'Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o'er wrought heart and bids it break.' William Shakespeare.

How very Waitsian to discuss heartbreak on Valentine's Day.

On Thursday evening of this week I saw Peta Lily's show 'Imperfection.' The blurb said it was about art, death and Charles Bukowski - so I knew I'd love it! I've been trying to figure out who my audience are for the show I'm writing - not in the target audience sense - but who are they? Peta Lily addressed us as an audience; she mentioned the ticket price and whether we'd got a drink before the show, and she consciously said she was making art about art.

So I made a list - 'My audience are...'

Drinking buddies, strangers in a bar or old acquaintances
Past or potential conquests
Passengers on a journey
Patients awaiting treatment and their relatives

The last possibility links to a the new thematic content I'm playing with, and it's also the most difficult in terms of the existing structure I've already written. But has been fascinating to research....

It's in this interview that Waits famously states that he'd 'rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.' Initially I had titled the show 'Hair in the Gate', but 'Frontal Lobotomy' had more music and less need for an explanation. It led me down a new research path, and I began to find more links with the personal story I wanted to tell and with Waits himself. I'm interested in healing and transformation, and how we pick ourselves up after failure or heartbreak. How laughing and crying are at once the same and different. The space between the limbic, emotional brain, and the pre-frontal cortex, which houses our intelligence and rationality. For someone who has been lobotomised, this link is irrevocably severed, leaving them functioning (though not always) but soulless, like there is a piece missing.

So this week I have given words to my sorrows, written my confessionals, formed the images from the past that I didn't want to see, and then laughed.