Diary

2010-02-08T22:03:00.002Z

When i was being bullied, the strongest weapons my enemies possessed was their capacity to make me complicit in the process. To make me a willing victim.
That's how the most successful and dangerous bullies work: they make their victims agree to what is happening to them.
The best ones even manage to hide from their victims the fact they are being bullied at all.
I never used to see myself as being oppressed as a transsexual, for instance. If i suffered and felt bad about myself, i reasoned, it was because I was a bad person. And so deserved it.
If my beliefs and opinions were discounted and jeered at, it was because they were worthless.
If my dreams never came to be, it was because they were impossible and absurd.
And so on.
I consented to remaining a victim because there did not seem to be an alternative.
I couldn't see one.
And I rejected or was unable to listen to anyone who seemed to offer me one.
And I learned to numb myself to the suffering, to detach myself from it.
Even to find it preferable in its constant, almost reassuring presence, to the unknown terrors of the world beyong the bully's prison walls.
And then to take the first steps to escape the bullying do feel agonising: because it somehow involves taking on board all the pain you've learnt to shut down from.
Freedom comes at a cost: but nothing else is truly worth paying for.

2010-02-01T15:20:00.002Z

3 glimpses of manhood:

ONE:
Someone sent me a link to this picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning with a young person that on first glance I identified as a girl.
http://www.life.com/image/3092113/in-gallery/38742
... but which after reading the caption I can now only identify as male.
I wonder what happened to him.
I imagine him going through the rite of passage of being seperated from his mother, having his hair cut, and being forced into the ugly uniform of the public schoolboy.
Toughened up and turned into a man.
And looking at that picture in the context of a generalised misogyny I can understand, somehow, why even up to my childhood the male-dominated culture viewed it as unhealthy for sons to grow up too close to their mothers.

TWO:
In the gym this morning a man came onto the treadmill next to mine. A male staff member was going round checking on the machines, and they engaged in "banter".
The man said his machine was OK, it was just him that had something wrong (I suspect like me he was in "heart rehabilitation") and the staff member asked him if he'd like to volounteer for euthanasia? Because if so he would be happy to give him a hand. I can think of lots of my friends who would think the same, the man said, and my wife would probably agree with them. It's the only thing they like about her, he added. Wittily.
And the whole exchange, in its sneering denial of friendship and affection, struck me as totally appalling.
But for them it was inconsequential.

THREE
Then i went onto the cross machine. Because my feet don't touch the ground and jar my knees, it is the only way I can ever jog. I set myself a target of doing a kilometre in 6 minutes. Which in the context of the three minute mile does not seem like that much of n achievement. But for me, approaching sixty with sore knees and two years after a heart operation, is actually quite something. I did it with three seconds to spare.
And only then became aware that i can completely forgotten to be in feedback with myself and was unpleasantly out of breath.
And that reminded me of how much we were encouraged to lose touch with our own bodies, ignore all the message they sent us, and push on regardless.
Which is so damaging.

2010-01-29T21:13:00.002Z

I happened to turn on the tv today and saw a very beautiful film about Sibelius
http://picasaweb.google.com/ibnunajib/LeaveToRemain?feat=email#
I knew that Sibelius was, in effect, silent for the last twenty or so years of his life and because I fear silence more that anything, and feel so imperative a command to resist it.. and because I was under the impression Sibelius had chosen silence I was somehow never really drawn to him.
And yet there is so much in him that I can relate to.
The fact he had to pay at the beginning to have his symphonies performed, that he lost money in the process. that he had to struggle against debt.
His ferocious capacity for self criticism. the appalling struggle to resist chaos and to create...
All this moved me so profoundly.
The constant struggle to find expression for what had to be said...
As I struggle, not at all in the same league (but that doesn't matter) struggle to get Every One into the best shape the script can be in for rehearsals...
In the times when I would find myself being sent abroad and put up in international hotels, i would turn on the TV and look in horror at the multiplicity of channels, and the power that represents, and the appalling low quality of the material they were transmitting, and feel so puny and helpless in the face of it all. Struggling to complete my works for tiny theatres...
And I am aware how the works never measure up to the power and the scope of the dreams that inspire them.
And Sibelius burning the movements of his last symphony that he had, after years of struggle, managed to complete...
How important to focus, somehow, on what can and has been achieved.
And try not to be obsessed by what has not.

2010-01-26T22:27:00.002Z

I went back to the Biodanza class today.
(www.biodanzascotland.com)
It's been a while. i was very moved to be returning.
Since i was last consistently involved, my Jesus, Queen of Heaven has exposed me to so much hatred... and so much support, so much passionate debate - I get about 346,000 hits when I google the title these days - and it's a strange, quite a lonely feeling.
Without my family and my firends and my lover I am not sure i could have sustained it.
And then now, as I do the final script preparations for Every OneI realise this is a job, also, that only I can do. Even with all the collective energy going into the play that will increase in intensity as the rehearsals begin.
Strangely, too, in the last few days, as I clear out my bookshelves, I have been coming across the diaries i kept during my illness and have been reliving all those times when I was in the most intense suffering. And alone.
So there was something very wonderful about holding hands, dancing in the circle... looking into everyone's eyes.
And feeling part of that worldlwide group again.
I still search for this.
Which must be why I called the play, "Every One"

2010-01-21T21:38:00.002Z

I saw the set model for Every One at the Lyceum today. It was beautiful.
I was profoundly moved by it, and by the sensitive intelligence of the designer.
There were a lot of people there: the carpenters and the lighting designer, the composer, the sound designer, the choreographer, satge management, production manager, the costume people...
It was one of those moments when I was profoundly moved and excited by the whole busines of working in the theatre, the collectivity of the whole process...
Aware too of an immense responsibility as the writer, the person who came up with the script that is inspiring all these people and bringing out their best thinking and best skills.
It is such a joy.
I had the same feeling last week, in the three days in the studio working on the recording of my new radio play, La princesse de Cleves.
The joy of seeing words coming to life off the page... of my sensitivity and skills being so immeasurably enriched by the sensitivity and skills of everyone else...
I feel a blesed and fortunate person.

2010-01-12T21:47:00.002Z

12th January
I phone my mother-in-law each day to check on how she is doing.
She is 84 and has a serious heart condition, and so I wonder each morning if today will be the day when she is simply not able to answer the phone.
My experience of loved ones dying has led me always to expect the worse: and I can feel my muscles tightening and the phone keeps on ringing.
this negative expectation has been made worse by the fact she really was very ill in November and December. She became horribly aware of the beating of her heart, tormented by it, really, and it was beating irregularly and sometimes stopping altogether.
This would happen day and night: sometimes when i was with her I would notice she was somehow absent, in an uncanny kind of way, and as if in suspension... and then it would thump back in again and she would be OK.
At night she would sometimes report waking up and feeling "as if I was away" and having to breathe deeply and deliberately until, thump, it came back again.
She now takes a total of twenty pills every day and must be a strong as an ox for not only does she survive them and their side effects but is also managing to get stronger.
She takes the intensest interest and delight in her surroundings and I think this must be her secret.
Today it was the thrush. She feeds the robin and the blackbirds and carries on the liveliest conversations with them: delighted today by the appearance of a thrush on a rowan tree outside her window.
The delight she takes is so infectious: and she becomes a delight to be with always.

2010-01-11T23:11:00.002Z

11th january
I've been looking through old photographs to hand some over for an interview in a magazine.
I'm struck by the incredible richness of our life as a family: and all its manifold opportunities for happiness and pleasure.
Opportunities I never really made the most of. Because I was tormented by this feeling of being in "the wrong body" in ways I could neither control or understand.
I look at my old masculine, suffering self, with increasing liking and compassion.
Almost physical attraction. I can't help but notice what a handsome charismatic fellow this John could be.
And yet I never knew it while I was that person.
This fills me with sadness.
Yes, and compassion: because whatever that feeling was about, I could simply do nothing about it.
Except what i have done now.

A woman called Iris Robinson is hugely in the news just now. Her husband is leader of the Democratic Unionist party and First Minister of Northern Ireland.
She is 59, my age exactly, and fell in love with a young man 40 years younger than her. And lent him a considerable amount of money to set up his own business.

Neither her husband or herself declared any of this when they were suoposed to declare their business interests as ministers.
More importantly for her, adultery is severely frowned upon in the unforgiving fundamentalist church to which she belongs.
Adultery is condemned as fiercely as homosexuality; and she made some vile public statements about homosexuality being an abomination as she took office.
For she is a senior politician herself.

So it's understandable that many LGBT commentators feel a quiet kind of satisfaction at her downfall.
I feel sorry for her myself, in my usual way. She might as well get some compassion from me, as she will get none from the vile god she worships and serves.
I suppose also I can't help noticing how similar in her way is her case to mine. Like me, he became uncontrollably gripped by a passion she simply could not resist.

Apparently she is in a mental hospital just now. I hope she emerges safely from it: and with a little more humility and compassion.

2010-01-10T18:13:00.001Z

This cold reminds me of a time when i was just starting out seriously to be a playwright. It was a freezing winter the year after our first daughter was born, and we lived in a very beautifully placed cottage just by Rosslynn Chapel.
It was so lovely. And so intensely cold.
Primitive too. Our daughter was wearing terry nappies (we couldn�t afford disposable ones) and we didn�t even have an automatic washing machine to wash them in.
I was getting the occasional review for The Scotsman (which paid �13 a review. Which was taken off my social security money) and trying to finish my thesis with a typewriter on the kitchen table. Susie was getting the occasional article, or bit of layout.
We fitted the stereotype of struggling artists with uncomfortable accuracy.
And then the pipes froze.
The plumber�s name was George. He saved our lives. He was also totally reliable, very skilled, very conscientious. he was sympathetic and humourous and always a real pleasure to talk to. And he didn�t charge an unreasonable amount of money.
Round about that time I remember passing a plaque on the Royal Mile (and I still pass it most days) that was dedicated to �George Chalmers, plumber� by the grateful citizens of the Canongate.
I so understood why they were so grateful.
And looking back on things, it occurs to me that a good theatre artist is a bit like a good plumber.
Part of the skill is being able to judge how long a job will take and then knowing how much to price it. And being able to hand the work in, or deliver it, on time.
Pleasantly, without fuss, getting on with your fellow workers. And your customers too.
And of course getting out there so your face is known and you get a reputation for being good to work with and reliable.
Not to mention also being incredibly highly skilled.
The difference is that the market is shrinking, the competition huge, and there�s an amazing reluctance to pay you anything like properly for the work you do.
Which is also quite dangerous, in its way, and certainly can take its toll on your nerves and self esteem.
So it�s probably not a bad idea to take on a sideline.
And then you have to juggle the demands of both jobs: but think, also, which one makes you happier. Really makes you happier.
Because there�s no point in being an artist, or a plumber, if it doesn�t make you happy and enable you to help people.
And after a bit, obviously, the analogy breaks down. But its a good one to stay with for a while.
It cuts down pretension and makes you think about whether what you do really is useful and serves people.
I always thought my role models were people like Lorca and Calderon.
But maybe it was George the plumber all along.

2009-12-24T20:36:00.002Z

I've found Christmas harder than usual this year.
It's the spectacle of so many people making themselves miserable and tense spending money they don't have to buy presents for people who don't need them and destroying the planet in the process...
I suppose I should be hardened to this by now, but this year it strikes me as obscene.

Things have got better since my younger daughter arrived: we decorated the tree, we put out the Christmas crib, we ate and talked together with great pleasure, and her grandma is so happy she's here...

The expression of love makes a certain sense of it all. Grandma's Jean's religious sect does not believe in celebrating Christmas, on the grounds we should try to be holy (and mindful, i would add) on every day of the year.

And maybe they have a point: love should be expressed every day of the year. And not with things we buy each other: but how we treat each other.

2009-12-23T15:54:00.001Z

HAPPY CHRISTMAS
from
Jesus, Queen of Heaven

�And don�t tell me
There were no shepherds. Or that there were no flocks.
Because they all went years ago when they built the city by-pass.
Or that it wasn�t a manger. But a plastic box in a run-down maternity ward. Without enough midwives.
Or there were no wise men,
Maybe just your dad, and him a bit pissed maybe, being so nervous.
Think poetically.
Because what I tell you is true.
The whole truth and nothing but
Because, Beloved sisters and brothers and every kind of sibling in Christ,
Because I am the truth.
And I am also the way and the life and a million other things besides.
And the angels were there at your birth
And there was rejoicing and great gladness
And wise men did come with the most beautiful gifts.
And the angels just so delightfully framing the sky....�

2009-12-20T00:00:00.002Z

19th december
Hard not to feel despairing these dark days, with the abject failure of the Copenhagen summit, the manifest failure of political loeaders of ever party to come to grips with the situation that confronts us...
but i did what everyone seems to be doing and tried to forget all about it.
Went to see 'The Red Shoes' with some old friends.
It looked so beautiful; I love the way the Powell and Pressburger films are absolutely not afraid to portray an inner landscape and make poetic films...
But this was tosh. The idea that you cannot love and be an artist; that the pursuit of art is somehow mad and destructive... the usual British anti art tosh.
But I was gateful to it just the same...

2009-12-08T08:13:00.002Z

There's been an uneasy feeling in the house since I came back from Cracow.
A sound of scrabbling in the walls. A sense of being under siege.
And then last thursday I came up to the kitchen and met a rat. A big one.
We looked at each other in mutual fear and loathing a moment and then the rat scuttled off behind the fridge.
Since then the feeling of being under siege has intensified.
The night before last the rat was gnawing away at the wainscoting at the top of the stairs; and the noise was unbearable. About 2am i started banging with my shoe wherever I heard the creature moving.
There were showing a horrible film on the TV that was using horror movie language to portray the Marquis de Sade in his asylum.
I felt like someone in a horror movie: threatened by monstrous creatures preparing to burst in through the walls.
And then yesterday the rat man came.
He was a cheerful man. They all seem to be. One difference, however, was that he was wearing a shirt and tie. Perhaps the profession is having a makeover.
"I enjoy the job" he told me. "It's good fun".
He flung bags of poison in strategic places and left me with his bill.
Soon afterwards an old student of mine came who wanted my advice about a film he is about to make.
And then we heard it: the rustling of a plastic bag. Just under one of the kitchen units.
I told him it was a rat eating poison.
And I said sorry to the rat when my friend was gone.
I had become uneasily aware of the Buddhist injunction not to harm the life of another living creature.
Curious how even so apparently simple a moral command is also so complicated. That should preserve us from complacency and arrogance.
And as I heard it munching away I was aware too of the proximity of two worlds: the acceptable one on the surface. the chaos and the filth underneath.

2009-12-05T08:36:00.002Z

I am reading a wonderful book called 'Imperium' (Ryszard Kapuscinski) - an account of the author's travels around the old Russian empire.

He writes about a visit to Ufa, a city in the grip of a massive ecological disaster.

It involves the chemical phenol, which has catastrophically contaminated the water supply.
He describes with extraordinary vividness the queues that form of people waiting in line for water.

In the book we never know if these people, whom he writes about with such humanity and compassion, ever receive the water they require.

Or how many die, or what happens to the city, or whether it ever gets cleaned up.

This seems to have happened between 1989 and 1991, but i have no memory of it. Wikipedia tells me Ufa really exists, and is a big city. Over a million people. Ufa's football club is FC Bashinformsvyaz-Dynamo Ufa play in the Russian Second Division. The city ice hockey club Salavat Yulaev Ufa play in the Kontinental Hockey league (KHL) and were five-time champions of the Russian Major League. The Ural Volleyball club are also based in Ufa.

.. which is of course indispensable. It tells me it is twinned with Ankara, Halle, Las Pinas,Paldiski and Orenberg.

The next site in Google tells me there are thousands of beautiful and willing women there eager to become western brides.

But there is no mention of this disaster anywhere.

This must be one of the myriads of appalling events that get their brief spotlight before media attention focuses elsewhere more important, like Katie Price's marriage, or someone's fashion disaster at a premiere.

There are pictures of Bhopal just now. It's the anniversary of hat disaster. The people who were poisoned have never received adequate compensation; those responsible for their suffering have never been brought to justice; the site has never been properly secured and still leaks poison out into the surrounding countryside.

That is one thing both these economic systems have in common: an utter and appalling disregard for humanity.

2009-12-04T07:37:00.003Z

Yesterday I am with my mother-in-law while a social worker visits.
She is "assessing Jean for a care package".
Meanwhile Jean is concerned because her disabilities mean she can no longer take either a shower or a bath.
However that is to be the subject of a "bathing assessment". The bathing assessor will report back to the social worker who will then decide whether there needs to be a re-assessment of the care package.
I think.

Meanwhile the social worker, who is a perfectly decent and helpful individual, starts to fill in a form. It's a thick and complicated form and I have to translate both the questions, so Jean can understand them, and the answers, so the social worker puts the right interpretation on them.

Jean, being a proud person who wishes to live an independent life, minimises her difficulties and is reluctant to ask for help.
I on the other hand am keen to maximise her difficulties so she gets all the help available.
Delicate negotiations ensure.

Meanwhile the social worker is explaining the form in terms of the freedom of information act - which restricts information - because, it turns out, when she gets back to her office she will have to fill out the form again to put it into her computer.

I, meanwhile, am trying to learn from the social worker what are the numbers to call and what are the services to ask for - the right words to use - if Jean gets ill again and we start to need more help.
The social worker has given us her direct line number and her name... but that may not necessarily be the way forward. Because what you are meant to do is phone something called Social Work Direct so that they then contact the appropriate social worker.

Almost certainly we will end up having to contact both.

Meanwhile, she fills in the form.
The day before, Jean had given similar information to the hospital doctor.
This doctor had his own struggles with the system: he spent a long time trying to log into the hospital computer to retrieve an x ray that was taken the last time the doctor was there. And that the doctor that time could not retrieve either.

Then the doctor writes out a letter - by hand - for Jean to give to her GP - by hand - so the GP can write out a prescription for her to get antibiotics for her chest infection.

And I discover yesterday that the prescription never reached the chemist...

Meanwhile the directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland - which the governmnt owns - are threatening to resign en masse in utterly furious indignation if the government does not allow them to award each other million pound bonuses for, among other things, investing billions and billions in Canadian shale oil extraction whic, besides wrecking the environment in Canada, is also wrecking the Copenhagen climate change talks.

I imagine their computer systems work perfectly.

2009-12-03T06:54:00.003Z

There's a meditation group that meets in a church on Tuesday lunchtimes.
We meditate sitting, walking, and eating in silence together.
And there's a space for sharing what happens.
The whole thing is inspired by the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh and made possible by the devoted work of a lovely man, Jon Bagust, who organises it.

I love being there, but the intensity of the last weeks and months has hardly made it possible.

I was there the day before yesterday. I was at a meeting and arrived a little late, just after it had begun.

The silence and the peacefulness in the church was so palpable and so strongly in contrast with my curent state of mind it was as if it hit me like a blow.

If its appropriate to use such a violent image to describe so quiet and yet so powerful a thing.

The reading spoke of the need to bring joy into the world. I thought that seemed a bit ambitious for what I try to do in my work; but at least i always try to give pleasure and inspire a smile.

But then I became aware of how much anger and hatred my play about Jesus has inspired. How hard not to get caught up in it. How the words we speak and the actions we do can have results that are totally opposed to our conscious wishes and intentions.

And painfully aware of how much this fills me with turmoil.

Turmoil that somehow needs to be assimililated and resolved.

My companions said some very sweet and supportive things; and I seem to have plunged right back into the fray.

I've been so dismayed that the evangelical groups who have noticed my work and been most vocal in the world-wide opposition to it are also almost certainly funding the Christian movements in Ugnada promoting the vile bill to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.

Knowing this makes me all the more determined to try to use my art as best I can to resist.

A first step has to get help from people who know the business. So yesterday I travelled to Glasgow to see an independent producer to see what can be done.

On the train on the way there i was working on the final draft of my radio adaptation of "La Princesse de Cleves". it was such a pleasure, this fine tuning. Over the years I have built up so many skills, I know precisely what I am doing, and I feel comfortable and at home there.

I enjoyed the meeting in many ways, and learnt so mjuch from it. Not least how far such encounters take me from my comfort zone, into a new world where i feel painfully ignorant.

Then i remembered: soon after my mother died i was sent to a new boarding school. It was a terrifying place. Bullying was institutionalised and systematiclly used as a method of social control.

It was crucially important to "fit in".

I didn't, of course.

Early on in my second term there I said or did something wrong and was sentenced to "being sent to Coventry". So for the next ten weeks no-one spoke to me, and everyone acted as if i didn't exist.

I suffered so intensely at that time. In the midst of my fear and my shame, a particular torment was that I couldn't even be certain of what i had said or done that had caused this to happen to me. That made it all worse, somehow: it made my whole being in the world seem doubly shameful and embarrassing and unacceptable.

It was soon after that that some bigger boys got me involved in acting: and it was in the rehearsal room that for the very first time I felt myself totally at home.

Playing girls' parts. And how sad that the pleasure that gave me should have then plunged me again into the deepest fear and shame. A hideous and so easily avoidable cycle of suffering that I am still struggling to escape from.

All that happened 45 years ago: but I can still so intensely feel it.

How strange that the huge issues the Jesus play involves, the global struggle between repression and liberation, should somehow also, and so intimately, be bound up with so individual a trauma.

How tempting to retreat back into the safety of words.

But it's not enough.

i suddenly think of lines from "Losing Venice":

The clouds gather. The storm is rising.
And it will come. Nothing can stop it.
We know. We laugh when we can;
We live, as we must.
Fear eats away our hearts. Will it spare us,
We wonder, will it spare or children?
Yet what can we do? Tear down our city?
Label the stones and move them, stone by stone,
Rebuild them on the higher ground?
All our energy is taken up with living.
Besides, is there any mountain high enough
to hide us,
Is there depth enough in any cave?
I doubt it. Crying is easy.
Laughter requires a little more strength.

I wrote that in 1985.
Somehow I saw what was coming.
I was right.

2009-12-01T08:39:00.002Z

1st december
I read yesterday that catholic and evangelical church groups are using the senate discussions about Obama's health bill to try to limit women's right to abortions.
It is utterly disgusting that church groups, instead of seizing this as an opportunity to make the US a more compassionate society, are using it instead as a chance to pursue their misogynist life hating obsessions.

They rant and whine about people like myself marginalising and ridiculing Christian values. But the damage they are doing themselves...

It's like a massive capital of authority and moral energy they are squandering.

Yesterday was St Andrews day: an old church holiday that still, in spite of everything, matters.

The postie was looking very splendid in a kilt. I have never seen such a thing before. He was a bit self-conscious about it, and didn't really respond to my complimenting on it (to judge from his voice he is by upbringing English).
But there were rather a lot of men in kilts, and the whole city had a vaguely festive air. Massive fireworks last night.

And in the day there were young men singing on the tops of trees.

2009-11-30T07:50:00.004Z

Yesterday was Advent Sunday.
Yesterday was the anniverary of my mother's death.
Yesterday was about preparing for new birth; they mark it in Anglican churches by reading texts that speak of universal death.
Yesterday I attended a meeting that voted unanimously for the dissolution of my church.
Yesterday i made a recipe that promised to be delicious but ended up looking like mud.
Yesterday something really crucial happened between me and my lover.
Yesterday I helped complete a grant application for a project that is about (I think) the frontier between life and death.

A good day.

2009-11-28T22:34:00.002Z

Our last morning's visit in Cracow was not accidental at all.
Years ago i saw a performance in the Edinburgh Festival by a Polish company called Cricot, led by their director, Tadeusz Kanotr.
It was called "Dead Class" and though I cannot say it gave me any pleasure, it made the profoundest impression on me.
My companion, who also saw it, and saw it as one of those profound and powerul theatre experiences one never forgets, remembers it in 1983.
Or when i was so crucially and painfully engaged in finding my voice.
After his death in 1990, the theatre ceased to function as a creative force, and the space remains as a clearly seldom visited museum. Our arrival seemed to be a source of some surprise; a young woman had to go down and open the space up for us specially.
It turned out there was very little down there: a video of Kantor directing a rehearsal, with a look of profound suffering.
And what might have been a stage set: 3 of four plain wooden doors, mysteriously ajar in a twilight.
I loved this space, and spent a long time sitting in it. feeling utterly at home.
At the entrance to this museum was a quotation from one of his writings, which perhaps was chosen because it summed up his values and his search.
It could certainly also sum up mine:

"Nightmarish malls have become the temples of a new deity of consumption and materialism.

I am listening carefully to that inner voice...
ONE HAS TO STAY UNFAITHFUL TO THIS NEW TEMPLE AND THIS NEW GOD AT ALL COSTS!
My creative work, whose roots are grounded in the subconscious, "understood" this inner voice and command much earlier and quicker.
The intellect goes through and becomes aware of a different and NEW STAGE OF COGNIZANCE
SPITIRUALISM
SPIRITUAL IMPERATIVE
PREMONITION OF THE OTHER WORLD
THE MEANING OF DEATH
THE MEANING OF THE "IMPOSSIBLE"
"AN IMPATIENT WAITING AT THE DOORS"
BEHIND WHICH
THERE ARE REGIONS
THAT ARE INACCESSIBLE TO OUR MINDS AND CONCEPTS..."

Tadeusz Kantor

2009-11-27T20:42:00.002Z

We wandered into the oldest building in Cracow university.
At random, as you do, and bought tickets for the tour.
The old university building is full of clocks.
It begins with the one above the library entrance which has figures processing in and out (and you can buy a CD of the tunes it can play); and every room has its special clock, some disguised as landscapes, one that plays Mozart operas, one that plays the Polish national anthem...
and I think back to the late Renaissance, when the university was founded, and Cracow a centre of alchemy and magic, and the magic that clockwork represented in all its fantastic forms.
It seems like a thread that runs through the university's history, like its nationalism, its sense of being central to the country's identity through all the invasions and partitions and disasters it suffered.
In this last calamitous century when the Nazis deported its most independent minded professors to German death camps and closed the whole place down; its re-opening after the war, only almost immediately to be shut down as an intellectual centre by Stalin.
And the constant resistance, the constant assertion of intellectual freedom.
I think that is something I love about this city.. it so feels like a place where it is still possible to be an artist.
Or where artistic and intellectual life is valued and understood.
That's why i feel at home here...

2009-11-26T07:17:00.003Z

It's an okd building, in the ancient city close to the old Royal Castle, and the sign outside promised an exhibition of religious art.
We went in on one of those impulses I so enjoy following on holiday.
There was religious art, yes, but it was art owned by, or donated to, the late pope John Paul II, who was the real focus of the museum.
There was the football shirts presented to him, the bicycle he owned, and the canoe. The gorgeous gowns he wore while saying mass, and wall after wall of photographs of him.
What a beautiful man he was when he was young: how full of life, how charismatic...
And I could feel a play coming: about the transformation of someone so full of hope and beauty, such a fierce and important focus of resistance to oppression, to an implacable defender of an ironclad reactionary, backward looking and utterly destructive tradition.
It gave me a kind of mischievous pleasure to be there, too, in skirt and boots: doubly condemned, as a transsexual, and the perpetrator of an apparently blasphemous play condemned by the catholic archbishop of Glasgow. A spy in the enemy camp, gravely receiving the attentions of the no doubt deeply pious custodian as he showed us a cross that came from Scotland, following his insistence I write something pious in the visitors book...
There was one piece of amazing religious art.
It was a replica of a 13th or 14th century figure of a Madonna and Child. She was holding the child in her arms, loving, serene, and could also open out to reveal the figure of the father within, bearded and crouched and a little anxious looking...
So touching and beautiful an image of the primacy of the Mother and the androgynous nature of God. Right there in the Holy Father's house, in the heart of the traditions of the church, and so tragically ignored by both.

2009-11-24T20:14:00.003Z

There was a picture on the ticket of trees in the sunshine.
Small knots of leisurely visitors passing under an ornamented gateway.
The lettering above the gateway read: "Arbeit mach frei".
Because this was ou ticket for Auschwitz.
And i wasn't prepared for this at all: extermination as part of the tourist industry, which was absurd of me, because this excursion is one of the sights of Cracow.
And on the way out our coachload was appropriately subdued. And we were shown a film with crackly sound, a film of staggering incompetence, featuring footage shot by a Russian cameraman who spoke about it all, his chest heavy with medals.
we'd had to get up early to catch the bus, and I kept falling asleep and feeling vaguely guilty about it. I didn't properly wake up until we had reached the coach park, with the pizza restaurants opposite, and we'd filed in to pick up our headphones which allowed our guide to speak softly and gently into our ears.
And so introduce us to horrors...
The heaps of shoes, forty thousand shoes, she said, ever so gently, and asked us to imagine that each shoe represented a life, and still this enormous heap only represented a tiny proportion of the utterly monstrous numbers of deaths.
And the massive heap of human hair, which sold for fifty copecks a bag, and was then, I imagine with a certain difficulty processed into the lining of men's suits, and was it also made into blankets? i was distracted at the thought of the work of the entrepreneurs who engaged themselves into developing the processes that would turn this unaccustomed material into something that could be turned into a profitable enterprise.
And the kitchen implements - the pots and pans and cheese graters.
And the heaps of clothes that were all stored in the warehouses called 'Canada' because Canada, at the time was considered a place of immense richness..
and it was this, i suppose, that struck me above all: that evil should wear such a banal face.
And the evidence of the routine... even the faces in the photographs staring at us along the corridor, with the dates bearing witness to the curelly short itme people were in general able to survive in that place... the photographs until at least partly the sheer numbers of the people being processed in that place overwhelmed the photographers and they took to tattooing the prisoners instead.
And there was the prison block, with the cells in the basement where they starved prisoners to death, or suffocated them, or made them stand without rest... and the same basement, too, where they carried out the experiemnts with the gas, to try to find the right substance, and then presumably the right dosage, and filled out evaluation forms until they were satisfied and were able to build the gas chamber and crematorium that our guie saved up to the very end.
And there we were in this horrible horrible place, staring up at the holes in the ceiling they dropped the gas canisters down, and trying to imagine, most inadequately, the horror of the place, with the ovens next door, and if I understood the guide correctly the ovens were clearly inadequate because it took two days to dispose of just one single killing.
And besides, it must have taken a while to check the corpses mouths and extract the gold teeth.
And no doubt forms were filled out, and committees met to discuss the matter, and the appropriate lessons were learnt and put into practice in the second, so much huger camp just down the road.
And there she showed us the barracks, that were originally designed for horses, and the bunks, and had us imagine the overcrowding and the stench and the cold, and then showed us the 'sanitation' hut where the latrines were, and up in the guard tower you could see the vastness of the samp...
And there was the really quite pleasant looking house in the first camp where the commandant lived, and his wife apparently grow the most beautiful flowers... and i would do the same, in her place. The guards drank a lot, I think i read somewhere, to try to numb their distress, which I can also easily believe, as i am drinking a big mug of cherry vodka and hot water just now to try to numb the horror of all i have seen today.
because how can we live with ourselves? How can we live knowing what we are all capable of? Quite easily, perhaps to judge from the couple laughing as they posed for photographs in front of the famous guardhouse and gate, or the guys talking football on the bus on the way back to the city.

2009-11-23T19:48:00.002Z

23rd november
it was an old synagogue, and the sign outside said: "I knew their faces". An exhibition of photographs of Polish Jews from just before the second world war. In the Jewish quarter of Cracow.
It was a collection of photographs that had been preserved, mostly, by accident or sometimes as desperate acts of defiance.
That each had the most extraprdinary story to tell... of villages where a third of the people had disappeared... families in their time of prosperity. School photographs where Jews and Poles were side by side. the captions spoke of the friendships between them, of the families who were lost, of the families and individuals who were sheltered and hid.
Some cruel - a man, out of focus, waist deep in water with hats bobbing beside him. The SS liked to drive Jewish men to the Vistula, take shots ach her through the crowd. at them.
And photograph them.
Another of Jews being forced to pull each other's beards to entertain their oppressors. Mostly they look down in deepest fear and shame: but one is looking out at us. Looking out at his tormentor.
Another, tiny, much creased one, of a survivor of Dr. Mengele, who hid the photo in her shoe during inspections. And survived.
Another of a young girl who was hid by a gentile family. They kept her photo too; and then lost track of her once the war ended.
Until the mother saw the young woman in a bust street.. and was unable to reach her to talk to her. And never spoke to her again.
A collection of photographs that had been hidden in a house in a village... and the photos were discovered by accident long after the war.
The man who found them displayed them in the town hall, desperate to find out the names of the people in the photographs.
But no-one could tell him: everyone had completely disappeared.

2009-11-14T20:15:00.002Z

14th November, and I was at a conference this morning called "Changing Hearts, Opening Minds" organised by the Equality Network.
I was due to speak on a panel to do with the arts. The chairperson began by asking us about a work of art that we had experienced and that we felt had been life-changing.
The others all spoke in a very beautiful and moving way about films they had seen, mostly, which had helped them discover and celebrate their gay identities.
When it came to my turn I realised I had not had a similar experience as a transsexual.
I had seen pantomime dames - where I learnt I was actually ridiculous.
Or I had occasionally seen a thriller (like "Psycho") where, to convey the idea that the villain was unspeakably and appallingly perverted and sick, they had put him in a dress.
And that was it.
Which made me understand something really important about what i am trying to do.

And perhaps, too, helps me understand why I should end up feeling so exposed as I try to do it.

2009-11-10T17:02:00.004Z

This has been so mad a time.
This morning, when I had a massage, was the first time I have been able to be still and try to reflect on & process what has happened.
I have known Cindy a long time - at least twenty years - and the minute she put her hand between my shoulder-blades, in just the right place, as always, she started to release some of the terror I've been carrying.
A lot of the work in rehearsals and in the first performances has been about trying to overcome fear - the fear of performing, the fear of being disliked, the fear of being exposed and disliked as a transexual...
And that basic panic was so reinforced when I turned up for the first performance to find the street filled with protesters.
Or a couple of days later when a friend texted me to say: "You're on the front page of the Glasgow Herald". And i was.
Or Steven, who runs Glasgay, told me there are 135,000 blog entries about the play on the web...
I started to read some, which was a mistake, perhaps, because they tell me I am "an open sewer" that I am "filth" that Jesus is not a "pervert", that my play is disgusting. Someone, bizarrely, writes to call me a "cowardly, twisted piece of anthropoid garbage. You are a talentless pervert, a dullard deviant and your disgusting posturing deserves a terminal case of AIDS".
I am responsible, I also discover, for society's spiral into moral decline; and for Islam taking over the United Kingdom. I am part of a conspiracy to mock Christianity.. and hundreds of thousands of dreadful things besides.
I must redress the balance, of course, by getting round to quoting some of the very beautiful letters of support I have also been reading....
but I suppose I must be a very naive kind of person because i simply refused to consider the possibility of inspiring so much protest.
It seemed so unlikely.. and because I knew so strongly my intention was never to mock or deride i assumed everyone would see that, somehow.
I had really forgotten how much prejudice someone like me still inspires.
It is such an odd feeling being thought of as an object of disgust... does all that negative energy have an impact, I wonder...?
And all the positive energy too...?
Am i in some kind of battleground between the two?
Meantime I take care of Susie's mum as best i can. An odd occupation for an "open sewer".
She is suffering from palpitations at night; her heart jumps, and sometimes even stops beating for a moment, long enough for her to wonder if it will start again...
It gets worse because until now she hasn't had the right pillow to allow her to sleep upright and because she is alone at night.
I've lent her mine, and between us we are making sure someone is sleeping in the house with her.
I remember that feeling before my heart operation: the sheer terror of knowing there is something wrong with your heart and you have to face it alone...
"We will all hang on our cross.." the play says, and poor Jean is hanging on hers.
Meanwhile, for all the exhaustion, I feel so deep a pride about the play and what we all achieved in it.
And somehow I shuttle between the two worlds....

2009-11-02T23:13:00.002Z

2nd november.. and a message from the theatre at lunchtime to say that some poor self-hating souls are planning a demonstration outside the theatre tomorrow night.
i was frightened for a while; and then the Daily Mail called me.
This paper has been running a vile homophobic campaign and I knew theoretically I should have challenged the man about it, or maybe put the phone down... but he was pleasant enough and, as ever, i found myself unable to resist a conversation.
Probably to my disadvantage; after I put the phone down i made a resolution to really learn how to handle the press.
And as i was talking to him i suddenly felt so sickened by the whole affair and so disinclined to be involved any more...
but then i ran through the script in my head and as ever it strengthened me.
This was reinforced wheen I got to the theatre today.
The space is beautiful and I feel absolutely at home in it.
I have the strongest feeling that all will be well...