Wednesday 27 August 2014

The East End Literary Salon

I wrote a little play for this wonderful new night starting on Sunday 7th September...it'll be the first time something that I have written will be read out by someone OTHER than myself. If you're in London do come along and hold my hand - I am ever so nervous that it won't come across the way I wrote it or it sounded in my head...


Notes from dreamland

I am in love with London; it's like this hidden part of me is coming back to life and flowering with every step I take in the thick, smog-covered air. Kissing the pavements. It's obvious really; I am a big city girl at heart, a gypsy by birth, no real home and the big city lights on my face as I wonder through the streets do nothing but fuel the fires in my heart. I don't sleep; I can never sleep, but at least now those endless hours are filled with reems and reems and reems of words. I never thought I'd be so inspired by sitting on a bus; it makes me wonder why I ever left. I'm a scream of hot-red writing fire, and I apply for everything I can get my hands on. I will scream and scream and scream until someone takes notice, then I will scream some more until the stars fall out of the sky.

Too many highlights to mention. Lunch at Mildreds, drinking in Garlic and Shots, Adam Ant on stage suddenly at Aces and Eights, an all dayer and all-night conversations about feminism and cats. So much breakfast. Joanne Joanne. A dog on the roof. Dinner by candlelight in a soon to be abandoned car park.

The unknown poetry of the world. My secrets at the Southbank, in an exhibition for all to see. Love, in it's many forms, our love, the old terrible thing I thought would only strike me once shown off and immortalised for everyone to see. In a way it's done the one thing I never managed with my words, it's there, but below glass, it's art and it's not our secret any more - everyone knows.


From my little balcony I can see for miles and miles and miles in each direction. Across to the river or back, north, up to the place I was born. I've made a little haven of it; I sit out at night swaddled in my giant blankets reading my horror stories. I have found a slice of peace in the middle of north London. I talk to the ghosts in the building and I cast the love spells of the generations of women before me and I am the calm little centre of the universe.

Tomorrow I set off to dance in a field for three and a half days.