Whenever I find an opportunity to squeeze in a casual podcast, I just can't resist especially when it's in a routine Welcome to episode three. The West Park park bench Podcast. Greetings, social media and metaverse. Wombles. I am back PCM creative Karen Lyon after my swim, sitting on park bench of most convenience, just having a bit of a reflection really since the last podcast from episode one, I'd intended to try and post them on a routine and do day after day, week after week, week after week with a weekly podcast or an episodic podcast, but there's a lot of pressure there and when you're not doing it for your job or you're not doing it for a paid gig, you actually want to take a little bit of breathing space into those enjoyable moments of media. So the first one has, as I'm recording this has all its graphics created. And I'm going to create graphic should have seen it at the beginning of this podcast picture is actually the park bench I am sat on and it's just that picture over the audio that I'm gonna put on YouTube. So greetings YouTubers, please do comment, like and subscribe. Obviously, it's just the audio with the cover picture for anchor. So if you're listening to this on an audio podcast, welcome and thank you can subscribe. So it's, it's May, it's mid May. So it's the 17th of May as I'm recording this and I've just come back from a weekend down in London. At firstly to attend a lunch for safety curtain, which is a charity for keeping the flame of culture alive in the darkest of times for performers and artists who find themselves in conflict zones or disaster areas, generally artists that are not Western Europe, beyond the fringes of Europe is the remit really and not North America and Canada. So we have some South American companies Africa, Eastern European. I think we may go out a little bit further than that. I think there's been some India that
mainly to cover living expenses, medical costs, cost of living in order so that they can make community often theatre. I just I'm really enjoying working with them. It's kind of my job to to find the stories and find a way of sharing those stories in a in a sensitive way. That also doesn't put some of the beneficiaries potentially into danger because some of the artists are funded because they're escaping persecution. So it's some sensitive concerns. So yes, here I am sad to the park. So that was the main reason I was going down. But I did get the opportunity to be invited to the coronet Theatre, which is in Notting Hill. Beautiful, old, old, old, old sort of Victorian no older than that sort. Of Matcham type theatres, which is I forgotten my Aging's late 1800s, early 19 I believe, no, I might have even got that wrong. Gosh, how awful anyway. It's a it's a picture book theatre, how you would imagine theatres. It was a cinema and it's had all its cinema. gubbins taken out, but what is left is the skeleton of a very, very old theatre and they've just really beautifully and sensitively just dressed it. So it is as much of the set as as when you go into the space and see a show. It isn't a procedure, it would have been a proscenium arch venue, but it's not being used as preceding March. It's being used as a studio space. So just just beautiful. Anyway, it was a Japanese community festival that was taking place and this was a Japanese dance troupe. There was six or seven of them maybe it wasn't. I don't know if it was an uneven number or an even number so that they could do patterns. But anyway, they were doing modern dance that was sharing the routine and the drudgery of work. Only props they really had were a blue tarpaulin and a breezeblock each. And just the poise and the power of dancers just with a breezeblock I mean, they, they were real Breezeblocks they weren't lifting them up and throwing them around to pretend they were anything else. But just the control at which they were able to lift them off the floor and move them around and place them down. I mean, that's not what the piece was about, but just just dances. The strength and coordination they have is is beautiful to see no matter what nationality even if there's a narrative and it was one of those things after it, I felt that I had seen something that was really special but didn't really have the words to really know what it was that I'd seen. So for me it was I just seen a thing. I really enjoyed it, but I'm not entirely sure what I've just seen on the Think on it. And there you go. You've just had it so it wasn't great. In terms of my expression. It wasn't great in terms of the piece. I really did enjoy it. But as a as a piece to be in front of because as episode two if you've listened to episode two, it's about Point of Presence and I think that's the thing about doing this podcast on this park bench as part of my routine it's great not being on video because having just coming out of swimming, I've got swimming hair, and it really does matter because you can't see ah so back to swimming. Just a nice way to have to move my body around and not think about the world and having to work in that world but just actually move my body in the swimming pool and I really love that. So coming back yesterday in fact, after the lunch, what happened after the lunch I managed to say farewells or some things come to an end and you think do I stick around? Do I stay to the end do I say and clear up? It was a restaurant and they were there to clear it up. It wasn't a mess. So I looked at my clock and I was hoping to get to the Clapham omnibus to see chronic insanities. 2223 24 or it may be 2423 22 I don't know if that's just because I can't remember or whether it's just my dyslexia flipping it around, but it's that kind of that's the title really quite appropriate really because the story of it is
two stories taking place simultaneously in front of you. One is running backwards. Through the day and one is running forwards through their day. And it's staged as a spoken word piece. So both performers into microphones with a DJ, giving the underscore and the energy to the piece and they do act between each other and there's moments where their worlds intersect that they intersect with their acting but apart from that, they are characters on stage and then out of character. paused at the edge of the space watching in not as their character but as the performers so you really get the sense that you are immersed in a piece that has no set but you are definitely inside it the actors when they are not on stage, or at the side of you being present and watching back and that went into the into the opening as well that they they did welcome the audience into the space. Not any ushers, it was the performers. And then when the time came, everybody was in they went into the sequence that then led us into the play on a point of immersive convention, the unusual pneus of the coronet theatre. So at the end, the Japanese performers took their bow, but one by one they stood forwards and said my name is and the Japanese name. And that was just a little step outside of convention that I really liked. So that was my adventure down to London. So I've come back and the next adventure really is looking at democracy and looking at the democracy of a trade union equity.
I love about this particular podcast is there's people walking around the park and so the pauses are just to let life pass me by. So the end of this week is equities annual representatives. Conference. And I will be going down there to represent the online branch and I always like to have those conversations. This podcasts are funny so it doesn't really matter. where I've been and it doesn't really matter who I met. What matters is this expression of presence
and it's easy for me it's easy for me to want to share all those things that I do when I do but actually part of this podcast is me then pausing and thinking No. This is about what we call shall you listening to this? What is it that you were doing whilst I was doing that? What was May 2022 for you. Are you going to remember may 2022 Because of photos you took, or a birthday you had or party you went to or something that you did that you haven't been able to do because a COVID was still exiting or passing through or in departure of a pandemic. And it is seems strangely distant, strangely present and I think of it in terms of myself, where time has a different meaning. Whereas children's time has a different meaning and two years of a child's life. It's a long period of time for them. They spent a lot longer in a pandemic than we have, potentially. Although we've all been present for the same period of time.
The birds here in West Park. Or probably more were to me than before I attended a augmented reality workshop with Mixed Reality Lab. Part of the computer science department at University of Nottingham. And some of the examples that we got our hands on was spatial audio. And those spatial audios were postcards that have audio embedded into them. So you use your mobile phone and using the app that is connected to these pieces. You look at them through your camera, and it triggers a soundscape but when you're wearing your headphones, that soundscape is pinned to the post cold so as you walk away, it gets quieter
one of the things that this may be the last episode that I record without a lapel mic. I don't know what the wind is like. I also don't have a little scuffle. So I apologise if the wind is there. But as the wind is picking up, and I'm going to head back. I'm going to have my lunch in this mid of May pause this has been episode three of Westpark park bench podcast
