Je suis content. There are lots of thoughts going through my head but that is perhaps the most important: I am happy.

Strings of thought, half-dreams and memories are coming together in my brain tonight: A group of young performers from Brisbane; traditional travelling values, preparations, behaviours and perceptions, and the meshing of contemporary technologies.

Maybe I should set the scene? Today is Friday, early early morning, about 4:30am. It is very cold, probably around freezing and I am somewhere in Northern France – I lost my way to some extent in the dark last night and parked up in a small village. There are some quaint farmhouses and tall plastered town-houses with dark, wooden shutters sheltering my little hiding place in a dark, enclosed courtyard, which is scattered with a handful of other vehicles.

I am wrapped in blankets, coats, jumpers and a sleeping bag in the boot of my car, but there is no longer enough heat for me to stay asleep. Déjà vu. Last Saturday at about 4:30am I was huddled in cardboard high up on a fire-escape stairwell in Melbourne’s Chinatown, (that’s in Australia if you’re a pleb), huddled like penguins with the Hoopla Clique boys, (some beautiful young travelling performers from Brisbane)… it wasn’t long before I had lost too much heat that evening too. But thankfully we could soon jump a tram to find comfort in the form of fire and blankets in a friends’ back garden. My sleep deprived mind keeps telling me the boys are here with me in my car, and well I have to laugh as I slowly awaken to myself chatting to a rucksack and cuddling up to a loaf of crusty bread and smelly French cheese (I knew I should have put those outside… mmm I’m gonna smell fresh tomorrow).

The modern traveller is so often unequipped to deal with sleeping rough. It makes me think of what travellers of an older time used to do – light fires, set up camp, and bring enough supplies to keep warm. That and have a damn hardy constitution! Anyone need a can of harden the fuck up right now?

Another scenario pops into my head. Just the very thought of it warms me again and makes me smile… Not so many days before the Chinatown excursion, the Hoopla Clique boys and myself had fled the city for a night. We found an amazing outcrop of rocks to climb on and watch the sunset, before lighting a fire and spending a warm and happy evening singing and laughing (so much laughter!!), and simply being playful and creative. That night we had enough provisions to be comfortable – the boys have been something of an inspiration to me in this way and many others. They epitomise the traditional values of a troupe of travelling performers, from the style of show they create and perform, to the manner of travelling they undertake. They are skilled clowns: playful, intelligent, inventive improvisers, innocently charming, physically talented, and eminently captivating to watch. They travel together by truck and van, sometimes a large group, sometimes just the core few, picking up artists and bidding farewell again at various points on their journey. Sometimes they just disappear for weeks on end to the road and the bush or the desert. Sometimes they call upon the hospitality of friends or family in houses or warehouses – and always they give back in food, entertainment and uplifting good company.

These values for me are the essence of the traditional traveller, whose arsenal of skills and provisions are of charm, friendliness, entertainment and improvisation as much as they are a compass, water, comfort and flame.

That night on the rocks we couldn’t help but feel in touch with the older generation of traveller. We were alone on a rocky hilltop, wrapped in blankets, around a fire, with the music of a guitar and the wind – in many ways it felt timeless and natural, but the conversation also turned towards the convergence of old and new technologies. Our pack-horses are now motorised vehicles, our music is not only acoustic, but also recorded from all over the world and played through car stereos, food is bought out of season and wrapped in plastic in supermarkets…

There are too many confounding and fascinating issues to touch on from these comparisons – what I really want to say is that the modern traveller has all sorts of things at their fingertips that make some of the older necessities obsolete, however, the behaviours and values of the traditional traveller seem to have also been forgotten. In my opinion, we rely too heavily on money to get us out of tricky situations, and is it disconnecting us or reducing occasions for human interactions?

Take tonight for example, I haven’t got the money to stay in a hostel, so I chose to simply sleep in my car. There are two interesting points to draw from this decision; one, I didn’t have the foresight to pack enough warmth and comfort to be able to sleep the night through (doh!); two, I didn’t even consider the other traditional action of a traveller – to meet the locals and call on our hospitable human nature. Sure there are always risks involved, but it wasn’t something I even thought of… but I know that if the tables were turned and I was approached one night by a respectable-looking person (I mean if someone turned up covered in eyeballs and scratching their bum with a human rib-bone I wouldn’t immediately warm to them), but a respectable traveller, who is lost and cold and needing shelter, sure, I would offer them at least a floor. Each side takes a risk on a stranger… but anyway, I didn’t do it. Maybe I will some other time.

For now, I’m cold, I’m kinda jet-lagged and mildly delirious, my car-boot is not the comfiest of beds… but I can’t help but smile. Je suis content.

Welcome to the World Buskers Festival in Christchurch, the peak of summer in New Zealand. bring your brolly and woollies and blankets and duffel coats…

Ah SORRY! How very British of me. I’m not gonna complain really - we may have been rained out of our first two shoes … oops! first two shows (we’ve been rained out of our shoes too). But since then our shows have been rockin. I’m stoked to have the oppurtunity to MC for most of the FlameOz daytime show. Crowds are phat, great energy, great hats, and the show is just heaps of fun to be a part of.  The nighttime fireshow is our typical FlameOz show - and it’s just so well rehearsed and practiced now after so many years of it that we can really rock it out and just have so much fun with the crowds.

Nice one

We rock blah blah blah.

Its great to be out entertaining people like this every day - my fantastic, talented and well loved Grandfather died a week ago, which is really sad, but he was a performer too and it feels like a real ode to him that I’m rocking it out over here.

DAMN! Even when I stop thinking about scratching I find I am unconsciously attacking my foot with a cheese grater. Unconsciously is maybe not quite the right word there - that would be a pretty unfortunate affliction. Sleep-grating. Especially if you fall asleep on a bus and start going on the head of a little scottish guy in front of you (taking the name “carrot-top” to new extremes)…

Anyway I’m covered in mosquito bites right now, I stopped counting at about 50 just on my arms and legs, but they’ve actually moved onto my face now. They’re throwing little parties, the sadists - dressing up in rubber, handing out straws and just feasting wherever they find flesh! And there’s a lot of it, the amount of bites I have, I must have swollen up to 5 times my normal body size by now.
It’s  tortuous. AND I got bitten by another evil death machine - a tiny little ant.

Who would have thought that a thing that small could inflict enough pain to make your foot disintegrate!?! It grew back after an hour, but I have not forgiven the little f*cker. Everyone gets freaked out by the spiders in Australia, but its the ants that’ll get ya.

I have decided to declare war - I shall poison my blood with anthrax and in so doing wipe out half the population of bitey creatures on the planet (roughly the number of things that have bitten me so far). They can go to hell.

bullshit aside, I DID chase a possum out of the house I’m staying in, which was very exciting for me! Shame I forgot to bring my Dame Edna Everage costume! “Hello Possum!!”

Impressions so far? Syndey is more similar to the US than it is to the UK. Nothing seems particularly old here, and the city layout is quite blocky. And hot and sunny. The city layout is hot and sunny. erm, that makes no sense, maybe I need more sleep?

I’m only here for a couple of days, and am off to go pick up my WICKED CAMPERS van - off up the coast over the next week and a half now, heading to Brisbane and sweltering humidity. Beats a British winter anyday.

That is the only way this post is really related to slugs.

Really I want to write about roots and travel, because lucky lucky lucky Loz, I get to travel all over the place with work. Mostly around the UK, but also abroad. Perks of the job, even without the cold nipples in winter.

I feel very happy and comfortable on the move a lot. I fall asleep quite easily on moving vehicles - demonstrated by that perpetual jerk awake just second after missing my stop on trains and buses… though the real danger is my skateboard narcolepsy. Thankfully that is a lie. And since starting performing my streetshow over the summer it has given me even more freedom to travel around, knowing that I can earn an honest living pretty much anywhere I go (hooray! no more stealing from old ladies!… it was always the same tins of cat food and starchy potatoes anyway… yawn)

When I realised this earlier in the year i started planning a whole series of streetshow touring around foreign lands, plying my wares (errr myself, but not in the nighttime banana-love sort of way), and i planned on never stopping anywhere for more than a month or so… all around Oz from december to march, then across to Seattle and the surrounding area, up to canada… etc etc.

BUT!

i feel differently now.

damn my fickle and flighty nature!

maybe I’m just scared, maybe I’m affected by the cold British winter, but suddenly I feel the draw of having a few roots. Not feet-in-drying-concrete stability with house and mortgage, but some tentative roots keeping hold in the community I love a lot: my family of friends and relatives in Bristol and in non-Bristol UK (there are only 2 regions of the UK in my mind).

I can never sustain meaningful relationships with this constant loose-footedness - and I’m not implying romantic endeavors, because frankly I don’t want anything like that just now! but relationships with friends and family… although they don’t disappear, its hard to connect deeply with anyone who only knows what you’re up to 5 days out of a month or even a year.

so maybe I will come back to the UK after summer in Australia. I may end up going to circus school in France for a while, but still, based in the Bristol for the most part. Somewhere I can build projects with friends and communities and actually commit to something for a while!

Ideal world: I don’t have to do any corporate gigs anymore, I just work with exciting artistic projects, and have all the fun in the world in my Bristol cake and stuff it in my face… (even if I still need to take a slice of it to sunnier climes just for the winter!)

make sense much?

hmmmmmm

slugcake mmmmmm

I would like to tell a story about the singular most exiting collaborative art project I have ever been a part of. It is quite humbling, prepare to be humbled, humbled to the floor. Aaaaaand you might want to brew a cuppa for this one too… it could take a while…

Are we sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

The cube is bigger than I. (and there’s no I in FUCK YOU! – sorry, SORRY! I saw that written on some T-shirt last week and it made me snigger). OK no more profanities, let’s try again; the cube is bigger than I. About 35ft if we’re talking facts and figures, and about 70-odd (yes very odd) people involved in the creation of the beast. The brainchild of a few Seattle-based tech-brained nutbars in early Spring 09, who decided it would be a GREAT idea to build a giant illuminated working rubix cube to take to the Burning Man Arts festival in September.

Let us skip ahead shall we for no reason at all…

It is night time, the heat and sweat of the day has mostly dissipated into clear cool blackness. Dusty clothes and dustier brains from working all day in the sun erecting structures and domes and tents and all manner of necessary provisions for survival… A slither of moon and the harsh white work lights illuminate a spot of barren Earth, around which we are gathered. Someone has put a flag there. Ha! A flag! Yes, THIS IS OUR LAND to do with as we please, and oh boy it pleases us to build a giant glowing cube.

“Is this really a good idea?”

The rattling roller door of the truck abuses the quiet of the night as it opens, we form a bucket line and the unloading begins…

A time lapse camera captures the build progress:

20 people, unload boxes, scaffolding, joints, huge sheets of card, tools, weird plastic contraptions, quick break for water, and the first shift starts, work through the night, scaffolding joints, must align everything, is that 5ft long yet?, it has a spine! cube shape layer by layer by layer, morning arrives, bam! it’s a cube! 3×3x3, ALREADY!? Cross bracing, Water break, right! Fabric panels, too hot, NO work during the day, beautiful sunset, fabric panels, next shift new workers, quick water break, more fabric, sun is up, must keep going, obsessive work into the heat, don’t stop! the panels are up! OMG you can see it from the campsite! Ahhhhhhh!!!!! And inside, hang lumieres, water? Reflector panels, zipties, circuit boards, do we sleep now? Sun up sun down, climbing, suspending, tying knots, connecting circuits, drink water, eat sleep? Test the software, more reflectors, more lumieres, Oh Christ this thing is going to work? Water break, back breaking, sleeping on scaffolding, how to we attach the frikkin door?!?!? Problems, stress, tired dusty brains to overcome them/// drnkmore water… it is nighttime, the cube is on AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT FRIKKIN WORKS!! IT’S ALIIIIIIVEE!!!!! Listen to the sound effects! OMG!!!!! 30 people now, camp-wide cheering, looks of terror, disbelief…

“What? We’ve got to balance this giant cube on THAT!??”

Ah yes, the toothpick. So, the cube is built. It works. How many months and man hours of planning, engineering, prototyping and preparing? Well over 5000 and that was only before we got onsite.

(These people care about this project, it is a conglomeration and cooperation of so many people working at the peak and beyond their skill-level and knowledge, it has already pushed people to extremes)

…and now we are standing in front of it, sleep-deprived, halfmad (only half?) from the dust and sun and desert craziness – not to mention the growth of a festival city all around us!

So here we are. The day the festival officially starts. The cube still sits on the ground. We encircle it, our monstrous baby, shackled with guy ropes that look the thickness of nylon thread against it. It is sitting next to a small vertical pole, about 7ft high and 6inches thick. The mechanics, the equations, and the logic all say it will hold the weight. The engineers say it wont topple and crash and destroy itself and others in up to 80mph winds, which could happen during the week. But they’re looking pretty nervous, and it just looks so very very unlikely.

The crane arrives, and begins to lift the weight of the cube up on its axis. Two and a half tonnes. The thing is huge and as we see it start to move, each one of us lets out an involuntary cry of ?? fear?delight?apprehension? yeah all of that and more!

And there it goes! Balanced atop a veritable toothpick!

“Er guys? Is this really a good idea??!”

A gung-ho crane operator releases the cube weight just a bit to fast… oh shiiiii….!! The spindle joint is bending! This could all come apart in front of our eyes in a matter of seconds…. Please get this right guys!… what? It’s lifted again?! Right second chance, nice and easy… we guy down the lines, heavy-weight trucker straps, tighten everything we have (including our bumholes!) And slowly step away…

Yes mate.

Yes.

Just… yes.

Thing of beauty. I could cry. I wont. But my heart is in my throat, and my stomach and I think has possibly left to orbit some other planet, well hey, I don’t think we’re even on Earth anymore anyway – would you look at this place?!!!

What stood out the most about the place was the amazing hospitality of its people. Jordan being a predominantly Muslim country, is not as strict and exclusive as Saudi Arabia for example. There are lots of women without covered faces, alcohol isn’t illegal there (not that I would judge a country on how drunk I can get there! hic!), and the religions are not massively thrust upon you, sinners! (there is also a small Christian following in the country)(…hehe just a little guy called Christain who goes round behind you the whole time…)

I really enjoyed waking up in the early hours upon hearing the first call to prayer - it is a very beautiful song and sound. Just so long as I could drift back to sleep again, that’s all good.
So, the gig - the main stage of the Amman summer festival, and event that runs through the month of July. Big crowds, arabic superstars, lots of fun!
AND HILARIOUS, we were the opening act for the various solo Jordanian heart-throb singers each night, and on the closing night of the festival was this guy —> called Hussain Selman… what a character! Hilariously, he took quite a strong liking to me backstage and gathered photographers around us to take photos of “his future bride”, then proceeded to sing love songs to me from the stage (much to the annoyance of the screaming teenagers in the crowd) hahhahah I might have been embarrassed if it wasn’t so damn funny!

And no, I didn’t succumb to his advances! He had all the airs and graces of a superstar and all the brains of a trampoline.

boing.

bye!

I am easily distracted and tangential. True.
Most tangents currently seem to lead to a similar place, however. Which is intriguing. A place that is intriguing. Place of play, research, development, artistry, obsession perhaps. Probably. And lack of grammar.

Aside from a continually growing obsession with hoop training, I’ve been back to training capoeira again (after about a 2year break) and learning Portuguese again. Wicked. Estou escutando a ‘Los Hermanos’ agora, que estou gostando mais e mais…
As I was saying, I’ve discovered and re-discovered lots of new music recently. Which has added to my research and development obsession. I hardly think of anything else. How can I improve? Learn? Discover? Hulahooping, dance, capoeira, body moving in different ways…

I haven’t felt this prolifically inspired in ages, it’s fantastic! I’m having trouble sleeping again (not so great) but I don’t care - because I can’t switch the flow of ideas off at night! …and rather than scribbling all over my bedsheets I am doodling or playing or filming or watching jugglingtv. Or writing my blog maybe :/

It all re-ignited at Southern Lights festival a couple of weeks ago, when I was watching a particularly inventive and creative juggler, called Wes (plug!!! www.wespeden.com) - and chatted with him about creating pieces and workethic and music etc… and shortly afterwards this intrigue in my own artwork and creation re-awakened to this ridiculous extent!!
Ah man, I wish I could sleep!! I’d love to be up at 6am to start training tomorrow. Rest body, rest!

So tonight, yes I’ll limit myself to just half an hour of hoop training. mmmm some gentle isolations I thought, and immediately reached for three hoops to spin WRONG WAY. hmm that probably makes no sense to non hoop spinners.

Basically everyone is kinda like a plughole on one or other side of the world that… er… water draining…. erm…defines which way you like spinning in circles. Yes, that makes perfect sense.

Its like being left or right-handed, if you are left of the meridian line facing Mecca and born under a certain celestial configuraltion you have a natural direction to spin a hula-hoop round your body.

I’m an anit-clockwisey. Unsimply put, spinning clockwise for me is like left(wrong)handed chinese calligraphy with an 18ft pixel-thin paintbrush. And a broken middle finger. But as an obsessively meticulous person, I always train my circus props both ways. So, I take about 3 or 4 times as long to get a trick (doh!) but at least I don’t damage myself in the process - if you’re spinning hoops around your body for hours on end in only one direction you end up with your intestines wrapped around your liver and have to poo out of a tube forever. (worryingly true story)
Sooooooo, 3 hoops WRONG WAY is stupidly hard for me and I sweat buckets of water. What a waste of water eh? Don’t worry I drink it again afterwards. mmmm nice way to replace salts aswell. And grime.

Grim.

enough

suffice to say I’m training hoops every day obsessively at the moment and it’s bloody brilliant. (and I didn’t quite stick to half an hour, I never do )

I thought for a long time and couldn’t pinpoint a single day for… erm… a year? a couple of years? wow! - sure, I absolutely love my profession and am somewhat obsessively passionate about it, but it does get quite stressful too. Maybe its about time to give my brain and body a break from it?

So, at the start of the year I perused a map of beautiful bits around Bristol, and found Chew Valley Lake… now whenever I find I have free time I go there and really appreciate the true sentiments of that phrase “free time”.

Watching the ducks and listening to the strange cracking sounds the reeds make in the marshy waters, walking for miles and just staring out at a big expanse of water… it makes me want to move out of the city.

I wont just yet. But I can feel it happening soon…