An amusing way to while away a wet and rainy afternoon is to cycle through blogs by clicking on the interests that you have listed for yourself and going through the blogs of those who share similar interests. Similarly, if you keep bookmarks on sites like del.icio.us as I do (though I got into the habit of doing it for practical reasons rather than sociability) then it becomes quite interesting to see who else has bookmarked a rather obscure site that you thought would be of interest to only to yourself. I look through their blogs or examine their profiles out of curiosity and the desire to discover other sites of interest, using these people as intermediaries, so to speak; just another way in which our society can be understood in terms of being a network of gargantuan proprotions. So in this manner I come across new sites of interest, a new web service to play with, new authors, new television shows. I will never contact these people and tell them that we share common bookmarks, why don't we be friends: nonetheless, for people with hermit-like tendencies such as myself, this is yet another reason to stay in my room and let the twenty-inch screen of the computer become my window to the world, and engage less in actual social interaction.
Because this, after all, is what friends do: they share music, books, experiences, ideas; and this comes before, and with the best of relationships, remains constant even as they become shoulders to cry on when a boyfriend leaves or take you home when you've embarrassed yourself at a party or take you to task when you've done three tabs of acid four nights in a row. And much as I value that, and think of my friends as family when my own is scattered across the globe and far away, I value the other aspect every bit as much: the quotidian exchange of information that no algorithm of recommendations will be able to replicate. The quirks and mannerisms, the eccentricities of personality, the unqiue way of speaking, the stories they tell over and over: these are, after all, what endears them to us, why we love them, the reason we say we know them. I have always felt that if I were to meet someone exactly like myself I would detest her immensely: the girl in the mirror is myself; but if she were to take on a life of her own and climb out from behind the looking-glass she would be someone I would want to throttle. There is a belief in popular mythology that if you wake up in the middle of the night and see someone who looks like yourself standing in the distance that it is an omen of death; perhaps there is a psychological underpinning to this bit of folklore.
We like our friends because they are different than us, but we love our friends for the extent to which they are of like minds to ourselves. Perhaps the decisive moment comes when in the course of time together and going through experiences together, that despite all you have in common that you hold a same or different morality. And the revelation of this morality, I have come to find as I grow older (but necessarily any more mature and certainly not nobler of thought or virtue) can be as much in the course of cataclysmic events as in quotidian companionship: in laughter; in its absence. When one moves beyond the family one is born into to "family" as defined by the people you surround yourself with, that one makes and chooses, the stakes become just a little bit higher. And this, I am firmly convinced, is a good thing.
Saturday
Honour Undriven
The Wyndhams Theatre used to be my favorite theatre in London, with its location right by the Leicester Square tube station, its intimate size, and the fact that several of my favorite plays, include "Copenhagen" and "Democracy" had successful runs there. Of late I've seen two duds in succession; well, one must qualify the the disparagement by pointing out that expectations were high: after all, if you have John Hurt and two other luminaries of the British stage in a play translated by Tom Stoppard ("Heroes"). Similarly, if you have Dama Diana Rigg and Natasha McElhone (pictured) and lots of exclamatory blurbs on tube posters, you gladly hand over £45 and rub your hands in gleeful anticipation.
"Honour" isn't rotten; like I said, it's a dud: it thumps to the ground like something unripened and inedible. It a terrible waste of a great premise, a good cast, and occasional patches of brilliant dialogue. But none of it comes together: the scenes are too short, and the transition between them awkward; the episodic quality is probably meant to make it fast-paced, but the net result is that scenes deliver the punch-line prematurely and ineffectually; without sufficient buildup, what could have been emotional body-blows glance off and hang limply in the darkness while the actors re-arrange themselves on the stage.
The play is about an intellectual couple, married for thirty-two years, whose marriage crumbles when Natasha McElhone's character (I usually buy a programme during the interval if I like the play; this one didn't have an interval, so I can't remember the names of the dramatis personae) invades their cosy intellectual domestic space in the guise of an interviewer having come to do a profile of the husband, flirting outrageously ("I know men want to fuck me"); the scenes of the interview alternate with scenes between him and his wife, during which they exchange smooth ironic repartee, evidently intended to portray a marriage between intellectual equals that has had all its corners and edges worn smooth with time. A logical addition which provides us an extra dimension from which to view the breakup is the a daughter who is roughly the same age as Natasha's character but not quite as clever or worldly, but from whom we learn nothing.
What ultimately lets the play down is its pacing. I can only suppose that, having managed to contract Dame Diana Rigg for the lead role (the man's wife, named Honor), they decided to squeeze as much emotion out of her as possible, so very early on in the play the smooth repartee turns into high-strung single-note emotionalism that simply could not be sustained for the rest of the uninterrupted hour or so after he decides to leave his wife for the willowy young interviewer. I was sitting in the stalls very close to the stage, where I usually like to sit, and despite the raw emotion gushing in floodwaves across the proverbial footlights, I found myself tuning out and thinking of where would be a good place to grab a bite afterwards. The ending, when it came, didn't so much leave me wanting more as made me leave wanting a play that did more. Watching this play is the opposite of seeing a masterpiece in a student production: it was an amateurish piece that a brilliant cast tried their best with. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that even Diana Rigg, while doing her scenes, was wondering if there was anything good on television later tonight.
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