Words From a Watcher

© Steve Gray 2026

Entering the space from the street required stepping through an ageing, double-timber set of doors. Fitted with clear glass panels that rattled faintly against their frames, they felt worn, heavy, and resilient. Only the left side opened; no one ever tried the right, which was stuck fast. The old building had dropped, its stumps no longer as solid as they once were, giving the entire entrance a slight, fun-house tilt.

The delicately curved brass handle was well-used, polished to a dull, oily sheen by over one hundred and forty years of hands. At some stage, it had been painted over, but most of that black enamel had flaked away, leaving gritty flecks in the crevices. As it opened, the door squeaked with a high-pitched, metallic tone that resonated delicately but firmly across the room, cutting through the low murmur of the street outside.

I knew to be careful of the step up at the front entrance, a jagged, uneven lip of concrete and timber that served as a tripping hazard no one wanted to own up to. Heading inside, the air shifted, thick with the scent of damp blue stone, stale floor polish, and the faint, sweet trace of cheap red wine from previous openings. I let my vision scan the room. I had walked through this door countless times, yet no two visits ever felt quite the same; the shifting shadows and peeling paint seemed to rearrange themselves in the dim light.

My intention was to join others in viewing an artistic expression, a piece of performance art. The creative event was the brainchild of ‘Default’, an artist of some repute, although I was unsure of that. The wide front space had been adjusted. The move-able wall sections, usually chalky white and scratched where artwork hung, had been pushed aside. They were replaced by a heavy, dusty black velvet curtain that added an air of mystery, choking out the natural light and trapping the warmth of the bodies inside.

Moving closer, I caught a glimpse through a wide gap in the middle: a group of people stood shoulder-to-shoulder, waiting for the proceedings to begin. I could tell at a glance that most of the viewers were artists, dressed in the obligatory all-black. Some say it’s a Melbourne thing; I say it’s an art thing, a sea of matte cotton, dark linen, and heavy leather boots, all rustling softly in the cramped space.

An usher gestured for me to move over to the right side of the room. I found a spot by the cold, exposed brick wall in case I decided to leave. However, that would probably only happen if the performance turned out to be boring. It wasn’t that I lacked high hopes for an enthralling event, but experience had taught me otherwise. Too many performances fell short of their intended mark, leaving the audience trapped in polite, agonising silence.

In front of the crowd, a ring of viewers sat on mismatched plastic and folding chairs, their knees nearly touching, signifying the edge of the performance area. It looked as though I was the last person to arrive; the collective gaze of the room briefly darted toward me before snapping back to the centre. A single, harsh halogen light on a stand projected a stark, blinding beam into the centre of the space, throwing long, exaggerated shadows against the rear curtain. Four brightly coloured sticks, neon pinks and acid greens mounted on heavy bases, were positioned around the floor like strange, synthetic sentinels.

The performance began with a soundscape that could easily be construed as a cat being tortured, a piercing screech of electronic feedback scraped against the eardrums, making several people in the front row visibly flinch. Then came an explosion of random physical movements as three people appeared in the space. To some, they looked suspiciously as though their puppet strings had been cut mid-dance. While any sane observer would call it a disorganised mess, others might suggest it was a profound, existential, non-linear assault on the senses, meticulously engineered to induce sensory panic rather than convey a clear narrative.

The physical movements felt somewhat pretentious, bravely melding aggressive gestures like ‘slashing’ the air and ‘trembling’ violently on the floor with simple, brightly coloured props that screamed for attention. By grouping these extraneous movements into arbitrary sequences of ‘stasis’, where they froze, chests heaving and sweat glistening under the hot halogen lights, followed by ‘violent displacement,’ the performers ensured the audience was left thoroughly bewildered. You could hear the faint, synchronous intake of breath from the crowd, a collective effort to appear intellectually engaged. This chaotic choreographic blend prevented any predictable viewing patterns, mostly because it seemed to make very little sense. Perhaps the artist simply wanted the audience to somehow attempt to find meaning via nonsense.

Spatially, the staging threw the traditional rule book into a bucket of stained water, turning the pages blue. One performer was violently pushed across the space by the other two, their bare feet slapping loudly against the worn timber floorboards, forcing the viewer’s eyes to dart around like a trapped fly. This intentional chaos was no accident; it was a rigorous stress test for the brain’s selective attention. The drama was amplified by brief, blindingly harsh strobe lighting that left purple afterimages on the retina, and gaudy projection overlays of botanical drawings that bled onto the dark curtains behind them. This gave the movements a false sense of independence, seemingly pretending to possess depth without doing any of the actual work required to build a real emotional connection, at least that was my view.

Ultimately, this multi-layered spectacle represented the pinnacle of overthinking. By blending mismatched aesthetics, empty stages, and random actions, it served as a wonderful psychological tool to make people stare at a performer and perhaps hallucinate a little, hoping to elicit a deeper meaning. It perfectly demonstrated that if you stage something strangely enough, you can convince people that a total lack of structure is a scandalous critique of the wider, gritty human malady.

The movement stopped, the lights rose slightly, bringing the stuffy, overheated reality of the room back into focus. As the performers retreated, the sound of a plastic didgeridoo began, providing a deep, warm, pulsing tone that vibrated right through the soles of the audience’s shoes. The musician remained hidden; only a white PVC pipe extended from a gap in the middle of the background curtains. The longer than usual pipe was slowly pushed forward, its hollow drone fading slightly, before it retreated from where it came.

Silence. The heavy, awkward kind. The crowd shuffled in their seats, the squeak of plastic and the scraping of boot heels filling the void before a polite, scattered applause followed. There was a collective appreciation that the performance was over. One person from the crowd shuffled toward the exit, warily unsure if they should leave just yet. The usher leaned over and advised, ever so quietly, ‘This is a momentary break in proceedings, please stay.’ The plucked viewer turned back, looking forlorn and exposed in the dim half-light.

More raucous sounds, or was it music, emanated from the pair of crackling speakers, a metallic rattle, and perhaps the piercing sound of a piccolo played by a fife player of no great merit. The artists re-emerged, this time in all-white costumes that I feel sure would have smelled faintly of unwashed calico. They looked like characters from the 1920s Cabaret Voltaire with Hugo Ball and company. For those familiar with the Bauhaus era aesthetic, the simple cardboard shapes resonated nicely with the poetic ramblings that followed. All three performers read directly from crumpled text, presenting words and phrasing that danced between similarity and dissonance, their voices overlapping in a dizzying cacophony.

The trio stopped in unison, turned to each other, and bowed. Then, they rotated to face the audience and bowed again. The crowd, seemingly relieved, applauded with much more gusto this time as the trio departed. The artist Default hurriedly came out to centre stage to bow, before the audience cleared the room.

The usher then moved to open the rear curtains, only to have the temporary timber structure fail miserably under the physical gesture. A loud, splintering crack echoed through the room as the curtains and structural elements collapsed inward. A look of acute, bright-red embarrassment washed over the usher’s face as the curtains and broken pieces of timber were hurriedly shuffled away to one side, scraping awkwardly against the floor.

There was not much in the way of a slow exit with people discussing the performance. Instead, people headed for the exit quicker than a neuro-diverse isolate, complete with headphones and an awkward wardrobe choice, but I digress. My journey home from such an event would normally be pondering and exploring what took place, yet there was little of this. My journey of twenty minutes back to my ‘fair abode’ was punctuated by contemplating the traffic and traffic lights, rather than the movements and sounds of the performance. Car parked, doors locked, I entered the living area with a sense of relief.

‘So, how was the performance?’Angela, my wife asked in a partially intrigued tone, her eyes glittering with amusement.

I chose one word: ‘Calamitous.’

I waited, it wasn’t long before she said, ‘and?’ I gave her a loose rundown and mentioned that the performance was allegedly about the journey the artist ‘Default’ had undertaken, so therefore an interpretation of and or an abstract meandering of a journey of some sort. ‘High art, I think not.’ Angela was briefly amused, smiled then turned back to the TV show she was partially watching. Then stating ‘Well that sounds like it was good fun…’

I put the kettle on, shook my head and wondered what it was that caused me to go to the performance in the first place. Clearly I expected more. The artist, ‘Default’ had been hailed in some circles as some kind of genius, I failed to make any connection to their level of intellectual prowess. In my mind I invented a similar setting with a concoction of my own. 

A word-scape with a group of people reading random words from a carefully curated bunch of somehow connected words. Then a soundtrack of animal noises overlapping and fading in and out. Finishing with a bunch of hand drums making a suitably disjointed set of rhythms, enough to make the audience question the connection, then the voices would fade out and come back in. Then finally they would abruptly stop. I would then wander out ready to bow to the audience. Hmm, I needed a stage name? ‘Odious Jones’ or ‘Disjunctive Snark’, nah, neither of these stood out. I felt like the name needed more academic exploration to ensure a perfunctory connection to the stance I held in literary and artistic circles.

Three am, I awoke after an annoying light sleep. I tossed and turned. My mind decided that I should fiddle around with concepts for a performance, not to merely entertain, but to move the audience to consider the offerings and brand the presentation as gallant, authoritative, noble or some such. Every idea soon fell by the wayside, feeble attempts to say something but not be direct, move the audience emotionally but not spell out the imagery.

I pondered wisdom, knowledge, local and international issues. I recalled other performances, especially interpretive dance set to a healthy soundtrack that eluded to gentle landscape scenery, lilting with delight, then turning to explore the notional concept of an approaching storm, dancers ducking for cover.

A stage show then came to mind which didn’t impress me at the time, ‘Singing in the Rain’. A piece of sentimental romantic drivel as far as I was concerned. But I soon drifted off to sleep, at least for half an hour or so.

I awoke, I recalled the stage show. Then an abstract notion arrived, dark figures with coloured flags on long sticks, they could be a choir, or they could explore the word-scape idea mentioned earlier. My mind was now making some sense of an abstract notion. But I kept coming back to what works on stage, how would an audience with little connection to this type of ‘production ’ perceive things?

Perhaps I should play it safe and do a standard story line with actors reciting accurately structured words to readily communicate the story line. No, I wanted something that meant they would have to interpret things, so that each would come to some form of personal conclusion, rather than some realistic story that was ‘light and lovely’.

A few options paraded themselves around in my head, most fell short, some invited further exploration but at another time. Sleep now beckoned. One thing was for sure, horror, heavily dramatic and zombies were out of the picture.

The next day, I jotted down the points explored overnight and then promptly forgot about them for a while. It would be weeks later before I found the file of ideas. I read through and deleted some, most I kept. I even added a new concept to explore, a monologue like Hannah Gadsby did to much acclaim. The reviewers who fell asleep during the Video that came out after the live show didn’t show up in the reviews, it was just the positive ones that made the grade, ‘Marvellous, Wonderful, A Tour De Force!’ My ‘character’ could utter words from a video prompter or two at the back of the room, perhaps that could be a key feature.

The following day, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with a notebook, a mug of hot chocolate, and the growing suspicion that I was becoming the very sort of person I had spent previously criticising. Angela wandered past, glanced at the collection of scribbled notes, and asked whether I was writing a shopping list.

‘Something considerably more important,’ I replied.

‘Cheese?’

‘Possibly.’

She wandered off, leaving me to contemplate the word. Cheese. A perfectly ordinary word, yet one capable of conjuring up a multitude of interpretations. Dairy, decay, mould, preservation, nourishment, excess, privilege, childhood sandwiches, European politics. A word with possibilities. I wrote it down.

CHEESE.

I stared at it for a while.

It was, I decided, either a stroke of genius or a sign that I needed to get out more.

The ‘performance’ began to take shape over the following weeks. I settled on a working title, The Inconvenience of Meaning, which sounded suitably authoritative without committing me to anything that might later prove embarrassing. I also chose a stage name, although the process was unnecessarily challenging. After rejecting several possibilities, including Professor Nonsense and The Man Who Knew Too Little, I settled on The Watcher.

It had a certain strength to it. It suggested observation, reflection, perhaps even wisdom. More importantly, it allowed me to stand at the back of the room and watch everyone else do the work.

The concept was simple, although I took considerable pleasure in explaining its complexity to anyone foolish enough to ask. It usually started with the innocent query, ‘What have you been up to lately?’ I would then give them both barrels, well, I figured, ‘They started it!’

The stage would be bare except for four coloured flags, a wooden chair, a small table, and a projector. There would be no conventional narrative, no recognisable characters, and certainly no sentimental music. A collection of carefully selected words would appear on a screen, while recorded voices, animal sounds and occasional drumming created an atmosphere of barely controlled disorder.

At predetermined intervals, I would enter the space, sit on the chair, and say nothing. The audience, I hoped, would be compelled to consider the significance of my silence.

Or fall asleep. There was always that possibility.

I approached a small arts organisation about hiring a room for the evening. The person who answered my inquiry asked about the nature of the performance.

‘An exploration of the relationship between intention and interpretation,’ I said.

There was a pause.

‘Is it theatre?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Dance?’

‘Only in the broadest possible sense.’

‘Music?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘And how many people are you expecting?’

I told her I had no idea.

She booked me into the smallest room they had.

I considered this an encouraging beginning.

Marketing took place via the arts group and a series of hand-done flyers, the sort they often used, expressionist in their bold black-and-white imagery. There was also social media information sent out and pushed, the tickets sold for $15 per head. According to the sales, there should be thirty people.

On the night of the performance, I arrived early to supervise the arrangements. The room was considerably smaller than the one in which I had witnessed Default’s production. The walls were painted a dull institutional grey, and the lighting was provided by several fluorescent tubes that hummed with the persistent irritation of an insect trapped behind a window.

There was no black velvet curtain. No theatrical mystery. No expensive lighting equipment. My four coloured flags stood in their allotted positions, looking rather like the equipment of an underfunded school production.

I felt strangely comfortable.

People began to arrive. Some were artists, others friends, and a few appeared to have wandered in after misreading the notice on the door. One elderly gentleman sat in the front row and immediately began examining his watch. A young woman took out a notebook. Two men whispered to each other, their expressions suggesting that they had already decided the evening would be either brilliant or appalling.

I took my position behind the curtain-less entrance.

The lights dimmed.

The first sound was a recording of a dog barking in the distance. This was followed by a low mechanical rumble, a series of unintelligible voices, and the occasional sharp crack of a hand drum. Words appeared on the screen.

BEGINNING.

WAITING.

ARRIVAL.

DEPARTURE.

The words faded, one by one, replaced by others.

HOPE.

FEAR.

CHEESE.

I had no idea why I had retained that last word, but it seemed important not to exclude it.

I entered the space and sat on the chair.

For three minutes, I did absolutely nothing.

I had intended to remain motionless for five, but the elderly gentleman in the front row had begun coughing, and I feared that he might pass away before the performance reached its intended conclusion.

I stood.

The screen changed.

WHO IS WATCHING WHOM?

I looked at the audience.

They looked at me.

For the first time that evening, I became acutely aware that I had no control over what was happening. I could choose the words, the sounds, the movements, and the duration of the silences, but I could not dictate what anyone thought about them.

A woman in the second row leaned forward and tilted her head, looking like she was pondering the intent of the whole production. One of the men who had been whispering stopped whispering. The elderly gentleman stopped looking at his watch. I continued.

A recording of birdsong emerged from the speakers, gradually overtaken by the sound of traffic. The flags were moved across the stage by two volunteers, who had been instructed to walk slowly and never look at one another. I recited a short passage about the difficulty of knowing whether an observation was an accurate representation of reality or merely a convenient interpretation of it.

Then I stopped.

The screen went blank. A minute passed. Then another. I could hear someone shifting in their chair. Somewhere outside, a vehicle changed gears. The fluorescent lights continued their irritating hum.

I had planned a final sequence of words, but the projector had frozen. I pressed the remote control, nothing. I pressed it again, the screen remained blank.

From the back of the room, someone whispered, ‘Is that it?’ I considered my options. I could apologise, explain the technical failure, and bring the evening to an orderly conclusion. Alternatively, I could pretend that the silence was deliberate.

I chose the latter.

I turned slowly towards the blank screen and said, ‘Sometimes, the absence of an answer is the most honest answer we can offer.’

It sounded considerably better than the projector’s packed it in.

I allowed the words to settle, then I bowed.

For a moment, nobody moved, then the applause began.

It was not thunderous, but it was sustained. The elderly gentleman stood quickly, although I suspect this had more to do with the discomfort of his chair than the quality of my performance. The young woman with the notebook was writing furiously. One of the men who had whispered earlier was nodding with the solemnity of someone who had just witnessed a significant contribution to contemporary thought.

I bowed again. Afterwards, people gathered around me.

A young artist told me that the blank screen had been a powerful metaphor for the collapse of certainty in an increasingly fragmented world.

Another suggested that the four coloured flags represented the arbitrary boundaries we impose upon human experience.

The woman with the notebook asked whether the word CHEESE had been intended as a critique of consumerism.

I looked at her. ‘Among other things,’ I said. She nodded thoughtfully and wrote something down. I was beginning to understand the appeal of this artistic business.

Then the elderly gentleman approached, ‘I enjoyed it,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ ‘Although I wasn’t entirely sure what it was about.’ ‘Neither was I, at times.’ He smiled. ‘That’s probably what made it interesting.’ He calmly shook my hand and left.

I stood there for a moment, considering his words. He had offered no elaborate interpretation, no reference to existential uncertainty or the collapse of modern consciousness. He had simply enjoyed the experience without needing to explain it. Perhaps there was something to be said for that.

On the drive home, I replayed the evening in my mind. I wondered whether the audience had found meaning in my performance or whether I had merely provided them with a group of disconnected ideas around which they could construct their own conclusions. Had I communicated something, or had I simply given people permission to imagine that I had?

The distinction seemed important, although I was no longer certain why.

Angela was in the living room when I arrived. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘How did it go?’

‘Calamitously well.’ She lowered the television volume, ‘Meaning?’

‘I had a technical failure, three minutes of deliberate inactivity, an unexpected philosophical discussion about cheese, and a standing ovation from a man who may have mistaken the performance for an opportunity to stretch his legs.’

‘Sounds promising.’

‘I think they understood it.’

‘What was it about?’

I opened my mouth to answer, I then stopped. I could have told her about the fragmentation of meaning, the uncertainty of perception, the tension between artistic intention and audience interpretation. I could have constructed a perfectly respectable explanation, complete with references to the human condition and the limitations of language. Instead, I put the kettle on.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I said. Angela smiled and returned to her television program. Later that night, I sat at the kitchen table and opened my notebook. I had intended to write a few observations about the performance, but something else occurred to me.

Perhaps the real absurdity was not that artists created obscure performances and audiences searched for meaning. Perhaps it was that we all did something similar, every day, with almost everything we encountered. We observed, interpreted, rearranged, and occasionally invented explanations for things we did not understand. We called it knowledge when it suited us, intuition when it did not, and art when the explanation became particularly difficult.

I wrote a final sentence.

The watcher watches, the watched perform, and somewhere between the two, meaning quietly slips out the door.

I read it twice. It sounded rather good, possibly pretentious, possibly profound, I put a line beneath it and closed the notebook.

The next morning, I received an email from the young woman who had taken notes during the performance. She was writing a review for an online arts publication and wanted to confirm the title.

I replied with two words.

The Watcher.

I then made another cup of hot chocolate, sat back in my chair, and wondered whether I had finally become an artist.

Or whether I had simply discovered a more elaborate way of taking the piss.

I suspected the distinction would remain unresolved, which, I thought, was probably the point.