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Friday, June 28, 2013

'One's Real Life Is the Life One Does Not Lead'



 They say we only have one life, but some people make a
career out of resisting that idea. Everyone starts with a blank
page, but all too soon the biographical data creep up on us:
where and when we were born, to whom, in what order and
of what gender, who taught us, who loved us and who did
not. The facts crowd in and shape our options. Actors,
bigamists and conmen are some of those who keep grabbing
for a fresh sheet of paper on which to reinvent their lives.
    Actors are parasites. We function through other people's
inventions and borrow other people's lives. Protected by the
camoutlage of character, we can express our truest selves and.
yet avoid detection. We are moving targets. We are refiections
,but which is more 'real'-the light or the reflected light?
    A Memory
    I am about five years old . I am wafting Isadora-1ike round the
drawing. room of our London home to Chopin's Nocturnes
on the gramophone. I wallow in the melancholy as only the
young and basiailly hopeful can bear to do. The hugeness of
my yearnings threatens to burst my little seams. My
aspirations are as deep as the music, as high as the sky. And
yet I cannot name them.
   Now I am eleven. I have been taken to Covent Garden to
wateh Rudolf Nureyev dance As he spins and leaps he takes
me  with him.THe Nameless Aspiration is within groping
distance. I want to dance like him? No, I want to be him? No,
not exactly. I want to be the music? That's getting nearer but
still not right. I woulld just have to carry on groping.
    Meanwhile, there was childhood to get through.
    An Early Leuon
    In reality I was an unexcptional child, the younger and
weedier of two girls being brought up in uneventful comfort
in London in the 1950s. I juggled those irreconcilable
opporites that go with the job of growing up. I was both
massively important and totally insignificaut at the same
time. I was shy but desperate to shatter my shell and be
heard.
    I was surprised to hear my mother and sister say very
recently that they remember me as being very funny as a
child- According to my own memory; my sister was unbeat-
ably hilarious (to this day n.o one can make me laugh like &he
an) and deletve.d the limelight every time.
    At my first school, I was the one who ducked under the
desk when they were lookimg for volunteers to be in tlle play.
I suspect this had more to do with cowardice and pride than
modesty. Already acting wu too important for me to be seen
doing it badly.
    However, in the safety of my own home I do recall the
sweaty exhilaration of being given my head in the
'entertainments' which my sister and I would knock up from
time to time . One evening, my act in front of the grown-ups
seemed to be going pretty well when suddenly, by some adult
yardstick which totally bewildered me, 1 must have tipped
over a limit.
    'Now you're just showing of£. .. ' said by a friend of the
family. Jam on the brakes. Screech to a halt. Then an interminable
huff. I bad been a star for a few minutes, now all of
a sudden I was a worm . There never seemed to be anything
in between.
    We have all been there. But why can I still feel the sting of
that slap in the face? In a way it was my first acting lesson,
delivered in a teacher's voice, stern and witheringly gentle .
Learning through shame, is that the deal! Fair enough .
Swallow hard.
    The thing was to learn to anticipate that point of going
'over the top' and temper the act myself.
    Compared to the dangers of real life, the stage can be the
safest place on earth.



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