This evening I went to a screening of "Hard To Swallow",
the short film I acted in back in April. Usually I hate watching myself trying to act, but tonight only a couple of things I did on screen made me cringe and I was pretty satisfied with the rest of it. It's a funny piece and beautifully shot and put together. Amongst a talented cast of actors it felt good that I didn't stand out as being some lucky chancer who'd only got the part because Justin Lee Collins was not available. There's some debate about whether I should appear in one of the TV scripts I am writing at the moment and seeing this tonight made me think that I probably should. I am not the most versatile of performers, but am pretty good at playing versions of myself and in this day and age that's pretty much what acting amounts to!
I felt exhilirated on the way home. Things seem to be coming together for me for the first time in a while and it's a weird feeling. The pessimistic part of my brain feels something must go wrong which will ruin it all, but if I can just get through the next two years without contracting yellow fever or being trampled by a hippo then there's soem very exciting stuff that could be happening.
My senses felt heightened, like they sometimes do after a good gig and all sights and sounds seemed fascinating and almost magical. Sometimes you take the tube and keep your head down and notice nothing, but tonight everything was drawing my attention and firing my imagination.
On the way in to Oxford Circus, I went through one of the ticket barriers that said "Oysters Only". It seemed a false economy to reserve a dedicated access point to this shelled sea-creature. How many oysters do you see on the tube? Hardly any. Why give them their own ticket barrier?
If London Underground had meant "Oyster Card Users Only" then they should have said that. I liked the idea of oysters getting special privileges on the tube, but also thought to myself that whilst this sign makes sense to all but the most pedantic idiot, if you had been away or in a coma for the last two years and didn't know about Oyster cards and you saw that sign it would be one of the most surreal and confusing things you could see. If you were a foreign tourist you might go back home with tales of the eccentricities of the English.
I got on the train and looked around at my fellow passengers. They too seemed quite surreal. A big man got on carrying a huge blue Weltmeister accordian. It seemed much bigger than any accordian I had seen before and he was big too - not in height, he was probably about 5ft 7, but he had a big face, big ears, big sausage fingers. He was maybe about 50 and looked like he had lived a life and was much more intimidating than the average accordian player. His nose had been broken at some point in the past, he had a chunky gold chain on one wrist and a chunky silver watch on the other. He had a massive ring on one of hs banana fingers, which I initially thought had an embossed skull on it, but then realised that the huge blob of metal coming out of the centre depicted a dog - something like a pitbull. Why was this terrifying thick fore-armed fighting man carrying a huge accordian at ten o clock at night. It wasn't in a case, but on his lap as if at any second he might subject us all to the awful sound that instrument could make. And no-one would want to complain to this pugilistic musician, lest he punch them in the face, leaving a deep indentation of a dog's face in their forehead.
I found him fascinating to look at and to guess what his life must be like.
Next to me was a young guy, dressed in the clothes he probably wears to the office every day, but he looked slick and oily like an estate agent or someone from the city. He had a piece of paper on his lap and was copying stuff from it into a text message, that I presumed he intended to send once he was above ground. I read some of the phrases: they seemed to be those slightly trite aphorisms that religious people like to quote and indeed many of them mentioned God. The one he was typing in when I first looked at him was "A heart is not judged by how much it loves,
But by how much you are loved by others."
Who was he sending that text to? And would they be as impressed by the sentiment if they knew he was just copying it off a bit of paper. The message and the man's appearance seemed a bit incongruous, and my best guess was that he was trying to husyle some young Christian lady into fancying him by appearing wise and holy himself. That was a cynical guess, but still I found his actions intriguing. He went to his home screen on his phone and there was a picture of a pretty woman in glasses, caught by the camera just as she was blinking. Was that who was receiving this nuggets of plagarised wisdom?
There seemed to be so many potential stories around me and yet I wondered if the less ostentatious passengers might actually hold the more interesting secrets: the Japanese businessman with the salt and pepper hair sitting opposite me, who kept nearly nodding off to sleep or the slightly startled woman next to him with her designer shopping bags full of boxes. Or just the young woman with the big silver handbag on the end of the row. Everybody appeared strange and the mixture oddly eclectic and I liked it.
Then I remembered that I myself was carrying a rolled up blue cable for my projector that I had leant to one of the actors in the film, which she had just returned to me. I wondered what stories they were making up in their head about me. It was a very long cable. Why would I be travelling on the tube with that?
But it was nice to feel connected to the world and to be noticing stuff again. Maybe this is three weeks of sobriety kicking in, but probably just endorphins or adrenalin from being happy about the film.
I was really hearing stuff as well and as I walked along Shepherd's Bush Green a can rolled around on the pavement behind me making a very satisfying sound. I smiled. And at this point a mad eyed man with one of his front teeth missing, caught my eye and pushed his face close to mine and said "
You look nice! No hating you!"
It was a bizarre thing to happen (even for Shepherd's Bush), especially on a night where I was being so thoughtful and philosophical. The implication seemed to be that he hated everyone else, but that I out of this sea of faces had appealed to this (presumably) homeless man for some reason. Probably because I looked happy whilst everyone else looked troubled and sad. It is tempting to think of the mentally ill as prophets and truly wise and even more so when they say something vaugely flattering rather than "Fuck off you fuck. i am going to kill you!". But on top of my heightened awareness it seemed a bit spooky.
A few steps on I wondered whether he had actually said "No hate in you". Which would be even more profound and possibly true at that exact moment.
I know that really he was just mentally ill and spouting rubbish, but either way it was an odd thing to say - even for a mental.
The world had seemed quite exquisite before I got back to Shepherd's Bush, but the scary tramps asking for money and the even scarier drunks on the verge of fighting outside Barclays and the alcoholic couple, holding cans of strong lager and drunkenly attempting to embrace and kiss each other brought me back to reality.
The world is funny and beautiful and tragic and ugly. I like it for all these things though. There's no hate in me. Apart from towards that bloke from Rymans and Patrick Marber and the people of Carlisle and so on.
There's no hating me? Well I wish that were true, but alas the fool was not so wise after all.
I wonder where the guy with the accordian was heading.
