Some friends of Brian and I are in town, Rob and Amy. I wanna go hang with them in the pub but right now my entire system is rejecting the booze. I don’t want it. And I’m not yet in a place where I can go be with boozy people and not step in. So I’ve put myself to bed.
It’s not even seven, but I’ve got a recall audition tomorrow after a dayjob shift at the old invigilation game. It’s resit week. I was there today presiding over the usual shitshow. Loads of them didn’t even show up. These are the ones who have to take it again so often there’s plenty of stuff going on. Nice lot though, and only ten of them but six different exams so it was a paperwork bonanza and I had to stay on top of it. They’ve frozen my card for access to lots of places because I’ve been working there on and off for so long they just automatically reset things like with a driving licence. I first did this in like 2003 when Abigail got me in shortly after we left drama school. She’s far too resourceful to still be ticking over with it, she jumped ship decades ago but I’m still letting it tick over. It takes less than ten minutes to get to work from my bed. On days that would otherwise be unused, I can make a bit of positive stack and be in a concentrated room for a few hours. It’s a decent enough place to remember lines so long as I remember not to say them out loud.
Early hot bath despite the temperature and now it’s a toss up between a few hours reading Infinite Jest or a few hours playing Skyrim. I think I’ll veer towards the paper as it is compulsive. Great big massive fucking tome, but it has been on my shelf for years and my last two books were both Stephen King so now’s the time. Teenage Lord of the Rings enthusiast means I’m at home to a fat book. It’s easy to forget to read books with all this information in our pocket, but like cash it’s both use it or lose it and ancient.
I’m tired. Happy I made the decision to take care of myself this evening. Hopefully will start to feel a bit less heavy before too long. Boundless energy has been my schtick for too long for me to be turning down a night on the town for a book and a bath. But pajamas and slippers are calling tonight and I’m gonna hear that call and listen to myself within it.
It’s nice to just sink into Shakespeare awhile. He wrote complicated and nuanced things about the human condition. He invented bits of language, he thought about things and then put them into words. He reworked existing works but with a strong eye to putting his own stamp on it. He was a great eye, quite rightly thought of as one of the all time greatest. And what he did is really getting into sharp relief now.
We all know by now how incredibly dumb the vast majority of people on his planet are. We no longer have to struggle to survive, we have no natural predators, we don’t need to be in any way clever to even get basic sustenance, to survive in general. And the majority of people are puddings. If all the infrastructure was pulled for a week, most of us would be dead. No water for starters, so people would try and drink the sea or tidal rivers after they’d killed each other grabbing bottles from supermarkets. But more of them wouldn’t even think of it until too late and would die wearing their stolen trainers.
Now these Large Language Models are helping us do the thinking and it will make even the clever people a bit dumber. There’ll be an interim generation of recent students who didn’t learn anything cos they could pass off LLM essays as their own. By now the professors are all going to be savvy about it so people will be reluctantly learning again, but it does feel as if, generally, if people could push a button that meant they never had to think or care about anything again, lots of people would just push it.
I don’t think LLMs are going to do what the people selling them say they will do. But I have started to see so much content on social media that is made by them. I’m looking out for them but they’re in busy l video form now too. Rabbits on a trampoline. I sniffed that out just as I know rabbits aren’t like crows – they looked too conscious of the play aspect. But… people ask LLMs to make these things and with a pretty basic prompt you can start to generate stuff that will pass as real at a cursory glance. It pushes all of our critical thinking muscles into overdrive, particularly if the thing we are watching plays to our bias. “Yay I like animals having fun, this must be real.” The possibilities for manipulation are off the scale, not just because people can make convincing fake videos but because people in compromising real videos can just say they’re AI and take no responsibility.
The idea that we live in a “post truth” world really rings now. Now we can have convincing fakes appeal to our biases, it is very nearly at the stage where we can’t pick the fakes from the real ones at all. It’s too late to regulate, so we are gonna have to just stop relying on anything we see that doesn’t come from a creditable source, but then the sources! All the papers in this country carry heavy bias. They can’t be trusted to bring us the truth. Reuters etc are supposed to be immune to bias, but they still have a perspective, they still have an editor. Pages like this are entirely biased. We are close to just honestly not knowing what the fuck is actually happening anywhere unless we can see it with our own eyes. It’s not a happy place to be…
The bullshit generators often have short memories. A few weeks ago I got served a load of stuff about an alien spaceship on a collision course with earth that is gonna arrive in November. November will come and go, no alien spaceship, but there’ll be stuff predicted for March. The amount of times I’ve been given dates for things that are going to happen… They never do. Cos you can’t predict the future, kids, and I tell you that as a tarot enthusiast.
I don’t even know why I bother going on social media anymore. Twitter was fun for a while, now it’s a Gutter. And more and more of these AI slop videos and stories, I don’t mind the ones that announce themselves – they’re like shit cartoons. But I detest the ones trying to pass themselves off as true. Keanu Reeves and Elon Musk arguing. Celebrities doing nice things. Celebrities doing nasty things. Articles that would be irrelevant noise anyway but made all the worse by being inventions. But practice I guess for “this is the democrat candidate punching a baby on CCTV” “here’s Jeremy Corbyn kissing a picture of Hitler with tongues”. Elections are gonna be an absolute shit show with this tech. You don’t need the truth to damage a reputation. You just need an idea.
I’m enjoying being useful to this delightful group of people, just to be Marc Antony and to try and make people care about those fuckers killing my best friend. I’ll have to have it all learnt by next time, sure. Our director Toby is the son of one of my more memorable English teachers. MJD. He was good at detail. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Such a strange thing to be back at that place. But it was only really the unevolved turds in my year group in my house that made the whole experience hard for me. They haven’t evolved and added to that they’ve doubled down on their lack of evolution. I bear them no ill will as largely I haven’t the headspace. Hating them would be like hating farts for being stinky. They were just kids being basic. I was in a beautiful place, with wonderful opportunities. It just happened that the people in my immediate vicinity had no real imagination. My biggest sadness is that when I got pulled into a reunion dinner they were still stuck in who they used to be.
The other day my mate Dan put it better than I could have: “We were both at Hogwarts, but Al was in Slytherin.”
But yeah I’m back, doing Shakespeare. It is a lovely thing. I’ve got a lot of learning to do as nobody wants to look like a cunt.
This evening I’m knackered. I had a half price Domino pizza thing so I bought one and froze the other. Now it’s not even nine and honestly I think I’m just gonna turn in. Boo has decided she lives on me no matter how I’m configured, and perhaps that’s my lesson for today, that all my concerns and curiosities are nothing when compared to my worthiness as a catpillow.
I’m feeling sad though tonight. Is it chemical or is it, mayhaps, that the air in London tonight is saying autumn? Persephone is still with us for a few weeks dammit. Either way, bed bed bed.
This has been our pre-weekend weekend. Both of us have stuff to do on the actual weekend so this is the relaxytime. Better that way I think. If you relaxytime when all the world relaxytimes, you find yourself in winduppytime instead because the entire population of ancient Babylon has simultaneously decided NOW is the time to chill.
Being zzzt a tiny bit out of sync with all the zzt the ones who have to be weekend on weekend because job or school or life or unexamined pattern shouts at them… It’s a nice place to be. We went to yoga at Lunarwave at 9.30am on a Friday and there was an empty mat. Beforehand we went to the land of Fika where the hipsters howl, and I was able to order immediately. I don’t like Fika because I think if I was to offer to pay with a ten pound note they would look at me as if money didn’t exist and then tell me in a supercilious tone that they don’t take cash. I have gone without coffee many times when my destination coffee house sports my least favourite phrase: “Proud to not take cash”. I usually pay with cards but “proud to restrict customer options and actually be much lazier about how we close down at the end of the day – oh and we are entirely electricity reliant now. And we are proud of that.” No. You’re a bunch of cunts. Zzt.
I’m sure I’m out of synch here too with how things are going, and I’m fine with that. We are running headlong into a situation that Japan will avoid. It’s only actually the south of this country thankfully so far that have been taken in with the “cash makes more work and we can pretend we don’t take cash cos it might be dirty but actually it saves us cashing up” routine. Up north you still have to ask if it’s okay to pay with card, and long may that continue. It’s so lazy to be cashless, but you can save on staff costs and everyone is greedy. And we the consumer, we aren’t helping cos now we can wave our card like some magical wand. And then it doesn’t feel like giving that capital we worked so hard for. Often the figure isn’t even discussed. But we wave at the boop and the boop takes our money and gives a tiny percentage to someone who is absolutely guaranteed to be an absolute total complete and utter unsalvageable cunt. Boop. Boop. Boop. Pumping up the cock.
We aren’t all millionaires. But we all like the feeling of waving the wand. It feels like magic. And that tiny percentage goes to someone we would punch if they tried to kiss us. And that person gets more and more influential cos there are millions and millions of us. And they can put a tiny tiny bit of their revenue into propagating the “cash is dirty” bullshit.
Then the machine goes down. If you haven’t got cash when the electricity goes, you’re on goodwill as happens at festivals. It happened to me in Paris. Local venue blew the power in all the local streets for a good hour and a half at ten pm. I had just eaten dinner in a local bistro after rushing in some ridiculously long plastic tubes. I can’t remember the name of the venue now. I hadn’t eaten all day, got a good quick bistro meal that ended up being a free meal cos I couldn’t wait for their internet to go back up. I thought I’d go back over the course of the event, but life never took me near again, but I offered them cash. No cash accepted. Fuckem. That’s it way of it.
Don’t take cash out of the equation. It’s like the fire alert at Grenfell telling everyone to stay in their home cos the doors and sprinklers have been assessed by experts and deemed to be all you need to save you from death by fire.
The new smart system tells you it has everything covered because it has been built by idiots. Anyone trying to muscle in on cash territory is just doing it for the percentage, of course. Cash has existed for thousands of years and lifetime after lifetime because it fucking works. It’s just more hubris going cashless. The results of cashlessness might not set a fire in our lifetime, but it WILL burn and it will burn nasty. Those who made the decision to be “proud to be cashless” will be examined in schoolrooms as the short term idiots they are. I’ll still go to cashless places, sure, I’m part of it, I’m just pointing things out.
But… I will walk away no matter how desperate I am for coffee from anyone who says “proud to be cashless”. I’ve annoyed multiple friends with that. “Proud to be cashless! *smileyface* “
You might as well tattoo “self satisfied short term lazy greedy pig trying to manipulate you and proud of it *smiley face* ” on your forehead.
Nah I won’t fund your lazy business. Nor will I give my percentage to the guaranteed extremist who gets that percentage for making an app six years ago and now has been fooled by capitalism into thinking he’s a special individual.
Anyway. Carry cash. Be nice. Remember that the people who don’t take the cash from you are employees so there’s no point being mean to them even though you know their boss is a lazy short termist thinker trying to make things go away, absolutely immune to the understanding that their actions are deeply negative to freedom and progress. Still, keep carrying cash. And next time the homeless guy stops you you won’t look helpless and say “I only have cards”. And you can give to the busker who doesn’t have an izettle and actually might need to get that rock of crack or that homeless shelter or that meal and who are we to judge? At the bottom cash is the only option. At the top, no cash is strangulation. We are still ok but we aren’t using it enough to make sure we will continue to be ok. And that’s as much the fault of the magic wand wavers as it is the short term idiots who are “proud to be lazy”.
Lou had a day planned. It has felt about a week long in the best possible way. It started with a tiny little early Norman church at Coombes with the remains of the original really rather odd and brilliant artwork on the walls.
We wandered awhile amid sheeps and cowses, and then drove on to pop in on friends of hers. A lovely couple, obsessively renovating their already incredible cottage in the shadow of Chanctonbury Fell. We had Earl Gray and figs and lavender cookies. I’ve met their daughter, back in the day at BAC. Didn’t mention it though as we never really spoke beyond a spot of drunken mimbling. She’s in theatre as well.
Then a short drive to Petworth Park. Never been there before. Three quid parking all day if you haven’t got a national trust sticker. It’s an old deer run, like Richmond Park still full of deer, but unlike Richmond, very empty on a weekday. We strode through sun drenched scrubland and lay long in grass on top of hills surveying domains. Too many deer to count. Bright summer sun. Nobody around. I took my shirt off. Got some sun. Glory be. Some wonderful trees. The sweet chestnuts up there have done some brilliant damage recoveries. They are ready for a bumper harvest soon. Looking at most crops, I can tell right away that this is gonna be another red letter year for red wine, like 2020 was.
Early evening we drove to Worthing. It’s the eighties in Worthing. We went to The Perch on the pier where they serve things like Prawn Cocktail and Knickerbocker Glory. I had ravioli. The sun set in our faces.
Then we went and saw The Naked Gun. When in a time warp… The Dome is a lovely old preserved cinema and everybody please keep going to the cinema, daddy doesn’t have a pension to speak of yet. Liam Neeson playing action hero at 73 helps me be peaceful that there’s still hope for this old horse, you won’t have to put a bolt in my head yet.
Now we are back at Tessy’s. She’s running around making up for lost time with play. Lou has chamomile tea brewing, she bought a load of dried chamomile flowers which thinking about it is definitely the best way to do it. You can get enough for weeks for the cost of half a packet of those teapig bags with a few flowers wrapped up in them. I’m gonna go online.
It’s misty by the sea, and honestly a spot of rain was refreshing after being cooked awake in London this morning. In a break with habit I came down by train. Lou has a car here now so Bergie is surplus to requirements, and actually it probably works out about the same for an open return as it does in petrol and parking. Train is quicker too even though it’s pretty much the same door to door.
I found it disconcerting though, not having him. I actually had to think about things I keep in him for emergencies like contact lenses. My car is like a great big overnight bag. For a long time there was even a full set of bedding in there. Towels. Chargers. He’s a workhorse.
Leaving the flat was slow. I wanted to look at some lines and the heat was slowing me down. Had a cold shower at 11am. Finally got out at about noon.
I’ve started a new book. There’s the joy of trains. You can read. Much as I’ve been enjoying the endless ridiculous dynamic between Laura Whitmore and Iain Stirling on the prolific and palatable crime podcast “Murder they Wrote,” I am happy to have started on something a little more challenging. I’m not gonna say what I’m reading right now as its one of those books that people ostentatiously read on the tube if they want to look clever. I’m barely into it and have no idea if I’m gonna persist with it right now as it is huge and halfway through the trip a woman with sad eyes guilted me into filling in a “very satisfied” survey about national rail that wasted twenty minutes of my life only to crash in a tunnel and refuse to reload.
This evening we watched Deep Cover. Lou wanted to see it. I’m just a flash in it and it was a delight to work on so it’s fun to share it with people. It really adds to things when the dynamic on set is so bright. More like that please.
Tomorrow we can kick back together. I’m just here to see her and spend a bit of time, no plans and nothing we need to achieve so we can just roll into nature and share the late summer awhile. Tomorrow hopefully we will see some yew trees… Things will pick up again soon so I’m enjoying the fact I can relax even if I have to be careful of spending now…
Went to Monmouth yesterday. Good coffee. Pint of water first. Ah that’s better. Monmouth coffee on in the stovetop.
Pulling on clothes. Can I reuse this sock? Collared shirt or T-shirt? Shorts today. Odd socks? Expedience. Drink coffee. Oh. Wait yes ok I’m awake because self tape. Shirt off. Shorts off. Rethink.
Record a soundtrack in bed. Then record another. Shave. I’ll be doing these to myself with me doing voices. Bite me.
Director first. Playing one. Calling the shots but not actually how they would be called on film. Time is shifted on that medium. Sticky up hair. Directors wear scarves. Hmm. Barclay tartan cravat. Corduroy jacket. No need to do hair. That’s me as a director with 5 minutes prep. Haven’t got time to do it better really. Lines. Record. Edit. Send. Done.
Ok. Now this next guy. He’s an actor in WW2. Gets a job pretending to be a famous general. I haven’t a moustache. Do I even look like him? Surely it is cast already. Still worth doing it I guess. He was a bit of a boozer this actor even though the general was teetotal. He did a good job of it. He’s army, but all I’ve got is navy. One of granddad’s coats. His tie from HMS Repulse, where he was torpedoed by the Japanese. Shove a bit of water in my hair. Haven’t got time to get this perfect. Fuck me it’s hot in wool. “Pleasure to meet you sir” FOREHEAD.
Same frame. Same light. Same fucking face, these were about ten minutes apart. Oh fuck and they want an ident with a full body shot and a clean frame. We don’t all live in fucking Saltburn darling, more’s the pity. I persuaded Maddy to handhold something that will have to do. Could have cleaned up cushions from the wide shot or worn a lower half that matched the upper but this is a crapshoot. It’s enough that I put on shoes. I’ve done them barefoot in the past as honestly what are you asking us to have here? Must we all live in vastness?
Two auditions done and it’s not even morning yet really. Maddy was sitting working on Chinese visas at the kitchen table throughout and I wished she wasn’t. Made me self conscious a little but largely didn’t negatively impact things – if anything it made it quicker to film as the social anxiety aspect was present hence why I didn’t want her there. Brian was kind enough to leave.
Spot of editing – top and tail. I’ve stopped giving too much of a fuck about getting the perfect take cos it’s an absolute crapshoot these days at this stage. I remember in 2002 seeing a role I was already cast in being advertised on the front page of PCR with a casting director who had been taken off the project. She was taken off because the director was fed up of being served the same old people from the same old agencies. But a ripple doesn’t cause a storm.
These parts are one line two line parts and I imagine they go to literally hundreds if not thousands of people for tapes. I’m allowed to play these parts according to the unspoken rules of agentranking. Esta is known in the industry and I’m not alone in loving her. They could still go to friends of the director these parts, and maybe they are already cast … but if there’s anything left it is a level playing field depending on what order they watch the tapes… I wonder how big the odds are. I’m conflicted. I’ll give a shit but I’m not gonna give you a clean landscape background for the ident as you literally have to live in a wind tunnel.
It would be lovely, of course, to do what I’m supposed to be doing, and sometimes these tapes do land. All you need is one ball bearing from the shotgun cartridge to hit the clay pigeon. Thinking about it won’t help though. So I pack up the tripod and change my clothes again. I’m awake now. Day. A day. A waddadaidai.
Into Bergie on a hot afternoon. First I have to get my festival stuff out of him to make room. I’m aware that the designer I’m collecting for needs things to be just-so. I don’t want her to slam herself to the negative when it isn’t immediately possible for me to pack the car. I’ve already made it clear to her that she can’t send the costume rail intact up three flights of stairs. She wanted us to put it in a van upright.
I collect fine. Then to The Arts which has no loading bay. I reverse dangerously onto the pavement and Brian appears as if from nowhere to wordlessly start carrying this crap. This is our understanding and our deep friendship now and I hold it tight. Unloading could have been an absolute bastard, but I know it and he knows it and between us it was ok. He had a house manager who had a brilliant hairstyle and did absolutely diddly fuck tomato apart from look at me like I was in the wrong place. He walked up some stairs in front of me. He had nice hair. Useless fucker. Brian and I slung all the heavy stuff up all the stairs. I even noticed that Brian had left two bags on a landing thinking that hairstyle might take them the rest of the way. Nope. We took one each, Brian and I. Nowadays nobody does more than they absolutely have to. This is how the world dies, honestly, I can’t make sense of it. How has everyone got so partitioned that you can call it boundaries where really it’s totally just laziness?
Anyway, I went for dinner with good people. Bedtime.
Got up, rented a van, slung a load of stuff into it I want to take to Canterbury from the lockup. Drove to Shoreditch to pick up the furniture from the job. Waited.
Bought a halloumi wrap and a coffee. Waited.
Bought another flat white. Went to pret as well for some water. Waited.
Waited a bit.
Client is getting fucked over. He can’t get keys. I mention to him that my plus one can’t stay much longer as it is a 4 hour round trip to the storage. He tells me it isn’t going to work.
I go back to the lockup and load the stuff back in. Pointless going to Canterbury just for that stuff. I return the van to Kentish Town and Siwan and I go for a shandy in the garden of The Lion and Unicorn. What a waste of a day.
I’ll get the van hire money from the client. Might get a bit of money for my time too if I ask. But it feels weird to invoice for a failed attempt. I think I’m quite goal driven sometimes. It doesn’t feel like a job if it’s just my time taken. It only feels like a job if I’ve actually done some work. I should take a leaf out of the playbook of every plumber in this country.
Now I’m home and sleepy. That’s the heat and the fact that I’ve not got the curtain over the window. Sun cooks me into fever dreams at dawn and they continue until I work out which one is the one I’m pretending to be a person in. Then it goes and gets a coffee and perhaps three hours after first awareness I manage to align the brain and the body and voila *cough* c’est Al! … … *cough* … … … … *flourish*
Liney learny. Drivey drivey. Money spendy.
I’m still enraged about the latest setback. It makes it that much harder to go back to the drawing board, but here I am, getting an early bed so I can send two tapes tomorrow for tiny little parts. One of them will surely land, maybe both, but I’m gonna make a track myself for these ones in the morning… I’ve asked too many friends too often lately. Good work my agent getting me all these small part tapes. Happy to be punting. But I need one to go in the goal now. I’m not auditioning for fun here.
Sitting at the top of the hill in the sun, I’m surprised to notice a stone circle. It feels very old. I knew it when I was at school here, but largely unremarked at the time. I was still making sense of the practical observable world. Ancient places of power barely registered. Mum used to drag us to a dolmen in Jersey and it was just a fucking rock.
Eight fucking rocks in a circle, near the top of the hill but shaded. What’s the etymology of Harrow? Is it from Hare? Perhaps, I have seen it argued, it comes from a heathen shrine. Heathen Shrine on the hill.
I sat with the rocks for a while sharpening my paganism once more. I asked them their names. The Hare Stone presented itself. Marking clockwise from there I found them to be Finnstone, Beestone, Flystone, Rollstone, Shadstone, Edgstone and Boystone. How had I not been talking openly with them as a boy? They’re eloquent. Neglected. Off on a limb.
Fly bottom left, Bee bottom right
This area though was generally pretty important for stones. We are near the Weald Stone. It’s a hill in a flat area, these places have been important since people were people. They’re places where the earth power comes up and raises us with it. The school was founded when everyone was busy pretending it was all about the Jewish myth and the Nazarene prophet, which largely ignores stones. I suspect someone left it out of a vague inherited respect for the ancient, but nobody attached any great significance to it. My tiny memory of it is someone saying: “If you challenged someone to a fight, they waited in the circle and you had to jump in from the wall.” Dull. But that’s boys and I’m sure the stones would have liked a bit of blood and emotion. Gotta charge up somehow.
I lay on my back in there a while. Have just been doing the funeral oration. Friends Romans Countrymen. God it’s wonderful to do. It feels like home. Muscular, emotional, full of life and joy and pain and rage. It’s a hell of a piece of writing. Charged myself up in the stone. It’s a nice way to spend the weekend, and now with the students away I can appreciate this extraordinary old and strong place that I ignored as a teenager.
There in The Speech Room at Harrow I found myself working through the lines of Marc Antony in 3.1 of Caesar. Tomorrow morning this’ll be 3.2. Honestly they are some of the most evocative lines in Shakespeare. Trying to find a truthful build through the prophecy that lets him cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war? That’s the sort of thing that requires life behind it. I’m up for it now. But it isn’t going to be a free lunch. Antony does bollocks all in the first half. He doesn’t need to, his friend who he adores is running the show. He only clicks into gear when those idiots do him in. But when he clicks in he clicks in hard. And for a period in the middle of the play his heart is exposed by the shock of losing his best friend, and simultaneously his ambition is exposed knowing that he could lose everything he’s built if he doesn’t act smartly and decisively. 3.1 and 3.2 you see conflicting sides of a true statesman, coming to terms with a personal loss while establishing how to exploit things to his advantage.
I’ve only got a few weeks to learn this and learn it well. There’s only a few sessions to stage it. Some of the Old Harrovian Players are still actors, others have never been and never would be. There are at least two octogenarians in this show. One of them is in the House of Lords and asked if he could play the Soothsayer. He won’t have any rehearsal, but I’m sure we will all beware the ides of march.
I’m here as one of the actual practitioners. There are always a few of us. I thought I’d walked away for good but I’m sad and want something to focus on and I’ve always wanted an excuse to learn Marc Antony as those speeches always get me – the structure of the funeral oration with the mix of rhetoric and heart, no surprises it’s famous, it is made up of heart. But therefore it needs to be known by heart. So there’s an end to my spare time for a few weeks and that’s probably for the best as I’m not sure I’d be able to look at myself if I finished Skyrim by the end of the summer.
It’s going to be a nice bunch. Caesar is a Guildhall lad which helps with the easy love.
I’m home. Early in tomorrow. Weird but delightful. Onwards.
AlBarclay 