Today my new friend wrote a play. It’s the first time I’ve dramaturged for someone in this programme and it did make me anxious. They’re writing a play. They’ve made up the character. They have certain strictures they have to observe and I have to help them. It was flowing beautifully in the morning, but then suddenly in the afternoon session things petered out because we moved from outside to inside and we were being LISTENED TO. Also I hadn’t taken into account that my young writer is part of a peer group and might have had her ideas negated by the louder and more confident members of her group in the lunch break. She suddenly after lunch didn’t feel like she wanted to say anything, partly because probably somebody tried to dictate her character, partly because of busy busy in the room we were in.
She’s tired from time to time my new friend, but at the hardest point of the writing we had someone busying themselves in the background. Just as we were about to try to say the important things we were unlucky as there was buzzing around and it really did feel like she was listening even if she wasn’t. She wouldn’t take the hints I dropped which proves she actually probably wasn’t listening it just felt that way for us. “It’s hard to concentrate when there are people bustling around and listening like this, isn’t it?” I said to the playwright. That’s about as close as nice me will I’ll ever get to saying “Go away! I’ve got this.” So… the final third of the script was solved with the stage direction “They fight”.
I feel that my young adult has written a delightful piece. It might have been different if we had not chosen a busy place to write the second part. I’m glad the first half was fecund. My desire for the scene isn’t her desire, and I’m trying to scribe for her not me. That’s important.
Everything comes from the best possible intentions with this lot. We are all volunteers. It’s tonic to be part of it. I have to check my privilege and my luck at every stage. Glorious people. Glorious work. It’s my first dramaturging, so yeah, of course I’m anxious that I get the best out of my writer.
My writer was so bold 1 on 1. I hope I’ve done well by her. I hope she feels her voice is heard. In the end, that’s all that matters.
My dear friend from Guildhall met up with me in Belsize Park after work. Her mum still lives on Crowndale Road. She grew up in Somerstown and would have definitely been part of the programme had it existed back then. As we left the pub, two young men stopped her. “Are you Miss 0? We all loved you in Dubai!” She’s been international for years, teaching. She’s just come home. I don’t think that happens every night, so I was glad to hear it from them on her behalf, and to hear how well they’re doing and how much they respect her, my old mate… My old drama school partner, Single mum at 16, training as an actress miss thirties, from hardship, alleviating hardship, full of life.
I’m not being paid for this mentoring. I’m doing it because I know how incredible these young adults are. I’m happy to be a tiny tiny part of their journey. My friend from Somerstown found drama. It has changed her life and – by the feel of it she has gone on to change that of many many people.
I spent the day in The Wellcome Collection. We were very kindly given a tour by one of the curators. I think if you’re presiding over an ethnographic museum from that era, you are going to have to be aware of the colonialism that made such things possible. Ditto the exploitation that led to all that money. But our tour was so completely wrapped up in hesitant apologetics for the very existence of the collection that it failed to take into account that there were some really interesting items with history and power. I was there with Scene and Heard, working with a young writer who lives in Mornington Crescent. She will be making a part of a play based on the collection. We were only shown a fraction of the public galleries, and it was mostly just a very well meaning woman apologising. We wanted to know things and see things. We can make our own minds up.
The tour didn’t stop us from finding things. Our team started off by looking at the device by which people blend and consume one another’s poo in order to ensure a diverse gut biome. Then we were curious about The Odin: DIY gene editing. Our guide had nothing about it though so we wandered into other less modern areas. Upstairs in the reading room we found pictures and posters. A big selection of period AIDS posters from different countries. “Did you notice the difference between the American posters and the French ones,” she asked me. I hadn’t. “The American ones are all threatening and negative, but the French ones are positive.” I look again. She’s right. But one from America strikes her and me for being outside of the narrative: “I have AIDS, please hug me, I can’t make you sick.” Mostly though its America doing toes on a gurney with a tag. “He didn’t use a condom”, and France with cartoons or sunshine and smiling. “This holiday I forgot everything. Except protection!!”
She’s right. Different countries employing different ways of controlling the flow of popular thought through the prism of a disease control imperative. Considering it is just a small section in the reading room, it was a powerful feeling towards what we have all been experiencing now. The world is no longer late eighties believe it or not. Looking at those posters we learnt a bit more about how the narrative has shifted. The internet has brought groupings. The internet has gathered. Advertising metrics have worked out the thoughtpoints around which most people coalesce, and has flagged us all with so many notional labels. Algorithms have realised that we respond more if certain dialogues are encouraged. And if we aren’t paying attention we are gently ushered into extremism by robots, even if we can’t read very well.
“You can teach her a little,” Lou responded when I told her something of the circumstances of the young adult I’m working with. “She can teach me,” I responded because we are both outside one another’s experience, but strangely bonded by Latin. Her school has made provision. She’s doing it as a fourth GCSE, coming in out of hours. She told me where Caecilius is. 33 years later and he’s STILL in the bloody horto.
We found a picture of The Dance of Death though, and that seemed to be the catalyst for her character. It’s a German picture. Death dancing with everybody. The rich and the poor, the powerful and the crushed. We will all have a part in her dance, and when it finishes she will help us go to the place we are “supposed” to go to. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. She helps make things better by dressing up cheerfully and being friendly and bright.
We’ve sewn the bones of something here today. Tomorrow we just need to reap what we’ve sewn. She will write her piece and I will interfere as little as possible other than typing. I’m excited about what she might bring though. She’s a force.
In terms of light it’s not really possible to get a good picture of the glass covered dance of death. Here’s the best I’ve got.
It’s my first night at home for a week. There is no cat to feed.
I ran a bath, and employed unusual restraint on the size of it. Scrubbed and then lay until I was pickled. I hadn’t got back home until about 3pm and I’d probably still be in the bath if I hadn’t had a briefing on Zoom at 5pm. Scene and Heard. I’ve volunteered for something interesting again. It’ll keep me occupied this week and will hopefully put something back into the London I love.
I haven’t been home for a week. All the lights have been off. According to my smart meter, that bath cost me the best part of £3.14. The fridge freezer was set too high though and has been chipping away for months. It was burning about 0.10p an hour.
These things can make you obsessive! There’s a setting where it tells you your kilowatt hours live. You can switch something on, wait a few seconds and see a result. It is terrifying being able to break things down quite to this extent. With everything but the fish aerator switched off we were looking pretty clear though, so at least I know I don’t have any weird drains on my power.
I’ve been swept up in the narrative even if I haven’t meant to be. I listen to lots of Radio 4 as I’m driving around etc, and right now it’s all about “What luxuries do you think you can’t do without? Call us and share.” We are being primed for a decade of hardship. But it’s weirder and darker than that, because there’s no windfall tax and energy companies are posting record profits. Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds have just seen a £47000 price hike on their energy bills. They are looking at what they can to be able to continue to operate – they are asking for donations but theatre is a wonderful industry that has been scratching by forever. Nobody goes into theatre to get rich. And it is an industry under fire. “Singing is a vector for COVID,” says the narrative. While the energy bills are soaring, so the theatres are being quietly styled as dangerous places and their running costs are being hiked. The audience that fills the seats are being discouraged from filling the seats by the narrative. Lockdown didn’t kill theatre. We rose up. We believed. We rallied. Brian was opening and closing so frequently it was like he was a saloon door. People with money at the top of production chains quietly bankrolled losses just because they knew they were employing people who needed employment… That was lockdown but I’m not sure we can sustain it if they start to attack us like they have been attacking the NHS for years. Pulling basic grassroots funding, deprioritising, patronising, crushing. I don’t want to live in a world where, as with the Gainsborough Studios, the old theatres are turned into flats for Captain Job-Description and her howling ninnies to have their pad in the smoke ya? I mean yeah, if you charge way too much for tickets then of course you’re a Cock. But we’ve all got to make a living. And theatre provides an early home for some really interesting thinker who, given their rein, could change the world. It’s almost like the people in charge don’t want the world to be changed… I guess that’s what “Conservative” means really. You have to stop the plants from growing freely in your conversatory. And If you cause the plants distress then they can yield better fruit to eat. You can even imitate a crisis – like setting a controlled fire in a pineapple conservatory – and yield record fruit by making the plants panic and push out all their best stuff.
I wonder what history will say about this period. About Boris the jolly arsonclown, and about the empty-faced parade still dancing behind his shadow. We are supposed to care if it is Liz or Rishi who is chosen to deliberately drive us into the iceberg. Rishi is supposed to understand money and is openly disapproving of Liz, so it looks like Liz has been chosen so she can sink us and then Rishi can say “I told you so” and be presented in a few years as an option for a “recovery” that’s just as fucked as everything before it. Empty transparent nasty mean humans the lot of them. No more empathy or kindness than a flock of geese. Leaders? Nah. None of them ever were. None of them ever can be. None of them ever will be. Like the officers in WW1. Dangerous proud fools with too much power.
It’s a funny old thing, living in London. Where I am, in Chelsea, the area is pointedly and angrily residential. There are well organised groups of concerned citizens who do mailouts. When The Tamezin Club – who are an Opus Dei receiving house next door to me – when they started hosting a girls’ school in their premises, there was local outrage. There is no school anymore.
As a result of this tendency there’s no decent coffee in my immediate area. The only shop in easy walking distance is the worst stocked Tesco Metro in the world, on Royal Hospital Road, woefully understaffed and selling an eccentric range of whatever they think people will want. I would love to see how much of their annual sales go on booze, even though a previous manager deliberately took the beer out of the fridge because he didn’t like local workmen buying cold beer and drinking it on the bench outside. They’ve recently put in two self checkouts and nobody uses them – either because the people are too old fashioned, they aren’t going to support the job automation, or – statistically most likely – the machines are both out of order again. Some Zuckerborg has made these crap machines and flogged them half broken to Tesco who have cut their staff and blocked out even more space to host them before it became apparent that they are just a humongous pile of failed bollocks like the Metaverse.
But yeah. That’s my only outlet until we get to The King’s Road, which is a warning to us all. Even up to the nineties it was a sexy and interesting place. The landlord – (I believe it’s the Cadogan Estate) – utterly ruined Chelsea by putting the rent up so high that only chains that are still dumb enough to think that The King’s Road means anything anymore can afford to be there. Big brands only. The Chelsea Kitchen went. The angry mangal place went. I think we might even have lost Picasso. Pucci Pizza. R Soles the shoe shop… All the personality has been excised, most of it a long time ago. Halfway up in the farmer’s market Phat Phuc still sells you basic decent ramen in their garden tent. Even The Stock Pot went though. I think Wilde Ones might still be trading, selling you a decent 0.20p incense stick for like £3.00, but good on them, they’ve got a market. There’s a lot of money in posh hippy kids. I blew my allowance there week in week out and I still occasionally buy stuff there because they are somehow still clinging on despite most of the road being assimilated by the borg. I haven’t been up in a while though. I’m more likely to buy the same stuff in Brixton market for a bit less of a mark up.
This is my last night in Camden,. It’s very very different up here in North London. 5 minutes walk from bed will bring me an exceptionally good independent coffee tomorrow morning from the place that used to be Leyas. It’s the same at Lou’s in Brighton with the Kemptown Bakery, which we both affectionately dub the Crack House. It’s just The King’s Road where I live that I’m disappointed by the cofferings. Starwucks. Pwet. Pwaul. Homogenised and insipid coffee from stressed out mass produced beans and indifferent staff. Ok so I take the quality of the available coffee as a benchmark for an area, but that’s because it’s an obvious thing to sell for a huge mark-up. It’s when the only outlets are actually these property empires that have streamlined their coffeemaking process until it is justjust good enough that you can’t quite get away with sending it back… “Excuse me, my but coffee is… Well … It’s … It’s insipid.” “We have correctly added the Fwargucks Fairtrade* beans to the perfect quantity. You agreed that you liked your coffee as part of the transaction when you made your payment. It’s the the tees and sees. And either way, there’s no point in you getting angry about it, we literally own you. We actually own you. Dance little piggy dance.” *(This is a brand name, not ethical practice)
I’ve lived in Chelsea for years. I don’t go out in Chelsea. It’s either lazy and standardized or its absurdly overpriced. It’s been lovely to be here in Camden. It’s a tiny bit more free here. I saw two old friends and remembered a bit more of those pre-lockdown days. Unfortunately though, we got fucked. The chains are moving in. The borg is assimilating Camden. Cwosta and Nwero and the others are all still there but we were after grub. “Hooray” we thought as Rossopomodoro told us they could take us on a late Sunday night.
£75 quid for two small bowls of pasta, two drinks and two tiramisu. Oh you villains. John is about to be a dad and it all ended up on his card too. Lovely jubbly until I have to return and favour. I can pop into Wilde Ones with all my unspent wealth and buy a single stick of palo santo… Might even get some change from it.
Before I was born, in Jersey, my mother had a cat. Jezebel. I was always aware of her missing presence. Mum spoke of her often, and occasionally considered another cat. There never was another cat though. The ghost of mum’s old cat was really the only feline interaction of my early childhood. Lots of dogs. No cats.
Sometimes I’d go to someone’s house and the cat would come straight to me. Beeline. “He doesn’t normally come to people,” is something I heard often enough. “It’s probably because I haven’t showered.” But really that was all. I had a sense that I might smell interesting to cats.
About five years ago, just before this blog started, I went and found a ceremony with some South American plant medicine and it helped shift the way I look at things.
The beat era psychedelic sage and functioning heroin addict William Burroughs spoke and wrote often about cats. “Evidence indicates that cats were first tamed in Egypt. The Egyptians stored grain, which attracted rodents, which attracted cats. (No evidence that such a thing happened with the Mayans, though a number of wild cats are native to the area.) I don’t think this is accurate. It is certainly not the whole story. Cats didn’t start as mousers. Weasels and snakes and dogs are more efficient as rodent-control agents. I postulate that cats started as psychic companions, as Familiars, and have never deviated from this function.”
When I was on whatever psychedelic journey the medicine took me on, I found myself identifying very strongly with all things feline. I was never really big into cats until that night. I only really noticed this today when I was thinking about it just now in terms of what’s been happening since catwise. A certain cat spirit came and visited me on my strange journey. It helped me find a useful means of understanding myself better, which is really the point of going to those psychedelic ceremonies. I don’t really write about it much cos it’s mine. But thinking back now, it seems that endless colorful night opened the catflap into my existence this time round.
First in was Pickle in May 2017, not long after the ceremony. Little Pickle who followed Brian and Mel home to mine and nobody claimed her. She would sleep on my bed every night. I used to thrash around in bed but her presence stopped that. She would curl up in my heart space and lie there most of the night. Then I ended up looking after loads of other cats short and long term. Nutmeg helping de-adrenalise me catsitting over one long week working in Southwark as shouty King John with too many shows for too little money. Dear little twitchy pissypants Mao who brought some wisdom and calm into the Covid downtime. I still think of him and his ways. He was with me and then Lou for a long long time all said.
After Mao there have been lots of delightful furry friends stewarding my dreams in lots of different contexts. Mochi and Mika up by Eton when I was doing the Bletchley show. Izzy and Tessy in the palace with Lou. Earlier this week I was in Richmond with restless Henry, most likely decimating the bird population of Richmond before demanding endless Sheba packages and occasional snuggles. And now, this pleasant evening, I’m high up in a council flat overlooking Mornington Crescent, ministering to Boy, who is a pudding. He just likes to lie on his side and look at you.
As with my mum back in Jersey, I want another cat but I know the hit you have to take on lifestyle if you haven’t got an Al to come and stay in your place every time you’re away.
I’m off all over the place all the time. My existence would become a logistical hell if I had a furry friend full time. So I’ve become a sort of cat-visitor, gradually building up a web of cats that know me so I can extend my night time dream-voyages into deeper and stranger places. The cats have got my back these days and I’ve got theirs. And all of them came in since I knelt and held that bitter cup to my lips and filled my mouth with that hard deep thick sludge and filling my system with the spirit molecule.
I’m still feeling very conflicted about not being able to make it to Chile for Extreme-e. I try to make myself useful in whatever context I find myself in. That’s my happy flaw. I know for sure that I filled a me-shaped gap on the team for those incredible ambitious off-road races. I’m still slightly pissed off that I won’t get to see the Atacama desert for the copper X-Prix, but today I offered a friend as a replacement and was told I was “irreplaceable.” That’s a lovely thing to hear and I know why I heard it. It is great to be irreplaceable if you’re my ego and crap if you’re my desire for things to go smoothly in the races. The major happy-factor is that I’ll almost certainly have a job in Uruguay in November. Obviously it’s always nice get positive feedback. And I know that my brand of unruffled immediacy lends itself well to that unusual international world I’ve found. I know they’ll do fine without me, but I’m aware of the edges that I was making it my business to file away. Wonderful people making great stuff, and I got to go to Saudi and to Sardinia so far. But acting has to forever be the primary…
I often think of dad’s first comment when I told him I wanted to be an actor. “When I was your age I wanted to be a long distance truck driver … You’d see more of the world and you’d make more money.”
I haven’t explicitly set out to defy my dad’s expectations, but I’ve made a solid throw at having my cake and eating it. I’ve traveled very widely with the acting, and augmented it with the races. I’ve seen more of the world than somebody stuck on a couple of routes, and hell yes I’ve had fun in the process.
This evening I introduced Chris from the Bletchley job to Siwan from the Hampstead Halloween Walk. My instinct knew it was the right person to the right group. We hit Camden and talked shop with booze. This seems to be what happens when I go to North London. The Lyttleton Arms, The Camden Head, The Elephants Head. We did all the talking and much of the drinking. All three of us are generators. It was a lovely dynamic and it’ll make for a delightful and spooky walk. Totally different route this time as well so I’ll have to make up a bunch of new stories… But we’ve got four lovely humans now who are all in London at Halloween time and who all want to make something delightful as we shift into darkness again. I didn’t think I’d be doing it again, but actually it makes lots of sense…
Maybe this year I’ll be less vague about it and I’ll get to have more friends come and enjoy an evening.
Thames Water sent me a text message. I shouldn’t have given them my number. They wanted to remind me that, even though there’s been loads of rain over the last few days it “isn’t enough to get river and reservoir levels back to where they need to be” so they are still going ahead with a hosepipe ban in London.
“where they need to be”
Yesterday the rain was so heavy driving home that it was like driving through the sea.
A tropical rain storm. Sure that’s just a day. And of course “after the unprecedented rainfall parts of the Sussex coast are out of bounds for swimming”. So there’s not enough rain to flush for weeks, and then in heavy rain they flush and say “ah we had no choice”.
Since we left the EU, companies have been allowed to dump much more bad water into our rivers and streams. Rules have relaxed about levels of hazardous chemicals they can pump into rivers. Many rivers are now dying and without a steady flow of rain to flush the poison it is getting unmanageable.
“need”
A hosepipe ban in London and a very clear push in the national narrative to make us worry about our personal water use and conserve water. I haven’t had a bath for a week. Maybe I’m swept up in it. But… What isn’t being spoken about here?
It looks like Liz Truss is gonna be our shiny new unelected PM. Not to be mistaken for Lynne Truss. Lynne Truss wrote the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.” It’s in most of the loos in most of the villages in most of small town England. If you wanted to, could describe Lynne Truss as a grammar Nazi. She really hates people, using bad commas.
Liz Truss is not related to Lynne. She said recently she will “lift the ban on grammar schools”. With that in mind alongside her political leanings, we could use the same moniker for her. And we all suddenly have to save water even though it’s raining? But… But why?
“Homegrown energy solutions.”
Putin has pulled the plug on Afghanistan oil and is now restricting flow of gas to Europe as he throws the badly trained youth of Russia into the fire in quest of some idea of a long dead past. At every stage, the extra cost has been passed onto the citizens while the fatties baste themselves in money. This won’t change and now they want our water. Why?
“We are conveniently out of all that nasty red tape from Europe.” “Bananas will be the right shape again!” Plus, we can poison our own waterways for easy profit. PLUS… FRACKING!!! She is talking about fracking, openly. She’s going to start pumping millions and millions of gallons of water into shale to bang up gas despite the fact that the water comes up deadly and goes back into the water table highly contaminated. No wonder even the London water board is trying to get us all to worry about water – the latest in this stream of turds we’ve had recently is planning on a wholesale attack on that resource. Ooh I could crush a grape… Things just keep getting worse… I kinda hoped that Covid would cause a recalibration but it has just made them think of us societally as entirely receptive and submissive. How dare our water company text us all on the morning of a day of heavy rain and tell us to be scared about water use when it’s clearly this poundshop Thatcher and her immunity to consequence earmarking all the water for punching poison into the soil so we can crank the heating up all night and weekend in the empty office buildings in Canary Wharf, and so the insanely rich CEOs of companies that should really be redundant in a forward looking society can post record profits and buy another car.
The problem is, most of the people who are talking openly about how we have been and are being misled have also very cleverly been misled too – by that very seductive right wing online community. I would contend that the famous hackers are actually just looking to sew confusion. They pump utter guff into the heads of their acolytes along with the things we really ought to be observing. We are so rooted in binary choices, in being right or being wrong. In the practicalities of control within education then expanded. So we hear the priests and followers of the new religion tell us things we can observe, and then in the next sentence they tell us something obviously made-up. So we, who have critical thinking, dismiss the whole argument because we don’t trust the source. Don’t do that though. There’s stuff we really need to stop being so complacent about, even if that friend of yours who keeps going on about it is using an unforgivably high handed tone and dropping in atrocious words like “sheeple”. Our rivers are dying. Our coastline is poison. And there’s a new idiot about to wear the hat who actively wants to make all of this worse. We have to do something to stop this soon. We have to. The other option is we turn this place into a desert.
Wow. Yesterday’s blog offering was an unstructured mess, huh?
I was having a lovely time though, trust me. If only I could remember it.
You see, I’m catsitting in Twickenham just round the corner from Lidl. Yesterday I popped in on my way home and they were flogging these for £7.00.
I don’t profess to be a wine aficionado, but I know a little about what I like. And there are two words I look for principally as things I know I will absolutely enjoy. One of the two is on this bottle: Mourvédre.
It’s the type of grape it’s made from. It results in a wine that my tastebuds always enjoy. Flat and dry and thick and nom. Grows best around Provence and in the tiny Bandol region – HOT. (The second word I look for is Bandol – I like wine with loads of sun in it.)
I immediately bought four bottles of the stuff to keep for special occasions. Austerity be damned.
I got home and got a call and booked a lovely job. That self tape from the other day. Ding. Straight from tape to offer.
So… I was happy about getting a job, on my own in Richmond but accompanied by four bottles of my favourite wine, a cat and the tail end of summer. What is a man to do?
When I came down this morning there were still three of them thankfully unopened. The fourth one was completely empty with the cork still inexplicably jammed into the neck. I had at some point got around to making all of those loosely connected sentences, and my throat hurt from the sort of committed and deafening snoring marathon that can only come from such proud and foolish excess.
A man need not feel guilty every time he necks a bottle of wine, writes a rant and passes out. But this evening I’m on the water, a good healthy salmon dinner and lots and lots of cat stroking. He is currently sitting beside me purring himself to sleep. We have grown pretty companionable now he knows I’m usually going to open the door and put food in his bowl. I somehow managed both at 7 this morning despite all that tasty Mourvédre.
As predicted it’s all starting to mount up, but as NOT predicted, it’s going in a different direction. I thought I would be off to Chile to be part of the cutting edge of what motor racing should be with the Copper X-Prix up in Antofagasta. I was pretty invested in going out to the Atacama desert and trying to help make something important. I like the work and I like the team. But my agent rang.
First of all, the Germans. I had a blast filming with them in early summer. They want me back for longer. I’m very much looking forward to the result of all this filming. The last one to screen saw loads of random text messages from Teutonic friends. It went out on Christmas Day. Who knows when these next two will go out, but the fact they’ve asked for me without audition is teutonic tonic. God love them. If I’d had some actual meetings at the start of my career I might equally have UK production companies asking for me too, but back then I was too distracted with the life shit that was happening, with no agent support and the false comfort of Bright Young Things. By the time I looked around the planet had moved on and everybody assumed they hadn’t met me because I was no good rather than my mum died and my potential big agent decided to drop it all and get married in California.
This is why, despite being sad about having to cancel Chile, I’m also deeply grateful. My agent has drawn a connection to a good casting director. That casting director is deep enough in her craft to see me clearly. Outside of the Germans, who have been so uncomplicatedly loyal that I’m quite emotional thinking about it, this casting director has just given me a nice little role in a known thing that’s shot here, just down the road from me, respectably paid and enough to remind me that THIS is what I do for a living. Yes I also build races, run workshops, catsit, train people, invigilate, fix film shoots, carry freight, read scripts, AD, ASM, sell antiques – plus I probably ought to write but I don’t… But my primary is and always has been my acting.
This month the universe and my agent are in alignment reminding me that I’m employable. Thank you, universe. I was about to sink myself into doing global racing logistics. I would be so fucking happy doing that, but I would be separated from my daemon and always just a little bit glassy eyed. It’s gonna be hard with my friends on the race crew. I could’ve been a boon in Chile. But… With the geography issues Silvia is thinking of doing it all with buses anyway. Maybe it’s the right one to miss. Maybe I would have been vibrating with unused energy the whole time until something went wrong.
Still. I’ll never go to the Atacama desert now. Big loss? Nah. Maybe not. It might have been another tick in the map. I’ve always held that the world is big and we are still slow. Nobody will ever see it all. But we should try to see as much of it as we can. The more we see, the rounder we become. Particularly if we go to the places that are not fêted and advertised. That’s where the truth happens. Sure that’s where crime and poverty happens, but hold the travelers mantra close: most people can be trusted.
There are not many people who are genuinely capable of being evil. Most people are kind and good. But, and this is important: The people who are genuinely capable of being evil? They can only see the world through their prism. So… They assume that everyone is as potentially awful as they arecapable of being. They are the ones who will fill you with fear about what might happen to you in an elsewhere place. You might catch their fear, and maybe a kind but desperate person will see your fear and think you’re an idiot and it’s ok to rob you if you’re already terrified of them. Don’t catch the fear from the psychos.
Ok, I’m a six foot male and sadly I’m not speaking to the fact that men, globally, are and have been fucking unforgivable for centuries towards women in public and I’ve seen it again and again and again in this lifetime. Sometimes I’ve tried to help, but I’m just another man. So yeah, sadly the sexual dynamic is not my area of expertise. If that’s not on the table I would contend that the vast majority of people and situations are safe – most people worldwide are actually good people.
Trust is the mantra of the traveler. The narrative that we are surrounded by volatile psychopaths is and can only be perpetuated by the actual wolves in sheep’s clothing – by the psychotic humans who know deep down that they are just nasty beings, but… they’ve “got it under control”. “If I wasn’t in control of my impulses I would X X” they think to themselves. Like all these desperately awful humans who are campaigning against drag queens reading to children. “Drag Queens are paedophiles,” they cry. They see people who are sexually unconstrained. “Who would I be, if I were liberated like drag queens?” they ask themselves. “Those drag queens are paedos!” they conclude.
There are many many better things to get exercised about.
I’ve even found myself getting pissed off about comedians in Edinburgh lately. Jerry Sadowitz is working in character and he is trying to put the worst thoughts into perspective. Censorship only causes entrenchment. His agenda was not one of hate. He only really hates himself. He wants you to hate yourself too if you’re a nasty piece of work, and he teaches you how to do it by deconstructing your shit thought patterns. It’s clever. You can take anything like that out of context if you want to. But his second show of two was cancelled because he upset members of staff with the content and had a big student walkout percentage. (About ten percent of the total house)
We need to manage our outrage. We really do. The Pleasance knew what they were booking. Whoever spearheaded the drive to cancel his second performance has done two things. 1: Made him the primary comedian of choice for the hateful brigade that he definitely does not like. That’s cool. His next show will probably take them apart into little tiny pieces if anybody is grown up enough to put it on.. 2: Made a previously untouchable comedy production brand (The Pleasance) look like a bunch of partisan idiots who are completely out of touch with the point of what they are supposed to be selling, and what character comedy IS. I remember seeing Laura Wade’s Posh in the stalls. I knew the Assistant Director and he got me a house seat. The audience guy behind me was unevolved but from a similar upbringing from me. “Classic!” He would occasionally fwah to his partner out loud, with his stunted breath rendering staccato laughter. “I’ll remember that one eh eh eh huuur” “The play isn’t for them, but they love it…” said my friend when I brought it up in the interval. Remember, most people around you have paid £200 a ticket. Fwah. I knew “Posh” wasn’t a Stan play for the Bullingdon Club. But the mister fwah behind me really thought it was. So yeah, despite intentions, things can be wilfully taken out of context.
“In a changing world, stories and language that were once accepted on stage, whether performed in character or not, need to be challenged. There is a line that we will not cross at the Pleasance, and it was our view that this line was crossed on this occasion.” That’s part of the statement.
I am frightened by this statement. I worry that you might tell me that I’m clinging onto something, and fuck it I’m happy to learn so school me because … In character? So you can’t have a character say hateful things? Like? All the villains ever… … Those guys in Posh?
I don’t particularly give a fuck about Sadowitz. He’s a shock guy. But… He assumes we are mature enough to parse his shit and then draw our own conclusions. He is playing a character and any genuine hatred I detect is inward. This sort of thing from a major comedy venue is dangerous though. It’s only a step or two away from policing thought crimes.
But … I’m over 40 now. We need to make room for those who are coming up. And we need to adapt and learn new tricks. I’m just not sure if this is a decent battle. It feels nastier and weirder. Sometimes concessions HAVE to be made but what do we cut off when we cut off angry mischief?
The world I grew up into pre internet is not the world I live in now. Like with travel, so with time. We have to acknowledge change of social morays as we do with change of literal location. I will try not to be left behind. Normally I’m very happy to run with the changes. I just… I just hitch with this. Like it’s a snag and I can’t feel beyond it… I’ve not even seen the offending offering – hell, very few people have, and of the ones that did loads of them had an agenda. I might hate it. I might hate him. But that’s his JOB. If you make whatever the fuck too taboo to say then it becomes the secret special thing that groups say together and it makes them feel happy to be part of something secret and underground. Sadowitz looks like a last line of defence in that context. “Look at yourself openly and out loud. Is this your hate? Why? Fuck you!” he says.
But maybe people have looked at themselves and seen hate of some sort. Maybe they have been shocked by their own human potential. And maybe… maybe that made them uncomfortable enough to fight for one show to be cancelled. Not to get people to go and assess it and learn. Not to reshape and mature through the performer’s vast demonstrated but valleys l calculated immaturity. Just to stop the thing that challenges. Stop it now now now it hurts.
Look to yourself, I would say, if you are one of those. Look to yourself because you might well be paving the road to hell with those good intentions.
A spot of rain in Richmond, and maybe it’s helped break the back of this heat. I’m catsitting up here for a few days. A change of scene and it has propelled me to bed early.
Henry is pretty low maintenance. He has a catflap and he lets himself in and out if he has to, although he is largely much happier if he can get somebody to open the door for him. Currently he won’t let me stroke him but he will make me feed him. He strides in and shouts until his bowl is full. “Close your bedroom door or he’ll wake you in the night for food,” Tanya tells me. And he will, even if his bowl is full.
So… I’m winding down here with another fun pussycat. It’s so much quieter here than in my flat. I don’t notice the main road when I’m home, but I notice the lack of it when I’m not. And there are creatures here. A giant house spider was staring at me when I was brushing my teeth. Great big thing. I got web in my face when I walked into the bathroom. So long as it doesn’t creep me out it’ll help cut down on the late summer flies though. I prefer to live and let live unless somebody is freaking out in which case I’d move it somewhere. Nature does what nature does, and that great big thing is going to avoid me but might eat things that want to cut little square holes in my skin and drain my blood.
Something unusual happened in Chelsea last night. With all the heat and the lack of rain, the plane trees must have been suffering, and maybe they felt like there was going to be a storm. On my street and the streets around me, they did a huge overnight shedding of old dead leaves. It was a still night. They just dropped about fifty percent of their foliage. Bergman was covered, and the pavement was crunching with them. Strange to see.
The leaves, the spider… All these things indicate autumn to me and I’m not done with summer yet dammit. But I can feel the air temperature dropping, and the trees and spiders are obviously feeling it too by their behaviours. I haven’t seen any crane flies yet thank God – they’re the true harbinger of autumn. It’s only a matter of time.
AlBarclay 