Schools matinee this morning. We had to cut all the filth. No dinner section either. I had to tell one of the teachers off who kept on going “shhh” when I was encouraging chaos. “I’m perfectly capable of doing that for myself when I need it thank you.” There was plenty of chaos thereafter and I was perfectly happy about that. We always got silence when we needed it. Will and I both love this kind of work and we both know how it works. This evening we were talking about the arbitrary nature of literally everything and how important it is to make peace with the fact that things are random as fuck. We both really bonded on that. We’ve both seen people go kablooie by hoping desperately that things are all connected and make some kind of sense.
They aren’t and they don’t.
Will and I have both understood that. Patterns are comforting but rubbish. That knowledge informs our attack on both world and work. It’s joyful when you stop having to worry, like one old actor friend of mine worried a decade ago: “I think I’m on some sort of blacklist.” No. We wish there was something concrete like that to make sense of our hurdles. But the sad desperate truth is that we are not important enough, none of us are. There is no pattern because the world is arbitrary random insane cruelty. For everyone.
As soon as you embrace that, then you find the vast wierd joy and the delightful power of Eris. That’s where I’ve been for over two decades, and Will right alongside me. He’s been doing Shitfaced Shakespeare, which is a bridge too far even for my degree of chaoslove. I dislike glamorising the thing that killed my mum. And yes it was more The Daily Mail than the booze, but she wouldn’t have looked to the “glamorous” killer refuge if the world hadn’t been painted so dark. And that shitty organ is just another example of painting bad cause and effect diagrams, the thinking that destroys our peace.
We had two shows today. The first was that schools matinee and I had a small cousin in the audience. My first ever school was there with the pink edges to the grey uniform. I can barely remember my friends from the brief time I was there. Mostly girls even then. Boys annoyed me, but Jocelyn… Lavinia and Marina. Oh and Antony! Those are the only 4 names I remember. I know all 4 surnames too, although likely the women’s have changed. I wonder if any of them are still on the island?
Thinking it through it is very very odd to be back here staying in a Premier Inn. Before mum died she told me “Peter and I have made sure you will always have a home in Jersey.” That wasn’t the case. I’ve got to know the hotels here in the town where I was born. It’s on their budget though. And I hope they get some profile in the local papers, cos this is a wonderful show and it is a shame it isn’t sold out, frankly. Even if sales don’t affect my pay at all. I prefer to play to a full house, obviously…
AlBarclay 