Bitter Sweet

Have you noticed that as you get older more moments have the potential to be bitter-sweet?  I don’t necessarily mean sad, but full, seasoned.  The history we bring with us can flavour occasions with memories, some of which are joyful, nostalgic or melancholy.  Maturity inevitably makes one more aware of complex resonances… and an aspect of this awareness is the knowledge that loss can shadow (even chase) many of life’s riches.  

The expression, ‘the big chill’, reminds me of this complexity.  For its two meanings are closely entwined: the first suggesting a relaxed and casual atmosphere… the second a frosty, hard-edged environment.  Strangely, they co-exist without dissonance, as if the contradiction were by design.  Such is life.

The use of this expression as a title for a film was especially clever, because the production managed to embody both meanings; the bitter and the sweet.

On some levels, what greatly moves me about The Big Chill is obvious.  People reunite after the suicide of an old friend.  They loved him.  They wish they’d known he’d lost hope and better understood his journey.  In coming together after many years, these friends are reminded of how much they have missed one-another, and how much they’ve left behind.  In a long-weekend of friendship, familiarity, regret and reflection they revisit shared joys and dreams, ideas of what their life was going to be, and in doing so grieve for a loss of innocence, for failings, and for the sense that choices have been which close other paths.  Their musings are particularly vivid because the background to their youth was America’s revolutionary, idealistic and hopeful 1960s.

Without hyperbole, The Big Chill is a great film – a resonant, surprisingly humorous, and insightful slice of life.  The sound-track is legendary, of course, but so too is the script, the direction and the performances.  The way themes and needs weave together is truly a work of art, a classic.

And to think that when I first saw the film – was invited, in fact, by a film critic to accompany him to a preview – I was bored and restless.  I complained after that the characters were indulgent and unsympathetic.  I also thought the humour abrasive.  Quite appalled, my friend looked down at me from a great height – and I mean literally because he was a rather slim, tall chap – no doubt realizing he was foolish to be attempting to court such a young and innocent girl.  For no matter how pretty, or promising as an actress, I clearly had bad taste.  Well, undeveloped.  The point was that I didn’t understand the film.  I was too young.  I was too innocent and sheltered.  Life was going to turn out as I expected.  If I did the right things and followed my passion I would end up exactly where I expected to be.  So I thought. 

In retrospect, I must have sounded like the character of Richard at the kitchen table: narrow and simplistic.  That evening he let my disappointing comments slide with a mere shake of his head, but he didn’t take me out again.  He imagined, I guess, that it would take some time before I could understand what was “wrong” with these people in The Big Chill, “swapping partners and taking drugs…”  Nor did I understand that levity, even flippancy, can be a necessary part of grief, as we struggle to normalise the shock; existentially torn between light and darkness, life and death.

Anyway it was nearly a decade before I saw The Big Chill again.  I don’t remember where I was or who I was with… but as every frame rolled I remembered that writer, Greg, and my own naivety and lack of perspective.  My teenage self stood so shamefully before me the poignancy of the film was enhanced.  At the time I was still younger than the characters in the movie and my life was going very well.  I was enjoying a long period of continual employment, quite a luxury for an actress, and in many ways felt I was just starting out.  Yet I’d experienced enough heartache – particularly the sudden death of my father - to empathise with the underlying pathos of the film.  This time too I got the film’s comic and ironic elements.  I also knew I was destined to see it again… that over time my appreciation for it would grow.  And so it did. 

X years later I watched it a couple more times; and again the other night when I was moved to the point of being choked up.  After each heart-tugging experience my appreciation for this film deepens like the lines on my forehead or the annoying grey hairs that do their best to poke through as I do my best to hide them.  Eerie is what this film is now… poignant and strikingly eerie...

But why?  What has Lawrence Kasdan captured which touches me so deeply?

Is it that these likeable characters can’t get the milk back in the bottle, and I identify with their feelings about “the road not taken”?  Is it the softening of revolutionary spirit that comes with age… the slide of pragmatism which accompanies if not middle-age then at least middle-class living?  Is it that Alex and Chloe’s charming hideaway reminded me of the wooden cottage in South Carolina which a dear boyfriend once presented to me with pride… and I’d been too young (again), and giddy with the love of show-biz, to consider serious commitment?  As the film was in fact set in South Carolina this would be an inevitable comparison.

It was some and all of those things but, in a constructive way, what the film illuminates through the palpable loss is that it is impossible to journey through life holding on to everything as much as we may wish we could.  The same is true of our idealism and the plans we may make.  Alteration and adaptation is not only crucial, it’s endless.  This does not make loss any less painful, but there is definitely something healthy and compelling about these friends coming back into a cocoon of sorts to support each other while processing the challenges they are facing.

I’ve had my share of death; too large a share lately.  So the scenes where the friends sit around remembering the person they desperately wish was still with them, are achingly familiar.  By contrast, the recriminations between them, the tensions unleashed in the tide of grief, seem comparatively modest.

I was also deeply touched by the respect and generosity of Sarah and Harold helping their friend Meg to become a mother.  The film predates the broader use of IVF so, looking back, the storyline was progressive.  If the morality of their ‘triangle’ strikes some as suspect, I can understand that.  If some think their choices too risky, I can understand that too.  But the gentleness and compassion shown here between them greatly warms the part of me which wishes more often we saw such unabashed compassion in action – compassion outside ‘accepted norms’, outside judgement. 

Nevertheless perhaps the big thing about The Big Chill is that it shows people in the prime of their life learning that personal growth and understanding is a grey business… a flawed and murky business… a journey far from black and white, or pure good and bad.  Living and love, wisdom and wonder, go on and on in waves of bitter-sweet experience.  Our job is to hang on for the upside, and to keep loving no-matter how grey or imperfect circumstances and people may be.

In this the friends in The Big Chill reinforce each other – eventually venturing back out into the world ready for another round.  That’s what true friends are for - for many better than family - and I think it’s this element which resonates with me most of all.  For in that warmth and comfort, frost and fear melt.  It’s ok to be less than perfect, less than all-knowing, for your friends will love you anyway.

That’s why The Big Chill, despite its plot, is like a warm hug.  As well as a celebration of the lives we are challenged to make the most out of while we can.

 

 

NOTES:

The Big Chill was released in 1983 and filmed entirely on location in Beaufort, South Carolina.  Principal Cast:

• Kevin Kline as Harold Cooper
• Glenn Close as Sarah Cooper
• William Hurt as Nick Carlton
• Mary Kay Place as Meg Jones
• Tom Berenger as Sam Weber
• JoBeth Williams as Karen Bowens
• Jeff Goldblum as Michael Gold
• Meg Tilly as Chloe
• Don Galloway as Richard Bowens 

The director, Lawrence Kasdan, has made several splendid films, including another favourite, The Accidental Tourist, where he worked again with William Hurt.

 

Barbarism and Civilisation

I went to a moving service for Remembrance Day on Sunday in London.  The minister gave a good homily about war and, by implication, peace… during which he said “barbarism and civilisation are as far from each other as a varnished sword is from rust”.  He suggested evil and goodness, virtue and human-failing, operate on a delicately poised scale and ready-to-swing pendulum.

His message was that to preserve our humanity, moreover to grow and improve, individually and collectively, we need to remain aware of our vulnerability to corruption and indifference.  And one doesn’t have to be religious to know that his observations of human nature and society are apt. 

At the more trivial end of the spectrum, do we push and shove and behave aggressively in peak hour?   For a few moments I had the moral high-ground on Victoria Station on Friday night when a guy with a bicycle pushed it through the crowd and slammed it into my leg.  I asked him to stop moving as my leg and jacket were hooked on his pedal, but he continued to push forward violently, dragging the metal deeper across my calf.  The expletive I called after him added unhelpfully to the agro of the commuter mosh-pit, not to mention fell on deaf ears.  What was the point of it all?  He didn’t get to his train any quicker than I got to the pub.

There are many moments when we have to choose between kindness and selfishness – regularly when living in a city surrounded by extremes of wealth and poverty – and even at the water-cooler we may not realise we are being asked to choose between judgementalism and gossip, and the opportunity to give people we encounter in our professional and personal lives the benefit of the doubt.

War and peace are extreme examples – strong juxtaposition aiding our ability to identify good from bad, courage from weakness.  It is right on so many levels that we ‘celebrate’ November 11^th.  This consciousness is as important for the living as it is for the dead – even ninety-five years after the end of World War One.

And that brings me to my reason for writing: if barbarism and civilisation lie, at times, a mere knife-edge apart… how close is enrichment from loss, comfort from abandonment, and life from death?  Destruction in the Philippines in recent days is so deeply tragic… so widespread… it makes for a painfully vivid reminder that life (and what equates with civilised living) can be wiped out brutally and on masse if you simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

It is different to the suffering in Syria only because a typhoon is not of man’s making.  Similarly, George Orwell describes a slippery-slope from affluence to poverty and marginalisation eloquently in Down and Out in Paris and London – a small book everyone who can really ought to read – but that journey is a slow and inexorable one.  In the Philippines, it is the suddenness of the typhoon which shocks and overwhelms.  We feel numb and powerless in the face of such a large-scale ‘natural’ disaster.

Many tens, even hundreds of thousands, of people are dead and/or suffering in the torrential wake.  We don’t yet know the half of it.  Like the Boxing Day Tsunami it is too much to take in, and will surely take years to remedy their physical lives, let alone heal emotional scars. So I don’t mean to minimise the catastrophe by shifting focus from the whole to the particular, but I have lost a friend in this tragedy; in circumstances which are complicated and sad. 

Since I got the news I keep thinking of my friend.  I see him body-surfing happily in the ocean; laughing over a bottle of red; exploring the churches and monuments of Rome and Assisi; passing round beers while I rough up some dinner; listen to him comment on (or argue about) the rugby league, the news, the latest item of political interest; riding his motor-bike; surprising me with a bottle of lemon-cello because he knows I’m missing Italy; encouraging me to play the piano while he competes with his good friend, Ray, to win at billiards; eagerly talking to bunches of school children who look up at him with fascination; standing fervently on the Altar celebrating Mass, during the dedicated years he gave his life to the church; celebrating Mass in whatever intimate place he found himself with a few friends or parishioners; starting every sermon with a joke; raising money to build a new church or support an orphanage; sharing his Faith and compassion with all he encountered; praying often and long for people who were sick, troubled or deceased; caring about people; and only a very short time ago making decisions which were to separate him from many he loved, from a vocation he loved, and, most sadly, lead him to the place where he would lose his life in massive tides. 

Technically, the distance from life to death is a breath.  Whatever the prelude, ultimately the change occurs in a moment.  Our challenge is to fill our breaths, however difficult at times, with as much richness as we possibly can… so when that last breath comes we have as few regrets as possible.  Whatever else he did, this friend gave out an abundance of love and kindness.  He spent the majority of his life in the service of others.  His life has been cut tragically short, but it was a full life; a life which did not shirk many difficult questions.  He was not always right.  Not always prudent.  He stuck his neck out rather than sit on a fence.  But the majority of the time Kevin had available, he fought the good fight.  The fight to ensure forgiveness and love rises above the attitudes which take us closer to barbarism, to coldness and isolation.  Knowing that, knowing him, the nature of his passing - alone on the tropical island where he hoped to find a new kind of fulfilment - seems all the crueller. 

I’m certain many lives lost in the Philippines deserve their own story and reflection.  Yet in the end it is only the sincerity of one’s heart and conscience, and what we leave behind in the hearts and minds of those who knew us, which counts.  And this friend deserves to be remembered and prayed for, for the life in his life, the spirit in his Faith, his passion for social justice, his love of God and humanity, and his certain belief that, whatever our mistakes, ultimately we each earn the right to be reunited with and welcomed by our Maker.  He has left a lot behind.  He made a valuable contribution – perhaps most when he was least aware of it.  Many will miss him and feel the pain of his absence and loss.

Nevertheless, despite our tears, all we can do is follow his example and trust the best of what he told us.  So for Father Kevin and all those lost in the Philippines: 

Eternal rest grant to them oh Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them. 

            May they rest in peace and rise in glory.  Amen.

 

 

Fear, Films & Fiona

I have a way of seeing connections between things which some think odd.  But it’s not my issue if people’s brains work differently.

The last two movies I’ve seen at the cinema have reminded me hugely of two dear friends called Fiona and of our experiences around fear.  Your loved ones don’t often know when you are thinking of them and missing them on the other side of the world – ‘little Fiona’ in Brisbane and ‘the other Fiona’ in LA – so I figure I may as well write a blog about them as anyone else.

The films I’m referring to were superbly made and highly recommended: Rush directed by Ron Howard, and Captain Phillips directed by Paul Greengrass.  Both these craftsmen know how to make a great movie which girls as well as guys love, because they have human nuance and compelling narrative as well as thrilling action and speed.  I don’t even like Formula One and I was engaged by Rush from the earliest frames.  And anyone connected with the making of the brilliant Bourne Trilogy and I’m hooked. So Howard and Greengrass: in your enormous fields of achievement these were exceptional efforts.  Thank you!

As it happens I’ve never taken speed.  Apart from health or legal concerns I have absolutely no need.  It’d be like giving uppers to the Eveready Bunny.  But these films made my blood pump.  Glued to the seat, all other realities evaporated as I utterly suspended my disbelief and sank into the drama.  At the end I felt like I’d been running a marathon and was desperate to get outside into London’s chilly Autumn air, walking home with wind blowing in my face and image after image replaying in my head.  I dreamt about them too – Tom Hanks’ final scenes exquisitely moving.

So what is it about fear which is so simultaneously frightening and compelling?  I’ve sky-dived, scuba-dived, heli-skied and fallen out of a white-water raft in a most inconvenient rocky river… but I wouldn’t class myself as a high-risk sportsperson.  I never go to horror films.  Yet these movies frightened the hell out of me and I loved it.  Perhaps the characters and story-telling won me over to the extent I endured the fear as an inescapable bi-product?  Yet I suspect Howard and Greengrass are so clever they understand how to take an audience to the brink of their coping threshold - dangling us in a metaphorical bungee-jump, where a collective addiction to narrative unites with a carnal hunger for wildness and beyond-our-boundaries experiences. 

The element which really made my heart pound in Captain Phillips is the lifeboat.  That small capsule with a lid was far more frightening to me than the pirates or the prospect of a bullet.  I could intensely feel the heat and lack of air, to the point that I had to repeatedly concentrate on slowing my own breathing.  How can one survive such a long journey so confined?  It was torture.  How do people in prison cope with four close walls, especially those thrown into dark dungeons without trial or justice?  All through the film I kept thanking God for Amnesty International and promising I’d give them some more money. (Can someone please hold me to that so I don’t forget?) 

Of course, Hanks’ brilliant performance and the director’s intense building of tension are sufficient provocateurs, but my projected fears enlarged the experience.  I am a little claustrophobic.  For years I’ve had a recurring dream I am trapped in a box or a cupboard.  And time and again I’ve woken up banging the wall behind the bed trying to get out. 

In life I do whatever I can to avoid peak-hour public transport, especially undergrounds.  On planes it isn’t crashing which freaks me out, but rather waking up in an overheated cabin with insufficient oxygen.  Occasionally this has threatened a mini panic-attack, but thankfully it only seems to happen in economy; which is great incentive to fly at the front of the bus. 

Anyway thoughts about “facing one’s fears” brings me to my friend, Fiona.

When we flatted together in Bondi in our fun-filled, wonderfully courageous, it’s-all-ahead-of-you 20s, Fiona would confront any hesitance or fear she felt, by saying “there’s nothing to fear except fear itself”.  I’m inclined to forget Franklin D. Roosevelt and attribute this phrase to Fiona, for I never hear it without thinking fondly of her.

Now fast-forward to the Mediterranean in 2009 when I’m showing ‘little Fiona’ around the Cinque Terre.  Setting out on the coastal walk from Monterosso al Mare to Vernazza, I call out: “Walk at your own pace, Fifi, you can’t get lost, there’s only one path… I’ll wait for you somewhere on a rock”.   The wind is whistling, a delightful breeze tickles the pre-midday leaves, and hundreds of metres below steep cliffs I find the sound of crashing waves utterly invigorating.  Various parts of the path are infamously narrow and rocky but I’m in my element – out in the world, fit and free, luxuriating in the sights and smells of my beloved Italy. 

Some time later I am perched in shade admiring the infamous blues of this great sea, and I hear footsteps approach.  Turning around with my lemonade (a treat offered by neighbours on route made from delicious local lemons) my sweet but somewhat pale-looking friend walks slowly toward me.  “What’s the matter?” I ask, bewildered.  “It’s really high, Julie” she says with more shock than malice.  She then adds quietly: “I think you’ve forgotten I’m afraid of heights.”  OMG, I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN.  What a dreadful friend – a most awful thing to do to someone who has travelled half way across the world to visit you!

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry” followed, but the girl with the most generous nature in the world would hear none of it: “But I did it” she said humbly.  “I was scared.  Especially the difficult parts when I thought I was going to slip off the edge.  But I did it.  I took my time and I was fine”   What can you do but hug a girl like that?!  I love her to bits, then and now.  And after a refreshing glass of lemonade we continued the walk to Vernazza, wandering quietly and contentedly together – the making of a very precious memory.

Now I’m thinking of ‘the other Fiona’, which is how I distinguished my L.A. friend from ‘little Fiona’ who my Tuscan mates had met and taken to their hearts.  I am sitting on a bar stool near San Gimignano recounting an extraordinary adventure to the Ice Hotel in Sweden with ‘the other Fiona’.  I have the whole room’s attention for this story, something I clearly enjoy, and the audience should be praised for accepting its meagre delivery in a mix of English and hand-waving Italian with conspicuously dodgy grammar.  I’m making my point anyway, sometimes jumping off the high-stool to act out various parts. But this Ferrari-loving race is hooked.  I skim over the details of meeting the chiefs of Audi while swigging vodka in the Ice Bar – a compulsory part of the Ice Hotel experience – and I’m up to the part where this divine group of ‘strangers’ have taken Fiona and I, and assorted journalists, out into the middle of a frozen lake in Lapland for the launch of a new Audi Sports Car.  (Don’t ask me which model. Not my thing.)  The sun is setting and in the far distance six spotlights cut through the haze.  Lights race toward us across a wide expanse of ice, until we recognise there are three pairs - three very fast pairs on bright red cars.  Audi has arranged for their European Racing Team to arrive… and arrive they do like James Bond or Jason Bourne… pulsing hot-rods soon inches from our twitching toes.  You’ll have to buy my book to get a full description, but suffice it to say the experience was nothing short of spectacular. 

The point about fear is this: Fiona and I were taken by each of these hot, racing-car drivers out for a spin on the enormous lake.  Scream?  Are you kidding – it’s a wonder you didn’t hear us in London!  These guys were out to give us the ride of our lives and the more we spun, the more we screamed, the faster they went… with an ocean of slippery ice between us and the nearest tree they played those cars like a Stradivarius… the little sports-steering-wheel so small yet powerful in the hands of truly great drivers.

Adrenalin pumped.  Curiosity peaked.  So much so I had to stop screaming and ask questions – while still the car spun, sped, reversed and raced while the driver calmly informed me about things I previously never thought interesting.  In love with everything Audi, everything fast, and everything stimulating, we returned to the Ice Bar for more vodka.  The anecdote has followed me around the world never failing to amuse.  And this fond and familiar sensation tugged at my heart during every scene of Ron Howard’s brilliantly rendered, Rush. 

OK, my thrilling European Rally Car had a proper roof.  I am still terrified of the risk Formula One drivers face with burns and injuries and the sheer insane noise of it.  But if my racing-car story is not about overcoming fear, it is certainly about embracing it. 

Rewards are all the richer, whatever the activity or goal, if we face the risks and do it anyway.  So thank God for friends, for my pals Fiona, and for films and experiences which take us out and beyond ourselves.

 

            Recommendations:
     

            Captain Phillips:             http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535109/

Rush:                            http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1979320/     

 

 

What’s with all the questions?

Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where he was driven mad by a girl who wouldn’t stop asking him questions? 

I remember laughing hard, at the time, but over the last few days Seinfeld’s  pain rang repeatedly in my ears while in the midst of my own torture and an overwhelming desire to scream “what’s with ALL THE QUESTIONS?!”  

To make it worse these endless questions and questionnaires were framed by boxes… confining, un-spontaneous, un-imaginative, contrived boxes.  Boxes which didn’t let you express or explore what you really wanted to say, what you might have said if you’d had enough space to breathe.  An awful limitation for someone with a huge freedom need and inclined to claustrophobia.

What was I doing?  Well, I caved in to social and psychological pressure to embark on a trial weekend with internet dating.  Friends genuinely wanted me to ‘give it a go’ as a means by which I could ‘sort the wheat from the chaff’… ‘let the cream rise to the top’… ‘eliminate a large percentage of inappropriate candidates’… ‘improve the odds’ etc.  Such is the faith people have these days in this most strange method of ‘meeting’ and forming attachments. 

I know it works well for some, but I don’t mind saying that everything in me resisted the idea of introduction and conversation via computer.  I struggle enough with Facebook, and only enjoy Twitter because it’s abbreviated and light-hearted. There’s no pretending it’s more than it is.  I am a face-to-face person who has no trouble with spontaneous meetings or talking to strangers.  

Moreover, I never admit to my age so why would I want to put it publically into print?  I don’t want to LIMIT a guy’s age or LIST what he should be, as that’s far too prescriptive for someone as flexible in her tastes as I am.  Nor do I feel in a hurry at the moment to find ‘Mr Right’.  I’ve turned down many possibilities in the last year as I’ve just not been interested in sub-standard.  I want quality not quantity.  Some friends joke I’ve got tired of being a cougar.  Others that the options in London aren’t half as sexy or eager as the Italians I met so easily while living in Tuscany.  There’s truth in both.  But I have many friends to go out with, including a lovely man who is very good to me and takes me regularly to the opera.  The bigger reason for a shift in my ‘romance antenna’ is probably that 2012 was bookended by the worst and best experiences of my dating life.  The former, so destructive I still wonder how I ever fell into it; let alone recovered. The latter, so enriching and enjoyable that it significantly raised the bar on what I felt I should expect. 

So, months after that friendship has changed course for reasons beyond our control, I found myself with a few days off work and the offer of a free trial on a dating website.  That was when the questions started.

OMG you’ve never seen so many questions!  You fill in page after page of questions so the computer can put you (and your supposed matches) in a category.  Your online profile is launched and then you have more questions – hundreds in fact – which I diligently answered thinking it was compulsory.  Then the ‘matches’ started to arrive, dozens and dozens of them, fifty in the space of three days.  It took HOURS to read so many profiles, to the extent I don’t know how anybody with a job actually does it! 

Then the real frustration started. I couldn’t see any photographs, for that was not part of the ‘free communication’ advertised. Oh well, maybe there was something positive to be had in discovering someone’s character before making judgements about looks.  Kind of like a traditional Matchmaker might have done.  But then I discovered most of these blokes hadn’t answered the 250 profile questions I had answered about behaviour, preferences and politics… or if they had they perhaps weren’t bothered to read my answers.  For in an excruciating impression of Groundhog Day, all these questions started to arrive - question after question, page after page until I felt hemmed in, under pressure, and anything but natural or relaxed.  I found my heart racing.  I was utterly overwhelmed.  And that’s saying something from someone who can sing in front of a thousand people with less nerves than most!

My mistake, of course, was that I was treating every approach from these faceless strangers as if they were real people, whose feelings needed to be considered.  I didn’t want to ignore approaches which may have been genuine.  Wouldn’t it hurt their feelings if I didn’t reply?  Send back a smile?  But the damn computer wouldn’t let me write a simple message, you had to go through the hoops, the obstacle course, with every candidate, stage after stage of differently worded QUESTIONS. 

It was all too much.  I felt like I was in the guilty seat of an Alfred Hitchcock with the spotlights pointed on my heart and inner most character.  Would I pass the test?  But what were the bloody rules?  Torture, pure torture.

So now I’m at Day 3, when one guy, who seems interesting, intelligent, sends five questions too many - the first of which is: “how often do you lose your temper?”  I am tempted to write back “NOW, you bloody idiot, because you keep sending me THE QUESTIONS!”  But the computer won’t let me answer in my own words because the computer LOVES the BOXES.  And the only people who can circumnavigate the boxes are the people with paid subscriptions (so I find out later).  I am about to lose it, as I put two and two together he is sending the questions because he LIKES them, and is probably either very guarded or a control freak.  So, with a thud, the penny drops: why am I actually answering?! 

Then, in the same ten minutes, a guy who’s pursued me vigilantly over 48 hours… and with whom I’ve made a date to meet face-to-face in Covent Garden… suddenly cancels two hours out.  The reason sounds fake; so no idea what that's about. 

As things often come in threes, before another twenty minutes has elapsed… another seemingly nice guy, suddenly BLOCKS ME.  Seriously?  Rejected by a guy I can’t see and who I’ve never met for, what I can only guess is, answering his last question incorrectly.  Well, he can seriously go **** himself.  But that doesn’t stop me feeling uncomfortable and judged.  For that question was: “how do you conduct yourself at a party?”  Do you a) set out and make your own introductions, meet new people?; b) remain glued to your date’s side all night?; c) stand in the corner and feel shy? or d) something I can’t recall.  Well, of course I answered option a)… but clearly that was not to his taste!  So he bins me without a ‘how’s your father’.   And though I am likely to be far better off never to meet someone so socially inept… it does highlight what’s wrong with the BOXES.  Real life is not as black and white as all that, because you may in fact do a mixture of a) and b) or whatever else is reasonable at the time.  Yet these artificially generated interrogations don’t allow for individuality or nuance.  And, THAT’S WHY I HATED THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE.

You can tell I am scarred.  It was held out as the big chance, the thing you ought to do to take your love-life into your own hands. I’d resisted so long and then given in, that after the suffocation of the whole process and three rejections on the hop I felt totally inadequate and somehow at fault.  Friends said, “but you’re used to rejection… treat it like showbiz”.  But that’s the thing, I get enough obstacle courses and rejection in my profession, I don’t need it in my personal life too.

Anyway, why is acceptance of this medium so prolific there’s an inference that if you don’t ‘do it’ you are somehow responsible for not finding that someone special?  

 

I reject that inference of course, but it only took until the next day to see I’d gone out too hard.  I had felt overwhelmed by the volume and the weirdness of it, and I’d been making myself persevere like medicine given by the doctor.  I wasn’t approaching this strange electronic dating game with the kind of cynicism or detachment which must surely be the only way to survive it.  Well, a dose of that, and some superior discernment re the truth or otherwise of many profiles.  I was operating as if I were at a party and each person deserved a polite response.  But seriously, if I hadn’t stopped and gone with a nice neighbour to our local coffee shop where Frankie (the lovely Italian manager) gave me a cappuccino, a brownie and a cuddle in that order… then I think I’d have hyperventilated. 

Instead I had a little cry… laughed at his suggestion that perhaps the guys weren’t real men anyway, but just elaborate CGI to get people to spend money… that I got past the disappointment and the feeling that I was a fly pinned to a boy’s school experiment board…  and I made the liberating decision to cancel my membership.  It’s too time-consuming – especially for a writer who needs space and time to create.  It’s too artificial and stressful.  It’s too sad, as I feel too responsible and open in a world where you can’t judge who is also being honest.  I’d rather start up a conversation in a pub, or smile across the departure lounge at a handsome stranger; as I did in the case of the fabulous guy mentioned above.  The internet dating thing is just not for me.

Nevertheless, as I logged off for the last time, I noticed a final message from one guy who said “I can’t believe you’re X years old… you don’t look half that… what’s your secret?!” 

Hmm, perhaps not such a bad ending after all. 

 

What a day!

Some people say blogging is no different to writing in a diary so is therefore indulgent.  I disagree.  Many bloggers explore and develop a theme, sometimes cleverly, so as with much digital media it’s different strokes for different folks.

Today, however, I confess my post is little more than an enlarged journal entry.  

The day started with fog.  You wouldn’t believe how white and wintry it felt.  I had the central heating on for hours before 11am, drying the washing as I sipped coffee and addressed miscellaneous emails and tinkled on the piano which my lovely friend Adam has kindly loaned me for the winter after my last keyboard gave up the ghost.  By lunch-time the air cleared and I had the windows wide open as I searched for summer clothes again.  

 Around 2pm I was trotting down the Kings Road enjoying the designer shops, when the second stranger in less than a week stopped me unexpectedly, saying: “excuse me, I love the colour of your hair”.  This man was also a red-head, keen to explain his restaurant policy was to offer red-heads a free drink.  Well, can’t argue with that.  But as I was on my way to an audition, which have been rather thin on the ground lately, I had to take a rain-check.  It made me smile anyway.  (And he was more stylish than the guy who spun me on the pavement late last Friday only to say: “ooh, I love a ginger… do you want to come with us?” and pointed to his straggly collection of drunken friends.)

After a happy exchange in Chelsea I skipped off to the appointed venue and from 2.30pm to 4.30pm took part in what could only be described as a workshop.  A dozen actor/singer/musicians worked with the Director around various themes, musical and dramatic, to elicit our ability to play a diverse range of characters.  It was great fun – challenging and stimulating.  We played theatrical games, improvised, moved around the space working scenes, imitating animals, and doing jazz-vocal scat.  I far prefer being ‘put through the hoops’ and really working my craft, than arriving with a ‘party piece’ which may or may not hit the mark in five minutes.  It was tiring, hot work on a surprisingly sunny day for late September in London, but I felt one hundred percent in the moment.  That doesn’t mean every improvisation was balanced or successful, but it does mean I was relaxed and in my element.  I thoroughly enjoyed the process. 

 

After waiting outside the theatre for fifteen minutes I then discovered I had been recalled early evening to meet the Musical Director.  So I scooted back up the Kings Road to relax in one of its many appealing cafes and watch the beautiful people walk by.   It was hard to resist the pull of the pub, in the lovely warm afternoon a cold beer would have been perfect, but I couldn’t possibly drink alcohol before a performance.  Eventually I returned to the theatre and went back into the studio, to sing a prepared jazz ballad and play the piano.  Then we improvised around a jazz chart.  I was asked about my ability to bluff/make-do on various other instruments… which I tried to answer with a balance of honesty and optimism… and then we rehearsed a new scene.  I had been playing a fox and an owl in the afternoon session, so was amused to now be playing a jazz-singing walrus!  The script said this walrus was glamorous so I searched for some husky, sexy sounds and by the smiles in the room things went rather well.  Again I enjoyed myself.  The script is new, imaginative, perfectly geared for a young audience, and probably plays well to my varied strengths as an actor/musician.  Yet the point of the audition was to flex my creative muscles, and by 6.45pm, when I left the theatre for the last time, I felt it had done just that.  What happens next is anyone’s guess – I’ve long since learnt if you’re a walrus and they want a whale, or you’re an apple and they want a pear, there ain’t a thing you can do about it.  That’s showbiz.   It was, anyway, a fulfilling afternoon.  

 

Back up the Kings Road I found myself at the door of the restaurant where I’d been spotted by the lover of red-heads.  The second I appeared Butch called out to me and within minutes I was embraced, introduced and made feel part of the friendliest bunch of Italians I’ve met since leaving Tuscany.  Almost immediately I was given my complimentary G &T… then I was in the kitchen meeting the Italian/Australian chef Domenico, and his assistant Danny (with kisses all round)… then I was meeting the restaurateur’s extended family (including the nice, single brother?!)… then the woman who had booked the large rear table for her book launch (an occasion I took straight to heart)…all the while loving the chance to practise my Italian… and somehow those exchanges morphed into more kissing, more greetings, and a seat at the bar eating exquisite seafood pasta, drinks, and a cross-over conversation between a stand-up-comedian who was barracking for his football team, Swindon, playing against Chelsea on the television, and a rather boastful police-officer who wanted me to know that if he wasn’t waiting for his date "I would really like to count every one of your freckles”.  It was just that kind of day. 

 

Isn’t London lovely when the sun is shining and everyone feels happy?  I certainly bumped into people in the same mood as me, and post any audition (like post a good hair-cut) I’m always a bit pumped and loved every minute of the play, the flirtation, and the food, wine and bonhomie.  For those few hours – as with the play as owl, fox and jazz-singing walrus – I was exactly where I was supposed to be.  And I wandered back down Beaufort Street to admire the Albert Bridge shining on the Thames and felt all was right with the world.

 

Tomorrow I go back to being a responsible Project Manager, though happily that’s dealing with a new entertainment company, so as with many an artiste it’s one hat off and one hat on and I’ll be all the better for the variety. 

 

To prove it’s been a remarkable day, I then returned home to an annoying email about a potential new contract which I’ve been carefully considering for several weeks but just this moment decided to decline… and another email, out of the blue, from an international recruitment company saying “your CV is excellent and well-suited to blah blah” and asking me if I am interested in a senior event management job for nine months on the other side of the world.   I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when you’re not in favour, and your luck is not in, you can’t even get arrested… when things change for the better, everything comes at once and suddenly you feel you have some bargaining power.  I won’t let it go to my head.  But it has been a good day.

 

Buonanotte.  Sogni d’oro! 

 

 

 

          RECOMMENDATION:

 
         Frantoio, 397 King's Rd  London SW10 0LR (Ph: 020 7352 4146)

         For the children's show The Ballad of Rudy book online at: www.chelseatheatre.org.uk

 

You'll Never Walk Alone

We all know the song.  The Liverpool Football fans know it word for word.

Recently I was standing outside Liverpool Football Club looking at the memorial to the Hillsborough tragedy and reading these famous words “you’ll never walk alone…” enthroned on the gate.  It was a moving experience, even more so in the light of last year’s revelations that the fans were not to ‘blame’ for the disaster but rather that the mismanaged crowd had been allowed to enter the stadium until well over capacity, drastically breaching safety standards.  Having carried responsibility for public events many times myself I shuddered at the atrociously poor judgement which led to such an enormous loss of life and suffering for hundreds, if not thousands, of families; all of which was made worse by the infamous cover-up.  Over days in Liverpool filled with enjoyable experiences this was one of only two moments of melancholy.

Why was I there?  Well, laugh if you like, but I was there as an invited VIP – booked for a Close Protection training course so the students had someone to practise on.  I was met at the train station by two cars and a team of five security professionals: what is known as a PPO, a Personal Protection Officer, two drivers and two additional bodyguards.  Bodyguard, I believe, is the old-fashioned term, but forgive me for using it.  I like its hulky, sexy, ready-to-do-anything-for-you inference, which frankly applied well to my attractive, healthy team of two women and three men.

I travelled in the first car with my PPO and driver, behind in another dark car were the other three.  It was just like you see in the movies: alert, athletic people with ear pieces and exceptionally good manners, watching my every move and meeting my every need.  Car doors opened and closed, people greeted me, guided me, glided beside and behind me like I was the President: “watch your step Madam”… “can I get you anything”… “are you comfortable”… “would you like to go to the hotel… yes, it’s on the waterfront…. or would you like…”  the options were endless.  I had a few days in lovely Liverpool – which I hadn’t visited for more than a decade – under warm blue skies to do exactly as I pleased while being exceptionally well cared for and made to feel special.

Clearly the team were being watched from somewhere by the managers assessing them.  I wondered if it was a helicopter or a telescope, as texts occasionally arrived which revealed they knew what we were doing, but they were incognito and wouldn’t tell me their position.  Maybe when that stuff happens in the movies it isn’t as much fiction as I thought?

If you read this blog or www.blogjuliearts.com it won’t surprise you to learn many of my activities were arts-related but still I was impressed that whenever I arrived anywhere – a museum, a theatre, a bar, a restaurant – a group of people near the front doors discreetly, but carefully, appeared ready for my arrival.  I think my team had ‘cased the joint’ in anticipation… having previously given them a list of places I might visit… but only after direct questioning did I learn Close Protection standards means plans are put in place for escape routes and damage limitation.  Other security guards nodded to my guys with respect, acknowledging their job to look after the chatty, pint-sized, red-head was important or challenging or both.  This made me laugh but also stand a little taller.  Hmm, maybe it was an omen?  A come-back looming?  It reminded me anyway, of the height of my fifteen minutes of fame – which around Neighbours lasted some years – and I couldn’t help but think how much better this ‘protection’ was to what I’d previously experienced.  Perhaps the industry has come on a pace?  Perhaps the right people hadn’t always been appointed before?  But I clearly remember many occasions when there was such a mini-riot in places around London that once I had to hide in a red telephone box in Leicester Square while my loyal Deputy Stage Manager did what he could to move the crowd away who were intent on banging on the door and doing anything they could to get in and touch me.  Seriously, I am not exaggerating.  So once you have experienced such highs of hysteria, anything about fame makes you always consider the perceived elements of success with something of a rye smile.  To be up, then down, in fortunes and fame is a good leveller.   It’s a shame the millions chasing instant profile on the likes of the X Factor don’t realize how flimsy a goal it is.  (But don’t get me started on that subject as I detest reality television for more reasons than boredom.)

Anyway, back to my story.  I was amused when I saw people watch me moving around Liverpool with my team – steering me in such a way that even in a busy museum or shopping street the crowd had no choice but to part – and sometimes a spectator would turn to the other with an expression like “who’s she?”  I felt guilty sitting in the sun with a beer on the pretty Albert Dock while my lovely bodyguards drank nothing but water, but not sufficiently guilty not to do it.  Whenever I was delivered to my charming hotel room in the Radisson, a time was agreed for me to be picked up again, and sure enough at exactly the appointed time there would be a knock on the door.  The lift was opened and held, other people had to wait to go down as my team and I took up much of the space, and when we emerged from the foyer, the Radisson staff nodding at me with indulgence, there was always the two cars waiting.

Ooh, I felt spoilt.  I only wished I’d brought a much higher pair of heels – for in London I tramp home at night so regularly from the tube that often it isn’t practical to wear my best shoes.  Here, however, I could have worn five inch heels as the car was always going to be waiting to deliver me door to door.  One evening I was having dinner in an Italian restaurant called Piccolino, the table reserved, I happened to overhear, in a pseudonym so as to disguise “the Principal’s” identity.  I was seated by a large window with my host from the company delivering the training.  He sweetly maintains “you will always be a VIP to me… videos of you in Neighbours got me through the Gulf War”.  Of course he is too kind.  Nevertheless, to my delight after years living and eating well in Tuscany, Piccolino provided me with the best assortment of seafood I have eaten in two years.  It was absolutely delicious and with great service from a genuine Italian guy waiting on tables as he makes his way around the world.  At one point I moved toward the stairs to find the bathroom, and suddenly two of my protection team appeared at the bottom to check on my well-being and point me in the right direction.  But how did they know I was coming?  I thought they were on a break?  Secret cameras?  Telescope?  No, I think that’s just how clever they are: alert, but not alarmed (to borrow from a slogan Australians will recognise).

Later that evening we went to Liverpool’s stunning Anglican Cathedral to admire the city lights from the top of the tower.  An over-used word perhaps, but our experience was magical.  The moon seemed to have received the memo that a VIP was in town… for at exactly the right moment she came slowly through the clouds… little by little, a partial moon peeping increasingly over the top… the silver lining glowing like a story-book… until suddenly she POPPED above the clouds… FULL and BLUE.  Yes, I wasn’t imagining it.  My PPO googled and we discovered it was indeed the night of a precious blue moon.  For those glorious minutes as she shone blue and golden we fell into silence, a shared sense of hope and awe.  When Nature is that glorious it feels anything is possible.  It was a bonding moment.  I was becoming very fond of my bodyguards.  And go figure, when my PPO is not being a terrific tour guide and companion, she is also an actress.  So we managed a little rendition of Blue Moon and various other snippets of romantic conversation before climbing down the tower’s many steps to explore the rest of the Cathedral with a private guide, another person who’d been hood-winked into treating me like a VIP.

I enjoyed many things about Liverpool: the fearless Mersey River; the interesting history of the docks and the effective redevelopment of waterfront spaces; the elegant Three Graces, one of the buildings topped with Liver Birds from where the city gets her legend; the well-designed Museum of Liverpool and Merseyside Maritime Museum; the scattering of colourful sculptures known as “Lambananas”; Beatles memorabilia; the Liverpool International Music Festival; Sefton Park; Albert Dock; and the Green Room on Duke Street.  Cabaret Lounges are all too rare around the world these days, so I was very pleased to find one thriving in Liverpool.  I managed to meet two of the three partners, including the big man himself, Ricky Tomlinson.  I was happy to discover Ricky’s warmth and humour in conversation and performance is as bountiful as his determination to contribute to society and make his voice heard on many a political topic.  In his down-to-earth style I recognised what I really like about Liverpudlians: a no-nonsense, independent attitude.  Aussies are at home with a straight-shooting, no bull-shit approach, so perhaps that’s why we often get on well with northerners. 

Perhaps too it’s the Celtic influence which makes me appreciate this quote from the wall of the Museum of Liverpool: “If you ask a Scouser to do something for you you’ll get all the co-operation in the world… but don’t tell them to do something for you...” 

Liverpudlians have spirit.  I like their accent too – originally born from affection for Shirley Valentine.  One of my more humorous observations is that the women in Liverpool really like to dress up.  I mean, really dress up; as in make a tremendous effort.  London by comparison is low-key.  High fashion and towering heels are deployed sparingly, selectively.  Even in regular visits to the Royal Opera House most of the audience will be dressed smart-casual to professional-formal.  (Of course West End Opening Nights and Film Previews are an exception, or anywhere one is expecting the paparazzi.)  Yet in Liverpool on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night you will be surrounded by the highest heels you have seen outside a Russian mllionaire’s party and hair dos to match. The hair-dressers must be making a fortune.  To my mind the hairstyles and glamorous dresses are more suited to a lavish wedding than a bar or nightclub… but far be it for me to criticize girls putting their best foot forward, even if, personally, it seemed a little over the top.  I tell you what though, next time I go to Liverpool, bodyguards or not, I’ll be packing high-heels and a chiffon number.

I should end on a particular highlight: my visit to Crosby Beach and the zone called Another Place.   I wanted a pre-breakfast jog and my bodyguards obliged by arriving early and escorting me from the hotel to a beach-side car park.  Ear pieces were set in place, plans discussed and confirmed, one protector jogged beside me, another behind, and a car followed on the road until sand-dunes made it impossible to continue.  Mile upon mile the team stayed in radio contact and at one point my former driver suddenly stuck his arm out from the dunes to offer me a bottle of water.  Talk about funny.  How did he get there at just the right time?  I felt like Madonna.  And not only on the jog did I get to know a little better the charming bodyguard who had previously been driving the back-up car, but I was surrounded by a stunning view, fresh air, and Anthony Gormley’s startling art installation.  Scattered across a wide expanse of sand there were a hundred bronze figures staring out to sea - some half covered by sand, water or molluscs, but all so lifelike that in the still, eerie glare of the sunny morning I sensed they were waiting for something monumental to happen.  The subliminal message was part science-fiction, part spiritual and definitely artistic, and I felt glad to be starting my day with salty air and invigorating exercise.  Like the statues my bodyguards were standing ready to drive their car onto the beach to save me, or scoop me up in their arms if I hazarded a torn muscle.  How could someone with a larrikin spirit not enjoy every step of such a journey?!   As my friend Fiona would say, “it was too funny”.

When finally the training exercises were complete and my team took me back to the hotel, I emerged from the lift on the ninth floor and for the first time in days I was alone. 

I felt an inexplicable wave of sadness.  No.  I felt lonely.  I was without their care, their company.  I had so quickly gotten used to someone watching out for me… someone, a team in fact, making me feel special.  For those days we’d been a little family and instantly I missed them.

Of course I adjusted fairly quickly to being alone again.  A five star hotel with a view and a mini-bar helped ease the blow.

Yet it reminds me that whatever happens in one’s life or career, we should never forget to be grateful for the people who support us, back us up - whether a Close Protection team, a husband, wife, lover, friend, parent, relative, acquaintance, stranger, colleague or unseen angel.   We are all poorer if we take this care for granted.

Thank you Liverpool.  Thank you my Close Protection team.  Travel safe and whenever I hear “eyes on” I’ll remember you.

 

Recommendations:

             http://sefton.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=6216

             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Place

             www.thegreenroomliverpool.com

             http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/

             http://www.clairestringer.com/lambas.htm

             http://www.radissonblu.co.uk/hotel-liverpool

             http://www.liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/about/cathedral.aspx

             http://www.liverpoolfc.com/