Yeah so I’m an actor that writes a daily blog. An obvious starter for ten is “Do you use it to promote yourself?” Nope. I mostly use it to speak frankly about what a twerp I am, and by implication how delightfully fleeting and arbitrary all our petty struggles are. No Photoshop here. Maybe that’s the trick I’m missing though. All of these manicured curated YouTube and Instagram freaks who can’t make three seconds of live content without a jump for edit, and then this freak putting out a few words daily with a badly thought through photograph, gently peeling off my own skin in public for complicated personal reasons. Nobody gives me free holidays though. I could use a bit of sun right now.
Today was a low day probably through lack of sun. I just wasn’t feeling like I wanted to participate in all the caring about things nonsense. I had a meeting to break the monotony but it was pulled at the last minute, so instead I went shopping and bought lazy roast dinner. Then I refused to go to the cinema with Brian and Mel, preferring to sit at home feeling sorry for myself. I suppose I could’ve learnt my lines for West Side Story. I didn’t. I just sat here and listened to Shirley Manson. Of course you might argue that listening to the Garbage back catalogue is never a day wasted. Now I’m playing Faithless. I might open a bottle of Bandol and just stand in the window watching the trees blow.
It seems my network of hearts is too alert. A friend rang up and now she’s coming round. I didn’t ask her to, even though I secretly wanted her to. Good on her. I’ve put the oven on. I’ll open a bottle of something. We’ll almost certainly find something to laugh about! Damn. I can’t go full emo now.
Brilliant. We are listening to Bon Jovi. We’ve stuffed our faces. Claire is dancing. She’s fit as hell after training to teach barre. I’m writing this to get it done because I think dancing might have to happen. Useful to remember in this city that, if you’re feeling a complicated mix of things there are lots of people who feel the same way. Claire and I might have felt sad in isolation. We converged and now neither of us feel sad.
It’s odd how we feel pressured to curate social media. It’s some sort of self imposed tyranny. We are all flawed, unhappy in showers, happy in slashes. But somehow, unspoken, if we say we are sad we are soliciting sympathy, and if we are super happy we are bragging. One of us is up while another one is down. Existence is like sine-wave. Up down up down up down. Doesn’t matter what you have, how much better off you might feel you are. Up down up down. I was down. Claire was down. Now we are in the same room and we are both up. And I’m off to stop writing and give her a hug.
Here’s the dinner carnage.
AlBarclay 