It’s half nine. I’m turning in. Sure it’s cold but also it is the week. I’m back with Brian. He works a stone cold week. My recovery days wouldn’t match his rigour. Every weekday he gets up and hits the world. Weekends he still might but he knows he doesn’t have to.
I’ve been going to bed this kind of time with Lou and I find it helps with waking up the other end. This time of year, the mornings are the light. As a child I was afraid of the dark. As an adult I hate it differently. I have learnt how to hold myself so you can plunge me into utter nothing and my curiosity will be piqued before my fear. I can’t do anything about the sun though or the lack of it, and my eyes are light affected. Right now I’m sad for the light. I prefer the world when it shines.
Still, it seems wherever I go there is cat. This is in keeping with Burroughs and the whole psychopomp thing. Here, on my lap, black as the night, I have this ridiculous creature, whurring like a chainsaw.
I’m gonna chill out and let time work. She’s already bolder than I expected after a few days. She’s fed by an auto feeder and I’m used to food motivated cats. She’s been a breeder so her motivation has maybe never been thought about but I think it’s play. She doesn’t have to create a relationship with her humans about food, so next on the list is the need for stimulation. I reckon we will be improvising games together before long.. Right now I’m going to have to shift my ADHD manifesting as my big toe has already been attacked by her and scratched. Food motivated cats wake you up at half 3 because their bowl is empty. Play motivated cats hunt and catch your big toe for fun at dawn. I’m gonna have scratches all over my foot and I’m gonna forgive the lot.
Guildhall lunch today. I came back from Lou for it. I am glad I did. Good to plug into the old place. They totally and utterly fucked over a large number of excellent staff members in lockdown. I wanted to meet the new ones. I would argue that Wyn died because of it, and he was remarkable.
Orla and David are both excellent humans. I think there’s an academic bent to the course now. Hopefully they’re minimising it as best they can. Academics don’t make good actors. So long as the craft access is there, the movement and the voice, then the rest of the work has to be about taking them out of academic interpretation and into instinctive response. Without that they are just going to make directors and critics. I wasn’t certain they’ve cracked that – it might be a drama degree with movement and voice attached. Leah Muller is an incredible movement teacher, and Annemette Verspeak is wonderful. We go way back. I got employed by a friend of mine to teach students at a drama school called The Courtyard. I think it is gone now. It was an ego project and took money for hope giving nothing in return. “These kids can’t speak,” Mel said, and I realised she had been there before. I contacted her; “They are being misled.” I tried to teach them something. It was over two years into them being rewarded for atrocious tricks. I tried to plug them into their authentic voices but it was largely too late. They were all good young humans, but they had eaten two years of shit and paid heartily for it. I was paid a portion of my friend’s directing fee – a pittance – and was only brought in because she wanted to try to try to try and help them learn something. I tried. Some of them unlocked things. But then they went back to June who just immediately switched them off again. I’d love to think that even one of them might be still an actor now. If they are it is despite the training
AlBarclay 