On my other hard drive remain the fragments of a study of the cabaret revival. Called the Burlesque Aesthetic, it began life as a collection of random musings on the current state of the scene. Inspired by that time I nearly messed my pants seeing The Tiger Lillies, it grappled with the idea that the revival was all about reinterpreting the past in the context of the wired age: a sort of Weimar meets Facebook. Unfortunately, my vision of cabaret, pretty much inspired by Dust Limits’ intelligence, the Creative Martyrs’ surrealism and Des O’Connor’s Normal Show floundered when I realised that the burlesque aesthetic was actually getting shop-worn.

I don’t mind that there is so much of it. I am just concerned that so much of it is lazy, and feels like the product of a scene fuelled by YouTube and sympathetic audiences. I was speaking to one Scottish veteran about The Wau Waus. When they replied that they’s seen them years ago, I couldn’t help but wonder why their act was so mundane. After I read Hunter S, I decided my criticism had to be personal, shameful, vibrant, engaged and wild. I could not go back to the objective standard. I had to be willing to be unpopular, to shock, to challenge. I might fall on my arse – even my team of writers are contradicting my opinions and exposing them as naive – but I am giving it a go.

I guess the Fringe gives me a choice. I could go and see another cabaret, or nip over to see Lemi Ponifasio, and get my mind expanded. I am too old to hammer drugs and alcohol, too shy for fleeting sexual encounters, so I have to get my kicks somewhere. The revival of cabaret is increasingly old news – it has shaped up as the rival to the hegemony of the comedian, thank God – but it is beginning to have paid its dues and recognise the need for actual talent and technique. If the strip based routines are getting called on their lack of imagination, this is a positive. They might get up and act like artists, escape the clinging, conforming, comfort of their scene and, like, say something.

Of course, as a man, I am uncomfortable actually saying what I think about that. So I chatted to the mighty Diane Torr about it…

Leaving aside my lack of a sense of humour – nobody as pompous as me is likely to find the court jester funny when he bursts my bubble of jargon – there is a problem in the way the Fringe consumes performance. As a reviewer, I use it as a chance to research genres in which I am vaguely interested and about which I am deeply ignorant. So I bustle between shows: yesterday was Indian dance, tomorrow is American drama. The day after, I’ll be telling you I know all about Hindu devotional dance and Southern American existential doubt, even though the nearest I have been to Alabama is the women I pick up in sex chat rooms.

Of course, I blame late consumerism. It encourages us not to take time over things, to rush, to consume more. I think I am so much better because it isn’t episodes of soap opera I am totting up, or home furnishings, but it is exactly the same mentality that made me an avid collector of comics ten years ago. I mistake seeing something for understanding, possessing it for owning it.

My excuse is brilliant. I am just a victim of my time, and the freedom a reviewer’s pass give me to roam the Fringe at will. Never mind that I am playing into the ultimate trap of the Bad Guy, to absolve myself of moral responsibility for my behaviour. Since I am in the victim’s role, I can quickly slip in an obnoxious comment, then point to my dilemma as justification.

Friday is probably going to be “human traffic” day. There are many shows about forced prostitution this year. Without wishing to sound obnoxious – are any of these plays really going to make a difference. There can hardly be anyone who supports the traffic of women for sex, yet every single play points out how bad it is. And yet it reminds me of an earlier response to my post about burlesque. When it comes to political engagement, everybody will defend the right of the artist. Few people will actually get their hands dirty and do some political action on the ground.

I do have a natural aversion to theatre that preaches. And I know that each play will have seen a great deal of research. I am only asking, not condemning: but will any of these plays actually change the situation? Or are they each just another check on a ticklist, an hour of the day spent in worthy activity and distraction from the horrors of the world?

And so I came out of this late night cabaret – I thought it was lame in some parts, a curate’s leg, and sometimes quite something. A woman had danced wearing a gas-mask and a man sat and cried until the mascara running down his face had blackened his shirt. I guess it was okay but even for me it was pretentious and self-regarding. They’d made a few pot-shots about the popularity of cabaret and the number of ukuleles scattered about the Fringe but I came out and met these Live Art people I met back in Glasgow.

Only they’d been drinking and I was too far behind to catch up and be any fun. I’d interviewed one of them and said something rude about her willingness to lose her self respect and sexual health just to entertain me for half an hour and she said that was okay and laughed. We went down to the Wash on the Mound and hung about until the lights went off and the bouncer smiled because he could go home now. I found a packet of cigarettes and strolled off into the night alone.

The next day and I am trying to catch up on this writing I sometimes claim to be my vocation. It appears I love to watch the shows but sitting down to review then is hard when the office has no daylight and the sun is spectacular. I get restless and sit on the roof and talk to a choreographer. I record our conversation and listen back. I notice the way my questions are longer than her answers and the strange emphasis I give to the words  “sexual” and “in my opinion.” I get distracted from writing it up and wander off to see another production.

This one is all about expatriate Americans and how they all felt so alienated in the !930s. I suppose that is meant to resonate with how we feel today, only we don’t recognise it in that way anymore. It’s all a bit long and at the interval I try to leave only a woman stops me and asks if I am a critic. I’d been watching people drinking on stage and was wondering why I wasn’t doing it myself, but I said yes.

She asked me if I’d seen The Tempest the night before, that Polynesian thing, and told me she didn’t understand it. I was diffident and told her that was okay and she said she had stayed to the end and that it all seemed so slow. I took a deep breathe and replied that the woman standing still had been an angel, watching history and all the events -  the smashing of chalk tablets, the body cut by the half light to a mere torso, the other body covered in oil as if sliding out of the BP slick, the clockwork priests skittering around the stage –  were all the cataclysms of history and the slowness had been to create that sense of timelessness that the angel felt as she watched our history, not as progress but one single disaster that blossomed in space-time, and when the angel screamed it was the scream of God at his beloved’s anguish.

She said thank you. I thought maybe it wasn’t so bad to be a critic. For a moment I remembered what I believed: that the artist was a shaman descending into places where we dared not go, and bringing back messages of hope or despair and the critic was like a priest decoding these messages.  Then I also remembered that I believed I was going to marry a burlesque dancer and make my parents proud and live happily ever after.  My beliefs may not be an accurate guide to reality.