Wordings Twenty-Four: Homemade
A short poem
They say that it’s a selling point For a thing to be homemade, But nobody’s buying the condoms I’ve lovingly crocheted.
Hello,
Welcome new followers, it’s very nice to have you here. This is normally a weekly newsletter, where I send out a bit of writing - usually, though not always, a comic poem - and a bit of writing about that writing. Now, while I’ve been up at the Edinburgh Fringe, I have been a bit lax at getting these Wordings out. For those who don’t know, this year I was performing all ten of my Edinburgh Solo comedy shows in rep - one each day. The first of these shows was from 2010, the most recent from 2022. I did two cycles, and then two bonus shows at the end. I had a wonderful, artistically and emotionally satisfying time. And also an exhausting time. Geez, an exhausting time. Woah Nelly, an exhausting time. “Z,” as the say, “ZZ.” For the first half of the month, every performance day I had to wake up at 8 a.m., relearn a show, perform it at 2p.m., and then (after a couple of hours downtime) watch the next day’s show. It was a test of memory, of endurance, and of emotional forbearance, thawing out all these younger versions of myself, with all their different dreams and fears. One of the questions I was asking as I embarked on the project was: can a human brain do this? The answer, it turns out, is yes - but there’s a point when it gets really quite tetchy.
I’ve been working on a soulful absurdist poem about memory and showmanship, which I thought would make the perfect return to Wordings. Unfortunately, I am too exhausted (see above) to finish that poem at the moment, so until I’ve gathered my mental resources, you’ll have to make do with this one, about prophylactics.
And so, a bit about my relationship with prophylactics.
Not meaning to brag, but I started the Fringe with eleven condoms this year, and left with ten 😎. This is because I had to use one of them as a prop in show one. (There’s a character called Sex Judge, and I gave him a gavel made out of a banana with a condom on it.)
Take care of yourselves,
John-Luke