The Flaneur: In Love With a Four Day Moment
I don't know if it's the fact I have a week off work, the surround of like minded folk, or the accent and giggle of the small Irish woman who sat next to me through the last performance I went to - my heart is racing and my brain is spinning. I am at SPILL festival as a writer, with access to every performance on show. I am here viewing artists working, but not as an artist. Such a strange concept that I'm finding marginally liberating. I'm an alien in my town, part of this strange happening that thousands are unaware of. I sit through a performance in a local venue, and then step back into reality as I walk back along Museum Street towards the high street. Every time this happens, I detach slightly from myself, from my reality. A knowledge of there being more than I am capable of being now hits me. I wonder what will happen when SPILL 2014 is over. I am surrounded in Arlingtons by everyone I have spent the past few days with. It feels as though a lifetime has passed, in a parallel universe. The people around me; artists, writers, performers, a whole bank of amazing people who share this common factor. Ipswich has been hit by an explosion of creativity and talent and I'm not sure that it knows it. Something in me feels the need to break the artistic barrier of reality, not just here, but everywhere. If buzz in this room can be beyond overwhelming, then what is the rest of the world like? I've found it strange having breakfast with these people, drinking and socialising with them; and then walking into a performance and they are leaping around topless pretending to be a horse. A bank of faces and figures, slowly becomes a network of fellow artists, each performance switching them on in the group, their presence validated. I wonder where we, the writers stand in this. At what point did we become part of it? Was it the moment that we walked into the Think Tank on Wednesday night? Or was it the first time we put pen to paper on Thursday afternoon? Regardless, I am here now. And this will stay with me; as artist, as curator or as writer.