i went to bed last night at about 1am.. couldn’t sleep.. the kind of can’t sleep, cause there are so many things flying around in your head that you not only can’t stop thinking about anything, but you’re determined to sort at least one of them out, but fail miserably, and get nowhere, because you finally fall asleep, exhausted… so i got up again at 3am, read the latest macworld, went back to bed.. then… then a car alarm started going off.. that went for about 15 minutes. i got up after 14 minutes of it, tried to find out where the car was, and then it went silent. so i went back to bed. i finally got to sleep at about 4.30am.
i was supposed to get up at 8am, finish off the interview for the artbeat magazine, mail it to Lou, and get to the stage production session by 11.30am.
i finally woke up at 9.30am.. or thereabouts, anyway.. decided not to work on the interview this morning, because my brain had gone AWOL overnight.
so, in the class today.. after going over some more stuff about structuring a play (character development, to be a little more specific).. then Dazza took over for the acting classes.. he set us an exercise called “I remember..”.. its a pretty simple concept, and it’s designed to make the actor aware of the importance of emotional realism within a role, etc. basically, you sit in front of everyone and just babble about some specific memories.. it can be anything, something light, odd, funny, life changing, whatever, it doesn’t matter.. the point is, that going through that, while you’re sitting up there, telling these people that are relative strangers about some of your most cherished memories, you start to feel the same emotions all over again.. it can be quite harrowing (there were tears shed by a few people, i even came close..), but its also a really interesting process.. and it helps to foster trust within the group..
so, what did i remember?
i remember playing underneath my grandmother’s house, i think i was watering her ferns, or just playing with the foxtail ferns, and i heard this voice call out.. it was the voice of a young boy, and he called out “Lilly loo, is that you?” i looked over to where the voice was coming from, and i saw this boy kneeling in the garden bed, and as i stood there watching him, i was thinking “who are you? and what are you doing in my nana’s gerbra’s?”…..and while i was watching him, he just disappeared.. he vanished into thin air..
i remember walking to school with my sister.. we were late, as usual, and in a rush.. and as we walked up the path into the school grounds, i ran my hand through the flowers.. and a bee stung me on the tip of my thumb.. i was crying, and my sister, who was always late, and was terrified of getting in trouble again, just said to me “oh, look, just go down to the office, they’ll take care of you.” then she ran off to her class, and left me standing at the gate, crying..
i remember November 1998.. i’d been at uni all day, a long, long day.. finally got home at about 7pm.. i was living with my aunt and uncle at the time, in a flat under their house.. when i got home, i dropped my bag, and started making coffee.. as i was doing that, i could hear crying coming from upstairs.. so i went up there to find out what was going on.. my cousin had been diagnosed with leukaemia, and his wife was refusing to let them go visit him in hospital..
i remember being the only person from my side of the family to go to his funeral a year later..
i remember having to change my cell phone number, and eventually, move house to get away from an ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t give up..
i remember what it feels like to be on stage…
most of these memories are already somewhere within these archives.. so i guess, in keeping this diary, i already had a head start on a lot of the other people in the group. but it was still tough to pull those stories out and tell them to people with faces, with personalities, with instant reactions… whereas here, even though i may know who you are, i don’t always have to deal with your reaction to what i say. the internet is faceless, and it’s a thousand times easier to spill my heart out on the table here. the toughest thing for me, wasn’t getting up there and saying it.. the hard part, was later.. coming to grips with the fact that a few of the barriers we all had, were now suddenly gone. vaporised. like the little boy in the garden bed.