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October 4, 2009 Chris Cox

Post Gig Come Downs

So I’ve not written a blog for sometime and thought that 1.30am on a Sunday morning is the perfect time to write a blog. I’ve not been sleeping too well the last few days so am hoping by writing before bed it’ll help me drift off. Insert your own joke here about how my writing is boring you enough to make you fall asleep.. but make it pithier than mine.

I’m awake at the moment enjoying/enduring a post-gig come down. Tonight I did my first performance since Edinburgh & The Royal Opera House and it was bloody good fun. I did a short set at the rather brilliant TAM London. It’s basically a skeptics convention but so much more than that, and yes, I know, I know, a mind-reader performing to skeptics.. tough gig. It wasn’t though. I even wore my He-Man I Have The Power T-Shirt which I’ve not worn for ages. And did some tricks I’ve not done for ages. The audience were lovely, I gave it loads of energy, wrote special jokes for the occasion and genuinally felt a lot of love and warmth from a very loud, laughy and impressed audience. It was a joy to do and one of those shows that makes you feel lucky. Basically just what I needed, to simply get on stage, not think about anything, and go entertain.

But of course after all this you have the post-gig come down. A drink or two, a glass of wine when you get home, then you just have to wait for your body to expunge any left over energy before you crash to sleep. In Edinburgh this was never a huge problem as I was always emotionally drained after doing 2 shows a day and drinking after my show so by 3am I was ready for bed. Eventually I’ll fall asleep into a happy slumber but right now I sit and relive the magic of the gig. (name drop alert) Russell Brand and I spoke about this once and he called the time between coming off stage to going to sleep the abyss, and he would do all he could to fill it with something to reach the highs that he got on stage. In his case it was plenty of sex. Lucky bastard.

I recall recently after a fantastic Edinburgh preview having pizza and wine with friends to try get into a sleep zone but it not really working, so when I eventually went to bed I lay there, made a fuss, couldn’t lie still as I had too much energy and was just trying to not annoy anyone too much. I decided to go through my script in my head to try to fall asleep….for some people it’s sheep, for me it’s cox gags. I recall being awake at around half 5, while others slept I was still buzzing but feeling like a very lucky and happy man. So much so that when I had to get up to move my car at 7am due to some slightly dubious parking, I actually felt like I’d had a huge long restful sleep despite it only being a few hours after I eventually crashed. That said by 3pm that day I was a tired mess, but quickly regained my usual composure. The post-gig come down I’m sure is something many others have written about, in a much more interesting way than I, but it’s a strange place to be in your body and mind, to have had the respect, laughs and ‘love’ of 500 odd people to then being on your own in a room with nothing but a nice glass of red to keep you company till the adrenaline wears off.

It’s strange what adrenaline can do to you, what the people you’re around can bring out of you, and how you can conquer your own body with the right mind-set. We’re pretty impressive things us human types. In the show tonight I alluded to a feeling of wonder, amazement and magic we can get in our lives. I try to create some of that for an audience, because it’s one of the best feelings in the world. When you’re a child and you believe in magic and the possibilities of the world seem endless, as you grow up you come to realise you can’t always get what you want, you start to live in your head, to think and over think, to learn that it’s dangerous to stay in your own head for too long, but to not pay attention to that, to bumble along day to day doing what you do, living the life you think you have to lead. However every now and again, every once in a while you’re reminded how lucky you are as something surprises you, catches you off guard, makes you feel special, makes you feel alive, makes you feel happy. And that’s all it’s about this life. You could die tomorrow, we’re little atoms on a little planet, our lives aren’t that important, the connections we make mean everything to us but nothing to anyone else, every face we see of a stranger has a life, a home, a mother has experienced something you never will, has people who care for them but they are still the strange face of someone you don’t care about. In essence if we can find magic, endless possibilities or even simple happiness from anything, be it from someone or something, then we can feel like our own masters of the universe.

To quote the Carl Sagan quote that ended the show tonight, where he talks of a photograph of Earth from a vast distance, a tiny pale blue dot…

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

I should stop now for I fear this has wavered into a poorly written steam of thoughts, from a slightly drunk magical performing monkey, but at least I’m feeling sleepy now.

Night,

C x

Comments (2)

  1. Simone

    I love that Carl Sagan quote, it really puts life into perspective.

    I thought it was a very well written stream of thoughts. I look forward to the next installment.

  2. Kate

    This blog put you to sleep, made me smile and reminded me of the end of Daniel Kitson’s show, ‘We Are Gathered Here’ (which I highly recommend, if you get chance to see it) – “We are points of light in a bottomless bucket of blackness”.

    Hope you keep blogging.

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