Have Box Will Travel - Charlie Dark's blistering new one man show

Have Box Will Travel is Blacktronica founder Charlie Dark's sizzling new one man show. Directed with a relaxed intelligence by Benji Reid HBWT chronicles Dark's journey to adulthood and a touching realisation of what it is to be truly human. Beginning with boyhood DJ fantasies whilst his ever-patient mother bellows through the bedroom door, Dark introduces us to his first love, the deliciousness of vinyl. As a young boy Charlie is believable and endearingly foolish. The description of a teenage party complete with underage smoking, drinking and some unwanted Heavy Metal had me splitting my sides with welcome recognition. As did his unsuccessful attempts to out dance Sweaty Tony at the legendary Dingwalls

His characterisation of his mother allows us to see the rapid quest to find himself through caring and resigned eyes. On her son's new attire she says "he's taken to wearing camouflage at all times. It's like living in the house with a bush!" The warmth of this relationship is made even more apparent when he goes to visit his father in Ghana who appears as a distant figure communicating his love mainly through his pocket.

Anyone who recalls the delirious history of London's pirate radio will relish the descriptions of the “right hand side of the dial' and “stations sandwiched between stations”.

There is so much humour in the first two thirds of the show I would defy anyone not to fall in love with Charlie Dark and his Tigger-like enthusiasm for the music. "I come home, put my headphones on and immerse myself in sound” he says.

The tale becomes increasingly poetic as he describes his search for illusive records hidden in “dark basements filled with other people's dreams” and the sheer orgiastic delight when he asks “have you ever seen 1000 records in one room?” Dark has that rare and deft gift of making the universal personal and the personal universal.

His dreams of becoming a Super DJ are ultimately unsatisfying, the more elite the gig the less responsive the audience “a private function where no one cares about the music” leading finally to the Attica Blues signing by Sony Records and the damning realisation that he is “fish-food in a tank full of piranhas” and a shattering mental breakdown. Dark’s violent scratching away at the surface of a record with a kitchen knife is symbolic of the self harm possible after such an enormous betrayal.

As a moving homage to self acceptance HBWT will break your heart. But, as he tells us, it is all welcome “the breakdown was a gift, it meant I didn't have to be that character anymore”. Charlie Dark teaches us how important it is to be ourselves, and how music will keep us alive when little else will.

In Praise of Bad British Feet

I find myself the frantic city of New York and ask myself just one recurring question - why is it only possible to get a perspective on ones own habitat at a distance of over a thousand miles. For each step I take in the invasive damp heat here I take another invisible step back home on the drab grey paving stones of what used to be known as London Town. Yesterday I went to Soho House, a private members club whose originator is in London. Never having been to its London counterpart I am well aware that its bar stools and high backed armchairs are sat upon by advertising industry drones, storyliners from Eastenders and would be, could be, and could never be artists and plagarists. From the tabloid press to gossip over a dinner table I hear that the London Soho House is fuelled by white powder and over priced champagne, the air heavy and yellow with tobacco smoke and the toilets loud with arguments about whose turn it is to take the next line of a Class A named after our future king, an irony I have always enjoyed.

At 830 in the morning, the suns rays shine boastfully despite the fact that it is mid-Septmber here in New York. I enter a large room called The Library. So as not to draw attention to the intellectual capacity of any of its members this particular library has no books. At the far end of the room there is a bar. A breakfast of bagels and salmon, weak coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice is free. Or should I say complimentary as this breakfast is, in the eyes of the PR company who provide it, “an investment”

At the other end of the room a tall man in a dove grey suit talks his eager audience of well-presented twenty somethings through a powerpoint presentation on eyebrow surgery. I sit and pout and try to fashion a look of enthusiasm. All to no avail, as after the presentation the surgeon discusses his innovative techniques with my colleague and describes me as the 'silent partner'. When in truth, free clover coloured lipgloss not withstanding, I was just ever so slightly bored. Bored, as you can well appreciate, is a word only found in dictionaries on English bookshelves. I think it means I would rather be doing something else, even if that particular something was nothing at all and sometimes especially that.

They say that the UK and the US are two countries divided by a common language and yesterday evening I found myself once again at another promotion at Soho House apeing some sort of interest when I know it is unlikely that I will ever return there. After being shown around the dimly lit spa and beauty rooms we took a drink in the sparsely populated 5th floor bar. The staff are polite and reading your credit card, address you by your christian name in the same manner that telesales people do to boost their commission and your impatience.

Am I the only person here who does not have perfect nails, toes and eyebrows. Momentarily I feel ashamed for my shoddy appearance but tell myself the exuse that I am A Writer and that this adds character. Another pair of efficiently dressed nobodies enter the bar and not even I am convinced by my own protestations. A bar is a bar is a bar but in London a little down dressing has always been the order of the day.

I sip on the remains of my free champagne and am introduced to a group of people who are clearly settling in for the night. Making my exuses I leave early and on 14th street I take my reliable flip flops out of my handbag, slip off my gloriously delicate strappy sandles and run for the subway praising my bad british feet.

Monkey Circus

I remember as a schoolgirl hearing a phrase I did not understand. It described a common complaint amongst the middle class North London mothers whose husbands had left them for the Au Pair, a younger model or in one case, a younger man. They had suffered, it was whispered in the playground between puffs of underage smoking, a Nervous Breakdown. Watching Diana Ross playing Billie Holiday all I could think of was straitjackets and cruel nurses, of women stuttering incomprehensive vowels rocking themselves to sleep, and of cartoon sized hyperdermic needles driven into unwilling flesh in order to calm them down. Not once did I have any idea of what it was like to feel this way. That is I until a few months ago, hence the silence. I did not wring my hands Ophelia- style in an amateur dramatics version of Hamlet. However I did sob until my voice was hoarse and my face pockmarked with the red blotches of too many tears, and not a name for any of them. I lost sight of who I was and the only relief I was able to achieve was from crying. There was no nurse with a syringe, instead the damage I did was to myself. When the pain inside became unbearable and when words could no longer describe what it was I was going through, I reached for the scissors on my desk. I slowly and deliberately drew the blade across my right thigh making a bloody grid with each mark. I sat and watched as the blood seeped out and the pain that had been howling and voiceless inside me found a home on the surface of my skin. I fantasised about hanging myself with the belt he had given me, from the door handle. I wanted to sleep forever, but dreams were no comfort. I flushed my prescribed valium down the toilet for fear of being seduced by my desire to end it all. I smoked heavily and stayed in doors. My thoughts were the enemy, they assaulted me each morning telling me how useless I was and that it was all my My Fault and that it would only get worse, why not end it now. I believed it all. I wept more and shivered and longed to be held. I was in hell, I had broken down.

It was only my admission of this fact that allowed me to turn away from the gutter and to look at the stars once more, that, and the persistence of my friends and family that allowed me access to the unbroken world again. And love too, a part of me was still alive enough to feel it. I still hug myself to sleep at nights but at last something in me has shifted. Last night I was lucky enough to go to a poetry festival where I met what can only be described of as my kindred writing spirits. New friends who not only spill over the sides, they actually turn their frayed edges in to an art form.

Walking back home past midnight along the bedtime streets of Highbury I realised that my madness, if that's the right term, was a calling in me to belong to something. Initially I was tempted to entitle this piece "If people evolved from apes why are there still apes ?". I am still angry you see, the sort of anger that paralyses me when I don't know who to blame first, when my body is a clenched fist looking for a fight.

There may be still be apes and for all I know I may be one of them. I do know, however, that my circus will be full of performers who fall from their horses, their make-up smudged, and yesterdays sequins littering the sawdust floor. In my circus the monkeys will out smart the men and clowns will make the straight man slip on the banana skin. Who knows the guy in the suit and tie may even cry in public, lose a button, lose face and not care. And in my circus, my nervous-breakdown-to-hell-with-it-we're-alive-circus, the applause will be all the louder for getting up.

Saving a Life

Greg and his lopsided family are moving out from the sodden flat in the basement. “Fuck” I hear him say in an exaggerated voice below my window, taking his last cardboard box to the van double parked on the street “A bit of this house has fallen off” he shouts to his son, and like those clutching to life in the boats that saved the shivering travellers from the Titanic he smiles from the car window as the van finally moves away. I have been meaning to move out for years, the chic wooden shutters that make this flat seem so elegant from the street have the reverse effect when you are the one shut inside during the winter months, it’s like being sealed in. I don’t mean to sound churlish or ungrateful, it’s just that it’s time to move on and I am not sure yet how I can, how I will or what to do.

I never thought that I would find myself at a workshop on a blustery autumn afternoon called ‘The Phenomenal Women’s Program’ and believe the possibilities to be true but that is where I was last weekend. After far too long being anchored to a stubborn depression, brought on in part by sustaining an unhappy relationship and partly by its end, I saw what it was like to be part of something. That something means more than the warmth of my ex lovers embrace when the love has gone sour. There were no lightning flashes or emotional outbursts and in its place just a quiet and sustained kindness. I felt what it was to care and be cared for again. The truth of it was gorgeous in its simplicity and it enabled me to see some of my more difficult relationships anew.

This understanding is what will save my life.

There are still bits falling from the hulk of me, some big enough to hold up a house, but sometimes the only thing to do is to hire the biggest van possible, pack the most valuable items and move on from what is crumbling and start afresh.

Tender Loving Care

Two years ago I worked in one of Londons biggest teaching hospitals. At the time I was curious about working as an Occupational Therapist (as a secondary career to supplement my writing) and to this end took a job as an OT and Physiotherapy assistant to find out if this really was the environment I wanted to work in. After a year I had my answer, and it was a defiant and definite no.

My first rotation was to be in the grim and dimly lit Queen Marys Ward. Photographs adorned the long corridors of the Victorian era when a strict matron in a starched uniform governed each ward, and dirt and germs were the rightful enemy of good health. How things change. I learnt more in my first week at the Middlesex hospital than I did in the following months I was there. Queen Marys Ward was for Care of The Elderly. It was here that I learnt that TLC did not mean love or kindness but instead that the end was inevitable and that no drugs or intervention would change this. TLC was a euphemism. It was not an act or an instruction instead it indicated a reluctance, in that notorious English way, to voice the truth death was, as ever, in our midsts. Each morning there would be a handover and new names scrawled in red or blue on the whiteboard. And, so often, after a weekend away, an abrupt RIP where the TLC had been.

I found that the most difficult and most meaningful thing I encountered when I was working there was the unavoidable fact that people die. And we make connections, ranging from love, loyalty to grudging indifference but, in the end, it stops for all of us. There were no provisions to talk about this. I worked with a young woman with breast cancer. She was a single mother and had a six year old daughter, whom she adored. I did relaxations sessions with her twice a week. We never talked about her inevitable death. But on my bike on the way home tears would run down my face before I knew they were there.

The people who coped the best with the illness and pain they saw were either unapologetic aethiests, pragmatists with a you take what youre given approach to life, or those lucky few who were buoyed up a certain spirituality and faith in Gods love. Anything else meant the inevitable struggle of questioning the glaring inequities in the lives we lead and how this could be so.

Entering the building at 815 each morning was like going to another world, with its very distinct language, customs and rules. You didnt have to be a sociologist to witness the rigid hierarchy with its unsubtle gender and race preferences. To be blunt the nearer the job was to cleaning up shit (figurative and real) the more likely the employee would be a Black and female. And no surprises, the conceited and knife hungry surgeons were, in the main, White and male. From the patients, to the porters, the cleaners to the consultants, the nurses, the health care assistants, the canteen staff, the physios, the OTs, the ward sisters everyone had a uniform indicating clearly not only their job but also showing their place in the social pecking order. It was the closest thing to being in the army that I could imagine.

But before I paint the grimmest picture imaginable let me end on this note. I met some of the most wonderful, exceptional people whilst I was there. A young cancer patient who could not walk when we met and worked with her her absolute devotion to life meant that when I saw her again 6 months later she smiled. Its the last day with my sticks she said and skipped down the hall away from me. And so many, so very many people I worked with, despite the bad hours, the MRSA, the grime, the appalling pay all loved, yes loved their patients. I met people with huge hearts full of faith, love and compassion.

I met everything there, all human life and I also met myself. I will always be grateful for the lessons I learnt about what it is to human and what it is to believe and, despite everything, to keep the faith.

The Mysterious Mr Beck

Before the Almeida Theatre was known city wide in its current incarnation it was a lecture hall. This was in the days of The Elephant Man, and when conjoined twins and bearded ladies were removed from the hospital and taken to the roadside freak show. Hand-rubbing gleeful surgeons would listen to professorial speeches about the latest techniques in aneasthesia or eyes widening witness the latest equipment to remove cysts from the digestive tract or lung.

The spectacular was muted by the First World War and the nursing of the trenches. The building lay dormant for some time until the Salvation Army took over using it mostly for storage. Soon the building was left to rats and the winter damp until Mr Beck of Islington saw its potential in the 1960’s and opened Mr Becks Carnival novelties selling and hiring fancy dress attire and circus equipment.

Mr Beck a timid and private transvestite was tragically murdered by his brother in law for bringing shame to the family. And today the emergency signal for a fire at this popular theatre is ‘Mr Beck’ wherever he may be. It is said that his shadowy figure is still seen loitering in the Green Room quietly listening to the interval conversations about make up and drag and the freedom of dressing up.

The World is Full of Letters

The other day the 6 year old Leo came to me with a yellow piece of paper emblazoned with black hieroglyphics. "Look,' he told me proudly " this is Chinese". As I was scrutinising the rice noodle packaging and wondering at the intricacies of these foreign words Leo tugged at my arm and in a stage whisper declared "The World is FULL of letters" before leaving the room to share the good news. I remember when I came to realise, like Leo, that the world was made more magical by alphabets. My mother was an art teacher and apart from my brother and I having a constant source of powder paint from the infamous school stock cupboard the walls in my room were covered with pages torn from an old Letraset catalogue. Seriffed and non-seriffed upper and lower case A's were stuck opposite my bed so I too could see the loveliness of letters.

Years later and my love affair has blossomed to a passion for googled information and a buffet approach to All Things Found There. The simplicity of letters is forgotten and now a word or phrase, from 'weblog' to 'wheat free cuisine' (if indeed there is such a thing) leads me to even more words and statements where the complex is made irresisitable with a single key stroke.

Mourning Made Permanent

I first came to NYC when I was 22 years old, with hair bleached the colour of dry sand on a hot day and dressed entirely in black. I wore pillar box red lipstick and was excited by everything. The world seemed so broad and inviting in its possibilities. I stayed in an over heated apartment in Brooklyn where even in the sub zero temperatures of that winter the windows were kept open to cool the place down. It was in stark contrast to my rented calor gas heated flat in damp north London. Twenty years ago the city was different and so was I. Even Manhattan, which for the most part resembles an enormous shopping mall with better architecture today, then had a certain edginess that I loved. I played at being the native New Yorker, striding on and off the subway with a faux confidence that was largely manufactured in front of the mirror. I played Trivial Pursuits on Christmas Eve in a tiny apartment in Alphabet City and lost as my team mate was Swiss, and being English myself we had no chance of winning the all American version of the game.

Things change. Always. On Sunday I found myself walking through the meat packers district on the west of this busy island. On one side of the street blood marks the sidewalk and the smell of animal flesh hangs in the air. On the other top fashion designers tout for business, their stores looking and feeling more like refrigerated museums than anywhere you would actually want to shop. I was enjoying the intentional irony in this contrast when I saw something that made me think. Ahead of me two tanned, gymed, mannicured, pedicured men were walking side by side. Their demenour, sharp dress and the hurried way in which they walked, as if on the run but not wanting anyone to know, told me that they were gay. Struggling to keep up in my rubber flip flops I noticed that one of the men had a tatoo on his tanned and muscled forearm. A black stripe, 3 inches thick circled his arm. It did not take me long to realise that he was wearing a black armband, his mourning made permanent by the tatooists ink. At first I thought that this was in homage to a dead lover from AIDS, but in truth I will never know. In a city where the permanent mauseleum of 9/11 is in the heart of the financial district I wanted to ask ‘what is it you are mourning exactly?’ The loss of a life, or lives, or the candor of somewhere that used to be angry enough to be a little bit dangerous.

I wonder what my armband is ? The lipstick, the urgent cobbled together confidence or the fact that I have to search deeper within myself to find an enthusiasm and a sense of adventure for what lies outside.