Defence
29 June, 2018
amphitheater | restaurant | backstage
red | mint green | white | black | yellow
bathtub | ute | clothes rack
circle
staff apron / vest
anticipation, annoyance, defending myself

I dream I am in an indoor venue just preceding an event. Everybody is setting up, lights are dim red, and feels like one hour before doors open. Venue is like a restaurant, more than a live music venue, but with a bar.

An organizer asks me to iron or sew up some of the vest / apron garments they have had made. I wonder who they got to make them, but don’t want to ask.

I’m also more interested in getting myself ready – my art collective have an important opportunity to enter a competition, and I have to submit the application before doors open, and get dressed. I go off to the bath to get ready. The bath is in a liminal space, perhaps made up just for one night, part foyer, part dressing area, carpeted floor. I notice I am bleeding. The mood is good, but a little rushed. Someone comes in to see if I’ve ironed the vests yet, but I tell them I don’t have time and they should get an intern or volunteer to do it. There is a rack in the room, and the sense that my costume is on it.

I am now at an outdoor venue, live music is playing. The space is like an amphitheater, where you can approach it directly from street level from the road. Its night is black and the stadium white. It is very crowded. There is someone good just starting, a woman that demands respect with her voice. A tall, heavy set woman behind me makes some smarmy comment about me pushing in or something, and I tell her what I’ve done is not illegal, but what she is doing might be!

An ex-boyfriend turns up with his ex-girlfriends (who are all now my friends). He puts both his hands over mine in an apparent act of tenderness, but he leaves dirt all over them and I’m annoyed as I’m not anywhere I can clean them off. I have an oversized, man like coat on so the sleeves are too long and also dirty now. He has a black and yellow ute with street art all over it. We are going off somewhere and I have to fit his ex-girlfriends into my car, but there’s little room and I have to clear things out. The feeling is annoyance, although I’m happy to see his ex-girlfriends (my friends).

Somewhere between the stadium and the car is a mint kit-kat. Red and mint green.