sick note
please excuse sarah from class, she's got skeleton problems
I've been at the doctor a bit, lately. Look, the whole story of it is boring and minor, but I will say that my kind GP looked me in the eye, knowing full well what I do for a living, and offered me a sick note anyway.
'But I have nobody to give it to,' I said, welling up a little under my mask. There was a medical student sitting in, who was taking notes. I wanted to turn to him and explain myself: I work very hard, I have been traveling, I don't have a boss, I report to myself, and Christ, how quickly the phrase, 'I'm sorry' would appear at the end of this sentence if I let it.
The doctor said it was worth having, just in case, for my own reference. I have been absolutely not resting, and I have been told to rest, now. I have been either working abroad, or traveling, for the latter two weeks of every month for the last four months. My body has drawn a line under it, reminding me that living like this, unmoored, is not good, actually. I have never been much good at moderation, in any capacity, which is something I could make work for myself in my twenties, all famine, all feast, all over the place - but is truly not something I can sustain here, fresh in 35, a whole, undeniable adult. My body is very good at reminding me to stop, when my head is going a mile a minute.
I know Gen Z think it's really funny that Millennials are perpetually baffled by our own adulthood, which may be a fair critique of our performed anxieties and collective mannerisms as a generation, but look. We'll see what their thirties feel like to them, in due course. So, this is a really long-winded way of saying, that my doctor gave me a sick note for me to look at, not for any employer. A reminder. Advice. Rest is needed due to a skeletal/muscular injury. The word 'skeletal' written down looks metal too, to be honest.
I was in Paris last year and on my way to the Catacombs, in a taxi, when I learned the French word for skeleton. We messed up our tickets and entry times and had to hurry, plus, it was lashing rain, so we dipped into a cab. The taxi driver was lovely, and we talked in my terrible, terrible secondary school French, and CB's weirdly good French (you learn new things about your partner all the time, and I learned that he has a shocking amount of French, while on this trip). When we asked could we go to the Catacombs, the driver said, 'Oui. Les squelettes.' and I replied, 'Oui! Toutes les squelettes... dans la monde...' and he laughed with me, definitely not at me. It was a nice little second, all our broken language put together. I sometimes say it to CB still. All of us skeletons. All of us skeletons, in the world.
Now. I have used my limited skills to make you a (counterfeit, but I don't think you can tell) sick note, for if you ever need to protect your own squelette from the difficulties of la monde. You just have to fill your own name in and you should be grand, tbh.
So now, newsletter proper. Some art talk, a small few pictures from my life from the last few weeks. Sort of excerpts of a diary. A condiment, too, that has arrived into my life with a bang.
I promised in an earlier newsletter that I'd talk a bit about The Burnt City, which I have now seen twice, and can't really seem to stop thinking about. It is Punchdrunk's latest production, set out of their warehouse in Woolwich, London. I take a regular pilgrimage to their immersive classic, Sleep No More, every so often, because I find the sense of otherworldliness I get from being in these elaborate sets deeply inspiring, for the want of a better word. I visit immersive theatre and experimental installations because I find the adjustment of reality charges me in a way that I don't often feel. Punchdrunk's work is often very surreal, the performances are carried almost with no dialogue, and utilize dance and movement over scripting. I don't know very much about dance, or theatre, but I do know how I feel when I am in these spaces, and that's really all I can talk about, rather than speaking with a critical or expert eye. I really am not an expert. Just an enthusiast - and that's the direction I'm coming from, here.
The Burnt City tells, more or less, the story of the fall of Troy. The way the show functions is like this: your phone is locked in a bag and you are handed a playing card. You are called into the Show by your card number - which is most likely very different from the card number of people you entered with. These shows are best navigated alone. You wear a white mask over your face, and are instructed not to speak, and to respect the performers - but still, that fortune favours the bold. Follow the characters you are interested in, or explore alone: move away from the crowd, find your own way. Sometimes, you will have to run. The show, if entered at the earliest slot, lasts three hours. I don't know how many rooms are in the set at Woolwich, but I know that at Sleep No More in Chelsea there are over a hundred, over six floors. The Burnt City is over two warehouses, technically. The comparison I would make is, like, imagine two of the biggest Tescos you've ever been in. That's about it.
The less I tell you about the inner details of the space, the better, to be honest. I went in with one piece of advice handed to me by a friend, one character to look for in the story that plays out, but otherwise, absolutely no idea what I was to find. I think a sense of fear, or dread, when evoked in a gallery space or theatre is one of the most incredible feelings that can be had. Bottled horror. I know I am not coming to any harm, but I also do not know what I am going to see, or feel, or what is around any corner I turn. Every room can be explored, riffled through. The performed vignettes you are party to can be distressing, or sensual, or beautiful, or sad, or thrilling. It is consistently strange, though.
I have, in the last seven or eight years, attended a piece of Punchdrunk theatre five times. Three Sleep No Mores, and as of recently, two Burnt Cities. One of which was a wild, wild New Year's Eve show: perhaps the most opulent thing I will ever experience. There were a lot of rose petals.
The first time CB and I went, he was pulled by the hand by a performer into a secret room, and had a tiny solo vignette performed for him, away from the crowd, in a tiny set that nobody else that night would see. During our fevered debrief that first night - which I will never forget, my head spinning - I couldn't believe it. I'd seen people getting led away alone, but didn't know why, or what for. I spent much of that first show frozen in terror: Sleep No More tells the story of Macbeth, combined with the story of DuMaurier's Rebecca (via Hitchcock, stylistically) and I was very - and appropriately - disoriented. I loved it. There would be no Other Words For Smoke if I hadn't had that experience, frankly. But still, I couldn't get over the covert magic that CB had experienced, and went on to discover that there was a whole network of secluded scenes that individual audience members could be selected for throughout each show. The selection process is all but unknown. Chance, I presume. Some mysterious vibe check.
In the forefront of my mind at any theatrical experience or immersive experience, I have 'respect the performer' and 'don't be a dick' blaring in stark neon. I have both attended enough shows and theme-parks over the years to know what overstepped boundaries look like. I've also spent years and years in the service industry, both household and public facing, too and I like to think that this life experience can give a person a really strong sense of how to carry themselves. The downside is, as mentioned above, that I am always about to say 'I'm sorry' to someone: the upside is I know when to say excuse me, and thank you, or nothing at all, or take a clear step back. So, during the rest of my voyages through these immersive spaces, I never knew how to somehow adjust my vibe from 'distant respectful crowd member' to 'available for cool and mysterious private excursion'. So, when it happened, I was surprised - I'd seen people at the show elbowing one another out of the way, flocking towards certain doorways at certain times, cracking the code of the show. I was just watching a person doing a detailed, but mundane task, then, I was pulled through a door, into the dark.
I want to tell you what happened, and how it happened, but with shows like this it's so important to hold the mystery of the space, to not give away secrets. I was scared out of my mind, and overjoyed, and what luck it is to experience both of those feelings at once. After it happened, I didn't rejoin CB & J for over an hour, so I couldn't even tell anybody about it, I just had to walk around the space in a daze.
I recognize that I've spoken about the show now, without telling you about the show. I'm not a person who really cares about narrative spoilers, at all, and I don't mind having things 'spoiled' for me. I don't think that's what art is about, I don't always value perfect surprise or unmapped travelling. But in this case, the reason I'm not talking about the show in closer detail is that the power of it is how unmoored you feel, how every corridor and stairway and door and street and window feels like walking through a real, true place. Surprise is part of that. Lostness, too. Blink and you'll miss it.
The first time I went, I managed to score matinee tickets, which I got for around sixty pounds. If you're in London, or visiting there, it's worth keeping an eye on off-peak ticket prices: get the earliest entry you can, so you can experience as much of the three hour period as possible. Later entries are cheaper, but for me, the longer in the other world the better. If it gets overwhelming, it's easy enough to find the way to the bar, and there are all-but-invisible staff at hand to help. The bar is called Peep, and a cabaret plays there throughout the show, so you don't feel entirely as though you're missing out if you need a breather. Sometimes you might even see something secret by being there at the correct moment.
Also, look, I know this kind of thing isn't for everyone. But it informs my own practice, it feels like study, as well as like escape, and entertainment. I feel the benefit of it. I'm glad it exists. That's my missive, there. I like and admire artifice, effort, detail. Camp is one of the things in art and experience that I like the most, generally, though this is certainly not camp. During my last hops to London, I also went to the Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds Experience, which was silly, and weirdly moving, and featured some truly surreal VR - I attended this the day after I went to Burnt City for the first time, so it was a perfect cocktail of High and Low Immersive Art. Then, on our more recent trip, to round out the set of birthdays, we gathered our troops and went to see the ABBA holograms. Weirdly, also not camp. Something else, entirely. I've got a lot to say about it, which I may at some point, but Aoife Barry was there a few weeks before me and wrote a beautiful newsletter about it, here.
Right. So, before we go, some images, some text, some talk about condiments.
And now, last of all, a condiment recommendation. Welcome to ALL SAUCES.
Below is the audio from the Tiktok I came across that recommended Hong Kong Vegetable to me at first, so I'll include it below! The chef speaking is Jon Kung, and you can follow his Youtube Channel here. I really love his work, he's got great perspectives. I'm excited to find new ways to integrate this new find into my various bits and pieces, but I did have it in a rice bowl before the jar met an untimely end and it really packs a punch. Sour and complex, really kicks up a whole dish.
As soon as I figure out how to imbed video, we're in business, but until then, audio will have to do.
That's it from me for this round, my friends. S Tier folks, you can expect your second newsletter tomorrow. It'll be about things we find, and what we do with them, and will feature two poems that I think about all the time.
Thank you again for joining me, for subscribing, for being here, for vibing. If you enjoy all this, and have a sec, please do spread the word: word of mouth is, as we all know, is the most powerful way to give support to any media you enjoy. I'll catch you at the end of the month with more bits and pieces. Happy Valentine's Day, too. I hope there's love around you, and the first signs of spring are bringing you cheer.
I will leave you with a picture of Puppy Weaver, because next month we'll be celebrating two years of her lovely, insane presence.
xoxo
Griff
P.S
Consider this my usual apology for weirdly repeated words, funny grammar, or bad spellings: I will fix them in the archive. Skeleton issues, you see.
