Diary

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:49:00 +0000

16 November 2008
There�s a couple being exposed to ridicule just now who met in one of these virtual reality worlds.
In this life they look fat and unattractive; their selves in the virtual world are glamourous and rich.
They met in cyberspace, and got married there, as well as in this world.
But she found him being unfaithful to someone else in cyberspace and is now divorcing him in this life.
And they are briefly being besieged by the media.
I feel so sorry for them: it�s so easy to mock them, or condemn them for spending energy on perfecting their cyber selves when if they�d maybe spent a fraction of the same energy improving their actual lives they could well have been so much happier.
And it�s sometimes only in the imagination that we can truly and fully live.
I found myself watching an old Stanley Baxter clip on You Tube. There he was, pretending to be Liza Minelli (�Gosh, I�m gauche�) and I fell in love with him all over again.
I went straight back to the boy I was watching him on television in my parents� house, in a state of desperate anxiety in case my father would disapprove, watching him with a kind of guilty pleasure because he was one of the desperately few representations of who I was.
The memory of that hunger � hunger for representation, even of a laughable kind � fills me with sadness.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:05:00 +0000

11 November

I've been dreaming a lot about my late partner recently.

Usually she's silent, and quite detached from the scene, although also very much a part of it. Which does, in fact, represent how she is in my life.

But last night, very unusually, she spoke. She was telling me to assert myself more and make my wishes felt.

Suddenly tonight I've started to change my profile picture. I couldn't figure out how to do it on this site, but I did it on Facebook.

I changed it to one of the pictures Neil took last week:
(and it's not ended up here...)

And found myself feeling intensely anxious about it.

It really is true that our identity is so fundamental, even in such an apparently trivial thing... no wonder being trans can be such a torment.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:25:00 +0000

6th November

Today I did a photoshoot.
A dear friend of mine who is an excellent photographer wants to make a photographic essay about transition.
I said i would help.
So I put on a shirt and tie and a man's flat cap and stood in our flats' garage looking miserable for him.
And then changed into my own lovely clothes and sat up in my lovely upstairs writing room and went through the moods he was looking for.
I have always been afraid of cameras. When I was a boy I was terrified of looking in the mirror because the boy I saw reflected there was not me, somehow, and I could not understand why.
It terrified me. And I could not understand..
Mirrors were bad, and cameras were worse, because they captured that confusion and that fear and that awkwardness and shame for everyone to see.
And I desperately wanted to hide it all, because I was sure this was all a sign of something most terribly wrong in me.
But one of the things that most amazes me about this whole process of transition is how much i feel at ease in myself now: and all kinds of things that felt impossible for me then now seem more than possible.
And I have started to love being photographed.
Suddenly the camera seems to have become my friend.
And I found it incredibly exciting..
Even the very sad parts. he wanted tears; and, to my amazement, I found I could enter a sad place, cry genuine tears, and then come out again.
Extraordinary.
I write this filled with a sense of wonder, as if something quite miraculous has happened.
Partly because he is a very safe person, and I could trust him absolutely: but partly also, I think, because I can trust myself.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:54:00 +0000

5th November

I woke about 3.30 this morning.
Couldn't sleep again, thinking of the US election.
So I ended up on the sofa under a blanket at 5am watching Obama's acceptance speech.
Crying, deeply moved, aware of a sea change.
A sense of waking up, perhaps, from the long nightmare that began with Thatecher in the 1980's. From that dreadful era in which there was, apparently, "no such thing as society" and the only task of the individual human being was to enrich himself in total indifference to the needs and conditions of others.

Susie would, I know, have loved his reference to the centenarian woman voting yesterday who when she was born could not vote, being a woman and black. She would have loved the shot of the four of them walking hand in hand to the front of the stage. She would have been so proud of the little girls.

She was so proud of ours.

Maybe she welcomed Obama's grandmother into her new life and they were there, somewhere, watching and relishing it all.

I fell back into the most luxurious and happy sleep, waking with intense reluctance to the daily routine, phoning Susie's mum, preparing her shopping list, leaving for the gym.

On the desk was a beautiful, effeminate and impeccably made up young man. The gym brings back so much distress and panic in me, and there he was, confident and professional. Such changes...

In the afternoon I went to Marks and Spencers with a dear friend who had offered to help me buy bras. She used to fit bras when she was a student in a lingerie shop in Morningside and she guided me expertly through the shop, pointing out all the different kinds, the pros and the cons of each, effortlessly selcting a budle to try on and guiding me into the changing room.

And then leaving to put some back to get more.

I realised I actually had no idea what it felt like to wear a properly fitting bra. That in a way this was something I should have been taught when i was fourteen but the fact that I am learning it all now, at the age of fifty eight, is somehow miraculous. It exposes me to the intense discomfort of my utter ignorance - about bras, about my own dear self.... - but also opens me to the joys of discovery.

I bought four, and we went to the Dome bar next door to celebrate.
I don't know what I've done to deserve so amazing and kind a friend.
Or what we all have done to deserve, finally, a hopeful result.
It probably doesn't do to ask: just enough to be grateful.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:36:00 +0000

4th November

I went to the dentist today and he had to do a little drilling. To save time, to get it over, I said it would be fine without an injection.

It wasn't, in a way: it was really unpleasant, as drilling always is, and I squirmed a bit. But not very much, and he congratulated me, in the cheery way he has, calling me a "brave little soldier".

Which was kind of bizarre, but weirdly enough its association with being a little boy, and being complimented, comforted me. Even gave me a warm glow...

These ghostly remnants of the past do live on.

"Os mortos nao sao mortos". The dead are not dead.

Someone at the meditation this lunchtime was saying how coming to the church always made her think so strongly of her dead partner. He was a devout Buddhist, and so coming to the practice makes him very present for her.

And I thought immediately of how often Susie comes to me in dreams. The last time was Saturday night: and there she was, sleeping happily, lying in a vegetable bed beside newly planted vegetables.

When I told my daughter she smiled and said: "What a good place to find mum".

And it's true: there is something comforting in this. The ones we love do live on.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:17:00 +0000

3rd November

Here's the second poem:

THE DOORWAY TO ANOTHER WORLD

It was in this doorway that I used to do it
Away from the gaslight
In this doorway in the dark
In my own life�s darkness.

The man who raped me
Gave me a cast off scarlet dress
I�d hook them off the streets wearing it
I�d land them down the alley
And here I�d make them gasp and writhe
As I took them in my mouth
Or jerked them off by hand.

It all depended on the price, of course:
Though after the man had had his cut
I�d always end up with pennies.
I sold myself so very cheap those days
I was young and innocent
Still only just a boy.

When they beat you just hold still
Curl up and try to protect your face.
A cut lip or a black eye
Is just so very bad for business.

It was the third time that I understood
There were men who just couldn�t bear to see me
Living on this earth.
A voice told me. A voice in my head.
The dingy sooty angel of this place
Whose wings are stained and filthy
But whose face
Is pure, untainted, glorious:

�Run!� she said.
And so I ran.
Down the alley, down the street
Into the arms of a lion tamer.
She was walking down the street in top hat and tails
And I almost knocked her in the gutter.
She picked me up in my tattered tear stained cumstained dress
And said: I�ll take you in.

Years later I came back here
Glasgow Pavilion, top of the bill:
A juggler, rope dancer
An acrobat of wild desire
Who had mistressed the flying trapeze:
ANNA THE AMAZING AMAZON
THE DEATH DEFYING MYSTERON
WHO IS ALWAYS MORE THAN SHE SEEMS

And when I died
Peacefully, in my sleep
After a happy and disgraceful old age
I came back to hover here
In my grimy dress and tattered wings
My heart still glowing
From a caravan�s warm, spangly, grease painted darkness
And I whisper to the young ones shivering here
Huddled in deep fear and shame:
�We can survive
We will arise
Pass it on
Pass it on�.

Jo Clifford Friday, 12 September 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:55:00 +0000

20th October.

This is the first poem I performed in St. Mary's Place:

Now what we need to understand is this:
All we see is mostly lies.
This world conceals, confuses and confounds
And what we see is not the thing that it appears.
Hear me, if you have eyes.
See me, if you have ears.

This is a secret place
You�ll find it on no maps.
It has a talent to conceal itself
As we do our selves.
The first time I was brought here
I was guided by an angel in disguise.
Appearing like an ordinary punkish kind of being
With spiky hair, her piercings, and her jeans.
But I knew her to be an angelic force
With fiery hair and glowing eyes
And the most gorgeous celestial robes
Striding through the city streets
With boots and flaming sword
Proclaiming the the majestic power of the word.

And yet this angelic power, guiding me to this spot,
Got lost.
This little square had thrown up a mist
To test our faith and courage.
I see you begin the understand
The uncanny powers of this sacred place.
Enter it
With reverence and caution.

And here where we stand
Within the inmost grove of sacred trees
Don�t tell me you can�t see the trees
Or hear the singing of the nightingales!
I don�t want yet again
To hear how the stairway toheaven
Looks like a fire escape
Or how the temple kitchens, where the acolytes
Cooked and served such fragrant banquets, such celestial feasts
Appear to belong to a noodle franchise.
Don�t tell me
No-one goes through the doorway to the other world
And the inner sanctuary, the place of sacred power,
Is just a sub sub station for electricity.

What�s happened to us
What�s so degraded our sight
So debased our minds
That all we can use this precinct for
Is to park our cars in it?
Don�t lets be fooled
Or be deceived by the mundane.
It�s from the queen of earth and heaven
This square takes its name.

One day, like us maybe, she�ll find herself again
She�ll throw off all disguise
These concrete squares which mark the trees
Will crack and splinter as the forest grows again
As the whole city is reclaimed by mother earth
And this drab nightmare returns to dream.

Jo Clifford 12 September 2008

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:28:00 +0000

10 October 2008

I saw an extraordinary sight on the television news today.

An equity fund manager, one of the apostle of unequity, grotesque greed and injustice who has been making our lives a misery, saying that the only future for the world economy was for banks to be nationalised. More than that: internationalised.

This coming from one of the men who have been preaching for us for years about the need for �light touch� government regulations of markets, because the market always knows best.

It�s a bit like hearing a vindication of evrything I have been saying since the early nineties about the long term unviability of the world economic system; of the bankruptcy of our culture�s values; of the need of the artist to abandon futile cries of despair and help dream a new world order into being.

The consequences are likely to be so violent, and the suffering so intense.. I�m not sure I like being right.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:24:00 +0000

5 October 2008

Today I did the strangest thing. Strange for me, at least. I joined a church.

The Metropolitan Community Church of Edinburgh has two new members, and I�m one.

I was thinking afterwards: �But I�ve never belonged to anything before�
And then I thought of the lovely Buddhists. Of all the amazing people I�ve met in and through Biodanza. Of the theatres I�ve worked in. Of the Drama School I�ve worked in. Of the church we went to when we lived in Roslin.

And yes, I have belonged. But on another level I�ve always run away from organisations, because I�ve always felt, or always known that they would never allow me to become myself. And what�s different about this one is that I�ve joined it formally to become me. In the fullest sense as a spiritual being.

A little voice says: this may well be very foolish.

But I�ve known for so long that the spiritual side of us as human beings is so important. And I�ve tried to write all my plays in the awareness of this. And I know that although we have to develop our spiritual sense alone, up to a point, this is something that also needs to happen collectively. And I know that much as I love the teachings of the Buddha, there is something missing for me in them.

And I know... and as I sit here thinking of this, so much floods up.
So much, it will take a lifetime to explore it.

And all the reasons that I could think of not to take this step were all negative. To do with feeling I hadn�t served my time. I hadn�t shown enough commitment. I wasn�t good enough. I wouldn�t be accepted. I was scared...

Something happens to us, I think, those of us who grew up feeling we didn�t belong. Didn�t belong to the men, didn�t belong to the women. Didn�t belong anywhere.
Our whole beings can shrivel under the weight of that.
And it so matters to get out there and contradict all that as best we can.
Whatever happens.

And if I really think about it, maybe what clinched the whole thing was the fact that the Rev. came to my house and drank my tea. And listened to me, and allowed me to listen to him. And laughed. He has a good laugh. My heart warms to it.

I think maybe in the end that is why.
And maybe that�s a bit frivolous.

But more probably not.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 09:34:00 +0000

4 October 2008

I was at a 60th birthday party last night.

These events used to be abstractions. Certainly something that happened to somebody else.

Somebody else I would feel vaguely sorry for, feeling that for all intents and purposes their live was mostly over.

But all that has changed now I know that in two years time the sixtieth birthday I will be celebrating will be mine.

(and suddenly, with a pang, I remember that another sixtieth we would have been celebrating this year would have been Susie�s)

I�m present at these celebrations now with a certain heightened awareness, a kind of anxiety. I wonder: will I want to celebrate mine this way? Or that way?

I�m not sure, but I suppose part of our reluctance to think about these events has to do with our reluctance to think about death. Someone had asked me politely what I was doing just now, and I was talking about my new play. �Every One�, I told them, �is about death�.

And I told them a bit of the story, and I told them that I have been exposed to a lot of death the last few years, one way or another, and that although it was painful it wasn�t altogether a bad thing. That I have been left with a reverence and appreciation for life. That our culture�s utter reluctance to accept the fact of death is very unhealthy and actually causes great unhappiness.

Another conversation: someone talking about watching a TV news item about a new set of wind generators in the countryside and the difficulty they seemed to be having to find someone cross about it.

And it�s true that �RESIDENTS� FURY AT NEW WIND TURBINES� is a story, whereas �RESIDENTS ACTUALLY QUITE HAPPY WITH NEW TURBINES� is not.

And maybe the relentless negativity of our culture is death�s revenge, somehow, for being so ignored. To be sure, we seem obsessed with, and hell bent on, our own destruction.

I was thinking of all this, and my heart started to beat uncomfortably loud. As it does at least once or twice every day. The Middle Ages used to value these moments when you became aware of death. �Memento Mori�.

Because one reason it is unpleasant to be aware of the beating of your heart is that it also makes you aware of the fact that one day, some time, perhaps now, it will stop.

And I don�t need to carry around a skull to remind me. It�s built in to me.

But then that�s not the whole story. Because one thing I am continually reminded of is how amazing and wonderful it is to live. And how life simply offers us all these infinite possibilities.

In that sense, this is not a Memento Mori. Neither the party nor the uncomfortable beating of my heart. It is a Memento Vivere.

Remember to live.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:13:00 +0000

2nd October
The vicar came to tea today.
He wasn't quite your usual vicar, since he's in the metropolitan community church, which I'm thinking of joining.
he's very lovely and he laughs a lot and when I was talking a bit about the whole process of transitioning from John to Jo he said he could do a ceremony of re-naming. A baptism, if I wanted.
I was so moved at the thought of this I started crying...
There is something so profound and poignant in all this that I simply don't understand.
Maybe don't need to understand. Maybe it passes all understanding.
But my weird sense that spirituality is at the heart of us isn't so weird after all...

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:26:00 +0000

24th September 2008

Mark Fisher made a thoughtful comment on yesterday's post; he also started a blog thread in the Guardian not so long ago about the effect theatre has on the real world, in connection with the effect the success of the play "Deep Cut" had on that scandal of the deaths of young recruits at the army barracks.

"All My Sons" is a beautiful and moving play,but I wonder if at times like these we really 'need' it. What we need, I guess, is a shared and effective sense of collective morality. An understanding that human welfare is more important than short term profit.

And maybe great art helps bring that about...? I feel a bit sceptical though, I must admit, after seeing the vile behaviour of classical music lovers barracking protesters at the Jerusalem Quartet concert. They were furious at the thought that their "civilised pleasures" were being disturbed by the intrusion of middle eastern politics. And they behaved in an utterly uncivilised way as a result.

More effective than art, I suspect, might be the direct action of a forum of grieving relatives in Israel and Palestine. These are people whose family members have been killed in the conflict. Parents of the dead of both sides are meeting each other to find ways of doing what they can through non-violent action to bring the conflict to an end.

But then i found out about what they are doing, and so was given a grain of hope in that despairing situation, through a very beautiful film called "Encounter Point" I saw this Monday at the Filmhouse.

And I still obstinately think that theatre does have power in the world, and we who create it do have a moral responsability for what we create. And that it is at best deeply irresponsible, and probably also immoral, to be content to spread despair at this time. Which is why i yelled abuse at the director/creator of "I went to the house but did not enter" at this year's Edinburgh Festival.

Though quite what effect it had on him to have a middle aged trans woman suddenly erupt from the stalls and call him "full of shit" is hard to tell.

And I worry hugely about the effect my plays have on the people performing them as well as on the people watching them...

I suppose, too, that one reason i feel proud of (as well as inyensely anxious about) "Every One" is because it breaks a taboo - the taboo against thinking about death - and that it's necessary to do so. A feeling that contemplating death is necessary for enjoying life...

But maybe when we try to think about how plays or artworks might have directly changed the world we're asking the wrong question. It's a kind of category mistake. Because they affect the inner world. And perhaps sometimes, cumulatively, that affects the outer world also.

And in the end it all gets created not for any particular reason. But simply because it has to be.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:07:00 +0000

23rd September

There are thirteen thousand babies in hospital in China who are ill because they have been given tainted baby milk. Another forty thousand have had to be treated.

These figures are probably an under-estimate. Authorities in the know kept silent about the scandal for at least a month: they did not want details leaking out during the Olympics.

It has happened because of a fairly sophisticated scam. Milk processing firms have been adding a chemical called melamine to the milk. This has the effect of making the milk appear to have more protein than it actually has. So it's possible for substandard milk, or milk that has been watered down, to pass quality control tests.

This, clearly, increases the producers' profiy margins.

But it also severely damages the kidneys of the babies who drink it.

Whoever did this obviously had a sophisticated knowledge of food science.

But what they lacked was any moral sense.

In that way, the scandal mirrors so many other scientific dilemmas world wide.

But what I have difficulty imagining is the mentality of the people who adulterated the milk for their own gain. Did they know how damaging it would be for the babies?

Did they try to find out?

How could they do this?

And, perhaps most importantly: what kind of society is it that produces people who are prepared to act with such callous disregard for human life?

I thought I was used to such things, but this profoundly disturbs me.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:44:00 +0000

Sunday, 21 September 2008

At last I finished the play today.

The last time I wrote a play so entirely on instinct it was Losing Venice. In those days, instinct was all I had. I didn�t know any other way to write a play.

So I wrote it all down quite innocently and unquestioningly.

These days, I know worse. Or perhaps better. Better in the sense that I have all kinds of technical understanding of what makes scenes work, and how they fit together to make a whole play work.

Worse in the sense that this continually got in my way. Because I kept trying to censor this play, Every One, so that it would be more like plays that I knew would work.

But it simply kept insisting on taking its own path. On taking the form it had to take.

And in the end I simply had to learn to stop worrying about whether it would work or not. And accept that it had to take the form it took, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Something easier to say than do.

And now its over I just feel an immense sense of joy and relief.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 05:25:00 +0000

Saturday, 20 September 2008

I remember how, years ago, when I was writing theatre reviews, I would be so utterly passionate about the shows I saw. And then utterly fearless about putting my response into words: whether positive or damning.

Generally it was the negative reviews I would receive praise for.

I would always receive this praise rather guiltily.

And now, some 25 or so years later, I feel even more guilty still on the (mercifully rare) occasions someone comes up to me and says: �You reviewed a show I did once...�
Almost always they remember because I said something hurtful or unpleasant about their work. All those years ago.

And we never forget.

I simply can�t bear to be negative this way any more. Perhaps it�s guilt. But I�ve been incapable of writing this diary for the last week precisely because I saw a production I thought was terrible in just about every respect.

I haven�t wanted to say so; and I haven�t wanted to pass it over in silence.

There were actors suffering in it I value highly; and they did what they could in an utterly unsupported and undermined way.

And I wanted to say to the theatres involved: if this is really the best you can do, you should shut up shop and give yourselves the space and time to reflect on what it is you really should be doing.

Of course this is the question I am continually asking myself: what should I be doing? How can I best respond to what is happening?

And I am struggling to answer these questions in the script I am working on. With what feels like a conspicuous lack of success.

And the experience of seeing that production has left me feeling completely unsupported. Filled with a sense of discouragement and dismay.

But that�s not just about the theatre.

The headlines the last week have been dominated by the unfolding of a gargantuan financial crisis that has exposed the utter weakness of the current financial structures and left governments flailing about, helpless.

The US government has nationalised mortgage lending � implicitly recognising what it cannot say openly. That the Market is not fit to be trusted with the basic processes that shape people�s lives.

Its latest response is to pay back the bad housing debts that began the process. Effectively, telling financial institutions that they can escape the consequences of their own greed and folly.

Not unnaturally, said financial institutions are delighted by this.

But no-one, I suspect, is really reassured.

There is a sense that governments, like that one poor suffering theatre, are responding to a new situation in an old and inappropriate way.

And that is just so much more dangerous.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:11:00 +0000

11 September 2008

Last night I couldn�t sleep. There seemed to be enormous tension in the air, somehow, and I couldn�t relax or settle. My body ached. I could not get comfortable. I found myself feeling furious with the situation in America. The news was bad from the elections. I felt such fury at that country's capacity for self deception. At their arrogance in trying to export a 'democracy' that is so terribly, tragically flawed. And I could not get my mind to focus on the idea of sleep.

Round about 3am I ran a bath. Slept in the bath, of course, and that somehow enabled me to let go and sleep afterwards in bed.

But after I�d woken about 8 work seemed impossible today. As a delaying tactic I started to tidy my wardrobe. Horrified at what I found: an unhappy person buying too many clothes in an attempt to ward off a deep unhappiness.

But oddly enough, in spite of that, I did work. Out in the garden, revising the first act.
And felt immensely proud of it. Felt a basic confidence: yes, this will work.

And then prepared the first trans creativity class. Which, as it turned out, was such a delight. I often do an exercise where we tell each other stories of our lives. We split into pairs: one talks, the other listen. Then we swap over. The person who listens then undertakes to tell their partner�s story to the group, in the first person, as if it was their own, and being aware that this is a story of heroism.

Which, in fact, it invariably is.

I was struck all over again tonight by the astonishing richness of our stories. And to hear my own retold was a profoundly moving experience.

I walked down the road: and think of tomorrow�s work with real pleasure.
As opposed to the usual: dread.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:54:00 +0000

10 September 2008

There�s a very nasty TV commercial doing the rounds just now. It�s little story begins with a husband saying goodbye to his wife as she leaves the house. As soon as she�s gone, he rushes to her bedroom and starts trying on a succession of absurd and ill-fitting outfits, before fixing on one that makes him look utterly ridiculous. Then he puts on make-up very badly, squeezes his feet into stilettos, and goes downstairs to the computer.

Why, I can�t remember. It may have something to do with on-line bingo.

What struck home to me was this sense of being a ridiculous being. An out of place being. Someone without dignity or worth.

It�s very profound in me, this sense, and often leads to absurd errors in judgement. A really shocking incapacity to look after myself or my interests properly.

This all gets tied up with my identity as a writer. I think it was four or five years ago, at a conference, that I first introduced myself as a �transgendered playwright�. I felt proud and defiant to do so.

What I was doing then was making explicit something that had always been implicitly true. And it has to do with the special quality of my voice as a writer.

Also to do with how prolific my writing is: because I have been trying, through writing, to gain a sense of the self-worth that has eluded me in living.

And I think now it also has to do with my difficulties with this play. My voice, here, feels so isolated and alone.

But I finished one of the two poems. The other I sketched and abandoned. I had the feeling no-one will like it.

Which is why, I think, I now need to finish it.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:11:00 +0000

9th September 2008

I was walking to the bus stop this morning to meet my mother-in-law when I suddenly remembered the first time I felt this dread: when I was starting out as a writer, and frightened and appalled at the kind of writer I wanted to be. Its as if this current project has taken me right back to the beginning again, to a place where I have to relearn everything...To be sure I need to confront my feelings of loss and my fear of death...

I had agreed to take her to an eye appointment in the hospital She suffers from diabetes, and they wanted to check her sight. They were intending to put eye drops in her eyes to dilate the pupils, she had been warned it might make her vision fuzzy, and this had made her anxious.

As it turned out the eye drops caused her few if any problems at all. Her difficulty was in finding the eye pavilion, which she�d never been to before, and then finding her way to her appointment once inside it. I was happy to help with that; she is beginning, now, to find new information quite hard to process and it often leaves her afraid and bewildered.

I�d happened to glance at some poems I�d agreed to translate for a friend; and I could work on these in my head while we were waiting. And this familiar task saved me from my bewilderment.

Which returned when I finally got home about lunchtime. I kept putting off work. And when I did, I got nowhere.
I typed up the translations to reassure myself I had not altogether lost my feel for words; and when I still got nowhere I went back to the poems I am writing for the �Hidden City�.

Like the play, they seemed empty, embarrassing, absurd.

I sat at my mum�s desk and thought: this is the end. I simply can�t write any more. That�s what it felt like, not as melodramatic as it sounds, just a quiet certainty.

And this is death.
This is what it feels like: this grey blankness.
I said: it has to come some day.
And I began to cook supper. And eat, in a mechanical kind of way, a supper that really was not good at all.
And then change, and put on my make-up ready for the dance class.
It all felt a bit like a wake: and afterwards I felt so tired.

I was ten minutes into the class when I realised I�d put my dress on inside out.
On the way to the loo to change it, I suddenly realised what I needed to do: to the play, and to the poem, to make them work again.

And I don�t think I will forget.
But that�s how it is, constantly: insight squeezing out through a tiny side door when my conscious mind has stopped looking.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:54:00 +0000

8 September 2008

Impossible, appalling morning.

I could not even bear to glance at the work I did the night before. I could not begin.

Utter despair.

Verdi�s Requiem on the radio in the afternoon. I was terrified at first. The Dies Irae frightened me in a way it never has before. And then enraged me: I felt utterly furious at the church for manipulating the very human fear of death for their own ends. To maintain and extend their power over their congregations.

And then the soprano began singing Dona eis requiem and I started to cry like a child. It was so much what I wanted for Susie. Peace, and eternal light.

I still couldn�t get started. I kept forgetting to bring up the notebook I�d jotted down some new dialogue in. And then I was afraid to go and get it. And then I went down, and picked up a pen in an absent minded kind of way and before I�d had time to think about I was sketching a new scene.

And then on the way down to the yoga class I found myself writing down more of it.

And in the yoga class I understood that what I was trying to do was write a scene between a woman and death. After her death.

And the sheer madness of it made me feel better about finding it so difficult. For how can you possibly imagine such a thing? And who would be daft enough to try?

Me, obviously.

The yoga was beautiful. The more I explore my body, the more I understand how terribly it was damaged in those appalling months of Susie�s illness and death. And then afterwards as I slid into illness. And then waited for surgery. And the surgery itself. And being poisoned afterwards...

The teacher has the most beautiful touch: warm and present. We did postures like the Cat and the Bridge, which I thought I knew, but which she presented in an utterly new way. And other I did not. And learnt so much.

So the day redeemed itself: and there�s a weird excitement in feeling I have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:10:00 +0000

7th September 2008

A dark, grey, cold day. No light in the sky. The prospect of winter feels unbearable.

Deep back ache keeps me at home. Down at the base of the spine: it�s the kind that usually tells you you�ve taken on too much, you need to slow down.

And it�s true: I�m trying to finish EVERYONE, but I�m also thinking about JESUS, QUEEN OF HEAVEN, and LEAVE TO REMAIN and the two poems I�m writing for the HIDDEN CITIES project.

But there�s something else, I can�t help thinking. Perhaps it was easier before to put up with the state theatre is in here; my self esteem was low, I didn�t really believe I deserved the best.

But now, as I struggle to finish this play, it�s as if I can�t bear to think of it going the way of all the others: opening when still under rehearsed, playing for its three weeks and then disappearing.

Because I am so dependent on the context in which I work, I feel a kind of angry despair at the thought that because theatre here and now is so woefully falling short of its potential as an art form I will never be able to reach my full potential as an artist.

They�re performing Messaien�s gigantic opera, St. Francois d�Assise, at the Proms tonight. It�s never had a full production here, of course; but Pierre Audi has just produced it in Amsterdam. Pierre Audi who I briefly encountered in 1986, when I think he was still running the Almeida. Which was when Losing Venice was performed there. He now runs a huge opera house which has the facilities to stage this vast opera: his career has moved on. Mine, I suspect, has stood still.

I think of Faust and realise to an extent I am being unjust to myself; but I read JESUS out loud this afternoon and I am horrified to think the only way I can realise my artistic desires is to operate on the tiniest scale imaginable.

And there�s Messaien with his cast of 240 musicians. Having access to them � properly subsidised, superbly trained - extended his range as an artist in way that to me is completely closed.

I don�t know what to do; beyond thinking of him in his prison camp. With four weirdly assorted musicians and a piano with missing notes. (Which is an extreme version of the artistic space I feel stuck in). He still produced amazing music. I must keep on keeping on trying to do the same.

I still feel I am reaching the end of this particular line.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:07:00 +0000

4 September 2008

They�ve just played Messaien�s �Quartet for the End of Time� over the radio, broadcast from the Proms.

Such a joy to hear that again: in all its bleakness, its wrath, its tenderness. Its transcendence.

Listening to it, I remembered my second professional play, Ending Time, which Radio broadcast in 1984.

I was so proud of it. So full of hope.

I wanted each of its scenes to reflect each of the music�s eight movements. And there were three stories: a Radio 3 announcer trying to figure out what on earth he was going to say about it, a musician who played in the quartet, listening to the recording on his car radio. He was travelling around with his partner, and they were trying to decide whether or not to have a child. And a tramp they picked up on the road, St John of Patmos, who had the vividest memory of the Angel coming to see him to give him the Revelation that became the last book of the bible.

And it ended in ecstasy. A vision of heaven granted St. John. In the public loo at Kinross motorway service station.

It�s disappeared since, as radio plays do. But how good to be reminded of it.

I think I wanted to try to express something about the different dimensions of time: how on our dimension it seems to move forward in a linear fashion, but in another dimension it is eternity and maybe stands still.

I�d seen it in an amazing picture by El Greco in Toledo, The Burial of Count Orgaz, and the idea kind of obsessed me. There must be a truth in it, because here I am, quite late at night, alone, this Thursday; and I�m also with Susie in the cottage in Roslin listening to it go out over the radio.

And I�m with Basil Farncombe in his study in Malvern, and he�s teaching me to meditate; and I�m reading out the �Four Quartets� to Susie in the hospice.

And there�s bread rising in the kitchen. On an impulse, I started to knead it in the first few movements. A promise of good things to come.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:12:00 +0000

2 September 2008
People say that modern music cannot find an audience. They say the same about theatre.

But I write this listening to ecstatic applause from a full house at the Albert Hall, where they�ve been performing Messaien�s Turangalila Symphony.

Messaien�s music isn�t especially easy; it�s full of discords; it structures itself in an alien and unfamiliar way. It�s not very good at melody. You could hardly sing along to it.

Yet people seem to love his music. I felt that in the Festival, at his Eclairs sur l�au-dela.

I think its because he writes from a place of meaning. Where life makes sense. And he writes from a sense of love and joy. Joy at the amazing richness of creation.

All of which is what I am trying to do.

Thinking of A Child of Our Time. Again, where Tippett was trying to make sense of catastrophic suffering.

All that is so important. That and recognising the possibility of change.

In this festival, I�ve kept seeing it in myself. At the Messaien concert, for instance, I noticed how much I�d changed.

Before, when I was trying to live as �John�, I used to so enjoy a concert or a performance in solitude. When I saw these things at school, I totally valued them partly because they were somewhere I could be absolutely alone. I was desperate for that: so I could escape the utterly oppressive collectiveness that surrounded me. And was trying to destroy me.

And I was incredibly aware of the difference of being with the music or the performance and talking about it. I felt very passionately that talking about what I�d felt spoilt it somehow and I was obsessive in my determination to avoid talking to anyone afterwards.

But now I seem to seek out company. In skirt or dress, I actively seek out exchanges and contacts with ushers, programme sellers and fellow members of the audience in ways that utterly amaze me. All these contacts with people than in the past were so painful in my shyness and that I used to try to avoid are now a new source of pleasure.

I was in Prince�s St. gardens on Sunday watching the fireworks with a dear friend with whom I could converse with every degree of pleasure.

And for the first time in five years I have enjoyed the Festival without some hideous calamity having just occurred or hanging over my head.

So yes: as the fireworks played their amazing inventive and beautiful patterns in the sky: yes. Time to celebrate.

But now: it�s back to work.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:25:00 +0000

31st August.

I'd bought a ticket for the Jerusalem Qusrtet. Without thinking at all, really, about the implications. I simply wanted to hear Haydn and Janacek and get to know Brahms.

The concert was at the Queens Hall at 11.00 am. These are generally impeccably well mannered affairs, and so i was a little surprised to see protesters picketing the entrance.

I never grasped why this particular group was targeted by pro-Palestinians. It's true they have served in the Palestinian army; but then every Israeli adult is obliged to; and it's also true that 3 of the quartet members belong to Barenboim's East-West Divan Orchestra, which is profoundly committed to the cause of peace in the Middle East.

Nonetheless, i was grateful to be reminded of the political dimension to their presnce by the protesters at the door.

I walked past them, however: I don't believe in cultuiral boycotts.

What was harder to deal with were the protesters who, in a very well organised way, disrupted each of the movements of the first quartets.

I felt for the artists; I know I would feel it very unjustified to be held to account for my government's war crimes.

I felt for the protesters, too. Though i could not help but wonder how they would respond to Zionist protesters barracking a group of Palestinian musicians.

And I felt for dear Haydn. Whose beautiful slow movement was such a totally beautiful and dignified assertion of the human centred values the Middle Eastern conflict so desperately needs.

But I did not feel for the audience. These supposedly cultured and civilised music lovers responded to the very dignified actions of the protesters - who were communicating undeniable truths - with a petty minded rage I found utterly repulsive.

And that is why I left. I did not want to be part of such a vile bunch of ignorant and prejudiced people.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:51:00 +0000

28 August 2008

A blog I discovered today from an LGBT group in Kyrgyztan:
�A transsexual woman was raped three weeks ago in Bishkek by three men, they burnt her nipples and genitals with cigarettes and burnt her bra, she did not dare to seek help and did not believe that it was possible to address the rape in court. This was a hate crime which could�ve been prevented. We could not register the rape because her legal gender is not female and only females can be raped according to the Kyrgyz law.�

I put it in here because it matters: because it forms part of the context in which I work; and partly explains my disgust at the utterly contemptible show I saw this evening.

Today I finally managed not simply to read acts one and two (so far) of �Everyone� but also to make some progress on act two. And I translated a love letter for a friend. And I had a massage: something so sweetly restful I fell into the softest sleep you could imagine. I cooked myself a delicious aubergine curry. And then this evening I went to the theatre.

A world premiere.. Heiner Goebbels: �I Went To The House But Did Not Enter�.
�A staged concert in three tableaux�
Scene one: a Kafka-esque interior. A huge amount of work has gone into creating a dull interior. A 1950�s vacuum cleaner has been meticulously sourced. Four men in grey overcoats meticulously wrap up the crockery, the flowers, the carpet, the curtain, the pictures, and place them in two large grey cardboard boxes.

They give each other a signal and they start to sing: it turns out they are the Hilliard Ensemble. They sing a dreary setting of �The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock�. Then, they painstakingly unpack the furniture again. The black flowers have turned white, the white vase has turned black. It�s all done with their bodies and faces blank and glum.

The curtain goes down; the curtain goes up; the scene changes. From dull interior to dull suburban exterior. A two storied house. The four singers each now inhabit a different room. The (equally dreary) text is by Maurice Blanchot: �La folie du jour�.Much of it is spoken. The singers, and who can blame them, have been unable to learn it by heart, and there is a certain amusement to be gained from watching their po-faced attempts to glance surreptitiously at the concealed portions of text.

The speak a senseless text. Sample: �Always the same. Always the same morning light�. They perform an unspeakably tedious series of meaningless actions, all realised with the kind of astronomical production values a theatre here (or just about anywhere) could not dare to dream of.

The last words: �A story. No. No stories. Never again�. And all the shutters come down. The curtain falls.

The merciful ice cream sellers gather. But no: now it�s a piece by Kafka. �Der Ausflug ins Gebirge�.

�I don�t know. I cried without being heard. ..Nobody will help me. A pack of nobodies�.

The third text, predictably, is Beckett�s. �Worstword Ho� (1983).
The period when the wretched man had finally written himself into a corner.
A meticulously realised dreary hotel room for the dreariest words.
An expensively recreated inept slide show. The fascination with outdated technology is somehow characteristic of the whole reactionary outdated exercise.
The lazy notion that its somehow enough to communicate nihilist senselessness.

I kept thinking of Jidariyya: the National theatre of Palestine show which was the last one I saw in this theatre. A company in desperate difficulties, under funded, facing real danger. Often prevented by army checkpoints from assembling in rehearsal.
Yet who created an immeasurably rich and beautiful and life affirming text.

As opposed to this: where millions were placed at the creator�s disposal. Millions he squandered in dreary, life-denying, dreary half baked nihilism. For which he was very comfortably feted and paid.

Which in a way sums up something appalling about the European West. With all the riches of the world at our feet, we can do no better than wallow in self-pity.

When he came out on stage to take his bow, I yelled out at him over the applause: �You are full of shit! Shame on you! You should be ashamed!�.

I�m glad I yelled. Even if no-one heard.

noreply@blogger.com (joteatro) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:11:00 +0000

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

Last night I saw something astonishing who significance I can barely begin to understand.

I can�t claim I was bowled over by it at the time; it�s only afterwards, on reflection, that I begin maybe to glimpse something of its significance.

It was called �Devil�s Ship� by Bazi Theatre Company. Performed in Parsi by a company of five women. And although the company seems to be run by men, who I noticed fussing around self-importantly after the show, the piece is about (and ultimately, I suspect by) the women. The only men on stage are in their graves.

The position of women in Iran is so extreme we can barely imagine it. And so the show came from a place utterly alien to us. The two protagonists introduced themselves by statements like �I am fifty� and �I am the daughter-in-law�. Statements I can now, perhaps, begin to decipher in terms of family relationships and the status of age.. and understand partially and with some difficulty statements that would immediately and profoundly resonate when spoken on their first stage.

The three other characters were the older woman�s two young and rebellious daughters; and a mysterious companion to the younger woman whose identity was never revealed. I don�t remember her introducing herself. Her mask was red, which meant something; she manipulated sinister looking voodoo dolls which she placed in the sand as if to have them crucified. And her veil was of silken fabric and impossibly, unmanageably, long.

Perhaps even the presence of these five women on the stage carried a meaning that we, outside their context, cannot really understand.

Their bodies were all covered in clothing. There was so much attention paid to their concealment. To their cloaks and veils. How must it be to live day in day out with the notion that your body is a thing of danger and shame that must be continually hidden from public view?

In fact I do understand in the sense that my whole life has been spent hiding, concealing, cloaking and veiling the secret of my feminine danger and shame. And like the women continually having to twitch and adjust and take care of this veil.
But somehow I have taken mine off. Which is why my world has suddenly become so different.

That was not possible for them... It is so difficult to explain this story! The women were prisoners, quasi prisoners, on an island of sand. With Sharja, the Gulf, modern living, visible yet inaccessible. The daughter-in-law was having a liaison with a man who offered her the possibility of escape. This violated the memory of her dead husband; and the mother-in-law was blocking her freedom. As they traditionally do.

But something amazing happened: the mother-in-law relented and gave her consent. And then the daughter-in-law refused to go. She wanted to honour the older woman�s choice; and she did not want, yet again, to give her freedom into the hands of a man.

She had a iPod, and this was a strangely shocking thing. On this stage, which was a kind of timeless space of fairy tale and myth. And there was this iPod: a reminder that this story does not belong to the realm of the fabulous alone, but also to a hard weary contemporary reality.

And at the end she gave it to one of the rebellious daughter: who listened with wonder.

A new reality was about to emerge.

I wrote all this, and then went to catch a bus. It didn�t come, as they tend not to, and I was watching a woman, and then a man, and remembering how tormented I used to be at the frontier between men and women. I felt stuck on the male side of it, where I didn�t want to be. And I could see no way I could ever cross it.

Whatever that frontier was in my mind, I have now crossed it. And am taking the first steps on the other, unknown side. This play I think has done the same.

Which is why in some ways it doesn�t quite work: the language is too tentative, too muted somehow. But that�s how it is, at the beginning. New worlds take a while to be fully born.