Wordings Eleven: Amsterdam
A short poem set in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Englishmen in Amsterdam to do things English-mannish
Unpack their bags and meet downstairs to find the stag has vanished.
They search the rooms and rack their brains then one of them, called Dennis,
Slaps his head and sighs and says “guys - remember Venice?!”
And so they search the waterways and, yes, here’s their man, Al,
Stood soft, gently gazing into a canal.
“Al!” They cry, “Come on, Mate! For sex and drugs and beer!”
The moment Al starts speaking, they know he’s staying here:
“There’s days that bid us to carouse, there’s days bid us to dance,
There’s days that bid us fornicate, there’s days bid us romance:
This day - though the world becomes fiercer and fraughter -
Has offered me peace by a body of water.”
That photo was the best one I took while I was in Amsterdam last week,
I was in Amsterdam to perform at Mezrab’s alternative comedy night. I had a lovely time, and it provided more evidence for my theory that I’m funnier in people’s second language. I’m performing all ten of my comedy solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, so I put together a set made up of routines from all over to start to refamiliarise myself with my archive - some from my first show, Distracts You From a Murder, some from Look On My Works, some from After Me Comes the Flood, some from It Is Better. Material spanning a decade or so.
The John-Luke-a-Palooza (that’s what I’m calling it) is a performance art project disguised as comedy. Plus ça change, I suppose. As I’m gearing up for it, I’m more daunted by the emotional aspect of the project than the logistical one. It will take work to relearn and remount the shows for sure, but the real work is heart-work not headwork. I’m setting out to meet a bunch of former versions of myself, some of whom I feel like I haven’t spoken to for ages. Some of my shows are very obviously about something emotional - my dad dying, breakups, divorce, depression - but now, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m discovering that even the ones which didn’t seem to be about something at the time, were.
These days, I’m finding the walls of time to be very thin - memories come on me frequently and suddenly. Some trivial - a street will remind me of a flat an ex’s brother lived in which we once visited - some less so - I do the washing up and I’m suddenly back in the weeks following the miscarriage. It feels like this thinness of time is an effect of embarking on the Edinburgh project; It feels like I’ve chosen to read through old journals.
Sunday I spent wandering around Amsterdam, memories pinging off me from all angles, finding quiet streets to cry in. In the gaps between those things, I wrote this poem.
Take care of yourselves,
John-Luke