The beginning of Chotto Matte

I am crashing like a plane into a mountain - the last few days have been epic and i am not apologising if i drop my usual poetic voice. Chotto matte performed at the Glasshouse on Thursday and it is now Sunday and on Friday i would have said i had not experienced such extreme ecstasy since 2004 when i directed a very powerful production of The Women of Troy. That show and this show are strangely linked - there is something in the experience of performing that seizes my central nervous system and sets pulses of electricity coarsing through my entire body. But i've been on stage plenty of times and rarely do i get this overwhelming rush - this time, like the other time, felt like a moment of enacted transformation. Not only did i get up and get lost in wild and dangerous improvisation - my being was snatched up and seized by unseen entities with madness at their finger tips. My body became a microcosmic theatre of impulse, desire and will to power. These elements may be ubiquitous, but rarely have i come so close to the orgiastic moment of transcendence, never have i known such intimacy with the void. Self was swallowed in flame and i danced upon the ashes. We could have gone all night, had the ending never found us. But, of course, there are points of rebuttal.

We would all agree that at points the music became thin, or lost its momentum, and due to some quirks and misdeliveries in the playing. Friends who came said that there were some issues with the music that were probably due to our approach, stature and occasions of insecurity. I hope that these issues will be overcome as we continue to work and experiment together. But one fact was made blistering clear - this is perhaps more of a personal than a group observation - that we not a band playing songs - we are a group engaged in a ritualistic performance of shamanistic proportions. As Dave built layer upon layer of thick tribal drumming and Alex drove that gattling gun bass, the sound rocketed further and further in its wild and heady ascensions, and i felt my body would explode or burst into flame - that some divine presence had seized my limbs and wanted to make every molecule of my being scream with terror. The pure liveness of the event - the intensity of improvised performance - houses a strange and ephemeral display of intimacy and discovery between three very different artists. The collision of expressed emotions and colours within the whirring miasm of the moment often seemed to teeter on self annihilation. With each decay crumble and fall it seemed we had taken a small step back from the brink of insanity. Performing a meditation on psychosis, we conjured unconscious and uncanny spirits, inviting all present to become consumed in the frenzy.

A further and astute observation was the length of the piece. We performed for exactly one hour - which is a long time when the performance is so full on and violent. Many punters had to leave early because the spasmodic paroxysms and attempted self harming was just too much. I guess it is better to leave people wanting more than to burn them out and leave them exhausted.

What else can be said? It was great fun and if i can do more of that and less of everything else i will be a very happy man. I started reading Pauline Oliveros on improvisation, sound art and philosophy, and an article on multi-tonal singing. I want to immerse myself yet deeper in this thick and wonderful theatre of sound and movement. I started emailing festival coordinators and friends in the music industry - i need to do this on stage and so much more often than every now and then. If there is self destruction lurking in the viscous burning of candles, then i crave that extinction - if it offers a means of self overcoming - then i want that extinction.

Since Thursday i have been full of joy until today when i feel like my legs are brittle water soaked twisties and my head is full of pop corn. If i could sleep a little better i think tomorrow will be great. I look to Alex and David, hoping that in our dialogue, our friendship some minute, detectable essence of the experience may be felt. We debrief, but we know that moment is gone. We can only shift our gaze to the passing time. And weep for that.

I have a recent memory of ecstasy - now i must grieve for its passing. But with all the fibres and vicissitudes of my body - i thirst for more.