Taking stock...

I'm off to Qatar tomorrow for a three-day translation conference. This is about as glamorous as my life gets - even more glamorous, and this is saying something, than medieval-lynch-mob-decorated CAKE - but this post is not simply boasting. Obviously it is mainly boasting, and I'm sure I'll do more boasting when I get back, hopefully with pictures (I'm hoping for a sunlit portrait of me against a wonderful panorama of Doha - think blazing blond hair, white shirt, English-Patient chic - although judging by previous experience all my photos will almost certainly involve lots of squinting, a sunburn line across my nose from my sunglasses, and a ridiculous hat). But... well, maybe it's just me, but I find there's something about flying halfway across the world that focuses the mind on mortality.

I am not a nervous flier. Well, no, I am a bit of a nervous flier (I don't fly very much, and it scares me for much the same reasons that I play Euromillions, i.e. the triumph of imagination over statistics), but I think this particular phenomenon is more to do with the way journeys mark milestones - the way I was strangely thoughtful before I set out for Santiago de Compostela, for example, which didn't involve any flying. Medieval pilgrims always used to write their wills before they left home, and while that was quite sensible, really, because in those days it really was hazardous, I think it's a good tradition. Then again, I have no money, so writing my will isn't really worth the time.*

But instead I have been Taking Stock of my life. And I thought I would share my thoughts with you. Just in case. (NB: this is, as you might expect given the above, a singularly self-absorbed blog-post. Please stop reading now if that's going to irritate you.)

I am thirty.** I have published five books, had seven accepted, written ten. I have had emails from people I don't know and probably won't ever know, telling me that my books have made a difference to them. I have played Juliet, Antigone, the Duchess of Malfi, Cordelia and Margaret Thatcher. I was once accosted in the street after a show by a member of the audience who wanted to shake my hand. (It was in Elephant and Castle and for a second I thought she was going to mug me.) I have walked from Le Puy to Santiago with only a few bus journeys in the middle. I can make vinaigrette, harissa and roast chicken without a recipe. I can throw a pot, replace a zip, speak French - all after a fashion - and I can ride a bike, run a mile, keep honest counsel and mar a curious tale in the telling of it. I have a scar on my forehead that I got in a dagger fight. At drama school I was given a chocolate bar by a teacher because I was the only person to walk past when he was teaching a class and considerately not let the door slam. I once sent a clipping to the News Quiz and they read it out***, which is something I am genuinely proud of.

So much for achievements. It seems quite a short list.

I have written some quite bad plays, some quite bad essays, and some quite cringe-worthy poetry. I can't hold a harmony or whistle a tune or touch the floor with my hands while keeping my legs straight. At drama school I was held up as an example to the others of how a backbone should not behave. I was a terrible Kvashnya in The Lower Depths. I have done some truly awful auditions, most of which I can now laugh at. I don't know how to change a fuse or make a Word document into a pdf file. I once made garlic soup which stayed in the plate when I turned it upside down over my head. I have never earned more than £10,000 in a year. At infants' school I dropped a guinea pig, and it still haunts me.

What else?

I have 230 facebook friends. Some of those are really friends - including, I think, some of the ones I've never met. That's nice. Five people have declared love to me, a couple more have asked me out, no one has asked me to marry them. (Or not seriously, anyway.) I have been gloriously, blazingly in love once, and less euphorically and intensely in love six-ish times, of which at least two were unrequited. I have never slept with anyone and regretted it. I have regretted not sleeping with people. (You know who you are. Probably.) I have only ever deliberately put one ex-boyfriend into a book, and it ended up being a far more flattering - and much less exact - portrait than I originally had in mind.

I've never stolen an idea for a novel. Yet.

I have never broken a bone or spent the night in hospital (except when I was born). I have never been pregnant or taken any Class A drugs. Two of my teeth are fake. I had my first filling a few weeks ago. All my vaccinations are up to date. I've tried to give blood three times, and the last time I was so much trouble they had to drive me home in the blood van and took me off the donor register.

I have written some letters for Amnesty International, given a few quid here and there to the Red Cross, signed endless petitions for Avaaz and 38 Degrees, written to my MP more times than I remember, and helped wash up coffee cups after Quaker Meeting; I delete emails from Amnesty when they've been sitting in my inbox for longer than a few days, I buy cheap clothes even though I know they're probably made in sweatshops, I'd rather get a laugh than be universally kind, I can't always be bothered to rip the plastic windows out of envelopes so I can put them in the paper recycling, I once held up a love-letter someone sent me to invite ridicule from our mutual friends, and I've done a few other things which I'm not prepared to admit to on the Internet. Morally speaking I'm probably in the red, like most of us. (Then again, they say that when old or ill people are asked what they regret, the two commonest answers are, 'I wish I'd worked less' and 'I wish I'd been less virtuous'. So, given the above, and that I have never had a proper job, I guess I'm doing fairly well.)

So... I can't think of anything else. That's it. My life in a nutshell.

OK, so this has been a really self-indulgent post. But strangely enough, it's made me feel better.



* Although, now I come to think of it, I did do my tax return this week. But that was mainly so I could spend the money I'd put aside for my tax bill. (One of the few advantages of being totally poverty-stricken is that I can proudly say I am not funding David Cameron at all. Take that, Tory bastards!)

** I was going to work in a Tom-Lehrer style gag: 'It's people like that [Alma Mahler] who make you realise just how little you've achieved. For example, when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years.' Then I looked it up and found, to my disappointment, that I am still too young for that joke...

*** It was the label off a jar of sweet peppers in oil, which said, 'Why not toss into a bowl of fresh green salad?'

Time for NaNoWriMo...

So. King Lear is over. Several months of pure joy (if you don't count the occasional moment of terror on stage, which I don't, because that's really part of the joy) have finally finished. And, predictably, I'm feeling a little bit sad and confused and like I need something new to fill the gap. 

Luckily, today is Hallowe'en. 

No, I'm not talking about trick-or-treating. (Never really been convinced anyway, as it seems to me to be basically encouraging kids to beg aggressively for sweets.) What I mean is: tomorrow is the 1st of November. 

Remember, remember the first of November? 

That's right. NaNoWriMo. 

Now, I've never done National Novel Writing Month before. This is mainly because I've always been in the middle of a novel when November rolled round, and also because my novels were Serious Writing that Couldn't Be Rushed. Happily this year neither of those statements applies... well, I do already have 5000 words of my novel, but that's tiny, isn't it? It would be a shame to pass up the chance of doing NaNoWriMo when it's not really cheating. I definitely need at least 50,000 more words for the book, so... OK, so I'm not convincing anyone here. It will be cheating. You're not supposed to have any words already written. But I don't mind. I fully intend to enter into the spirit of the thing as strongly as if I were doing it properly. And my slash novel is the perfect vehicle, as it doesn't really matter if it ends up as a load of balls.  

So I'm feeling kind of excited. And a little bit scared, because even if I do write for a living I could fail spectacularly at this. But that's the fun of it, I guess. 

I will try to keep you posted. Although if I'm writing 1,667 words a day, including weekends, this blog may falter from time to time... Wish me luck. 

Oh, and if you're interested in King Lear, here is a short video of me painted gold and doing the Merlin speech from Act 3. I haven't watched it, as I always feel a bit ambivalent about watching myself, but - well, enjoy. (I am less blurry in real life. I hope.)

Another play, another love affair...

Or not. Exactly.

I mentioned back in the summer, when I'd just finished doing What the Butler Saw (click here for a photo, I am the one who is not naked) how I always thought of plays - i.e. the process of being in one, from audition to last night - as being like love affairs. It's something I've been thinking about again recently, what with King Lear and all... and also, I guess, because I'm thinking about love affairs generally for my germinating slash novel. (I.e. the novel is germinating. I haven't just invented a new genre.)

I realise this might sound a little bit weird, or perverse, even though* I should point out that, for the record, I am not talking about actual love affairs with actual people. But bear with me, OK?

It may seem a little strange to think about an abstract process in terms of sex. One of the fairly universal assumptions about sexuality is that it has to have a direct object - whether that's a person or an animal or a high-heeled shoe... But, you know, I'm not convinced. I had a discussion with someone a while ago about how "appropriate" it was to exploit one's sexuality in the workplace, and she suggested that whenever anyone did anything that they loved, and did it wholeheartedly and well, that their sexuality was automatically engaged: that in a sense it was meaningless to try to demarcate the "appropriate" spheres for sexuality because it was there in everything. This isn't, I hasten to add, about fancying anything that moves. It's more the idea that what drives us is not clearly divisible into sexual and non-sexual, or even romantic and non-romantic. Desire is desire, whether it's for sex or an elegant solution to a problem or a really good bacon sandwich. The object is actually an indirect object - pretty much (OK, this is probably a bit contentious, but hey) incidental. What you want to achieve varies - but the feeling that motivates you is... the same.

And the process of being in a play has the same shape as a burgeoning love affair. You hear about the play and you're interested, you have that moment of connection (the audition), you walk out feeling hopeful but helpless - it's down to them whether they want to see you again - and then you get cast and you feel triumphant and attractive... And then in rehearsals you have fun, you laugh a lot, you have moments of wondering whether this is the best thing ever or if it's all a horrible mistake... you get a whole new group of ready-made friends with whom you have something in common... and all the time you're moving towards the Great Climax of the first night. And then you Do It. Again and again. Until suddenly it's over. Leaving you, at least in my case, invariably a little bit broken-hearted.

But it isn't just the specific emotions that make the simile work for me. Because, let's face it, I've been in plays where the rehearsal process has been painful, the other actors boring or irritating, the director tiresome - where, in short, I haven't enjoyed it much - and somehow, even in those cases, the metaphor still rings true. No, it's more to do with the way it makes you think about the future. Does that make sense? It's because of the balance of enjoyment and anticipation, certainty and uncertainty, pleasure and fear... And maybe it's something much more universal, something about all narratives, whether they're ones we live through or ones we read or watch or write. I think what I'm driving at is the way momentum and experience meet and interact, our relationship with the present vs. the future... (This is getting wanky, but bear with me.) When you're acting you have to be absolutely in the moment, focused on what's happening now, and there's a kind of happiness that comes from that, especially when you're doing something you love. But at the same time, rehearsals are only there because you're going to perform. That's the whole point. They only reach their full meaning retrospectively - when you get to the performance. If, when you rehearsed, you didn't believe that one day you'd perform, you wouldn't enjoy it - even if nothing about the actual experience was different. And it's the same for all narratives. You're driven by the desire to know what happens next - not right now, maybe, but soon. You have to enjoy the process of reading, but it only reaches its fulfilment when it finishes. That's why a brilliant book with a bad ending can be so frustrating. It's like great sex that breaks off when your partner goes to answer the door and doesn't come back.**

OK, so I didn't mean for this to get quite so Barthesian. To be honest I was really only thinking about how sad I'll be when King Lear is over. I'm not absolutely sure where this splurge of quasi-narrative theory came from... but it's probably better that way. (Possibly something to do with the fact that I'm delaying the moment when I have to do some real work.)

I am going to sign off now. Mainly because I just realised I could sum this post up in three sentences: "I like being in King Lear." And, "Last night we went to the pub after rehearsal. I had a very nice time."


* Or, possibly, especially because...
** I imagine. This has never happened to me.***
*** No, it really hasn't.

Stranger Things and Other Things

Last week, as you might remember if you follow this blog, I had the UK premiere of my first full-length film, Stranger Things, at the Raindance Film Festival. Which was amazing and bizarre in equal measure. Try seeing your own face, very close up, on a big screen when you're only sitting in the second row... I'd imagined it was going to be like watching the DVD only bigger (logical enough, when you think about it) but actually the whole experience was different and weird. Mainly good but also... odd. It hadn't occurred to me to be nervous beforehand, but so many people asked me if I was that by the time I went into the cinema I was feeling very jumpy indeed. And of course watching that first scene with the zombies didn't relax me much...

The really nice thing, though, was that I found myself forgetting that it was me onscreen, and just letting the film tell me its story. Sometimes I think that story-telling is really the thing I love best about acting (or possibly about everything) - and in film you don't get to do it yourself, you're only providing the raw material for someone else to do it. So seeing it all put together and looking beautiful is a lovely eureka moment. Oh I see, I said to myself. I understand now...

On a less thoughtful note, I hope and pray that I am better-looking in real life. Several of my friends assured me I was. But then, they're my friends... Maybe I should ask an enemy.

Anyway - so that was Friday. Then on Saturday, just as I was going to bed (a little bit addled from my father's birthday dinner)* I had a phone call from Ron, one of the directors, saying we'd won Best UK Film! I had to check on the Internet the next morning in case I'd dreamt it... Very exciting. And it also won an award for Best Direction at a different festival the day after. Honestly, Ron and Eleanor (the other director) are so successful it would be unbearable if they weren't so nice.

So I radiated glory and triumph for about two hours yesterday morning before I had to go to rehearsal for King Lear. And had a splendid time forgetting my five lines and being restfully dead. I'm loving rehearsals at the moment.

Oh, and did I mention I sent Mazecheat to my editor? So it's Liberty Hall chez moi at the moment, as I'm not exactly sure what to work on. Slash novel? Historical novel? More blog?

Time for writeordie, I think.


* I had scallops with pancetta and chillies, calf's liver with fig sauce, semi-freddo and coffee. Since you ask.

OK, so three princesses walk into a bar...

(c) Di Byers, 2011

Did I mention that I was (am, am going to be) in King Lear? Well, I expect I did, but here anyway to prove it is a photo of me with some of the other actors. I'm the one in the white dress, looking stern in an I'm-taking-myself-terribly-seriously kind of way... Yes, Cordelia, how did you guess?

I am also playing the Fool, which is fun too. I get to make lots of rather dirty jokes, not to mention do a brilliant impression of a horse eating buttered hay. (Confused at first, then dubious, then won over by the idea and thoroughly over-excited, since you ask. All in an unmistakeably equine fashion. It'll be worth seeing the play just for that... Promise.)

So today I was going to blog about the Internet and the fact that it's a Good Thing, after all... but I started and then realised it was going to take longer than I'd planned to write it. So I thought, nah, put that on hold, something with a picture would be better. And since pretty much all my time is taken up with rehearsals at the moment, King Lear sprang to mind.

This photo was posed, I hasten to add. For the local paper. Which hopefully will go some way to explaining why it looks so... odd. And why Lear's court has mysteriously been transformed to a cave. (Possibly a mystic cave.)

Never trust a man in a fur jerkin, that's my motto.

Stranger Things at Raindance

Stranger Things is my first feature-length film. It's a touching study of a young woman touched by grief (played by me - see fig. 1, left, I am the one who doesn't have a beard) who strikes up an unusual friendship with a vagrant who breaks into her dead mother's house. It's beautifully shot and scripted, and the film is a subtle and poignant story about loss, vulnerability and healing.

And if that doesn't grab you, and you're more of an action-movie fan, let me just say that although there aren't any car chases, there is a section where I flail around uselessly in a field with a stick.

I worked on it a long time ago, so it feels weird (and nostalgic) that it's only just having its London premiere (although it's done the rounds in the US and South America, picking up lots of awards on the way, including Best Narrative Feature at Slamdance and Woodstock). But it is!

At 9 pm on the 7th of October, Stranger Things will be shown at the Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly, as part of the Raindance festival. Everyone is more than welcome...

Close of Play

Well, that's it, then. My play has now finished. I'm at that depressing going-back-to-normal-life stage, and I can't bring myself to do anything. Not even laundry, and believe me, I really need to do some, or I will actually disappear beneath the surface of a swamp of dirty T-shirts and drown.

It's such a long time since I've done a play that I'd almost forgotten what it was like. Finishing a film just doesn't have the same impact - mainly because doing films isn't much fun anyway. No, a play is different. It's - well, it's like a love affair. The adrenalin, the fear, the uncertainty, the delight... The rehearsals as you appraise and wonder and flirt, the tech as you think this was all a huge mistake, and then the performances when it all falls into place and you've found the purpose, the love of your life. And then the party, and the euphoria and fatigue, and then that moment when you go round saying goodbye to people and you realise it's raining outside and it's half past three in the morning and you're walking home alone.

And this has really nothing to do with actually falling in love with someone in the play. (Sometimes that happens too, but let's not go into that.)

But there you go. I feel like I've just been dumped. No, not dumped. I feel like we've decided, with mutual sadness, that it's not going to happen and we should stop now before someone gets hurt. Not the end of the world, but... what do I do now?

Well, we'll see. Today I was looking over profiles from bookdrum.com for a competition I'm judging - that was nice, not too demanding but I had to concentrate - and it won't be till tomorrow that I'll have to do some real work.

Or possibly I'll buy some ice cream and eat it in my pyjamas, sitting on the sofa.

I'll keep you informed.

Ah, the joys of a photo shoot...

Just been down in Pett (near Hastings) for a couple of days, doing a publicity-photo shoot for a film I was in a while ago. For anyone who's interested, it's called Stranger Things, and hasn't been released yet - but watch this space, as it's already won an independent film competition and is getting some good attention... It was very low-budget - hence the need to take photos later, as normally there would be a stills photographer there while you were shooting the film - but it's a lovely, subtle story with some great performances. (Or so I've been told. I haven't seen it yet.)

Anyway, on the photo shoot we stayed in a sweet little B&B, which was run by a really talkative woman who made ceramics. She cornered us after breakfast and, on hearing what we were doing, started talking about her own creative processes ("You never know where inspiration comes from, do you? It just comes... my grandson said to me, Nan, where do you get your ideas? but of course I just don't know, I just have them..."). And then she started showing us her work ("I had this idea for a pottery frog to go in the garden, with a top hat and glasses and a book... and this statue, I had the idea for the woman kneeling in the waves because I got to the bottom and realised I couldn't do feet...") and it was all... well, not very good. OK, so I'm a bit of a snob - but it was all so incongruous, the kind of Radio 4 artistic introspection, as if we'd come to interview her, when the work was all so bad.

I related this story to my parents, and my dad said, doesn't it make you think of that poem...?

The one he was talking about is:

'Look at the happy moron.
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron.
My God, perhaps I am!'

And he's absolutely right.

So today I am not going to expatiate on my creative processes.

I'll just leave you with the image of three people squashed in a twenty-year-old camper van, which is rolling gently backwards down a hill while the driver curses and revs and the smell of burnt plastic rises all around. I've been in cars where I thought they might not get up the hill, but in the past they always did. This one, however, did actually roll back down. And apparently after I got dropped off it got stuck on the M25 and had to be rescued by the AA. The world of low-budget films is a glamorous one...