I have hit a milestone this week and even though I am full of a hideous cold and can’t really smell much I want to stop and smell the metaphorical roses of the moment. Ever since I can remember I have loved doing little performances of stories, dances and songs. Some of my clearest memories as a child involve being on a stage. Boxing with a weird kangaroo puppet as an audience volunteer, being a horse in a ballet show at theatre clywd (a proper theatre!) with my local ballet group, being part of the school’s show for the first ever Red Nose Day. For the comic relief show I wrote my own sketch and me and my two friends were the only first years who took part in the show. I played an old woman who comically misheard words. Now I am the old woman and it’s not so comical to be honest. (I swear an electric car will be the death of me… no noise until literally at your heels… ).
I digress. From ‘the moment’.
This week saw tickets for a show, I will be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe this August, go on sale. A mere 35 years after my Red Nose Day sketch and I am so thrilled.
The show is called ‘Do you remember the first rhyme?’ and it debuted at the GM Fringe last year and I am in the process of brushing it up and refining it ahead of its outing in Edinburgh.
It tells the story of how I thrived off books and lyrics and creativity as a child / youth but fell into the role of a consumer of art in my adulthood. I’d go to gigs, shows, see art but stopped creating. In my 30s I joined a few show choirs which helped scratch the itch a little. I did amazing things in these choirs, including singing in a backing choir for Susan Boyle! But, as I explain in the show, I wanted more than being on the sidelines.
And after moving from the sidelines to writing and sharing again in 2019 I am a step closer to doing something I definitely thought was for other people. I took different paths for decades but decided to handbrake turn into a world I want to be part of.
I have money I wouldn’t have had in my 20s but also a confidence/lack of fear. This isn’t the end of my world if it doesn’t work. It’s an experience. A chapter in my story I never expected to get and no-one would have seen coming in the years between 1996 and 2018. I keep saying, it took me this long to find the thing I loved, the thing that was a release, a way of connecting with others and a way of learning so much about myself and the world around me. I will always prioritise the joy of what I have found over anything.
So seeing this email was a moment of joy
And that is worth celebrating on it’s own.
Our development is a stairway to heaven
not a walk on the flat but a rise into the blue
each step is a leap in the dark
passion-led creativity
authenticated with the joy of gratitude
first steps may take twenty years
but our practice makes them shorter
soon we will be running
up the steps
till at last we jump into the blue