Lying down, resting: ‘A Crash Course in Cloudspotting’ by Raquel Meseguer Zafe

I listened to the audio performance of A Crash Course in Cloudspotting by Raquel Meseguer Zafe, it was on at Sophiensaele and they sent a link to join remotely. It was really nice, as an experience. I did it lying on the sofa with someone I’ve been dating maybe 6 weeks. (Sorry because I know its meant to be headphones) but we listened together. It was kind of a new experience, to share something like this with a date. I always go alone to shows and love zoning into things, especially one on one things like that. But it felt nice, to lie there with another person, with their legs across me. I wore something over my eyes so I felt separate, and grounded at the same time - in my own head but in contact with their legs.

The show shares the stories of different people who need to lie down in public places often, either to rest, or deal with pain, or both. We heard the different voices telling us the details - lying in the front row of a cinema, but only after the film starts, or folding your body between the metal architecture of a train station bench. My mind was there with them, easily seeing the textures imagining the feeling of lying in these spaces. I loved the way the sounds outside the window blended with the sounds of the performance - mixing my world with theirs.

I felt really connected to this piece, really relieved, and really sad. I felt relieved because Raquel and other people with disabilities or chronic conditions are starting to be heard, and have more space to talk - at least in the UK. I felt relief because I related to these experiences and I had never heard anyone else speak about something like that. But I felt sad because of the hostility shown towards people who use public space in a different way, and the stupid unnecessary-ness of this.

After the performance I shared with my date the times I remember lying down in ‘unsuitable’ spaces. Getting migraines at work and feeling like I couldn’t go home because there was ‘too much to do’ - the time I was discovered lying underneath the Accounts person’s desk with my head wrapped in a scarf because she was part time and it was the only place I could be horizontal. The times when I used to go to the empty Studio downstairs when I worked in a theatre, because it was dark and I could hide there for a while until I recovered. Fatigue - The times I’ve laid down in the treatment space to sleep on my 25min lunch break at a beauty salon, counting the minutes until my break would end. And sometimes this strange reaction I get, where the room spins and I feel sick and have to lie on the floor in stressful situations. One time when I had to leave a performance at the Southbank and just lie on the floor right outside the theatre door, dreading the audience leaving and seeing me there, and the look the usher gave me. Knowing as well that its a privilege to be read as someone who is allowed to continue lying there and not moved on, or fired from my job.

The piece moved from stories grounded in familiar places - the toilet floor, the University lecture theatre, the cinema - to the slightly more fantastical spaces of a coastline in the jagged paintwork of Raquel’s ceiling, a Mediterranean beach, and the international space station. I loved how it flowed along, stream of consciousness, and took me to this place which felt so much like my own thoughts floating away in those stolen moments, sleeping with my head against a train window or drifting in a park. The audio talked about weightlessness & I felt myself hovering, floating, and then coming back to gravity and feeling the sofa underneath me and my weight sinking right down into the ground.

The stories shared made me a lot more aware that some people might see leaving the house as risky, that a change in state could happen at any time and how daunting that must be, to choose to be ‘out’ when you know you could end up unavoidably having to be on the ground - or like one of the stories, caught in the rain and curled up under a bush. It made me think a lot about how inhospitable the world is designed to be, and how everything flows smoothly until you need to stop for longer than a coffee. It made me think of the ‘anti-homeless’ architecture in London. And it made me think of the beauty in those moments, of the things you see and the thoughts you have in that half-waking sleep, when you can manage to snatch it. 

I don’t know why I have fatigue (its pretty mild mostly), or whether my migraines are linked to my neurodiversity, or to be honest wtf even happened medically in some of those moments when I needed to lie down at inconvenient times. But it was comforting to hear that other people have experienced something like this too, and mostly to hear the details of their experiences - the suspect pool of water on the toilet floor, the arms of the bench or the plane seats - because maybe without realising it I felt ashamed, like I was the only one who navigated those & laid there anyway. 

The sound was beautiful and after we drifted out of it, we talked and it was so nice to have been there - but also not - with someone else. I guess that’s what it would be like, lying there on the floor with other audience members. To be honest I really appreciated a performance that thought about my comfort! :) and where that wasn’t something I was sneaking by slouching down in the chair or resting my head back or making a cushion out of my backpack. hopefully there can be more.