Edinburgh-  August 2013

​

Nothingness

​

We went to the Edinburgh Fringe with the complete intention of doing a show. The show also had a title, you've probably seen the image above if not you should check It out. It was called Existing, Waiting, Fish.

​

A title itself that references things we have already explored such as Waiting for Godot and Existentialism, The Fish element came from So Long and Thanks for All The Fish. This is from the Douglas Adams series The Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy. The narrative was more coherent in places and was less of a sketch show but still had some of those elements in there.

​

In Joel The Hermit Deans words:

​

In Edinburgh I wanted to see if we could portray boredom. Perhaps that's a bit silly but I think nothingness is something that's troubled me all my life. Sometimes I really don't want to do anything at all. Maybe it's a form of nihilism but within that I wanted us to do whatever we felt like naturally doing, if anything. In some respects it was a reaction to the noise and bustle of Edinburgh. So many people pushing their shows, trying to stand out. I thought “what if we take a step back? What if we offer a calmer space? A space that isn't worried about breaking the rules and just does whatever if feels like doing?”

 

At this point I was going to interject with some things pertaining Buddhism and Nihilism but I will save it for later. I have found a piece of text that we wrote in a reflective style around the time of our trip to Edinburgh so I have inserted in next.

 

Enough about Jeff and more about our important lives, or lack there of so comes the need to create nonsensical overtly absurd stories & fantasies so we appear much more interesting then we actually are. And potentially pretentious as Joel so helpfully pointed out. But don’t you find that positively fascinating? Our obsession with the interesting. We do. We certainly do. It begs the question, imaging begging a question, but it’s not about begging the question it’s the need of the subject matter screaming out the obvious. The obvious. What the ruddy hell is interesting? 

At Jamhed we have several different views on what is interesting. Sometimes they overlap, other times they do not. Joel loves Doctor Who, The Avengers, Dracula, John Pertwee, Roger Moore etc. And Adam loves Alan Watts, Rum, People, John Cage etc. Now we’re not saying that we both hate what each other loves but we don’t have the same passions we don’t have the same interests. What’s interesting to Joel isn’t necessarily interesting to Adam and vice versa.

​

So when we then think about it everything must be equally interesting and uninteresting isn’t that interesting! Even boredom has an interesting quality about it. When someone is utterly dull. Think of Peter Cook's character E.L. Wisty. So enchantingly dull. We’re transfixed by this character and so we find the idea of being this an interesting concept. How can you be the most boring being ever? Is this the phrase so often used as having no life? Well suicide could be an option and we’d be dead but then people would talk about our suicide and being a talking point must mean there’s something interesting in the act of killing oneself so that seems out of the question. So then maybe it’s Joel's old fascination with Hermits. Removing oneself completely from life but then again it seems like too much of a talking point but maybe Joel's already there, maybe Joel is the most boring being on the planet. But that just doesn’t sound right. I know Joel, you know Joel, Joel sort of knows Joel and we’re both pretty convinced he isn’t.

​

So if you do know of the most boring being then please illuminate this person to us, although if you are aware of them chances are that they are not really that boring because you must also be aware of us. And chances are we are not that boring so extension you are not that boring and neither is the being whom you believe is most boring. We’ll probably find them really interesting and revere them as a God.

​

At this time I (Adam) stumbled upon the book Where The Heart Beats, Zen Buddhism, John Cage and the Inner life of artists. It led me on a discovery of artists and artistic thought which has brought me here. What drew me to Zen Buddhism was it's absurd and at times comical koans as well as it's detachment and negation. It felt like something I read before. I could sense a link between Zen- Dada & existentialism. I started negating the pessimistic view I had put on to Dada; that of destruction and of existentialism; dread and anguish only to realise that these kind of nihilistic thoughts had been put onto Zen! There Is clearly a binary way of thinking when it comes to these three subjects, I understood where I stand because of where I did not. In the words of Alan Watts:

 

.

 This is why the Hindu-Buddhist insistence on the impermanence

of the world is not the pessimistic or nihilistic doctrine which Western

critics normally suppose it to be. Transitoriness is depressing only to

the mind which insists upon trying to grasp. But to the mind which lets

go and moves with the flow of change, which becomes, in Zen Buddhist

imagery, like a ball in a mountain stream, the sense of transience or

emptiness becomes a kind of ecstasy.

​

But what does this all mean for Edinburgh!  Okay okay...... there is a point to all this. Through our Edinburgh experience we were learning how we work as creatives, what path we wanted to carve. Next we would start to see who we were after our King & Horse characters, who were Adam & Joel in relation to the performances we created.