Writings belong of David Finnigan

Sun Drugs in Auckland

Grand first run, thanks to Miriam Barr and the Poetry Live poets and audience. Of course first run technical niggles. You think you’ve simplified it down as much as humanly possible, touring with a tube of lipstick four razors and an mp3 player, & yet you know, deep in your heart of hearts, that forty minutes before the show starts you’ll be fucking around on your laptop trying to edit Solomon Burke’s 1959 hit Cry to me from stereo to mono. But it all mostly worked. Mostly it all worked.

Backed with Anna Rugis’ gorgeous a capella tunes derived from 19th century Scottish folk tunes, and Poetry Live’s lovely swap-a-poem evening, whereby poets read one another’s work. On the other side of the street, a prostitute paced the corner the entire night, and the sign for the sex shop adjacent read VIBRATORS 50% OFF.*

After my performance, a man got up on stage and told a story in response to Sun Drugs - his father died in 1949 of Tuberculosis at the age of 18. He reminded us of the wonders of Penicillin and the danger we’re in through overprescribing antibiotics when we haven’t discovered any major new strains since the seventies. So let no-one accuse my work of having no substance.

* That’s either 50% off the price, or they’ve sawn an electric dildo in half and you’re expected to jam a bunch of loose circuitry in yr holiest of holies.