21st of May
The corporation Apple see to it that I need to pay through the nose to get connected.
The goal posts move and I continue to pay to stay connected.
I have to shell out an absurd amount of money for two pieces of plastic coated wire to ensure that my sound card works with Ableton (the software I’m using) and sends it to the speaker system in the Old Fire Station that Chris Full has had us set up as he designs.
I am reminded of a Tom Stoppard short play about a man who has to get a taxi between banks to sort out some finances and it ends up costing more than he actually has.
A long day scheduled in the theatre to get to grips with the audio clips that I have collected and test them out in the space and then edit them before tomorrow’s tech run through.
A short way into the day it stops working. Chris Full’s iPhone is also broken and I can’t really hear his advice. I am looking at apple logo and thinking about the rotting fruit smell coming from my compost bin in the autumn and the grubby little beasts that feast on the detritus.
Help in the form of Simon Geogahn who knows Ableton. Can’t get the sound card to register any signal. “Turnoffandonagain” will soon be a word in the English dictionary. Uninstall reinstall. Every combination of lead and computer tested.
The day has gone.
I’m reminded of the lines:
implement insulting
minimum wage
and change the image of the modern slave
and masses continue
to live in a dirty world
where nothing works
from my poem ‘System Malfunction” which belongs in a fuller length version of TES than any audience will ever have patience for.
I am driven to a calm resigned state of madness in which lies method. This informs the feeling involved in the 21st century reinvention of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the modern Murphy’s Law the frustrating thrust of the techno wedge.
Is this inevitable? Am I actually cursed? These are the questions that arise.
Steve Larkin