And so to the end of this extended weekend and having no children it is a lovely excuse to do very little. The world is switched off, all the shops are shut. If you’re active in an acting job then sure you’ll end up being busy cos we play when they work.
Today though I played.
An old friend called me. Can I call him a friend? I think so. He and my mum had a sustained positive romantic interaction when I was a teenager. A lot of the guys she got tangled up with were self important high status silver fox douchebags. They always had one hand on their own dick. This guy was unlike all of them, did an honest job, cared about things, used to get us all out into the countryside for walks. To my eye she was happier with him than all the players. But she kept looking at the players with their shifting skin and their wobbly lipped privilege oozing off them. She ended up with one of them and he only wanted her for a roof.
I went for lunch with this guy over a year ago. I paid. It was a feast time. Now it’s famine again and I’ve been on staples. He rang me, out of the blue. Does he read this? I don’t think so. But maybe he sensed it. The universe is funny like that. I haven’t been looking after myself and suddenly he took me out for a pub lunch, and told me in advance it would be his treat this time. So I had fish and chips and a big glass of douro. He can’t drink these days so like my brother Rupert he does it vicariously.
Many of my mum’s boyfriends used to offer me advice about the acting, with their visible lips and their self importance. It is rare for us to get good advice from people outside the industry, but it never stops people trying. I am happy to take it, and I got some today from a more welcome source than those grey eminences she would let into the flat from time to time. “You really need to sort out your internet presence.”
I guess if you Google me, it is an encyclopedia of my daily life. Whereas maybe I should bump up shit like IMDB. CAN SOMEBODY MAKE ME A TINY WIKIPEDIA? My friend James tried, but he did multiple paragraphs and it got kicked back. Just a sentence or two, with links. Once it exists it can be expanded, but the gatekeepers are very vigilant about people putting their mates up when they haven’t done anything of note. Have I done anything of note? Some think I have. Surely there’s enough online for a stubby.
Interesting to take his advice to heart. He’s not wrong, my focus has been elsewhere. It’s useful to internalise the perspective of older generations. I think that stuff is less relevant these days, but all mum’s great I-ams who had probably been up Epstein’s island – that form of Nigel Dempster fame holds very little weight with the generations jumping up the tree.
What am I selling? I hope I’m selling something honest. But something honest that looks and sounds like me. Would it be an integrity break to do the whole “hey world ermagerd I’m tho amathing ya?!” I think it would. Is that the only way to bigger jobs? No. My way has worked in that I’m still here. Many aren’t. But maybe I need to dress my shop up. Even if I kinda like that if you Google me you get this uncontrollable mess of six years and more of daily opinion noise. Christ, I wonder what would come if I fed it all exclusively into an AI and got it to write on a particular subject.
AlBarclay 