Fear grips constantly at my life. If I have a boggart at my back, then it is fear.
Through the work Ross and I have been doing with the Family Counselling services, I felt that I needed to try to understand my emotional journey of the past seven years of so. I have been so busy doing stuff that I have given myself little time for pause and reflection up until this. When I tried to think about it, the word "fear" kept coming through strongly, so I decided to tease that out and see where that took me. I quickly filled the sheet.
I understand that this is a snapshot rather than a finished piece. It's maybe something I shall need to return to. But it does help explain the weariness that overtakes me now and again.
Gillian Anderson's Margo Channing had reached a point in her life when fear was her constant friend. Lily James' Eve had it all before her. Her fear, however, was of the life from which she was trying to escape and to which she might yet be forced to return. The legend and the ingénue. It's a cracking show.
Ivo van Hove's production was technically and technologically brilliant but managed to keep its cleverness and tricksiness in the service of the text. Bette Davis's eye-rolling hauteur was avoided and the text was given from a depth of psychology not a surface presentation of it. Overall, the impact was pretty bruising about aspiration/ambition, being over the hill, manipulation, the insidious power of secrets, etc. It was a bumpy ride but no carpets were chewed in the making of the dénouement.
Immersion in works of great imagination can keep fear at bay for a time. Killing Eve is great stuff for doing just that.
No twist is left unturned. Stylish and elegant nastiness prevails. Fiona Shaw is just deadpan brill. Involuntary euthanasia happens regularly with characters being offed with impunity.
Glorious mayhem with the final outcome only made apparent in the last 30 seconds.
Silliness is another was of taming the fearful seriousness of life. And Gilbert and Sullivan were masterly at pricking the pomposity and debunking the definite.
Mike Leigh's production is already a few years' old and I was glad to catch up with it at last. His film Topsy-Turvy showed that he had a great deal of affection and respect for the Savoyards and it showed through here. While Alison Chitty's stage designs are bold with primary colours, the direction of the singers restrained and characterful.
Andrew Shore is a quintessentially English artist (as well as many other things) and his Major General Stanley drew on a rich vein of Music Hall, "Carry On..." and "Up Pompeii" without ever becoming ridiculous. It requires the lightest of touches to balance between buffoonery and good humour.
Ashley Riches was a glamorous Pirate King while John Tomlinson was what is known as "luxury casting" for the Sergeant of Police but to be honest the voice may still have amplitude but there's not a lot of tone left.
I've signed up for the ten days' free trial of Marquee TV: a performing arts streaming service. For a first offering, I decided to watch the RSC production of Two Gentlemen of Verona from 2014. Having never seen the play before, I had absolutely no expectations and was delighted to find myself thoroughly enjoying the production.
It was very funny and touching too in its dénouement - everyone learns something. Heartily recommended.
I hadn't realised it was such a companion piece to Romeo and Juliet: there are so many cross-references that I'm surprised that no-one's thought to do them as a pair.
Next, I decided on Cymberline which, once more, I had not previously seen throughout. I'm afraid that I found it to be a bit of a car crash. There are reasons why some plays as seen much less often than others. The marketing phrase "A rare opportunity to see..." is not necessarily an alert to witnessing a forgotten masterpiece.
Melly Still is usually quite reliable but this sort of post apocalyptic, punk design shtick is wearing a little thin. I think that there were just too many IDEAs - in fact, probably too much of everything. And, for someone who didn't know the play, I felt that the costuming did not help me understand at all the factionalism, friendships, class hierarchies and other interactions between the characters.
And yet a lot about the play was very good. Gillian Bevan made an excellent Cymbeline (becoming a sort of anti-Lear trying to re-unite her three children rather than rending them apart).
There is a particularly problematic scene in the play in which Iachimo enters Innogen's bedroom whilst she is asleep to gain evidence which he will later present to her husband Posthumus to trick him into believing her unfaithful. The scene was so very sensitively handled making it creepy but also inviting the audience to be voyeuristic. My view, however, is probably skewed by the fact that I would shag the pants off Iachimo (Oliver Johnstone) at the drop of a codpiece.
And then, when you are faced with Gaia in all her glory suspended inside a monumental cathedral, fear perhaps turns to awe. My fears seemed quite negligible when viewed in the presence of such majesty. And as for Ross? Er ist die Welt für mich.
Here's a sobering thought. After London, the highest number of drug-related gun crimes in England are to be found in Huddersfield. And if you convert those numbers into per capita, you have a very serious problem which is going completely under the radar.
It would seem that it is largely be about tensions between Pakistan and Indian communities but I'd imagine that there'd also be a large dollop of racist, white arseholes in the mix for good measure plus whatever other gang-related species of crime is flavour of the month. Issues in Bradford also seem to flair up regularly but are rarely reported. Local community leaders and local residents are reported to be afraid to speak out not solely because of reprisal but also because they were unwilling to hand over a glorious factoid to the right-wing anti-immigration lobby. Particularly after Rochdale. Rock. Hard place.
Wonder of all wonders. My ageing car winged it through its MOT and so the scrap heap was postponed for yet another year. I was fearful of having to find the money a new car before my personal finances reach the security of becoming a state pensioner. The good news meant that I was also easily able to journey to Salford for a bit of physical.
I met up with Luke for the first time thanks to the good offices of Manchester Lads. We met with Jasper from Eccles who now wishes to be known as Jordan (but is still from Eccles).
I'm not sure if the three-way was a good idea or not. At this stage of my erotic life, there is always a background fear of not being up to it any longer and, in this instance, something certainly put me off. Maybe I just felt intimidated by strangers and strange surroundings.
Luke and Jordan were happy to go at it and looked good doing it but Jordan seemed even more brittle than before and kept up an incessant commentary on his life, his likes, his dislikes and his world in general.
I don't think I shall see him again but I would like to get to know Luke much, much better.
I really need these meetings in a parallel way to my need to immerse myself in performance and display. Stimulation, challenge, contact, exchange, nurture, solace, yes all of those. And energy too.
I am a natural carer from a line of carers - I am genetically marked and socially trained for it. Caring for people is a fine and excellent thing but I also find it too easy to care for others and not to care for myself. In fact, there have been many times when I have made a point of assisting other people with their issues so that I had a valid reason to avoid my own.
I am also an exceedingly powerful empath. The ability to recognise emotional states and their provenance is a big assist in caring but it's also exhausting: it's a constant struggle not to be infected by other people's shadows: it's darkly revelatory to look straight at personal purgatories.
And here is the dark secret. Empaths have a tendency to be energy thieves. When we are depleted, we seek out strong emotions to draw down vitality. We are emotional vampires.
With me, there is the added complication that I easily get bored and so crave new stimulus and distraction.
So, after four and a half years of caring for and empathising with someone who was both groomed and coerced into unwanted (but probably longed for) sexual activity by two mature men working in tandem, I am approaching utter depletion if I can't keep at least some of this going.