Shatila Social Thoughts

'The problem,' Jonathan said to me as he dropped me off back at the house, 'is that you had them hanging on your every word and then you scuttled off. It was like you were disowning what you'd said.' And the thing is, people, he's right. About the latter part anyway. I would never be so ungallant as to presume that people had been hanging on my every word. Yes, there may have been silence, people may have been listening but, y'know, someone might have climbed up on stage behind me and started creating a balloon animal kama sutra. Correlation does not equal causation.

Jonathan was talking about my performance at the Shatila Social gig at the Cumberland Arms last night. I had pledged to write a poem especially for the event and to include anything people mentioned in the poem as long as they sponsored me to do so. In the end, only the redoubtable Kevin Cadwallender took me up on this offer, promising to contribute 'five shiny pounds' if I mentioned Torchwood in my poem.

Well, Kevin, you owe Peter Mortimer five pounds:

alt.torchwood.slash

Paging through the fanfic,
pansexual Mary-Sueing, superfluous
slash: Gwen/Tosh, Rhys/Ianto:
feeling smug,envisioning

gimlet-eyed women with too many cats,
and boxes full of knitting magazines
conjuring a warmth within
that hairy-knuckled male hands
will not bring: imagining
Jack’s lips, in plasma-screen
Hi-Definition, skin glowing
in the spaceship light,
pressed against the Doctor’s,
faces meshing, black glasses askew...

Huh. Losers. Perverts. Weirdoes.

Am I different? Am I worse?
I’ve lived an imagined life of decadence
in private, casting it with
friends and workmates, colleagues, exes,
people on the street. I’ve pictured
your fist in a black leather glove,
wrapped up in, ripping at, my hair;
I’ve flinched, half-smiling, at the thought
of your teeth snapping shut
on the soft parts of my skin:

what difference is there here but dramatis
personae, the decision not to dream
of sex by proxy? More honest, maybe,
more direct...

but I pass you in the corridor. We talk
and I feel awkward. The fanficcers –
they have that?

Maybe at conventions.


Obviously it's not really about Torchwood, of course. It's about adult situations, or at least the imagining thereof. In this it actually formed part of a weird triptych of poems about sex in the final part of the evening. Kate Fox started it by talking about unmentionable parts of the anatomy, her partner Alfie Craigs did a long and very satisfying extended metaphor comparing poetry-writing to having sex for the first time, and I wound up forming the unappetising filling in this weird improptu sex-poetry sandwich. Obviously it's an uncomfortable situation for an uncommonly pious child of the Almighty such as myself to be in, talking about, y'know, the filthiness and that, but that wasn't why I scarpered off the stage as soon as I was finished. I was in fact afraid.

I was afraid that people might applaud.

All performing artists fear applause on some level or other. We fear it being withheld, but we also fear it being given too liberally. There's nothing like a massive round of applause to politely tell someone - especially some shitty poet - that they've had their moment in the spotlight, and would you kindly get off stage. But for me, there's another thing I fear about applause. I'm afraid, you see, that if people are applauding, then -

maybe that means they like me.

I've never really got used to being liked. Being loved. Being wanted. If you want to completely throw me, if you want me to feel scared and shitty and to question my self-worth, don't get in my face and insult me, because I'll just insult you back. Instead, offer me a compliment.

Compliments fuck me up. The thought that someone out there, some other human being not related to me by blood, wedlock or longstanding friendship, might consider something I do to have been of worth, might actually feel something about my continued existence other than a strong inclination to want it over with as soon as possible, frightens the shit out of me. Don't know why. Maybe I won't ever know. But it does. And for me, that moment when you've stopped performing, when there's a chance that people might have liked you and, worse, might be about to let you know, is absolutely bloody terrifying.

All of which is no excuse, of course. Leaving before the audience have had a chance to say a proper goodbye, whether with bouquets or bricks, is just bloody rude, and I apologise wholeheartedly to anyone offended by my scuttling behaviour. Rest assured, it will not happen next time.

Shatila Social and the Great Sponsored Poem Experiment

Shatila Social
The Cumberland Arms
Ouseburn, Byker
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE6 1LD,
Monday July 13th
Doors at 7.30 starts at 8.00
Admission £5.00
(All proceeds to the Shatila Project)

Special Guests: Ray Laidlaw and Billy Mitchell of Lindisfarne
Blues singer Annie Orwin
Comedian Steve Drayton
Plus, Plus, Plus, Scott Tyrrell, Kate Fox, Simma, Nikki Hawkins, Yvonne Young, Adam Fish, Catherine Graham, Kevin Cadwallender, Annie Moir, Richard Makepiece, Kyla Clay Fox are just a few of the other wonderful performers who have agreed to help us raise money.

The writer Peter Mortimer spent two months working in the Shatila Refugee Camp in Beirut. Peter spent time working with the children of the camp school to create, and for them then to perform on camp, a 30 minute play, which incorporated music, dance and physical theatre. Peter is bringing 10 young actors, (and four of their teachers) to perform the play in the autumn on Tyneside. However, in order to do this, funds are needed to help pay for the travel and accommodation for the performers, and to organise the performance itself.

If you can come and pay the £5.00 entrance fee (which is, I know, rather expensive to watch ex-Lindisfarne personnel but you do have to remember I’ll be there too, so on those grounds it’s a bargain), then great, if not, I’d love it if you’d contribute some money by contributing to

THE GREAT SPONSORED POEM EXPERIMENT !
GREAT SPONSORED POEM EXPERIMENT, YOU SAY? WHAT, PRAY TELL, IS THAT?

It’s an innovative, forward-facing, innovative, audience-focused, innovative, interactive and innovative method I’ve devised of getting people to sponsor me to perform at the Shatila Social gig. Obviously, with such a packed bill, I can only do one poem, and I can’t go on too long, so that rules out sponsorship ideas like, say, 50p per poem or a pound for every minute spent performing or whatever. So what I’ve came up with is this: I will write a new poem especially for the event, and if you contribute some sponsorship money I will mention one thing of your choosing. It might be a specific word you want me to use, it might be someone’s name, it might be a number, a concept, whatever. It could be your favourite football team, a line from a song, or a convoluted and embarrassing double entendre. Literally anything you want, if you sponsor me and pay me the money to mention it for the gig, I will mention it in the new poem.

By now, you’re probably saying ‘gee, Adam, this sounds swell, but how can I sign up to be a part of this incredible experiment?’, or you will be if you’re an American 1950s schoolboy anyway. Well, Timmy, it’s simple – simply comment below with details of what you'd like me to mention and how much you're willing to pay for it...