This is the second time in twenty years that I’ve met Georgie. She’s living in Stratford and the first time was when I got home off my face last week. It’s not her fault, it’s the association. I knew I didn’t want to do it again.
This evening we spent time with one another without overaugmenting chemically. She is a mother and it looks like she’s made an actor with one of her daughters. The daughter doesn’t want or need any advice from the old lag. Still, Georgie is making sure I’m visible to the daughter. It’s smart. Me and my lot, we are the kids who ended up doing the drama. Very few of us were the drama kids, excusing the memory of our dear Factory founder Alex. Alex and I were the only two people recalled for my Guildhall first round on the morning I was there. He knew a lot of the people in that room, and they knew him. I knew nobody. Bless Wendy, my movement teacher and first round panelist, who made me her special project for three years…
I’ve been on a campaign for Wendy since I’ve been in Stratford. She is an actress who taught movement, and her teachings are some of the deepest I’ve known. Her work came out of Trish Arnold and Litz Pisk, and she understood my bodybrain connection issues. Her husband was Colin McCormack, he was often around at our drama school shows, just as a support to Wendy but also as a training actor he was someone I could watch doing things at the level I’m at now. He was literally the first actor with a portrait photo put up in The Dirty Duck. He was part of why there is an “actors bar” there.
Hence my campaign. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the fact that his portrait has been randomly removed. There are pictures of emptyheads I love. But where the fuck is Colin? He died very suddenly. Wendy quite rightly wants her husband’s original picture, signed, to go back up. Nobody wants to take responsibility for taking it down, I have no idea where it might have been and only remember him as an older gent, maybe my age.
Wendy Allnutt quite literally changed my life. She was the decision maker for first round at Guildhall. She saw a project – “when I first met you, you were a floating head.” Yep. I was The Mekon. Wendy and Guildhall, now Lou… My dear friend Helen… Head to heart. I’m grounded now and good at my job. When the two recalls were both called “Alex” for my first round audition at Guildhall, I honestly wondered if they couldn’t remember which one of us was me and which was Hassell. I’m glad I went to the pub with Hassell afterwards. I could never have imagined how we would share friends. He’s off into another of his crazy trajectories…
I’ve been trying to get Midjourney to draw the mekon. It is spectacularly crap at it. It WILL NOT be disproportionate. Here’s the prompt for this image. I was getting fed up:
Tiny body, big head. Tiny body big head. Tiny body big head. Come on midjourney, I’m asking for art here and I know you can do it. The Mekon has a tiny tiny body, he floats on a disc because he is entirely brain. That’s why he has a huge head compared to his body. You keep making the body match the head. Stop it. It is a completely disproportionately tiny atrophied body. The Mekon with a tiny tiny body. 2% body, 98% head. DO NOT MAKE THIS BODY PROPORTIONATE!!!! This creature is pretty much completely head. Drawn by Frank Hampson. Cartoon panels. The Mekon sits with tiny tiny legs crossed on his floating disc. The Mekon has a head so much much larger than his body. His body is out of proportion tiny. His head is out of proportion huge. His head is so much larger than his body it’s almost like he’s just a head. He looks confident and dangerous because he knows he will defeat Dan Dare. Please forget the need to be proportional. The mekon is supposed to have an atrophied body. –
These are the best I could get. Show this to anyone with a brain who thinks Ai is the future. Nah. It’s just a dumb tool.
AlBarclay 