Me doth protest, she thinks too much !!!

I am in a funny place.

Not in terms of location -although had you wandered into my street this week you would have observed a temporary bamboo theatre created to hold 8 or 9 monks in various stages of elaborate costume and stick on moustaches with Paper Mache dolls on chairs and bells, clangy things and joss sticks warding off hungry ghosts- no no, I mean mentally.

Don't say anything rude.

I am self aware.

And perhaps that is the problem.

There are times when I wish I knew myself less.

That way, when I behave in a certain manner, or think a certain way, it would all seem as if it had come out of the blue and before I could understand it, the behaviour and the thinking would be gone.

That 'Blissful ignorance' thing everyone always goes on about.

Trouble is, I have never held that to be true.

I know ignorant people and they are not blissful, they are ignorant.

Anyhow, back to me.......

I am currently at the pointy end of a play production.....not my first.....not my last....just another one.

Producing and Directing a play (and this time I am doing both, with assistance) is like creating a child that will be born an adult and will be made up of dozens of other adults who remain somehow frozen in their own childhoods.
I do not mean this to sound in anyway derogatory or defamatory.

It is simply a fact that in order to tap into our own creativity as adults we MUST remain open to the wonder of our childlike states.

The world is rough.

Real life is scary and confronting.

If we were to look at it with the dry disconnection of a scientist we would see that, on paper, there is little to be amused, inspired and delighted by.

But we DO find joy, and love and harmony, and beauty, and richness and laughter.

We DO reach out to embrace tomorrow.

We DO believe in the world.

We forgive, and we forget, and we try again.

And that hope, that belief, that desire to create magic where none exists is our inner child.

Our better self.

I am always confused by people who say that they don't like children.

What's not to like?

They are us.

Only smaller.

And less able to lie.

But back to me.........

This 'Process'- this 'Creation of a Play' works in three parts.

There is the Early Stuff-Auditions/Casting/ Booking things/Team building/Blocking-

There is the Middle Bit- Rehearsal/Production stuff/Emotional well being of the cast/characterization/ drinking too much/ exhaustion.

And then there is The Death- The Performance Itself.

You did not misread that, for this is the truth.

For the directer, and for the Producers, the play is finished before it ever hits the stage.

Don't get me wrong, in all my years I have never missed a performance and I will stand there patting backs and kissing foreheads until the last punter has left the theatre.

I give notes after performances, when things are quiet.

But I am in mourning.

My child has left me, and will soon be gone.

I think for people in my position, the fact that the Child is so happy to be free and walk on it's own- and by this I mean the enormous momentum of a cast and crew working in unison- is a kind of tortured double sworded joyous relief.

Yes, it is simply fantastic and totally rewarding to see it.

But I have never yet spoken to a directer who didn't utter the words " Well, that one's done" after Every. Single. Performance.

So,back to me and my funny place.

I recently went through a bout of melancholy.

Nothing major.

Frustration and a general desire for less bad news on the television and more forward motion on a personal level.

It lasted 4 days.

I kept working, kept talking to people, kept exercising and it passed.

I am ever vigilant for the shadow of The Black Dog.

Having been in it's company once before for a debilitatingly long period of time, and having learned from the past, I did what any self respecting insecure Obsessive Compulsive Egotist would do.

I wrote witty emails.

Not one, dozens.

To all sorts of people.

Most of them friends.

(Hopefully, they are still friends).

I wrote useful things like 'Tips for this and that'.

I wrote loving things like ' This is what this and that means to me'.

I wrote cross things like 'This is what I think of that'.

But all of them bursting with razor sharp observations and comic brilliance.

And sat back awaiting their over awed responses.

Silence can be so quiet sometimes.

Of course,people have lives of their own.

They have families, and jobs, and stuff to do after they have been with their families and at their jobs.

I do too.

I have all those things.

And I know- and here is where the self awareness thing really scores an own goal- I know that MY need to communicate my tumultuous 'look how fast I can tap dance to the tune of my own heart beating' has very little to do with all the things that makes THEM dance to THEIRS.

I know, and I knew then, that MY need to cut the air and fight the demons with the only weapons I have- my words- is more about me looking for the reassurance that it was going to be OK, than it was to show everyone how clever I am.

I know I'm clever, what I sometimes need is to know that I'm Still Here.

The book of that name by ABC journalist and mother Anne Deveson dealt with the heartbreakingly sad destruction and ultimate death of her son due to the horror that is Schizophrenia.

I am not schizophrenic, if I was, I would tell you.

But when I read that book many years ago, I was struck by that phrase.

Oprah calls it 'affirmation' and I have talked about it before.

It's when you look in the mirror and think..."is that what I really look like?"

It's when the child inside you calls out just to check that there is someone there when the lights go off.

And to check that you are still there too.

When someone says " I can hear you, I can see you", all the doubts, all the shadows, the shallow breathing, melts away.

Reply emails started appearing.

No one was worried about my mood.

Happy, buoyant and witty- that word again- I was clearly on top of things.

"Oh Wendy, you are so funny'- yeah tell me about it, I'm fucking dying here.

I wanted to send out follow up emails headlined.

AM BEING HILARIOUS-PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE

But even I knew that that sounded desperate and clingy.

Eventually my inbox filled up.

Frankly, I didn't need to read them.

I just needed to know I wasn't alone.

I am loved, I know that.

I have three children with whom I have a passionate mutual love affair, and always will.

I am blessed with the strength of friendships they make sitcoms out of.

But I am letting go of yet another creation that must take flight in order thrive, and it hurts.

I know another will come along and replace it, and I will fall as deeply in love with its process as I have the others, and I will grieve when it comes to life as I have done with all the rest.

And it's not ego.

It's not 'My Vision'.....for fucks sake, what is that in a collaboration...?

It's not even really about me.

You see, when I do my job properly, I am invisible.

And maybe it's about that.

Maybe it is.

Blink.....and you'll miss me.

You have a lot of potential, but if you have sex with me you will win

When did we start replacing proper words with their soft cock shadowy options?
When did 'Second Place' become 'Runner Up'?
When did 'being crap at something' become 'having room for improvement' ?
When did 'I am fucking stoked I've won, I've earned it and it's no surprise because the others were shite' become 'it's been an amazing opportunity and I am grateful for all the support of everyone in this competition' ?

Yes, yes.....political correctness.

I'm not new here.

I know.

We soften the blows because we want everyone to feel good about themselves.

Ugly girls have great personalities, insane people are creative, and small dick men know how to use them.

(Christ how I hope that that's true, Dear Baby Jebus PLEASE let that be true, I somehow feel that's not true)

Since the day that Janet Jackson ripped off her blouse to show us her star swaddled Boobie, Gen X's such as myself have lumbered under the weight of 'wardrobe malfunctions, imitation jewellery, pleather and faux fur'.

In my mothers day they would have called all that stuff 'attention seeking, cheap tat, vinyl and fake shit'.

It's the same number of words- go ahead and count them- it's just a LOT less letters.

The prefix that irritates me most, and yes, I know that sounds pedantic, is 'MAL'.

In Latin it means bad, badly, harsh, wrong, ill, evil, abnormal,or defective.

I have mentioned one here already 'Malfunction' which basically means 'busted' or 'broken'....but it appears we no longer wish to hurt the feelings of inanimate object as well, so instead of saying " This computer is BROKEN" we say " This computer is MALFUNCTIONING". Because 'broken' sound so harsh and final, whereas 'malfunctioning' has the word 'FUNCTION' in it, and therefore sounds like there might be some hope.

For that reason we use the word MALADJUSTED instead of PSYCHO, MALCONTENT instead of ARSEHOLE, MALINGERING instead of LYING, MALODOROUS instead of SMELLY and MALICIOUS instead of BITCH.

Note the 'licious' part of that word. Sounds yummy doesn't it?

"What's your new boss like?"

"Oh she's really mal........licious".

"Well, that's nice".

When we add the word 'lingering' to the prefix for 'bad' it sounds like we are hanging back a little, and not terribly well, just wasting time in a sort of romantic manner.

What it doesn't sound like is that we are being an irresponsible cheating twat.

I blame the state we are in on cheap and plentiful education of the white middle classes.

We think big words make us sound smarter.

Everyone knows it is human nature to complicate the simple for the sake of drama or a bit of sport.

When we all went looking for nuts and berries, no one was fat.

Now we can have entire cows delivered cooked to the door, we need gyms.

And weight loss pills, and personal trainers, and running shoes, and support groups, and nutritionists, and sports bras and hand held weights and nautilus machines, and organised fitness classes with excellent names like BODY COMBAT and PUMP UP THE MUSCLES SO YOU LOOK FREAKIN' AWESOME, ALRIGHT GOOD JOB !!!. ( that's not a real one).

We used to take the stairs to get up to the tops of buildings, now we take the lift and go to the Gym to spend an hour sweating with 2 dozen others as we go up and down on an extruded plastic stair.

Of course to do this, we need to take our water bottle, towel, shoes, gym clothes ( including sports bra), membership card and lip gloss- just in case we see someone nice.

It's complicated.

And it is a lot to remember.

And sometimes I forget things 'cause I'm getting old.

But I digress.

Lets bring language BACK to the point where it has meaning again.
Let's scratch of the slough that we have allowed to form over the scabs that are The Wounded Words.

I'm not suggesting cruelty.

I don't think telling the father of a new born that his precious bundle is neither better nor worse looking than any other newborn who has been squeezed from between the hips and out of the vaginal canal of it's mother and that it just looks like a baby.

Coo all you want.

But for Pete's sake, lets at least get back to a place where a kid failing Maths at school is told " You are failing Maths, it appears you are shit with numbers, so you had better find something that you are good at or you are FUCKED" .

'Cause that is a hell of a lot easier to say, and carries more meaning than" There certainly is some room for growth and development in areas such as numeracy and there appears to be some malalignment between expectation and output, although I can see you are defiantly making some inroads and with some more guidance and encouragement you may achieve a level of success, in the meantime you might consider your options and strengths in other areas or you may discover a reduction of options at a later date".

A Spade, A Spade.

It will hurt less than you think, and in the long run it will go a long way to healing the pain of a generation of men and women in their late 30's and early 40's who discovered too late that their androgynous pop stars were all actually closet homosexuals, their Ergonomic Chairs were a ploy to sell broken furnature to yuppies, and that Janet's Wardrobe Malfunction was a publicity stunt with a built in tear away patch and a stuck on nipple shield.