"Love Your Neighbour That Hates Your Friends" // Live Show Review
Written by Fred Carlyle
On the breezy evening that belonged to the third of October; my partner and I found ourselves opposite a sleeping Queen Vic Market and sheltered within The Motley Wherehaus. The roller gate entrance, open planned layout and exposed ceiling of this lobby revealed to me this building's original function as an inner city industrial warehouse.
Yet, the warm, golden lights and not to mention the bizarre, 3D animal models that hung suspended in the air as well as the mismatched assembly of living room furniture indicated the place's rebirthed, converted state as an exhibition venue and recently added location for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
The Melbourne Fringe Festival (which ran from late September to Mid October this year) was this city's annual showcase of art in its most eccentric and left-field form. Fringe separates itself from the crowd of Naarm's usual events with its intention of showcasing creativity in its furthest, most expansive reaches. On this evening however, we were brought below the surface of The Motley Wherehaus as a staircase and a pathway of dangling fairy lights lead us through a basement passageway and into a small, intimate and curtained off room which held the night's event that I and a modest crowd of a few others were eager to attend.
And so it was in this room; with ceramic tiles underneath my feet and a cushioned, airport seat
underneath my ass that I found myself in a sort of silent stupor. There I was, comprehending the fact that my own voice was put on a loop and repeatedly echoed back to me and everyone else in the room- it was as though my internal monologue became, well, external. All while this bizarre moment was happening, I watched as the night's showman stood slumped over a double bass, their face buried into this gigantic instrument in a silent, meditative manner like a bar fly finding peace while slumped over a bar counter.
This particular moment was just one of the many unique experiences that was in store for me as part of 'Love Your Neighbour that Hates Your Friends', a show that serves as the Fringe Festival debut of Argentine-Australian composer & performer (and Couchdog regular), Salvador Peralta.
"Love your neighbour that hates your friend/ Wish them rest at the evening's end/ however against you they might stand/ you'll share more with them than you ever can/ with the men who own the press." This verse was one of the many thought provoking utterances that would suddenly shoot out like sprays of water amidst a sea of fluid, semi-improvised music and sound that made up the hour's runtime of this strange, entrancing performance.
Another lyrical highlight I’d like to quickly mention is the following: “safe within the feed/ I found out yesterday my cousin had a kid/
scrolled right past his child and forgot her for a while.” This line’s drastic, encapsulating example of an experience or way of life that many of us have grown too comfortable and
used to nowadays was very confronting to hear.
The instance that I noted on earlier (the one where my own voice was recorded and played back to me on a speaker) was an asset of this show's inclusion of the audience as - to home in the overarching theme of community - Salvador's stage provided a microphone and a blank canvas on an easel.
Besides these props was a basket of paper slips that each had an insightful prompt related to the show's topic and it was up to the audience to decide to either draw or speak their response.
This feature of the show led to one of the highlights of my experience as individuals would quietly stand up from their seat and approach the stage at random intervals; it was like seeing quakers waiting for an invisible force to move them from their seat. Now, the stage I speak of wasn't exactly literal as Salvador and their fellow performers shared the same floor as us. The lack of division or physical separation between artist & audience accentuated the raw, intimate and heartfelt experience of this performance as it deeply felt to me that we were all one collective.
I would like to emphasize the intimate nature of this event. The improvised aspect of the instrumentals allowed for the onstage emotions to develop and unfold in front of our eyes rather than being pre-determined by a setlist. It felt as though Salvador subjected us to a personal moment of vulnerability as though the artist was crying in the shower and Invited us to watch.
Promoted as 'A musical show celebrating and challenging the notion of community', I think it's best to frame the concept of this show with the question that it supposedly intends to ask, that being, "what is important to me about my community?" The interpretative, vague and brooding atmosphere of the show that I witnessed suggests this proposed question doesn't necessarily require an answer as the mere prospect of questioning this thought is enough of a response alone. With that being said however, I feel that I left this event with an answer to this question; that being the fact that, despite initially being in a room of strangers that night, I felt that our shared experience created an unspoken connection between us all, a connection that, to me at least, does a better job at signifying community and its unspeakable value better than any written statement could. You can keep up to date with Salvador Peralta on instagram here
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