Okay, so sometime in the last two days I tried to fly back to England. All was going well until we were on the runway at Portland and the captain appeared at the cabin door to announce that because of thunder storms in Chicago there'd be a bit of a delay. So we sit there, on the runway, delayed. So four and a half hours later we get off the plane again in Portland.

Then half an hour later (before anything has been rearranged), we're reboarding. But, of course, the food that was available on the flight has already been eaten while we were on the ground. So we get to Chicago and it's 11 o'clock at night and I've had a roll to eat all day and hotel rooms are $70-80 (and the airline won't pay because the delay was weather related) and my flight has been rescheduled for 6 p.m. the next day.

Evening
I'm on the verge of leaving and things are going down to the wire.

There's all kinds of video, pics and audio that I'm putting onto CD to take home. When I leave Anet's computer will breathe a sigh of relief.

We did a second video session today at the Centre Space - another great warehouse space. I have quite a romantic attachement to the performance spaces that I've been to in Portland. So&So (Dreamswell) - basically a shop - has been great to work in, the 411 space and Center Space - warehouse spaces and the church space we saw piece at was fantastic (albeit a little too warm in the summer and freezing in the winter by all accounts). All the warehouse spaces in Huddersfield are either being converted to flats or are full of televisions equipment.

Today feels like the start of a long goodbye. There are little bits of comments in conversations with Scott and Anet about 'when you're gone'. Leaving is a much bigger deal than arriving was and there's a gradual coming-to-terms with that going on from all sides.

It's interesting to note that since we got into gear with the piece a couple of weeks ago that Scott hasn't made any wisecracks about getting back to dying. Since we did the piece the only talk has been about what he's/they're/we're planning to do next (apart from sleep for a week). Anet goes to Switzerland the day after I leave, so the house is going to be very quiet - especially considering there's been a steady succession of visitors over the past 3 weeks. It's been kind of crazy really. There has to be an end to it.

Wow, this is what I call momentum. We've just come in from a shoot aqt OPB television studio. We just spent the evening running "(incredible) Things..." for a 3 camera shoot. There's such an amazing momentum to this work. It's so infectious, seemingly. When we did the performances, people were saying that they wanted to get to see the piece a few more times. Of course, with the nature of the piece they'd always get a different show. David Poulshock who was the director this evening came to see the piece on Saturday night. He was in Scott's workshop for three years up to a couple of years ago. He said to me after the performance, "Now I may be crazy but..." and proceeded to set out the idea for shooting the piece at some point during the week.

He basically nailed down some free studio time and called in a few favours and it happened this evening. Scott and I met with him this afternoon to discuss outline details for the evening. He started by asking which piece might be most repeatable. That's when he was finding out how much was improvised. I think he knew a certain amount was impro'd but I know that it can feel rehearsed to people. In fact a group who saw it on Friday thought it was all set and rehearsed. Scott got a bit upset by that and said "don't these people read their programs?". I reminded him that it's an entertainment performance and not a lecture. David wasn't too phased by us saying that it wasn't really apart from the poem sections.

Okay so today is when I start counting down to going home. There is a sense of wanting to put it off just a bit longer. Obviously coming off the performances will accentuate that sliding feeling. And it's not like we're stopping just yet.

Yesterday was about people going off home and away. Susanna went back to LA with a CD of photos, really enthused. She's been fantastic to have here for her enthusiasm and her thoughts. And she took a shit loads of photographs as well. She's wanting to get the LA group to meet on a more regular basis - not just once or twice a year when Scott is around. It'll be difficult - I think Scott casts quite a long shadow in LA.

Stanley and Margarita also left. Margarita who is a dance therapist and was a professional dancer for years was very gracious and enthusiastic about the performance they saw on Sunday. It's very gratifying to have people who don't know the work but who are or have been performers react so strongly - we must have done something special.

As we came back through Belmont (area in Portland) from the session last night, I realised how fond I've become of Portland (particularly the SE) and how familiar it is. I was trying to think of unique things that I might take back to England to represent the great things about being here but I couldn't really come up with any thing as such. It all seems tied up with the process of living. there are some great spaces - clubs, eating houses, shops, beers and of course people.

I spent most of Sunday worrying about the performance and getting hold of skater shoes for my son, Joel.

There's a real problem with trying to know what you can usefully do as an improvising performer between performances. Or even what to focus on. It's kind of abstract to be thinking about how to improvise better. You kind of have to practice the mechanics of it and develop a meditative acceptance and build a trust that the things will continue to come and be interesting but of course then there is a certain amount of saving energy for the performances.

Well, we had a fabulous reaction to the piece last night. We were saying it could be a great cult piece because of the surprises in it and the different directions it takes.

It really can feel like a jazz band comping and riffing (in the musical sense). There were some who know the work well and alot who don't know it at all.

A thing that struck me abou this stuff as performance is that it's really idffiecult to compare it to any thing. The nearest thing in terms of look and feel might be Goat Island and certain Forced Entertainment work but they have specific choreography and work through a discovered process to make a piece. There's really nothing that I've seen that is like it. Somebody the other day described it as like the 60's refined. In another situation a Portland-based director enthused to Scott "No one's doing work like this, no-one.", Scott said "Yeah, I'm an artefact".

So the demand for this show is pretty heavy, just by word of mouth.

Originally Scott and I imagined we might do a single performance to 20 to 30 people, that if we did two performances would we get an audience? When I said perhaps we should do two if we can get the space, he said "Will we get an audience?". Then we increased it to two and hoped we might get twenty in each. At the beginning of this week Scott said "We have to get some reservations, nobody's coming at the moment". By Friday morning the two shows were sold out and people were being invited to the Friday run-through and additional seats being added to the Saturday and Sunday shows up to 45 for each night.

Friday morning

So we're effectively doing 3 performances now. This evening will be a run thro' of the piece "(incredible) Things Happen On The Way To Other Places". At the moment there'll be about 15 people there - half-full considering we're only meant to be playing to 30 people on each of the other nights. That's fine. The more people that get to see it, the better.

Another of the LA group came yesterday. Susanna Knittel is Swiss-American and has basically come from Switzerland via LA for a few days to catch some of the process that we're engaged on. It's great to have these guys coming into town (after Tom and others being here for a few days). It gives us a load of immediate feedback and different perspectives on what we're doing.

There have been a few different beginnings mooted and tried for the piece. We've been released from various rooms (including the bathroom/toilet with the toilet being flushed on our exit), we've been selected from the audience but most of them were seen as too 'hokey' (which they were) for inclusion. I'm glad we didn't have to do any 'acting' in this piece. The simpler the better.

An essential element of Scott's performance making has been how to involve/implicate the audience in the performance without messing up the core aesthetic of the performance. How do you rope the audience and performer tighter together without overbalancing the whole thing? In this situation for me it's about how we involve the performers in the first place without messing up the core aesthetic of the piece.

Yesterday was quite a day.

Tom Ericson, who's from LA and has worked with Scott since the 80s and does duo performances with a guy called Peter Schroff based on the work, flew in. It sounds like the work he does has a closer relationship to what the UK group do in that they work in counterpoint predominantly.

He hasn't really done work with Scott on an ongoing basis for a while and not with a group like Scott's advanced group. So he's around for the Monday session.

Also Craig, who's another strong presence and an experienced ex-member of the Portland workshop (he and Carla did some performance work together) was in from out of town.

In, addition Scott proposed that Sarah M did a reading of "When Bill Danced The War" at the end of the workshop session. Quite a big thing as it's a piece that has a wake up call that 9/11 isn't completely unexpected or unique and that death and pain is not the exclusive preserve of the US. It's such a powerful, angry and unflinching piece and Sarah hadn't got to present it in America before.

So we did a rehearsal in the afternoon with Tom and Sarah in attendance.

We had an excellent rehearsal last night. It was quite tough but various breakthroughs were being made and although at times things felt a little strained, I think we're coming to some fundamental understandings about what we're doing.

We've got a structure where we've chosen a poem each and are developing a chorus for each of those and then are segueing into open improv and then on into the next poem. A week ago we tried to cheat and make something happen rather than letting it come through the process and working exercises to generate the chorus content.

The process for that has been one of distillation and discarding of things that are needed and not needed making-wise. As with any devising process. So now, for instance, Carla's poem is about the chorus being a SoundJam 'band' and her conducting us and bringing people in and out.

Last night we really seemed to be finding the performance goods.