addiction
Fantastic weekend trawling through Mia recordings and my compositions and starting to map the shape of them across the city. With rain lashing Irish style outside, it seemed OK not to be out on the bike testintesting, my own words ringing in my ears… ” you really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s out on the bike and you’re moving with it! ” – but there’s a new situation here. I’ve decided to work with a writer, and I found and asked Mia Gallagher and she suggested Hellfire as a place to start and within 100 pages, I’d decided this was the story to work with. Largely as it’s about a girl growing up in Dublin and how she gets introduced and addicted to heroin. And how easy that is, and how poverty is so tied up with that, and overall reveals this layer, prevalent everywhere that we either ignore or associate with bad or sick people. Addiction. We all have them. Why are drugs like coffee and alcohol and facebook OK and encouraged and a heroin addict is a junkie and therefore a failure? (check this article from Irish Times)
Mia’s story is based on years of workshops with ex-offenders and homeless, many of whom also had drug related offences, and their stories feed into the voice of Lucy Dolan, the central character in Hellfire. And it’s a gritty read and fast. So the music I’ve made is rhythmic and noisy, in factproces as well as slowly shifting layers of shifting beatings with theELKA.
I’ve mapped a lengthy route, which does not, I realise now, bring in the prettiest parts of Dub at all. As ever it’s about ease of navigation to and from Science Gallery combined with the intense city centre roadworks as well as the places I want to include. And then there’s the narrative. Not only the spoken voice telling a local story on the changing streets, but a linear narrative I want to use and follow. Now that I’ve mapped it across the city, it’s obvious which sections I can lose. Plus I’ve got the text for the beginning. Different to the one I thought I’d use back in the studio. Progress. Tomorrow we’re on the bike.
