Acting course

I am coming to the end of a 6 week acting course that has been very enjoyable and quite intense. It’s been run by Faces casting agency in Brighton who I’m registered with down here, and has served mainly as a refresher, I’ve also picked up quite a few useful bits and pieces that I didn’t know. The course leader Valerie Dent has been excellent, as have the 6 or 7 other people on the course. Although this experience has been fun and worthwhile in itself, I will consider it much more worthwhile if it helps me get more acting work.

One of the main goals of the course is the production of a showreel for showing to production companies and casting directories, similar to a music demo for record companies and promoters. We are finishing off the filming for the showreel next weekend but most of the work for mine has already been done. Valerie selected a short section of the play “Art” (by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton) for myself and Michael, another chap on the course, to act. We filmed this on Sunday morning and had really got into the characters by the final takes. The play “Art” is quite funny, a tale of three friends, one of whom has bought a dubious modern painting. “Imagine a canvas about five foot by four… with a white background… completely white in fact… with fine white diagonal stripes… and maybe another horizontal white line, towards the bottom…”. My character Marc is really pissed off about this, and generally rants and raves about what an idiot his friend Serge is for paying 200,000 francs for it. I look forward to seeing the final edited version!

The above piece will be a short part of the showreel, together with brief sketches of various characters I’ve chosen. These are: a mentally-ill man in a psychiatric hospital, a nurse, and an American self-development seminar leader. There were one or two others that we decided not to use. On Saturday we also filmed some samples of my guitar playing and singing – a bit of Pink Floyd-ish echo-guitar, a few bars of Nirvana complete with rasping vocals, and half of one of my own songs. This Saturday we may also record a few accents for potential voiceover work. I should finish up with a good presentation of a wide range of performance skills.

All sorts of little ups and downs in the rest of my life. I went up to London last week to see John Young and his band play at the Half Moon, Putney, which I really enjoyed. Managed to meet up with one of my best chums Simon before the gig.

Jupiter has now gone into my 10th house hooray!

I have just been joined by Domino the cat on my lap. This is making it extremely difficult to continue typing while he wriggles around and nudges me, so I shall finish.

Affluenza

Having been struck down by the dreaded lurgey this week (is that how you spell “lurgey” and what exactly is a lurgey anyway?!), I have been trying to catch up on a whole bunch of things and use my time constructively despite feeling shit.

I sat in Borders in Brighton for two afternoons and read “Affluenza (How To Be Successful And Stay Sane)” by psychologist Oliver James, a book published very recently that has been receiving quite a bit of media attention. On the whole, it is right up my street. Here is a brief summary taken from my review which you can find on Amazon.

“The author’s focus is on why so many people in English-speaking countries (such as America, England, Australia but not so much New Zealand) are experiencing higher rates of personal unhappiness than they were 30 years ago. According to James, this is the result of placing a high value on money, possessions, physical and social appearances, and fame. By contrast, countries such as Denmark have a less selfish version of capitalism and so are generally happier.”

I have spent years ranting with (or at!) my friends about the dehumanizing materialism of our society, and apart from anything else, it is personally fantastically comforting to see a book on this subject being treated seriously by the mainstream. I suspect and hope that many others may feel the same. I guess it has now become very obvious that we are on the wrong track, or at least a severely off-balance track. Massive financial debt for many, rapidly increasing mental health problems and general stress, we all know the score don’t we? By co-incidence, the Unicef report published this week puts the UK and the USA at the bottom for overall well-being of British children, and Scandinavian countries and Holland near the top. This is completely consistent with the conclusions of Oliver James.

So what can we do about it? James presents a series of self-help “vaccines” for the “virus” (of affluenza) in his book, and these all make a lot of sense to me. I am reminded of that classic quote “Be the change you wish to see in the world” by Ghandi, he always was a bit of a smart-arse! At one point, James suggests two main categories of action:- 1) Sort out your childhood. 2) Reject much of the status quo.

Hmmm… well I’ve spent all my life trying to sort out my childhood, some would say we all do that in one way or another. And I’ve certainly rejected a lot of my middle-class background, although I don’t think you can ever fully escape where you came from. Nor would I wish to.

At the back of my mind I always hoped I would eventually find some way of conforming a bit more to society as I got older. But at 45, I feel more determined to follow my own path than ever. I guess there’s a lot of luck involved as to what kind of personality you are born with, whether your childhood is sufficiently healthy to stand a chance at making of something of yourself, whether you find “happiness” and what that means to you. What it has never meant to me is a big car (I have a driving license but have never owned one, never felt I needed to, I guess not having kids helps.), a mortgage (have always felt I had better things to spend my money on), or a “career” (e.g. have actively avoided becoming a qualified nurse due to bullshit stress and paperwork, have also avoided the easy option of prostituting my astrology work in any way).

Don’t get me wrong, if I had found a way of earning lots of money while still feeling I was being true to myself (e.g. through my music), I would be doing it make no mistake. Maybe I have just been unlucky or lacking in drive or ability. Good luck to anyone who achieves success in a career, earns pots and pots of money… if it is genuinely making you and others around you happy INSIDE. Or at least not miserable inside, which is how it seems for many?

Surely the most important thing is that we respect and value each other as vulnerable complex beings with complex needs? Like Oliver James I am not against all capitalism but

WE ARE NOT JUST BLOODY MACHINES TO PRODUCE AND CONSUME CRAP.

Rant over… for now!

A lot happening

Pretty broke and with a bad sore throat at the moment, but 2007 has been quite positive so far.

I played a great little gig with Martin Franklin in Windsor a couple of weekends ago. Some pictures should find their way onto my site in the near future and we also recorded the set. There are several sections of the music (which was played as one continuous 25 minute instrumental piece) which could be edited for future use. The beginning section was based on a loop of overdubbed electric guitar notes courtesy of my Dod DFX94 pedal, to which Martin added some curious and spooky shortwave radio sounds from his laptop. Another section featured a Roland SH101 sequence in 6/8 patterns which worked well, but here the live mix levels left something to be desired. The finishing section, a solo e-bow and echo piece is another strong candidate for a short piece on the next album.

We enjoyed ourselves! Nice to be back on a proper stage with lighting and a more “rock” environment on the whole. I am still aiming for a few gigs with my band later this year to coincide with the new album.

Talking of which, early last month I made a serious re-assessment of all the available songs and pieces for the new Tim Burness album release. Certainly more than enough for an album, in fact if I had the resources I would be tempted to go for a double album. There are three lists of possible tracks: those with backing tracks already recorded with the band, those sketched out by myself in the studio with keyboards and/or guitar, and those recently written on my keyboard and in my head. The total number is about 27 which will come down to a final list of 14 or 15. Almost inevitably some won’t work out and some will unexpectedly come good.

I have been kicking possible titles around. “Before And After Bankruptcy” was an obvious possibility due to having been written and recorded before and after my experience of official bankruptcy. A different take on Brian Eno’s old title! More important than that is finance. The next studio sessions have been put back due to studio availability and money issues. I am going to have to beg, borrow or steal some money to finish it all somehow. I was on course with saving from the nursing dayjob until last August when I chucked it in for a bit, and for a number of reasons I haven’t been able to properly recover my earning situation. So far anyway.

I am in the middle of a very enjoyable acting course that will increase my chances of earning in that area. One of the goals of the course is to come away with a good quality showreel, a kind of quick demo of what one is capable of.

Lin is as supportive as ever. Tonight we are driving into Brighton to see The Dr. Space Toad Experience! I bumped into Dr. Space Toad yesterday. He now lives in France, and has come over for this gig which has been organized by Captain Sensible, he plays bass in the band.

Astrologically, Jupiter is moving up towards its first pass for 12 years over my midheaven in two weeks time, hooray! There’s several other major transits and a progressed Venus conjunct my natal Sun to keep an eye on this year. Right now Saturn is conjuncting my ruling planet Uranus. More on all that another time.