Peter Temple via Jack Irish

He can write. The man can.

From the novel Black Tide by Peter Temple, soon to be made into a telemovie starring Guy Pearce.

My heart belongs to

It takes a lot to win my heart. This'll pretty much do it.

Obralem Dziemnaga

Polish-Australian wonder-brothers Jacek Koman & Tomek Koman with a very special guest star in a short film promoting the upcoming Melbourne International Film Festival.

No points for recognising the guest - whose pronunciation, in Polish, of "I peeled a potato" sounds something like "I beeled a bodado" - but kudos if you can name the band for which Jacek is the front-man.

Bite-sized LA observations

It's my last morning in LA and the US and I'm sitting at Urth Cafe on Melrose, surrounded by Asian tourists and attractive people trying to look like they are somebody worth recognising.

My half serve of tuna salad is huge but at least the oil is a drizzle rather than a pour, and it's good.

And my coffee?
Nice coffee art in the foam. Cup is hot to the touch rather than scalding, which means that had I not asked for it extra hot it would've been brought out tepid. Slightly on the sweet side, either due to sweet soy milk or sweet beans, and slightly more bitter than I'd like. But by American standards altogether drinkable. On second sip it's actually too sweet, but whatever, I'm in LA.

There are some ridiculously overdone girls here, with ridiculously cute white Maltese terriers who look like they've never felt the bliss of mud on the paws. And a dozen tables of glamorous tourists from Hong Kong with a Luis Vuitton on the back of every chair. And girls with blondest blonde hair set in perfect salon curls clipping past in white jeans and Manolo lookalikes carrying scripts with the title page facing outwards.

A young model in trainers and no make-up just arrived accompanied by two Italian greyhounds and a man with dyed black hair who I thought was her father until she called him "honey". We strike up a conversation over restless canines and he reveals to me the tawdry secret of the dogs' relationship; Primo is Angie's father and brother, but due to their impeccable pedigree she is genetically flawless. I try to prevent my mind from straying towards the nature of Primo and Angie's owners' relationship.
They offer me a bite of their green tea tiramisu and it is phenomenal. I barely manage to resist ordering an entire slice once they leave.

There's a couple dudes at a table opposite talking through the funding plan for a new Queer-Eye-for-the-Straight-Guy-meets-dating-show and three Valley girls above me discussing whether to wear shorts or jeans out on Saturday night. The sky is perfect blue and everything is washed in sunlight and all around me people are throwing about phrases like "best-cased scenario" and "the bottom line" and I can see how a person could come to this city and never, ever leave.

read to me i love you

I should be working on a script, but I’m not.
I’m sitting here typing to myself, and you, because I’m overcome with the need to connect with someone.

I’ve been busy.

I have a new job. A real job. That I’m not qualified for but which I got anyway. And which I’m ridiculously good at. At a desk with a computer and a new wardrobe of clothes that can, if you squint, pass for conservative but are really just longer/looser/duller/neater versions of what I already own, worn without coloured socks and other accoutrements. 

I’m also working on a play. An Australian premiere of a new translation of a classic play. The one with the orchard and the rich folk who lose all their money and cry about it. By the Russian guy who hated the theatre and died of TB.
I have a lead role; the one who cries the most and feels unwanted and doesn’t get the guy in the end… What a stretch.

And finally, I’m Assistant Director to someone I greatly admire, who is famous, on a play that he wrote, which is being performed by a highly respected theatre company. And although this actually means I’m assisting the director, not assisting with directing, it’s still a wonderful opportunity, which I created for myself through sheer determination and a shitload of temerity.

BUT.
Whilst all these things are wondrous and blissful and point to my ability to get things done and disregard obstacles others would consider insurmountable, I’ve been feeling lost and disconsolate. And the theatre work, which I’m usually so desperate for, is turning me in on myself and forcing me deeper into my own head, my bedroom, my bed.
Why?
I don’t know.

But I do know I’ve been feeling so lonely it’s eating me alive and all I want to do is disappear into a crowd so big I’ll never find my way out, and where it’s never dark, and where it’s never quiet.

Or maybe that’s my own idea of hell.

Or Tokyo.

I don’t know.

But I do know that if I don't pull myself out of this inevitable descent into the mire of self-pity and melancholia, things could get very bad. Worse even than they have in the past. Because this time there is no cause for my retreat and therefore it cannot be rationalised away.

So to aid in my recovery, I leave myself, and you, with this. It's not particularly cool, but it's bittersweet beautiful and that's kind of how I'm feeling right now.

Why the Arts Matter

"We believe that the arts are important because they change lives.
 

Art is one of the key ways we have as a culture of seeing ourselves, and of seeing our relations to the world.  Encounters with art - as school students, in further education, as adults - whether they take place in museums and galleries, theatres, concert halls, village halls, street corners, websites or in any of the many many other places that art has made its own -have the possibility to awaken us to new experiences, pleasures and questions.
 

Art is often talked of in terms of affirmation and celebration and just for the record, we have nothing at all against these things. But we're also proud of the role art has to challenge, to provoke and to question. Those experiences are the ones that stay with us - and for us make the most powerful argument for supporting the arts. A healthy society is one that has doubts and disputes, uncertainties and divisions - how we cope with those things, how we give space to discussing and dealing with them is the mark of our success.
 

Art has a double centre - it asks that we look closely at the world we are living in - that we see it, for what it is, with all of its joys, complexities and all of its problems. At the same time art asks us to dream of another space - to imagine things as otherwise, to step outside the limits of our day to day.
 

Art and tolerance go together.
 

Cuts to the arts are cuts to the imagination."

 
Tim Etchells. September 2010.

Source: Forced Entertainment

And there will come a time, you'll see

There is an unfortunate state of being that I find myself in occasionally. It doesn't happen often but when it does it's beautifully bittersweet.

I am experiencing it right now, in this moment, as I sit on my friend's velour pod chair in Sydney, post headshot session, suitcase packed and ready to fly home. It is a feeling of intense and exhilarating motivation made tortuously frustrating by my inability to act.

As an actor, I spend most of my time happily waiting for the phone to ring and wildly dreaming up projects I'd like to produce. For the most part, it's a tolerable existence. Occasionally I'm hit with a stab of cold fear that makes me hate my unemployment and question the choices I've made in life. And then, very rarely, something will happen that will fill me with the most overwhelming passion and impatient enthusiasm to be doing something useful RIGHT NOW that it's almost heart-breaking.
I know I am capable of achieving what I would like to and, in these moments, I become painfully aware of just how much more I could be doing to get to where I want to be. It's wonderfully enlivening to have these bolts of positive hyper-reality, but it terrifies me to consider that the people who really do achieve greatness - who succeed - are those who are able to harness this feeling and channel it into the relentless pursuit of their goals, without the distractions of finances, and fashion, and finding love, and facebook.

So now.

All I need to do.

Is.

- Start marketing the crap out of myself
- Save money
- Stay focused
- Marry an American to get a VISA, and;
- Live happily ever after

So hard?

Pfff.

Sometimes I Do Things that People Like

I can't offend you more than I offend myself..

I’m feeling a lot of doubt, in myself as a person, as an actor, as a woman/girl/female (it doesn’t feel right referring to myself as a woman but that’s an issue I’ll have to leave for another day).
I wonder, all the time, so much so that it’s almost not worth mentioning, whether I’m deluding myself with this whole acting malarkey. But that inevitably leads to thoughts of whether I’m deluding myself with this whole life business.
Sometime in my past, somehow, I latched onto the idea of acting to give myself a purpose. And now, at 28 years old, I’m returning to the moment when that decision was made and once again asking, “what now?”
And so indeed, what now? If not an actor then what? A director? Well, that’s just as delusional as the so-called career I’ve already got. An Olympic equestrienne? Hah! A teacher? Where’s the bottle of cheap wine and sleeping pills please. A writer? Well we’re back to the impossibleness of the realm of the actor and director. So….
A prostitute? Financially lucrative but I’ve never been much good with men. And I have tiny breasts. A dog trainer? Wonderful fun but pays just enough to keep a small poodle in kibble for a couple of days with owner living in cardboard box. Hmm…. I’m drawing a blank. What else interests me? Retail sales manager? I can see my future now. Forty-five and dressed like a girl, telling some insecure brat that she looks ‘hot’.
What else? What else? Fucking God please tell me what else?!
I. Can. Not. Think. Of. Any. Other. Profession. That. I. Would. Be. Good. At.
What do I do? Starve myself to death to avoid my inevitable descent into middle-aged mediocrity? But I’ve already tried that and I’m bored with the self-indulgent narcissism it demands.
What would I be great at? I could watch DVDs for a living. Read books. Look up celebrities on the internet. Browse for weight-loss tips. Tan once a year. Do cryptic crosswords. Eat breakfast at a cafe everyday. Forget to call my parents. Stay up late. Download TV shows. Park illegally. Take mediocre photos and post them on my blog. Buy clothes. Buy cosmetics. Try to find the cure for acne. Eat my own weight in popcorn. Pick up other peoples rubbish while tsking audibly. Write down ideas for outfits I will never wear. Read Amazon book reviews for book I will never buy. Look up IMDb profiles for actors I have never heard of. Doubt myself. Doubt myself. Doubt myself.
I’m so exhausted with the thought of the meaning of the pursuit of fulfilment in life that I cannot even bring myself to think of a way to end this bitter diatri…

Start Spreading the News

Only 3 and a half weeks until I leave for New York and the William Esper Studio and I'm still tracking down accommodation. At the moment it looks like it may be Polish Greenpoint, where I'll be able to stuff myself with Pierogi and Zywiec for a reasonable US$900 a month.
From there I plan to go to Chicago before heading to LA to sell my soul for a few weeks. I'm hoping to throw Las Vegas and Mexico into the mix too if all goes well; I don't have any internal flights booked yet so my itinerary is still open.
So that means that in a month I'll be Street Styling from some new locations, in between running to acting classes and learning lines.

If anyone in the States has a spare couch, or a couple hours free to get coffee, I'm open to suggestions...

Improv Everywhere

This is so impressive. 207 actors all freezing in place for 5 minutes at Grand Central Station in New York.



I find these guys very inspiring. You can read more about them here.

Courtesy of SultanaBlog

The Real World

I'm cleaning out the overflowing canvas bag of things that used to belong in my school locker and I'm sad.
I've left the bag sitting in the corner of my room for over a month, delaying this eventual sorting and discarding of the last two years of my life, and now that it's being done I can't help but feel overwhelmed by this familiar, lonely feeling of loss and mourning. It hadn't affected me that much up till now - my leaving the course - not in such an absolute and final way. The day I cleared out my locker I walked through the school on my own, for what I knew was the last time, and allowed myself to indulge in some melancholy sentimentality. But it wasn't a new feeling. I'd felt it before, at the end of my first year, and also during the last few months of second year in preparation for the inevitable; I wanted to spread out the sadness.
But this is different. This is just me and my stuff and a low ache of regret; for my decision to leave and then my decision to stick to this decision while others are fighting to stay.
Have I done the right thing? I know I have, 100%, but I'm the one who cried every year when the annual 24hr Appealathon fundraiser ended on TV, or when I’d finished a novel, or when a long-running sitcom aired its final episode. I'm a sentimental, maudlin kind of person (although I try to hide it), and I'm simply not equipped for coping with endings and goodbyes.
So now all that’s left at the bottom of my oversized camping bag are a bottle of witch hazel, deodorant, a Beethoven CD borrowed from a classmate for Abstracting, a red square of towel from a first-term face washing ceremony, and some salt sachets. And as I look at these things, leaning on the edge of my bed with my cat and puppy for company, I realise it’s not the institution, or the building, or the curios I will miss, but the 28 or so people I shared it with, day to day, for over 45 hours a week.
And I don’t feel quite as sad anymore. Because they’re still available to me, I hope, and whether I had two or three years of stuff to unpack, the feeling of loss at losing my connection to those people in that context would probably be exactly the same.