Outside of it all

On the train, after a stressful situation was competently handled, I relax reading Simon Gray's The Smoking Diaries. It's lovely - irascible and unapologetic, Gray simply writes down whatever he needs to. He has turned 64 and seen his friend Ian Hamilton die. Within the first twenty pages, Gray has dinner with Harold Pinter and his wife Antonia (Fraser, the writer and biographer), and Pinter announces he has cancer.

I don't adore Gray's plays - I saw the critically trounced Cell Mates in London on its debut, Valentine's Day, 1995 (or 94?), and remember being seriously underwhelmed, even before the reviews did their dirty work. But this book, in which he putters along, speaking of his famous writer friends and looking kindly but honestly back at his youth and wishing he'd studied Anglo-Saxon more thoroughly so he'd know more about the origin of the word shiffen, this book soothes me. I think it eases some fret in me that he is an intellectual and feels no need to apologize for that. That he can argue about Auden not being a good poet without anyone taking him to task for his elitism. It is a world I miss, and yearn for, and, truth be told, am not really smart enough to belong in. I like Auden, and know barely any Latin, much less Anglo-Saxon.

The book eases my malaise so much that when a man sits next to me in the train, I have enough room in my brain to notice the wonderful smell of his coffee - clearly a flavoured roast, hazelnut, perhaps, or almond. He's studying a book about foundations, the page neatly blocked in diagrams.

The otherness of a life spent studying foundations further soothes me, like a french window into a new idea sliding open to allow a breeze.

I wish I could go to college again. Now I'm ravenous for knowledge, now I care less for the grades and more for the sheer knowing grace of grappling with the new idea. I'm still more at home arguing plays and poetry than philosophy, but I'm like to branch out into anthropology, biology again, maybe buckle down at a language. Who am I kidding? Languages are my stumbling block, and ever will be. C'est la vie. I'll bet - I'll hope I'm spelling that wrong and proving my point.

I love reading. I feel very sorry for people who don't or can't read, because I feel I have entry into whole worlds they deny themselves or are denied. I'm extroverted in company when the occasion allows, but some child in me longs always for a quiet space and a book to ride into the wind. When I read I become engrossed, so that conversation directed at me has to penetrate a thick haze ("I'm sorry, what?"), and any interruption aggravates, even sleep. Last night I made up my mind, after losing yet another whole night's sleep to a book, that if I ever have children, I will enforce lights out with an iron hand - all flashlights will be confiscated! As a child I found any loophole I could to keep reading whatever was at hand, thus beginning a habit that keeps me sleepy by day. Like all parents trying to root out the parts of themselves they dislike, my plan is doomed to failure, I should think.

In closing, I have the impulse to apologize for the last-post-but-one. I catalog the impulse, but I do not apologize. In the calm of another day, my rightness (or wrongness) is not as important as my shock that so few people even try to get things right - not intrinsically right, per se, but at least as right as they can. I deplore the thought that a person's objection to my personality could obscure the possibilities of my ideas (i.e., your smartness threatens me, therefore I will dismiss you as being too intellectual), but my own tantrum at not being respected reflects the same kind of thinking. I must decide I have something I want to say and say it, then whether or not people listen is external, and secondary.

And I still think I'm right

I'm frustrated. A friend of mine wrote a play, and I'm involved in a reading of about ten pages, and last night we had a rehearsal. I have very strong views about this play, though I have a sneaking feeling I have no objectivity left in this friendship, and thus my views are suspect.

I've read most of my friend's plays, and I think he's a good writer, but I've known him about five years now, and I have formed ideas about what he's trying to say, as many of his plays have similar themes and characters. (That's not a criticism - so does Chekhov, so does Tennessee Williams, so do many great writers.) I admit to feeling a little on the inside of his work, as if I know more about it than an outsider. This, I have realized, may or may not be true.

I went to the rehearsal with very clear comments and criticisms, and first, found there was no forum to air these, as my role had gone from "well-informed friend" to "reader of scene controlled by director", and second, found that the problems I had with the play were not universal, as several other actors disagreed with my views.

I'm shocked that not everyone shares my aesthetic for clarity. And I'm shocked that because I want clarity, there's an inference that I think I'm smarter than the rest of the group. This infuriates me, because I then waste time trying to play low status to make my point in a non-threatening manner, a ploy that probably doesn't work. I am thrown back to a college professor who graded a play journal of mine and wrote the comment: "It makes me sad to see someone so young have such strong opinions."

This comment and others like it have shut me up and haunted me for years. I have been told over and over again than no one wants to hear what I think, and certainly no one wants me to talk about myself. And I have accepted this as true, because it is. Even this blog is an effort, because I can't imagine what I might have to say that someone would find enlightening.

I am angry. Enough. When do I get the right to speak? When am I old enough to have opinions? Is there a day when I get to stop apologizing for having some thing to say and people will just listen to me say it?

Yes, maybe it's me. Maybe if I could train my ear not to be upset by this kind of comment, perhaps I would command the kind of respect I'm looking for. But the lesson has been hammered in for too long by too many to just shrug off.

The title of this post does not refer to the fact that I think my comments are unarguable, inherent. But if I say, this is unclear, I didn't know what this meant, don't fob me off with, well, people speak unclearly. Of course they do. But if you're trying to tell a story in a scant two hours, you need to chose every piece of information that goes into that story. If you PLAN to confuse, fine, that's a choice, but don't pretend your laziness makes you more authentic.

Someday, I will bear down on some script like an angel of the apocalypse and there will be no mercy. Of course, in a just world, that script would be mine, but as we've established, no one is interested in what I have to say.

An adventure

I'd like one, please. An adventure. 'Sfunny, I spend about eight hours every weekend playing out someone else's adventure, and yet I'm surprised as how much I want my own. I've always threaded the line between the responsible and the devil-may-care, but I've been trying to feed more money, time and energy into responsibility lately. I'm sure it's very grown up and forward thinking, but I'm feeling very trapped. Ugh. I feel an escape coming on.

To be fair, I don't want to escape acting. I like acting. I like the commercial auditions and gigs as much as the high-toned theatre acting. It is an adventure, and it changes all the time. It's just that currently, I spend a lot of time in the office to give me the opportunity to eat as well as audition. And I'd like to escape the office. It seems ironic that so many "creative" people have to pay for the chance to be creative with truly mind-numbing days. I suppose there's a nobility to earning your right to success, but I feel like I've been slogging away for four years - I'd like some success now, if you don't mind. Sadly, my life has never been run on my time line.

So in the meantime, I'm secretly planning an adventure. Hmmm.....it should involve derring-do and disguises. Also the judicious use of code words, and probably some interpretive dance. I'll report back with the mission is completed.

Insaniquarium

So I've been playing this game online called Insaniquarium, a complete waste of time when I should be putting mailings together to casting directors enjoining them to come see my show. Oh, the reviews, the ones I was worried about - the Tribune put it in the paper Monday, the Sun-Times on Tuesday, and the newest Time Out Chicago brought out an issue on Wednesday with a blurb. All were positive, all enjoyed the show, all feel the show is a massive fun romp with no substance. (Well, it is.) All three reviewers compare me to Emma Thompson.

This is flattering, certainly, if somewhat unnerving. Do these reviewers hang out in the reviewer bar afterwards? Do they phone each other before they publish? Did one of them watch the show while the other two slept, and so were forced to copy each other's notes?

The only problem with being compared to Emma Thompson is the shocking number of people who have no idea who she is. I'm sure that an overwhelming majority don't know who Edith Evans was, or Ralph Richardson or Gielgud, but Emma Thompson? I mean, even if you didn't see it, surely you'd be aware of Sense and Sensibility from 1997? Or have seen the Harry Potter movies, at least, that's just last year. It's not like she's an obscure British stage actress, like Victoria Hamilton or Joanna Riding (I can't stand the former, and adore the latter).

There is just one more problem. My character is described as insouciant, and I do know what it means, but apparently no one else does. So they all make little "insouciant" jokes throughout the day. YAAWWNNN.

So I should be putting mini press packets together and mailing them to Important People to tell them to come see the show. But instead I'm mildly obsessed with this odd game. You have to feed the fish regularly or they turn yellow, and eventually die. Sometimes the tank is teeming with fish, turning odd colours and requiring you feed them immediately.

Last night there was some bad news - a stroke in the family, not my family, but my sweetheart's. And I feel powerless, and guilty to be doing so well, and I have nothing to say but "I love you," over and over again, and that doesn't seem like enough right now. And I held this person and tried to sleep, and in the back of my head behind my closed eyes, animated fish swam. They rose in my dream state, turning green and yellow and orange again, shifting colours incessantly, wave upon wave of fish rolling around my mind.

I guess I'm lucky I haven't been playing Grand Theft Auto.