As part of the Edinburgh version of Whisper Walk from the "AFOOT" series, I give you one of the monologues/short stories I have composed for this deliciously Scottish incarnation (that we on the creative team refer to a "whispers.")
From the press release:
Confessional stories, unuttered truths and personal memories are whispered through headphones in a documentary-style walking tour through Edinburgh. Whisper Walk is partly inspired by the Japanese Kaze no Denwa (“wind phone”) and explores how memories are deeply connected to a seemingly ordinary place. Each audience member, equipped with their smartphone and a pair of headphones, is guided through Edinburgh as voices gently whisper stories and personal memories tied to the locations they pass. As participants become trusted confidants, they are invited to contribute their own place-related memory – whispered into a phone placed at the end of the Whisper Walk – to be archived in the ever-growing Whisper Museum.
Writer Alexandra Silber said, “Whisper Walk is, I think, a really beautiful and unique storytelling theatrical experience, under the notion that places hold memories. It explores the notion that our memories are tied heavily to place, and sort of revels in the idea that a seemingly ordinary, singular, flat park bench, a tree, a series of steps, a street corner, a churchyard, a pub, a very specific cross-section of longitude and latitude, can contain a multitude of stacked memories belonging to countless people—really holding these stories and memories from every human who ever crosses that location. This is very much the way we receive podcasts nowadays, and certainly builds upon the radio drama tradition, but the individual audience member, as a result of this, will end up in a specific geographical place and will hear a story about the place in which they are standing, and thus serves as a confessional, a confidant, a stranger on the road to whom the speaker of the story can speak more candidly than to a regular person in their everyday lives.”
And so, with that. Enjoy this sneak peak and see you in Edinburgh, this August, afoot!
*
Set: Cowgate under George IV Bridge, Edinburgh
I am Iain Angus Campbell— the first one, or at least, the one telling this story—and I am standing under George IV Bridge with a large cardboard box labeled “FOR THE OTHER IAIN” and the vague feeling that I have slipped through a tear in the fabric of space-time.
Inside the box I am holding is:
• Three veterinary textbooks written in German (I do not read German)
• A framed photo of a ginger man on a yacht (I have never been on a yacht, only vomited near one)
• And a very personal letter from someone named Dimitri, written entirely in Cyrillic, which I am almost certain is an erotic poem. (Because, yes, I have had it translated.)
It’s hard to explain: every time one receives a piece of correspondence with their name on it, one naturally assumes the correspondence is for them. But every time I open mail to The Other Iain, I am, at first, shocked. Then horrified. Then oddly aroused by the illicit nature of opening other people’s mail. I consider myself a relatively ethical person, and I’m not proud to have rifled through Iain Angus Campbell’s private things, read his mail, and texted back his exes. But what am I to do? For you see: THEY ARE ALL ADDRESSED TO “ME.”
It began with a misdirected email from a veterinary clinic in Dundee, followed by a call from HMRC regarding unpaid taxes on my “falconry side hustle,” and climaxed with an offer to speak at a conference in Amsterdam on “large animal anesthesia”—a subject I know exactly nothing about because I mostly treat cats.
That was two years ago.
Iain Angus Campbell— the other one— is real. Or at least I’m real, and the universe has committed to a bit that is now years long and disturbingly elaborate. He has the same name. Is the same age. He is also a veterinarian. Also left-handed (?!) and green-eyed, and redheaded. The algorithms are confused. The tax office is furious. The dating apps are saturated with accusations.
We are, by all accounts, statistically indistinguishable.
And? We have never met.
Not in the flesh. Not once.
Until—apparently—today.
I got a text:
“Iain. It’s Iain. Let’s exchange boxes. Cowgate. Under the bridge. Three.”
Which, yes, sounds murder-y. (Or like a compelling romance!)
But anyway here I am. Under the bridge. With my box. Wearing my jacket. Holding my nerves together with the fragile glue of one too many espressos. And spiraling.
Because if this man is me—not just like me—then what am I, exactly?
Some early prototype?
The version of Iain who never had the courage to move to the Netherlands or take up falconry or respond to Dimitri’s love note?
What if I meet him and I’m just the “Beta Iain?”
Or worse— oh, God: what if he doesn’t show up?
I don’t fucking know.
And I think, not for the first time:
If this isn’t the matrix, then maybe it’s something worse.
Maybe it’s a love story.
But only one of us gets to tell it.