The Cracked Pot

Doors That Won't Open

2006-12-11T20:56:00.001Z

Well that was the weirdest birthday on record.

I spent most of my weekend knocking on doors that remain unopened both literally and figuratively.

I spent most of the weekend trying to locate Georgia. This I spectacularly failed at.
As perhaps the one person who really has any understanding of me at all or is even interested in attempting to understand me; she is an important friend. That I tramped up to her house (Far end of Carlisle) no less than four times, twice when she wasn't there, twice when all appearances indicated that she was in, but no one answered the door, even when all the lights were on.

Pauley and Jenny, who I was staying with, on my last but one day I tramped to their house (The other far end of Carlisle) twice, and yet again, lights on, nobody answering, even though I knew that they were in.

I have come to the incredible knowledge that all doorknockers are completely inadequate at fulfilling their job description.

Thankfully Lindsay (How much do I love that girl) put me up my last night.

In other news: The Holy Trinity: Haley, Amy and Sabrina. The three girls from Carlisle I love/care about the most. All made an appearance this weekend. In various ways.

Saturday, I got very very depressed, having lost Pauley, having realised that there was no one and nothing in Carlisle for me any more. I sat in The Source and chewed over my sweet potatos and dip and finally sent a text message I vowed I'd never send.

I told Haley I loved her.

I thought I had been doing well. Hadn't seen her in a couple of years except slightly at graduation, and a couple of hours in Scarborough with Mark. And yet. It wasn't as if I was moving on, or as if I even wanted to move on. She's someone else's girl, always was. Not even mine to lose. Yet feelings are feelings. I'd known for a long time that I had to make those feelings known to her before I could feel like I could look at another woman and not miss Haley. Every day for the past year, I have thought. I'll text her today telling her how I really feel about her. And every day has gone by and I had not done it, and the longer it went on from the very first time I met her, the harder it became to say anything. There were times, I think, that she would have left Mark for me, but I was too chivalrous to take advantage of those times because it would not have been right for me to take advantage of her loneliness or depression.

And I do it now! When she's been back with Mark for two years. When there is not a snowball's chance in hell of her saying anything except what she said to me which is perfectly justified and barely perfunctory. Again, like when I told Natalie that I loved her, or even when I told Kat that I had a crush on her, both of whom I had feelings for, which I'd had for years. Neither of them really grasped what I was trying to say. Neither wanted contact with me really, after I'd told them, and I expect the same with Haley. They assume that whatever I appeared to be to them was something false because whatever I was to them was underpinned by feelings that they didn't know about or couldn't return or whatever.

Maybe it was false, but if so, every single thing we do is false. Every friend we make is false. God knows I've had that proved to me on enough occasions, but I never expected it of myself. Every friend I have is more important to me than myself. There is nothing I ask of anyone, and yet, am I false? With Kat? With Nat? With Hayley? With the women in my life? With those I want to be with and yet not just fail to be with them but actively shoot myself in the foot over them?

More on that later, but for now, on to Amy.

Amy, I love Amy, she's brilliant, she's wonderful. I fancy the hell out of her. No feelings, but by God I could develop some. Or at least I could have until three or four years ago when she got a boyfriend and moved out of Carlisle to Edinborough.

And that was the last we saw of her pretty much. Until Saturday.

I'd already left The Source, having eaten my Sweet Potatos and dip. I had gone to The Sportsman to see Sabs and Lindsay, of which more later. When the absent Pauley, rang me to say that he was on his way to The Source. So I tramped all the way back to Denton Holme.

Pauley was in the back room. Not that I knew this. I was in the front room. When Amy walks in. I only saw her from the back but I'd know her anywhere. She sees me and gives me a hug and kiss hello. And sits in the corner. I would go and talk to her except I'm talking to Jody. (A guy, of whom, more later) So when I finally get rid of him, I have to go and join Pauley as he has found me, and seeing as Amy is deep in conversation with someone else. I tell her not to go anywhere without coming and catching up properly.

Of course she goes. Of course she bloody well goes. Why wouldn't she? It's not like I couldn't stop talking to a guy I'd just met in order to talk to an old friend I hadn't seen in years? Someone whom I absolutely adore and is someone with so much joie de vivre that she's infectious.

No I couldn't.

Jody.

Or more accurately: Jody and Sabrina.

I had met Jody before, not in person, but down the end of a radio set. I was in Sabs room and he was outside and I pretty bluntly told him to go away. My exact words were, if I recall correctly: "Look mate, the lady don't want you and you're just embarassing yourself, so do yourself a favour and fuck off."

Which he did.

However he later came back, and back, and back. In fact, every time Sabrina gets rid of him, he comes back. As Lindsay said. He's like a boomerang. And, not a particularly pleasant one at that. Sabrina has kept us apart for the very good reason that we would kill each other if we ever met.

So we met without her knowledge. Without our own knowledge either. Sat in the Source with no one but each other, he asks me to look after his pint. I do so and he joins me. What then occurs is a masterclass in infiltration. Mainly cos I was depressed and spent half the conversation unaware of who he was, and then the other half wishing he would go away so I could talk to Amy.

He was aware of who I was almost from the off, just my name. He got it. He asked me pertinent questions, which I answered, wondering how he was guessing so much. I was polite and asked him about himself in return. We had quite a lot in common. It was only when he told me that he had gatecrashed a party of Jehovah's Witnesses the other day which had been an interesting occasion as he was an ex Jehovah's Witness himself. At which point I gave a huge mental AAAAHH! So that's who you are.

He was playing a game. I wasn't. Which is why he left, thinking that I was quite unaware of who he is. He also thinks I am a nice guy, which I am, and no threat to him, which really depends on how dangerous he becomes to Sabs.

Sabs meanwhile, is an idiot. A poor self destructive idiot who can't stop playing with fire. Which is all the more annoying considering that I love her to bits and, even though I can't be there to help sort her out mentally any more, woe betide anyone who hurts her physically. Especially Jody. Which should be fun, considering he seems to be bigger than me.

I didn't see her this weekend. Or at least I did see her twice. Once when she was drunk, and once when she was very drunk.

I did knock at her door at one point. She was having sex with Jody. Before we met.

Everything screams out to me, leave her be. If she wants to mess up her life she is gonna mess it up no matter what you do. She is pretty good at messing up her life. On the other hand I will never stop caring about her.

Maybe this too is false? Maybe I care because I am in love with her? It is not hard to be in love with her, every boy who lays eyes on her falls in love with her. Maybe the fact that I managed to walk away from her this weekend is also false, a falsity of falseness?

I think she lied to me. I don't know. I think it. I have been away too long. She does not trust me like she did once. Yet at the same time, she knows that I will always be there for her, always. I felt it when she hugged me, even while barely conscious, I felt it. She used to call me her protector. Debbie used to call me that too once, even though she too has drifted away from me, or perhaps I from her, from both of them.

Yet, once appointed to that position, it stands for life.

Both are dying. Sabs and Lindsay. Smoking dozens a day, drinking themselves sick. Lindsay has a wracking cough that screams cancer. I can't protect them from that. Now or at any point in the future.

And now I am back at home, alone. Essentially, always. I am 25 now and I am, have nothing. No one. I knocked at doors and no one but no one opened them. No one invited me in. No one offered me shelter or companionship, no one even knew I was there as no one could hear me knocking. They weren't in, or they were sleeping. They had other visitors or were having sex.
They might once have invited me. Sometimes I was even guest of honour. Now I am lucky if they leave the curtains open so I can look inside through the windows. And see my friends, happy, not happy, in love or lust or hatred, still alive, a little older, a little dusty, fine tuning their lives.

And I sit outside their door and I hear them. And I am glad that they are happy, and that is why I can turn and walk away from their door, although not without posting them a letter perhaps, as I did with Haley.

My fate is always to be on the outside of the door. I have become so used to wandering out by myself that even if someone were to open a door to me, could I walk through it?

No. I know the answer, doors did open. I have simply and methodically shut them again. Almost as if I have a wish to be a martyr. But the real reason is that I cannot live, cannot survive in just one house. I wander along, looking at each door in turn, noting it's beauty. I knock, expecting no answer, and even if there is an answer I simply look through the doorway for a time and then turn away.

Not content, no, I am not happy. Maybe that is my lot, to be unhappy, to be alone and afraid but mentally and physically incapable of taking that one step.

Georgia, Hayley, Sabrina, Amy, Debbie, Lindsay, Ruth, Natalie, Kat, both Naomi's. I love them all. And what of it? What of my love in a world where no one wants it, where I am of no consequence. These are, or were, some of my best friends.

The answer surely lies in proving that I am worthy, of living, not just of loving. But I have no need for proofs. I am not going to be a person who sets the world alight with his sparkling personality , charming wit or even displays of genius. I simply am, and as always, that is good enough for me.

I am, I am, I am, I cry
Remembered and Foretold.

The Sixth Sense

2006-12-11T20:56:00.000Z

Still reading Huxley.

In Heaven and Hell, Huxley states that Science is free to look into the knowable world. The world around us. But that no one has attempted, legitimitely, to look into the unknowable world and that certainly no one has ever attempted to catalogue, categorise or improve our ability in that unknowable world. His words are still true today close to 80 years later.

The unknowable world being that of the unconscious. That state in which we exist during a trip, hypnotism, religious experience, dreams, meditation or near death. The actual experiences that the brain goes through, that we consciously or unconsciously experience while under these influences.

No one, to my mind, has found a unifying idea between these seperate states of existence, no one that is except Huxley who wished to expand our knowledge of such experiences and expound them and discover the true mind or universe or supreme being or whatever. Basically he was on the search for Life the Universe and Everything, just as so many people have done. The fact is that he has found a unique path which no one but no one has seen fit to follow since, possibly because the experiences of Mind are unquantifiable, unrecordable, unreliable and unverifiable by current scientific means. Therefore the only people who embark on such studies are, by nature, quacks, even Huxley. Although Huxley was one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, your average psychic is not.

While not aspiring to be Huxley and having no Peyote or Mescalin to partake of the experience myself I just want to record my own thoughts on the nature of Mind, Life, Universe and Everything.

It is blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes to see that we as conscious beings, do not have control of our Minds. We are capable of thought, and this has become such an overriding thing that it drowns out our natural Mindscape.

Human Beings have a Sixth Sense. It is a very obvious Sixth Sense, not at all mystical. We are able to detect Electricity on a very basic level. Stand underneath a pylon, and even discounting the evidence of your eyes and ears you would know that an inordinantly large amount of Electricity was passing overhead. Walk into a room with your eyes closed and most people would be able to detect if an electrical appliance (of sufficient wattage, such as a telly or computer) is operating, even if that appliance is completely silent. But, probably, they would have no idea how they could guess such a thing.

All animals have this sixth sense. In the build up to a storm, animals will become agitated hours before.

Birds are also apparently capable of navigation through magnetism. It is entirely possible that many animals are aware of magnetism, so closely related to electricity it would not be inconceivable.

And yet we do not admit that we can sense Electricity. We have five senses that we are aware of. See, hear, feel, smell and taste. Thus the mystery of the sixth sense that has no apparant apparatus but plugs directly into our brain. We accept that we have five senses and do not attempt to search for what the brain is capable of feeling by itself.

This is what Huxley was trying to find, he takes the theory that the senses/consciousness is a reducing feature. Our senses/mind take in an incredible amount of information. Consciousness reduces that information to what is important to what is neccesary for survival. This is an excellent theory. Humans are not very specialised animals. We can survive in almost any conditions. As our ability to survive has increased, our information intake has reduced as we need less information to survive than the average animal. Most animals have at least one super enhanced sense - Dogs have incredible noses, Owls have excellent hearing and eyesight. Dolphins and Bats have senses that allow them to recieve sonar or radar, certain Lizards and snakes have heat vision, or rather heat taste.

Our senses by contrast are ridculously average. We are capable of seeing in TriChromatic Colour, but that is a freak genetic mutaion rather than anything useful. Most animals get along quite happily in black and white. One day our eyes may mutate into QuadroChromatic organs, which will make what we see now seem very dull and tame. Our hearing is quite good but nothing spectacular, smell is almost pointless, we have to stick our noses into a rose to smell it. Taste is pretty much pointless, having evolved only to stop us eating poison although I am personally glad that we do have it. Touch is not bad for the organs that utilise it (hands) and pretty rubbish in other places. We have no frame of reference for how well other animals sense of touch is developed apart from the Cats Whiskers perhaps.

Now how do we define Sense? Sense is the tools through which we percieve our environment. It is the traditional belief that we have five organs to do so which are then made sense of by the brain.

What may be evident however is that the Brain itself may be a sense organ, that it may be able to sense that which is other. If we look at the physical world, we find several phenomena which cannot be percieved - Magnetism, Radiation, Electricity, Gravity, Light (which cannot of itself be seen, it merely illuminates), Waves (Radio, Micro, Sound, InfraRed, UltraViolet).

Recently there was an experiment conducted in which people attempted to predict the person who was about to ring them on the telephone. The success rate was 70%.

There could be no physical perception of this knowledge through any of the five senses. How then could such knowledge be acquired? There are two possibilities. The Telephoner and the telephonee were in some kind of telepathic contact. Attractive but coming close to the realm of fantasy. Or the electronics connecting the two phones provide a certain pattern which although probably undetectable to the conscious mind, buries itself in the unconscious mind as a recognisable connection to the person calling, reinforced through repetition.

We know that humans are capable of detecting electricity somehow, it is easy for an individual to test themselves, but because we have made no attempt to develop our brains beyond simply an analytical computer, unlike our other senses which we are conscious of and develop from birth; because we surround ourselves with electricity while barely a century ago, humans and other animals experiences with electricity were scarce and confined to lightning (a threat to survival, albeit rare, but therefore a need to sense it) our sense has dulled. We are not even aware that we sense it.

Now for the hypothetical ideas. Our Brains work on Electricity, if we can detect it, if our unconscious can recognise patterns, is it not possible that we can detect each others Brain Patterns? Most telepathic claims are hoaxes, a very few are not, amongst twins especially, Hypnotic regression to a past life? Same thing. Some people have great eyesight, some don't. If the Brain is a sense organ there is no guarantee that everyone can sense to the same degree. Admittedly the electrical output of a Brain is low to very low but this is a suggestion of a possibility, nothing more. We know almost nothing about Mind as a sense or otherwise.

If we are capable of sensing Electricity, is the brain also not capable of sensing Magnetism? Possibly not from an evolutionary point of view, we diverged from birds and dinosaurs probably long before this developed. Humans have never needed to mass migrate on an annual basis. We have had visual clues such as the sun and stars and latterly maps and compasses. But that does not rule out the possibility of sensing magnetism if we know how. Who has not held a magnet in their hand and tried to feel the magnetism with their fingers, tried to push two magnets together and wondered at the invisible force between the two or attracting the two. Magnetism is related to Electricity so again it should at least be investigated. But we live with the Magnetism of the Earth our entire lives, how would we possibly separate a sense that is entirely stimulated all the time that we don't even know exists (if it does exist that is)? Birds know the difference however. They know the difference between two directions and when to fly in whichever of those two directions through nothing other than thousands of years of ingrained instinct.

Here we run into the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis, how do we even start to explain something for which we have no words to describe even if we knew what we were describing? What exactly is feeling normal? What senses are operating and are we aware that they are operating? Are there senses which we are unaware of but which are in constant operation and so contribute to feeling normal? Are there senses which we are unaware of and rarely in operation therefore possibly contributing to instinct? Gut Feelings? Supernormal/Supernatural Phenomena?

Thus we come back to Huxley. In this case. We know what we know. We know that we have at least five senses. If a person is deprived of these five senses, what does that person still have? What is that person still able to percieve? Huxley talks of sensory deprivation as a transporting device along with drugs, hypnotism, great art and everything else that loosens the reduction of the brain to survival information. Once the brain opens up through one of these paths to take in more information than is strictly neccesary for survival then the brain experiences a drugs trip, a religious epiphany, a dream or nightmare, a hypnotic regression to a past life, an imagination overload. In all these things clear images become apparant to the individual. There are several possibilities here: That the senses become super sensitive and that what is percieved is in actual fact reality or has a basis in reality; that the brain is recieving information even though the traditional information recievers are partially or completely shut down.; that the brain is capable of creating something out of nothing.

The third option is by far the most logical, but here we run into further questions. Where do we separate Mind from Brain? The Brain is us, The Mind is us. Deprived of Sensory information we retreat from our bodies to ourselves, our innermost mind which gives us? Exactly what we have just retreated from. A dream is a reality only slightly warped from the waking world. We dream within our own experience. Yet how do we see without eyes? Hear while we sleep? Our unconscious Brain takes our memories, or our thoughts and translates them into our own private reality and then delivers this to itself. Either in imagination or dreams, through hypnotism or hallucinogenic drugs. What our conscious mind recieves constantly is reality, whether real or invented by our unconscious mind. If our senses are lost they are replaced by Mind. Does a person born blind, with no conception of vision, dream in the same way we do or are their dreams shrouded in darkness also? Is their Mind capable of vision even if there may be no logic or order to it, if so, this is the man whose Mind is truly free in imagination.

This has one major impact. People in a "vegetable" state, are conscious, however damaged the Brain, we know that the Mind demands a reality in which to exist, even if it has to invent one. A Mind cannot exist in perpetuity without sensing the world except by imagining that it senses the world. If the body lives, the Mind lives.

More questions than answers, more guesswork than evidence but philosophical enquiry is full of such. Hopefully others will tread where Huxley advanced boldly. If we do not try to examine Mind properly, or even improperly, we might as well still be climbing trees in Africa. We have the physical world mapped to such a degree that we can see the entire room and are examining the nooks and crannies. Mind and Brain however we don't even know if we are even in a room, we certainly don't know what the furniture is or how to use it.

Dreams

2006-12-11T20:55:00.000Z

It's a relief to start dreaming again really. I'm such a heavy sleeper I don't ever remember my dreams, well, not for the past 10/12 years anyway. I can remember maybe two dreams from that period, so to have two in two days is quite nice really. Recording them for posterity.

The first was kind of inspired by my reading both The Conquest of the New World by Bernal Diaz and The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. I was in the middle of a massive forest or jungle and on a road. A massive road that wound through this jungle. There were other people further up or down the road but I was walking by myself. It wound around some buildings and underneath some columns with buildings above I think, there was a large square hole beyond this with what was probably lava there, although the road went past this so you could walk past it and the hole was symbolic, the whole road was symbolic, all the things that were on it. Further up it crossed a river or ran parallell to a river and I could look back and see people walking down the road behind me on the other side of the river with a long way still to go. Other things happened but I don't remember now.

The funny thing is that the whole image is so completely familiar to me that I would swear blind I'd read about it in Bernal Diaz, except I know for a fact that I didn't, nor in any of the other South American set books I've recently read and yet the image and symbolism of that road is so clear in my head I feel that I must have read about it somewhere, for the life of me I don't know where and doubt that I have. This leaves the probability that my subconscious came up with the whole damn thing including the symbolism which I understood and now lies just out of the reach of my conscious mind. The hole in the road is symbolic as is the fact that you can walk past it without needing to jump it. I was also walking the road as a tourist, down a road of the ancients, something that they had all had to undertake.

The other influence was Aldous Huxley, as I read of his Mescalin experience I feel that I know exactly what he is talking about, even though I've never taken drugs, I understand the theory that the senses are actually a reducing device, and I believe it because I know that at times I have broken through that myself when you feel that you hold the entire universe in the palm of your hand and have opened your mind to the galactic consciousness and the eternal void of beauty and however else you might explain or describe it, words being entirely useless in this respect.

To return to the dream, everything around me was in extravagant colour, as Huxley describes his experience, everything took on an importance of it's own that it was impossible not to look at things and actually see them for the first time and find the eternity of things in full view of your eyes.

It's like seeing the whole world in glorious technicolour when previously it was entirely in monochrome.

It was a religious experience, but not a Christian experience, I was walking the path of a long dead tradition, a long dead religion, whether it was Aztec or something made up entirely in my own head, but I felt the power of that disappeared essence. It was a pilgrimmage.

The dream I had last night was different, entirely. We were driving (Don't ask me who was with me) along a road that ran parallel to a soft beach. A turning appears and we turn left down it. There is a pub with a sign saying "in financial difficulties" Further along the road there is a development. A well designed body of buildings with the sign Building for sale - 10 rooms (Or possibly 10 buildings) - £80.

We enter and the place is wonderful. The room we are in is a library of some sort. There appears to be a laboratory around somewhere. Of course I fall in love with the place. There's a couple of people around and I ask them why they are selling. That's where what I remember ended, but the dream seemed to go on. My dad asking what the hell I was gonna do with it (Completely true to life)

I buy the place but God knows what I did with it. I think I had several versions of the dream, doing different things, maybe I was lucid dreaming and kept changing my mind as to what I was gonna do, trying things out. If I can remember it I was certainly partly conscious. I certainly lived there, in this place where there was almost no one else, just a pub permanently on the verge of closing for lack of business. I do something right at least because people come to this place. I think it might have been my friends but I don't know, it'd make sense if it was. And things were happy ever after.

I don't usually remember any dreams, to the point that I haven't had a period of dreaming for nearly a decade or so. I've had one or two, plus De Ja Vu dreams but that's it. So these are interesting if nothing else to remind myself that I do dream like other people even if I don't know I do.

Both dreams were so real that I woke up and for a while thought that I had actually done the events described.

One dream is about taking a journey, the other is about finding a place to be permanently and while I know the influences of the first at least and can guess those of the second, and both were extremely attractive to me, no meaning appears. There may be no meaning but somehow, perhaps I want there to be a meaning but knowing my unconscious mind as I do I know that something is going on in there.

To die. To sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream.

Kings Of This World

2006-12-11T20:48:00.000Z

What do I wish to talk about today? I think it's gonna be history. I found out today that Caitlin was Belgian. Go figure. She was telling me how everyone from Britain assumes that Belgium is a pointless country where nothing ever happens.

It is a strange coincidence that I am intending to write a play on Belgian History of WW1. In fact, short of Caitlin and other Anglicised Belgians, I am probably Britain's foremost expert on Belgian History, in that I own more books on the subject than anyone else in the country (3, hopefully soon to be 4, if you can find anyone in Britain who owns five books on the history of Belgium, I shall gladly lay down my assumed title).

It is actually fascinating. Before WW1 began, The Germans asked the Belgians if they could march through Belgium to attack France. Belgium refused and the Germans were forced to spend two to four weeks conquering the country. The Belgians held out for this long despite having a standing army of barely 50,000 at the start of the war. If they had not done so, we would be speaking German as at the point of the invasion, France had not properly mobilised. Belgium basically sacrificed herself to the war machine of Germany which allowed France and Britain to mobilise their armies and meet Germany in Northern France. If Belgium had let the Germans through or had not held out. WW1 would not have been fought in Ypres and the Somme, but in Dunkirk and Dover, the French would have been quickly conquered and we wouldn't have lasted much longer.

So thank the Lord for the Belgians. They saved our arses at incredible cost as Belgium was completely ruined in the occupation. It's industries were stripped and transported to Germany. It's food supplies went to the Germans and a famine spread throughout the country. Much of the country was a permanent war zone for four years.

None of this is generally known. What did I learn in History at school? Crop Rotation. Dates. Vikings. Pretty much. Nothing actually interesting.

The Vikings - When the Vikings settled Greenland they used to have running battles with the Inuits - Eskimos. Can you imagine a battle between a Viking horde and an Eskimo tribe? The Eskimos won mostly as well. The first man to settle Iceland was a Viking called Ingolf Arnasson in 985 AD. These are interesting things. How did it feel to be the first person ever to settle a new land? Were these people just like us? I've recently finished Bernal Diaz's account of the Conquistadors conquest of Mexico under Cortes. Diaz served with him. We get fascinating snippets from Diaz such as him viewing first hand a thigh bone brought to him by the Indians that was as long as a normal person's leg. The Indians told them tales about giant humans who had occupied South America, standing up to 8 or 10 feet high. Other evidence for this has recently turned up I think.

We get a quote from Cortes that shows a side of him that may have later been obscured by his rising greed and possible magalomania. (Possibly the only case in history where megalomania might have been valid, Cortes did after all wipe out an entire civilisation almost single handed).

"It would be better not to know how to write. Then one could not sign death warrants."

The Aztecs had invented/discovered Books, Chocolate, Tobacco, Cotton Armour, Aquaducts, Broadswords edged with Jade, the Bow and Arrow, Castles (Mexico city was one huge lake fortress). They marched under banners and standards of their commanders which were differentiated by coloured badges. They were adept at Guerilla and Naval Warfare. And had a commerce system, the huge market of Mexico City selling everything from weapons to skins to incense to pottery to food to human flesh and heads. The market had a constable or two who made sure the goods and money were not counterfeit. They had not discovered the wheel. The Spaniards taught them how to burn wax and took Montezuma sailing, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

Contrary to what I may have said before in my pieces on religion. The Aztecs did have a God of Hell. Diaz mentions nothing about any God of heaven that may exist. They had a God of war also and these were the two primary Gods of Mexico, although other Gods were primary elsewhere. They used to fatten up their slaves in cages hung above the streets ready to be sacrificed as the bodies would be eaten after sacrifice.

Diaz recalls the end of the battle for Mexico (Which lasted over 100 days) Cortes and his men had been separated into three groups, each of which barricaded the three causeways into Mexico. They had several Launches which disrupted the water route. They hoped to starve the Aztecs into surrender. However, over that 100 days, these three groups would find themselves attacked every day by thousands upon thousands of Aztecs all day and often much of the night. It was a waiting game to see who cracked first. As the Spaniards wearied, more and more of them were captured and in the evenings would be sacrificed at the top of the temple ("Cue" in Aztec), by the priests ("Papas") who wore long black robes like Franciscan Monks. This temple was the highest building in Mexico City and every night the Spaniards would watch their comrades being hauled to the top, while the Aztecs screamed and wailed and banged huge drums, before having their hearts cut out alive with Jade knives.

After a third of a year of constant attack, the numbers of Aztecs lessened and Cortes finally took Mexico City/Technochtitlan. He found that almost every house was filled to bursting with dead and rotten corpses either from hunger or the smallpox epidemic that the Spaniards had brought to Mexico. Thousands and thousands and thousands of corpses filled the city. The surviving Aztec King - Guatemoc was so distraught at what had happened to his people he would burst into tears whenever he was approached. He confessed that he wished to die alongside his people.

After all this, it was found that Montezuma had already given all the gold in Mexico to Cortes of his own free will. Much of which was promised to the soldiers, Cortes had hidden away. There was nothing left to plunder. Most of the Conquistadors left Mexico more destitute than when they had arrived.

Montezuma had been amicable to the Spaniards. He had long been told by the Gods that bearded men from the West would come and rule Mexico. When Cortes arrived, Montezuma tried to resist him at first, but eventually accepted that Cortes and his men were those prophecised. He went into custody willingly and became friends with all the conquistadors, many of whom turned to him for advice and treated him as a father or uncle figure. He was killed by friendly fire while trying to stop the battle for Mexico. Three stones from Aztec slings hit him on the head and he fell and died soon after. He was one of the greatest Kings the Aztecs had ever had.

Four things strike me about this potted history:

That the Indians could produce proof, by way of giant bones, and family memory of human like giants. This may be a giant ape or even a lost breed of human, Bigfoot even, maybe. Certainly corroborating evidence has been found since. 600 years ago who knows what was prowling around Central America.

The Aztecs had a God of Hell. Maybe this is just how the Spaniards interpreted the concept, but it seems to me that Hell is a concept of the Judeo/Christian religion. It is very difficult for a random basic cult religion to concieve of a hell without a corresponding heaven. Where did the Aztecs get this concept from, and did they also believe in a heaven? Was this hell simply misunderstood by the Spaniards, such as Hades' Underworld. Not a Hell, just a resting place for the dead.

The prophecy of the Gods. That bearded men from the West would come to rule Mexico. Ok, either the Aztec Gods were real and pretty damn good at predictions. Or the Priests had been smoking too much. Or, someone from the West had visited the Aztecs many many years before and it had remained in folklore.

The Aztecs could read, write and make books. Diaz tells us of Montezuma's accountant whose job it was to tot up all the taxes and gold that Montezuma/Mexico owned. This accountant's house was full, top to bottom of books - ledgers. The Aztecs were also fantastic painters. Life size and life like portraits of Cortes were taken to Montezuma. If these Indians were capable of record keeping, even if Mexico City was destroyed, there were several cities around the lake of Mexico City. Why have these records not been found? Were they capable of fiction or just fact?

The fact remains that as Diaz tells us about the South American Indians, their taste for Human Flesh notwithstanding, it often becomes plain that they are equal to the Spaniards in matters of etiquette, social mores and intelligence. Their society is the same and equal to any human society before or after it. They are just like us.

In The White Nile. Alan Moorehead, the brilliant journalist and historian recounts the exploration of the (White) Nile in the 19th century. He tells us about King Kabarega and other African Kings. He tells us about The Mahdi and his conquering of Khartoum and the killing of General Gordon. What is amazing is that these two people - The savage Kabarega, and the Islamist Mahdi (Forerunner of Osama Bin Laden) both followed the Victorian social mores and etiquette that dominated of the day. Basic politeness. Letters by The Mahdi exist where he exhorts Queen Victoria to convert to Islam and tells her all the benefits this will have. Although she did not reply, one can imagine that she was not amused, considering the state of war between the Mahdi and Gordon, Britain's emissary.

Yet The Mahdi was a gentleman. As was Gordon. They communicated by letter, making sure that each knew the boundaries, where they were set and to expect battle beyond them and being exceedingly courteous to each other. A respect for thine enemy. As Cortes respected Montezuma and vice versa.

I could go on about others - Garibaldi maybe. History is full of great adventurers and those who lived on their wits, luck and courtesy. Those who fought for life, freedom, country or just gold. And these people are wonderful, fascinating.

My next book to read is about Sei Shonagon. A Japanese girl who kept a diary. In the year 1008. 998 years ago from today on the other side of the world. I wonder how much of her I might still find in people today. How much understanding there is. For truly human understanding does not progress. Each of us has only 100 years to understand truly what life is. And what is life?
Is it what we see? what we percieve? is it how we live? or who we are? Is it who we are around? Other people? How we see the world? And is any of that really all that different from one person to the next whenever they live.

These people from history, are us. We might not be making waves but we are all part of history. We all lived, we all die. We are all part of this one great earth and there is nothing but us. Nothing but humanity, nothing but you me and Montezuma. HIstory is not a timeline, a selection of dates. It is who we are and where we have come from and perhaps most important, where we are going.

Beyond this life to someone 500, 1000, 2000 years ago. 4000 years ago? Were we really all that different? Were the questions then the same as they are now?
Did philosophy begin and end with Socrates and Plato? Two men from a different time and a different place and arguably the most intelligent men in the past 2000 years. We are still answering their questions because their questions are eternal.

How can we know ourselves if we don't know ourselves.

The Return

2006-09-06T21:23:00.000Z

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.

Feelings

2006-04-05T23:23:00.000Z

For the first time in what seems like forever, I am optimistic, happy even.

Or perhaps it is the loss of financial worry. Or the looking forward to that, when it occurs, for it is in my sights.

And now can I return to writing?

I must have discipline. I am lax.

And yet I have faith. Someday. Someday...

I have swallowed too much chlorine, my stomach is queasy. A flea has bitten my knuckle and I squeeze out the anasthetic. it feels good but itches more.

Let my hope be justified. Give me a future before I die.

Evil

2006-01-30T23:23:00.000Z

It came to me today that evil is yet another concept. A Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept.

And therefore so is good.

We categorise (or at least the media and the leaders categorise) all sorts of people as evil: The axis of evil, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, The Taliban, Hamas, any cult that springs up.

It no longer means anything to me. It is a label with which to call these people. Once we label them as evil we can ignore whatever motivations they may have. They don't do it because they are oppressed or have been pushed into believeing they have no other choice. They do it because they are Evil.

No one wakes up on a day and says today I am going to be evil. The greatest show up of this is Dr. Evil, fantastic. All those Bond films and Indy films where there are bad guys to defeat. People just don't act like that. They have reasons for acting the way they do. They see us as the evil ones.

And yet before Jesus, there was no such thing. The Greeks and Romans had no concept of evil, of a satan figure. There were Hades and Ares but these were Gods who were not neccesarily of an evil bent. they were what they were. If I remember correctly, the monsters battled by Odysseus are not intrinsically evil, not named as such, they are placed in his way by the Gods or simply doing what monsters do, or like the Cyclops, they have a good reason for behaving as they do. Odysseus invades his island, and technically he is food.

Can you imagine erasing your concept of evil? And that of good? what we have left is right and wrong, honour and dishonour. We would have to find a reason for Harold Shipman, we can't simply call him evil anymore, for Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, for Saddam Hussein, for all of them. Perhaps we would have found solutions to the mental illnesses or paranoias faced by these people. perhaps we would realise that events in the Middle East are our own fault, not Bin Laden's

To the ancient peoples death was simply a doorway to the next life. Death was ambiguous. You could die without fear, because there was a future. Upon this idea, the Greeks built the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. they did not believe that slavery was evil, it just was. The Romans built the greatest empire of the day. They did not believe that the bloodsports were evil. Gladiators and Christians had a future life.

Then comes along Judaism, then Christianity, then Islam. And with them they bring Satan, the great deciever. Suddenly if you want a future in the next life you have to follow a predefined path of Good and not Evil. The Greeks built their essentially good democracy on Philosophy. Chr-Jud-Isl built their goodness and democracies on Blackmail. And with blackmail, you can twist the idea of goodness, suddenly goodness is wiping out the enemy as per religious relations.

The Aztecs and the Romans and the Mongols were bloodthirsty barbarians, but without a perception of Good and Evil they truly believed in their own righteousness. We do good out of Blackmail to our heaven, and the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews are now being blackmailed, as they have been for thousands of years into destroying each other. Destroying the fundamental righteousness of philosphical equality between man for a piece of heaven that they are told will come to them.

Evil is not an act, it is it's own concept. Satan quotes the scripture to us once again.

What A Difference A Year Makes

2006-01-08T23:41:00.000Z

Ariel Sharon is dying. Even if the doctors can bring him out of the coma, they will have prolonged his life by a week? a month? He will be paralysed, his brain may be destroyed, as happened to poor Tony Banks less than 48 hours later. Dying from a massive stroke is quite preferable to surviving it. And so Lord Stratford is in a sense luckier than The Bulldozer.

I never liked Sharon, never. No one who seriously wished for peace in the middle east could do. I remember when he was elected, it unofficially meant that any chance for peace had gone forever. The Israelis had voted for the warmonger to blast the Palestinians out of existence. And pretty soon; intifadas and jihads abounded. The whole world was drawn into a simplified version of the Israel problem.

But something changed, Sharon never actually believed that peace was possible. He said as much to a confidante, and his comments were later reported. But since the death of Arafat, Sharon somehow transformed himself into the only hope for peace. The removal of the settlements from the Gaza strip was as much as a surprise to the Israelis as to the Palestinians. I found myself rooting for Sharon and wondering how had this man, a man who only believed in peace through conflict, turned into the good guy. And yet, for all his ulterior motives, he was, and he was succeeding.

Sharon and Arafat, two stalking horses, enemies for as long as they lived, perhaps it is only their deaths that will truly pave the way.

But first, succession must be waged in Israel. The Palestinians were succesful. Mahmood Abbas believes in his purpose, even if he currently lacks the full power to rein in the extremes. We may yet see one of the old Warhorses, Peres or Netinyahu return to power, or the new man (at least to us foreigners) Ehud Olmert, may hold on. Known quantity or not, the wrong man now could spell disaster, the right man, if such as one exists, will bring progress.

In all the years of the Arab Israeli conflict, there has never been a more critical time. It used to be THE conflict on which the fate of the world rested. Now Iraq, Iran, Bin Laden and Bush, and possibly Syria and Afghanistan, all hold equal importance. All affect the global balance of suspicion between the peoples of the world. We cannot resolve Israel too soon. It is our longest, most poisonous conflict. Fail in this now, at this point in time when our chances of success have never been so good, and we may never get them again. Make no mistake, events in Iraq and Iran shall follow suit.

Thus we stand at a crossroads. Peres on one side, Netinyahu on the other, Olmert in the centre and a fourth direction that of any unknown combatant, and so do our futures rest on the fortunes of a power struggle in a distant land. Any of these people may be right, none of them can afford to be wrong.

And all this over the passing of an obese, but perhaps repentant man.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

2005-11-27T13:54:00.000Z

Grandma died this morning.

I don't really feel anything, it's something I've been prepared for for a few years at least. In the long term it makes things so much easier. Mum has spent at least the last three years constantly worrying. If it wasn't Grandma it was work and if it wasn't work it was Katie. The last year she's had to spend almost all of her spare time looking after Grandma. Maybe now she can learn to relax.

The inheritance is going to do a lot for all of us. It'll allow my parents to get out of debt, allow me to move out, let Chris finish uni.

Down to one Grandparent now.

I think I knew. Mum called me saying that Grandma had fallen and to look after dinner while she went up. She said the ambulance was on its way. That said something to my subconscious. then mum rang up and asked me to send Dad over when he got home. I knew then from the catch in her throat.

It sounds callous but I am glad. Six years now since Grandad died, all Mum has done really is try and keep grandma interested in life when she wasn't really. And looking after her has been a huge burden on all of us. And at times we did begrudge that burden.

Truly I think Grandma never really came back after Grandad died. Her body was there but her spirit didn't really want to be. I loved her.

Maybe I'll cry in a bit. If she were around she'd say it would be silly to cry over an old fool like her. And maybe it is.

Another Day In Paradise

2005-11-27T01:00:00.000Z

The second song I ever heard. As important to me as Vienna, the first. Nearly a ten year gap seperated them. Hearing it live was on the cusp of being a religious experience. Phil Collins is a major influence and to finally see him live was undescribable, it felt the same as when I finally saw Hopper's Nighthawks in the flesh, or read a particularly brilliant piece of Chesterton. You know that these are Gods among men.

In Glasgow I went to the museum of modern art. Their oval room was amazing, It did things to the brain as you stood there. I also saw a couple of pieces which gave me inspiration for two very good ideas. But most of it was like all modern art, pretentious.

Idea 1. Have a stage onstge, portrayed by a rug or somesuch. The character cannot leave this space. He is conscious of this limitation. Beckettian maybe, but he never approached the subject like that. I think the idea is good but it doesn't feel unique. It's possible I've subconsciously found the idea from someone else, although I don't think so, even so, although I like the idea it seems old. I don't know why.

Idea 2. Use blinds in front of the stage. This restricts the audiences view to more or less straight ahead. Very Brechtian. I think this could work exceptionately well, far better than Gauze, which I hate. The blinds can be directed towards left or right, thereby pinpointing the audiences view. This I think is an exceptional idea. I know it is unique, nothing has been attempted like this. It only remains to find a show or script with which this idea would work. I suppose Hamlet or Lear could be done with it. I really love this idea.

Coming back from glasgow I could have sworn it was Mark Mardell in the seat over the aisle. Opposite me was a black guy. There are some people in the world with an aura, this was one of those people. People you'd follow to the ends of the earth if they asked you to. We exchanged pleasantries, nothing more. But when I left he wished me good luck. He had no reason to say this. Indeed he looked as surprised that he had uttered the words as I did upon hearing them. I thanked him, too hastily, and moved on before wishing that I had expressed the same sentiments to him. I felt a greater connection to this stranger on a train, belied by a few short sentences than to people I have known for years and had many conversations. Perhaps he saw the same in me, though I can't imagine why.

But I thanked him and moved on. And wished Godspeed and good luck to him from the platform.

Life proceeds, from, unto. Perhaps we need to escape that.

Me Or Something Like Me

2005-10-30T21:29:00.000Z

Spent half term at Georgia's.

Wonderful week. Did nothing.

Invented a couple of perpetual motion machines, one with water and one of clockwork, wondered why we have never used sound as a source of energy, after all we can turn it into electricity. Turn the M25 into a giant sound eating generator and we'll solve all our energy problems.

Found a first edition of Gordon's journals. Am going to write a play about him. Discovered Krishnamurti. Suddenly life makes sense.

Realised many things. In love I need a pupil and a muse as much as a lover.

Felt thoroughly rested. That went within a day of returning home.

Went to see Jools Holland. Bloody fantastic. Marc Almond came on, gave an incredible rendition of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, and then Tainted Love.

Bought several CD's but not one of Jools. Not really my kind of music to listen to, but a treat to go out to.

The band were really trying to get the atmosphere going, trying to get the audience up on their feet. It was killing us both, you could cut the place with a knife. Eventually I just broke and leapt to my feet, the only one there. Then I thought, Shit, I don't actually know any boogie woogie dance moves. Spent five incredibly embarrasing seconds running through my entire repertoire of moves until I had something that actually fitted to the music. Everyone else, relieved that it was actually someone else who had gotten up first, just leapt to their feet. At that point the evening took hold and was brilliant. It's funny, how even though I wasn't anywhere near the stage, I still lead the crowd at that point when it needed to be lead. Being on stage I probably wouldn't have been able to do that, especially since not even Jools or Marc or their charismatic Sax players could do it.

Back to the grist.

I really need to get out of this place before I do something I regret.

Desire Above And Beyond Sanctity

2005-10-05T21:46:00.000Z

There are now bots leaving adverts on blogs in the form of comments. Picked up a few. And am thoroughly pissed off. A blog is a personal space, not a free for all where anyone can bombard you with ads such as on tv, the cinema, or indeed anywhere in real life.

There is no longer any sanctity in a person's life. We are here to be got at by a company, before we are poached. Therefore we get cold callers. Ads in every shape or form, on the telly, in cinema, even in films and tv programs now which is perhaps the most insidious as it destroys the experience. Nowhere is sacred if they think they get you to spend your money on their products, and since just about everyone might buy, everyone is a target. They seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that wall to wall advertising actually turns people off a company.

The time has come to redress the balance between this. The people and those for whom money is the only object.

I have been thinking for a while. An ethical tax, applying to business, administered by the people is what is required. Let us Socialise Capitalism.

A Quango is set up. The people can submit petitions against a business. Any business that has more than a certain number of signatures against it is investigated in its proceedures. If they are ethical, eg, if they are paying their staff fairly, paying their suppliers fairly, not operating a monopoly, using or researching greener methods, not acting against society etc, then all is fine and good. If however they are operating under unethical practices (Of course many good business practices are unethical) they shall be taxed at a rate of 100% on their profits for that fiscal year. This tax will go towards righting the wrongs the company has comitted. For instance, The Drinks industry will see all of its profits go towards controlling binge drinking and treating alcoholics, the smoking lobby will similarly see its profits go towards treating smokers who cost the NHS several billion a year (roughly about what the tobacco industry makes). Oil companies will see their profits going to Wind Farms. Nestle's profit will go towards convincing African women that breast milk is best for their child. Pharmaceutical companies will see their profit going towards providing AIDS treatment to all for free, rather than their unpayable prices.

Companies will soon learn that it is better to spend a portion of their income on becoming good citizens, rather than see it all taken from them to right their irresponsible wrongs caused for the sake of their share holders. Suddenly the consumer will be in charge. Will hold the reigns of power. If a company is corrupt, it shall be brought low. No one can argue against this tax, because to do so would be an admission of guilt. If you are an ethical business and treat your customers right, you have nothing to fear. Thus, instant true social capitalism.

This tax would also encourage competition, by paralysing the unethical competitors for a year, ethical competitors will get a massive boost to their relative fortunes. Because their running costs won't be touched, the tax collected at the end of the year, (the case against the company possibly concealed until that date) the tax cannot actually drive any company out of business. Also none of the money will actually pass through the government, but through this quango who will use it to directly change areas adversely affected by companies who have been self regulating for so long that they have given themselves carte blanche to absolve themselves of any responsibility towards society whatsoever if it means more money for them.

The resulting extra cash boost to areas like the NHS, (such as if all smoke related diseases are treated on the fag companies money) among other things, will probably mean that at some point taxes on the people can be lowered, thus creating a growing economy and lowering the rich poor divide.

Oh the things I could do if I ran the country.

The Bullet With Your Name On It.

2005-09-24T09:54:00.000Z

Baldrick once carved his name on a bullet, so he couldn't be shot with it.

50 to 100 years ago some lucky soldiers survived being shot because a bullet in the chest would hit a bible carried in the breast pocket.

This week someone was shot in the chest during a bungled robbery. The bullet hit a mobile phone carried in the breast pocket and saved the guys life.

How times change.

Brittle

2005-09-11T23:27:00.000Z

Everything in life is Brittle nowadays. The peace in Northern Ireland, The peace in the Middle East, the environment, life, feelings, politics, religion. Everything feels like it's so blasted dry, that all the moisture has been sucked from us, from our lives. Now we are all close to snapping. Destroying ourselves in the process.

Who is it who has done this? The spin doctors, the politicians? Educated professionals? Red Tape? Every step we are taking is a wrong step. New Orleans, De Menezes, Eriksson, Woodward, Sudan, Ariel Sharon, Oil for Food, Blair, Bush and Bin Laden.

Mum keeps complaining about the world, how can she bring Katie up in this world.

I remind her that in the nineties, I saw Mandela walk free, The Berlin Wall come down, Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Camp David Peace Accords, Britpop. Among other things.

It occurs to me now that our icons, our great men and women are dead, fading fast or tainted. Nothing proved this more than when Brother Roger was stabbed to death recently. The founder of Europe's most famous brotherhood and retreat. Taize. Killed in a random act.

Our leaders today are misguided and tainted. Blair, Chirac, Schroeder, Bush, Bin Laden, Pope Benedict, Kofi Annan, Ariel Sharon, Thabo Mbeke, John Howard, Berlusconi, Putin.

Thieves, Murderers, Neo Conservatives. Harsh on Annan, Mbeke and Benedict perhaps but they are mere shadows of their predecessors.

We no longer have people to lead us into the light, people we wish to follow, people who have caught the zeitgeist of the times and ridden roughshod at the head of the tide. This is why we mourn so for our dead heroes, Robin Cook, John Peel, Princess Di. However small their contribution was, they were held in high regard by the nation.

The simple fact is though, almost all of our heroes are dead. Nelson Mandela is getting older by the day, as is Tony Benn, Jesse Jackson is has been slighted in the ugly world of American politics as a bandwaggon jumper. Pervez Musharraf walks the tightest line of any leader in the world and Castro is barricaded inside his island. Chavez and the other new South American Leaders are ignored in a Europe too preoccupied with America, so America's secret history carries on, annexing Haiti, while allying with the murderers and torturers of Uzbekistan.

The head of MI5 called for civil liberties to be eroded the other day, in order that we might buy ourselves some protection.

This is the world in which we live. Our heroes are dead and dying and no more are appearing. Humankind has finally dealt the death blow to hope. Our future is governed by forces over which we have no control, our liberties curtailed for our own safety, like a man having pen and paper removed in case he stabs himself with the pen and cuts himself on the paper. We may finally have reached the tipping point.

Life seems brittle. A little pressure one way or the other could pull us back from the brink or push us tumbling into the abyss. Too much in any direction and we could snap. Tightened in so many different ways, we can only move so far.

There was rioting in Belfast last night, less than a week after the greatest Northern Irish victory ever seen. The worst rioting in many years. There are forces here beyond people, beyond which people are aware. I do not fear the beginning of the end. For the end cannot be prevented whenever it comes. But I do fear that we will become so cowed that we will accept it. That it will be spoonfed to us and we are told to be grateful. That we become grateful.

The mob is toothless, it has no stomach for a fight. It has been told that it must become civilised or become outlaws. The mob rolled over. It sat and it begged. Some broke away from the mob. They are called Al Qaeda. They may be misguided in their targets but at least they believe in something. It is not the leaders who will defeat them, but the mob must return and find its teeth. It too must believe in something.

Then perhaps we will not be so brittle.

Why Do All The Good Politicians Die?

2005-08-19T21:00:00.000Z

We've lost Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam within a fortnight of each other.

Only the two most talented and moral politicians of the past ten years.

Bugger.

We'll miss you guys.

God help parliament.

The Dole

2005-08-12T00:01:00.000Z

Yesterday I signed on for the first time.

I texted Sabs, said that if I'd never known her or Linz, I'd be close to hanging myself. Not strictly true but the sentiment is right, they taught me something. Sabs in particular said something that just struck me and changed my view on life.

It went along the lines of if you have enough, why do you need more?

They get pittance off their jobseekers, but they are happy, or at least happy now, after going through years of depression. Sabs even has a part time job in Shelter.

The jobs I've been applying for are between 12 and 20 grand a year. But what would I do with 20 grand a year. I have no one to support, once I get money, 20 grand, I reckon I could become self sufficient in five years or so on that. Beyond that money would go into spending and saving. I don't want a house or a car, I've become suited to living out of the one (large) room.

Until Sabs said what she said, I always assumed I'd move up the jobs ladder, but what if I was happy at the bottom of it? If that money could pay for everything I needed. Bigger and better jobs bring bigger and better stress.

And that was when I realised that Sabs was happy where she was. All that time I'd tried to talk her round to a job, she was happy with what she had. And I realised I'd become a slave to capitalism after all. Before, the Dole had seemed like the bottom rung, now, all rungs are equal.

But I can't seem to get a job. All I need is an initial outlay of five grand or less on a job I enjoy doing and I can become independent. But living with parents who fail to see, creates a pressure, small though it is at the moment. And I cannot get to where I wish to be even though it is virtually in my grasp. To be so close and yet so far is mortifying and everyone suffers in its wake.

Because of my parents I cannot even do what I must to stay alive. I am reduced to holding on to apron strings because of my emotional block. But they are off to Cornwall tomorrow and I am free! For two weeks at least, enough time to get done all the things I can't do when they are around me.

I've been watching The X Files. Dad has the whole set on DVD and I've been waiting for what seems like forever to watch them. Finally got to the last season today. Co-incided with a newspaper article saying that UFO sightings are down 80%, 100% in some parts of the country. It's a pity, sometimes I wish that the governments of the world were actually running an incredibly huge conspiracy behind all our backs. At least it would show that they were capable of doing something. Give us all a reason to get up in the mornings.

Why do all the good politicians die young (Robin Cook, Donald Dewar) while Ian Paisley goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and.........

Yibble:

A perfect description of my precise feelings at this particular moment in time.

Goodbye Cat

2005-07-16T09:11:00.000Z

Am heartbroken. Timmy the cat was run over, probably late last night. Simple fact is, since I got home, he's been the best friend.

He'd come and sit on my lap, lie on my rug. Come and cheer me up. I loved him like nothing on earth and he loved me. I've only been home for two weeks. Only knew him two weeks, feel like I've lost someone I've known for years.

Smell The Briefcase

2005-07-08T02:59:00.000Z

Go on, you know you want to.
It's such good fun.

The Strange And Subtle Effects Of Sleep Deprivation

2005-07-08T02:48:00.000Z

WAAAAAAAAAAAH

Boom oom
oink.

SKUcha skucha skucha

skucha skucha skucha

do do do do do do do do do do do do do do la la la la la la la la la la
bee beep a skiddly bom bom bom

ska wap a doo dah
oink.

cawa cawa cawoo
wowowowowowowowowowowowo

Skin bibbly BOO waa a doo do
oink.

!??

So can anyone tell me exactly why there is a pig in here?

The Striking Of London

2005-07-08T02:35:00.000Z

Today was the day London got bombed, and I officially got my degree. 2:1, which I'm happy with although I feel I deserved a first. Pompous or what, but the people who would have got firsts didn't really do anything special. They did what they knew and they did it well, whereas for the important parts of the course I always took a risk, tried to do something completely different, risk failing as much as success, but I didn't fail. I simply didn't do the unknown as well as certain people could do the well known. This ain't sour grapes towards the people who got firsts, as yet I haven't heard from anyone save Lucy and Deb. First text from Deb in ages, so good to hear from her. But to the system perhaps in which dull but safe is always better than new but risky. Vision doesn't really count for anything.

It's rather unfortunate that vision and idea is really just about the only thing I can do really well. I don't really see things objectively or subjectively any more. At the moment it's a kind of detachedness from everything, from reality. Moving back home, it's like an entire little world within the family and the outside world might as well not exist. I cannot allow myself to stay here for too long, even the year I have set myself might drive me mad. I need the world. My family will suffocate me. Here, I have nothing other than the family, no friends, no life, no beyond.

In the 1870's, shortly after the exploration of Central Africa, General Charles Gordon was made Viceroy/Pasha of the newly mapped Sudan. He was succesful and popular. But politics led him back to Britain and around the world for four years during which time The Mahdi rose to power, an Islamist with intent to destroy the Jews and Christians he declared a Jihad. In short he was the 19th Century Osama Bin Laden. Gordon returned to the Sudan to put down the rebellion as he had with so many slave traders. The Mahdi sacked Khartoum and executed Gordon.

Bin Laden and all Islamists bent on Jihad today, are actually less powerful than the Mahdi in the 19th century. The Mahdi had a coherent and cohesive army, based in one place. He was able to invade and ransack Khartoum and destroy one of the most popular leaders Africa ever had. Today, there is no evidence that Osama Bin Laden can actually command Al Qaeda and the many affiliated groups. He has given them a mission statement and off they go. What do they actually do except blow a few tens to a few hundreds of people up every few years except for the flashpoints of Iraq and Afghanistan. They could never be an army in the traditional sense and so they can never succeed. After Gordon's death, The Mahdi had a period of power, i don't yet know how he was stopped, haven't finished the really quite excellent book I'm reading on the subject, but he was stopped eventually. Today, we cannot stop Al Qaeda, but likewise, they can never ever win because they will never again have a stronghold of concentrated power. Bin Laden preaches from a cave. They are snakes, they can bite us and there will always be some in the undergrowth that we may never find, but we are not afraid of the sunlight. We must just be careful not to aim at our own feet when we fire our guns at the ground.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, this attack on London was absolutely pathetic. London is one of the greatest cities in the world. It has been destroyed and rebuilt twice, these bombs were probably just about the least of all the crises the city has ever faced. Not even close Qaeda. There's a song in Britain, it goes "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough." You could blow up every single operative you have in London and still London would be undefeated. Think you're the equal to the Luftwaffe? Not a chance in Hell. What are they gonna do? Invade? Blow us up a tube train at a time?

Life goes on, and on, and on, and on.

Had a brilliant idea for selling music on the net today. Unfortunately not a businessman. Will pass it on to one when I meet them, just as my brilliant idea for creating a government that actually works by combining socialism and capitalism needs to be passed on because I am not a politician, or a famous soicologist or philosopher. Otherwise I'd need to form my own party, and run an internet business. Both of those would take forever. I'd rather be a hobo.

Is it possible to be any lower than I am at the moment? I'm not considering suicide but if I were that would be an improvement, at least it would mean I had some feeling about something somewhere. Life does not mean anything at the moment, not even enough to end life. The only things that are alive to me are the cats. Their emotions are simple and uncomplicated. They seek for nothing more than each other and the rest will come, even if they weren't in such a good home. Two brothers, they curl up around each other, clean each other, play and look after one another. I have never known such kind cats. Alex likes to chew on my thumb and lick my hand like a dog, he is the smaller and occassionally is timid of the outside world.

My God, I have been home a week and already I yearn for freedom. I hope to work at Waterstones. Maybe this will be my year of books. If I immerse myself in other worlds perhaps the real one will not call so strongly, perhaps it will call with more force. I can resist, I have no choice in the matter for now. But what price my sanity.

I am trapped and I have no hope of rescue. I live in comparative luxury but a gilded cage is still a cage. What is more, it is a cage that traps all of my family, but are deaf to the others. So I get to spend this year listening to all the prisoners complaining about how trapped they feel, while weighed down by the keys about their necks. And I, I put up with it, somehow I stay sane by staying aloof. I am alone, always have been, always will be, even amongst family, and this year I plan my final escape.

Of the past seven years, I spent two mad, two trying to desperately avoid madness and three where I gleefully embraced it as part of me. But that was a madness allied to the joy of the world, wedded to the possibilities of life, where nothing truly matters. This madness is like a deep dark, possibly bottomless well, down which I have already begun to sink. Too far and I may never emerge. I have to be stronger than that. Have to be.

What is life but a matter of avoiding death for as long as possible?

A madness of the soul

2005-06-11T00:55:00.000Z

Dear God I want to curl up and die right now.

Asked Lizzie out. Got a whole load of nuthin. Nats words come back to haunt me.

I'm a fool and a good for nothing. I'll be a solitary man all my life because I can't show my feelings.

Goddamnit I've ripped trees out of the ground with my bare hands and I can't work up the courage to tell a girl my feelings. And when I do I get shot down like a kite in a war zone. Every single bloody time. Maybe I am just completely unlovable.

Had to listen to Tim and Gaz boasting about women for two hours yesterday. Wanted to nail their heads to the wall. With a girl like Soph Gaz shouldn't even be looking at another woman. Don't think he cheats but I wouldn't put it past him. He's a mate but I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him. He's gotten me into trouble a couple of times now. Has to be said tho, he's a very good actor, always says exactly what people want to hear. Or what he thinks people want to hear whether he means it or not. The incredible part is they fall for it. Still, people are people and we all have our failings, myself included. I am no judge.

Will seek solace in Sabrina's arms next Monday. Slept with her last monday. The two of us on Linz's broken couch. The most uncomfortable night I've had in a long while. But worth it just to wrap my arms round her, round someone.

This is it for me, Carlisle, done, dusted. Nothing left for me here now. Mark and Deb have both gone. Haven't spoken to Hayley in forever. Me and Phil and Naomi have drifted apart. I rarely see Aron or Martin.

I will miss Sabs and Linz. Sabs especially is such an important part of my life. I did my best to help her and in return tho she doesn't really know it, she's helped me. Kept me sane. She hasn't done anything really, except be there, carried on being Sabs, as paranoid and lovelorn as ever. And I tried to be there for her, and for Lindsey, and I tried to be strong for them both and that in turn made me strong enough to carry on myself.

But they don't need me any more. they are better. A thousand times better than they were. Things are starting to work out for them and they'll carry on, happy as Larry. And once again I have no one to be strong for. And thus by default I cannot even carry myself.

People misunderstand me. They say I am kind. I am, but it is self preservation as well. I need to have someone to look after because if I don't, then I not only have no purpose, but have no wish to go on. And so I involve myself in people's lives, rightly or wrongly. Try to put things right for them. And sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail and make things even worse. I am only human. But without that crutch of another persons problems, I am nothing. I have nothing to strive for, nothing to attain because there is nothing beyond the borders of my own mind that I could wish for.

I try and read, watch films, improve my mind, create. I am a solitary person, being alone should not be difficult, but right now I feel suicidal. I am not wanted, not needed. Everyone else has everyone else.

Carlisle is at an end, at I feel that I am in exactly the same position as leaving Halifax or Bradford except that I now have BA Hons after my name. So bloody what. I have no goals. No need to do anything now except make enough money to live on and I could do that in almost any job now. All I can do is act, mostly pretty badly, write, with a permanent writers block, sing without a hint of musicality. I'd be as well off as a bricklayer. At least i'd be in the sun all day.

At the end of Halifax I remember thinking to all the people who had disowned me as a friend. Sod you, someday I'm gonna be bigger than all of you. Even at the time it seemed childish but quite frankly I'm not sure I have anything left. Those people I consider my friends are gone, and I really am bad at keeping in touch. I am returning to Leeds which is the arsehole of the country, no history, no culture, pure shameless commercialism. I feel like firebombing Harvey Nichols every time I walk past. Not that I am not a slave to commercialism. In the lack of anything better.

There is a better way, and in the end it is the only thing I am working towards. A field, a meadow. With a vegetable garden, and a horse and a shed to work in. A boat on the river to live out of. And a long grey beard. A hermit, a writer.

But I also feel it within me to genuinely become a giant of the stage, in the vein of Olivier, Gielgud etc, no not as big, Jim Broadbent or Timothy Spall. That sounds pompous, I have no confidence in my acting abilities and I don't know why I feel it, but I do.

Random quote from somewhere on the net today. Liu Tzu or someone. "Command people and you shall wield power but command yourself and you shall hold power." Or something like that. I can command a crowd. Not from within, but from without. I can lead. Always could. If everyone looks at me, then they are mine. I have a stage presence, I really don't know why. The only thing to do therefore is to get people to look at me. I have ideas. But carrying them out, ah that is another thing entirely. I am no man of action, although I have seen much. I must break free entirely of being my fathers son. I must give myself the freedom I was given in Bradford. Whether I can do that while my Dad is still alive is another matter entirely.

But I will perhaps always be a solitary man. And if so, then so it must be. And I must be grateful that I am strong in heart and mind to live as such, tho oftentimes I do not feel so.

At Bradford I was in a power struggle and didn't even know it. Although it cost me everything, I won. In Carlisle, I was nothing. When I did take power, the fate of too many others rested in the balance, they didn't trust me fully. Alright these were nothing. Producing a couple of shows. So what. It means nothing. But at the moment I am nothing.

Looking at the world in this way is dangerous. I am not stupid, I lost everything once. But it is all a game. And I need something to keep me alive. Lead others but follow only yourself. And also, never, ever outstay your welcome.

At Bradford I learnt how to lead, at Carlisle I learnt how to follow. Halifax taught me everything else.

Now all that is required is a situation in which to, yet again, begin my life.

Christ, how badly do I sound like a crazed dictator!

Rainbow

2005-05-15T01:38:00.000Z

This has to be seen to be believed

Champion Of Pool

2005-04-15T17:19:00.000Z

Me and Mark won a trophy. For playing Pool.

I don't think I've ever won anything before now. Mark has but he was even more chuffed to bits than me.

Gaz asked us the day before if we could play Pool for the inter-college championships. I said we hadn't played in a while but were up for it.

We turned up, beat the other three teams, smashed them actually, and took the trophy. Our college got the overall trophy on the day and I was so glad for Gaz. We won also in Squash and 11 a side football.

To be honest we played out of our skins. Both me and Mark wanted to win so bad. We're not bad Pool players, though we have our ups and downs and we neither of us played consistently well in the pub league last year so this was a big vindication for something we just enjoy offhand, not even as much of a hobby. But we knew we were good. We just needed a stage to show it.

My long potting, which had been fantastic a couple of weeks ago, was abysmal, fortunately my short game was damn good. We played nine games overall and won six. We lost our first doubles match (To Cookie of all people) and each lost a singles game to a guy called Gavin who was the kind of player who covers all the pockets and then snookers you constantly until he gets a chance to down everything.

Somehow it came down to his team having to beat us three times in a row in order to win because we'd been phenomenal in our first flush. Despite his snookering style and his team mates potting, we took the trophy with a game to spare. Wasn't easy. Last game, He's on the black, makes a mistake. We have four balls and the black still on the table, any mistake and he will win, the black being over a pocket. Mark steps up. Nerves of steel, I dunno how, and neither does he, but he puts down a five ball clearance. Incredible. It was fortunate that I'd managed to put all our balls into pottable positions on my last go. I'd just taken to smashing the balls around to break up chances of the guy snookering us.

Paul Simpson, Player Manager of Carlisle Utd, presented us with the trophy which was great. He said, "I presume you're the guys who spend all your time in the pub then". I was too happy to care.

I've never won anything in my life before. It didn't seem like much, but it meant such a hell of a lot.

An Occurance Of The Last Five Minutes

2005-04-15T17:15:00.000Z

My housemates response to a disaster.

(Shouting Upstairs)
Dave! Your washing's on fire!

Approximately 1 minute and 10 seconds later, after Dave has ascertained that it is not his washing that was on fire.

Pete! Your washing's on fire!

Sod's Law (Via Barry Norman)

2005-04-10T22:05:00.000Z

What is it with this crap?

Whenever I buy or rent a film I've not seen before, I can guarantee it will be on telly before the week is out.

Cyborg Nation

2005-04-09T14:38:00.000Z

Suddenly there is a huge number of news stories about people being able to operate computer chips by the power of thought. The first cyborgs are appearing, there are now chips that can be implanted in the eye to give a blind person sight, to allow an amputee to control plastic limbs etc. This is not the vision of cyborgs that we had ten years ago which was based on mechanics, these are based on micro electronics and in ten or twenty years we'll have cyborgs able to do incredible things, and they'll look completely normal.

As I've probably said before, blockbuster movies tend to reflect the fears of the world. 30 or 40 years ago, movies were all about alien invaders, nowadays they are all about robots battling humanity or taking over humanity, I Robot, The Terminator, A.I, Blade Runner, 2001, others I can't think of right now. Robot and intelligence technology is lagging behind cyborg technology at the moment but it's weird watching the future evolve in front of your eyes. People just aren't noticing. Like the internet, it wasn't something that appeared, at some point it was just there, and had been there for a while.

If artificial intelligence does evolve to the point of being conscious what will happen? It's a long long, long way off but if we play God and essentially create life, we need to realise it and have the responsibility to treat it fairly.

As for cyborgs, essentially we've opened a door to turn humans into God. People will have the ability to control mechanics and electronics using their mind alone. It's an incredible revolution. The technology is in it's infancy but already it's incredible. Lets recognise it and explore the possibilities.

Also, on the subject of science, the discovery of fossil soft dinosaur tissue. Incredible, especially if DNA is extant.

Depression

2005-04-09T14:21:00.000Z

Even before yesterday I was feeling much better. I did something like 72 hours without sleep.

I was terribly depressed, but it was like a fever, built and built for weeks and then the past few days became almost unbearable. Hits a breaking point and it broke. I'm fine. Started to sort things out, even feeling confident about my show.

Depression has always seemed to affect me like that. It comes like a wave and after it breaks there is a period of calm.

I had a fever with flu last year and broke that. Literally, standing in the pharmacy waiting for antibiotics I was burning up. Pulling off my clothes, sweating buckets, about to faint. I could barely stand. And then it broke and I couldn't have felt better.

Doctors believe that some kinds of Depression are caused by viruses, certainly looking at it like this it really does seem like it. I'm not a depressive by nature. In fact when I do get depressed I force myself to beat it. It feels like an illness that I have to ride out, rather than a genuine pyschological problem.

Religious Weekend

2005-04-09T13:40:00.000Z

What a wonderful weekend, A Papal Funeral yesterday, and a Royal Wedding today. It's been great fun to see the great and the good of Britain gallivanting all over the place, in the middle of an election no less.

Technically, in this election period, no one is in power. And then we get to see our entire power base run off to Rome. Prime Minister, both leaders of the opposition, The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Heir to the Throne.

One life ends but the world carries on. The wedding is the perfect antidote to the sadness surrounding John Paul's death. It reminds us that life is neverending.

I love ritual. When I did Peace Studies we looked at ritual and what it's place was in the world. I think the tutors were disdainful of it and so I became, but I think on it now and it is so wonderful. Ritual allows for great gatherings. People on their own are individuals, but in groups they become a herd, as easily corralled as sheep by a dog. The larger the gathering the easier to corral because the space around the individual whether physical or intellectual, is closed down. The person who knows this can have power beyond any other means, What ritual does, whether state, religious, ceremonial or even everyday, is sanctify the gathering, give everyone their own place and time, led by a responsible person, who leads but does not wield the mob. The ancient rituals have survived because they do this succesfully, and with either pomp and circumstance or simplicity, embody the needs of the mob without giving it it's head. Ritual only becomes dangerous when it is artificial or led by an irresponsible person.

This is perhaps the problem of new states. States such as USA and Israel among others. America is an amalgamation of many different cultures with few overall traditions. The Ku Klux Klan is a mob that takes its needs rather than embodying them. Not that embodying them would be any better in this occasion, but in America, there is no ritual, no belief, only need and want. So the mob get together and take because there is no other way for it to express itself. Israel is the same. Pakistan and Bangladesh have escaped this perhaps because Islam has it's own strong rooted traditions.

Anyway. This weekend has been a lovely show of religion as opposed to the past few years which have shown a horrible side. Part of ritual is helping people get through times of strife and this weekend has been a great success.

I'm so glad for Charlie. He and Camilla are greatly in love and finally they can be together properly. The ring he gave her was beautiful.

John Paul II

2005-04-02T00:59:00.000Z

The Pope is dying.

Peter Jennings was trying very hard not to lose his composure on BBC News 24 America. His voice broke a few times.

I'm fighting against tears myself, the pictures from St Peter's Square are very moving. A quiet dignified vigil.

I wrote last month, when the Pope went into hospital, that I hoped he would die soon, partly because he was oviously in pain and blatantly on his last legs, but mainly in the hope that his successor would be less hardline on things such as contraception, abortion, AIDS etc. This was not in disrespect to JP II. Objectively, this century needs a new Pope with perhaps a wider world view. JP II has been an excellent Pope and a strong man, the right person to hold the papacy these past 30 years. To the Catholics, he was a father.

I mourn not because the Pope is dying, but because a good and old man is saying his final prayers. There is a place set for him in the afterlife.

Dr Who.

2005-03-27T21:32:00.000Z

The Doctor returned and I have to say I am not a fan of the new style. Eccleston's doctor is great but the format and the direction are trying to be trendy and some of it comes off as childish, some of the cgi looks worse than if the special effects had been mocked up by hand. I am a great believer in improvisation, the show never had a decent budget so the techies had to mock stuff up from what was around, it often looked cheap and homemade but it's better than middling cgi which just looks careless.

I still can't accept Bilie Piper as an actress, everyone says she is fantastic, I just don't see it.

I won't go on about what I disliked about the show, safe to say that Eccleston is such a fantastic actor he sibglehandedly redeemed it. I can put up with the rubbish to watch this Doctor. He's not quite what anyone might have expected but he's so charming you don't care.

Sylvester McCoy was the Doctor I grew up with and loved, there was an undercurrent of darkness in every pore, a hint that nothing was as it seemed, that even though events may appear out of control the Doctor was behind the scenes of every aspect, even if he wasn't. I loved that. He wasn't the funniest, smartest, most human, or even darkest of the Doctors but more than any of them he was the one I would have followed to the ends of the universe. The Doctor never ran, he strolled, nonchalently. Eccleston's Doctor never strolls, he always runs. I think that is why he won't displace McCoy's Doctor in my affections.

The producers of this series should look at the revamped Battlestar Galactica as to how to effectively update a series. Another show I loved as a kid the remake has, within a season, established itself as the premier SF show. It's just fantastic.

The eighties were all about machismo on TV and while it was insane fun it lacked any reality at all, which is perhaps where late nineties to modern American Television has made incredible strides. I think it must have been The X Files which drew the boundary.

British Telly is different. In America and other countries such as Australia, if you have an idea that can be pitched succesfully then you get to make a show. If your idea is good enough then it will pick up viewers. Of course this isn't enough to keep a show on the air, great series such as Millenium, American Gothic, Farscape, Sliders, and Crusade have all been axed after a few seasons or even midstory but there is potential for these to live on in other mediums, although there is the danger of turning into another Lexx, originally a fantastic show with some absolutely brilliant actors and characters it's budget was repeatedly cut and it's writing degenerated into the insanity of man eating carrots.

But the net has allowed these stories to carry on.

In Britain however it is almost impossible to get an original idea on to TV. We may be the best in the world with our period dramas but we do have great writers today, not just from the past. When was the last time Britain created a classic piece of original Science Fiction telly?

Ok, after actually trying to answer that question I've come up with Red Dwarf and the Tomorrow People both of which began in the early nineties, one as a sitcom in space, the other a kids program and itself a sequel to an eighties kids program.

Compare this to America which has so many brilliant SF shows the ones it has to cut are in fact brilliant.

Can you imagine the BBC taking a chance on a pre Buffy Joss Whedon? As much as there are problems with America, it is not with it's telly, even outside of SF there are shows as diverse as Ally McBeal, Sex in the city and The Sopranos. What do we get, endless make over shows, endless.

Ok, BBC 2 is doing quite well at the moment, there's an opera on. At least it's cultural, but exciting new shows, in the vein of thinking which created Dr Who and Blake's Seven, you must be joking. I don't blame the BBC for not taking scripts for Who, they'd be buried under mailbags, but for some reason British born new Science Fiction has become a rarity if not a taboo. It simply doesn't exist and that's a sad state of affairs.

Ooh, remembered another piece of SF that got made, around about 1996, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. So that's three then.

While I'm on the subject of Telly, saw an absolutely brilliant short japanese film a while back on C4 called Bus 46 (or 45?) I might have mentioned it before. A really beautifully acted piece. A man gets on a bus which gets attacked by some hoodlums, the female bus driver is dragged off and raped. Only the man goes to help but gets stabbed in the leg. The other passengers watch the event or ignore it, but they do nothing. When the driver returns to the bus, the man asks if she is ok. She tells him to get off the bus. He is confused having been the only one to try to help but does so and the bus drives off. Confused and hurt the man hitchikes further along the road, he is passed by police cars. He reaches the scene of the incident and overhears a policeman talking about the accident, a bus drove off the bridge, the driver must have been crazy, no survivors.

The look on the man's face at the end is a really beautiful look, a pleasure of a film to watch and not as disheartening as it sounds.

The Beatles and Tennessee

2005-03-27T01:19:00.000Z

There was once a journalist who went to interview Tennessee Williams. Williams met him outside the house and hustled him upstairs where he proclaimed he'd just heard the music of heaven. Tennessee turned to the gramophone and started it playing and the record was the White Album by The Beatles.

That is a fantastic story. We think of Williams as a million years away from The Beatles, can't imagine any relation to Eleanor Rigby and Blanche DuBois. Two completely different mediums. Williams is the dustbowl playwright, of the four greater than great 20th Century American writers - Williams, Steinbeck, Hemmingway and Arthur Miller, his America is the most distant, a noir beyond reality that somehow anchors itself in a greater reality than any of the others. The other three I find staid, too rooted in the actual. Williams understood the power of writing, the possible rather than the probable, the others only understood the power of stories. His natural progeny are William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson.

I saw The Glass Menagerie in the West End with Dame Diana Rigg. At the time I was still reeling from seeing Democracy by Frayn (Possibly the greatest play I shall ever see) and Oleanna by Mamet (Possibly the worst) so I didn't really appreciate it. Now I wish I could see it again. One of Williams' greatest assets is that southern states drawl which is imbued in his characters. It really is one of the great accents. Sometimes things strike you with immediacy, sometimes you don't realise their impact for years.

He was homosexual, apart from that I don't think I know anything about Williams. I've read and I've forgotten. But I know he liked The Beatles. I can imagine him, sitting on his bed in a sparse room, a typewriter on a table in a far corner, full moustache, gramophone on, listening to Ob La Di Ob La Da, or While my guitar gently weeps or perhaps Happiness is a warm gun. Maybe he danced when he was alone. I think that sometimes an image is all you need of a man to know him.

Deep Winter

2005-03-23T13:48:00.000Z

Fantastic piece of writing from Denton Welch:

When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death.
8th May, 1945

Civilisation

2005-03-22T22:30:00.000Z

There is a myth amongst politicians and philosophers that Civilisation, or at least modern civilisation, equals civilised people.

I think the word civilised is a fraudulent word. Is it possible to be a civilised person? Certainly there is no such thing as a civilised people. I consider myself an intellectual person, I think a lot. I know a lot, I understand a lot, yet I have a thirst for violence. I am not a violent man, I attempt to avoid it within my life as much as possible but I cannot deny that the one time I truly lost my cool and punched someone, I enjoyed myself.

I in fact have a need for violence. I hate hurting people but there are times when all I want to do is punch someone's head in and I wouldn't care who. I deal with this by going clubbing, dancing. Usually I have to go dancing at least twice a week to give my subconcious something to focus on, take my frustrations out on the dancefloor. Quite often I come home with bruised knuckles from punching walls while I dance.

Humans are violent, not all of them, but we are animals, animals kill for food, they fight for territory, they fight for a mate. All that is great and good about humanity has tried to eliminate this instinct to fight, to kill. Will we ever eradicate this instinct? I doubt it, I think it is indeed naive to believe we can. The Romans had human bloodsport to quench their bloodlust. Other cultures hotwired it into their religions. This was blood for the sake of pleasure. Knowing that the normal instinct for death could not be followed, they invented fun ways of inflicting it on people who could not retaliate. Today most of the world considers itself civilised, that it is wrong to kill, to maim, to injure for the sake of pleasure.

Yet executions in America are public to all who have an interest. Hangings were public to all and sundry in Britain barely seventy or eighty years ago. only in the past half century have we sanctified death, sanctified blood, mainly because of the sheer numbers of those lost in the great war, a pointless war, when we realised that blood for the sake of blood could never be worth it.

Yet we have not learnt the lesson, let us not be stupid. We did not send troops half way round the world to give freedom to a people in a country on the other side of the world. We did it for oil and our own safety (whether illusory or not). We did it for our own power. We did it because we could. The lives don't matter, the number of soldiers killed on either side don't matter. The number of civilians killed don't matter. We cannot put a number on how many people we are willing to kill before an objective becomes too great, that 5000 deaths is acceptable but 5001 is too many. Governments are run by the rich and the clever or alternatively the feared and the worshipped, whichever country we may be in, whether America, Iran, Britain, North Korea, Australia, Zimbabwe, Russia or Syria.

And the clever wish to become rich and the feared wish to become worshipped.

And still we want blood, we want to be better than, we want to be defended from, we want to have their resources, we want our freedom, we want them to be free, we want the money, or the fear, or the worship, essentially, we want the power. And because we cannot have six billion clever, rich, feared, worshipped dictators on this planet, because we pretend that we must live in a bloodless world, where, despite our instincts we cannot ever be violent, we coldly accept the violence that is put in front of us as some sort of substitute.

We have killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of people whom we were trying to save from a dictator that we ourselves armed. The people marched, protested, and the rulers took no notice. But this was for our own army. If any of us truly cared about human life, if any of us wished to call ourselves civilised we would bring the nation to a stop with our cries until the leaders had no option but to listen. Until then, we are as equal to the charge of murder as either Saddam Hussein or George Bush.

George Bush recently rushed back from holiday to pass legislation on a woman, who, in a vegetative state, has had her feeding tube removed and so will starve to death, which, although a stark choice, has to be marginally more humane than being left, essentially braindead for the rest of her life. I find it ironic that Bush, whose actions and decisions have killed countless, should fight to keep alive a woman without a life.

A person may consider themselves civilised, their actions may be reasoned, logical, even morally correct, if there is such a thing. But humanity will never be civilised, debate will always fall into violence, ego's will always erupt. It takes just one blow. And lets be truly honest, we all enjoy being the victor, no one wants to lose, in anything. We will always fight, we will always die, those who survive will say how terrible, and if they won, will be glad, and if they lost, will want revenge. And others will complain about the violence around us and blame it on tv or computer games or rock music and forget that it is inherent in this race of ours. We will never outlive it to gain some great nirvana. I do not excuse violence, do not endorse it, do not believe in it, but it is programmed in our genes. The strongest survive, this tenet applies to our structures, our countries, as well as our immediate circle.

Therefore, we must stop evolution, in our base terms, occuring in the political world. If we remove competition, we remove the need to fight. Violence will be bred out, eventually. There are two drawbacks to this; a> Without evolution there is stagnation and death, b> it'll never happen. The Human Race is aptly named. Currently our countries fight over beliefs. Soon we will fight over resources, we already are in some cases. Then, when too many are subjugated, and the supplies again run low, we will begin to fight each other. This too is happening. We forget that power and freedom are also resources.

I punched someone once and I immediately regretted it. I scared myself, not because I threw the punch, but because I enjoyed myself immensely while doing so.

Long Live Aslan Maskhadov.
Long Live Mahatma Gandhi.
Long Live Che Guevara.
Long Live Yasser Arafat.
Long Live Owain Glyndwr.
Long Live William Wallace.
Long Live Michael Collins.
Long Live Martin Luther King.
Long Live Spartacus.
Long Live Crazy Horse.
Long Live all those who have fought and died, whether remembered, or unheralded, in the pursuit of the greatest resource of all, a freedom that they would never see.

If violence is inherent in us, let it only be used in a noble cause. Where we can, let us follow Gandhi or King, in nonviolence, but it must also be recognised that it is possible to fight in two different ways. Honourably and dishonourably. It is the way of the world that honour has become so blatantly distorted.

This is not about religion, this is about oppression. If Osama Bin Laden and Islam were genuinely oppressed by America then they too would earn a place on the above list. They do not for they do not fight for freedom but for power. Islam is as betrayed by it's own worshipped religious leaders and rich political leaders as anyone in the west. This does not leave America in the right.

And no one can find a solution except in violence, not because there isn't one, but because deep down, we enjoy violence, we enjoy the power we have over another person. We enjoy creating fear and terror.

If we enjoy the violence we do to another person we destroy the reason we are forced to resort to it, for it should always be a last resort if at all.

Osama Bin Laden and George Bush, both enjoy this violence too much, and whatsmore, we as a people also enjoy it, or at the least believe in it, even if it is at a primal level. We cannot call ourselves peace loving. We should have ousted our leaders before we allowed them to condemn us.

We are not civilised. We never will be.

Mr. Clumsy

2005-03-17T15:23:00.000Z

Am happy for the first time in a long long time. I feel needed. Am lighting Sophie's and the two Jen's show. It's really good and possibly the best I've ever seen Sophie, she's also directed it.

Essentially I'm also running tech, although Lilo is named as SM, she hasn't been around and won't have anything to do. Gaz is sound and help for me. I feel back in control, just sorting it all in my way without anyone interfering.

Spent all day yesterday in the semi dark of the studio, and most of today and just really enjoyed myself.

I don't know the whole world of tech, probably never will, but I know enough now to do a good job.

Didn't stop me from a making a horrendous mistake. Took two spots from the theatre, not realising that Zoe's show was still on. one wasn't being used, the other was, fortunately just in a wash. So, thanks to PJ and Katy it got sorted. I mess the two Pauls round a lot. I don't mean to, but I'm still learning and try to be independent. I find it very hard not to be sometimes.

I've only slept 6 hours out of the last 48. My eyes keep going funny. I don't feel tired tho I'll occasionally catch myself falling asleep. But I have managed to right my day, instead of being up half the night and not getting up in the morning I think I've sorted it back to normal. We'll see.

I'm such a clumsy person at times. I've always been clumsy with my hands, technically and artistically, but I've only recently realised I'm clumsy with my words and my thoughts as well. Some of my decisions suffer because of it, but I can always see myself when I'm doing something stupid or clumsy, like taking those lights. I know it's stupid, but I can't stop myself.

Must allow myself to follow my gut and accept my subconscious mind, it's far more able than my conscious mind.

But when I get in, and I know what I'm doing. No one can touch me for quiet and efficiency.

Creation does not need Intellect.

Stalemate

2005-03-11T13:16:00.000Z

Comic Relief night tonight. I'm sick of it.

This time two years ago I went to Elle's house to watch it. I left my bike in the car park. An almost brand new bike that I'd treated myself to.
By the time I left the house it had been hit by a car or vandalised or something. One wheel was pinned against the frame and the rear mudguard was gone. I had to carry it home which was at least a mile. It's never ridden the same since. Something with the gears. I keep taking it in and they keep checking it out, but it simply doesn't ride well anymore and as far as I'm concerned the gears are shot, however many times they tell me they're fine.

Two years and I'm still pissed off about it. It was such a beautiful bike when I first got it.

I have an ancestor who ran away from home. He was in his late twenties with a wife and children at the time. Went off to work one day and disappeared. Turned up on the doorstep about fifteen to twenty years later and was taken back in.

Turned out he'd hopped a ship to the New World, went up north for the gold rush, discovered it and became a millionaire, married and had a family, wasted his money on wine women and gambling and when he bacame poor again simply hopped a ship back to blighty.

His American progeny included a future mayor of Washington D.C.

Well, all I need is a gold rush.

My great aunt Ethel was another funny one. She was a Victorian dropout. Her dad sent her to work in service, she was allegedly caught stealing and sent back. Her dad handed her over to the police and she went to prison (Holloway?) from whence she escaped and set herself up as a Ukranian Gypsy or some such. Married several times, had several children, some of whom were taken by their father back to Sri Lanka I think it was. At some point she was living in a caravan with some guy from the BBC. Last heard of she was running a shop in Hammersmith.

My family is full of strange characters. It's also full of some extremely intelligent and wonderful people. Very often these are one and the same.

I wonder if they thought in the way that I think. Mum says I'm very like my Grandad but I never really new him, he was so ill from as long as I can remember, but I know he was a wonderful man.

I certainly haven't found anyone, except perhaps Hayley, who thinks like I think, but thinks in the way I thought several years ago at least. That's why I've always been so drawn to her, I recognise something in her, that until recently I wanted to nurture. Now I feel like why would I want anyone else to be the way I am, to think like me, it almost always ends up disastrous.

I suppose that actually I run along for a good few years with people before running into a wall, whereas some people run into walls constantly. But I feel with me it's inevitable, it's because of the way I am constructed that sooner or later it will happen. Whoever I'm with, whatever I'm doing. I keep in touch with no one from Bradford, must try and speak to Danny, occasional contact. Very few people from Halifax. No one from before that and the list seems incredibly small now from two years ago from Carlisle.

The one constant in all your failed relationships is you.

How accurate is that.

Does this mean that almost every realtionship, whether platonic or romantic, that I have, is doomed to fail at some point. Once that person discovers me beyond the appearance that I put out am I doomed to fail in their expectation of me.

The image everyone sees is concerned, willing, caring for all and sundry, unafraid to involve myself in their private affairs if I think I can help. This is what life has made me, because no one has ever done it for me. Yet I always have the suspicion myself that underneath all of that is the hardest nut in the world, that I don't actually care for anyone but myself, that if I truly wanted to, I could walk away from everyone who loves me and everything that I love. I wonder if I actually have feelings at all, whether my brain is so powerful that I simply override everything with logic. And then I feel guilty about that.

Ruth no doubt believes I quit her show for selfish reasons. I believe I quit the show in the best interests of both of us, but have I simply constructed that argument to justify a selfish act? I honestly do not know. And thus I feel guilty that it might have been a selfish act. I feel sure that it wasn't but I do not know.

I feel like this about all my judgements. Where do my thoughts end and my feelings begin? Have my thoughts simply constructed my feelings in an effort to dress up my unpalatable decisions? Have my feelings affected my judegement or my logic?

I wish I was more like Dale, uneducated. Thoughts are thoughts, feelings are feelings. Everything that happens is justified, he is always in the right and no thinking occurs. No challenging occurs.

I have arrived at the conclusion that challenging everything, questioning everything, is the only true way forward. The only true basis of knowledge and discovery. The excellent book, Teaching as a subversive activity, puts it succinctly, unfortunately I've lent it to Elle, so I can't quote from it.

I challenge everything, even my own mind. I've always done it, but it is only recently, since I read the book, that I have become aware of what I do and why I do it.

The wise man knows, only that he knows nothing, goes the old axiom. I can't decide whether that is true or not. I feel like God, for God must know everything, and therefore he must challenge his every move himself, for no one else will. Surely he too would be paralysed by the conflict of thought and feeling, a paradox that cannot be resolved. A chess player playing against only himself, both sides in stalemate.

That is the price of understanding. Me and him together. I really wish I did know nothing.

On a lighter note, Dr Who is returning to the telly. A few weeks. Really can't wait.

Lik

2005-03-11T02:00:00.000Z

Not a good time.

Spent the day in college waiting to see John at 5. Arrived at 1 to return stuff to Ruth.

Both meetings were formalities which was annoying.

Tried to avoid feeling guilt. Failed utterly. Nothing to be done. The decision was the right one.

Spent the day reading Nabokov. Four short stories. Incredibly good and full of fantastic quotes:

"And what about God? Did or did not people who would resent any omnipotent dictator on earth look forward to one in heaven?"

"(actually, in diurnal life, she was a small dumpy creature resembling a mummified guinea pig)"

Two fantastic observations from The Vane Sisters

However I was struck by the story Lik. Lik is a "moderately talented" actor, he doesn't drink and has an inherited heart condition that will kill him. He fails to understand people and spends extravagent amounts of money on himself on pretty items that get broken.

This could be an almost picture perfect description of myself. There are some differences, I am not as timid as Lik, I am not Russian, however I have always been drawn to the Russians, my temperament might be described as Russian.

Nabokov did an excellent charachterisation with Lik, I recognised a lot of myself in him, a coincidence surely. Of course.

Another great Nabokov quote, said of Lik

"Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness."

I feel sick.

It's absolutely true. I seek out loneliness. I desire it yet hate it. It is my state of mind.

I don't understand the paradox but I've known for a long time. I rang Sabs and invited her over but no. She's a loner as well, though I don't know how much of that is bravado she puts on about it. She talks about getting a cat, the way she is, she'll never even have her own flat.

Perhaps that is why I'm latching on to her now more than anyone else, though she doesn't realise I am.

She's been alone. Even if she wasn't she's felt alone. It's the most terrifying thing in the world. That's why I always tried to be around as much as I could.

Because I've been further. I embraced being alone. I nearly comitted suicide and I nearly went insane but those couple of months at the end of Bradford and in Wales were the most terrifying yet liberating of my life. I faced down being alone, and won. I feel like I'm facing that again now, possibly on a permanent basis, for the rest of my life. I feel that if Sabs was with me, we could face that, alone perhaps but together. An awfully big adventure.

Of course, I presume a lot about Sabs and I don't think she ever would. But she might. I can't think of anyone else I could do it with. Anyone else, except perhaps Hayley (but that'd never happen) I'd have to be conventional.

See although wandering off into the sunset yonder with nothing except yourself scares me half to death, it also intrigues me, beckons me. I would like nothing better than to just wander off and just be forgotten about. Tramp my way around the world, see things that no one other person could ever hope to see.

Would I ever have the courage to just drop everything and live on my ingenuity and art? I feel like it might be a part of my future someday. Not immediately, but someday, and if it did happen I'd want to take Sabs, to share the experience. But she never would. She needs safety.

A girl, almost certainly Sian, was crying in the toilet earlier. I wanted to go and comfort her but I didn't feel I had the right, that I would be intruding. If it was Sian, then it is for Dave to comfort her. Dave was nice to me today, not that he isn't usually, perhaps noticed is a better word. He usually doesn't. He invited me down for a film. I said I would but never did. Was not in the mood for house company, none of them know what's going on with me. To be honest they aren't much more than acquaintances, which is how I wanted it when I moved in. Wanted some privacy. Still do, but I could kill for some company now. Someone who cares for me as I am, rather than makes conversation for the sake of it. I don't know how many people like that are left for me.

Lizzie did invite me paintballing next weekend. Accepted at once. She's a lovely girl. Be nice to spend some time around her.

Also ran into Natalia today, in a completely random place.

Mum and Katy coming up Saturday. Really glad.

Have to write my monologue. Thinking of calling it 'Once when he lost himself.'

Too tired.

This is Lik saying goodnight.

The Waiting Room

2005-03-10T13:31:00.000Z

So I quit Ruth's play and it is, almost certainly, not now going on. Ruth hates my guts.

Not that I was given a chance to explain. I was intending to tell her today which would give me time to sound out some possible replacements, except Lucy told Ruth I wanted to speak to her last night. So phone call at 11pm, her in Fats or wherever, can't really hear each other. She insists on knowing, hangs up on me. Now she won't speak to me.

Sod her.

When Aron dropped out of Hamlet, all but destroying it, I didn't fall out with him. I listened to his reasons, accepted them. When Debbie put the final nail in the coffin I was the same, even though my heart was being torn to pieces, I didn't blame them. Refused to. Every bloody day of my life I spend trying to understand other people, absorbing all the shit that they need to push onto someone else. Even this decision was tipped by the balance that in the long run it would be better for Ruth.

Yet she thinks I dropped her in the shit for my own selfish reasons. We've been good friends for a year at least, all she has ever seen me do is look out for other people, yet one decision which unfortunately at the moment affects her badly and I become a selfish bastard.

Sod her. If she knew me at all, she'd know that if anything, I need to be more selfish.

Her housemate Dee rang me up after Ruth hung up. She said we'd met before but I don't think we have. At the beginning of our conversation she was on the warpath. When I'd actually done some explaining she really didn't know what to do. I ended up being "in her bad books" and that it looked like I was being a selfish bastard. Which I wholeheartedly admit it does, but she was surprised to discover that it was not as black and white as it seemed. At the end of our conversation I felt she was supporting Ruth only because she knew her and not me. Which is perfectly acceptable, stand by your friends.

But sod her anyway, for even thinking that not just me, but anyone, would take such a decision based purely on selfishness.

Has anyone ever stood by me?

If it came to it I know Mike, Martin, Mark and Bob would, without question. Scott and Carl maybe. Even if they knew I was wrong they are people who would back me up as a friend.

This isn't about right and wrong, I know perfectly well when I am in the wrong, but I don't think I have any other friends in Carlisle who would just back me to the hilt. I used to think there were others, but their aren't, Hayley, Georgia, Deb, Sabs, Elle would question me or my motives. I don't really know about anyone else, I barely see anyone anymore.

About four months ago I was said to be the most trustworthy person on the course. I think that reputation went for a burton a long time ago.

And so we come back down to me, just me. No one can help me because I don't ask people for help. No one can understand me because the instant they see something they don't like they turn and run. They want me for what I can give to them, I don't expect anything in return for that, yet the instant that the relationship begins to flow the other way they cannot give anything.

Somehow it's ten times as bad that a good person suddenly seems to have a human failing, whether real or imagined. That one mistake of a good person, even if they have to choose between two equally bad mistakes, can permanently destroy everything that has gone before. And yet people who's failings are all too evident, who constantly let others down and do it remorselessly can somehow continue to endear themselves, that we forgive their each and every misdeed.

And so I become bitter and so the tide changes.

And the lines become blurred so that I don't even understand myself why I did what I did. I only know it was the right choice, for both of us, even if she doesn't realise it.

Did I do it for the right reasons? I feel I did. I remember I did. But now I am not so sure. I am capable of selfishness, of jealousy, of hatred, of depression, of all the terrible things that make up a man. But I am capable also of those that make a man worthy, love, honour, faith, incisiveness, confidence.

I am right. I was right. Does this mean I am right or that I am conceited?

Every feeling, every situation, every minute; is seen in a thousand different ways. There is no such thing as fact. There is only what we believe to have occured. We must make assumptions, put ourselves in other people's shoes, view everything from every angle, and even then, we can only create odds. We can only believe in what we see. What we hear and touch.

Because I know this above all things, I know more than others. I know that I retrace every angle, while others simply follow their eyes. I know too that this is a conceit. But I can see out of every pair of eyes, they cannot. This is why I am right. Why above others, I am right. Why, despite being conceited, I am not neccesarily wrong. Why, even if my decisions may hurt some, hurt myself, they are never illogical, they never fail to take others into account even if they cannot see it.

I feel that educated people in general think like this. People with the capacity and the ability to think beyond their own sphere. Is this elitist? Of course. This does not mean that it is not neccesarily true.

I feel like I do not know very many educated people.

Two

2005-03-09T16:47:00.000Z

Feel utterly bloody trapped.

After Hamlet collapsed I agreed to do Ruth's project. Two. However, every rehearsal we have now we just spend argueing. Some of it is my fault and some of it is her fault. She has a very set idea of how this play should be, yet she has given me equal directorial responsibility. So every single thing I come up with leads to an argument. If it was just her directing, I'd be fine, do as I am told. Not paricularly well, but I could do it. She says I argue for the sake of arguing and simply because she has an idea, I do argue for the sake of arguing but I do worry with how she talks about certain things, that she is going on decisions taken from previous performances of the show, rather than coming to the text fresh and allowing me to make my own decisions about the characters. Now I feel utterly trapped. Rehearsals are hell to get through. I do my utmost to be amenable but I feel now that my style of acting, of getting to grips with the character, which involves trying out new things is being impeded, that anything I try and suggest will be taken as a pretext for an argument because it goes against what Ruth has in her head. Even things I thought I'd successfully argued for have disappeared. Yesterday I said that at least some part of the set needs to be on rostra because I have to do a backwards pratfall over a chair. If this is not on a rostra I will blow my head open on the concrete theatre floor. Yet today when I was talking about where I thought we had agreed there would be rostra she did not seem to know what I was talking about.

We had an argument about whether we should charge for entry. She had already decided it should be free in. I said I thought we should charge. At least that one I won, I can't afford to pay £50 quid into the budget and not get anything back.

Now she expects us to learn about four pages of dialogue by tomorrow. I'm not sure I can be bothered any more. What seemed like a fun, little play to do at the start, now seems like a horrendous great piece of monolithic junk. I feel like I want to quit but that if I do I might as well just call off mine and Ruth's friendship, it would be a terrible betrayal. Especially considering what has gone on before. So do I carry on as I always do and put someone else's feelings before mine, allow myself to do a crap job because I will not feel that I am acting true to the character but being railroaded into someone else's vision of it. Or do I just walk out. Destroy Ruth's dream as mine was destroyed. Leave her in the shit. She's done nothing to deserve that. Yet this is why I am always depressed, I always give in. I always put myself out for someone else. Never think of oneself above another. This time, I truly feel like I would be heaping stupidity upon stupidity by carrying on like this, the way I'm being asked to rehearse.

I would argue with any director, Ruth thinks it's just her but I will argue with any director if I believe they are trying to push a charcter in a way they should not go. Especially seeing as I am supposed to be equal to her in directing. To then find that things are already set short of actual blocking, and any suggestion or attempt to discover the reason just sets of an argument. I don't doubt that I am an argumentative person and that some of this is my fault, Ruth accepts that some of it is her fault, but she gets so het up and it turns into an argument when I mean it just to be a discussion, I wouldn't bother if I did not have a good reason.

She feels that she is giving in every time, and I feel exactly the same way. We are intractable. Our ways of working are so completely different, I felt I was criticised for how I act, well, however she would like me to act, I must work how I work, otherwise I might as well quit now. Ruth works completely different to me, she has to have everything in performance exactly the way it is in rehearsal otherwise she will lose it. I can't work like that. The rehearsals are a guide they are the blueprint for the spontaneity of the performance, because otherwise I might as well be a puppet. The rehearsals are there for me to try out everything possible, to vary each time until you get a perfect fit. They are a process of creation, not simply to mould the cogs to a certain size to fit the machine which is how I see Ruth working the rehearsals. She says that all directors need actors to work in this way, yet I've never had a problem before. Georgia's show, I was experimenting with accents right up until the opening night. I simply couldn't get what I wanted, but I had to try, Georgia and Elle had no problem, they simply trusted me. As did Stefan, Leachy and John. David did try and control me. I don't think he succeeded though. It was my first real piece of acting. I think eventually he just let me carry on as I had to. I feel why can't Ruth just trust me on these characters. I don't think she will be as flexible as David, she can't let me carry on as I have to because she will see it as giving in to me, letting me win on her project.

She said I disregard the director and go off on my own on the night. I agree that yes sometimes I do that, in fact I do it quite a bit, but when you have an audience you allow them to carry you. Case in point, her last show. The first night, the audience were quiet and I performed, as I had rehearsed. I felt like it was a dreadful performance. I simply wasn't in it. The second night was brilliant, the audience were responsive and that allowed me to respond, I took it further, higher, gave one of the best performances of my life. Ruth had told me not to show emotion, that second night I ignored that completely and for that it was a better show, I feel sure that Ruth would agree, between the two nights the second was better, even if it wasn't what she wanted. To blindly follow, to ignore the opportunities the audience affords you, to be unable to vary even a slight movement of the hand is what causes performances to die, to drag. This was made very clear to me over the summer. It is what Ruth is asking me to do. It's only two nights but I cannot perform like that. I know that that is how she works. I cannot.

Looking at that last bit I feel that carrying on as we are, even beyond all the arguments, our different ways of working will end up leaving us with a mess. I honestly don't know how we can get beyond it, short of bringing in a seperate director which Ruth is loathe to do, or seceeding everything to her and just getting on with it as best I can, which she would also hate because that would seem like leaving all the work to her and I would hate because, like in Debbie's play, I'd feel like I had no access to the things that make me a performer. I'd just be saying lines, moving where I had to move. Ideally I would like to call the whole thing off right now, go back to writing my monologue. I honestly feel straitjacketed by Ruth's style and she obviously feels like I am trying to control everything. Even if we did both completely understand each other, I don't see that either of us would be able to adapt well enough to alleviate the situation.

Rehearsals are bad, I find myself being trapped at such an early stage, where I want to experiment, thus I find I can't work on the character, thus she thinks I'm not trying, which makes things worse.

I cannot act in a straitjacket. At the same time, I cannot do to her what was done to me. How in God's name did I find myself in this situation. My degree or my friend.

Thing is, if I fail to do as well as I can do in this show, it's not just my degree that suffers but also Ruth's. If I do pull out, she may need to cut a bit more but she can find a good actor, someone who can work well with her. She would have five weeks to get them up to speed. It's not as if I've made much progress. Of course, she may be unable to do that, the third years all have projects they need to work on, the first and second years all have classes.

How can I possibly pull out, how can I possibly stay?

I need to make a decision tonight, she asked me how I felt about doing the play today, I said I was fine.

Shit shit shit shit.
John's probably gone home so I can't even talk to him for advice.

So ruddy tired.

Went to see The Good, The Bad and The Ugly at the cinema yesterday. Turned up five minutes late. Had no one to go with and felt alone. Nearly didn't go. Glad I did. The print was awful, scenes disappeared. and then from the shoot out in the deserted town, to the shoot out at the graveyard it was perfect.

Two incredible pieces of acting, Eli Wallech as Tuco. A petty bandit who goes to see his brother, the friar of a monastery. His brother tells him of the death of his parents, how they longed for him to be there. Tuco falls against a wall hiding his emotion, then snaps back, now anger, they blame each other. Blows, then Tuco leaves and is back to his old self making jokes to Blondey, but you can still see the pain in his eyes.

Then Blondey and Tuco roll up to a battlefield, the North and South, both fighting for control of a bridge. The drunkard Captain of the North sees his men killed, day in, day out. All he wants is to see the bridge destroyed. It haunts him. In the last attack he is fatally wounded. Blondey and Tuco see him and you can see the compassion in Clint Eastwood's eyes, usually steel and unemotional. With barely a word, Blondey and Tuco take hold of a box of explosives and head out into pitched cannon fire to blow the bridge.

And of course Morricone's score. Surely the greatest composer of the twentieth century. A bit I had forgotten, where Tuco runs around the graveyard, the score was magnificent. Must get hold of it.

Must ring Linz tonight. Might have to go round, don't want to, am so tired, haven't really wanted to speak to anyone in such a long time; Addy, Pam, Glen, Gavin, Neil, Mooney, Naomi. All people I need to ring, stay in contact with and I haven't.

Invited Sabs round this evening. Will have to ring her, she has no credit. Hope she does, but knowing her she won't, she's like me. She's about the only person I feel I can talk to at the moment, even tho I mostly listen. Her and Mike for some reason. But I barely ever see him.

He gave me some Dr. Zeus CD's, I tried to pay him for them but he wouldn't hear of it. Must listen to them.

Felt like crap this morning. Will feel like crap tomorrow morning too. Hate waking up late. I've started falling asleep in the early evenings and then being wide awake throughout the night. Not good.

Begun to dream again as well, sleeping on the floor, I tend to stir when my alarms go off and so when I do wake up I remember my dreams. Haven't had any for so many years it's a novelty. Cand remember any of them except that in one, a silver merry go round music box thing with the inscription Comic Relief 2001 was the most emotional thing I had ever witnessed, this dream being set in the year 2500 or something, after some terrible war or something like that. I woke up in tears. All I wanted was this merry go round with Comic Relief etched on it, it meant so much, world peace or something.

Need to ring Samuel French. Too late now, have to do it tomorrow morning.

Italy's Tragedy

2005-03-08T14:08:00.000Z

God bless and keep Nicola Callipari. A martyr to the needless and senseless killing of war. We train soldiers to be killers, why has no one realised this. Set killers loose in a war with which they can kill with impunity, inflict pain with impunity, have power with impunity and innocent people will die. The man was a hero, he died, needlessly, in saving another. America needs to bring these killers to justice. All armed forces everywhere need to examine themselves for they are all implicit in creating and training professional killers. This is wrong.

The Future

2005-03-08T13:31:00.000Z

Have been thinking of my future. I can do this teaching postgrad, I'd enjoy it. I can use the money to buy myself a boat. And then I want a field. In this field I will build a shed, or small building, solar panelled for energy. I can set myself up a little den for working. The field will have a vegetable garden and a flower garden. I can plant some trees and let the rest grow into a meadow. I can build stables for the horse that I will have. That would make me happy.

Wandered round town yesterday, ran into Ed who wasn't feeling too good. We bought Futurama on video. The first and third seasons for £12. That's what I enjoy about DVD. Video's are so cheap nowadays. We went to doughnuts for food and walked back. I got a nosebleed.

There is nothing more humiliating than having a nosebleed in public, especially mine which are just terrible. I get them quite a bit in summer because of the pressure, very rarely in winter or spring but that's two in a week or so. Ed fished out a hankey that he had bought for a prop in Blasted and gave it to me. I was very grateful.

Fell asleep watching futurama and roused myself in time to head to Sabs'. She seemed happy enough and we had a good night out. A quiet night, which I was grateful for, despite the Geordies who have formed their own little fanclub for me. It's quite sweet really. Every time I went to dance I got cheered onto the floor.

I don't know what I feel for Sabs'. I care for her a lot but she would have nothing but scorn for me if she thought I was her friend out of love or pity. I just think she deserves a better chance at life, Linz too, neither of them really had much choice as to where they are now, victims of circumstance buffeted by other people's failures. They have their shortcomings as everyone does, but society fails to allow for theirs in particular. I wish I could offer both of them more than what I do, help them start again, but I need to be in a financial position where I can help to support them, and also they would need to take a risky leap, from the barely survivng but familiar world to a completely unfamiliar, unpredictable world. I wish I could persuade Sabs' at least, to show her what life really is worth. There are signs she is getting better, she at least acknowledges that she now has to get a job. She simply hasn't got enough money to pay the rent and feed herself properly. I worry.

The Lords have rejected the terror bill, the one about house arrest. Judges have to be involved they say. It goes back to the Commons. I really really hope we get shot of the whole blasted lot of Labour. At this point I am ready to settle for anyone else, even the Tories. Labour have lost every single value they might have ever had. It's not just Blair, I hated his government from the moment they were installed but I didn't realise just how liberal the original cabinet were compared with the disciples to Blair that now inhabit the posts. Remember Frank Dobson, Robin Cook, Michael Meacher, Mo Mowlam, Clare Short, all good people. I wasn't neccesarily a fan of their policies (except Meacher's) but at least they were working for the good of the country. The current cabinet may say they are still doing so but it is the biggest load of tripe. They are working for the good of Blair.

Computer Dreams

2005-03-07T13:04:00.000Z

I pinpointed my feelings on Deb's pregnancy. Same I had when Naomi told me she had got married. A sense that life is passing me by. I felt that on Saturday but not any more. I am increasingly being drawn to the works of Bruce Chatwin, that kind of loneliness of the traveller. I have the itching foot and feel I must go. I have a few months left here and at least a year in Leeds. Mum has found a teaching postgrad for which I would get paid £6000. Deadline is August. I think I would actually enjoy that. It would set me well financially. I have absolutely no intention to enter teaching professionally however. The government fails again. I'm taking the money and running. It can at the very least get me a boat that's livable on. I would be happy with that. No worries about housing.

I have taken to the library for a daily fix of writing. I only get an hour here which is annoying but will do until the net is restored at home. I am glad of this, it helps to soothe me. It allows me to write that which I could not do by hand. I do keep a handwritten journal. It has about a dozen entries over two years. I could never have thought of writing as a career if I had been born at another time. I simply do not have the discipline for prolongued hand writing. Even now, I find it much easier to enter into this diary than to continue with my novel, which I have restarted yet again. About five different beginnings in as many years, but this time I think I have finally come to an understanding about the art that will allow me to continue. But it is a slow process.

Today has so far been leisurely, the best of many weeks. Woke about ten to find that Ruth was ill and rehearsal was cancelled. Stayed in bed and read until twelve until I ventured here to write. The only downside being that I cannot quote from what I have read. Quite a pleasantly warm day, although I have no doubt that it will chasten later. It is ironic that Carlisle has escaped the snow that has stopped most of the country these past couple of weeks. I cannot wait for the summer however. I keep catching myself admiring my tan. It is one of the best aspects, I feel, of inhabiting this particular body. My tan's last for years. My first tan I remember, I must have got about 3 years of age. In the valleys we would be outside constantly running around on the mountains even at such an early age, it was true freedom. I had that tan at least until I was nine or ten. It was a proper tan, a gold rather than a brown. I've always been proud of it.

Why oh why am I lost in these pallid winter and early spring months. Come summer I know my life shall once again become jam packed with work. I long for blue sky, a worthy heat. A sun that burns. Of course I know that as soon as these things come around the heat will exhaust me and trouble my sleep and I will wish for winter. I feel alone again.

Going to Sabs' this evening and we will go clubbing. She seems to be alone too, although she does not show it. She has her family and a few people. She is, like all women are now, someone who hates to show emotion. I am like that also, but I wish I could.
She is so painfully thin. When I sleep with her I can feel her ribs.

Ray calls her a Jew, presumably as a friendly insult. From reading diaries today, I was struck by how people see someone and draw inferences. How can they tell a Jew if they do not wear the clothes? Leon was Jewish but he had to tell me so. Now that I think, I can see the similarities between him and Sabs, who couldn't be less interested in religion if she tried. Ray looks as Jewish as any of them but probably has as much Gypsy blood as anything.

I feel that my face would have been considered handsome in the Edwardian era. Striking even. I personally consider myself handsome now, but only when I shave and bother with vanity and that is rarely. I wander about with my left eyebrow almost permanently raised. I consider my face a lot, I do not think I would swap it for another, it is not a face that can show my feelings and emotions. It is thin and high and my eyes are permanently hidden behind spectacles. It is rigid and uneffusive and faintly ridiculous but I have become attached to it. It is me and it becomes me more than any other could have.

I wish to talk of many other things, of politics, religion, friends and enemies but time runs short and I must adjourn until my next opportunity.

Strange World

2005-03-05T15:17:00.000Z

Four bithday parties in one day. Tom's 25, Nick's 20th, Chris and Deb's 21st's.

Deb has amazing news to tell us at her party. But i've just read it in her email. She's pregnant. Happy for her. Don't know what I feel tho. Strange feelings. Glad I know now rather than at the party. Hope everything is gonna be good for her in the next eight months or so.

Tons O' Stuff

2005-03-03T17:37:00.000Z

The internet got cut off at home so couldn't update. Brief note cos loadsa stuff happened and not got time:

Hamlet cancelled. A year and a half of work down the drain. Brought down by two of my best friends. Trying not to be bitter. Cried a lot.

Sabs and Lindz no longer speaking at all.

Aron and Lucy going out. Still trying not to be bitter.

Doing Two with Ruth. Hate it, not because of anything but just generally hate life at the moment.

Dissertation written and handed in. 6000 words of pure conjecture. Never know, might be a work of genius.

Debbie's and Chris' 21'st on saturday, also Nick's 20th and Tom's 25th. Four seperate parties. Oh boy.

Valentine's day. Not good.

Wales on course for the Grand Slam. Smashed Italy then what a match against France. Wales forever.

St David's day. Miserable as hell.

Lilo's bisexual!

Chris's masterclass soon. Good luck bro.

Gaz's gig cancelled.

Haven't spoken to anyone in ages.

Trying to write a monologue for me. For all my frustration.

Life has lost all meaning, except on the weekends when Wales win in the rugby.

Lighting Sophie's show sometime soon.

Room a tip.

Have lost all motivation.

Hungry.

Broke.

Saw Mike last night. Good Friend.

Tons of other stuff, forgotten most of it.

Salad Days in Bradford soon. Must get and see it.

No internet at home. Pissed off.

When my landlord finally gets round to sorting it out, I shall write more. Until then, very unlikely.

Ton O' Bricks

Theatre Of Beauty

2005-02-07T03:08:00.000Z

Theatre is a finite Art. Once a particular show ends, that is it. If you did not see that show, you never will. Thus theories about theatre all, tend to be about the process of bringing a script to stage, how to act, how to talk, etc. No one can talk about theatre they have not seen. They can read reviews, they can look at directors notes, hear the memories of people who did see, or were in a particular piece, but this is no substitute for actually seeing an historically important performance.

I am told that David Warner's portrayal of Hamlet in the sixties defined the character for a generation, yet I will never see that portrayal, how, therefore, can I assess it, write about it, discuss or analyse it.

This gives theatre one great advantage and one great disadvantage.

Advantage: Ideas are always fresh.
Disadvantage: Ideas are constantly reused.

Occasionally, someone like E. Gordon Craig comes along and introduces some new ideas. In 2000 years of theatre, there are about 30 to 40 people who can be identified as having changed the course of theatre. Shakespeare, Brecht, Stanislavsky, Boal, Artaud, Brook, Pirandello, Beckett, Shaw, Satre, Chekov, Meyerhold, Grotowski, Craig. These are the famous ones.

For one of the oldest identifiable arts to have only had theories applied to it in the past hundred years is incredibly strange.

Also, incredibly most of those people's theories concentrate more on the science of theatre, i.e how to get from the script to the stage by one of several routes, than to the art of theatre.

Artaud, Beckett, Brook, Meyerhold concentrate on the idea of theatre, what and why it is, as an art, rather than as a political engine which is how such people as Boal, Brecht, Satre, Shaw saw it as.

Artaud's theatre of cruelty is an idea of how to attune an audience into an entity capable or recieving his vast ideas, by being cruel and unusual to them. Beckett's plays are symmetrical. Brook attempts to turn theatre into a religious experience, even replacing seats with pews. Meyerhold fought against Stanislavsky's realism, returning symbolism to theatre.

All of these are attempts to find out what theatre is and what it is capable of. They all miss the point. Theatre is everything and is capable of anything.

While each individual production may be part of a particular school of thought and may advance that school of thought.

I have lost my train of thought, it is nearly four in the morning, I shall continue this at another time.

Half Past Two In The Morning

2005-02-07T03:07:00.000Z

I am currently eating dry cereal because I have run out of milk. I have no other food left.

Actually I have plenty of food.

But it is all in tins.

I've had it for months.

But I have no tin opener.

Keep dropping cereal down my front.

Why am I awake at this ridiculous time of the night/morning?

It will be 5am before I even think of going to bed.

I have to meet Haley at college for midday tomorrow.

I should really start my disertation. It's due in in 21 days.

How do you spell Disertation? Is it one S or two? Neither seem right.

I have done no research.

I have to get Tim amd Deb to sing down the phone at my brother.

Tim didn't like me bragging at him about how England lost.

I have to find a couple of Rapier's from somewhere.

Not an easy thing to find, rapier's.

But possibly easier than basket swords.

Whatever possessed me to think producing and directing Hamlet would be easy?

Damn, run out of cereal.

Now I'm going to get hungry.

Bed would be a good idea.

Except I've been sleeping on the floor for the past fortnight.

Using a beanbag as a pillow.

The superbowl on telly. Why?

Americans should learn how to play Rugby.

That's without padding and helmets, and much more physical.

Silverboots should be elected God.

Definitely no more cereal, just crumbs.

What is beauty and why does it exist?

Is it an invention of our brains?

Or was it created by God?

That is my dis(s)ertation, and how to relate it to theatre.

Because no one else has done that before.

Why did I decide that I wished to reinvent the performing arts?

Especially at 3am in the morning.

Patriots winning the superbowl. I don't care. I don't even understand what they are doing.

I wonder if great Americans like Tennesse Williams, John Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, Ernest Hemingway, cared about American Football.

I wonder why eagles don't eat frogs, probably too small.

What the hell am I doing?

Saturnalia

2005-02-07T01:25:00.000Z

Death Of The Pope

2005-02-06T21:44:00.000Z

The Pope, currently a bit ill and in hospital, recovered enough to say mass today.

Not that I dislike him or anything, but dying is about the only useful act he can still perform.

This is how I see it, the Catholic Church is responsible for mass murder in Africa, with it's anti contraception policies being one of the most direct reasons for the AIDs explosion there. This is not the fault of the current Pope, he took office before AIDs was recognised. He was old then and he is older now.

There are certain elements in the Catholic Church which don't appear to want to reverse this belief, whether it's because it will show that the church has been wrong? I don't know.

When John Paul II does finally pop his clogs, let us hope that an intelligent Cardinal makes the grade, someone who will not be afraid to make brave decisions.

The argument goes that every sexual encounter within marriage could result in a child, and so anything blocking that possibility is tantamount to preventing a possible life.

What the Catholic Church fails to realise, is that despite a lot Africans being quite devout Catholics, sex within marriage is not the only sex that happens, hence the massive spread of AIDs across the continent.

Thus thousands of Africans dying, against thousands of Africans not being concieved.

Shouldn't we be more concerned about thouse people already alive rather than those who do not yet exist.

According to the Catholic Church, apparently not. I do emphasise the Catholic Church rather than individual Catholics. There are individual Catholics who believe this, that if you have extramarital sex, then you deserve what you get. Just as the spouses of those people also deserve it, just as the children of those people also deserve it.

These individuals appear to be near the top of the church hierarchy. People who advise the Pope. I've nothing against JP II. On the whole he's been a good Pontiff, but the world has changed during his run. And on this issue at least, he has failed to change along with it.

We need a new pontiff, someone who will be unafraid to face down people who fail to understand this situation. So as I say, nothing against JP II, but his exit is required in order for someone else to become the voice of God on Earth, and let us please please hope that they can make a difference and give these people some spiritual guidance that won't kill them.

Africa cannot afford another ten or twenty years of ignorance.

Mr Walpole's Quote

2005-02-06T01:32:00.000Z

Life is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole

Very true Horace. Very true.

Time Out Of Mind

2005-02-05T22:56:00.000Z

I sometimes get dreams of the future. Not very exciting dreams I must admit. They are of me brushing my teeth or sitting on a train. These invariably come true, nothing new in that. There are people far more attuned to that sort of thing than me, unless of course we are all dreaming it up, but I think not.

Some guy painted 9/11 before it happened.

But anyway, when it happens to me it is just slightly advanced De JaVu (How on earth do you spell that?) Until one day when the incident of cleaning my teeth happened.

I remembered the exact movements that I had seen myself perform in the dream some time ago, when I looked in the mirror, when I spat etc.

This time, instead of just doing what I was to do, I deliberately made movements that had not occured in the dream. The weirdest thing happened, my memory of the dream changed to what I actually did. Now I understand that the brain is a funny thing, you can see things that don't happen, remember false memories etc. This does not prove anything, however, here is a conjecture of what it would mean for time, if my mind was not playing tricks on me, and I actually experienced what I believe I experienced.

First: Time is predestined.

Secondly: This predestiny can be changed.

However, we can only claim predestination if we know what the future is, what path we are set to follow, what path we can move to. Also by its very definition, predestination cannot be changed.

The way I explain this is as follows:

A future exists, whatever happens, there is a future. There is also a past. Whatever happens, the past will always exist.

If we had the ability to view the past, we could go back to a major event, WW2 say. However, WW2 is an event that has already occured, short of actually interfering in the event, it would play out exactly as the history books say it does. Japan would attack America, Germany would attack Russia. No matter that if we could see these events as they play out, we would see Hitler and Hirohito making these decisions as if they were fresh.

Therefore is it not possible to concieve that time for us has already happened. That we are playing out the events of our life as they happen, each decision fresh and of ourselves, yet at the same time we are in the history books of a future civilisation, or that the universe has already ended.

There are people who claim to know the future, I am not one of them but I know that I have dreamt things which have later happened.

We must remove ourselves from the idea of time being a dimension. Of it stretching like length or height. It may occur or have occured all at the same time, and how would we know?

Only once you are aware of what is going to happen, can you change what actually happens.

If this is possible, is it not then possible to understand psychic activity, having a previous life under hypnosis may just be connecting with someone who is living out their life in the same instant that all time occurs in, as you are. Ghosts become rational, people who see the future may simply connect with themselves in a future viewpoint.

Time might simply be a form of energy released in the big bang or it might be something else entirely.

People say they don't believe in God because there is no evidence of him, yet what actual evidence is there for time. The clocks tick, the earth goes around the sun, rocks weather, people grow old and die, yet these are physical, chemical and biological processes. We can slow them down or speed them up with advanced scientific principles. They simply occur and continue occuring until the mechanism or the parts involved get worn down to the point of stopping.

If we travel faster than light we can 'travel back in time' by moving to somewhere faster than we can see what is happening in that place, yet when we arrive at that place, we would see what is happening at that point in time, not the past.

In such a viewpoint, does time even exist?
Is it simply that our brains are able to delineate between this time and that time, sure, the usage of the idea of time as a dimension is a useful concept. We work on weekdays and have the weekends off. Dinner is at 12 o clock. WW2 began in 1939 and ended in 1945.

Take this for what you will.
I have stopped believing in time. If it ever existed at all, it has already occured. My life is already over and everything I will do is already completed, while at the same time, I must make decisions that will alter the future. It is simply that the future is already in place, has already happened. It does not mean that my decisions and actions are not fresh.

The Right Foot Of Stephen Jones

2005-02-05T17:42:00.000Z

Jones has had three scoring chances so far. (20 mins in) of which he has made none. But Wales are in front 5 - 3. Which is fantastic.

Jones is a good player, not Neil Jenkins but he is good. Now just made his first score.

As a sports player you are either decent, good or fantastic depending on how much work you put in, you can have good days and bad days, and in a team hopefully enough players have good days. Jason Robinson and Matt Dawson are currently the only people stopping England being demolished. Stephen Jones is having an off day, but the team is still doing well.

There is no such thing as a bad artist. You don't have good or bad days. You are either a brilliant artist or you are in the wrong profession.

The photo shoot was a shambles. No one's fault really. I didn't realise the mill would be closed on saturday. Aron was tired, in a bad mood and unable to show anything really. I couldn't think of anything to motivate him until after the shoot. The light was awful and Haley isn't the most experienced with portraits. No brilliant shots that I saw, but we'll see on Monday. Otherwise we'll try again. Next time I'll know how to get Aron motivated. Hadn't thought about it, never done it before. It's all experience. But I wasn't happy. And then, to really piss me off, walking home there was absolutely beautiful sunset light glinting off the buildings. Where the sun moves beneath the clouds so all the light just reflects and reflects.

I may sound like I'm just whining about being single sometimes, but it's more than just that. I don't have anyone to tell me I'm doing well, to cheer me up, to tell me if what I'm doing is not very good, to give me confidence in myself, to make it worthwhile coming home at the end of the day. To support me on my off days.

I've never had that, never. And so I've developed an overriding sense of confidence in myself, a sense of belief, because no one else will give it to me. I know I'm a damn good artist, I stretch myself, I know exactly what I need to do as a director, I know what I need to achieve. I know the final piece will be great.

But what if it isn't. What if I'm nothing more than a mediocre artist. It's a subjective profession, so no one can tell me I'm useless except myself. Thus I have supreme self confidence and self doubt at the same time.

I have no one to believe in me. No one to balance my fears. That is why I hate being alone, I also have no one but myself to blame for this.

Today I failed as a director, I could not achieve what I wanted, and the failures will only increase as my life goes on. There will be successes but the failures will always be there, and this was a small one by comparison.

To be honest, I've never really failed in a way that mattered. This one just means that it will take more time to get something done. It's not terrible if we miss the deadline for this brochure.

But I feel like I should have thought of making Aron go through Ruth's monolgue as he posed, I shouldn't have made the mistake about the mill, I should have asked someone with a bit more experience that Haley to do the shoot, I should have realised that the sunset would have been great.

I have no one to warn me of these mistakes, I have no one to pick me up when I am down. No one to trim my excesses. No one to turn to.

It feels like hell.
And I can't see an end to it.

The game?
England 9
Wales 11

At 77 mins Wales were 8 - 9 down with a penalty. Stephen Jones walked away and let Gavin Henson, Silverboots, take the kick.
Henson was man of the match, gave the best performance on a rugby field I have seen in years, is now the latest Welsh Rugby God, saviour of Welsh Rugby, and the man who beat England for the first time in six years.

But credit also to Stephen Jones, who had a bit of an off day as far as kicking was concerned but didn't allow his pride to create a fall. The team came through.

I've never had anyone but myself, never let myself trust in someone else, until Natalie. And then had my heart broken and a breakdown. Not Nat's fault.

I make mistakes from time to time but everyone does.
I'm old, lonely and bitter, but bloody hell I refuse to be a mediocre artist.

Sitting here in the dark, as my light has gone.

If Wishes Were Horses

2005-02-05T14:09:00.000Z

I never shot a man down in cold blood
for taking what I had
but I wanted to.

I could see him in my mind
clutching at his chest
and falling to the ground
as I walked away

If wishes were horses
Beggars would ride
If I did what I wanted
I'd be locked up inside

I never shot a man down in cold blood
for taking what I had
but I wanted to

I never quit my job
packed a single bag
and left this nowhere town
but I wanted to

Standing by the roadside
my thumb is in the air
and I'm out of here

If wishes were wheels
Beggars would ride
Lincolns and Buicks
with leather inside

I never quit my job
packed a single bag
and left this nowhere town
but I wanted to

Oh Mary
What has happened to your son
Nothing in this world
ever seems to go the way
that he wants it to

I never met a woman
who could love me like she did
but I wanted to

She's in some other town
in some other state
with some other man
and a child or two

If wishes were horses
this beggar would ride
across all that distance
to be by her side

I never met a woman
who could love me like she did
but I wanted to

I never met a woman
who could love me like she did
but I wanted to

Bruce Henderson

Wales For The Slam

2005-02-05T13:49:00.000Z

Never went to speakeasy. But neither did Haley so that's ok. Ended up with Sabs. Of course her and Lindsey's fight was just drunkeness, Linz's paranoia makes everything worse than it is. They've made up anyways.

So spent the vening with Sabs and me and her went out, just us, for the first time ever.

The Wheel was more crowded than I've ever seen.
Housemates were in, as were the Geordies, Mal and Carl have agreed to do the filming for Hamlet which is great. Debbie and Russel, Mike, Rory, Dave, Scott, Andy, Ed, Phil, people I don't seem to know but who seem to know me, plus a whole load of Sabs' exes, and Dan, whom she currently fancies and is desperately trying not to fancy, plus the usual jackasses who spend the whole night simply trying to get off with her. Even when I am making blatantly obvious signs that she is not available.

Gav was in. Hadn't seen or heard from him in five months. He'd been dumped and returned to Scotland, now on the verge of running his own video shop. He is just one of the lovliest blokes I know, so completely personable. I barely know him all that well, we just met a few times in the wheel, yet we were hugging like old friends. That's the thing with him, you feel like you've known him your whole life. Just really an incredible guy and a pleasure to know him. Got the feeling he may do a QT later in life.

Got talking to the girl from the guild, Amanda, she is on musical theatre, gorgeous voice and very pretty. I say talking, I kind of shouted, having strained my voice in the club, and I doubt I made a good impression, that can be corrected. At the very least why not try.

Me and Sabs had a great time, I told Linz I loved her but was not in love with her. Because I'm in love with Haley, which is true. I know Sabs doesn't and never will see me as anything more than a friend, and I'm happy with that. But I wonder if it might not be possible we could end up together. There are very few men that don't see her simply as a sex object, and to be honest, both of us could end up in ten years still being alone.

She lets me spend the night with her sometimes, when I'm feeling lonely, and need someone to hold. I'm gonna ask her if I can stop sunday, wanted to last night but left it too late.

Went to see House Of Flying Daggers with Deb and Russ. Somewhere in the film was a fantastic storyline and most of the visuals were gorgeous, but then got spoiled by the CG graphics, and then the director let dramatics kind of get in the way, the emotional weather I could handle, even the cliche of the dead woman (Zhanf Ziyi, fantastic actress!!!) summoning up the strength to talk when held by lover etc. But then she repeated this little trick about five times. It literally took her 25 minutes from recieving her fatal wound, to actually dying. 10 minutes into this, Debbie dissolved into laughter and I followed not long after. A director working on fantasy should never allow his imagination to overreach the project. It spoilt what could have been a brilliant film.

Am rather worried about Dan. He's said he can do one day a week Hamlet rehearsals. Even with three months, thats only twelve rehearsals, and Claudius needs more work than that, don't think he realises how big the role is, he hasn't yet read the script or even watched a film version. It's a pity, if I can't get more out of him, I will have to drop him, but there is no one else I know that I can see in that role. I could maybe get Richard to come down from Scotland, but he looks younger than Aron and I could not put him and Ruth in the same production after hearing what I heard last night. Dave maybe, Leo would be the same problem as Dan, Pauley already pulled out of playing Rosencrantz, a far smaller role, Mark Chris and Martin aren't really right for the part, Bob, possibly but he has a tendency to ignore direction, it might work for Addy, other than that I could ask Glen to come back or bring up Dave P, though I'd have to sort board and lodging for him.

Photoshoot at 4 for the first touch of publicity.

Must pop in see Phil, get his CD.

Then Wales vs England at half five.
If we win I will be happy for the rest of the month. I will also torment Tim at least until the end of the year.

If we lose, which we won't, well, I won't even go there.

Now, promised myself the Nicol Williamson version of Hamlet, and Explosions In The Sky's second album, never mind that I can't afford them.

Fight The Battle Of Who Could Care Less

2005-02-02T15:50:00.000Z

Three hours sleep.
Spent the morning on a sugar high, ran round with manic glee.

Lecture with Gwyn. Poor her, she's a lecturer, we're Performing Arts students.

Stevo took a tantrum at her, one of the funniest things.

"Why the hell are we having to waste time with this fucking piece of shit crap when we could be on with doing stuff thats actually relevant to us and to our careers."

Kind of summed up the mood of everyone in the room.

To be fair to Gwyn she did take it all on board and work something out for us. She is a teacher and she does care about us. It's not her fault we have to do the module.

However she doesn't help herself when she uses sentences such as "I shall endeavor to assist you on the work involved in this module." Anyone else in the world would simply have used the words. "I'll be around to help if you need it."

She's too highly educated and organised and rational. A manager's dream. On a dry literature course she'd have been great. We ain't dry, we certainly ain't literature. We are action people, and unfortunately Gwyn's lectures bore us stupid.

Imagine an out of control nursery class, only with kids who are old enough to know that they can get away with not caring. Pauley drew a picture, Ed fell asleep, Tim started playing a music video on his phone, Eric Prydz of all things and just sat there gawping while the music blared.

It's not that they disrespect Gwyn, it's that they simply couldn't give a sweet goddamn.

I'm used to jumping through hoops, it doesn't really bother me any more. Fortunately it does them.

Did some Hamlet stuff, came home, resisted temptation to buy. Sugar high coming and going.

Losing the light.

Must go see Sabs and Linz. See if I can't sort things out. To be honest, probably can't. but gotta try.

Chainging

2005-02-02T03:13:00.000Z

Regrets

2005-02-02T02:35:00.000Z

Not a good day, or at least it was a good day until about an hour ago when one of my best friend's started getting it together with my ex.

My only ex.

Not that I mind in particular, it's coming up about 11 months since me and Lucy split up and I'm rather glad that it is Aron with her and not some random bloke. Aron will take care of her.

Me and Lucy never really clicked when we were together, in fact we didn't click at all. When she broke up with me there was no feeling of anything except disappointment, and also the fact that I'd just bought her a pair of £50 earrings from Harrods, that I've never seen her wear. But that was it, I never really knew her and she certainly didn't have a clue about me. I've got to know her a lot better since, living in the same house has helped. But there was never anything there. Aron and Lucy make a lovely couple and I hope it works out for them. They both needed someone. I'm glad they've found each other.

Of course, it doesn't stop me feeling like crap.

It's not Lucy per se, it's missed opportunities. I can't say I haven't had my fair share of them, and I've passed over or screwed up every single one.

Anya, Ginger Jen's friend was eyeing me up tonight. She's a lovely person but I've focused in on one particular girl and being with almost anyone else would be a lie, certainly someone I don't really know, so I passed up yet another opportunity.

Can't help feeling I'm gonna be on the shelf all my life.

Speakeasy

2005-01-31T05:05:00.000Z

Just realised I need some poems for the speakeasy on wednesday, I've just been reading from other poets. I have lost several of my notebooks and the old poems I have, I look back now and think are just very immature, important to me at the time, but all just teenage angst that I had.

And I can't do Sapphire again. I've done it several times. It is a damn good poem, the best I will ever write, period, and Haley hasn't heard it yet, she will be there on wednesday, which is a good enough reason to make an impression. Roberto (seemingly the most ridiculously talented young poet in Britain) will blow everyone else away as usual, but I am talented enough to at least put up a decent fight.

Mission: Beat writers block, write two incredibly great poems for Wednesday.

GK Chesterton yearned to be forgotten, that he might be rediscovered.

Sapphire

She's sitting there
Just sitting there
Staring out at the sea
The everliving, everdying sea
She looks at me, and looks away
Waters of sapphire grey
Reflected in her eyes
And I run towards her
Losing my breath in the salt spray mist
To the place where she had been
I look out at the sea
And those waters of sapphire grey
And I realise
I realise at last
That she just
Ebbed away.

Free Iraq?

2005-01-31T02:22:00.000Z

Iraqi polling stations have just closed.

A few bombs, several million votes, 30 dead, resounding success.

And so there might be democracy in Iraq, but freedom?

I know I'll be accused of taking my freedoms for granted, but I understand Hamlet when he talks about Denmark being a prison, Rosencrantz replies Then is the world one. Hamlet's stark answer, a goodly one.

Living where I live is great. I have freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom to work and earn a good wage. Many freedoms. But I am not a free man.

The ancient Greeks defined a Free Man as a political entity. A man who participated in the ongoing social and philosophical debate and had a say in the decisions taken by the political body.

This I resolutely do not have. I have no say on what my government does or does not do. I can protest, but they will not listen, I could partake in local democracy but that has nothing to do with larger issues, such as Fox Hunting, ID Cards, Immigration, Terror Laws, Policing, etc etc. We may have democracy in this country, but as the Greeks would see it, we are all slaves to the government's wishes. This is why, in Britain, very few people ever bother to vote any more.

I envy Iraqi's. They have been given a great freedom that has been denied them for many years, the freedom to vote for their government. They have shown the will and strength to excercise that freedom. They have come out of a period of darkness, not in the most graceful manner, but they have progressed nonetheless, let us hope that a fledgling democracy will not kowtow to America, will not conciously exclude any Iraqi from the decisions of their own government, will not be destroyed by fundamentalist Islamism, that it will take a long long time before their democracy becomes as cynical as Britain's or America's. They truly, at this moment in time, have a greater freedom than anyone here in the West

It must be nice to be able to have such faith in the political process. But bile must be reserved for another time. All Good Luck to the Iraqis, who today started out on an uncertain road, but at least it is a road as opposed to the desert they have just left.

I personally, will put my faith in Lord Byron, again I take from The Assassin's Cloak.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestastion of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of a universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, no worse, for a people than another.
1814

Alright, Byron never saw Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Hussein, US Imperialism, Islamism, Apartheid or any of the really brutal regimes. But I understand and sympathise with the sentiment.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream.

2005-01-31T01:33:00.000Z

Finally finished the script of Hamlet, and what's more it's under sixty pages. Which means its more or less the correct time as well.
That is the worst part of this project out of the way, everything else will be a doddle compared to slaving over a keyboard. Original material is fine, copying is hard work. Especially as my shift button is sticking.

Act 2 scene 2, ridiculously long even with the cuts. I put The Thin Red Line on while I wrote. A truly brilliant movie and one that I don't need to watch. Just listened to the dialog and the music. Runs at three hours. Took me the entire film to get that scene copied down, by the end I was just throwing out huge chunks of dialog.

But anyway, now at least the script is in a state that can be understood, in large print and with plenty of space for rehearsal notes.

I'm not worried about the rehearsals, they are all good competent actors and we have three months. Which is why I'm being positively lazy about this. The actors keep coming to me asking when we are getting started, it's good to keep them waiting a short while. I trust my own experience now, this is my third production, second directing credit. I know exactly what I'm doing now, that may sound arrogant, but I do. Charlotte's worrying me, haven't heard from her in ages, must get in touch with her, costumes very important.

Kez told me that she is using A Play in her essay on Holy Theatre (Peter Brook) am rather stunned. My first writing and directing credit, only two months down and someone is critically analysing it, that has revived my confidence. After watching the other pieces from our year I was seriously surprised at how incredibly good they were, compared with previous years rather half arsed efforts really. I knew that we were talented, didn't realise just how talented, and I watched my fantastic piece slowly get pushed down the list of other even more incredibly fantastic pieces, so to find that it is being looked at in the way I wanted it to be looked at is great. Soon as the minor early bits and pieces of Hamlet are sorted I'm gonna finish my second piece. I'm pretty certain I can get it to full length. It's a tad Shavian or Satrean but I don't care.

It's not for here, Once I have some decent pieces I'm going to bombard places with them. I know I'm good. I honestly can't decide whether to concentrate on writing, acting or directing. Hopefully I can tread between them all. But I tend to ignore my writing whenever other things crop up.

Tolstoy's diary entry:
It is a note worth remembering that Thackeray prepared for thirty years for his first novel, while Dumas turns out two a week.

Took it from The Assassin's cloak, great diary anthology. I love Tolstoy's entries, brief and to the point, such as:

I have fallen in love, or at least imagine I have, lost my head at a party. Bought a horse for which I have no use at all.

Or:

quarreled with Turganev. Wench in my room.

I am currently working my way through February.

Remake

2005-01-30T16:46:00.000Z

Another critic, this time in the Guardian, bemoaning Hollywood's splurge on remakes. The remake of Assault on Precint 13 is nowhere near as good as the original etc etc. Well I've not seen the original but I went to see the remake yesterday with my friends, and damn, it was pretty good. Not brilliant, I agree, but as a popcorn muncher with beautiful visuals and no compromises, it worked for me, plus the little tribute to The Matrix, which I loved.

The critic argued that no one would ever try to repaint the Mona Lisa, or rewrite Hamlet. On the contrary, I myself am doing just that (rewriting Hamlet, not repainting the Mona Lisa, or at least putting it off until this evening). In fact Hamlet by Shakespeare was about the seventh version of the story to appear. Every time hamlet gets staged, it is reconsidered, re edited, reworked, restaged, relit, recast. The Hamlet's of today probably bear absolutely no resemblance to Shakespeare's original vision. Certainly the version I'm directing won't.

How many new plays get produced in the West End or Regional Theatres each year? 10? 20? 50? 100? And how many revivals of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Checkov, Shaw, Miller, Brecht etc. Obviously, Theatre is a finite art which is the justification for the renewal of great plays. However, who on earth can say that Film is not. The cinema is only around 120 years old. The average working life of a (Good) Hollywood director is 30 years, for a (Good) actor, ten to twenty years, for a long lived megastar (Connery, Eastwood, Hackman etc) as long as they live. But basically we are into the fourth or fifth generation of Hollywood. That remakes are now so common is a sign of maturity of the art.

Great Art will always inspire Great Art. Because Great Art can always be reinterpreted. Take Assault as an example. Rio Bravo (John Wayne, Good Guys V Bad Guys) was a response to High Noon (Gary Cooper, Abandoned by "Good Americans"). Rio Bravo became Assault on Precinct 13, updating the story from Old West to Modern America and blurred the line between good guys and bad guys with cops being forced to work with criminals for survival.
Now the third remake brings it right up to modern times. The Bad Guys are now bent cops, Good Guys suddenly turn into Bad Guys, Bad Guys, however Bad, are now Good. A perfect metaphor for the confused post 9/11 world we now live in. You can now read it as an allegory against George Bush and the White House.

Movie's reflect the time in which they were made and so remaking/updating them is not a bad thing. It does not denigrate the original, it allows new artists to bring their own take to an old tale. It might not always work, but I have seen some crap Shakespeare in my time as well.
Despite people crying about these remakes betraying the memories of the original, a good tale always benefits from the retelling, it is how stories evolve.

Whatever people say about the monetarial reasons for these remakes, I think it shows that Hollywood has reached a staging post in it's development, it has become self referential, such a critical mass of stories has built up that whatever original crap gets churned out (cf Pearl Harbour, Titanic, Alexander, Troy, Shark Tale: All very expensive yet singularly original pieces of trash) There is always something from the Golden Age that can be brought back to prominance. It is not that remakes in themselves are particularly bad, it is simply that none so far have yet outshone the original (Save Oceans 11). Give it time. Hollywood is not out of talent.

Someone should remake High Noon. Oh wait, what's that little series Kiefer Sutherland has at the moment; 24 is it?

I Wanna Tresspass

2005-01-29T18:36:00.000Z

Coffin Anybody?

2005-01-29T18:15:00.000Z

Great story from the BBC about a Ghanese coffin maker who makes sculptured coffins to represent the trade of the dead person, or whatever they wanted. So a dead cobbler, gets buried in a shoe, a snailseller, in a snail, a drunk in a bottle, a journalist in a pen and a gynocologist inside a giant womb which is both funny and also rather touching.

I think I would like one of those, but not of my trade. A Welsh Dragon methinks.

No Commitments

2005-01-29T13:39:00.000Z

All my commitments to other people are done with now.
I have until the end of February to write my dissertation and the end of April to put on Hamlet.

Spring has arrived.

Last night was a great success.
Haley came to see me in a show for the first time ever on the Thursday, but I did not put in a great performance, decent but not great. The audience was low key. Afterwards we went to the source, Dave insisted on coming too, nice enough lad but I wanted to be alone with her. I never noticed what a pretty nose she has. A roman nose, not like our ugly splayed nordic noses. Fell asleep on her shoulder.

As we walked back into town she started talking about ulterior motives, she believes everyone has them. How no one is what they seem, thats why she likes me so much, because I am genuine to her. Of course, I'm not, how can I be when I have such strong feelings for her. But I don't intend to act on them. There is no forseeable point in the future when I could act on them. I am quite happy as her friend and if that is all that our relationship ever is, I shall be happy simply to have known her, I can exist without her love. So I have no ulterior motive. Nevertheless, I feel guilt as she talks. I wish I had put in a better performance for her.

On the Friday, I stayed in bed all day so as not to go out and spend money. Ended up rushing out of the house at seven O clock. Ran to Tesco's for cheap food then jumped in a cab, just made it to Tim and Steve's show. Stood there nibbling at the grapes I'd bought. The show was fantastic, but not surprising. I've never known anyone more aware of their own physicality than Tim. He has the physique of a dancer and can create a raw dangerous energy, everything he does on stage is as though he has lost his mind, acting like a raw animal, but at the same time this is a complete performance. A complete act. I have seen it numerous times such as in Soul Traders. Tim is so incredibly talented, but somehow I always know what he is going to throw at us. That incredible stare. This is a pity, it is not a flaw in his performance but simply that I know him too well, have seen him perform too many times, not to know which of his tricks he will pull out. He is a fantastic performer, in order for him to become a great performer however, he will need a few more tricks, a few more surprises.

Steve on the other hand constantly surprises me. He couldn't lose it as well as Tim. Tim rushed the audience because he was angry, caged, a beast. Steve rushed the audience because it was the bit in the piece where he rushed the audience. People constantly cast Steve as a hard man, despite his small stature. He does it very competently. This past year he has improved a thousandfold as a performer and I see something in his eyes now that stands out but not as a hard man but as a vulnerable and sad lead. He explored it slightly in The Penal Colony, and I think that is where he may find his forte, which is why I count it fortuitous that he is now playing Horatio in Hamlet. He may not believe in his ability to play such a character as evinced in the rehearsals we have had so far, but I think he could be brilliant.

I was expecting an interval between Tim's and Ruth's show, but people started running up immediately without waiting for Front of House. Not to put too fine a point on it, the stewards need to get their act together, I know they are volunteers and Wee Jen does a good job of Box Office, but I keep finding stands left out around college during the day that they have simply forgotten about. Little Tom I can forgive, bless him, but certain people need to start taking the initiative.

Anyway, once Front of House got the audience back downstairs and into some sort of order we had a five minute breather, desperately needed for Jenny C who had just exhausted herself in the previous piece and had barely enough time to change costume and make up. We all just stood there behind the flats running our monologues at each other, there was no time for preparation. Just go out and do it. It was in this ridiculous time, that the character finally appeared. He had been there, all the time, all the things I had been trying to create finally came together with the adrenalin rush. My characters never really appear until the first night, this one was late, but he did appear. It is the audience that makes them. Rehersals are simply to learn the lines and the movements. It is the audience that allow me to create the character

Because I'd had no preparation, my throat was dry, I walked out, said my first line and could barely hear myself croaking. I cleared my throat hoping that I wouldn't need water, and carried on. And it worked, from having a very good but rather dry, one dimensional character which was mostly myself, I became someone else. I knew what he had eaten for breakfast, how he had spent his day at work. Not from thinking about it, but because that was who he was. I inhabited the character more completely than any other I have portrayed.

And I worked the audience. Renee had warmed them up. I took them further, I could make them laugh by how I said a line. I knew where I wanted them to laugh and I made them laugh. I knew where I wanted quiet and so I brought them down. Jenny C, a lot less nervous than the Thursday, had them rolling in the aisles. Aron, in a completely unfunny role, got a round of applause and then Jenny E rounded it off nicely, another unfunny role, but she pulled out a few laughs nonetheless.

I imagine after Steve and Tim's, people were thinking, what could top that? I don't believe in comparing shows. They are either good or bad. What we did, combined, is give the audience an incredible night out, one which they won't forget in a hurry.

After the get outs, we headed to the guild for the party. I needed to dance so went upstairs quite early, but the DJ was playing crap, stuff I hated anyway. I left without saying goodbye. In a general bad mood for no reason.

Katie's leaving do tonight. I hope Nile sticks by her while she's away. If anyone can make an honest man of him, she can.

Bah, humbug.

Family

2005-01-29T13:19:00.000Z

Woken at midday by Fran with a phone call from Mum. She's taken to ringing the house now that I can't avoid it whereas I usually just ignore the mobile.
Katie has won a music scholarship to school. Which is fantastic for her, be a huge boost to her confidence.
Chris has won the first round of his big competitition. He'll win the whole thing easily.
He has also been selected to play in a masterclass with Derek Han, I think broadcast on Classic FM, as part of some event they are having in Olympia. Mum has bought tickets for her and Katie, I put in for the competition to win a couple so we'll see.
Grumpy as ever on the phone. I hate the things.

London

2005-01-29T01:26:00.000Z

The city of London.

While I was working there last summer I had some fantastic experiences.

I saw Dame Diana Rigg on stage, but missed Dame Judi Dench, also Aaron Eckhart and Julia Stiles from Hollywood in Oleanna. Eckhart was brilliant, Stiles a bit stilted but I didn't like the play.

The best play I saw was Democracy, a brilliant piece of work.

I visited the Tate Modern to see the Hopper exhibition.

Seeing Nighthawks up close is an undescribable experience, the paint seems to envelop you, tens of people were pushing round trying to get close. I stood at the front and stared for twenty minutes maybe, oblivious, sucked in by this neverending scene.

Other pieces I remember were Picasso's Dove, a charcoal work that captured me far more than any of his more famous or experimental works, and Studio Bankside by Derek Jarman. Watched it through twice and was reduced to tears. It is of a time apart from me, from us, of someone else's friends, someone else's happiness and remembrances in a place no longer existing, a time I never knew. Leaving, I mourned for its passing.
I have my own friends, happiness and remembrances in a time and place of my own. Though I don't feel it. I am an odd person, I do not have friends in the conventional sense, I feel like I exist within a gathering of other people. I have respect and love and I do not know why I have this, I have done nothing to deserve it.

These are the people I am with, in later times it will be different people. Every single one of them has a place in my heart and always will do, but I tend to drift.

I have never belonged, not to this group nor to any other group.
I am simply there. Let me illustrate.
While at Bradford, there were cliques, which did not mingle, except I was in most of them. There were lots of Malaysians in the halls, somehow I found myself invited whenever they went to play basketball or football. I would be the only non-malaysian there. I was friends with them but not great friends, except with Simon. I just happened to be there when these people were there. The same with the goths, the hippies, the Norweigians, the operatics, the Southporters, Bob's band, the theatrics.

I'm 23 and I have seen a lot. I know famous and non famous people. I have done incredible things such as ripping up a tree by the roots with my bare hands, climbing a cliff one handed, or walking from Bradford to Halifax on a five hour suicidal night trek, I have seen incredible sights such as the herd of cows wandering across Vatersay Bay under a mauve sunset, the sea stacks of St Kilda, the dawn mist over the broads and the great valley of the Afan. I have insulted the Bishop of Knaresborough and Dame Vera Lynn. My cousin captained Wales u21, My brother MD's several West End musicals. One of my ancestors was Mayor of Washington D.C

To get back to my point though, none of it matters, I am not a memorable person. I cannot regale friends with tales of adventure, derring do or incredible sights. I am not a storyteller, neither am I a comic, I can barely hold my own in social niceties. If I am in a good and happy mood then I can just about have a general conversation. I honestly wonder why people put up with boring old me.

But I am a writer, I can commit here, what I cannot express in life, I am, if nothing else, a complete observer, and some day in the future, when this current band of people have dispersed around the globe, in life, inevitably in death, I shall remember this gallant little group, that I watched for three years and I shall chronicle, if need be, these people, my friends, in a time and place that was ours, even for so short a time. In the future, people may read and wish perhaps that they had known these people, cared about them like I cared about them. They were all worth knowing, and all worth caring about. Some of them may go on to greatness, most won't. They'll have families and other friends in the future, they will produce art, most of it unremembered, they will die, like all people, some, before their time.

But most of all, they will have been my friend, will have accepted me, for at least some part of their life, and I am privileged, humbled and honoured to know them at this time. To have seen them mature, grow, learn, begin to become whole. Whatever the future holds, right now, and to the end of my life, these people will matter to me.

As much as this journal is about myself, it is about the people I know as well, the people who pass through my life, or perhaps more accurately the lives of people of which I pass through.

If you are reading this, mourn for our passing, as all things must pass, and then be with those you love, your friends, for things change faster than you know. Do not regret this, it is as things are.

Joyce Grenfell

2005-01-28T02:57:00.000Z

Joyce Grenfell seemed like an absolutely lovely person. I wish I could have met her.

Damn

2005-01-27T02:31:00.000Z

Walked home, almost in tears.

Don't know what I'm gonna do.
Oskar left for Finland today. Lucy's gone to Crete, Katie is off to Austria.

And then Haley was in the Wheel.

I've only ever been in love with two women in my life. Natalie and Haley.

Being rejected by Natalie essentially was the last straw in my nervous breakdown.

What I feel for Haley makes the feelings I had for Nat seem like a passing fancy.
And she is still the only woman I know that I cannot have. Natalie simply rejected me.
Haley is engaged to someone she loves vey much. I can't even tell her how I feel because then I'd just be messing up her life as well as our friendship.

She is the only woman I have ever met who complements me as a person, who completes me, who inspires me and makes me think. In three years she has been the only woman I have cared about, there have been others, girls I've fancied, gone out with, looked after.
I went out with Lucy for three weeks, my first proper girlfriend.
When we broke up it didn't matter. Lucy wasn't Haley and she was never going to make me forget about Haley. No woman is going to, ever. Is there any point even bothering?

I don't see her all that often, it's easier in some ways. She's not on my mind then. I can at least pretend that other women exist and are worthy of attention.

Tonight I was out with Ed, Katie, Chris, Irish Ray, Nile, Sabs and Lindsay. Dave, Sian, Adam, Crazy Dave, Annette, Faz, Richie Rich, and Carl were also there.
And then I saw Haley and no one else existed.

We are very very good friends, she finds it hard to get on with most other people.
But she thinks that she bores me.
When actually there is no one in this world that I care about more.

Afterwards, when she left, the world no longer mattered.
All those friends and no Haley. It wasn't worth being there after that.

I hung around for a short while
Mostly bangning my head into a wall or sitting in the corner.

Annette, bless her heart, came over. I don't know her all that well and lied, said I was tired. But it was nice.

Of all people Nile came and asked what was wrong.
I said woman trouble and he gave me a hug.
Then Irish Ray came to me and said that he admired me and wished that he could be more like me. I was stunned. The guy is half a foot taller than me, with looks I would die for, a beautiful girl who hangs on his every word and he wishes he could be more like me.

I hugged both of them, I love them all to bits but all Ray sees is my self confidence. To my friends I am always there dancing away without a care in the world.

They don't know why I dance.

I saw Debbie in the Warwick as I walked home. She didn't see me, I didn't stop. Couldn't bear to talk.

I should have got Oskar's email address, I really am going to miss those crazy finger dances we had.

I asked that first year to come see me in Ruth's play. She didn't recognise me since I have shaved since we last met, I like her, but tonight again I realised she isn't who I want her to be, isn't who I need, should I even bother making an attempt?

I could find a nice girl, settle down, do all the normal stuff, but I know that whatever I felt for them if Haley ever became single, I'd leave the nice girl like a shot for Haley.

What I should do is just stop all contact, which I had to do with Nat for my own sanity, but going through life knowing I would never speak to her again would be unbearable. We'll be friends and I'll continue being speechless around her because I know that at some point she has to leave and leave me on my own with my heart as desolate as if someone had exploded an atomic bomb inside it.

Its a price worth paying to be her friend.

Maybe one day I will tell her how I feel, and maybe just maybe she'll feel the same and leave Mark for me. Of course she probably wouldn't and I could never ask her to, Mark's a nice lad and if he feels even a fraction of what I feel for that girl, well, I wouldn't wish to put anyone through that.

Lose-lose situation really.

She will always be my muse however, whether or not she knows it.

Spoke to Renee today, for the first time in ages, she told me how she is frightened now of going home, the gangs in Jamaica are running riot, places where she played as a kid are no go areas because people just get shot. She is frightened for her son Jamali. She also told me how only the very rich have decent housing so whenever a hurricane or floods hit, houses are torn apart, her friends lost their roofs and all their possessions in the last Hurricane to hit (Ivan?)

She has a permanent stay in Britain if she wishes and she can make a career here, she is a very talened actress, but as an expat Welshman, I know how much it hurts to be away from your own country.

In five months it will be over.
my formal education.
I have spent 20 years, a third of my entire life (If I am to die at sixty like all my male ancestors and relations) getting the damn thing.

These three years, depressions over Haley excepted, have been the happiest of my life.

People are already leaving, people I've only just got to know. People I care about.
Aron, Nile, Ray, Lizzie will all be back off to ireland, following Gerard and Jessie. Renee to Jamaica. Stevo and Tim to Florida. Mark to Camp America. Pam, all over the world as an Air Hostess. People to Scotland, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Hull, abroad.
Some will stay in Carlisle.

And I back to that dungheap of a city of Leeds

People I might never see again.

I will never forget this city, the people I met here, whether locals or students. It has been home from home.
Even if I were to stay, it wouldn't be the same, time moves on, lives move on.

If I am to die, let it be at the end of this degree, because from there on out, it will be all downhill.

I have forty years, more if I am lucky.

I'd better bloody well do something important.

Look at me all maudlin now, just depressed, just lonely, but I'll get over it.

It is now half past four in the morning. I have rehearsals in eleven and a half hours and a show in fifteen and a half hours.
The show requires me to be maudlin, depressed and lonely so I'll get over it in a couple of days time.

Goodnight.

Performance

2005-01-25T22:51:00.000Z

Tonight I gave a bad performance, that's two in a row.
In Obsession, I felt like I was barely there, almost not inside of myself, working on autopilot.

Tonight in Debbie's show, I simply did not have a full grasp of the lines, I only messed up after attention was off me, but I still messed up.

I should not be too hard on myself.
When I learn lines I learn them so that the each line only comes to me as I finish the last one.

This is dangerous, several times I have come to the end of a line and there is nothing but a big yawning abyss where the next line should be.

In Obsession an abyss opened up even where lines did not exist.

When it works it means that I am never just on autopilot. It actively improves my acting and stage presence, it brings a reality I could not otherwise produce.
When it doesn't work, I simply shouldn't be on stage.

But it's over, it's done with.

Next up is Moaning Logs, Ruth's show.
I know it, whats more, though I say it myself, I am very good at it.

It's a show which gives me free range which is always my forte, as with Epsom Downs, The Glorious Mechanicals, and Company, in my bit the audience will be mine and mine alone and I will give them a show.

If given the opportunity I can do anything with an audience.
That is what I enjoy about Theatre so much. Making an audience feel whatever you want them to feel.
Making them feel like you feel.
Making them think.

Humans react differently in groups than they do alone. An audience is primal, directionless, formless.

Understand that and you can do anything.

Show

2005-01-25T22:41:00.000Z

Before a show I like to sit in the theatre, on stage or in the auditorium
on my own
in the dark
before the lights go up and the magic begins.

I study the stage, each object, each prop
in a few hours the actors will be on stage,
the technicians making the final adjustments
the audience finding their seats.

Now it is calm
and there is just me
and the playwright

Invisible

Waiting for life.

The air in a theatre has a peculiar quality
Channelled lights on empty spaces
Empty chairs waiting for an occupant.

An enclosed darkness.
Waiting for breath, for speech
for drama.

Death, life and taxes, all on a 10 by 8
changeable people, changeable stories
but right now
me
here
alone

in an empty room.

Florestan And Eusebius

2005-01-24T23:32:00.000Z

I want to not care.
I want to isolate myself from everyone,
just myself with my books and my music and my words.

I want to care.
I want to take everyone in my arms and tell them that it is alright
That everything will be fine
That I can make things easier.

The more I understand, the less I know.
The more I understand the less real the world is
the less things exist.

I see every perspective, can see every angle, understand the pro's and con's of every situation
and I do what is right at the time.
Except it never is.

I want to know the ocean.

Free choice does not exist, because time has already occured.
Free choice exists because time is occuring.

No person is evil, they simply believe in their own good.

For me, good does not exist, so I must invent it.

I am Florestan and Eusebius.
Equal and opposite.
Neither right, neither wrong.

Neither in command.
Always quarreling.

At times I know nothing at all, except that I do not know even myself.

Words mean nothing at all, nor actions.
We only percieve what we wish to percieve.
And wishes cannot be altered.
Florestan percieves Eusebius and Eusebius percieves Florestan.

With hatred, contempt and pity.
Yet Eusebius aids Florestan and Florestan aids Eusebius,
Without one or other, there would be no whole.

Thus is humanity.

Our Own Little Apocalyptic Scenario

2005-01-23T18:56:00.000Z

We had a little apocalypse in Carlisle a couple of weeks ago. That there is the council building under about five feet of water. (Ta BBC) It might not sound all that bad but consider that the council building is about seven to nine feet above the normal level of the River Eden. Also consider that the flood actually happened in the space of about two hours, and that Eden has quite a large flood plain for such a small river. The water level rose approximately fourteen feet in about two hours.

The only way to traverse between the North and the South of the city was by boat or helicopter.

Casualties noted: Two Elderly Women
One Elderly Man
One Cow (Last seen floating down a main road)
One Carp (Thought to have taken a wrong turn in the Irish Sea)

Two goldfish, long thought lost, were recovered swimming in the football pitch and have since been adopted as mascots.

I went and rescued Sabs who was trapped with her worst nightmare. She went off to Lindsey's and I put the nightmare up for the night. Watched helicopters.

Night Came.

No power for forty eight hours.

Candles, games, booze, radio, guitars, chat.
Students wandering in the dark between those houses that had survived, pooling food, supply trips to darkened shops. Tim on a mission. (Tim likes missions).
The impromptu redneck preachers.
Hotel California.

Someone asked me if I was Jewish.
I said my head was cold.
Because it was.

Dinner Party

2005-01-23T16:14:00.000Z

I like to imagine having a fantasy dinner party with people I admire and respect.
This would be my perfect dinner party:

Ernest Shackleton
(Polar Explorer)
A great leader and inspiration, someone who refused to give up despite impossible odds. Stubborn as hell.

Lawrence Durrell
(Author and Poet)
The greatest writer I've ever read, had a greater perspective on life than a thousand other men combined.

James Lloyd Carr
(Author, Teacher, Publisher and Englishman)
The world his books encompassed is the most complete literary accomplishment ever, someone who saw things for what they were.

Donald Pleasance
(Actor)
One of the finest actors England has ever produced, for all Steve McQueen's antics in The Great Escape, it is Pleasance's performance, along with James Garner's able support that leaves you heartbroken and gives the film its poignancy.

Bette Davis
(Actress)
Watching her perform is like watching the sun rising. As beautiful and unstoppable, it makes us question life itself and worship it should we never see it again. The greatest actress ever to grace the world. Period.

Olivier Messiaen
(Composer)
While interned in a prison camp during WW2 wrote the Quartet For The End Of Time. Brought hope in a time of darkness.

Bruce Chatwin
(Writer, Traveller)
A man who needed to travel, who made the journey and showed the way.

RS Thomas
(Vicar and Poet)
Arguably greater than Dylan Thomas, the complete collection of his poems might as well be called The Decline And Fall Of Wales, charted the country more completely than anyone before or since.

Caractacus
(Warrior)
English by birth, Welsh by adoption, he waged a guerilla war against the Romans for over a decade before being betrayed by an English tribe he sought assistance from. Even in custody in front of the Emperor Claudius he outsmarted him and was given the freedom of the city of Rome rather than the execution that awaited most enemies of the Empire.

G.K. Chesterton
(Writer, Christian)
The funniest and yet most poingant of all English writers, he could twist an unambiguous gut wrenching laugh into a wistful and insightful remark on any part of the human condition, and back again within three lines. A giant of a man in every sense.

Derek Jarman
(Artist, Gardener, Writer, Campaigner)
I saw his one of his early films at Tate Modern and it made me cry. A crying out for rememberance and innocence. An artist in and above all things.

Fynn and Anna
(Lost Souls)
Fynn found Anna wandering the streets of London, she had run away from home. Fynn and his family adopted her and they had lots of adventures. Anna died falling out of a tree onto spiked iron railings, years later Fynn wrote a book about his extraordinary little girl who saw and understood more than any adult.

Jim Jarmusch
(Director)
Understands that the journey is more important than the destination and therefore produces greater art than any other film director.

Sir Henry Morton Stanley
(Welshman, Stowaway, Soldier, Journalist, Explorer, MP, Knight)
Packed more into his life than virtually anyone else in history. Stowed away to America from work house. Fought on both sides of the American Civil War. Journalist for the New York Post. Made trouble, sent to Africa. Managed to find Dr Livingstone in the middle of the largest continent, almost completely uncharted at the time, and then charted most of it, discovered the source of the Congo and covered more African ground than just about anyone else in history. Returned home and got elected. Knighted. Earned bragging rights.

Lieutenant John Chard V.C and Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead V.C
(Soldiers)
With a complement of 139 men, many of whom were recovering at the missionary hospital, held off an army of 4000 Zulu in the battle of Rorke's Drift, the battle lasted for two days and included fierce hand to hand fighting as the Zulu's attacked on all sides. When the Zulu's finally retreated and casualties counted, the Zulu's had lost some 300 men, with a further 300 dying from their wounds on the long march home. The Welsh regiment, incredibly, counted only 17 casualties.

Edward Hopper
(Painter)
Created works of intense beauty, they contain scenes of loneliness yet make one yearn to be alone, simple representations of simple moments yet from within them Hopper reaches out to entwine himself in our own souls. Understood what it is that makes us human and that makes the Earth part of us, and managed to paint the unpaintable.

My Sleeping Bag

2005-01-23T15:55:00.000Z

I love my sleeping bag. It is warm and snug and suits me perfectly. I have had it a long time, in fact it is the only sleeping bag I have ever had. I hope I never need a new one. It is bright red which would be a bad thing if I ever had to go to sleep while camouflaged in the middle of a green field with unspeakable things hunting me, but fortunately this has never yet happened.

Feeling Down?

2005-01-23T04:03:00.000Z

Statement

2005-01-23T02:24:00.000Z

My social ineptitude is staggering.

Rumble

2005-01-22T16:52:00.000Z

Been watching a lot of wrestling recently. I know it's choreographed and staged to an extent (not that much of an extent), but it's fun nonetheless, satisfies a need for violence. Been reading Bret Hart's columns. They are quite moving, and I appreciate wrestling and wrestlers more for what it is now, for reading them. As an actor, I have especial respect. There have been some great characters through the years.

I like the Royal Rumble. Enjoyable.
Here is my Fantasy Royal Rumble

1. The Undertaker
2. Kane
3. Andre The Giant
4. Mick Foley
5. Stone Cold Steve Austin
6. Hulk Hogan
7. Bret Hitman Hart
8. The Rock
9. Jake The Snake Roberts
10. Triple H
11. Macho Man Randy Savage
12. Rowdy Roddy Piper
13. Chris Benoit
14. Ultimate Warrior
15. Giant Haystacks
16. Hacksaw Jim Duggan
17. The Big Show
18. Chris Jericho
19. British Bulldog
20. Big Daddy
21. Razor Ramon
22. Ric Flair
23. Gorilla Monsoon
24. Kurt Angle
25. Jesse The Body Ventura
26. Al Snow
27. The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase
28. Diesel
29. Big Boss Man
30. Bob Hardcore Holly

Words And Rollercoasters

2005-01-22T14:44:00.000Z

Horror Terror
Horrid Torrid
Horrify Terrify
Horrible Terrible
Horrifying Terrifying

Horrific ...............Terrific??

That one's gonna bug me till the end of my days.
Still maintain it has something to do with Rollercoasters.

Happy New Year

2005-01-04T01:46:00.000Z

Not exactly the greatest New Year of modern times was it.

Pacific Rim, 150,000 dead, millions displaced, families destroyed. Yada yada yada, America, September 11th, 2001, thousands dead, families destroyed, yada, yada, yada. Bam, Christmas, 2004, Earthquake, thousands dead, yada yada yada. Hiroshima/Nagasaki, 1945, thousands dead, hundreds of thousands with radiation poisoning, yada yada yada. Vietnam, Agent Orange, yada yada yada. Cambodia, Burma, Rwanda, Somalia, Hurricane Ivan, Kursk, Every bloody mine in China. Whatever bloody African country we were supposed to be rescuing from famine before the tsunami came and we all forgot about it. (Sudan)

People will die in disasters, natural and man made, people will always die, but we have the technology to reduce the risk considerably. We have the intelligence to stop firing guns and bombs and God knows what else at each other. And yet all that we ever seem to spend money on is thinking up new ways to kill each other. There are natural disasters, from which none of us are immune, but if you live in the US or Europe, you actually have more than a chance in hell of surviving it if you're unlucky enough for there to be one while you're in the area. Not so the poor bastards in the pacific rim, who drowned, those in the Sudan, who starved, or those in Iran who got buried alive in the rubble of their own city.

When Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii, there was not a single Roman who could have predicted that disaster. Nowadays we have geological equipment, that while being an imperfect science, is better than nothing. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, especially large ones, tend to happen on a regular basis. The Pacific Tsunami needs to be a wake up call to people such as George W. Bush who seem unable to grasp the idea that the planet is a living changing environment. There will certainly be better protection now, for the countries that can afford it.

We live on a planet with six billion other human beings, many of whom face a daily struggle just to survive. However the 5000 or so people on this planet who actually hold any real power, simply look for ways to kill everyone who holds a grudge against them, and others want to kill everyone who doesn't happen to believe in the same religion. And then everyone needs land, water, food, fuel, and there's only so much to go around.

Wake up call people, with six billion people on this planet, you ain't never gonna kill everyone you disagree with, and you ain't never ever gonna get everyone to agree with you. It's absolutely incredible by itself that we only have six major religions.

This planet has the resources to look after us all, and our science is fast coming to a point where we can look after our ecosystems well, allowing them to return to a healthier state and provide more resources. And yet we fight, and put our money into guns and armies. We westerners are too greedy. We care about our bellies and our purses, and when we see images of dead black people we go how terrible and send a bit of loose change. You might disagree, the west has sent an awful lot of aid to the pacific this time, but an awful lot of westerners were killed. Look at the comparable damage of the Bam earthquake this time last year, and ask how much was given.

We have technology that can protect people from natural disasters. The US sees several Hurricanes, Tornados and Cyclones a year, yet very few people are killed, compare that with Haiti, which was devastated in Hurricane Ivan. What's more, any decent climatologist could have predicted what would happen. The weather kills thousands of people in Asia each year. We have technology that can reduce that number.

We care so much while it is on our tv screens but we are not just responsible for helping the survivors of a terrible disaster, we are responsible for our entire race. I hate to sound like John Lennon but for goodness's sake, every time an African dies of Aids when we have drugs that could have prevented it, we are responsible, every time a Bangladeshi is swept out to sea in a flash flood, we are responsible, every time an Iraqi civilian is shot dead by a loose American bullet, we are responsible, every time an Israeli dies at the hands of a Palestinian or a Palestinian at the hands of an Israeli, we are responsible, when the bomb fell on thousands of Japanese civilians, we were responsible, anywhere where there are people suffering, whether from natural causes or human greed in aggression and oppression then we are responsible.

We cannot prevent Earthquakes or Tsunami, We cannot cure Aids among other things, Wherever humanity is, greed, aggression and oppression will be there, but it is our responsibility as simple human beings to care enough to change the way in which we live, and by this I mean the way in which countries exist and the way in which governments act. Capitalism, the pursuit of money for its own sake, cannot be justified as the basis for the existence of a country and as the way of life for its citizens.

Mutual distrust between countries must be put aside in the wake of wider responsibility, it happened between Greece and Turkey after the latter's earthquake last year, and now in the same vein between Pakistan and India.

This is not an answer, but it is a beginning. We each have one life, and you may forget responsibility for your fellow man, wherever he may be, but to do so is to damn your own children, because the children of your fellow man, will remember that you forgot.

Happy New Year 2005 to the 150 000+ people who didn't live to see that day.
Everyone else be thankful that you did.