ve decided to ask for people’s help to make this happen.

I’m going with the Free Fringe, as ever – they make it easy for both artists and audiences to take risks by not charging either a penny. However, as artists, we’re reliant on audience donations to help offset our costs, and getting audiences in costs money.

Publicity, accommodation, transport, props, hiring a technician to provide music cues, insurance, costume – they all cost money. And creating merchandise to sell to try to recoup some of that cash means spending money up-front. In all it costs between one and two thousand pounds to take a show run of eleven days up to The Fringe. And no – there are no official grants available!

I have to work part-time because my health isn’t strong enough, and having chronic health conditions costs money in itself. Yay. But I thought that, instead of owning the bank interest, I’d owe you a reward – far more satisfying! If you donate, you can claim from a range of returns on your investment from a hearty thanks, a badge, the book or CD of the show, prints of the beautiful artwork by Sa’adiah Khan, to a writing or performance coaching session with me, or various other rewards. And you can tell everyone that you’re an official patron of the arts, as well as earning my undying gratitude, and helping to ensure that more people get to enjoy the show!

Thanks for reading, and hopefully see you soon!

Back to the Archives

I talked last month about my foray into writing fanfic. I’d written what was essentially a chunky short story (~7,100+ words) of angsty, explicitly erotic, transformative fiction. I told you that I’d enjoyed it and that it was likely I’d write more.

Boy, was I ever not wrong about that. Even before the first one was finished, I had ideas for another. Spurred on by the enthusiasm of the few people who actually commented, I started writing the follow-up. And it expanded into a gigantic monster thing, 23,976 words long and packed with more angst and more explicitly erotic stuff. And three fight scenes. And a bunch of historical detail*

And then I got ill. I’ve been dodging colds and other bugs like a pro for months now, but when it’s right inside your own house, the options are few, and there’s only so much echinacea and extra Vitamin C a body can take that will make a difference. So I set myself a challenge: be ill. Don’t do poetry admin, don’t run around doing extra stuff, don’t, for the love of Hades, go into work and a) make everyone else ill, b) make yourself more ill (see: stressed person in your house who has likely gifted you these microbes). You’re allowed to sleep and read. Okay, and write.

Oh boy. I polished off the gigantic monster work and decided to see whether I could write another one that I figured would be less popular in a few days, just get it out of my system and into the world.

The new one proved… Well, I enjoyed writing it (and doing the research - yes, I’m a nerd, whevs, as the youth say), but its pairing and its subject matter seemed to get fewer people going. By this point, I had a game plan (that, yes, kept expanding, shhh), but I knew it was only a step on the way to the later episodes. And I’ve tried to be less upset/ weirded out by the new piece’s lack of popularity, but there’s still a vocal part of me that’s been affected by the notion of a reduced audience.

Up until about halfway through the monster piece, I was writing for myself, and pleased that people were along for the ride. But now I’ve become a stats hound and got myself tangled up. Argh.

{Deep breath}

It hasn’t helped that someone started shouting at me in the comments section of Chapter 6, ALL CAPS AND ALL, because I dared suggest that one character might think that the life of female, Renaissance royalty might be a bit constrained. To put it into context: this passionately verbal reader would presumably have already read through five chapters of intimate fantasies, graphic depictions of masturbation, a completely invented play re-imagining Genesis by evoking Lilith, detailed talk of herb-growing, etiquette, and historically accurate chess (because I love to do this stuff to myself is why), and THIS WAS THE HILL THEY WOULD DIE ON, BY GOD. I’ve been sanguine about it and presented myself as wryly amused by this to friends with whom I’ve discussed the issue; I’ve been calm, polite, and assertive in my responses to the commenter (despite receiving more shouting at first, and silence thereafter); I’ve refused to let myself doubt the particular aspect about which they’re shouting rattle my resolve (pretty sure I’m right and they can take a hike). However, their actions have damaged my calm; up until now the comments section was a place of validation and over-excited people (there were fewer of those latterly (again: I knew this one would be less popular), but still…), and now there’s the possibility of people hating what I wrote for the oddest of reasons that I can’t predict and waah, basically: honeymoon’s over.

And yet here’s the thing. I’m starting into a fourth work (AO3 allows people to post works (multi-chaptered or otherwise), which can in turn form part of larger series), which will draw all the threads of everything I’ve written about (plus some canon stuff), and I already have detailed notes about it (and the two further works to follow). In 25 days I have combined 52,508 cohesive, coherent, reasonably well-researched (do other fanfic writers go on IMDB and other sources to check the heights and freeze-frame shots of actors to get the eye colour right?!) words (not including plot notes, dialogue fragments, and research) and have a bunch more planned.

In other words, I’ve written more than people are supposed to aim for in NaNoWriMo in less than a month, and it all makes sense. And about the getting weird over stats thing; here’s some True Facts for ya:

First piece: 7,135 words in 2 days, 658 hits since 14-Feb-18 and still growing.
Second piece: 23,976 words in 14 days, 1,139 hits since 19-Feb-18 and still growing.
Third piece: 18,670 words in 5 days, 371 hits and still growing.
Fourth piece (unfinished): 2,727 words in 1 day so far, 75 hits already (two of those in the time it took to write this post).

That’s freakin amazing - why am I being such a meanie to myself about this?!

I have, it turns out, made the mistake of going and comparing my stats (comments and kudos included, which I haven’t listed above) with people who have been writing works for this fandom for… years. I haven’t even been doing it a month, I’ve just been a bit… intense about it all. I cannot realistically expect as many people to be invested in this newbie who likes writing extended (apparently very realistic - that’s nice! :) ) dialogue and gathering plot points around the filth.

And yet. And still.

So here's my new challenge: write the thing, enjoy the thing, post the thing. If you don't get many hits or kudos or comments, whatever - you will have written this for yourself and you will have had a blast. Anyone else who enjoys it is a bonus, ffs. And you will have created the equivalent of a medium-sized novel. Now take that information and discipline and apply it to non-fanfic work (like, e.g. your wayward novel).

Okay?

Okay.

_________

*What?

{sigh} Yes, it would appear that I can’t even write naughty fiction about characters for whom I don’t need to do any world-building without Googling the shit out of what would be realistic and appropriate. Everyone’s lucky I didn’t start getting over-intense about weaponry, but I now know a lot more about European Late Renaissance (is that a term? Fuck it…) footwear, headwear, outerwear, and underwear than I did, also lighting (civic and personal), drainage, personal hygiene, coinage, exchange rates, civic building, historical characters around which the original fictional characters would have been based, geography, bed linen, the intersection of church and state, royal regiments, and the creation of post roads. I also know some interesting words for human anatomy that I didn’t before. Let your mind boggle over that unlikely scenario! And then I had to balance it off so that the historical detail just ticked over in the background and grounded the sex in something realistic without turning into Little Miss Exposition.