Angels on pinheads

I've been living and working back in Melbourne now for four months. It was going to be three ... but then I've never been especially good at estimating the amount of time something will take.

Since I have been back, I have interrupted the lives of some wonderful, dear friends. We have sung and danced around the messy details of our mid-life crises and I have often wondered where in the journey of my life I would 'be' now if it hadn't been for the Fag, Interrupted-esque sojourn in the harbour city for seven years. But as James Goldman, in his The Lion In Winter script, puts it: "'What if ...' is a game for scholars. What if Angels sat on pinheads?"

I am constantly moved and provoked by the (in)different circumstances of many of the people I knew almost a decade ago. One of my dearest (and most reliable) co-bar-propper-upper-ers is now on heart medication and rarely drinks. For he and I, it's recently become something like an arduous garden-path kind of a walk to our local for two ... or more. I think about calling him and asking him out to the pub a little less often - especially now that it appears to be a matter of life or death. For him, in any case.

And some of the people I have known in this lifetime are achieving truly wonderful things ... and like a ratty little mongrel puppy, I yap and nip at their heels - celebrating their deserved success: like this extraordinarily beautiful work.

DVD Review: United 93

My introduction to United Airlines Flight 93 was in the early hours of September 12, 2001. Not owning a television, I was following the unfurling, hypnotic spectacle on the internet. ('September 11' would later be acknowledged as being the first major international event to have been communicated to the world in real time via the 'net.) I was plugged in to a large number of websites - one of which belonged to United Airlines. At some point during the fiasco, having refreshed their site in my browser, there was a stark, simple message on the company's homepage: "United Airlines regret to announce that we appear to have lost another aircraft." (United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane hijacked, had already been flown into the World Trade Center's South Tower.)

My introduction to the Paul Greengrass film - United 93 - was as a result of the, then, Sydney Film Festival Artistic Director Lynden Barber's decision to include it in his program for the 2006 festival. I was the Events Manager for Barber's final festival (an hypnotic and terrifying ordeal in its own right) and I had taken the opportunity to sneak in and watch this film. About 15 minutes into it, my mobile phone, silently, announced that I was needed somewhere. We had a huge number of Festival Sponsor post-screening functions immediately following the film - and there was the entirely necessary corporate sponsorship banner positioning to be attended to. Almost gratefully, I slid from the theatre. I had missed the beginning and I was going to miss the end ... and until the other night when I saw the film for the first time, I didn't realise just how grateful I should have been.

The post-United 93 screening functions were, as you might imagine, dire affairs. Ghostly white and subdued, corporate Sydney wandered dazed and undone into their little roped-off exclusion zones - truly stunned by what they had witnessed. I had imagined they would be, and had arranged for the lights to be dimmed in the holding pens I had any control over and encouraged the event staff who bothered to listen to be mindful of what our cheque-signers had just witnessed. I adored Lynden Barber's festival ... and especially his inclusion of this film. The State Theatre, where it screened, had just had a new 'rock concert' sound rig installed ... and United 93's momentous and almost impossibly layered soundtrack (Martin Cantwell's Sound Editing and John Powell's Original Score) gave it a paint-and-wall-paper stripping run for its money.

****

One of Greengrass's masterstrokes is the casting. John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) once said that "casting is 65 percent of directing", and in the case of United 93 I would, possibly rather magnaminously suggest, that the casting is almost 90 percent of the work's cinematic torque. The flight crew (pilots and cabin attendants) are all played by real crew - some of whom work for United Airlines. On the ground, the Civilian and US Military Air Traffic Controllers are played by real air traffic controllers – and in some cases, the people who were actually working on the morning of September 11. The passengers are played by relative unknowns, and it is this choice that ensures the film demands an immediate and instinctive respect. There is, not at any time, any "Acting" going on. Yes, there is knowledge and technique … there is commitment and passion … but ultimately, it is the anonymity of these actors that powers their presence in this work in precious and commanding ways. Many Directors and Casting Directors choose this casting path to walk – but very few have succeeded in matching the power of the unreservedly adventurous and uncluttered energy with the material that Greengrass manages to inspire in this work and from his brilliant cast.

The editing by Clare Douglas, Richard Pearson and Christopher Rouse is astonishing and entirely worthy of their Oscar™ nomination … even though they lost - inexplicably - to Thelma Schoonmaker's work on Martin Scorsese's chronically over-rated, sentimental favourite The Departed. Greengrass, too, was nominated for the Oscar™ for Best Achievement in Directing, capitulating too, to Mr Scorsese.

I have always been greedy for detail - and Barry Ackroyd's Cinematography re-defines the possibilities of the hand-held camera and strikes the perfect aviation-clinical look throughout the 'inflight' interiors. His colours and tones are bone-bearingly real, and his and Greengrass's camera becomes almost lascivious as it prowls the darkest and most unlikely corners of the entire, unravelling horror. From the chaos on the ground to the habitual inflight prattle, Greengrass is everywhere. He pins each and every minute detail of his formidable narrative to your every breath ... choking you with his drive, intention and pace. His virtuoso camera angles are a lesson in themselves and the camera's battle for stability and equilibrium in the post-hijack cabin of United Airlines Flight 93 is unrelentingly painful. That there is even the slightest semblance of hope for a different denoument is the mark of a truly great storyteller ... and a water-tight and skillful ensemble and crew.

From its simple, eerily familiar and almost routine beginning to the blistering mid-point where the tension can no longer be contained, United 93 is a masterful cinematic ante-mortem examination … and even though forensic investigators have contradicted the popular myth that the passengers managed to make it into the cockpit, the final few minutes of United 93 will connect so brutally with your heart that it may be almost impossible for you to stand it.

It was only through the wide-eyed wonder at what real and raw courage and determination looks like, that I could.

****

Donate to, and view, the Honour Flight 93 National Memorial and buy the DVD.

Image courtesy United 93.

Madness

David Walliams plays a character in the television series Little Britain who walks through scenes making 'boock boock' noises ... clucking noises ... like a chicken. 'She' is one of the least sentimental characters in what is most certainly one of the bleakest of scenarios in the show ... and I have always been curious about the likely motivations for her inclusion - but no more so than this afternoon, when, on my way to the office with my takeaway coffee, a woman was walking along behind me making identical sounds. I glanced over my shoulder to see whether someone was taking the piss, as it were ... but no. Here, on Chapel Street (the very epicentre of Melbourne's Fashionista set and an almost impossibly ironic choice of location), was a woman as mad as the day is long, clucking away while strolling along the footpath.

Our little gaggle of pedestrians arrived at a set a traffic lights and a Little Red Walking Man. Others, perhaps as bemused and bewildered as I, moved out of her way. Some struck a pose of airhead aloofness ... others giggled. I looked on with a sanctimonious, self-rightedness pity. As the Little Red Walking Man was replaced by a Little Green Walking Man, we all stood completely still. Mad Woman glanced briefly from the middle-distance surrounding her to the ground and said "I hate going first". As I stepped from the footpath onto the road, Mad Woman followed and began to cluck away again.

My thought, as I wandered down a side-street toward my office was: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

****

Madness has always fascinated me. A large number of characters in plays I have written could quite easily, if not a little too lazily, be described as 'Mad'. I wrote a play many years ago called Memories, Melodies and Madness which enjoyed a world premiere in London (and great reviews!) and a season in Melbourne.

In the play, four dead women relive the final night of their lives and, guided and encouraged by a Virgil character, are given the opportunity to take responsibility for each of their roles in their shared tragedy and cross over to the Afterlife. One of the characters succeeds. The others do not ... and for them, their fate is to continue to re-live the final night until they are at peace with their responsibility for what occurred. As the character who was finally at peace began to cross-over into her new life, the play began again - playing identically to the way the performance had started. It was my interpretation of the Catholic 'Purgatory' ... the Christians' 'Hell'.

In London, it received rave reviews and played to packed houses. In Melbourne, at the height of an unseasonal Melbourne heatwave (such is my fucking luck!) we had to cancel several performances due to the fact that the old theatre we were performing in had no air-conditioning which resulted in a temperature in the back few rows of raked seating of close to 40°C.

At the conclusion of one performance, as the play 'began again', a woman in the audience suddenly realised what was happening. She let loose with an audible gasp of recognition and an almost painful whimper of realisation ... as the lights snapped to black. She sat in her seat in the theatre for almost half an hour after the performance had ended ... staring at the stage. The rest of the audience had long since left and she remained - at one with the work and her experience of it.

I have been incredibly fortunate to experience a number of moments like this throughout the many years I spent making theatre. There was the young man who, upon seeing my play The World ... According to Timothy Cross promptly returned to another performance with his Mum, having gone home and 'come out' to her. He brought his Mum to see my play because he believed that the experience of it would be something that would inform her understanding of who her son was ... and what he was going through.

****

At some point in the not too distant past, something else came to mean something more to me than the collection of these experiences I was proudly gathering to keep my heart and soul fed and at peace.

I wish I knew what it was.

The Wheel of Fortune

Well, my plastic tubs are almost packed. The wardrobe is full of the detritus of various imaginings of a personal environment. And I'm awaiting a call from the removalists which will confirm my uplift time from Sydney tomorrow.

Over at Nash's blog, I discovered an interesting Tarot Card link. I do the occasional Tarot Card reading, and I was interested to discover which of the cards in the deck I might be - at least according to this little Q&A. I am apparently "The Wheel of Fortune". In JD's deck, I've always been the "Page of Wands".

Whichever it is, it's time to say 'toot toot' Sydney, for now. The computers have to be cold when they get packed and picked up tomorrow morning, so I'm logging off and turning off until some time next week when I will pop up down south ... where Wheels, Wands and Pages will meet, once again, in the city of great hope, excitement and truth.

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Scraps of distraction: Part 7

The new end

The thing about about abuse of any kind - emotional, physical, psychological, verbal, sexual - is that it stiffles and retards growth and development. On both sides of the act. The act of critical review is essentially no different. Whether they shove their hand down your pants and express like - or dislike - for what they feel, they've still shoved their hand down your pants. In life, it can be many things: rude, pleasureable, invasive, arousing, invited, uninvited, unexpected and a catalyst for many many things.

In the Theatre, it's the same. Ultimately though, it depends entirely on whose hand it is and how much you enjoy it down there. And where it leads ... and how soon after the initial mystery of the exchange, the mutual respect and consideration is lost to selfishness and greed. Savagery. The primal instinct for conquest. The hunger and appetite of the abuser at the expense of the curious consent of the person who might have continued to let them get off on the privacy of their desire.

In reflection, the saddest aspect of this entire journey for me was that yes, I did care about what the reviewers in London had said. Too much? At 25 years old, with your hand down your own pants and on the edge of the rest of your life, just how are you expected to comprehend, let alone know how to maintain and sustain that magical thing called "perspective"? ... not to mention know how to measure - precisely - what is "too much" of anything? It's futile ... pointless ... not unlike trying to measure what is "too long". Admirable sentiments I am sure, but the power of Perspective (not unlike the power of Denial) is not something that belongs in the domain of the young and adventurous. They come later. Like Regret.

Melodrama is drama without truth. And truth is that rare and fleeting almost instinctive breath of a moment in the theatre that is utterly and entirely impossible to capture. But it does exist. It's just very, very difficult to manufacture. You find it ... sometimes where you least expect it. It will sometimes chose to reveal itself in the perfect measure of time and place. But more often than not, it will elude you ... as was the case with many, if not most, of the performances of Tunnels without end I sat through in London.

You strive for it but it constantly eludes you. And the times in the theatre where truth has revealed itself, even fleetingly, remain my most memorable. I understand that now. And I seek it in everything I do.

Ireland's Brian Friel is my Master. William Shakespeare is too ... some of the time. So is Christopher Marlowe - all of the time. Arthur Miller most certainly delved deeply and often for the truth, but the truth of his writing was ultimately sabotaged by the truth of his significance to the lives of others and the turbulent times in which he lived. You need to look harder to find it in his writing. But it is there, especially in All My Sons - a magnificent, monster of play. And Timebends, his utterly compelling autobiography. Alan Bennett betrays truth with circumstance and his finely pleated structure. His becomes a convenient truth and he makes me uneasy. He is the very Englishness of contemporary English dramatists. Right up there with Alan Aychbourn. Aychbourn's truth is entirely of his own making which, in my mind, is akin to admitting that you'll never expect or allow it to appear in the work ... that it shall remain forever ellusive. It's a dangerous claim to stake ... because Theatre without Truth - or at the very least the eternal hope for its appearance - is Dead Theatre.

Tom Stoppard, a writer to whom I would be compared in a London review, is far too clever to be obviously seen to be truth-spotting.
David

Mamet

knows

(Beat)

it

will

(Beat)

appear

(Beat)

and

it

(Beat)

inevitably

(Beat)

does.

Because we imagine it has. Something this cleverly written and structured has to eventually reveal truth in one form or another.

****

I have tried many ways to deal with the what Alistair McCauley took from me. I have accepted - and resolved - my responsibility for it. I revisited the script, rewrote it, and staged a production of it in Melbourne which was fantastic. I learned. I developed. I changed. And I am grateful for the lessons.

Today I understand and accept that Alistair McCauley is - essentially - a thief. I often read his reviews (I read one today) and marvel at how he consistently uses the creative energy of others to write - essentially - about hate. And I still marvel at just how much hate he is truly - no, truth-fully - capable of. How bitter and miserable must he be, recognising how incapable he is of taking the kind of creative risks he is forced to endure in the dark with the less hate-filled. He mistakes fleeting Truth for wit, observation and cleverness. His. At least the blood of mine he spilled that day on The Green was bright red. Not black, toxic, poisoned, and oxygen-less - like his. I have gone on to make a great deal more theatre. He has, quite obviously, not gone on. I relish that fact.

Every act of critical review is like a kabob. There's onion, red capsicum, lamb, green capsicum, tomato and you. Having written an inestimable number of reviews since, I know a truth about McCauley - and myself - I wish more than anything I'd known on my knees on the grass in the middle of The Green all those years ago. Because everything that occured after it would have been different. I would have ensured that the responses to him were entirely different. I would not have allowed him to castrate me in the way I allowed him to then. I would not have allowed him to punish me for daring in quite the same way as I did then. I would, instead, have responded with the full strength and weight of my passion, and courage, and the sheer unbridled determination that had placed my magnificent attempt at his feet in the first place. All the saved-up-for way from Glen Waverley, Australia. In short, I would have cut off his fondling fingers - and the hand they were attached to.

His was a position of great privilege to that point in my life that we shared and I will hate - and I really mean Hate - him and his like forever for not deciding, instead, to find what there was to admire about my sprawling passionate ode to Fate and despair - as opposed to finding what there was to hate about both himself and me, as he gazed at his ugly and twisted reflection in the cracked mirror I was holding up to his face.

My solace, if you like, is to know that at the end of my life, I will at least have imagined what was possible. McCauley, and his like, will only be able to look back at how much they truly were beneath it ... and how, ultimately worthlessly, they instead, take anothers' creativity, passion and ability prisoner - captive in their own unenviable, lonely and creation-less cell of complete theatrical and literary insignificance.

They signify only The Reactionary my insightful and quite brilliant Mother dared to hope I would not become. I understand her fear of that happening for me in its entirety now: 'Where," she was asking "is the courage and originality in that?"

And it makes the act of making uncompromising theatre again in my life almost compulsory.

****

My journey through the memory of this life-altering experience abroad has been immensely painful. That much is probably obvious. What is perhaps not quite so obvious is the way I feel today, right now, about where the rest of my life will take me. And I will close this final chapter of a most remarkable reminiscence with this exchange which somehow, quite magically, The Universe delivered to me late last night.

It is an edited transcript from the ABC Radio's PM program in 2005 - and the interviewee, Michael Billington, is a reviewer for London's The Guardian newspaper.

MICHAEL BILLINGTON: I suppose what makes Pinter interesting as a writer and as a man, is that the plays themselves defy analysis. You can offer an interpretation, but you can never quite fully say what The Homecoming is about, what No Man's Land is about, what Landscape is about. I think that's partly what makes Pinter interesting and what links him with the great dramatists of the past – that there is a quality in his plays that is beyond rational explanation. And one of my colleagues ... I think brilliantly said, part of the pleasure of watching a Pinter play is not fully understanding what it is about.

Really, Mr Billington? Well touché.

And the "colleague" in question? Here, and I hope this will give you as great a thrilling and gut-busting laugh as it did me, is the unedited version:

MICHAEL BILLINGTON: ... And one of my colleagues, Alistair McCauley, I think brilliantly said, part of the pleasure of watching a Pinter play is not fully understanding what it is about.

If "brilliance" is defined by "not fully understanding" then I feel terribly sad and sorry for both you and your colleague. And terribly proud of myself and the literally hundreds of people who came to my play in London and loved and understood it - in spite of him.

Truthfully.

Thank you, Masters of Nothing ... and fuck you!

The Mother of Distraction

"Son ... don't just be a Reactionary," my Mother once quietly hoped of me. She caught me off-guard, as she so habitually did with that spooky maternal instinct of hers. I remember being quite taken aback at the time - so much so that I neglected to ask her to detail her apprehension and promptly returned to the baseless, grandiose, sweeping generalisation I was more than likely making at the expense of some poor hapless over-achiever.

It is 1980. The Games of the XXII Olympiad in Moscow. I am 16 ... and I am devoted to the gymnastics. Or to be more precise, the Gymnasts. The male Gymnasts - who are (to borrow a whorey old chestnut) poetry in motion. Beautiful men. Graceful, agile and strong. Focussed. Humble. Determined. Elegant. Our television is my pimp - and no price is too high. I am introduced to Infatuation. I try not to be obvious and (possibly a little too casually) tear myself away to the kitchen for a snack. Commentary connects us. And I am already saturated by their perfection. My Mother's sing-song voice interrupts my reverie:

"Your Gymnast is on!"

Fuck!

*****

It is 1987. I am 23. I have moved out of home and have visited my Mother at our family home. She is walking me to my car.

"Have you got anyone special in your life at the moment, Son?"

"No Mum."

A pause at the end of the driveway.

"Well, when you do, I hope you won't feel uncomfortable about bringing her home to meet us." ... (Beat) ... "Or him."

Jesus!

How the fuck does she know? Not even I know for sure yet!

*****

It is 1992. I am 28. I own a gay newspaper - Brother Sister - and The Australian Opera are staging their brilliant new production of The Mikado in the State Theatre in the Victorian Arts Centre. It is being conducted by a newcomer - Simone Young. My Mother was in a production of The Mikado many years ago, before asthma claimed her ability to sustain her breath in song. I accepted the Australian Opera's invitation to the opening night performance ... and, of course, I took my Mother. We dressed up. I went to the box office to collect our tickets. Which weren't there. Anywhere. My Mother looked on nervously. Embarrassed.

I have embarrassed My Mother ... who is resolutely standing beside me, her now possibly hopelessly deluded son, in the foyer of The State Theatre and my tickets are not there. I don't exist. The foyer is emptying. The final bell is ringing - endlessly. The ushers are cheerfully anticipating their cigarette break. My profound and stomach-churning embarrassment is confused by this newfound murderous capability: if I had had a gun I would have reached for it.

"I'm sorry Mr Williams, but there are no tickets here for you."

Impotency. Failure. I am introduced to a hatred of fatuous poofs.

My Mother can't stand it anymore. Sensibly, as always, she suggests we leave. I see the sadness of resignation in her eyes and my heart breaks. I know, because I hear it. And feel it. We start to walk away, and as soon as we are a respectable distance from the box office, I touch my Mother's arm and ask her to wait a minute. I am introduced to Fury ... and She's demanding Her say. I walk back to the box office and face the tired gaggle of thieving little jobbers behind the counter before I slam my business card down on their shiny black counter.

"I am going to bury this fucking production!" falls from my mouth like an axe.

They scramble for the business card. I cover it with my hand - a slam so intense my hand stings.

"And in less than a week, every faggot in this town is going to despise this fucking tin-pot testimony to artlessness in precisely the same way that I do now - and for precisely the same reason. You see that woman over there you have humiliated this evening? That is my fucking Mother!"

I lift my hand to reveal my business card, turn and walk away. My Mother is desperately searching for that hole in the floor she wished had appeared ten minutes ago.

I stride up to her like a dismemembered knight. Forcing a wan and forlorn smile. How else do you acknowledge this level of defeat?

"Excuse me ... Mr Williams?"

I think about not stopping. I've already composed the opening paragraph of what will be a full page article - page 3 I think - carefully and studiously dissecting The Australian Opera's rampant homophobia. Where, I find myself wondering, would the company be if it weren't for faggots? Would it even exist? Of course not.

My Mother puts her hand on my arm, and together, we turn. Racing across the foyer is a very, very concerned man. And flapping about in his waving hands are what I immediately recognise as theatre tickets. He offers them to me with trembling hands.

"Mr Williams, please accept our apologies."

"Shove your tickets up your arse!" I spit. "I've practically spell-checked this fucking article!"

Almost in spite of herself, my Mother laughs. Here is the boy she imagined she came to the Opera with.

"You're fucked! This whole fucking company is fucked!

His eyes plead. The tickets are offered again. I turn to my Mother.

"Do you want to see it?"

"Has it started?" she asks - with the timing and instinct I've always admired. And tried to emulate.

The poor hapless messenger panics and practically pirouettes back to the box office. Heads shake and bad hair-dos fall further apart. He turns back to us from his safe space, furiously shaking his head ... and as he trips over himself, my Mother and I (less than a little reluctantly) accompany him to Door 1. He escorts us down the stairs. The Houselights are at half. It's H Row. Right in the middle. And knowing as much as I did at the time about ticketing protocol, they were the seats the Director and his vain little sycophantic oxygen thieving partner might have been sitting in.

"It's a female conductor!" my Mother marvels as the domes introduce us to Simone Young for the first time. And we are away.

At interval, the company's publicist spots us and invites us to the VIP Room for champagne. We accent the buzz about the production, which is very good, and more importantly, my Mother is having the time of her life. As she leaves us to go to the bathroom, the publicist seizes her opportunity to apologise, very discreetly, for the "problem" with my tickets. There is no sign of my Mother returning, so I, too, seize my opportunity to, equally as discreetly, respond by saying that the greatest disservice that has been done to my Mother and I this evening is that it has made this sparkling new production of The Mikado rather impossible to truly enjoy. Or review. So I won't be.

And I didn't.

And up until this day, other than my exclusive and wonderfully candid interview with Simone Young for homo, I have never written a word about the Australian Opera. They, in mind - and much like the tickets that were to be under my name - didn't and don't exist.

*****

It is 1993. I am 29. Robert Chuter is seducing Melbourne with his promenade production of Julia Britton's An Indian Summer in the grounds of Rippon Lea. I still own a gay newspaper, but I am now also a Publicist. A well-connected fag about town. I have some clout ... and I also have a group booking: friends, clients, a couple of heavy-hitters ... and my boyfriend. Scattered around my blankets, it's champagne, fresh fruit, names, picnics and faces for days. I invite my Mother. She doesn't think my Father would like to come ... which is just as well, I say ... because he's not invited. He drops her off outside the gates. She has her folding chair, her blanket and her picnic in an all too-familiar tupperware container. I don't recall much about the performance ... but my Mother was entranced and enchanting! As one with her clever son. My friends adored her ... and all night, her eyes sparkled with delight.

It is a sight I will never forget ... and one I have rarely witnessed since. Our tragedy. My responsibility ... but not entirely my fault. It's one of the aspects of being brought up in a trenchantly Christian household I still resent so completely: the subjugation of women. "The Wife and Mother" as sole purpose, not context. Silenced to circumstance.

But that, as they say, is another story. Right now, I think I need to take my Mother to the opera. In Sydney. And pay for the flight, the accommodation and the fucking tickets! The Sheraton on The Park for a night or two I think. Don't you?

Image: Aleksandr Dityatin. Moscow, 24 July 1980. Games of the XXII Olympiad. Aleksandr Dityatin of the Soviet Union, gold medallist of the individual all-round competition, at the medal ceremony.

Stopping All Stations

Easter is such a problem. For the small business operator, it's long enough to be a 'shut down' and short enough to be a real nuisance. "We'll be 'looking at', 'thinking about', 'responding to that' after Easter" ... "That invoice won't be paid until after Easter" ... . As a child growing up in an unforgivably Christian household, Easter was a real mind-fuck. It was impossibly bleak. Shops would shut ... and gloom and doom would descend on our, otherwise, perfectly happy household. It was a veritable tsunami of interminable guilt and suffering (Friday), reverent anticipation (Saturday) and strident rejoicing (Sunday). For the Recovering Christian, Easter remains a heady mix of ingrained duty and obligation ... and like many of the rituals I still associate with the practice of Christianity, essentially one of messy contradictions. Well might the rock have been rolled away, but the Easter Eggs were (and still are) always scarce.

My father was, and still is, a preacher in the High Methodist tradition. He was also responsible for the Easter Candlelight Prayer Vigil at our local church ... and every year, my faith-full Dad would draw up a roster of believers who would take it in turns to sit at the altar of our little church to ensure the single candle (symbolising our spiritual accompaniment of Jesus on the journey to his crucifixion - 'The (fourteen) Stations of The Cross') never went out. The vigil would start at 8pm on Thursday evening and end at about 9am on Friday morning when the Minister leading the Good Friday Service would extinguish the candle to symbolise Christ's death ... murder ... passing ... homecoming ... betrayal ... what you will.

My father would spend hours on the phone tending his blueprint. 'So and so' were going away ... 'so and so' were interstate ... 'so and so' would love to, but ... 'so and so' were sorry, but ... and so and so on. One year, he ended up doing four separate shifts at times of the morning that were, for the rest of the congregation, decidedly un-Godly. And while our home was always stressful, tense and complicated for the duration of this thankless task, I envied his devotion.

A short time after I had moved out of home, my mother called to tell me that my father was having great difficulty filling his Candlelight Vigil roster. I was in the thick of therapy and, possibly even writhing around on my bed like Linda Blair's 'Regan', I think I snarled something typically badly-intentioned, blasphemous and entirely lacking in irony like: "Jesus Christ! Is he still peddling that shit?" down the phone. My mother, knowing - as mothers infuriatingly do - that I treated sleeping at night with the same level of contempt as I treated my health generally, thought I may like to offer to help him out by taking the early morning slots ... those times when it was apparently inconvenient for the rest of the congregation to be up. Even though I was in the midst of fanatically despising both of my parents for the dazzling array of sins they had (not, as it turned out) commited throughout my entire childhood, I agreed to call him. After all, 3am was easy for me ... and yes mum, I'll try not to be pissed. Christ!

I rang my Candlelight Prayer Vigil Roster-fatigued father who gratefully accepted my offer to fill in the gaps. I would take over from Him, sorry, him, at 3am and 'accompany Jesus to the cross' until 9am when people would start to arrive for the Good Friday service.

The fourteen 'Stations of the Cross', as documented both in the Christian faith and my father's Easter Candlelight Prayer Vigil Roster, are: 1. Jesus is condemned to death; 2. Jesus receives the cross; 3. Jesus falls the first time; 4. Jesus meets His Mother; 5. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross; 6. Veronica wipes Jesus' face with her veil; 7. Jesus falls the second time; 8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem; 9. Jesus falls the third time; 10. Jesus is stripped of His garments; 11. Crucifixion - Jesus is nailed to the cross; 12. Jesus dies on the cross; 13. Jesus' body removed from the cross; and 14. Jesus is laid in the tomb. I was to take over from my father as Jesus fell for the third time and be there in faithful observation until Jesus was laid in the tomb, and the congregation had arrived to worship.

Acts of faith are decidedly loaded undertakings - where that part of the brain that qualifies our actions as meaningful and appropriate to the given circumstances, proves simply incapable of resolving the inverted equations (of which the World Trade Center 2 + 2 = 0 is the quintessential example of our age). But I was acting out my faith for the benefit of my father ... in spite of the fact that the philosophy of John Wesley's Methodism contains more than a generous strain of emotional, psychological and physical child abuse. (Years later, I would include faithfully transcribed details of Wesley's teachings relating to The Child(ren) as material evidence in a submission I was commissioned to write for the Australian Senate Enquiry into the Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse). And while I certainly do not consider myself an abused child, Mind Fuck Methodism certainly defined the physicalisation and the fractures that will forever mark the complex and demanding relationship I share(d) with the Christian faith in general, and my father specifically.

Arriving at the church remains a striking memory. It was cold. I was early. I was sober. I was drug-free ... and I was rugged up and ready to draw on all of my theatrical reserves and 'do this thing'. It would be easier than television. I thought. My father was very happy to see me ... and for the briefest of moments, as we met at the altar in the flickering candlelight, his faith and my acceptance and understanding of it, was an undeniable reality. The peace and resolve was quite profound. He showed me The Prayer Book, where people had written their requests for prayer. There was the little old lady down the road who was expected to die come the resurrection. And there were others. I was to pray these collective requests ... but more than anything else, I was to be here as keeper of the candle. If it went out, I was to re-light it with a match from the box beside it. I was to be beside Jesus in his hour of need. And with that, my father left ... shortly after which I, of course, immediately fell asleep.

And on this occasion anyway, Christ died on my watch.

I woke only when the lady who had arrived with the floral arrangements was fastidiously (and perhaps intentionally a little too noisly, thank God) attending to her task. Those who know me well will understand how soundly I sleep ... and for how long ... and how hilarious it might have been watching this particular Good Friday service delivered over the prostrate, paralysed, dribbling, snoring and talking body of Geoffrey sprawled - immovable, stranded, inert and unconscious - across the altar. I didn't know where I was and, the momentary disassociation was impacted (with the velocity of an incredibly high speed head on collision between a semi-trailer and a tiny hatchback on a stretch of desolate rural single-lane highway) with fear that I could, for the first time in my life, taste. The candle had gone out.

Pulverised with fear, I very reluctantly looked up. A scattering of people were arriving and there were some already seated. I witnessed this by, not only the almost surgical quality of fluorescent light, but also by the now barely discernible but instantly recognisable flickering light of 'my' candle. Well might I have abandoned Christ in his hour(s) of need, but it would seem that He had chosen not to provide any evidence of it.

In the good Methodist tradition, I expected to be punished when I least expected it. Instead, it would later be confirmed, that the true measure of significance was that I was physically 'there'. 'Popping out to the 7-11 for a late night snack' would have been an indisputable error of Judgement - and consequently impossible to either accept or forgive. Christ's death, on the other hand, was unpreventable - and whether I was asleep or awake, it was the presence of a living (albeit snoring) soul beside the candle that was the quintessential and undeniable truth of this particular ritual. It took me years, however, to get over the embarrassment ... and to be honest, especially writing about it now, I'm not entirely convinced that I have.

In the years since I rejected Christianity and have chosen to live my life, instead, worshipping at the altar of The Almighty Haphazard, there have been moments when it has been impossible to deny the presence of something beyond even the clockwork curiosity of my imagination. There has been more than one occasion when a gentle but determined hand on my shoulder has prevented me from stepping from the footpath into the path of an oncoming car. I have suddenly been inspired to call a friend at the perfect time, and I have spent time on stage buried under dirt in a shallow and very crowded grave.

But my lasting memory of the Easter Candlelight Prayer Vigil is also crowded ... crowded by acceptance, forgiveness, company and precious solitude. And the point at where, while in the tranquil company of Jesus, I was powerless to prevent the most all-consuming, blissfully ignorant and unintentional sleep I have ever had.

Image: Barry Moser's The Crucifixion.