The Game of Me

I underwent the latest, and possibly final, immersive experience from the Belgian theatre company ONTROEREND Goed last week.

It is an experience of shared conversations and two-way mirrors, observing and being observed, and at the end of it, you are given a disc.

In keeping with this review I thought that this might be a disc of video. The reviewer did not bothered to play it before posting their review.

I've just played mine and in fact it is an audio disc.

The first stage in the production has you sit in a chair on your own opposite a mirror.

You may correctly speculate that the mirror is a two-way mirror and that you are being observed.

In fact you're being observed by some other ticket buyer  a few minutes further on in the production from you. They give their opinion of what they read from... well from you.

The subject I observed later was a lady in a colourful dress that I named Olga and to whom I awarded several cats.

So as I sat quietly in my chair, this is what somebody apparently read from my face (or rather made up from their own imagination).

You can call me Evan.

Priorities

I've written Uber on the side of my Focus.

I'm Bus-Lane Happy!

Role play

You know the phrase..

If you can''t say anything positive, don't say anything at all... you know that?

I use that.

Not all the time..but more often than most. 

It is in my arsenal.

Is it in yours?

Thought not.

It's just a postscript in aphorism history to you - the Oxford Book of Cliches.

Well wake up, moron. 

And be nice. 

Your grandma knew what she was talking about. 

She wouldn't have go to balls, dinners and proms in a man's DJ or wear a trouser suit unless it was the sort of onesie that the goddess known as Anneka Rice made her own. 

(She didn't make her own).

Imagine those who tweet you before debate you, criticise before bother to learn something, score a point and recruit their friends against you..imagine the bitches who do that. 

"You're a loser". 

"You're wrong". (WTF) 

"You're uninformed". 

"You're a dimwit". 

"You're an ...ist". fill in your own... it barely matters...it's the diagnosis of a half -modern half-wit.

I say bitches because this is a female thing. 

Score higher by scoring others lower. 

Anti-improv.

Is it any wonder men like to drink "alone"...by which I mean "with other men"?

Then the laydeez can just do it to each other..and perhaps stretch it to a catty Edinburgh Show. Get drunk. Get sad. Go home. Show me a man who has ever done that.

Not everything needs to be facebooked out of context, instagrammed for likes or tweeted for followers and digital affection or whatever the language is.

GROW 

THE FUCK

UP, GIRLS.

Or is that sexist?

Don't answer.

It's rhetorical.

No Spitting

I have just been for a "steam"..

A steam room,  Turkish sauna - is that the same thing?

I'll never know - I have given up Googling and everybody I know is stupid.

Two girls spat at me.

Allow me to explain. And stop me if you know this and I am the only one who didn't.

The first came in and leaned on my shoulder (permission not given), then spat at the wall, which fell on me. She apologised and told me 'Everyday's a School Day'.

Not everyday love, I thought. We are not that lucky.

Her friend came in, repeated the action and missed the wall so it went down my back.

They explained the "thing" on the wall was some kind of thermostat.

Spit cold water at it and the room heats up.

I suggested there could also hold the water in their cupped cleavage in a tacky US mid-west whore sort of way.

At least I was going to... then decided against it

This is Scotland.

Somebody had to be a bit English.

So I actually told her that now I had something I had to write about in my blog tonight.

Aaand you are upto speed

The Circus

I don't watch football anymore.

I understand the faux investment, the highs and lows, the need to feed the masses with bread and circuses.

To the outcome is so binary.

Win. Lose. Who cares.

I'm better than you,

No you are not.

Where is the nuance?

What has anybody ever learned in life from watching a football match, the occasional fightback aside....how to spit? How to fall? How to cheat?

It's a poor lesson.

It's a pretty sad obsession.

Why not follow entertainment with edge, thrust and drive, with nuance and flair, with originality and depth and which enriches, teaches, strengthens, informs and has few laughs in it.

There is more play in a play that on a pitch.

When you think about it following a few millionaires kicking a ball is a pathetic pastime. Sorrowful. They deserve our pity and fear.

What's a good result for the season?

How about having our heroes rape 10% fewer teenagers then they did last year?

Shooting too high?

OK then try 5%

Sub Zero

You can relax....with Corrie, or in a bath, in a white room, with your favourite TV programmes, CD or book, at the pub.

But the following day you might feel stressed.

Still.

That is the definition of a treatment not working.

At least these are harmless things to do (unless washed down with litres of wine).

But it is temporary.

Transient.

A pause play with bubbles.

A distraction.

It may be that it is an Elastoplast over deeper worries - gut-burning debt, illness etc...so it's understandable.

But still pressing "stress" is an unuseful response to select.

You need to learn to deliberately deselect it.

To relax...Plus.

To wind down ...to the max.

To Superchill.

Little Differences

On the day Banksy offers up a Dismal-land  - a bleak version of a theme park - that looks really no better than a slightly pricey fringe experience but was enough to leave Julie Burchill "speechless for 2 days" I offer you 3 thoughts. One is the undying gratitude from Julie Burchill's husband. 

She's a gob in case you didn't know.

One is a preference I have never really noticed which is to to be inspired even over entertained. Food for thought rather than watching something that is simply a brilliant complete work. Perfection is always dull. Believe me, I know.

Of course when you have already had a lot of thoughts then that food is scarce. The abstract is required and even that may not be enough. That's because there may not be many gaps to fill. Not big ones anyway - perhaps a few little holes that may have been left by woodworm or darts.

The other thought is my recent wonderings on the difference between treatment and entertainment.

But it's obvious isn't it?

Treatment lasts (supposedly)...life-changer

Entertainment passes...time-filla.

It's simple....

supposedly.

Behind You

Life grumbles, grazes and grates and causes pain but never quite enough to really hurt.

At least that's how my brain summarised a line from Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos/No Exit what I 'ave just returned from.

Thanks to the internet the line is actually:

"Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough".

I am not saying I improved on his line. In fact I am giving the nod to Sartre on that one.

'Hell is other people' is his most famous concept.

I saw the play 20 years ago on the BBC with the recently late Omar Sharif. It has always lived with me largely I now think due to his charisma and a particularly memorable set. This production left me a little unshaken despite being very good.

Stirred is good.

Shaken is better. 

Neither... is just a quality production, which for me isn't really enough. "Quality" in itself is not high on my shopping list. It's generally too sanitised, interfered-with.

Bend me, shape me, anyway you want me

Long as I love it, it's all right. In fact, it's great.

Throughout the play, a female behind me, in my right ear as it were, squeezed what sounded like a brand new cheap PVC handbag, and twisted it repeatedly, as though she had no capacity to hear the "fingernails on windows" overture.

To hear either her bag or my agonising pain.

As I repeatedly drilled my karmic fist into her personal space, I noted that existentialism as a practical response lacked bite.

She started coughing. Perhaps trying to drown out the squeezing of the handbag that she simply would not rest on the floor.

The fires were getting hotter.

Enter stage left - the cough drop. You may know them better as the throat lozenge. Replete in the noisiest tin foil plastic. Not of course pre-loosened in its cage in expectation of use. And not released quickly. 

How many minutes does it take to unfurl a Strepsil?

Twelve. The answer is twelve.

I screamed at her psyche with every inflection of disapproval that a mute man facing in the wrong direction could muster.

Nothing.

I leaned forward to get closer to the play, sliding down her volume and increasing that of the performers.

I'll give you this one as well, Jean-Paul.

Hell is other people.

Look at it from my angle...Bermuda Triangle

Money doesn't buy you happiness...it buys you status.
Which has no connection with happiness.
When have you heard the question even posed..."Does status buy you happiness?"

Let's assume it is because the answer is either "No", or "What the
fuck are you talking about?" depending largely on whether you have an
Audi in the garage and serve Fentimans Tonic, because it is better
than Schweppes.


So....money doesn't buy you happiness..it buys you status.
Unless....

unless you have sold your status for the money.

Maybe you have portrayed yourself as a Victim
And maybe you have overegged it and disrespected real victims...and
become invested in not moving on.
And your eager lawyers have lapped it up. Not because they are bad
people but hell..the company has to pay for the Christmas party.

Just.

Maybe.

Failing Foreword

I have just watched a show on Failure, usually a rich seam, in Britain at least.
He didn't explore the lows enough, there was little emotional grunt.
His inevitable conclusion that failure was worthwhile was tempered by
the fact that he lost me when we found out he was 32 and had a 22 year
old girlfriend, slagged off an audient for making him forget where he
was (otherwise a blessing in a pretty crummy routing and the audience
member was only trying to add something), and a sequence on the
Terminator movies which he exclaimed never worked and started slapping
himself when I reminded him there were 5 of them rather than the 4 he
had delivered in order. We were waiting/hoping for a punchline as he
was waiting for a laugh presumably. The Terminator movies had more
laughs.

His delivery was good though - he could have delivered any joke with
his likeable Irish lilt. The chap out of the door before me was
offering advice like he was a comedy producer. I felt like doing the
same and script editing his act.

So why not this.
Get Tim Key's act ( he looked a bit like him) and perform it from
beginning to end.
Credit it. People do tributes for songs. People do the same old magic
tricks. Why not comedy?
Pretty soon you might learn method.
And what comedy is in the public domain I wonder?


Why not try it yourself? Perform Lee Mack's or Sarah Millican's entire
act like you were doing a Springsteen cover for you tube

Tell me you won't learn something from that.

A Few Good Yuks

You need serious conversations in life.

That's what pubs were made for.

Series conversations with sensible people.

A two-way dialogue. Or two plus. Just talking. About stuff. And mixing it with other stuff.

When you work through the meat and drink of the serious, you can start to find the funny in it.

But sometimes you need to earn a licence to laugh something off.

Do it too early and you are dismissive.

Ask someone else to do it too early and you may appear insensitive.

You probably haven't consider the situation fully.

Somebody might take your laughter as derogatory. Which is exactly what it is, even if you don't realise it.

You need to earn your chuckle spurs.

A laugh isn't a laugh unless it's a laugh shared.

Focus.

Remember.

It's the (absurd) situation you're laughing at.

There's always something funny because if you say enough words something amusing is bound to come up. And then you're away...gently gently, catchy monkey.

Say no words at all. And those funnies may remain hidden in the shadows forever. Unseen sidestreets.

Then you need a better strategy than laughter. Which means you're in big trouble.

And in fact let's not call it "laughter". It is an overused term. Just like the idea of any crappy sitcom being called hilarious by a TV reviewer. 

It never is.

So how about searching for just a little bit of "quizzical amusement" instead.

There plenty of things you find perfectly funny without the need to laugh like a drain.

If stand-up comedians don't bother inconveniencing themselves to tell jokes anymore, lets not let it worry the likes of us.

Let's redefine the laugh. 

To help us neutralise the serious.

Don't miss any opportunity to search for the snigger, harness the ha-ha, achieve that chortle and grab that giggle. 

Just go for it. 

Bigtime.

Track down that titter.

There and Back Again

When things happen, people say that it 'takes resilience'.

(It is an interesting phrase for a little piece of pedantry and apt to see that resilience is an anagram of Ire Silence)

Because challenges don't take resilience, they deliver it.

People mean of course that they require resilience.

It is true that you do need enough to start with on your journey. Early years of a good and present parent or two is often the deciding factor lest the ground gives way too easily.

And you may have to fake the resilience it will take.

But that's OK.

These fake seeds grow real shoots

These magic beans yield real stalks.

Make it to morning and hopefully all the trolls will have turned to stone.

Beginnings

You are not going to like this

You're not going to understand

You're not going to be able to appreciate my view .

In short, you're not going to be able to deal with this.

This blog is getting too vanilla.

Read no further. 

Spare yourself. 

Stop. 

Now.

But this has been a week for suicides, hasn't it?

I don't think a week has gone by when I've read of so many. 

Chance probably.

But what we learn about the human condition comes from the reaction to suicide.

The only thing still in the game. The reaction of the living.

When I started this blog half a decade ago, pretty soon after, I included an excerpt from Walter Koenig regarding the suicide of his son. It was one of the few entries if not the only one that I recall. 

(Oh.... I did a poem as well, about the sea which was OK too despite some sloppy scanning in the early verses).

He spoke with passion and emotion and heart. I remember it as though it were yesterday.

I've quoted its message in my own head 1000 times.

"Reach out. Extend a hand".

And I haven't shirked.

I've done it every time I have found an opportunity.

And I have made opportunities where they did not previously exist.

I have implored others, even those in pain,  to do the same because I know that by giving they will receive.

Not riches.

But what they need.

Yesterday, I learned the recent story of the "celebrity barrister" and "Champage socialist" Michael "Moneybags" Mansfield. Google his love of money and you might convince yourself that he is single-handedly responsible for the removal of legal aid for the people who need it. 

It's up to you to decide whether he is smooth, slick and charismatic, or a disgusting, immoral greedy shell of a man, but the sins of the fathers are not the sins of the children.

His TV interview told of his daughter's suicide three months ago.  

Highflyer. Everything to live for. The usual. 

But what's interesting, to me at least, is his interview.

Emotionless. When you had a chance to reach out to people with emotion.

Inarticulate in its solutions. When you had a chance to reach out to people with a new type of articulation.

So he arranges a public talk. Why? It's not time to talk yet. It's time to listen. To learn.

The why, of course, is because that is what he is. 

When you are an E flat you play E flat. 

Even if agony begins with A. 

Medicine has a counterpart to this character.. the crusty arrogant consultant surgeon. I'm not saying it's a fair stereotype, but it's real.

Mansfield chose to wheel out another depressive celebrity, Ruby Wax who talks about little else these days, to illustrate cachet.

Sometimes you have to understand vulnerability by embracing it. And if you present it when you are ready, make sure you do as good a job as you can.

I could go on.

His approach is a missed opportunity. This clinically sterile legal approach might suit the court room.

But the courtroom is not life.

Life is not that stage.

Not today.

When you have a golden opportunity, and all the money and power in the world from a lifetime of big fat bills, you need to look at yourself.

Do it before you go on Newsnight. Take all the time you need.

But if you want to know how it should be done.

Go on Star Trek first.

I know this isn't a competition.

But this matters. 

And there are a lot of ways of getting this wrong.

I've shown you wrong and at the risk of duplication I will show you how to be more effective.

By leaving the final word....

If you don't like my style, that's fine. 

Get angry at me. 

And when you're finished, find a way to help.

This isn't magic.

I can talk with you about that at length if you wish. 

But this isn't it.

The Results Are In..

Stuck for a therapy?

Here's why CBT is twice as good as mindfulness

​

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Supermedicine

The interesting thing about drama is that you can distill ideas and drop them into characters. 

It is human chromatography.

You can remix these themes and memes, you can make a point with counterpoint, you can justify a position with juxtaposition, and you can do it with a sackful of blokes with tropes.

You can break down the human condition and write it into parts. Parts for scenes. 

Then you can record it and present it.

Show.

And tell.

The question is often asked -  "But is it art?" 

Well, yes. Get over yourself.

In the process, your analysis became art. Largely because it was done by you and not a computer.

The question is less often asked - "But is it therapy?" 

Is it the same? Or the opposite of?

This is a question that dances across the mind of many a sensitive performer particularly those looking to a bloated NHS for funding when the Arts Council gives them only the finger,  and not the one that indicates a bright Vaudevillian idea.

Surely a thoughtful therapeutic intervention would use those techniques of artistry, and many, many others besides and marry them with with more supposedly conventional "science".

A good interventionist, whether medical (doctors) or non-medical (nurses, counsellors, psychologists, rune stone readers, psychics etc) should be able to leverage these interventions to build up the human condition once more. This time proper like. 

Strategies upgraded. Rebooted, if it comes to that.

"We can rebuild him".

"We have the technology".

The technology might come from a quiz in Cosmo. 

But probably not.

Lasting change might come from watching The Matrix, for all its Buddhist enlightenment. 

But probably not. (Watch it anyway. It didn't spawn new religions for nothing).

It might come from a session of mindfulness or CBT from someone with an appropriate diploma. It might .... but do you really think it will?

They will sell you a B flat when you need a C sharp.

But neither can the artists do it all alone.

It doesn't matter whether it's music or dance,  magic or mime.

You don't make a therapy by adding the word 'therapy' on to an art form.

It requires something else.

A catalyst.

A narrative.

A plot.

A plan.

A super-performance.

Skills...

Bravado, derring-do, drive, evidence, guts, charm, I don't know... something... it requires something.

Something else.

Something that even when defined will still be ethereal.

Sorry Capita. Sorry Serco. There is nothing you can strip and mass-produce here.

If you are a lover of the laughable invention of homeopathy, you may understand the concept of treating like with like. 

Maybe the only thing that can treat the human condition is the human condition.

I'm not Perry Mason but I would happily put my thumbs in my lapels and put it to you that that might involve all the different approaches mentioned above, and many, many more...

I think the 'something else' involves the ability to own a bag of credible tricks and be able to improvise with them.

Like a piano player dancing over keys.

Able not just to strike the keys, but to strike them in time, at the right moment with the correct force. Piano e forte.

Go and see a general surgeon and you will get an F sharp. Because that's the only note he knows. Even if you don't need an F sharp right then. Even if you're in a minor key. You will get F#.

Go and see a psychologist. Let them puff their tweeded chests out and brag about having both a B flat and a C flat to offer. 

You might not even notice the discord till you are too far in. Committed.

Go and see a GP. As far as I can see is that he is the only chap possible to have a full octave in stock. But probable? Sadly not. You will need to work hard to find one who doesn't wear big yellow shoes and drive a car whose doors frequently fall off.
Generally patients don't think their health and well-being sufficiently worthwhile to carry out research that is internet-proof.  A good GP isn't Google-able.

See one with the skills, care and love to strategically improvise and he or she may get you to Be.
Perhaps by disguising it as a C flat. Or they might sneak in a good solid F by gently introducing you to a playful E#. Or redesignate your  B flat to an A sharp with an instant parallax switch.

Or not...and if not you might make your way to BUPA instead or head to The Priory. Then you'll get everything you deserve.

They will sell you an A. Then they will sell you a B. Then they will sell you a C. Then they will sell you a D. Then they will sell you an E. Then... well you get my drift.

They might even throw in a bottle of Prosecco and some of the black keys for a 20% discount. 

But nothing will change, but for the making of a new friend.... relative poverty.

What should your doctor deliver, when they make no claim to be Superman?

Let's improvise a motto  in the style of that most succinct of art forms  - the movie tag line. (Which I would take over one of those miserable bloody haikus anyday).

"Can you help me, Doctor?"

"No Cape.
 No Powers.
 No Lycra.  

 No Problem".