(no subject)

So I'm not down or feeling stagnant anymore. In fact, a lot is going on (although I should perhaps not judge the state of my creative momentum by the little pop-up window of updates on my website). I still feel kind of disconnected from all that and am preoccupied with being in the financial crunch time of my month (but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, in that one of my debts will be paid off in just a few months, which means I can get to work on the others, and on a better schedule).

Really missing Sydney today. Have no way to go at the moment, but started my day tooling around the web looking for accomodations in Darlinghurst since I have to stay there next time (Newtown was good to me, but Darlinghurst became home). Sigh. I should stay at the Altamont next time.

Sometimes I miss the funniest things. I miss one of the guys from the net.cafe in King's Cross that I went to a lot. We didn't talk that much but his face and his silly bleached blond hair became the model for the main character in my screenplay. For no good reason really. I knew nothing about his life, nor was I particlarly curious about it.

I am achey from dance class yesterday and my arms are briused from the shoot.

The Club for Drawing Cats

In first grade grade we were allowed to start clubs that met during recess or lunch as a way to mimic the student-organized afterschool activities allowed to the older girls. I started The Club for Drawing Cats.

In retrospect, I find this a little puzzling, as I have never been good at drawing or particularly enthused by the activity. But I knew about cats, and theoretically, I knew about drawing since my parents' were artists and I had to have a club because it seemed better to have a thing than be excluded from some thing some other person had.

Predictably, the members of The Club for Drawing Cats who joined mostly because they were my friends and were trying to help me avoid looking pathetic and had neither the balls nor insanity to start a club themselves eventually grew tired of drawing cats and thought we should draw other things too.

Now, what was the point of being president of a club if I was just going to do whatever the members said? This was a very serious problem, of a most fundamental and political nature. And I remember discussing this very seriously with my friend Elyse who was most adamant that everyone was going to quit if I didn't give in and that that would look really bad. Perhaps we could restrict the amount of drawing of non-cat things so that we were still mostly the club for drawing cats? I had to hold onto my power, but how? Compromise seemed weak. Surely, I could just give a speech and rally the troops and convince them that following me in teh exclusive drawing of cats was the best and most righteous thing they could possibly do.

As you might have already guessed, I paced a lot in my very serious six-year-old way and The Club for Drawing Cats ultimately disintegrated because I lacked the charisma and force of will to make people do what I wanted simpy because they dervied pleasure from doing as I said. And yes, I remember thinking of the world in these terms at that age.

Since finding out that I will be directing this play of mine, I've been thinking of The Club for Drawing Cats a great deal, because the problem is essentially the same except I'm older and presumeably both more subtle and less stupid. To make a show happen no matter how small or trivial one must come up with rules worth following (i.e., the creative vision that justifies things like schedules and not being late and making time and emotional committments to the show) and then get people to enjoy following them through the sheer virtue of my nature.

All of which strikes me as astoundingly difficult and terrifying when I put it in those terms and it's all on me. I imagine some people I know will think it's absurd that I even worry about such things, as I brazen everything out through force of will and people do respond to me and want my approval often in ways I can't even see. But I also know that I'm socially awkward and strange, that I live in fear of casting people who think they are somehow "cooler" than me and will then be lax or unpleasant about this project.

I've always known directing would result in some sort of intense confrontation not just with my self-image but with the way I've built so much narrative and philsophy and erotic bullshit into what I think a director should be. What I didn't know is that all of that would be an amusing afterthought to an inner confrontation with the girl I knew I should be at six but wasn't, and never became.

When I poked and prodded at people's scenes at NIDA, people went along with what I said because it made sense, made things better and resolved problems of clarity, pacing and intention. So I suppose I merely need to be focused and make sense. But it is not yet in my nature to be pleased when I find ways for tasks to circumvent the problems of romance. Maybe I never will be. And maybe that's a good thing. But right now, the ambiguity has me shrieking in a corner.