Choose your Patrick | May 22 2020
Lately it seems we’ve been discussing alternate realities a lot.
This is not intentional, sometimes these things just write themselves...
Apparently it's called automatic writing and it happens in situations where the writer (or writers) are overcome by forces from other astral planes and the writing comes effortlessly without any thought or preconception or even direction it flows out of you and you can't stop it even if it never ceases and the meaning is after then a little while exactly what turkeyneck thrush might shit on me if I fiddledeedee fluxom snycopated rhythm tap dance...
Wow.
What a rush. That was Exorcist level right there.
What we were going to say, before a non-incarnate being inhabited us, was that if there are split realities there must be all sorts of stuff we've left behind in the vacuum between dimensions.
Stuff like...
The EU
Human contact
Trump's leadership qualifications (no wait he never had any did he?)
Carriageworks (soon to be renamed Sydney Opera Carriageworks House)
Live performance
Patrick Swayze
That's right, Patrick Swayze.
But not this Patrick...
This Patrick…
That's the earnest ghost Patrick, not the dirty dancing one.
There's a reason Patrick's in our minds right now. On The Farm we've been having trouble sleeping. It's not the animals snoring, it's not the sound of the ocean outside our barn doors, it's not even the chilli con carne we had for dinner.
It's the depth of loss within us.
The loss of the things we should be doing.
Siblings embracing their past, a cowboy on the streets of Spain, Farmer Grayson and cohorts making do in Berlin and SoLD dancers getting down in Freiburg. Glass Child, Cowboy, Make Do and Land Unter. Two shows in Germany and two in Australia. Two in development, two in performance. Four ways to create meaningful connection in the world.
All four gone, at least in this current reality. They've been lost in the uncertainty of our collective future, a place that seems as far from us now as Trump is from credibility.
As we lie awake in The Farm's dark night, the ghosts of these shows rise up out of the shadows to haunt us and we feel like Demi Moore, our hands on the clay, Patrick pressed into our backs as we attempt to draw a formless lump into shape, clay juice squeezing between our fingers, a dirty breath dancing on the back of our necks.
Our lost shows haunt us but like Demi, we have to move on. We face a new reality now and we have to learn how to cope, despite the longing and the tears, despite the ideas that we knew were going to be great.
We have to keep searching for fresh inspiration because, unlike Patrick Swayze, we still need to make our way in this world.
So here's what we've done so far.
3 home safety videos to induct you into your new workspace. The link is here
A new blog by Farmer Gav teaching his six year old son things he has failed to understand himself. Another link... over here
And Issue VI for Farmer Mindy's Quaranzine project. Let's put this link...
...down here
We're still reeling from the loss of things we were expecting and adjusting ourselves as things shift and change but, like the Sydney Opera House on the hunt for flailing arts organisations to absorb into it's clam shell, we need to find new things to do.
We're searching for new ways to create connection in a new world where live performance doesn't yet exist, unless you use the rather loose terminology employed by the Royal Shakespeare Company...
“using devices such as mobile phones, extended reality (XR) headsets and streaming, they (audiences) will experience live performance like never before.”
That's because it's not live! Sorry, no offense, but we never thought we'd be arguing semantics with Shakespeare...
We understand the desire to contact the past...
But just like Patrick's character arc, that past is now insubstantial and we have to try to move forward and keep looking for new forms to emerge from the formless.
New lumps of clay to throw on the wheel.
Back at the Farmhouse, we close our eyes and try to sleep, in between a horse and a cow, a rock and a hard place. It's hard to let go of the things we know, but it's the only way we can continue, because our pre-Corona past is now only a ghost.
“When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you're going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life... it's a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.”
Patrick Swayze