Funeral today for a man I loved very much. I couldn’t be there as I was committed already and it all came very quickly. He was 100, bless his heart. Last time I saw him he was still keeping the cheer but given to deliberate groaning. The weight of the world was bearing down on him. Good God his friends in the industry were all long gone, he probably stopped acting before I was born. We connected over a mutual love of Shakespeare one Christmas and stayed friends and I’m so sad for the world that he is no longer in it. His family have been kind to me in sad times.
I always hoped and imagined I’d be there to see him off, but at least I did get to see him in his hundredth year and drop off a card. He was right by the Avebury stones, in a place of power. A good place to shuffle off the load and send it all back to the universe. I think this has been affecting my mood though. Tendrils of connection severed. Hopes and dreams coming to their inevitable conclusion as we hurtle through the void.
And so we push on. I don’t think he ever severed ties with his old agent. He just refused every job and every meeting, after a while. There was a possibility he might play Prospero with us at Sprite over twenty years ago. In the end he didn’t, and a bad spirited fellow came in instead, heavy handed with the young female director, better than the job in his mind, unkind with his thwarted ambition, looking to score points and build a hierarchy where he was king. I’m about the age he was then. I’ll never be like him, I trust. Sometimes I hear his name in the credits on the radio and a little bit of me wonders how he’s still working. There’s only so much room for unkindness in this world. But maybe be realised after the fact and the scales fell from his eyes etc.
My friend who went underground today was kind. A true actor, and a brilliant soul… but… in the old fashioned sense he needed to rest. And now he’s “resting” for good. If I knew anyone who was ever ready for it it’d be him, but damn. I’m sad about it. Michael Beint. I salute you.
I think the weight of his passing has been pulling on me these few weeks. Wouldn’t it be lovely to escape this trap of time, to know that all the things we love will remain… But they don’t and they can’t and that’s the thing we’re born into. Borne into. The current of it. And it sweeps us where it sweeps us and we cling to what we cling to and then it’s done and we leave behind what we leave behind and if we have another go we can’t remember this one. Michael has a legacy through his family, through a grandson that took his name, through the friends who loved him – I’ll be having another pint or three with another old lag who worked with him back in the day – we worked out we both knew him at Chalke Festival last summer. We will go out there together again in July. I’m moving into being one of the old ones who are still in the game, and we bloody love them for their resilience and sense of fun. The crucible usually burns away all the shit eventually. And come on… We love it, dammit all. We just love it this thing we are supposed to be doing. Particularly when we get to do it.
“Did you hear John Hurt died? Very sad.”
“Sad? Yes it is. Bugger still owes me 3 and 6 for a train ticket to Elstree in 1965.”
AlBarclay 