February tomorrow

So here's a quick note to wish you happy new year

My dear friend

I am writing this quickly and without too many revisions as I’m deep in panic-mode for my new show, Stitches which opens in two weeks. I’m finishing a dress each night using my sewing machine, and not just any dress, the dress I’m going to wear to my own funeral (it’s not really about my funeral though). You can buy tickets here if you’d like to come along. It is the sixth solo show I’ve written since I first staged Pearls in 2018. I’m staging it alongside a remounting of my wedding dress visual arts exhibition, Pearls (Unstitched) and a very-short-with-extremely-limited-seating staging of Pearls (tickets here).

Through the writing of this show I’ve come to realise that Stitches is the last solo monologue I will write. I didn’t plan it this way, but it is perfect that these three shows are coming together in this way. Do you know how some decisions feel so right even though it’s not at all what you were expecting to decide? That’s what this has been like.

As a result of all of this, this letter is very rough and ready, but I didn’t want all of January to pass without at least saying hello to you. I am one of those who thinks that ‘happy new year’ lasts until the end of January. But given that we didn’t get around to taking our Christmas tree down until three weeks into January, you probably shouldn’t trust me on timelines. (We didn’t keep switching on the Christmas lights, the Christmas tree just slowly turned in a fixture of the house in the way that things do like broken latches and dirty windows.)

So let me wish you a happy new year. ‘Happy’ being a strange word given all that is happening and about to happen (US elections, my god do I have the strength?) around the world. ‘Happy’ being as innocuous as ‘nice’ in the scheme of things, because a life that is simply ‘happy’ seems a little bland to me. And on top of that, only one word ‘happy’ to last an entire year?

This is not at all what I was expecting to write! Despite the apparent gloominess of that last paragraph I do mean to send you loving wishes for the year and I hope that it is a rich and gentle one for you (though the caveat of all that is happening and about to happen still stands).

I had been planning to write to you about the Lloyd Cole concert I went to see before Christmas. I am one of those people who adored the Rattlesnakes album. I’ll admit I first fell in love with it, because a boy who flirted with me when I was sixteen was playing it on his cassette player that he was carrying around. I’ll further admit I did look around the crowd at the concert wondering which of these balding, greying, bespectacled men that might have been—this is Adelaide there is every chance he was there. Unless he’s moved to Sydney. I don’t even remember his name.

Lloyd Cole has released many albums since Rattlesnakes and I have listened to them all, but never loved any as much as I still love Rattlesnakes. Whenever I see him in concert, I go to the internet and search for any new interviews that he might have done since I last looked. I think one of the reasons I continue to like him so much as an artist is that he is open about wishing he had more than a cult following. He also has a lot of interesting things to say about making art into middle age and beyond.

There’s a lot I want to say about this. I do want to write more about it, and particularly in the context of Stitches, and why I’ve come to realise that it’s the final show. But of course I’m about two weeks behind where I want to be so I need to get back to my script.

Like I do every time I write to you, I think ‘I should write more often, the more you write the easier it is to write’ and so on. I’d like to think that one day I will achieve my goal of writing to you every Wednesday. So maybe I will be in your inbox next Wednesday, but more than likely it will be another Wednesday in the unpredictable future.

Until whenever that time might be, I send you my love. And I hope that you have at least one rich, creative project in your life that will be a source of strength and solace as we continue to pay attention and maintain our action.

Your friend

Tracy