The Return
9 Months. I return to this journal after 9 months. I do not know why it should be now, but I know why it could not be earlier. I have re read my musings and they move me to carry on. Make this a true record. Yet in 9 months, what has changed? In my life. Nothing. I was given the chance to do a teaching qualification and turned it down in the hope of another fruitless year of auditions. I occupy the bungalow my grandmother used to occupy (one could not nor cannot call it living) it is full to brimming with so many books films and music that I could spend my entire life exploring and analysing the culture I have gathered between these four walls.
Somehow I have acquired financial responsibilities that are barely covered by my earnings, if at all. My job, supply work at a special needs school, takes my time and energy. Although I may have been suffering from Glandular Fever this year I am exhausted by work. For the first time today I caught a bus up the hill rather than walking it. At home I ignore housework and indeed everything else in the need to recharge for the next day. Indeed, even writing here is an excuse.
I entertain vague notions about my art, and put it off yet again. My agent occasionally rings me with an audition and I attend knowing that I will not get the job. I can do nothing in auditions except work with broad brush strokes. I work with the characters to refine them in rehersals, but broad brush strokes do not win auditions. Plus I do not look like my photo. This means nothing. I do not look like any photo taken of me. I have an exceptionately average face which means that every possible variable pushes it to one thing or the other, in opposite directions. I do not truly know what I look like, except that I look like nothing in particular.
I stated in previous entries that I knew Leeds would be a prison. It now indubitably is. I enter my second year here having made no discernible progress, except from having doubled my salary from £30 to £60 a day, but halving my job security in the process. And my stomach has expanded almost exponentially, despite the fact that I can barely afford to eat and certainly can't be bothered to cook. My diet, when I'm not starving, is appalling. I am afraid that this is due to genetics. I now mirror my father's profile. My only hope now is to form my own theatre company or write something worth publishing or performing. While I believe I can write great fiction, I do not have the knack of making it relevant to people. I am an elitist, I will not adapt to the lowest common denominator. My two plays have been described as great but totally incomprehensible by not unintelligent people. I even stumped Leachy on one occasion. The man is Britain's foremost expert on Russian Theatre. He has written lots of books and reads more than anyone except me. He is extremely intelligent and I respect him to bits. Yet I stumped him on philosophy when he freely admitted that it was not his area of expertise and advised me to read Rousseau.
I outgrew my tutors. I outgrew my highly intelligent, highly respected, highly read tutor, not in the extent of my knowledge but in the range of it. In fact my search, my need for understanding, my search for knowlegde, my search for truthful art has expanded exponentially, and is now so encompassing that I can do little else. Money I should be saving is spent on the neverending search and I am trapped by my own insatiable needs, paying the bills and the desire to have a life.
And of the world today? 9 months on. Tony Blair is a wounded animal, prowling the cage of Number 10. George Bush continues to deny reality on a daily basis. Climate change is now and will kill many more of us. Red algae covers our seas and deserts expand over the lands. The ancient Arabs created an irrigation scheme that turned Persia and Babylon (Iran and Iraq) into a lush paradise. Today they are desert.
Why can we, with all our great technology not irrigate the deserts? When medieval nomadic peoples could? Back then, they had to do it to live. Today we will only do it if it is likely to make enough money to justify the cost.
We've had a minor war between Israel and Lebanon, no one knows who won, so both sides claim it. Fair share of deaths marriages and births and nothing that truly mattered. Sharon hangs on. The new Pope does very little and the only person I've been impressed by is Archbishop John Sentamu. I wanted to go to his fast in Yorkminster, but I was in Cornwall at the time. One good man for all those who simply want war and for all those who do nothing but argue and for all those who just wish to hang on to power.
Somehow I have acquired financial responsibilities that are barely covered by my earnings, if at all. My job, supply work at a special needs school, takes my time and energy. Although I may have been suffering from Glandular Fever this year I am exhausted by work. For the first time today I caught a bus up the hill rather than walking it. At home I ignore housework and indeed everything else in the need to recharge for the next day. Indeed, even writing here is an excuse.
I entertain vague notions about my art, and put it off yet again. My agent occasionally rings me with an audition and I attend knowing that I will not get the job. I can do nothing in auditions except work with broad brush strokes. I work with the characters to refine them in rehersals, but broad brush strokes do not win auditions. Plus I do not look like my photo. This means nothing. I do not look like any photo taken of me. I have an exceptionately average face which means that every possible variable pushes it to one thing or the other, in opposite directions. I do not truly know what I look like, except that I look like nothing in particular.
I stated in previous entries that I knew Leeds would be a prison. It now indubitably is. I enter my second year here having made no discernible progress, except from having doubled my salary from £30 to £60 a day, but halving my job security in the process. And my stomach has expanded almost exponentially, despite the fact that I can barely afford to eat and certainly can't be bothered to cook. My diet, when I'm not starving, is appalling. I am afraid that this is due to genetics. I now mirror my father's profile. My only hope now is to form my own theatre company or write something worth publishing or performing. While I believe I can write great fiction, I do not have the knack of making it relevant to people. I am an elitist, I will not adapt to the lowest common denominator. My two plays have been described as great but totally incomprehensible by not unintelligent people. I even stumped Leachy on one occasion. The man is Britain's foremost expert on Russian Theatre. He has written lots of books and reads more than anyone except me. He is extremely intelligent and I respect him to bits. Yet I stumped him on philosophy when he freely admitted that it was not his area of expertise and advised me to read Rousseau.
I outgrew my tutors. I outgrew my highly intelligent, highly respected, highly read tutor, not in the extent of my knowledge but in the range of it. In fact my search, my need for understanding, my search for knowlegde, my search for truthful art has expanded exponentially, and is now so encompassing that I can do little else. Money I should be saving is spent on the neverending search and I am trapped by my own insatiable needs, paying the bills and the desire to have a life.
And of the world today? 9 months on. Tony Blair is a wounded animal, prowling the cage of Number 10. George Bush continues to deny reality on a daily basis. Climate change is now and will kill many more of us. Red algae covers our seas and deserts expand over the lands. The ancient Arabs created an irrigation scheme that turned Persia and Babylon (Iran and Iraq) into a lush paradise. Today they are desert.
Why can we, with all our great technology not irrigate the deserts? When medieval nomadic peoples could? Back then, they had to do it to live. Today we will only do it if it is likely to make enough money to justify the cost.
We've had a minor war between Israel and Lebanon, no one knows who won, so both sides claim it. Fair share of deaths marriages and births and nothing that truly mattered. Sharon hangs on. The new Pope does very little and the only person I've been impressed by is Archbishop John Sentamu. I wanted to go to his fast in Yorkminster, but I was in Cornwall at the time. One good man for all those who simply want war and for all those who do nothing but argue and for all those who just wish to hang on to power.
posted by Caractacus at 21:23
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