I'm writing these first few blog posts about #intertwined retrospectively - well a few months after they occurred. I have a tendency to want to write about things as they happen, BUT then procrastinate and think too much time has passed to catch up. Well, this is me catching up so that I can write more 'in the moment' in a few blog posts time. I hope that makes sense.
Intertwined was birthed somewhere inside my mind and the deep creative parts of myself in early 2022. Then on the night of the 29th June 2022, I had a sleepless evening. Sleep completely evaded me while I fought through the throes of a cough and cold. I was ill but completely awake and alert and as I lay in bed wishing for the darkness to engulf me into slumber, I instead saw vignettes on a stage. After a while I grabbed my phone and wrote in the notes section. I still have the notes I made that night. Some of them now make me cringe but others are spot on and still in the working script. I saw most of the play take shape in my mind's eye. I wrote at the end of my notes that night: ultimately, this play is about stories, compassion, acknowledgement, getting uncomfortable, hearing songs. No comparison.
I began working on the script. And it began coming together very quickly. Organically. Naturally. Whatever you want to say...and that is the truth. Well, the script and the songs did. It was like they'd been sitting under the surface of skin and soul just waiting for the chance to be brought to life. I feel like all I did was peel back that proverbial layer and out they came onto the paper.
I wrote the script in cafes, at home, at the POW camp, at the Cowra Japanese Gardens, at the Services Club, at the beach when I was on holidays, and I wrote whilst I sat with my kids in hospital. Wherever I took my laptop, I worked on it little by little. I tweaked sentences and corrected turns of phrase. I took books with me and notepads of research.
Sometimes I'd just have the ipad and garageband app with my headphones and I'd work on the arrangement of the digital score. I watched loads of garageband tutorials since I'd never used it before either. I sang all the songs onto garageband using my son's gaming headset....not the best quality but it got the job done. And what was the job? The job was - make a basic, digital recording of each of the songs so that our cast/crew/musos could hear what we would be working towards creating.
Intertwined began as a labour of love and each step of the way feels very much like it continues to be.
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