Ahmed

When I began thinking about what I wanted to create at the end of the Mehfil Fellowship, I kept coming back to a feeling I have always loved about live shows.

There is something almost magical about the last thirty minutes before an event starts, before the doors finally open when everything is almost ready but nothing has begun yet.

The sound system is being tested. Someone is running through their cues. The performers are rehearsing in the wings. Guests are slowly finding their way in. Someone is looking for a cable. Someone is asking whether the lights are ready.

Because everyone in the room knows that something big is about to happen, even though no one can quite see it yet. The stage is almost set. The room is filling up. Everyone is carrying a small piece of what is about to come alive.

Maybe it happens because everyone is temporarily part of the same thing. The artist, the technician, the producer, the audience. For a brief moment, all of their work, all of their anticipation, all of their little acts of preparation are all leading them towards the same thing.

And once you have felt that, it becomes hard not to come back for it. There is nothing quite like watching something move from an idea in someone's head into a room full of people.

So I wanted my final piece for Mehfil to live in that moment: the liminal point when the room is buzzing with what's next to come, there's anticipation and when creativity starts to feel like transcendence