Work not in progress…

Officially, winter ended last Monday, and so to celebrate this joyous occasion, I packed up my troubles, slung a rucksack over my shoulder, and took an early morning tram to the grey monstrosity that is the home of the company that pays my rent. Since moving to this concrete and clay monument to Le Corbusier, I’ve tended to work from home, but the sun was shining, and I had to check on a few plants, as well as make sure the coffee was as bad as ever, (it is), and say hello to the odd colleague, (and there are some very odd, if nice, people at ****), but before I took my leave, I was asked a rather troubling question: Are you still writing?

I suppose that, given I am sitting at my ancient Mac in a café and words are appearing on the screen in a somewhat erratic fashion, then the answer is yes. I must admit I’ve been here for over an hour and have so far managed only to add to my list of possible essay titles, (I look forward to dealing with ‘The Ophelia Problem’), and think deeply about what I should have for lunch, (cheese on toast perhaps), but suddenly the flood gates have opened and I am ready to put finger to keyboard, if you’ll excuse the phrase.

It would seem I have a major problem when it comes to writing in that, if I actually try to compose something to order, my mind is a blank. I basically have to throw words on the screen, juggle them about a bit, stand on one leg, hum ‘The Internationale’, and then, if I am lucky, a theme will appear as if out of nowhere. I suppose you could say the words come first followed by an idea of sorts. Well, it works for me.

Writing is a great escape, almost as important to me as the weekly pub quiz, and only just behind red wine, music and meeting dogs. It is, in all probability, more important than sex, but my memory no longer goes back far enough for me to remember…

What is it with memory? I have been doing quite a bit of reminiscing lately. I think it started when an old friend, someone I haven’t seen in about fifteen years, got back in touch and suggested a visit to Vienna. We met when we were both teenagers at a summer school for aspiring actors, (yes, I was young once upon a time). He played guitar, charmed the girls, and introduced me to the music of James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg. (Dylan was beyond my understanding. I tried some ‘Blood on the Tracks’, but had no ‘Desire’ to continue. Can’t sing, can’t play guitar…apart from that, marvellous.) And then Andy changed direction, became an accountant, got married, moved away, got divorced, eventually emigrated to Canada, got married again, and we lost contact. But we will catch up over countless Austrian beers and ancient LP’s, and perhaps a fragment of our youth will return, if only for an hour or two. We may even look at old photos, but that might be going a step too far. I have visions of scary hairstyles and even more terrifying clothes. Oh fashion, where is thy sting?

How much will we have changed since those heady days when the world was our oyster and hope sprang eternal? I was told quite firmly last week that hopes and dreams are worth little unless they become reality in which case I would have failed to pass go. I’m not sure I agree with this assessment of my existence, but she was probably right. Have I wasted countless years? Maybe, but I have so many friends in my life that I must have done something right.

It would appear to be quite unusual to end up doing what you were desperate to do when you were young and ever so slightly naive. I’ve spent the last thirty odd years wanting to act, and so, I suppose, as I am on a Viennese stage in a few short hours kissing a beautiful girl in a back-to-basics production of Orwell’s ‘1984’, I’m actually rather lucky. I think most of the males who see the production are envious, although that doesn’t have much to do with me. Indeed, it doesn’t have anything to do with me. OK, so I’m not playing Chekhov at the RSC or collecting my umpteenth Tony on Broadway, but I do spend my evenings in a theatre with like-minded people, telling a story and hopefully adding something to the lives of the audience. The money might be almost non-existent, but we are doing something we believe in. After all, I could be working long hours for some faceless banking corporation or insurance company, (and believe me I have done this), arriving home with only a microwave meal and a bottle of something to keep me company through the night.

I am willing to accept that I may have ever so slightly misjudged the balance between dreams and reality in my life. All right, I have frequently made the most momentous miscalculations and mistakes over the years, but while I could attempt to address this in the time I have left, it would, I think, take something away from what and who I am. I agree that I am quite probably the most inept self-publicist on the planet, which is suicidal in the theatre world, and that when it comes to blowing my own trumpet I seem to have totally mislaid the mouthpiece. It has endlessly frustrated the women in my life, (not that there have been many), but that was the guy they met in the first place and so surely they’ve only themselves to blame. And there must have been some good times…even I can remember those.

Having said all this, I do come home in the evening to a cold sandwich and with the need for a bottle or two to get me through the hours of darkness, so not everything in my vineyard is rosy. (Or should that be rosé?) Perhaps there will come a time for action instead of studied inaction in the coming months, but I don’t think I can write those days quite yet. I can dream a little, hope a little, and maybe something or, more importantly, someone, will arrive in my crumbling little life and blow the past away. Maybe they are there already but I simply haven’t noticed them…now that would be fairly typical.

Until that moment arrives, and god help me if it doesn’t, I shall make occasional visits to Café Sperl, order a pot of coffee, start up my computer, throw words at the screen, and hope that they form themselves into something coherent and possibly amusing.  As I said at the beginning, I have a title I need to work on, ‘The Ophelia Problem’…you want to know the idea? Get thee to a nunnery!

Holiday Schnapps… (notes from happier times)

In this little part of Norge, (that’s Norway to any non language student who happens to be reading), in a small cabin by the Oslo Fjord with the sun beating down, (the summer can be a delight in this corner of the frozen North), I am looking back at the early part of my year. I suppose that’s one of the things you do when on holiday. Yes, we are on holiday. We have vacated the grey days of work, and the even greyer roads of Leytonstone, and toddled north to visit the family. Not my family, you understand, but the boss’s family. My family are almost as far north as this point of Scandinavia, but a little further to the west and a touch wetter. And windier. And rather cooler, one would suppose.

I say the boss’s family, but they are actually, and finally, my family, after we silently absconded and got married in the early spring of 2005 in New York. We’d only been together twelve years and so some people might suggest that we rushed things a touch. Perhaps it would have benefited us to have taken a little more time to get to know one another, to discover the real us, to learn about our significant other’s little foibles, but you have to take a risk sometime and ours was marriage. So, here we are a legally bound couple, and now she owns everything I have, and I don’t. Or that’s how it seems. I’m sure there are benefits to wedded bliss, although, despite searching high and low, I haven’t found many yet. I really should have read the small print before getting into this. But there are certainly occasional, very occasional, down sides to this union of two minds.

Take friends, and, if you’ll excuse the cliché, I wish you would take hers. Not all of them I hasten to add, but just one or three who insist on holding strange, unarguable political views and breeding as a group. It’s possible, of course, that breeding forces you into taking up ridiculous positions on everything from the state of the Algerian economy to the price of dog biscuits in Kuala Lumpa. Perhaps, and I say this whilst hiding behind a large sideboard, it is hormonal. But I think not. Indeed, I’m fairly positive this isn’t the case here as these particular females, let’s call them Anne, Line and Ingebjørg, (obviously not their real names), have always been a little difficult with me. Ok, lets say it; they’ve always been difficult with everyone! Or so it appears to this individual… Now, it should be obvious from the above list that these three ladies are Norse, (although I say again that the names used are purely fictitious and are simply a rough guide to help us on our way).  They have their own Scandinavian peculiarities, the most important of which are a sense of humour bypass, a tendency to use violence on the male of the species, and the Viking god-given right never to be wrong. (All Norwegian women, and most Danish, claim to be infallible, whilst Swedish girls claim nothing but the right to be tall, blonde and athletic. Just an observation…) Any similarity between these three and certain characters from a Wagnerian opera has little to do with coincidence and almost everything to do with genetics. In short, even without well-rounded operatic figures, horned helmets and shiny breastplates, they seem to be tour guides from Valhalla Inc., leading the weak and innocent to a predestined doom. But I digress.

Why mention Line, Ingebjørg and Anne, (pseudonyms remember, and in no way similar to the actual names of these young women), and the distress they delight in spreading, whilst we are on holiday? Can I not forget them for just a few short days and revel in the freedoms that August on the Oslo fjord might bring to a tortured soul? Well, yes, I could, if it were not for the ´wedding party´. You see, when we got married we ran away without so much as a word or a gesture to anyone. We flew to the States, bought a licence, dragged a friend in as a witness, stood in line at NY City Hall, said I do, had a beer at a Ukrainian café, and then told friends and family the story as we sipped Manhattans in a Brooklyn bar. (It really was like that.) But now, some months later, we have to pay for our madness by taking part in a strange Norwegian celebration, or feast perhaps, that will make the bosses circle feel part of the event, and the happy couple feel as if we should have run away again! And Ingebjørg, Line and Anne, (and once again I assure you that these names were chosen at random), are, despite my protestations, to be a part of this. And their partners, of course, although two of these unfortunate chaps are, sadly, banned from conversing with me in the belief that I might take the opportunity to lead them to freedom, (or at least the nearest bar). The other manacled male has always seemed to be an all right sort of guy, but that was before he came under the ‘improving’ influence of the one we now know as Anne…although that, of course, isn’t her name, is it? There are also likely to be newly born infants present, children of the afore mentioned couples, gurgling and dribbling, leading their one subject parents to turn each conversation towards the agonies of child birth, or the pleasures of feeding through the hours of darkness, or, god forbid, to reach into a pocket or bag and produce a digital camera filled with images of either the gory birth or endless days of child rearing since. Don’t you just hate digital cameras? And new parents?

So, here we are waiting for the events to unfold. Already this tiny celebration has taken on a life of its own, led by the ever so slightly mad women on the outer fringes of Oslo suburbia, who are even now dreaming of droning speeches, marquees, and catering companies, and it has been accepted by we followers as inevitable. And so we wait, and the awful darkness that is the wedding fest draws ever nearer…and it leaves me with one question, one thought that might yet save us from any more of these torturous celebrations. If we don’t just marry a person but actually marry into a life, is there any way of deciding which areas of your partner’s life you are legally obliged to be involved in? Shouldn’t the marriage licence actually have tick boxes that you can choose either to opt in or opt out of? Questions along the lines of, ‘Do you wish to be a part of all family arguments, especially the one involving your spouse’s behaviour when she was 15 and her use of the family home as a hotel?’ Or, ‘Your wife to be has a long standing grievance with her, so called, best friend, concerning a long haired scruff by the name of Jonas, illegal events in a sauna, and a pickled herring. Do you wish to be a part of the conversation when this all comes to the surface after an evening of ancient recriminations and a glass or five of her fathers very special cask-aged Aquavit?’ It would make life so much simpler.

I have no doubt that in Europe, this semi-civilised continent with numerous peoples and a common history of fighting each other to a standstill, we have no chance of such farsighted thinking. But we were joined together in New York, the cultural heart of the land of the free, (let’s not discuss the use of the words culture and USA in the same sentence here), which surely means we have options, perhaps options yet to be envisaged even there. And this is why I call for divorce to become legal between friends, and possibly, I suggest, amongst some family members. Even the boss is beginning to see that I might have a point here, that a lawful separation from certain acquaintances or blood relations might be beneficial to all parties and lead to a quieter, more contented life. Of course, it goes without saying that this friends and family divorce would only apply to my new family. My old family and friends are in most ways perfectly fine, and actually seem to be fonder of the boss than they are of me. Which is slightly worrying, don’t you think? Mmm, maybe this divorce thing needs a little tweaking, but I’m sure it’s the way forward for we legally bound couples. I mean, there has to be some hope for us, doesn’t there?