I’m coming to you straight from the bottom of my gut with no filter. I am anxious to the point of procrastinating my way around the last three days. We all do it right? The laundry has to be done, the house has to be tidied, a trip to the bottle bank, yeah let’s do that right now! Let’s do everything else other than the thing that I am supposed to do right now- which is pack my fecking suitcase for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
It’s a tricky one to explain if you have not done it as a performer before. People think it’s really cool that I am doing my show at the biggest Fringe Festival in the world. Yes, it is. The good side is that it’s like going to a summer camp or the Gaeltacht. Remember that? When you’d go and it’s fun and games all the time before one night you get the shift! (The shift is a term used in certain parts of Ireland for kissing, smooching, I dunno- you get me) Was there anything better than the shift in the summer? Ah summer love!
Edinburgh Fringe is kinda that for grown ups really. You run around with thousands of other artists, also running around, all trying to get people into your show. You get to meet all these other artists and hang out in the evening with them and realise that we simply haven’t grown up on many levels, and that’s why we are here. A bunch of adults who can’t live in what some people call ‘the real world,’ with ‘real jobs’ so we create our own world with our imaginations.
It’s a fine line living as an artist, because it is the greatest thing in the world. No boss, no one to answer to, no timetable, no one telling what you have to do, no idea what is going to happen from one day, one week, one month to the next. I mean I’ve ended up in movies, huge TV shows and huge gigs in the past 6 months alone. Then on the other hand it can be the toughest thing in the world. No one to answer to, means no one is watching over your work. No timetable means you are the only one to get anything moving. Not knowing what’s happening from one day to the next, the fun wears off after a while and you realise you are exhausted.
Guess what I found out? Working at the Iveagh Gardens Comedy Festival this weekend, a few people asked me how I was doing. I was honest: “Been pretty sick, haven’t performed in a month, nervous about performing tonight.” I said this to a couple of my comedy heroes. Turns out they had some of the same stuff. Some of them have made it big in the last couple of years and last week they were in hospital. Sick, broken, stressed and ‘burnt out.’
It confirmed what I had been thinking for a while. That the living as an artist is brilliant and a privilege to get to do it, but you know what? It’s not worth my health. It’s not worth damaging my relationship with my daughter. It’s not worth the materialistic idea of success, which is something I have never bought into anyway, yet I find myself caught up in its ideals from time to time. Comparing myself to others, measuring success in terms of money, ticket sales and fame. YEUCH!
I suppose we’ve all done these things from time to time and it’s a killer. It takes us away from the reason we started out in the first place, just following a dream. We don’t have to live out our dreams anyway. We could just dream- it’s free! We could just be happy, be content, be thankful for some of the dreams that are right in front of our fucking faces! Our friends, our family- like what else matters when all is said and done?
Writing this has already calmed me. I know the hardest part for me is that I will miss my daughter, even though she comes to visit me in the middle. I hate feeling a distance between me and her. I just called her on her Mam’s phone and my daughter answered. I tried to include her in my thinking, to try and be a good Dad and show her my vulnerability: “I am feeling anxious about going to the festival. What do you think is a good idea to do in these situations?”. Her deadpan response is making me laugh now “I dunno Dad you should just figure something out.”
She’s right! I will. But I know part of figuring it out for me is accepting the tough feelings and not burying them. I’m not going to lie, I just wrote that last sentence and it brought a tear to my eye. I have to acknowledge that being an artist is great, but I cannot deny it’s lonely at times. Edinburgh Fringe is unreal, but it is overwhelming too. It’s a lot of work and tough on the energy but also I know if I go to the right places I can be fed by good energy too. It’s not black or white, there’s lots going on. Edinburgh Fringe is kind of a metaphor for life.
With that in mind I’ll give my daughter the final words. As I was ending the call with her, and she said: “Maybe you should have some fun.”