[Wrote this a few weeks ago....]
So. Where are we?
We're in Camberwell. Denmark Hill. Brixton. South East London. That area. Specifically Coldharbour Lane. Brilliant name. Is there a novel somewhere in Henry Pordes second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road called Coldharbour Lane? There should be. Nicole Kidman can be in the film. It's set in the 1800s and there's a long-departed sailor involved. Nicole plays charcoal spoons in a damp street market to survive. The edges of her skirts (plural) are just filthy.
Hmm. Still with the film references/fantasies. After this long it's...well it's unavoidable. Even after 75 years in the business (thank you for that gag Julia Morris) I still feel self-conscious being an actor and kneading film images to explain and illustrate my life. My life experience. My story. My script. My God, should I be embarrassed? I dunno. Seems like I might be.
I'm past the half-century mark now and occasionally I wonder if this was ever a good idea. Let me wander off the narrative path for a paragraph or so to help flesh out my point. My theme. My tagline.
The other day I was discussing, with a straight friend, casual assignations. How I was walking away from some guy's apartment in Singapore semi-recently and how I was then instantly feeling shallow and whore-ish and – this next expression sounds American to my ears – down on myself. What had been the point? Didn't I want love? A relationship? Longevity? Life support? On that day and at the time I walked another few steps before breaking into a huge grin and thinking to myself “Hang on. That was awesome!” For indeed the other man had been stupidly handsome and the time spent together in his tiny Singaporean flat had managed to be both dirty and cleansing in coincidentally equal measures. My thinking ran on: “While I'm waiting for depth, why not dog-paddle in the shallows?” In conversation, I successfully transferred my momentary philosophy to my straight friend who, though now diving through deep waters and happily so, got my point and smiled nostalgically. Even went so far as to agree out loud.
I suppose extreme financial rewards are the depths of this business. Any business. We can all agree on that point. Except perhaps Nicole and her charcoal spoons. But she can stay out of it for now. Back off Nicole. Stop interrupting. Hang on again. She isn't. Come back! She isn't interrupting because indeed she is pretending to earn her keep by the playing of The Lord Is My Shepherd on her black and fragile spoons. In reality there'd be trucks full of Omega watches backing up the driveway of her and Keith's farmhouse somewhere in New South Wales. Tipping the lot out all over her carefully tended rhododendrons in the front bed. Nicole is swimming in the depths! In a platinum snorkel-and-goggle set. Good on you, Nicster! Nice work.
So. Where are we?
Where we are is here: in a stranger's flat in the inspirational Coldharbour Lane after a day rehearsing The Show for yet a third time in six years and feeling slightly dirty and wondering how I got so good at playing charcoal spoons in the shallow end of the pond but enjoying the paddling and admitting that it is, forsooth, a handsome pond and the far end, the deeper end is still in plain and goading sight and I know and trust that I'm quite good at overarm and oh look I now have proper metal spoons and the pond is in Singapore. Dubai. Lisbon. Milan. Et cetera. I may have Kitchen Whizzed several metaphors into a Reference Smoothie just then but if you were here with me now you would see that I'm not deeply concerned. Not by that or the floaties someone seems to have sutured onto my biceps. Sometimes I'll stick pins in them but they have the uncanny ability to re-inflate. Although I do like drifting...
So. The tagline is this: In Coldharbour Lane, No-One Can Hear You Scream.
Actually, after last week's mugging, we know that's not really...anyhow...moving on...
It's probably: 30 years ago, he left Coldharbour Lane to sail the world. Did he know the cat was dead?
No.
It's more like: He wanted more. But in the meantime, he screwed Latinos.
No.
It's definitely: Every sailor comes home. Sometimes with a Rolex. Always with herpes. And she couldn't see a watch....
No.
The tagline – at the moment – is:
At the end of Coldharbour Lane was a harbour. It was cold. Coldharbour Lane. It wasn't genius. It was just right.
So. What else?
I'm writing a book. One day at a time. It has no title but I write a page a day. Except when I don't. It's about a man called Joshua who's rehearsing a musical called Milky Coffee. He's done it before and he's doing it again. It follows him through his daily adventures. Some are genuinely adventurous. Others, perhaps, not quite up to Raiders of the Lost Ark. If we're honest. But it is that. Honest. In a nom-de-plume/quasi-truthful way. Don't see the affix 'quasi' nearly enough these days.
Where were we?
Um.
Wasn't Birdman aMAZing?
