Saturday, December 10, 2005

Life reflecting TV

I don't know whether I'm becoming a drama queen or finding everyday life so boring when anything a bit different does happen it stands out in comparison. Either way, my excuses have been covered so here goes.

For TV and film viewers drama and chaos is very exciting, but the actors are only playing out a script and not having to live it for real. My life has no audience, and I'm in the middle of it and don't appreciate the elements that will make a major book or TV series should it ever get written and used. From the smallest to the largest element it can shoot out of control in ways that though not leaving physical damage, can potentially do everything else, many though not all lodging in my subconscious store of experiences and sitting there like yet another stone in my shoe.
Overall it's been a pretty average week. A bit more work than usual (it always evens up though) and just enough light to get two batches of photos done (25 minutes altogether, and that only thanks to the auto-fix faculty that resets underexposed pictures). Next week and for another two that'll reduce even more as it's about 7 minutes less a day per week until the new year. Not a good time to buy a digital camera- if it was May or June I'd have done most of my list by now by staying out till about 6 once I was out, but this will be strung out. I've done a little with the remaining indoor time, some but not much work on my painting and the article I mentioned on Tuesday. Wednesday night was a rare night in as there was football on Sky (I only watch it selectively now) and saw my team, Manchester Utd, get knocked out of the first stage of the European cup, as I dreamed the previous night. It turned out they only needed a draw to get through, and that required just one more goal. I'm just pleased England are in the World Cup, which is far more important really. I don't feel I've exactly wasted the week but it still feels pretty unfulfilled and became chaotic later into it as well. I can only speak for now and it's put me all over the place.

Nick Roach so often seems to have a point to make on whatever's happening to me, and he says here that we receive drama when we want it, though how after all this time looking for peace it still gets created beats me. Jung would say it's coming from my subconscious, but then I'd need years of analysis to uncover what's driving the outer weather system from within my being.

The film/book/tv series would be my only profit from the last few years, should it (cough cough) ever happen. It would star my grandma, who's now started a three person mission (ending with me this time) to get her a new TV for the price of a radio (though she can afford better). That's the weekend's task, which I hope will be relatively simple which I know it can be.
Her lifetime's lectures and wisdom would be the focal point of it, her hawk eye watching your every move, shifting ornaments back an inch when someone's moved them, asking what you did when you went to the toilet, where are you going, when are you coming back, who was on the phone, did you comb your hair (you need to ask that? think about it...), have you washed your hands, etc etc.
Then she'd be shown attempting, like King Canute (though he actually attempted to stop the tide to show he couldn't do it, not that he could) but genuinely expecting things to follow her will, telling the cat not to do its business in her garden, deciding what jobs and girlfriends I should and shouldn't have (like I ever took any notice), the clothes I wear and length of my hair (the one concession I usually make for the sake of peace) and any other element she feels is imperfect in her world. I could (without much work) make myself the Woody Allen narrator of the show, adding up the number of weeks of therapy each incident caused for me, and any connected neuroses attached, such as her insistence anyone who doesn't like restaurants is peculiar, and no normal woman would ever want to go out with me. The trouble is she could well be right on both counts. But I doubt on the eating out, it sucks. Anyway, we'd see her in a restaurant rounding up errant family members like stray cattle- 'Why are you late' 'Aren't you going to order yet?' 'Why do you want to eat that?', and then go on to comment on every person's table manners once the food actually arrives (having already picked through every element of their clothing faux pas first).
I could then add some of the more 'left field' people I've collected much in the way cats pick up burrs on their fur in my life. Like the one who quizzes strangers on their personal life. When she was considering having children went up to any woman she met casually and ended up asking them if their childbirth was painful. Then the other person who met said woman's husband at his insurance brokers, and said to him 'Your wife goes on a bit, doesn't she'. Does everyone know people like this, or do they come to me like the Pied Piper? Then you'd see the incredibly wide scope of mental illnesses so many friends have, not when I met them but developed suddenly years later, and relayed in full via stories of meeting Jesus in Fulham Palace Road, poison gas being pumped into their flat, and prison guards standing outside the bedroom. It's like living in a crazy, chili-fuelled nightmare at times but nature has provided these situations are genuine, and completely real to the individuals who believe they are happening to them. Just like my life is to me...

I suppose I could include little scenes from childhood as well, when it was mainly happier times, but no shortage of characters. Going back to primary school we had Malcolm from Glasgow, who used to look down on all of us in the class as 'my father's a barrister'. Actually so was mine, big deal, but they were in fairness also millionaires, though that could have come from many other sources. There was Simon, whose initials spelt out SBD, and used to say 'Do you want to hear a funny noise?' when he was going to fart, and his friend whose surname was Levin (said like Levine) who we called Latrine, who also came up with possibly the lamest excuse I'd ever heard why I couldn't come round his house, "The boilerman's coming". We used this as a joke reason for about ten years afterwards. It was as if the spirit of Woody Allen (just like the holy spirit and possibly the self-same entity) came down on North London and entered selected Jews to provide both entertainment and academic excellence to the world. All these guys went on to high faluting careers way beyond myself, but still no doubt 30 years on in the mould of Woody Allen. I can just imagine Malcolm standing in court attempting to cross-examine a witness and stopping to announce 'Ooh! I think my bottom has something to say!'. I really can see him doing that. Or another Malcolm, also a lawyer, who was a family friend, and his best line (of many similar) was when at the age of 8 I dropped a classic one in the back of his tiny and crowded Baby Fiat. He turned round from the driver's seat and asked 'Do you want some toilet paper?'. I almost did after that!
Seinfeld knew exactly what he had to do in his series, though NBC (or whatever cockamamy US company took it) said it was too Jewish, so he had to pretend the cast outside his family wasn't (when all besides Kramer was) despite the scripts being identical and impossible to be anything but. So before the TV series or even the more likely attempted book (as I can publish that myself if I want to regardless) is out, it's all available to read here. And believe me, compared to most TV series the real thing is far more out there. They have to water much down for TV as people wouldn't believe it. Honestly!

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