ON 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love London/Life/ Sponges/ Snails'

For all those us who have had 'one of those days': keep the faith.


There isn’t much that can awaken me from the general stupor of living in London. I expect shock headlines, fears of airborne virus, the decline of traditional values, and worse, traditional sexualities. Rogue pigeons have weakened my flight or fight response, and if my pocket isn’t emptied by direct debit, it’s emptied by every street beggar from WC1 to SE16. In the 80’s the fear was nuclear war, now it’s not even terrorism, it’s the fear of being mown down by the paparazzi on the trail of a GMTV guest. So, yes; sufficiently indifferent about covers it.



Sufficiently indifferent until I came across something in the World Book Encyclopaedia, Volume 1: A-B. I was reading up about “Animals” because having left the womb 27 years ago - and Ireland about four - I was totally disconnected from any meaningful relationship with mammals, four legged friends, or those with gills. Anyway, I was on to sponges, which “swim freely (how nice!) with cilia (hair like extensions of their bodies: think mullet).



“However (the verbal equivalent to the proverbial ‘dark cloud’), these young animals soon attach themselves to rocks or other firm objects and stay there for life”. The cilia bit didn’t scare me. What made the blood drain from my face, and my pupils dilate, were two little words that sounded and echoed loudly in my head, ‘for life’. How terrifying.



My mind raced. Where can I find the closest sponge, and how can I go about freeing it so it can continue to swim freely? Do I have a snorkel? Do I have the bus fair? I dropped my head; no on all accounts.



“For life” terrified me. It sounded like a key locking a box that I had no control over. I could hear all variations: ‘You’re diabetic...for life,’ ‘She’s going to be fat...for life’, ‘You’re going to be married...for life’. The sweat dripped from my nose unto the page. Maybe there were some happy things that happened for life? ‘You’re going to be rich...for life,’ ‘You’re going to be in a loving relationship...for life,’ ‘You’re going to breed dogs...for life’. Maybe. Just maybe.



What terrified me so? And how did those two little words pierce through that stupor to the brave and resilient brain cell that withstood years of retail, and that was still, in the words of the immortal Bonnie Tyler, holding out for a hero? Then it came to me, the little brain cell squealed: ‘You’re going to be in London...for life!”


Back in your cell, brain cell!


Was that it? Was that the worst that could happen? Was that what I was so afraid of? Was London even that bad? It was the surety of the expression; the finality. I saw myself in the sponge. I too had roamed, happy and salty, throughout my days, only to one day see a nice rock, and with innocence swim by and unintentionally attach myself there (to fulfil a moment’s inquiry) for...life. This is all sounding a bit Freudian.


What a bastard life was to trick me so!


It was so metaphorically loaded: a lifetime’s pain, for a moment’s pleasure, hills always greener further off, a moment on the lips, forever on the hips. The fate of the sponge, I resolved, would not be mine. I had to not be a sponge. I had become a vertebrate!


I went to my balcony. I threw open the door and my bathrobe, and I stared full on at the Gherkin, St. Paul’s and the BT tower, and screamed: “Hear me, miscreants! I will not be a sponge. I will grow vertebrae. I will not live here for life. I will cast down this milky film thou, smoggy bitch, has kept over mine eyes these four years, and I will take night classes, and go to the gym, and join eharmony.co.uk and start converting my Tesco club card vouchers into travel tokens...you will not have me for life!”


“Shut the fuck up” came the reply, “or I’m calling the police”.



I closed the balcony door, and sat on my couch. My hair swept with the wind, and a ruddy glow on my buttocks. I looked at the sponge, etched in grey in the Encyclopaedia. I traced its shape with my thumb. But this is natural for the sponge, isn’t it? This is life? Its only foolishness, boy, to think that you will never be claimed, never settle down, never start contributing to a pension. These things will happen. Do they have to? I asked myself. Yes, it may be natural for the sponge, to stay there ‘for life’, until it gets plucked, dried, entombed in cheap plastic and sold in Boots. Then again, perhaps the same destiny awaits all of us.



I continued reading. After such a powerful promise to the elements on my Bermondsey balcony, I felt at once entrapped back in the confines of the sitting room. I had so nearly escaped. I had nearly grown wings. Was there to be any release, any promise, any hope? Was I always to remain a sponge, ‘for life’?


I continued the next paragraph. “Snails travel on roadways that they make themselves”. My heart leapt beyond the confines of ecstasy. One moment before I was in the throes of anguish, now I was higher than a high note in a Bee Gees song. I raced to the balcony, kicking off my slippers and my bathrobe. Once again I threw open the doors, and faced London and its immovable grin,



“I’M GOING TO BE A FUCKING SNAIL...ON A ROADWAY THAT I MAKE MYSELF”


And I did.

Cinderella 1929-2010

Today 'The Guardian' posted an obituary for Cinderella. Oh. Wait. No. It was an obituary for the voice of Cinderella, Ilene Woods. Or was it an obituary for Ilene herself. Well. The Guardian, weren't entirely sure. All they could really say was something about Cinderella helping the studio out in sales after the war.

Has it come to this? That there is a man sitting in the Guardian office called Brian Sibley who has lost his inner child, and it's partner magic. Poor Mr. Sibley, no doubt, thought he was onto comic gold, or at least, morbid witticism, or in vogue nonchalance in handing in his copy. Should someone tell him Cinderella can't die? Or that the little boy inside of him already has?

Live Theatre?

Those merry-but-poor souls that work in theatre are frequently, if not initally drawn to the 4000+ year old medium because of the one thing that sets it apart from Film/ Radio/ Written Word/ Fine Art and so forth. Theatre, or rather, the performing arts are live. Yes, Radio is live-ish .But Theatre is immediately live. It is this thrill factor that draws so many in, and is unique, and exploited as unique in many fine dramas, and forms of theatre.

I can be forgiven then for my double take, when I caught a Guardian headline telling me that 'Sir Derek Jacobi's King Lear to go LIVE' (at 300 Cinemas).

The Donmar on the back of the success of the NT, Royal Opera House and Co has decided to expand it's reach, and I shall buy a ticket (if I can't manage to get one for the actual show).

It might be that I am unemployed and have too much time to think this over, but isn't this 'live' business a classification error?

King Lear will be live, but only if you're sitting at the Donmar. If you're sitting in Holyhead, you're seeing something that is streamed live, but which still passes as a cinematic experience, rather than a live one? There is as much more life on a big screen from action that is pre-shot as there is from action that is streamed live, surely.

Has theatre given up? Already the audience attention span has dwindled. We are programmed to expect plot points every fifteen minutes thanks to television. Artistic programmes are funded by powerhouses like Shell. And while I'm sure the National isn't going to pander to Shell. Equally it is not going to stage an imaginative Melly Still response to the recent Gulf of Mexico leak, on the Olivier Stage. Self-censorship is perhaps more prevalent than the former patriarchial kind of the the Lord Chamberlain.

And if you need to be watching what you're saying or doing, even a fraction, then it's still a fraction wide off the mark from how you should be responding to the here and now in whatever way possible, even if it upsets how some suits feel they are being creative by throwing blood money at the National Theatre. Anywho.

Most young writers, sadly have to adopt many staples of TV drama if their play is going to be seriously considered for production. Keeping the cast to a minimum, and sticking to one location, time space, and age bracket cannot continue to be challenging to write, produce, or eventually watch. Yes. Limitations often force us to be more creative, but as far as I can see 'Look Back in Anger' was staged at the Royal Court in 1956, and then every year subsequently. The play is the same, only the ironing board is replaced with an iphone, cliff is a raging homosexual, Alison is an assertive second wave feminist, and Jimmy, in a postmodern twist is Jimi Mistry, playing himself. Soon to be screened at a cinema near you.

Of course, the fundamental differences between theatre and cinema continue. However if theatre is to retain some of what makes it special, I think it needs to be locked away with itself staring into a mirror so it can see what it has been producing. This naval gazing shouldn't be so hard for an industry that depends upon naval gazing as a keystone in it's structure: it's called acting.

Cinema then, is rarely interested in putting on the 3-d glasses and seeing itself as ugly. Why? Because it already feels ugly through and through. For all the stars on the Hollywood walk of fame, and living on Mulholland, the place sure uses up enough electricity to light up the darkness every evening.

The good news is that the Donmar is also expanding its touring with this production of King Lear, visiting more venues than with previous touring productions. This is the kind of live theatre, I have no ambiguous feelings about. And is a happy ending in these times of political and economic quicksand.

To Meat or not to Meat?

It is a milestone in my life, as I celebrate my second vegitanniversary. I'm thinking of having a party where everybody comes as their favourite vegetable, and we all share pot-luck vegetable dishes. It will be another thing I can strike off my list as I move towards creating, one day, my vegetopia.

And I really fancy having a rare steak to celebrate.

I'm not a strict vegetarian. I am in fact, a pescetarian. I eat fish. Not that much. But I do eat fish. So I'm not a vegetarian. Don't make me feel more guilty than I already am.

I'm quite a happy vegetarian. I never really bothered so much with meat when I did eat it. It was expensive, usually tasteless, and what I ask you is a Chicken Breast-stick. Can that possibly taste good, indeed can it actually, legally, be labelled meat? Probably not. But the level of blindness to what's good for you and not, as meat eaters is so acute that it's simply not worth asking the questions, bceause nobody is willing to see the answers.

And yet, I still feel like a having a rare steak.

But I'm waiting for the right time. I'm waiting until I am at a BBQ on the pacific (or caribbean) ocean, at sunset, dancing with a beautiful stranger, passing around the Vino and the Bong, and then finally, a delicioulsy prepared indigenous dish, prepared by the blind mama-makeba in a receipe handed down over generations.

And what's important here, is not that I'm eating 'meat'. It could be that Makeba's receipe is fish based. What's important is the history I'm writing myself into, and finding myself part of. More noble than the current history which is, we will be remembered as inhumane beak-rippers, genetic-f*ckers, Ecoli-munching,Cameron-voting demigods. So until my local Iceland, or PFC (always makes me think of PVC) in Hackney can enter into the tradition of substance, and meaning, I'm content to save my 1.99 towards that trip to St. Kitts, or Trinidad, where I know my Makeba miracle is waiting.

Social Networking, Not Working

Claire is leaving Facebook. So the message went. My response: who's Claire? Claire it turns out, is my friend, or was before she left facebook. I had forgotten about Claire. She had been lost in the quagmire of my other 300 odd facebook 'friends', which is by most standards a conservative number. Now she would be truly lost to the real world. Or is that found?

Veda updated her status to tell us that if we were reading this we had just survived her latest 'cull'. I crossed my legs anxiously. Darren rang me angry that I had not come to his party the night before. Did I know about it? 'I invited you on Facebook!' he said. I had some explaining to do.

I dragged myself away from the monitor and into the bathroom, where I took a good long look in the mildewed mirror. Something was rotten in the state of Bookmark(s). I had friends called Claire, I didn't know about, and friends called Veda who were weilding cyber machetes, warning us we were next, and implying we should be grateful for her mercy. I rang Darren back, 'I stopped responding to events about a year ago, there are simply too many invites. I don't need to go watch the pseudo-physical theatre version of The Frogs on at the Rosemary Branch, that this girl I could have met once, whose friend I may have slept with once (she says we did - I say we didn't), with these people who keep popping up as Recommended Friends. I live in London. I don't have time to see my 'real' friends'. When did Facebook become a substitute for living, rather than an accessory of it? Social Networking is making me less Social and it is Notworking for me.

Twitter, for me, represents the fundamental problem with much of today's disconnect. It is all output. No input. Everybody pretends to read. But mostly, we want to pretend we're being read. It's been called democratic. I call it 'blah'. Demi more and Achtung Kushner (whatever he's called) - and in this country Stephen Fry- are the high priests and priestesses, with that little blue bird emblazoned on their chalice. At every 'celebrity' death or natural disaster, increasingly lazy news researchers at Bloomberg go to Demi for her council. 'Too Bad' she tweets, 'LOL'. What a moron.

I think of Claire. She sounds brave. It's true that she will no longer be invited to parties, and miss the ongoing epic of Susan's singe-married-it's complicated-divorced status to Frank. But at least she isn't proud of her virtual diarrhea masquerading as opinion. She's probably out in the real world, meeting a real friend, and having a real good time. She doesn't need to be reminded of this on facebook, or to let any of us know about it. Maybe I should have gotten to know her, out there? Maybe there's still time?

Journey: By-Pass: A Travel Diary

On the plane to Ireland I try hard to imagine that I’m leaving London for the very last time. I often do this. It’s a litmus test, to see what my first reaction is. In this case, I felt happy. The overriding thought being that London was a dream, and I was waking up. Some London faces flashed before me. They and made me smile. I was ok saying goodbye.


London isn’t so much a dream as a variation of a dream, hooked always upon a kind of nightmare. The first thing one notices about Ireland is how quiet it is, and how expansive. Silence and fields that extend beyond the periphery and seem to join hands somewhere away from the eyes gaze. Below, chasing under the sky, the homes, towns, and cities crawl. There is always more silence and space than there is noise, and concrete.

I feel like Frank McCourt revisiting, as a stranger the town of his youth. Growing up in Tipperary in the 80’s and 90’s isn’t Limerick in the 30’s and 40’s, but a journey home is always the longest and the shortest. The longest because you’re not just visiting home in 2010, you’re there when you were six years old and cycling a bike, fifteen, when you drank whiskey in the field, or twenty one when you dreamed of going away. The shortest because your mind, memory, or heart never really got as far away as you thought it had.

I’m not too sure where Angela’s ashes lie, but every time I come home a kind of Phoenix propels itself from the past, and disintegrates again at the terminal at Shannon. I wonder where that Phoenix goes, where it waits while I return to the dream-hooked-on-nightmare of London.

Of course, I’m expected to say that ‘this is not the Ireland of my youth’. And it’s not. Besides, I’m only turning 27 – tomorrow, in fact. Even as we drive from the airport towards home we by-pass so many of the recognisable tokens of the all important and loaded trip to Shannon airport – a pathway of emigration for many Irish. This new road means there is no reason to enter the towns that bored me, excited me, or unnerved me as a child. We frequently drove to Shannon Airport to collect our Neighbour whose family lived in New York. The most memorable car trips were during Christmas time. It was magical: passing through the small towns with their eager decorations, passing through Limerick (that epitome of cosmopolitan for small child eyes) and onto Shannon, decked in glee and flashing lights, a giant snowman waving from the side of the control tower, and inside the winter wonderland pen. Back in those days the airport seemed so big, with its long marble foyers and, even, an escalator. There was the luggage trolly to push around, and discarded magazines to flick through. And then there was the challenge to spot the plane that held our neighbour, and further still, the promise that someday we might see New York.

A by-pass functions as an alternative route for a blocked passage. My dad’s had two triple by-passes. I learned the word when I was a boy. What about Irish towns can we infer from this phenomena? Promising to do away with the noisy dirty EU trucks stuck at every corner of the small Irish market town, the town planning philosophy seems to have been: if it’s not broke – don’t fix it – bypass it. By-pass to me just means there’s a whole generation of tourists and drivers who will never experience the charm of small Irish villages, surrounded as they will be with the cross over, bountiful road kill, and the loneliness of driving in Ireland at night. They might catch a church steeple, a hurling flag, or the sign that reads ‘Newtownabbey is proudly partnered with Rybnik’. However, the most one can gleam on this by-pass is a glimpse of ‘something’; never an understanding of it, not of Newtownabbey, and my guess is, not of Rybnik.

Coming home – everything is different, and everything is the same. Our house is different; brighter, bigger. Renovation is good. It makes the homestead more manageable, but does it make it more homely? Home is the people. The paint on the wall changes, and suddenly there is Internet, and Flat screen TV. The photo frames change, but the photo’s are the same, and the people in them, without choice, feel the same, and this warms you.

Walking around town with my Dad, one sees how small the homes are. The baby boomer generation wanted homes, and security, and raised children that do not return. The houses grow moss at their sides like hair from ears, and dark rivers run down the front, like a wrinkle, caused by a broken drainpipe. ‘Who lives here, Dad?’ ‘Someone very old’. Most of the houses are empty. A lot of the curtains have not been changed since I walked past them as a child.

Walking in the plant store with my Mother, I’m reminded of how I always wanted to buy flower bulbs as a child. I would stare at the huge display of small packets, with fantastic colours on the front. Staring was nearly better than ever growing the dry little things, which nearly always ended up shrivelling in the boiler shed. The boiler shed – a boy’s best friend; the closest thing to the wardrobe leading into Narnia. All it contained was nails, old pennies, tins of paint, golfballs, glass jars, debris from Dad’s DIY adventures, and my Mother’s father, who had built the house. The walls were black, and, I imagined, stained with oil. The smell of the boiler, and the rattle never scared me. I never saw an evil face on it, or thought it would swallow me up, like some children might think. It was my accomplice when I snuck in to steal a hammer, or a knife, or chose to hide some stolen good there. My mother called me the magpie, and the boiler was my rattling nest. It was like a heartbeat that could not stop shaking.

The house changes. The house does not change. The people change the house. The house changes the people. The people do not change. In totally different circumstances, and with different props, about 22 years ago we played shop on our porch. My four year old cousin’s don’t know this, but use the porch for the exact same fantasy. Perhaps there is a window of missed opportunity for passing trade? Of course, the house cannot make the people happy. That’s not the house’s function. At best it can comfort.

Age is relative. A 1 billion year old rock is old. A 72 year old is not old. I am not old. Twenty seven is older than I thought I was. I thought that I’d be editor of the New Yorker by now, but then New York is also further away than I thought it was.

It is a joy, humbling even, to share time with those who raised you. I’ve been told that one element of a parent’s pride is to see their child mature, and become an equal (or at least, an adult). I think the reverse is true. If the person is truly mature they will see their parent, uncle, friend, or teacher no longer defined by a role, but composed of all the complexities and shades they know themselves to be made up of. For some this moment is defined as the moment where children realise that their parent has a weakness or frailty. Maybe it’s not so much the recognition of this trait, but our awareness that we are thinking of someone in another way – that our thought processes is changing. Babies, for all one can write about them, are greedy, insistent, manipulative things, hell bent on self-gratification. The most important moment in a person’s life is not their birth or death, but the moment they come out of their self, and selflessness is born.

We would not want to by-pass these moments in life, any more than we should by-pass Carrowkeel, Lisnagry, Drominboy, or Gooig. We give places names because they mean something to us. Carrowkeel, An Cheathrú Chaol , the narrow quarter. People have fought and died to name, or preserve a name. Who is to say what is worth keeping on the map, the colonists, the local councillors? If the place looses the reason for its name, it’s name will fade. Childhood is a name and it means something to us. Is it worth passing?

Amnesty International Blog

http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=3664

I was asked by Amnesty International to detail my experiences bringing a play dealing with Human Rights Abuses to Edinburgh. It can be found on the above link to the Amnesty Blog pages.

The TV Series that Never Got Made

Tex in the City


One Houston woman’s journey as she navigates the pitfalls and misogynist bars of London’s financial district.

Six Feet Blender

A biopic detailing Peter Schwartz’s dream to create the worlds largest blender. Mainly smooth with bits.

Turner and Hootch

A dramatisation of Kathleen Turners fictionalised battle with the bottle, and her devotion to completing the song ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ without forgetting the lyrics.

Mad Homosexual Men

A dramatisation of the formation of the stonewall foundation and the advertising executives who fought to conquer scales of unimaginable hard-erm-ship.

Two and a Half Men

The story of German brothers Erbert, Hulme, and their brother of short stature, Typhee. Erbert and Hulme sell Typhee to the Brazilian Circus during its visit to Germany in 1789. The circus offers an education for Typhee, who avenges his brothers’ actions years later by buying up the remaining shares in their crude iron ore supplies factory, and making a twenty foot bronze statue in his image, placed at the centre of town. Sadly ‘Two and a Half Men’ never made it past the pilot.

Matilda the Vampire Naysayer

Roald Dahl’s Matilda Wormwood as she battles depression following her transformation to Vampire.

EastEnders

Eastenders, but set in the Middle East.