A Woman of Parts

‘Men find limps attractive,’ a good friend told me on Thursday. She was hugging me goodbye. She is a film director, back in London to pick up her visa before returning to New York. She was looking very well: blonde, green-eyed, clear-skinned. As she held me she explained the theory.

‘Men see a woman who limps and they think they can catch her.’ She kissed my cheek and smiled. ‘They like that.’

I considered this as I cycled away. Does this explain the great success I’ve had attracting men over the past 18 months? I’d thought it was my hair.

Because I do have a limp. And it’s been getting worse. Or, using my friend’s equation, better. (The worse the limp the greater the attraction? Is a bed-ridden woman irresistible?)

I dislocated my hip in a tobogganing accident when I was 22 and had successful surgery. It healed perfectly.  Within six months I was able to run a full marathon, cycle across the Rockies in summer heat and swim Lake Ontario. Of course I wasn’t so bloody stupid that I did any of these bloody stupid things, but I was able to.

In 2007 I was doing yoga, came out of a deep bend and screamed. And a few months later, walking with a friend in an orchard in Kent I first heard the words ‘Are you limping?’

I hadn’t known it then. But now it’s impossible to miss.

I was out with a man this summer, a guy I hadn’t seen in years, and the limp grieved him. He talked about it. He mentioned it. When he held me in bed he said ‘Is this your sore hip???’  It was more painful for him than for me. (He was the man I shocked by whistling as I came down the hall from the bathroom, returning to bed. ‘Was that you, whistling?’ he said as I walked in, his eyes wide.

‘Oh yes yes, that’s me. I’m sorry’, I admitted, crawling beside him. ‘My whistling is annoying. People tell me, I’m sorry.’

‘No, no. Not annoying,’ he said, thinking. ‘It’s kind of sexy.’ He waited a moment. ‘And off putting.’

My producer Chris maintains that’s why I never saw him again. ‘He’s not going to ring! Why would he ring?? You know what he calls you? You’re the whistling gimp.’) (She obviously doesn’t subscribe to my director-friend’s theory.)

When I got tired of seeing the grimaces of pain on the faces of my friends, I went to see a doctor who referred me to a surgeon who within six weeks agreed to see me unconscious under his able, gifted, slicing hands. On Tuesday, 29^th  November, he’s putting in a new hip.

I am so excited I can hardly tell you. I am going to be walking, dancing, ROLLER BLADING again (this I will do, can’t wait, on my birthday, you’re invited). And before I go under the knife I have given myself a quest.  I stand on a cliff top, shielding my eyes against the rising sun of my new Hip Life and scan the horizon. For someone. Some brave one. Some brave man, in fact – who will just put his fingers against the skin on my hip, as it is now and say ‘Ah yes. This is how it is. I will remember…’  And promise to always remember.

Or at least lie and say he does.

It’s not that I mind scars. I quite like the original one, in such a discreet place that you have to know me very, very well before you see it. It’s just that I don’t like change. Or, rather, changing. Once the scar is there, I will love it because it means I can walk. However, in these days before it arrives, I feel nostalgic about the as-yet-unblemished skin. I told two friends last Sunday in a pub that this part of my hip I happen to like very much. I like most of me quite a bit, if I’m honest, but these 10 centimetres at the top of my thigh – they are jolly nice.

And I want someone to recognise this.

Even if I have to pay him.

My pub companions, two young men, were very receptive. They were friendly – and charitable enough – to have sympathy for my plight and immediately volunteer their services.

‘I want someone,’ I said, turning in my seat and putting my fingers on my denim-ed outer leg ‘to just – feel – this part of me, and then to – ‘

‘Photograph it??’ said the handsome, long-haired musician I’ll call Bill. He’d had several beers by this point. So had his equally handsome, saturnine friend Ben.  They gazed at me, weirdly sober seven pints in. Or behaving weirdly sober, at any rate.

‘Yes!’ I said, not daring to hope someone would actually be able to get a camera close enough to those ten centimetres without embarrassing us both and making it look like a home porno movie.

Bill was on it.

‘I’ll feel it and Ben can take a picture!’

Ben scowled.

‘Why do I have to take the picture? Why do you get to feel it?’

‘I have softer hands,’ Bill said. He shrugged, philosophic.

‘You have softer hands?’ Ben guffawed. ‘What? You’ve been moisturising?’

‘You have hands like a rhino,’ Bill shouted.

At this point I realised they were no longer acting as sober as they seemed. And neither one has since mentioned this service they were willing to offer when under the influence, so I suspect they a) don’t remember or b) have re-thought the propriety of my request and decided, understandably, all is best passed over in silence. So, sports fans, I am back on the trail.

But I know what I want. I want someone sensitive, decorous, poetic – and with a camera. On his phone. That’s fine.  Someone young enough to be around in later years when I ask ‘Do you remember how I looked without the scar?’ and have him smile at me fondly – not, you know, creepily – and say ‘Yes. I remember it well.’ And if some day he’s not there I can look at the picture he took – his sensitive, decorous, poetic picture - and remember myself.

I am ready for this newer, faster, fitter me. I am ready to hike the coastal paths again, ready to skate for hours while listening to Ron Sexsmith sing ‘I’m A Late Bloomer’. It will be spring, maybe April, maybe my birthday. Trees will be bursting into blossom, light will ricochet off the Serpentine onto the sunglasses of the happy tourists eating ice cream on the benches, and I, on my roller blades, will push forward, stride after stride after stride, gaining momentum, faster and faster and faster and I will think on my director friend’s theory, about men who like women who limp. And I will realise this is irrelevant to me now. I will speed past boats and trees, past other girls on bikes sailing beside me through Hyde Park, and I will know, in my new ceramic replacement bones, that I am ready for a man who is fast enough to catch up.

S. Young - Artistic Director will return as soon as she is conscious. Enough.

Getting it Right : The Art of Taking Notes

Anna (not her real name) (so I could I call her Pallas Athene. Jocasta. Ankehesanamun [queen of Egypt BC 1348]) (yeah, I could, but it’s £$** hard to type)  is not only a dear friend she is my first reader.

She receives my scripts as they appear, freshly lasered, or pixelated into early drafts on the screen. She is the source of the best comments and editorial suggestions. She confirms Christine’s opinions and, as a writer herself, translates them into equations I can solve technically.

Equations that can begin ‘I hate Gladys’ if, say, I had written a script about someone called Gladys. ‘I hate Gladys,’ she would write, and at that point I would know where she stood.

Once I was writing a mildly autobiographical piece and the sentence was ‘I hate Stephanie.’ Very bracing let-me-tell-you. And she was right. Fictional Stephanie was hateful. So I changed her name (and pretty much everything else).

And she always begins with praise. What works and why. What she enjoys, what moves and amuses her, what engages her. She then examines, with surgical precision, what doesn’t work. Sometimes it is a very simple note with far-reaching consequences – ‘What motivates her?’ or ‘You haven’t earned this’; sometimes it’s just simple: ‘Cut that.’

But sometimes, as in the ‘I hate Stephanie’ moment, she is inspired to comments with a full-bodied energy and passion ‘ I wanted to slap her, who would date THAT? She’s ungenerous and unkind’ – that, trusting her wholly, she knows I will ride as an expert surfer does the high wave to the pacific beauty of a Much Better Draft.

I don’t mind the passion.

What I dread is the quiet.

The small sentence.

The blood-chilling phrase  - ‘Shall we meet?’

Then I know I’m fucked.

When I was at university I lived with a girl called Maureen, the only daughter in a tribe of older brothers. She described, with remarkable good nature, the abuse she underwent on a daily basis – kneed in the chest, drooled over, used for Nerf ball target practise, and, generally, the focus of casual assault whenever one of her five siblings was around.

‘My brothers tackled me. All the time. Because I would do something – like, spit in their milkshakes – no, believe me, they had it coming – and I’d take off down the lawn and one of them would be behind me. And I’d be ripping, I’d be tearing down the grass, heading for the fence, I’d hear him behind me. I’d hear him running and I’d be running and he’d be running, thump thump thump, and that’s fine. The running is fine. The bad moment was when the running stopped. Because I know where he is. He’s in the air. And he’s in the air because he’s leaping and I know where he’s going to land…’

This is the dread I feel in the quiet of Anna’s brief email response. No passion, no hatred;  just something in the air and I know where it’s going to land.

Last month I met Anna on a hot Saturday afternoon in her local park to get notes on the rest of the pilot episode of HOME MOVIES – the 21 minutes that follow the seven minutes we have filmed. The dread had receded and I was beginning to look forward to the relief I knew her comments would inspire. I have always said that, in art, you cross the bridge of poo to get to the grassy knoll of truth (‘Grassy knoll?’ Chris said once. ‘Do you have to evoke murder in Dallas?’), and Anna was leading me across that bridge.

We sat on our favourite hillside overlooking a verdant playing field, leaves falling weirdly in the 27 degree October heat. She glanced around nervously.

‘Who are you looking for?’ I said, following her gaze.

‘You know who,’ she said. ‘He lives – somewhere - here.’

‘Ah!’ I said, understanding. And panicking, myself. I looked down the paths for the familiar, well-built shape of Stretch Williams [not his real name].

Stretch Williams is the only person in my whole life to whom I have ever said ‘I do not want to see or hear from you again.’ He dated my friend Carol and when she ended it, he couldn’t. He called her mates, he arranged coffees. To talk about her.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love to talk about her. I just also like to think at some point in the conversation someone is going to realise they are talking to me. Even if it is about her.

After three such coffees when Stretch rang I said I didn’t think things were working out and I ended it. 

I now run into Stretch as though he is some messenger from an Underworld, the kind your mother threatened you with if you didn’t accept dates from the lanky, greasy, Star Trek enthusiast who fancied you when no one else would. ‘Sell when you can, you are not for all markets!’ my mother shouted – or would have if she had known Shakespeare said it best.

(Lanky Tom Buskard went on to a hugely prolific publishing career as a science fiction writer. So. You know. Who’s laughing now.)

I’ve run into Stretch so often it’s become a kind of parallel social reality – as though we really are friends and have planned to meet. He is always gracious but, after ten minutes, he can see the flecks of foam forming around the sides of my mouth and lets me go.

I cursed myself for choosing this patch of ground. I wondered if we should skulk off to a café when Anna, with remarkable focus given the potential for imminent social danger, turned and looked at me. Steadily.

‘So,’ she said. Her voice resonant.

The air whistled, birds sang.

‘So,’ I muttered.

She kept my gaze.

And, as full awareness descended, eyes-wide and heart-pounding I was able to say ‘I have to re-write the whole thing,’ and feel Anna nod before I heard her voice, half-strangled, half-desperate, announce ‘Stretch.’

And I knew this wasn’t a spiritual suggestion.

I looked up and there was the pleasant face of the gym-visiting, yoga-practising, ex-girlfriend-obsessed Stretch Williams.

Swiftly, before standing, Anna turned and whispered, intensely ‘It has to get much more real, there has to be something else between the women that accounts for their relationship, you can’t sustain a half-hour with the tone you’ve set up in the first scene, you need separate motives for what they do that keeps them connected and then we realise somewhere that’s all they’ve ever had.’

I memorised her words as you would directions from the Troll indicating the Way Out of the Forest of Death, saw her turn to Stretch, kiss his cheek and suggest a walk.

She took the bullet.

I transcribed the notes.

I’ve said it before. Writing is a collaborative process, informed by the wisdom that a plurality of hearts applied to a question reveals an answer the single perspective would not have seen. You need your friends/editors/directors/ producers – even, or perhaps especially, if they hate what you’ve done and can tell you why.

Anna returned without Stretch.  She sat down. My pen was raised for the next string of pearls but she wasn’t thinking about me.

‘He’s publishing a novel. Faber and Faber.  He’s got a big deal in the States.’ She paused. ‘He didn’t mention Carol.’

I reeled. I was full of a begrudging admiration and thought about this unfortunate tendency I have to repel men who later become hugely successful. But, even in my regret, I awarded top marks to Stretch.

He’d obviously, somewhere inside, taken notes.

The Quest

Chris and I have been waiting to discover whether HOME MOVIES has been selected for screening at ‘In Short’, a film festival promoting the talent of people who live, work or study in Queen’s Park and surrounding neighbourhoods.

There are prizes.

Of course we want to share our work, to promote our cast and crew and to broadcast the company name.

But we really, really, really want a prize.

First prize is good. First prize is your film shown as a trailer before the main feature at the Lexi Cinema on the Chamberlayne Road every night for a week. We could be the warm up act for Tilda Swinton.

This is the prize we want.

All right. Fine. Clarification: This is the prize I want.

Chris, probably a better person, has maintained since February - all through development, rehearsal, shooting and post-production – that she just wants the film in the festival. That would be success enough for her.

I have nodded, aping her humility. ‘Oh yes, yes – triumph,’ I’ve said, while secretly imagining what I’ll wear to introduce our movie the night they undoubtedly ask me to come and talk about our eight-minute short that features one vaguely ataxic character falling over in the street, twice, and another breaking into spontaneous yoga just before they screen ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’.

My big face!! Gurning into an audience who have paid to see Tilda Swinton! This is my quest.

Of course we have only been able to make the film and submit it because 31, count ‘em, 31 people have supported the blighter. Chris and I have been gob-smacked with astonishment and awe at the overwhelming support our WeFund campaign has attracted. We now have 85% of our total budget. We are the heroes racing towards the finish line, heads thrown back, chests bared to the skies, shouting ‘Aaaaaaghhh!’ And, like all great heroic quests, there is at the climactic point, the chance of losing it all.  YES of LOSING IT ALL!! ALL!! LOOOOOOSING AAAAAaaaall.

Because.

If we don’t raise the final £600 in the next two weeks and three days, WeFund will cancel all the pledges we’ve received so far.

  

YES. CAAAAaaaaNCEL!!(echo: caaaaaaaaaancellllll)

They are the Wizards guarding the Treasure that will not be given into our stewardship until we prove our worthiness. WeFunders sit, tender, watchful, as Chris and I run, faster faster faster, keeping our eye on the finish line and on the festival (and on first prize).

Of course we knew that getting into the festival would give us juuuust that much more incentive to run that much faster and attract that much more money.

They were announcing their selection last weekend.

Last weekend I sat at my computer (pretty safe bet, if I’m sitting actually. Chris asked me yesterday ‘What did you do for your sixteen waking hours before you had a laptop?’ and I stared at her. Before laptop?  What is  - this – before laptop?).  I was Skyping. My friend Anna and I were texting away. A happy exchange of Skype texts. Little bits of information and humourous observations, stories and anecdotes when  - another Skype text came through.

‘Beep’ it said.

I glanced up.

It was from the founder of the ‘In Short’ festival.

My heart somersaulted and landed in my knees. I wanted to open it but was in mid-anecdote. What if it was bad news? I’d never finish the story. And if it were good news – well. I’d never finish the story either.

Below is a transcript of that stomach-revolving moment. Anna had just asked how I was:

[22/10/2011 15:31:06] Stephanie Young:  I'm really well, thank you. Having a really fun day with Chris - hardly ever have this kind of time just the two of us. She and I are talking about writing and –

Beep.

[22/10/2011 15:31:33] Stephanie Young: oh hang on, sorry - message from the founder about the flim festival!

(Suddenly we’ve submitted our movie to a flim festival. This combined with my initials would make for a flim-SY festival to which, quite honestly, we would rather not be invited. My friend, however, understood and wrote:)

[22/10/2011 15:31:40] Anna: Oooo

[22/10/2011 15:31:48] Stephanie Young: I know my heart is racing!

[22/10/2011 15:31:51] Stephanie Young: she's texting me now

[22/10/2011 15:31:58] Stephanie Young: i'm nervous!

[22/10/2011 15:32:08] Anna: I'm waiting

I shifted to the other page and watched the little Skype pencil move as the Founder typed. I saw the text come up, willing the words, crossing my fingers, holding my breath.

And at 15:32 on Saturday, 22^nd October the Founder of the festival (whose intern had been unable to get to us on email) wrote to me saying:

[22/10/2011 15:32:05] We said everyone must be told by 3pm today. We saw over 30 short films - and yours is in…

 WE’RE IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’re in, we’re in. I told Anna, swiftly, that we had got into the flim festival. Again, she understood.

[22/10/2011 15:33:02] Anna: Fabulo!

[22/10/2011 15:33:03] Stephanie Young: I may have to run and tell Chris!!

[22/10/2011 15:33:12] Anna: Go go I have to run

[22/10/2011 15:33:22] Anna: Congratulations!!!

[22/10/2011 15:33:33] Anna: I'll catch you later

I called out to Chris, working down the hall in her office.

‘Have you checked your email today?’ I shouted.

‘No,’ she called back. ‘Why?’

‘Just – just check your email,’ I said.

I typed my thanks to the Founder while I heard Chris pull her chair up to her computer. The mouse clicked a few times. She shouted

‘There’s an email from [HOME MOVIES director] DaveAnderson, is that what you mean?’

(For those of you new to the blog, DaveAnderson has become one word in the offices of MYPC. We say his name so often, it’s just easier. I could waste years of my life pausing that split nano-second between ‘Dave’ and ‘Anderson’ and, I tell you, I’ve just got too much to see and do. Like re-categorise my iTunes library by artist and not album. And whittle.)

'He's written, is it from Dave?' 

Obviously, I wasn't speaking about an email from Dave.

‘Yes!’ I said.

I texted the Founder:

 [22/10/2011 15:41:25] Stephanie Young: I am going to go, run and tell Christine if I may. She's been holding her breath!

[22/10/2011 15:41:29] Stephanie Young: I am so so happy.

[22/10/2011 15:41:35] Stephanie Young: This is great for us .

‘Yes? About - train times?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said again, warmly. Hoping she would be distracted by my loving tone and not suspect my forked tongue.

There was a pause. I felt Christine’s eyes squinting from 20 feet away.

‘Why did you know I was going to get an email from DaveAnderson?’

I signed off from the Founder. I heard Chris inhale.  She shouted down the hall. ‘Stephanie. I think you’re lying.’

I giggled. Yes, I giggled. I hate giggling and I hate gigglers but here I was, victim and perpetrator. How best to tell her? The best way is to read the news yourself. The best way is to open the envelope, the best way is to hold the letter in your hands. I didn’t have an envelope or a letter.

I unplugged and picked up my computer.

‘I – I have something I want you to read.’

She glanced at me from the sofa. She’d given up thinking she was supposed to be excited about emails from director DaveAnderson, even emails with which I seemed to have a prescient relationship. She waited to see what I was lying about.

I stood in front of her, brandishing my laptop like the grail she’d been looking for. She blinked at me.

‘Now – it’s Skype,’ I said.

‘When is Skype?’ she said, frowning.

‘Now. This. Is. Skype. It’s Skype this is Skype.’

‘I – I hear that. It’s Skype.’ She paused. ‘What is Skype?’

‘What you are about to read, it’s on Skype so bear that in mind.’

‘What am I – ‘

I pushed her novel to the floor and thrust the laptop into her hands. She wrestled with the machine and looked where my fingers were pointing.

‘Look, you see – it’s Skype. Skype. Skype.’

‘I see, I see, it’s Skype.  It’s Skype. You keep saying Skype. It’s like talking to Rain Man, why is it – ‘

And at that very moment her eyes caught the words ‘We saw over 30 films…’ And I watched her face as the fact hit home and the truth sank in (after three attempts to read the GOOD NEWS! because, being Skype, the messages were not sequential and they are quite hard to make sense of which is why I had kept shouting ‘Skype!’ at her, you’d have thought that would have been enough but Noooo she had wanted me to say “These messages are not sequential”, I ASK YOU.).

And a moment later we high-fived each other. And then discussed tiaras.

And my speech.

***

 

If you feel inspired to assist us in our quest to claim all the pledges that have been made by those 31 extraordinarily generous people, to become One of Them, to allow us to reach the finish line, gasping, exultant, teary-eyed - borne shoulder-high by our cast and crew to the Lexi Cinema on Sunday, 20^th November to see my face as big as Tilda’s; if you would like to see us triumph before the Hour-Glass Runs Out and the Treasure is Returned – click here:

http://www.wefund.com/project/home-movies

As little as £5 will get you a perk. We’d love to get you – perky. Thank you for following us and the story of our little film.

(We have big plans for it.)

A Home Movie

We held a small party and private screening of HOME MOVIES to thank our cast, crew, sponsors and friends on Friday 30th September. We served them wine, cheese and those tiny, little decorative pickles. We hugged them as often as possible. We fed them the talent of Belfast singer/songwriter Anthony Toner and there was laughing, at the right parts, during the film. The mood was warm and generous after, and no one stampeded to get to the door.

It was enjoyable.

For everyone else.

For me it was an evening for which 'enjoyable' is a pale and watery word. There was, obviously, the pleasure of friends and colleagues and those pickles were fantastic. But. There was a moment when I felt so fulfilled, such a gloriously happy inhabitant of my own life, that, lucky for you -  I made a photograph with my heart.

It looks like this:

The front room of a mansion block in Maida Vale: pale teal walls, darker teal carpet with classic and comfortable sofas and arm chairs. The ceiling lights are dimmed.

Connecting doors to a small study are open and wooden chairs are lined up behind the low-backed sofa; half a dozen people stand at the back. Every one faces the fire place in front of which is ANTHONY TONER – Belfast singer/songwriter. Twenty-two people wait..

Seated in a wooden chair, holding a guitar, his hair rock ‘n’ roll long and soft about his collar, he fiddled with a tuner at his feet.

‘It’s very possible this might make you nervous’ he said, adjusting dials as he plucked a string on his guitar. ‘Sitting quietly in front of a man from Northern Ireland while between you is a small, electronic device, wired and activated…’

Anthony explained he had been asked to open the evening because his music is used in MYPC’s hugely successful WeFund campaign – the campaign that continues to succeed and make HOME MOVIES possible (lines are still open) (80% of the target has been reached) (yee-haaa).  

  

http://www.wefund.com/project/home-movies

The audience, full of goat's cheese and sundried tomatoes on sesame crackers, listened with growing pleasure (you never know what you're going to get in someone's living room)  to the incomparably clever lyrics and heartfelt tunes, typified by the opening number, ‘East of Louise’.

http://www.anthonytoner.net/anthonys-blog/2011/5/26/10-days-10-songs-east-of-louise.html

I felt everyone relax just the way I relaxed earlier in the afternoon when Anthony breezed in from Belfast, fresh from a gig the night before and leaving in twenty hours to play another.  His huge and easy charm, genuine enthusiasm and, let’s face it, distracting good looks are an impossibly winning combination that I defy any sentient being to resist (apparently there is a sitcom in development in Belfast – ‘Everyone Likes Anthony Toner’).

His music and conversation knit us together. I could feel us all thinking ‘Well, this is very simple. And very nice.’ It was Friday night, London was still baring her shoulders and legs to the brazen, second summer (22 degrees at 8pm) and here was someone telling us stories and singing beautifully.

And there was more wine.

If I had been nervous about the first semi-public screening of HOME MOVIES, by the second song – (‘…we’re the people that we’ve always been, so just lie here til the light comes in…’) - I wasn't.

http://www.anthonytoner.net/anthonys-blog/2011/5/27/10-days-10-songs-walking-down-the-line.html

And not because I was suddenly filled with an unshakable confidence that everyone would rise and fist-punch the air to announce this was their favourite short film ever EVER EVER!!! But because I was amongst friends (some I’d just met) who would accept our film in the spirit in which it had been created, the spirit that motivated Anthony’s songs – to move and entertain some people.

Now I was comfortable, I was engaged. What I didn’t know was that I was about to be launched into one of those heightened moments when time and place vanish, where you reach through the insubstantial stuff of molecules and memory to touch some source, some river that’s always flowing and that now and then you notice.

Anthony re-adjusted his guitar and watched the tuner.

‘This next song is the one that Chris and Stephanie have used to promote the film’ he said, glancing up. ‘And I wrote it for Stephanie.  She was going through a lot, a rough time, some very big changes in her life – very intense – and I was inspired to write this.’ The guitar was in tune. He settled it in his lap.  His hands hovered over the strings as he looked up to assure us  ‘And this song fixed everything.’

He played the catchy opening. This was how I’d first heard it – just Anthony and a guitar. And I realised, sitting on the floor of this room, leaning against this sofa, was, achingly weirdly, precisely where I had been sitting when he'd said 'Merry Christmas,' put the CD into the machine and hit ‘play' in December 2008.

On that winter morning it had been over two years since I had left my job, my home and a relationship, swimming, sometimes flailing, in deep waters trying to find the life I knew I was built for: making art, making money, living with people I loved. My mother had written, worried, worried sick, shouldn’t I face reality, shouldn’t I get a job? and in huge frustration I wished I’d never told her the truth. If only I had lied. If only I could film a fake life to send home to her so I would look like a success. So she wouldn’t worry.

Feel the breezes in the leaves above you,

the here and now and the ones who love you…

Finally you find home, and it’s a state of mind.

As the words cascaded out of the speakers, invisible behind the gargantuan Christmas tree Anthony and I had carried home down Elgin Avenue just the night before, I could feel my face tighten and my forehead spasm in what I understand is a hugely unattractive reflex but which I can’t help when I am about to cry from my deepest heart. Tears like water from a hydrant leapt, horizontally, from my eyes. I gasped. Andrea, my dear friend and Anthony’s partner, moved slowly down on the floor beside me and Anthony propped me up on the right. They put their arms about me as I suspect it looked as though I wasn’t going to remain incarnate, and maybe anchoring me to them, and the floor, would keep me breathing.

I hadn’t realised how profoundly I had longed for help – yearned for some huge cosmic billboard lit up announcing ‘You Are Not Fucking Insane!’ And here, in just under four minutes, was every syllable of acknowledgement and affirmation, encouragement and support I could have ever desired.

What you were looking for has finally found you,

The world wants to put its arms around you

Finally.

It was probably the best Christmas present I had ever received. It was certainly one of the best moments of my life. And here, three years later, I was sitting exactly where I’d first heard that song, surrounded by people who had produced, directed, shot, acted in, sound designed, developed and funded the script – about a woman who films a fake life to send home to her mother. To prove she’s a success.

 http://www.anthonytoner.net/anthonys-blog/2011/5/24/10-days-10-songs-finally.html

A wise teacher once said that ‘The standard of success in life isn't the things. It isn't the money or the stuff -- it is absolutely the amount of joy you feel.’

Look at this picture. It was taken that moment Anthony sang. And I want you to note the woman in pink, because she is the most successful woman on the face of the blossoming earth.

(I took a photograph with my heart; more usefully, Chris took this with her phone.)

Chapter Ten

19 June 2010

Nora opened last week to acceptable reviews. Nothing that has challenged the vocabulary of critics as they seek new expressions of praise, but acceptable. This means The National should break even and the mood in the green room is sanguine.

I watch the leads chatting with each other before curtain; some of them read notices, some of them refuse. I happen to know that Nora herself was singled out as the strongest and most compelling aspect of the production and I agree. She is effortlessly real. And she’s slightly scary. You don’t know what she is going to do next.

I am impressed and slightly jealous. I was always lauded for my ‘animal presence.’ Now if anyone noticed my animal presence they’d try to shoot me - creeping around on stage in the dark, running into furniture, grunting in my balaclava. I might bite. 

I’d shoot me.

I remember seeing Judi make an entrance in 1995 on the huge revolving Olivier stage in this very theatre. She and I had made plans to have a birthday tea in the canteen after the matinee (I’d bought her a needlework kit – every moment she wasn’t on stage she was cross-stitching; she was bloody good, too) and she’d got me a prime seat.  Lights went down, music came up and she appeared, upstage, and began her cross down. She was dressed circa 1895 and carried a parasol, wore a spectacular hat. Lights began to fill the stage as she made her purposeful way towards us and with every step I felt an increasing sense of sitting in the presence of something I could not describe but that my soul recognised. The hair on my forearms rose, the skin on my lower back tingled, my body began to lift to meet the sheer irresistible power of her presence. 

She kept walking – the stage is 45 feet deep – her skirts sashaying, her parasol swinging and with every step she grew more terrifying and more irresistible. Here, on an ordinary afternoon, on a rainy autumn day in a very familiar place, something wild emerged.  It was like meeting a tiger in your garden.

I’d been a professional actress for almost twenty years and could not say then – and can barely describe now – the effect of her charisma.  I was weeping by the time she reached the lip of the stage. Her character surveyed us -  amused, erotic, hopelessly sad -  and we were her happy slaves.

This is why we’re here, I thought.  On earth. We’re here to be as alive as possible.

Judi is just more alive than most.

And in Nora I pride myself on being as un-alive as I can. If I am meant to be invisible, I am going to be the best bloody invisible character in the London theatre today.

(And as I wasn't mentioned in the reviews, I Am Obviously Succeeding Nobly.)

And the Credits Roll

We’ve finished making HOME MOVIES. Chris and I watched the final cut on Friday, alone, on the sofa in our office (her living room).  After eight minutes and seventeen seconds the credits came up and we looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows. I nodded.

‘Holy £$**’ she said. ‘We’ve made a film.’          

I have never given birth to another person, but something about making this little, tiny movie has made me feel invincible. I’ve heard new mothers think like this. ‘I’ve created life!! What CAN’T I do??’

Of course I didn’t do it alone. I had Chris. And we  - well. We  had an ocean of heaving talent around us.

For instance.

A tall, dark and handsome man with a name from a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald was our sound engineer. Raoul Brand could be the son of a Spanish duchess exiled to New England married to an American industrialist called  -uh - Edgar Brand.

In fact, Raoul is German. And he speaks with a London accent.

Chris said she expected the sound guy to clean things up, to sync the audio and visual. She didn’t expect him to make the movie funnier, tighter, more coherent. This is why Raoul isn’t actually ever going to be called a ‘sound guy’ anywhere else. He’s a designer.

And he saved my ass.

The night before we were due to ‘lock in’ the sound and audio, we showed a copy of the film to my most trusted script editor, something I should have done, you might argue, before shooting and editing the bloody thing. She said the story worked but there was a crucial bit of information missing in the dialogue. The relationship with the mother wasn’t clear. Crucial, crucial. Missing.

Missing.

I knew she was right, the moment the words were out of her mouth. I hung up quickly, Chris rang Raoul to tell him our problem – well, let’s face it – my problem -  and I went to bed.

I lay in the dark with my computer on my lap, sending versions of new dialogue to Chris and the director, DaveAnderson (his names have morphed into one word – much easier). DaveAnderson read the new versions and, at 1:00 am on a day that had seen  him up at 6:30, he talked me through what I’d written with patience and encouragement.

Chris sent comments. I kept writing.  At 3:30 I hadn’t solved it.

We’re talking a minute-and-a-half of dialogue here, people. I’d been sitting in front of the problem for five hours.

At 4:00 am I went to sleep. I woke at 9:30 and started again. I was due in the studio at 1:30 that afternoon.  

Ten a.m, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30, nothing nothing nothing. BUT - by noon, taking Chris and Dave’s notes, finessing what I’d sent them, eureka and hallelujah and any other Latinesque words to describe joy  (iubilate, fabulosae!) I’d cracked the first half of the problem.

I knew how to clarify the relationship.  I quickly wrote what my character would say to reveal just exactly why she was so desperate for her mother’s approval.

Half the job done. Now I needed to write the pay off. You know what I mean, whether you know you know it or not. A good story has a set up, it builds– and in the final moments the writer lifts the stakes a little bit higher than they were at the start.

I hadn’t done this.

Yet.

I made two fumbling, unconvincing attempts before seeing I should have left ten minutes ago.  I shoved the paper in my bag, hauled on my computer and cycled, madly, to the Camden studio in the sluicing rain. Tall, dark, handsome, non-Spanish Raoul smiled, rueful, let me in and led me, sloshing, down the carpeted halls to his two good-sized rooms, console and booth.

He set me up to lip sync the stuff I'd solved. I kept my eyes on the large monitor. Raoul said ‘Action’. I recited - it worked. He gave me the thumb’s up.

‘Next?’ he said, smiling. Because I’m obviously a writing and recording genius and find solutions in moments.

I cleared my throat. I read the closing dialogue. Raoul played it back. He turned to me. His face was kind.

‘It sounds like you’re telling us what to think.’

He was right. It did.

‘You’re right, Raoul,’ I said. ‘It does.’

We gazed at the screen. What now? Should I improvise on what I’d written, hoping I’d stumble across the words that would realise the theme and spring the character forward?

Like fuck I should. I’m not Robin Williams. I felt very clear.

‘You go back to work, Raoul – whatever you’re doing. Adding footsteps.’ He raised an eyebrow, smiling. I took a deep breath.  I felt like Gary Cooper in High Noon. I strapped on my virtual holster and faced the door, calling to Raoul over my shoulder. ‘I’ll go do my job.’ My spurs jangled as I left.

Two chairs, probably for students, sat in the hallway outside of a drummer’s empty studio. I lay myself across them, dropped my head over the edge. And waited.

Someone sang love songs in the far corridor while a piano played. ‘You Do Something To Me’ ‘Making Whoopee’ (maybe not so much about love..) ‘The Way You Look Tonight.’

When you are in that still, small place of not trying to solve a problem but just – spending time with a problem, just – hanging about with a problem, just being with a problem – everything you hear and see can be helpful. In fact, I would go so far as to say you attract exactly what you need to hear and see to help you solve the problem.

Love songs, I said to myself. Love songs must be useful for the final three lines of the film. I had no bleeding idea how. But I socked the idea away.

I paced. I nodded at the universally tall, dark and handsome young men who emerged from rooms at regular intervals. This was obviously a condition for renting. I stood quietly in corners with my head propped between two walls, looking at my feet. I lay on the chairs. I listened and sang along. 

Another bride, another June, another sunny honeymoon. Another season, another reason for makin’ whoopee.

Seventy-five minutes later I returned to the studio. Raoul was editing the final scene but glanced up quickly.

‘Would you like to record again?’ he asked, courteous. Maybe hopeful.

‘Oh yes, Raoul,’ I said. ‘I’d love to record again. I have nothing to record again but I’d love  it if I did.’

He smiled a little, waiting. He is not a reactive man. In the best possible way.

‘May I hover here for a while? Will I annoy you?’

He laughed. I could see him thinking How could you on the other side of the room, looking away from me and unable to hear what I’m doing annoy me?

‘No,’ he said. He waved me to a chair and put his headphones back on.

I sat. I pulled my computer out of my bag. I propped it on my lap. I looked at an empty page.

I breathed. And I made a decision.

I decided to come at the problem backwards. What did I want to feel when I’d found  the words? Maybe if I pretended I had the solution, the solution would feel right at home and leap up to meet me, like a happy dog. What did I want to feel?

Well that was easy. What did anyone want to feel when they’d solved a problem? Elated, satisfied, pleased. Connected, expressed, useful.  The way you feel when you’ve just told a joke and people laugh. That feeling.

Joke. That’s good to remember. This is a comedy. There should be a joke at the end.

And how do comedies end?

How do most good comedies end? How do classic comedies end?

The love songs rushed back.

A lota shoes, a lota rice, the groom is nervous, he answers twice.

And there, leaping into my lap and nuzzling my face, was the answer.  I had it and I knew it.  More and greater eureka, I wrote the dialogue in a minute and a half – about as long as the dialogue itself. I looked up to Raoul

‘I have it,’ I said.  He glanced up, maybe hearing the assurance in my voice. He stopped what he was doing and stood. He set up the microphone, synced me to the final images, said ‘Action’ and I read the new dialogue, as the credits rolled. The last picture appeared, the MYPC logo flashed up and the film stopped.

Raoul looked up and beamed at me.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘It works.’

We did it in two takes.

Later, Chris heard the new dialogue in the office and laughed. DaveAnderson rang me, listening to the new dialogue while on the phone, and he laughed. Yes. I thought. Yes. Exactly what I’d imagined.

And.

If my script-editor hadn’t known I was missing dialogue, I would not have known either.

If Raoul hadn’t known my first attempt had been poo, I might not have known either.

If Chris hadn’t thought the script had legs, it would not have been filmed.

If DaveAnderson hadn’t made that script into a film, it would have stayed just a script.

You need the still, small voice to write the story. And if you’re lucky, you have the joy of working with everyone else to make it heard.
  
****

Chris and I continue to sing loud songs of delight in our weekly meetings inspired by you, our supporters. Check out our funding progress:

http://www.wefund.com/project/home-movies

WeFund, wisely, returns all the money to donors if we don't reach our target. We will reach our target, thanks to you, and if you hear songs of delight coming from people downing chai tea lattes at Starbucks - that's us.