Eyebombing With Kath

 

 

When meeting various contributors for this documentary each of them have had suggestions for other unusual pastimes I might want to look into. Probably one of the strangest (yet weirdly the most appealing to me) was ‘EyeBombing’ which, is simply the practice of sticking googly eyes to objects you believe should have a face. So there I was, standing outside the Festival Hall London with yarn bombing Kath, as she magically produced a bag of googly eyes and a gluestick from the depths of her bag. Although I’d only known Kath for two hours at this point I’d decided this was exactly the kind of behaviour that I could expect from her.

A strange sense of excitement and anticipation passed through me as I glued and carefully positioned the googly eyes onto our chosen spot. Kath, a primary school teacher by day, even resisted correcting my work – she thought the eyes were too close together – and we stood back and admired my handiwork. Whilst I was enjoying the high I was getting from this unprecedented cheap thrill, I was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder. I turned around feeling jumpy and felonious to find my housemate, Fred, from a few years back standing behind me.

 

We exchanged the appropriate small talk and I asked him what he was doing tonight. It turned out he was performing in the Festival Hall that night. He turned his attention to me and asked what it was I was doing. I stopped for a second. When you bump into people from your past you usually want to express how well it is you’re doing. Suddenly, a random, silly and whimsical activity was potentially about to define my life; Fred was performing in one of London’s most prestigious concert halls and here I was sticking googly eyes to the exterior of it.

 

It’s times like these that really make you re-evaluate your life choices. It is also at these times that you develop the skill to make something out of nothing. As I found myself explaining I was meeting a participant for a new exciting documentary that I was producing/directing whilst simultaneously overemphasizing it’s broadcast potential. I dropped in buzzwords like  ‘vision’ ‘story arc’ and ‘transmedia’ just to make sure he knew that I knew exactly what I was talking about. He presumably left unconcerned and I got back to the important matter in hand – repositioning those eyes.