Back in London: Who is this city and what has it learned?

Well, it’s been a good 60 hours or so that I’ve been back in this familiar-ish city, which, when you measure it up like that, does all kinds of strange things to my perception of time. 1 hour x 60 doesn’t seem so very much, yet 6 hours x 10 seems like a heck of a lot. Once during a play I got slightly bored and decided to calculate how many days I’d been alive, and I believe it was around the vicinity of just under 10,000. Which is strange, when you think if I’d been paid a dollar a day for my entire existence, I still wouldn’t be able to buy a house or even a particularly nice car. Not that I would turn my nose up at being given a dollar a day. Any takers?

Oh, right. Still avoiding the subject line of this blog post, aren’t I? With some half *ssed though elaborate tangential pseudo-math. Good for me and good for you for reading.

I spent the weekend at Arts Admin, first watching Chris Goode do his thang, his first time performing poetry since the Forest Fringe tapes in Edinburgh 2 years ago, and the next day meeting Jack Bond and Victor Spinnetti at a playreading of one of Jane Arden’s shows at the Artslab. The play, “Vagina Rex” dealt with feminism in a very hands-on way, though I think I’ll be more interested to watch Jane Arden and Jack Bond’s film collaborations through the BFI just as soon as I can get my hands on them. There was a lot of talk about whether or not there was a contemporary theatre of outrage - whether contemporary audiences could be radicalized the way that audiences were in the 1960s. I did take issue with the discussion's suggestion that theatre has lost its "can-do" attitude. I find nothing less helpful than the tendency, when discussing the 60s, to suggest it points to the sated attitudes of the youth of today. People still can-do, and are doing. We just live in a baby-booming society that idealizes the projects of its youth, occasionally ignoring the fact that rather than disregard these projects, our generation has been inspired by them, learned from their failures, and will (hopefully) make something happen. Wow. Bit of a rant. Sorry, what else were you expecting from the blog?

Quite a wonderful feeling came out of this reading, which was that they began discussing Jim Haynes, one of my heroes, the founder of ArtsLab and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, and mentioned that they would be showing a video interview with him. I couldn’t wait to see what the man looked like – when suddenly, a familiar face came on the screen. It turned out that I had already met Jim in Paris 2 years ago. I had gone to his house for dinner, and he’d seen me do a monologue on the Golden Hour tour and gave me the warmest most congratulatory smile afterwards. He is such a down to earth man that I’d had no idea I was monologuing for the same Jim Haynes who played such a large role in inspiring me to found Forest Fringe, but there you have it. I’m glad this feeling had 2 years to ferment before coming to light. It’s a vintage I can keep.

On a different note, I am questioning whether I have to stop stewarding at Arts Admin, even though I love the building, the events and everyone who works there. I keep running in to professional contacts while I do it, and in our little industry nobody (including myself) seems to know quite how to handle the co-director of a venue having to break off conversation to clear up the rubbish in the room and to put away chairs. I’m in two minds about this – one part of me thinks just clear up all the better and let the world get used to it – if anything, it should demonstrate Forest Fringe’s down-to-earth, can-do attitude, of which I’m very proud. Another part of me gets nervous in these situations and is less bold. Demystifying the less glamorous aspects of theatre, stewarding, for example, does make me buzz with excitement a little. The real question has to be, am I being subversive or simply foolish? (Story of my life!)

So there’s me in London, avoiding my laundry, breakfast, and date with the Odyssey. I really am back.

Flowchart your life

That's what we did....

humming...

I like to hear people hum along to music. Especially when they think they’re on their own. And also when they get so lost that they can’t quite help it.

It's late at the bookstore and two flies are wrestling

It never seems that there is an absolutely ideal time to post - but 3 am Greek time is as good of one as any. I'll admit to feeling a little bit of blog-writer's block lately. Life here in the bookstore is repetitive, it changes in barely noticeable increments, but there is something so ineffably relaxing and grounding about it. Nonetheless, there have been revelations (if only incremental) and it seems that the blog being what it is, I should share some of those here. And so, in the grand tradition of the blog, I will list my recent revelations in the order that I find them to be most impressive - impressive to who is a great question. Especially when I'm asking the great hulking mystery of the internet - though "Who are you trying to impress?" is a question I'd like to ask myself a lot more often anyway. See? See? Leave me in a Greek bookshop and I get all kinds of reflective.

But onto the tiny revelations of so far.


1. In our society we place far too much importance on individual achievements rather than collective ones.
Okay, so you probably saw this one coming with socialist-sounding talk about why Homer was probably written by several poets over time and why we should all definitely be okay with that and see it as some sort of grand structure, like a cathedral, that could only be built through the collective effort of many individuals and the knowledge, hindsight, whatever you'll call it of many generations. But I was also prompted to think about how much we undervalue work by a collective when I was reading Raymond Carver's "What we talk about when we talk about love." Some of you may have already heard the lore about this collection - that the stories were so heavily changed by his editor Alfred A Knopf, who basically created what many always identified as Carver's unique minimalist style, that you could say they were co-creators of whatever made those stories magic.
Now a lot of people, myself initially included, would be inclined to be annoyed at the fact that Knopf had so much to do with Carver's legacy - that Carver wasn't given more creative room to move. But, to sound like a psychologist or particularly tuned in teacher for a moment, can I ask why we are annoyed? Could it be because we are uncomfortably attached to the idea of a lone genius making work in his basement? At the end of the day, it may just be possible that Carver is great because there were two people involved in that greatness. And what the heck is wrong with that?

2. I am excited about theatre because it is live. I am excited abouttheatre because it is now. I am excited about theatre because you have to *literally* be in the right place at the right time. And even if this sounds obvious, I also need to be reminded of it in the moment, live, at the right place and the right time for it to really hit home.

There's just nothing else like it. More on this later, but for now my here and now inspiration is more preoccupied with the desire to sleep that the desire to explain itself. So for now, here's to incremental revelations, and explaining them to the blog incrementally.

Paper Cinema's Odyssey - Sneak preview shots

Here are some of the drawings Nic made in Greece. The boy looking out to shore is a preliminary sketch for Telemachus and the man on the shore with a beard is the first sketch of Odysseus on Calypso's island.

If I were in London I'd be watching this...

Those of you who know me will know that I have an equal love of new writing and site responsive work. When they come together effectively, it is bold, risky and rare. I spoke with the lovely Lucy about this piece while she was writing it, and it sounded like it was heading in that risky and rare (and exceptional) direction. I'm extremely annoyed that I'm not in London to see this - from what I've read about it, it sounds like Kirkwood and Clean Break have created something delicate and important.

http://www.arcolatheatre.com/?action=showtemplate&sid=367

A kitten is asleep on my lap as I type this...

Hi Bloggy friends,

Sorry not to be about for the last couple of days. I've come back to the bookshop, Atlantis, in Greece, where today I spent some time with Nick from Paper Cinema discussing the Odyssey and drinking too much white wine. A kitten is now asleep on my lap as I sit behind the til. It may sound idyllic, though last night this kitten thought that my legs beneath the covers were a toy to be pounced on with claws at regular intervals.

A few things have come up today while discussing beautiful stories with Mr. Beard.

1. a beautiful image to end something. Think Zorba the Greek or the end of the poem "Pomegranate" by DH Lawrence. Kundera does this too at the end of his novels.

2. In a story, every action should be followed by an action of greater quality and magnitude, culminating in an action after which the audience can not imagine anything else. Action has come up a lot lately in my life. Apparently Karma is all about action too - this is what I learned yesterday by looking it up in the excellent "A short introduction to everything."

3. There is a lot of creative room to move in the Odyssey and there always has been. The story itself is really the result of a collective effort of many poets over a long period of time- regardless of the capitalist belief that it had to have been created by an individual named Homer. It's a framework that many artists have moved in creatively for ages, and the more of their own spin they put on it, the better. (Don't worry, I haven't gone to Greece and become a communist.)

4. The kitten jumped from my lap once I started typing.

This is a beautiful place to work.