Just giving in

I had the misfortune of actually listening to myself in the past week.  It's horrifying.

I am going to try to take a break from "blogging", which in my case is hardly blogging at all, it's just keeping an online diary that can't be truly honest because people might see it and be offended, while ironically being something no one ever sees.

Except, apparently, a whole bunch of people in Russia.  Dobryj Dyen'!  I know none of you can possibly have an interest in any of this, so, my apologies that my ridiculous Byron quote of a title somehow shows up when you search "torture."

Thanks to anyone who stopped by.

YAY!!!

I'm going west to see habermasgirl!!!

Also, I had six people over to my house last night and we all drank a ton, so that was also fun.

So...lesson learned, when you're feeling blue, invite people over or leave town.  Done.

(UPDATE:  IT'S SUPER FUN TO VISIT HABERMAS GIRL!!!)

OOOOOOOHHHHHHH

I forgot about McHenry.

I have a bunch of people coming to my house to drink shortly, which never ever happens, so I can't elaborate, but I'm just going to make that little note to myself and say once more:  I forgot about McHenry.

Who is Milne.

In Tom Stoppard's Night and Day.

Sort of.

To me.  In college.  When I was madly in love with 4 people at the same time, none of whom I could even think about having.

Now if I can just remember the other three....I know one was the classical guitar player...one was Quirky Boy.....who was four??

Sorry - no one's reading these, it's just for me.  Hi, person in Russia who looks at my blog!  I'll explain later.

The Mexican Restaurant

When I was living in London in the summer of 1996, it started off a little lonely.  I had the city to keep me company, and I loved the city, loved to trot out to museums or parks or the theatre.  I loved riding the 168 bus back home from the National Theatre, past Euston Station, up Haverstock Hill and off right at the end of the road I needed.

A Mexican restaurant sat at that juncture, on the corner, and it was oddly in the basement section of a commercial building, so you'd check in on the ground floor in a hallway, then duck down a flight of narrow stairs to the restaurant.  The hallway doors opened out onto my street, not onto Haverstock Hill, so I passed those doors to walk home, or walking out to the bus or tube, of course.  The man who ran the restaurant sat up there on a stool - it was the same man every single time I passed, dark-haired and swarthy, possibly Mexican himself, but more likely Middle Eastern or Eastern European.

One night I talked a friend into going to eat there, and we discovered it had none of the virtues of a Mexican restaurant in America: it was neither cheap, nor plentiful, nor satisfyingly tasty.  However, as we came up out of the dark basement, I stopped and spoke to the gentleman I had passed nearly every night for a month.

"Hi, I pass here all the time, and I see you every night sitting here.  Now, we're more or less neighbors, so I'd like to be friendly and say hello when I go by.  What's your name?"

He told me it was Tony, I told him my name, and I made him practice with me.  "All right, when I walk by, I'm going to say, 'Hey, Tony!!'  and you will say...'Hey, Elsbeth!'  Try it with me....Hey, Tony!"  He smiled and gamely gave it a try.  I had him say it a few more times.

He never did remember my name after that night, but for weeks afterward, when I passed I would catch his eye and say, Hey, Tony!  And he'd wave and smile and at least yell hey back.  There was recognition there, even if there wasn't a name in his memory.

Where was I?

I was disgruntled and grumpy.  I'm working hard at chilling out now, because I just don't have any interest in being pissy all the time.  I don't want to be that person.  So, deep breath, and I'm looking for the positive.

There is positive.  I got a wad of checks today for past acting work - that's always gratifying.  I'm working this week but gonna take a quick journey next week to see a favorite person (yeah, that's you, hg!), and then maybe a longer journey to see more family and the ocean.

The ocean.  I think it might just be time to go sit at the ocean with a book and my dad and do some nothing. Want to come?  There's extra room.

I don't know why these past few weeks have been so disgruntling - I mean, I had an entire week with my mom, so that was a test of endurance that I basically failed, but hey, it's my mom.  If there were a way to get it right, I might have some clue what it is by now, but then again, I might not.

I'll tell you - I got close to booking a life-changing commercial.  Not as life changing as some, but it would have been a 2 week shoot, and I got all the way to getting put on first refusal for it, which is like being pre-booked, except you don't know how many people they've pre-booked and if you are first choice or sixth.  So technically, I might not have been close at all - that's a legitimate possibility.

But if felt close - it felt like it could actually happen, and then it didn't, and I was so sad.

I keep trying to tell myself that if I'm getting close more often, I can't be that far from booking one.  That if I get put on enough first refusals, ONE of them will turn out to be for real.  But right now it just feels so damn disappointing.  Like going on 9996 miles of a 1000 mile journey and getting stopped and told I can't go any farther.

Also, as I'm sure any regular reader will know, I had mentally spent the money.  Only mentally, of course.

Wright or Wrong

I went to Taliesin today.  It's a house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for himself.  You might find it beautiful, you might find it strange, but it's absolutely unique, a new way of thinking about buildings that uses styles and references that are familiar in completely unexpected ways.

But, with hardly any evidence at all, I know the prevailing opinion is that Frank Lloyd Wright was an ass.  He was egotistical, rude, presumptuous, spoiled, self-centered.  He ran through three wives and at least one mistress, he was involved repeatedly in scandal, and there are plenty of reports of his mistreatment of staff.

So...how great does his work have to be to justify the fact that he was a shit?  Can it?  Or does his personality not effect the greatness of his vision?

I can look at his cantilevered shelves, their surfaces drifting along the side of the wall, and think, how beautiful, how magical.  Does my respect fade if I know the person who made them was cruel to his subordinates?  Or does his art earn something beyond approval of morals?

I don't know the answer to this question.  I do not think art gives one a right for bad behavior.  But I know a lot of great art that has been produced by jerks.  Does that lessen its effectiveness?  Or is there something about the uncompromising, self-centered nature of certain people that allows them to ignore the approval of the entire world in order to follow their own artistic path?  After all, doesn't niceness just produce "nice" art?

I think for me, I'm willing to put up with some bad behavior in the pursuit of art that can move me.  But I don't know if I can bring myself to perpetrate the necessary bad behavior to open up my own art.  Too much of my programming is about making other people happy.  But I dream of it, sometimes, the idea of shaking off everyone's expectations, even my own, and doing something extraordinary.  Something unexpected.

It's not an accident that the only "art" I'll let myself stand behind is one where I use the words of others.

Parents

I love my parents.  So much.  They are both completely terrific people and I am so lucky that they brought me up and made me who I am.

That said, I am hitting saturation point with my mother.  I kind of want to...no, I don't want to hit her, I just want to start screaming.

It started early.  When they arrived a whole day early.  ON my doorstep.  While I was still three hours away by car.  That's right, waiting on my doorstep a whole day early which meant all those last minute cleaning projects couldn't get done, none of the grocery shopping prep got done, none of the hey-let's-have-sex-before-your-parents-get-here got done, none of the final clean up/get organized/prepare oneself stuff GOT DONE.

So it should be no surprise that three days in, I'm near to breaking.

Oh, this weekend's trip ought to be fun.

But the hard thing is that I still adore them and want to make them happy every second.

Like I said, this will be fun.

Noticing

Life must be improving, because today I started noticing things outside myself.  The pristine beauty of fish fillets laid out along pebbled ice, a road works man checking out a pretty girl walking by, bright green socks on a hipster with black frames to his glasses and a sweep of hair falling over his forehead.

There's so much light and glory out there - people talking on street corners, children playing on the beach.  Last night as I was unlocking my bike I overheard this teenaged Asian girl tell someone, "That's why vacation has gotten so boring for me...."  It made me laugh, but of course in context I'm sure it was legitimate.  She was sitting on top of a traffic barrier and chatting with a man who looked to be three times her age, and the body language didn't read "flirt" but I couldn't pick up what relationship they had to one another.  It didn't sound like he was family.

I get bogged down in my actual life and miss the transitory and thrilling detail of the tunes of others.  I like stories so much.  Maybe it's time to pay attention to everyone else's story for a while.