Making better plans

On Wednesday evening just gone, myself and the boyfriend found ourselves with quite the interesting dilemma, we had to choose what to go see from a list of many. Now I used to  be the first to complain about the lack of things to do in Waterford but will admit that things seem to be changing and that complaint is becoming less and less valid. Particularly given the rise of organisations like central arts who bringing all sorts of cool and interesting things to the city. If they ever added art-house/world cinema to their bowstring then I would probably just tape a reserved for Laura sign on their squashiest couch and just move in. Of course were in the middle of the imagine arts festival right now so its less a case is there anything on and more which thing shall we pick. We eventually settled on either a gig in central hall or a play in a nearby theatre. Now I knew very little about either option so I left the choosing up to himself who after much hawing and hemming said we'd give the play a shot.

We arrived at the theatre early and this gave me plenty of time to establish how tired I was. This part is really a story for another night but I had yet again realised my sugar consumption was getting out of hand and had gone cold turkey (if you can even call it that when it's sugar) just that morning and oh boy was I suffering for it. Extreme tiredness and an amazing headache were just two of many symptoms. So with all of that going on and waiting for the show to start, I had plenty of time to wish I was lying down in a dark room but while that thought was floating about my brain, the lights dimmed and there I was in a dark room but sitting upright. It was one man plus many side effects and it didn't take me long to decide the whole thing was woeful plus on top of this with the tiredness I found myself have micro naps and knew that I was not enjoying this play and if we stayed much longer that I would slide off my seat and just sleep on the floor. After an hour of this carry on, it was time for the interval and the first thing I said to my boyfriend was this is awful, can we go? Fortunately I was not alone in this and we ran out of there. Lucky for us with the timing of the interval, I happened to know that there was gig in central hall starting moments later.

Walking in, I knew I had made the right decision, I started feeling more awake and soon got over my disappointment that the couch was taken and settled instead on the chaise longue which Stephen insisted on sharing with me and refused to feed me peeled grapes ( like I was Julius Caesar) I didn't really know what to expect but I am yet to find myself  leaving Central Hall feeling disappointed so I figured it would pay off and it wasn't like it could possibly be any worse than the play we had just sat through. 

The gig we were there to see was called Circle sequence and it was a guy called Jasper Rua playing guitar to accompany a silent film made by two local photographers. This much I had grasped from my boyfriend upon arriving. So I settled down onto my seat and prepared to be entertained. Now I am terrible for this but much as I might enjoy an instrumental piece, I generally find I prefer it as background rather than as a main show because I get bored sometimes without lyrics to focus my attention. I don't mean to say that purely instrumental groups don't have as much to offer because there's a red-neck manifesto track that I used to put myself to sleep with (so soothing) and I love Rodrigo & Gabriela. 

I was still fairly exhausted when the gig began, perhaps to say I was feeling frazzled would be more accurate but actually the combination of music and film worked perfectly together. It wasn't a coherent story being told with the images on screen but Jasper seemed to find the perfect notes to accompany each image and I swear I got more tired just watching the speed at which his fingers manipulated that guitar. I found that I would watch the images flicker by but that my mind would wander of it's own accord and the overall effect was incredibly relaxing. Like meditation by music for lack of a better description. Now I have read the introductory chapter of a mindfulness book and I one day might read more than that so I feel fully qualified to say ( I hope you also speak sarcasm and actually get I'm joking) that during the gig it felt as though I was being mindful. At least in a way it did, I was in the moment and then I wasn't. One thing was for certain, ditching that play to come to central hall was the best decision I had made all week.