Finnish, First Reading

So. I wrote a play, and here we are, me between two talented theatre people who apparently liked the script enough to want to help out, and in front of a few friends who were curious enough to come along to the cafe to hear the thing. I was only reading because the guy organised to read couldn't make it and I had no time to find someone else. Was I nervous? I've never read a damned thing of mine in public, so yes, I was a little bit nervous, especially as I've seen and reviewed the stage performances of the two people either side of me, and as performers, they are a little bit awesome. Pretty fucking awesome, actually.

It was quite a strange experience. The two words I kept repeating as my mantra when writing were Personal, Universal.

Meaning that I want it to feel so very personal, which it is. But I want it to have universal appeal, which I think it does. There is much truth and honesty in the subject matter, but also some fiction. It's three dialogues between three people, none of which ever happened. The essence though, the essence of the dialogues, is so very real.

It was strange that I ended up doing the reading. I know I wasn't of the calibre of Dayna and Steph, but I think I did okay. There was a funny moment for me... my character reads a very short story to another character, and I was so focused on the lines I was reading at the moment that I forgot about this part. This short story, Love You, See You Soon, it always fucks with me emotionally. Oh no, I thought, this story is coming up...

My character got to the story, and he let go. I let go. I read one of my most emotional short stories to a small audience with enough feeling to bring tears to the eyes of some of those listening, but without tearing up myself. I don't know what happened there, but I was relieved. A little bit of magic happened.

What happens next with the play? I don't know. I've entered it into a thing and it would be nice if it won that thing, but I have to be realistic and think about what to do if it doesn't do well in the thing.

Yesterday morning I woke up anxious and depressed and thought fuck it, we did the reading and that was fun, I'm done with this play. Then I watched the recording a friend had made of it, and I was back. In the recording, there was more laughter than I remembered, because I was focused on the reading. I think the drama works too. Watching Steph when she was not reading, her face and her giggles were like a barometer of what was going on in the play.

I don't know what happens next. Other than I know I have to start writing the next play.

Finnish, Is Finished

12 months after starting it, I have finished my play, titled Finnish.

It shouldn't have taken me this long. It's only 85 or so pages of writing. But in parts, it is intense, and this has been an intense year. Such extremes of love and the questioning of love, self doubt that brought me to the edge of some very dark places because the person I love most... I had hurt her and she wanted to hurt me. She achieved that goal. I realised that I am, this late in life, still as lacking in self-confidence as I was as young boy. When I was a young boy, my self-confidence was destroyed. Unlike a lizard's tail, it seems your self-confidence never grows back. You cover up this lack of self-confidence late in life... you learn some tricks. But when it gets kicked out of you again, you realise that you are still that lonely little boy.

Writing this play was a coping mechanism. Writing this play was a way of trying to understand things. I really didn't do anything wrong. I loved outside of the accepted parameters of love maybe... meaning just that I love my friends. I have few friends, I am solitary man, but sometimes these random strangers break through and I find myself seeing these individuals fully, understanding them fully, accepting them fully, and loving them fully.

And that is what my play is about. It's about the nature of love and friendship. It's about can society accept alternative forms of love and friendship.

Can a 50 year old man have a beautiful friendship with a 25 or 30 year old woman without it being about sex or lust. This a valid question. It's also about the nature of love. What, exactly, is love, and how do we judge love. Maybe love can be pure, even though you are judging it from your world view. Just because you think love is about lust, it isn't necessarily so. Sometimes love is just about acceptance. You just accept them, and you embrace them, because you love them. Love is a mystery.

So I've finished a play about love. It's maybe the rawest thing I've ever written, and I tend to go for raw. I write to make myself cry or to laugh, and I have done both in writing this thing.

Just like in the closing of the third act of the play, I have no idea what happens next.

The Work In Progress

I've neglected the play for a week now. Today, I got a little bit scared about that. What if the momentum has gone? What if this is yet another of my ideas that comes to nothing? What if these characters I've been calling down from The Forever have moved on?

I was about to leave the cafe today but thought no, I have to find out if these characters are still there, so I sat down in my quiet and empty cafe, and I called out to them.

Silence.

Silence.

And silence.

And then, eventually, they were there.

The first thing they said to me was, Where the fuck have you been for the past week?
I told them I was sorry and that I have missed them. They said they had missed me too. Then we got to work, and they said dramatic and witty things to each other, and I took dictation, and all was good in my world.