What kind of f**kery is this? (if I may, Amy)

Amy Winehouse cancels a concert twice; a woman has a back operation and I get to have her ticket. Sitting in Level 3 of Shepherd’s Bush Empire up with the Gods; my friend A and I wait and wait for AW to appear. The boudoir lamps on stage wait with us.

At long last AW appears… legs thin and ready to break like tooth picks; hair propped up meter high God knows how; body jittery on black high heels and loads of wine (red it turns out when a stage hand brought another glass which was gone in two gulps) and a baby doll dress…all giving the image of imminent collapse…

Is she all an act or is she, as I suspect and as her voice and her songs leave no doubt, vulnerable to a degree that makes me feel like a voyeur watching her?

Either way, she sure is special and deserves all the praise and awards she receives.

The rythms of her songs take your body and before you know you are swaying in sync with the two gorgeous male back vocals on stage…even when you are brought to the edge of tears by the lyrics.

And her voice!...oh yes it’s the voice of yearning…no matter what she sings, it cries ‘help me’. It’s angry; it’s fighting….but with what? Mostly with AW, her creativity and the dullness of the rest I think.

Why is it that those who have the most talent suffer from it most? There is definitely that deep suffering to AW’s music and voice…I’d read somewhere once about how thin the line between genius and depression was and she seems to be threading that thin line with the help (?) of wine.

Perhaps, not her looks, but this suffering is what makes her look so vulnerable or emotionally naked on stage…or perhaps that nakedness is what makes her suffer.

Keith Johnstone (a guru of improvised theatre) says (in his book Improvisation for the Theatre) that that “…personality is a PR department for the real mind, which remains unknown”… AW seems to have sacked her PR department and has delved into a search for the unknown through her music. It’s difficult to watch her search not only because she is honest about how difficult the search is but also because we all wish we had the courage too.

...But most of us don’t have the courage…I may have got to the verge of tears listening to her songs, I may have written this note on the whole experience as soon as I got home from the concert. But I then went to bed, got up, went to work and got on with life…I have been thinking about AW and what may happen to her and her drinking…but there seems to be nothing I can do…except perhaps drink one less glass of wine next time I feel the pressure of sacking the PR department.

PS. I used to think people (me included) drink because life is hard…more and more I think it’s because life (and self), otherwise, is too dull…. This needs further thinking…more later…