Annabel, my Annabel!

I found her!

Short confessions of a Summit Cynic

It's been challenging trying to keep my dinner down while I've been surfing the internet lately. I've read more 'motherhood statements' and 'aspirational' messages over the past couple of days than I have ever seen in my life. My saving grace was Annabel Crabb—whose hilarious blog about the proceedings mysteriously disappeared. Overnight. Every search for it on theage.com.au resulted in a confounding "lack of search results". But at least there is now a new voice in the Australian media who makes me laugh and with whom, on many points, I strongly agree.

What I strongly disagree with is these people, the self-proclaimed "chosen ones", who have motherhooded themselves into some tardis of sociopolitical relevance that seems to have eluded every one whose opinions I value. "The Chosen Ones" have taken refuge behind the most convenient of barricades: that anyone who has an opinion about the summit and its outcome(s) that is not wrapped up in divine love is a "cynic". A Naysayer. "You're either with us ... or agin us." That we're all suffering from some hideous plague of Summit Envy Syndrome (SES) ... or Acquired Idealism Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

The critical point to surface for me out of the proceedings over recent days is that—even with all the protestations about "robust democracy" and "fresh air"—that people who have not found worthy and meaningful ways of contributing to society and justifying the amount of oxygen they steal from everyone else have suddenly been recognised as having some immense societal worth. In their own minds, at least.

I 'worked' for the ALP last year. I 'worked' for A Candidate in an unwinnable seat. I learned many, many, many things. And chief among those is that Politics is a grubby, nasty, toxic business. It's the absolute manifestation of self-interest. Absolute. That this Summit was anything more than a fancy 'Thank You' card to the personal attention of some hard-working campaigners ... or a PR event of national significance is really, I'm sorry to say, idle conceit. You'll see what I mean when your well-intentioned emails start bouncing back. And people stop remembering and/or using your name. And the extent to which you supported them becomes irrelevant in their continued pursuit of their own selfish agendas.

I have worked with women who rocked their new-born babies to sleep in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet because they couldn't afford child care. That Cate Blanchett seems to be celebrated beyond the boundaries of good taste for turning up offends the sense and sensibility of working mothers everywhere. The Unchosen Ones it would seem. And that Kevin (07) Rudd missed the great John Button's funeral to drop off what I imagine were Osh Kosh B'Gosh overalls to the newest Upton/Blanchett, is an astonishing lack of judgement and political sympatico.

I feel like I've just spent the last couple of days at somebody else's cast party. I wish Annabel Crabb had been there.

Wise counsel

I had dinner with an old friend the other night. Charming. Lovely. Nostalgic. She cross-examined me about why I hadn't continued writing plays. Or writing anything. I proudly discussed my blog, this blog, with her ... and encouraged her to log on when she felt like reading some of my musings. Our evening ended with a sudden and somewhat hostile disagreement about the value of looking back into the past ... of not "moving on", as she put it. And as she dropped me home, I wondered what she would make of theartofdistraction.

It didn't take long for me to find out.

The next day, she called me on my mobile and told me she thought my blog was probably the primary reason why I hadn't "moved on", as she put it. She was greatly concerned that I was about to embark on another toxic regurgitation of people, places and experiences that were, collectively, hardly worth the time.

"What did you learn from these revolting experiences?" she challenged.

"To never consider anything like them again", I replied.

"You said it yourself last night," she snapped ... "Gay is so fucking OVER that it's hardly even worth mentioning! And as I've said time and time again Geoffrey, you're too fucking NICE all the time and yet you're obsessed with making some kind of meaningful contribution to some fucking imaginary Gay Community that simply don't deserve it darling!"

I was speechless.

"Did you do the Sydney Film Festival last year? I thought it was 2006!?" she wondered.

"It ... yes, it was 2006," I confirmed.

"SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WASTING YOUR TIME WRITING ABOUT SOME FUCKING NIGHTMARE FROM ALMOST THREE YEARS AGO!?" she bawled into the phone. "Get over it darling! MOVE ON!"

***

Great advice ... possibly one of the most sensible things anyone has said to me in the past twelve months.

Liberating. Forgiving. Wiser. Determined. Looking toward tomorrow.

In the Pink: Part 1

It all started harmlessly enough, as life-changing experiences often do. Ambushed, wooed, flattered and ultimately seduced with promises of great wealth and opportunity, creative autonomy, a supportive team and life-long friendship, associations and success. Who could resist? And who would ever have guessed that a little over eighteen months later, I would be standing, homeless and stranded on the wrong side of Sydney Harbour with my life in tatters?

Bear with me. Withhold your judgment. Resist the temptation to know where this was all going to end ... if only because we do.

***

Making things happen

My single greatest blessing and my single greatest curse is simple: I make things happen. From the days of my childhood when I used to mount entire puppet productions of the great musicals in the loungeroom of our family home, I have always made things. Happen. People who, in my presence, have dared wonder how an idea or a vision might be brought to life have usually either ended up running from it as it materialises right before their eyes, or (on the rarest of occasions) embracing it.

Burnt almost beyond recognition by the penury associated with being an independent theatre maker, and desperately needing a handsome and reliable income to pay off the accrued debts of my creative fancies, I established a small communications company ... a desktop publishing company, actually. It was actually always just clever me with an Apple Macintosh and a couple of clients who needed my skills. Nothing grand ... business cards, letterheads ... the occasional brochure here ... flyers, posters ... you know. Junk mail. Clever, neat, pretty and fancy, maybe, but junk mail nonetheless.

Over the years—ten of them in fact—I actually became quite good at junk mail. My designer's eye developed and my instinct for balance and a visual imperative translated almost effortlessly into graphic and typographic design. Slowly, my little business grew and a steady (if not always reliable) income ensued. Sure, it had its ups and downs ... but mostly, I could pay my bills and live the kind of life where I could do pretty much what I pleased. When I pleased. And it pleased me, often.

My move to Sydney in 1999 was an impulsive, spontaneous and entirely irresponsible leap of faith. I had grown tired and bored in Melbourne and the pre-2000 Sydney Olympic Games was abuzz with all sorts of mysterious possibilities (none of which, I should add at this point, ever materialised ... for anybody). Perched in Utopia on the rooftop of a daggy old apartment block in Potts Point, I fell in love with Sydney and her dazzling physical environment. The sky. The lights. The water. The constant activity. The new sights, sounds and smells. The impulsive recklessness and the determination. And the greed. My little business bubbled along ... and courtesy of Marcus O'Donnell, who I had known from the tiny and insular world of gay publishing in Melbourne, I started a regular job as Production Coordinator at Sydney's leading weekly gay and lesbian newspaper – The Sydney Star Observer.

This contract was the beginning of many, many wonderful Sydney stories. Guy, who was the designer and person who put The Sydney Star Observer together, would become a great, inspirational friend ... and a significant aspect of my salvation from the rigors of penury and homelessness would, months later, be in no small way directly attributed to his care and generosity.

It was also at The Star that I would befriend a young advertising salesman who would, in the months that followed, become my dear friend. And I would become his mentor. We would sail the harbour on his boat and I would bask in the glow of his companionship, friendship and irascible nature. Months later, he would become one of many who have mistaken my generosity and capacity for friendship for a seemingly never-ending supply of energy to be relentlessly drained. Exhausted. Our friendship capsized on an immutable point of contention: that I was in love with him and he was not in love with me. Whatever it was, I had actually became fatigued by his constant need, hunger and demand for every ounce of energy I had. On one memorable occasion, even his sister saw fit to warn me that I was being used up.

One night, as I was on my way to the boat with takeway dinner for the two of us, he called my mobile and suggested that it might not be a good time for me to come over—even though I was responding to his call for my company (and takeaway food delivery services). He had someone coming over who he would, er, prefer to spend time with. And at that moment, I burnt him off ... like a leech. I never saw or spoke to him again ... and even now, his attempts to re-establish contact with me are met with a perfunctory and entirely necessary resentful silence.

homo

One of the greatest achievements of my life was the little magazine I published in Sydney called homo. The concept and the look of homo had come to me while I was wandering dazed, confused and dehydrated around the base of Uluru for the second time that day. He had leapt into my mind with such fierce and determined visual clarity that he was impossible to ignore.

Upon my return to Sydney, I immediately made him happen ... and after eleven issues (one every month), homo and my business collapsed under massive debts and my complete inability to continue to service the vision in real and meaningful ways. homo was to have been my future. In his short life, he had made an enormous impact. I had been celebrated as 'Homo Man' at ritzy Elizabeth Bay rooftop parties ... and he had gathered a tiny but loyal band of subscribers. But yet again, the grand theme of my life so far, continued to play out: that with two exceptions, no-one knew how to help me. They knew what they needed from me, and rarely hesitated to ask. But when I was capable of struggling to find the words and to ask for help ... or power with suggestion ... or even on one occasion, plead for support, nothing was forthcoming. And everything that might have been done by others to help me was conditional. Or absent. And homo vanished ... and with him, went my pride, my sense of achievement ... and my perception of a future.

It was a spectacular failure that even those closest to me have no concept whatsoever of the extent to which I was (and remain) incredibly damaged by it.

I've never understood conditions ... but I am beginning to like the idea of further exploring the concept. At least.

Inbox delights

This arrived in my Inbox this afternoon ... and given my current theme, it's a timely addition. Thank you Lisa!

"This little animal really exists! It's called a Naked Mole-Rat, from Africa. So if you are having a bad day and feeling sorry for yourself, just imagine going through life looking like a dick with buck teeth!"


Bless its heart!

Selfishness: The context

Definitions of selfishness:
1. stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others;
2. Selfishness is, at base, the concept and/or practice of concern with one's own interests in some sort of priority to the interests of others; it is often used to refer to a self-interest that comes in a particular form, or above a certain level; and
3. … is devotion to or concern with one’s own advantage or welfare to the exclusion of regard for others. Science and religion both teach selfishness: That the first rule of life is self preservation, which results in "me first" and the creed of materialism.

Quotes about selfishness:
1. He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies. — Tertullian
2. Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race. — William E. Gladstone
3. That man who lives for self alone, lives for the meanest mortal known. — Joaquin Miller

It's difficult to remember when the concept of selfishness first entered my orbit ... but it is not difficult to remember the many occasions when it had an incredibly destructive impact on my life. I am also not entirely sure what and when has triggered another's selfishness ... and how, in whatever way, I have been responsible for their action—their flagrant disregard for my feelings.

I have written about the selfishness of a past partner/lover/boyfriend. His constant, reckless and selfish pursuit of sexual intimacy with, well, anyone else—in much the same way as most fags I have known ... the sad, lonely, cock-obsessed tragics who think that finding themselves perched on the end of a stranger's cock in some way makes them far more worthwhile to society than they truly are. Or to themselves. Or to those who really care about them. The great misappropriation of esteem and value, suddenly and brutally equated to the length and breadth of a stranger's dick. Is this what the value of sexuality is? Does the sexual act—or perhaps sexual greed and need—trigger innate selfishness?

Or to be less (or perhaps more) specific: does the lack of emotional honesty in our lives gradually (or suddenly) instill in us faith in a belief that all else of real value and worth suddenly becomes expendable?

Does the crippling betrayal of one's unconditional trust and belief in the wholesome good and potential of a shared experience destroy our ability to be selfish? Are we so damaged by the experience that we move on and away ... silent, forever, about our needs in case someone destroys us again because we dare to allow ourselves to be open, accepting and vulnerable to them? Pathologically both naked and selfless for fear of being hurt to that extent ever again?

Is that the trigger? Is this the point at where one might feel incredibly alive and worthwhile ... even at the expense of another's needs, value and meaning in their life? And then, like some grotesque masquerade, buoyed with the ballast of this vain and fleeting conceit, they sail on—blissfully unaware that their worth is actually afloat on the decimation of another's.

Is this what 'learning selfishness' is?

In what circumstance and at what point do we decide that our needs have more priority to the needs of others? In my case, the quandaries and conflicts in my life have arisen because of the very opposite of selfishness ... selflessness: "having, exhibiting, or motivated by no concern for oneself; unselfish." (www.thefreedictionary.com). I don't want this to read as though I have a Jesus Complex, but somewhere along the line, my priorities have become incredibly skewed … I've bundled myself off in a corner somewhere ... to watch the paint dry.

Are we taught to be selfish? Do we learn to be selfless? Is there a point in our journey through life where we finally realise that, apart from only the good dying young, that those who pursue their goals and aspirations with dogged, selfish self-determination are the ones that get 'there'? I will be able to discount this possibility entirely in a future post ... but it doesn't change the overall challenge to the context of these qualities in the way we present to the world. Or ourselves, in the quiet, fearful hours of lonely contemplation.

Selfishness and selflessness are equally powerful and destructive forces. Selfishness, by its very definition, can't exist in isolation ... one needs the other. So is the act of one's selfishness made more potent by the extent to which it is matched by another's selflessness? Have I, in some way, added fuel to the fire by matching people's incredible selfishness with my own peculiar selflessness? Is it, perhaps, that one's selfishness is dramatically inflamed, and possibly even dragged into existence, by another's selflessness?

So what then happens when two equally selfish people meet? An explosion of need? And what happens when two equally selfless people meet? An implosion of equal velocity? A great spontaneous nothingness?

Or is selflessness simply Fear underwritten by Weakness? If I look at any number of the unhappy circumstances present in my life at the moment, I could take a completely different approach to each of them. I could say what I really think about how I really feel ... or I could do as I do—which is respect the other person's situation … a complicit and unholy alliance between a person who might have known better and a person who does, but is too afraid of confrontation that they silence the solution. Well, one of the solutions anyway.

Creating Theatre trained me to be selfless. My scripts would arrive in the rehearsal room, and from that point onwards, you value the contribution made by everyone who comes in contact with it, before handing the (un)true realisation of it over to the ensemble and releasing it to the many relationships it is to go on and experience: the actors, the technicians, the audience ...

Creating Theatre, in a way, drills the capacity for honest reaction out of you. It creates the circumstances and the environment in which your once perfect vision exists in hybrid form … possessed by others ... spoken, felt, watched, and listened to by people often not of your choosing. And yet as the creator you are silent. Immune.

It is a precious and rare exchange, and one that does not necessarily belong in the domain of business ... or even life generally. That, I think, demands the very personification of the Law of the Jungle:

Can I fuck it? Will it fuck me?
Can I kill it? Will it kill me?
Can I eat it? Will it eat me?

And when the Australian actress Leah Purcell warned me that I "had bad magic happening on that stage" only hours before my Opening Night of the Sydney Film Festival, I should have handled my response differently. Very differently. But that is another story ... and one it is time we shared.

UPDATE: The Candidates: Part 1

... and then there are stories like this one.

I'm almost inclined to rest to my case … if it weren't for the fact that even though there are amazing people on the planet like this young man, there are The Others. Sinister, self-serving … and, especially by comparison, entirely worthy of a different kind of attack.

The Candidates: Part 1

Sometimes, in fact many times, I have been known to seek revenge. The desperate need for vindication and the unmistakable feeling that, yet again, someone has misinterpreted my genuine gifts of skill, support, caring and goodwill as weakness ... things to be fingered—sharply and abruptly. Abused.

There's a theme peddling furiously along the bicycle path that is my journey through life at the moment ... and it's called Self Interest. Selfishness. "Me! Me! Me! Me at all costs! ... including yours." The "Fuck your needs! What about ME!" Broadway-esque showtune in G Major, performed with almost monotonous regularity by people I always imagined might have known better.

At the many and various times my feet have slipped off the pedals, I have always slowly regained my balance ... accompanied by that familiar voice in my head, howling me down for being "so fucking nice and understanding and helpful and generous ALL THE TIME": reminding me cursorily that people really only ever really care about themselves ... that when push comes to shove, black to white, Labor to Liberal, gay to straight, and broke to flush ... people will put their needs first. Always.

So why haven't (and can't) I?

It's a complex equation. It's symptomatic of being a nice, well-meaning, genuine, caring kind of a guy. I was brought up to be. There was always plenty of everything in our home ... and apart from the occasional religion-inspired fracas, the ebb and flow of daily life throughout my childhood was practically effortless. Simple. And fair. Incredibly fair.

The further you depart from valuing and holding to fairness and equality in your life, the greater the perils you face. As systematically, people placed their own needs somewhere much higher on the hierarchy of needs than mine (or the needs of those I represented) I began to realise that there was a fatal flaw in my persona. I became, almost by default, persona non-grata. I blindingly assumed that it would all work out in the end ... that they would see the error of their ways and embrace my contribution and meaning with respect and appreciation. That they would stop using my seemingly never-ending supply of capability. My skills. My Goodwill. My Support. My Cash. And My Creativity.

The mind fuck has always been in the wash-up. On a number of occasions over recent years, the actuality of an experience has been devastated as a direct result of the actions of almost impossibly selfish and self-interested people. Their power over me has always been what they offer(ed): knowledge, experience, adventure, achievement, excitement, a contribution to our society and our culture, validation ... and the payment of a modest invoice at the end of it all. Or not.

Over the past two years I have walked away from a number of experiences completely fucked over. Ruthlessly and rigorously bruised. Insulted. Offended. And almost broke. There has been the kindness of near-perfect strangers who have helped me up and set me right. They, too, will get theirs.

Am I bitter? Quite possibly ... I will let you be the judge. But in the meantime ... there's a couple of stories I would like to share with you.

The power of ...

One. After. Another.

They are the minute breathes of personified or objectified real creative thought ... the pulses and impulses littering the soundscape. They are pollution, clarity, obscurity and mystery – as much as they are confounding, confronting, instructionist and obligatory. They are history, present and future. They are gifts and they are returns. They are the wrong size and the wrong colour. They are inappropriate, hateful, racist, sexist and politically opportunistic.

They are doors or windows slamming shut and shattering glass. And silence. Or both.

They are wind, rain, fire and dancing. They are laughter and tears, resolve and dispute, common and uncommon ... they are the sun, the moon, the planets and they are the way we know how to get there – and what it looks like and feels like when we do.

They are coming home. And leaving again.

They are a look. A sound. A scent.

They are fear, apprehension, joy and derision.

They are life and they are death.

They are what it looks like and feels like.

They are what it tastes like. What it's made of. What colour it is ... how long it takes ... where it happens, why it happens, how it happens, who knows it's happening, happened, about to happen.

They are where they are and with whom. They are why. When. How.

They are what if, what was, what might be, what could be, should be and they are what can never be.

Maybe. Maybe not.

They are characterful and characterless. They are charming and abusive, seductive and repulsive. They find themselves aligned in long-winded paragraphs of exposition and they also find themselves ejaculated into being within short sharp rounds of gun fire or argument. They argue and forgive. They expect and they resist creating expectations. They are barren and furtile. They hate and they love, cloud and clear, close and near, rain, sleet, snow and desert.

They eat and regurgitate, skate, ski and turn keys – opening locked doors, chests, firing engines of cars, motorbikes and triggering deadlocks. And guns.

They are safe and unsafe. They arouse and ignore, they save and they fail. They shoot to kill and they run for their lives. They explore and explode. They walk, ride and ramble.

They fly ... and they hurtle toward the ground. Crashing and burning. They start fires and cheat death by seconds. Or not.

They burn buildings, capsize ocean liners and pluck rotten fruit from the desiccated earth. They exercise and exorcise. They have faith, a little or none. They believe in everything, something or nothing.

They are more than the sounds that come out of Actors' mouths. They are everything we see, hear, feel, experience, understand, misunderstand, loathe, love, admire and detest about the world of sound and vision on screen. Any screen. Any poster. Any trailer. Anywhere.

I, for one, won't miss The Golden Globe Awards this year. The worth of one is the value of many.

Reincarnation

Happy New Year!

It's been too long since I paid my blog any attention. Since September of last year, I have looked at it every now and then ... and on one occasion when sleep was my worst enemy, I read it all from start to finish. It helped me consider the constants of my life (apart from my cigarettes) ... and it made me realise that there is much to be said for living an interesting life – free from traps (of ours or anothers making). It also made me consider a myriad of experiences I am yet to write about ... and it made me wonder whether I should. Or can.

Distracted by the pressures associated with keeping my little communications company afloat, I have begun to neglect the stories of my past. I think I have done this because documenting the experiences of my past has served to highlight the inadequacies of my present ... and the undercurrent of doom that bubbles away below that vision I have of my future. And the future of others.

I haven't made any New Year's Resolutions this year. I have floated peacefully and without expectations into 2008. I have enjoyed conversation, contemplation and watching the cricket on the TV. I've slept and relaxed and caught up with special friends ... people for whom 2008 holds a promise of travel, adventure and debt-reduction.

There are many common tones and higlights in the colours of my life when I compare them to the colours of the lives of some of my friends – and it's time to consider a colour revolution. Something other than pink.

What colours will your 2008 consist of?

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.

Careful, it might not be about you

I had a telephone call from a very concerned friend tonight ... someone who thought I was being more than a little indiscreet writing about their relationship. The funny thing, from my point of view in any case, was that they had not even entered my mind when I was writing about the kinds of dysfunctional relationships others have in their lives.

It reminded me of a friend who asked me out to lunch when the relationship I was referring to with, let's call him W, was in its death-throes. I said I would see what W was doing (as one of a couple almost annoyingly does when you invite them to do something), and she said that the invitation to lunch was not actually being extended to him ... but to me and only me. My friend was not interested in having lunch with my boyfriend and I. He, I assumed, was to be the topic of conversation.

And I was right. My friend, let's call her B, had decided to cross the invisible line in the sand we all negotiate in our relationships with our friends. What right do we have to express an opinion about how healthy or otherwise we believe our loved ones' relationships to be? How can we be sure we know what we're talking about? After all, the only two people who 'live' a relationship are the ones who spend the majority of time together in it. Aren't they?

So what are we do with the uneasy feelings and observations we have about the lives of others who are dear to us? B decided it was time to tell me how uneasy she felt about my relationship. She felt that it was changing me in a negative way and that I had become unhealthily obsessed with keeping the relationship going, even though it was apparently obvious to everyone but me that it was doomed. The lunch was awkward and I remember defending my relationship, not only to her but to myself as well. The lunch achieved several things - one of which was for me to return to our home and reinvest ... in some kind of wonderfully noble attempt to prove her wrong. She wasn't 'wrong', of course. She was actually articulating something that I feared myself ... and for that reason, it changed our friendship forever.

****

Some years later I took the same risk with a very, very dear friend. I had information about her partner that made me feel incredibly uneasy. Our 'dinner' turned into her terrible, tearful flight from me. Years later, the honesty of my perception of the flaw in her relationship and the increased toll the dilemma was to take on her life were both acknowledged. It certainly didn't make me feel any better about having been the harbinger of doom ... but it did make me realise that we occasionally rely on our friends to tell us when we're dancing with the potential for great sadness and disillusionment. We also risk a significantly more sinister betrayal: that moment when a friend asks "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" or "Why didn't anyone warn me?" ... or "say something".

One of my friends who had actually fucked my boyfriend (with his partner ... yes, two of them at the same time) took it upon himself to confess their indiscretion to me. I was, strangely, extremely grateful for his honesty. I remember the wall building itself around my heart as he spoke.

Trust is loaded. Perhaps I don't trust easily. Perhaps I don't trust at all. Not even myself.

But that is another story.

Evolutionarily speaking

How do we evolve? Not as a species ... but as individuals? ... and how do we measure the extent to which we have evolved? If, in fact, we have. Or ever do. The habits of our lives are fascinating paradigms - within and without which, we know and sometimes observe ourselves. Living. Or not living. Existing. Or subsisting.

I am preparing myself for a major change in the habit of my life. My collision with the concept of mortality was extremely interesting. Punishing, in fact. I bought myself a little spiral notepad to write down all the aspects of my life that I want to examine in more detail ... and possibly change. Or not. The important thing is that I am going to rigorously interrogate every aspect of my life and its value (or lack of value) to me.

The first topic, interestingly enough, is the lack of a relationship in my life. Love. Skin-tingling intimacy ... and a perpetual state of arousal. Days in bed fucking. Kissing. Touching. Wanting for nothing ... except maybe the possibility to disappear further into each other than is biologically possible.

I started with this topic because it is the one by which most people judge me most harshly. Apparently, because I am a single man, I am "lonely" ... "sad and lonely" ... "bitter" ... "fat, sad, lonely and bitter" ... "lacking in self-esteem" ... chronically. But other people's judgment of me is almost entirely lame conceit in the face of the extent to which I am capable of judging myself. And have been, mercilessly, for a number of years.

Now it is time to change a few things.

*****

I had a boyfriend once. He lived in Elsternwick and I lived in Balaclava. We met at a gay men's sauna. We fucked all night. And exchanged telephone numbers. I remember the beginning of this relationship as though it were yesterday. He, or I, would call ... and then we would both leave our homes at the same time and meet on Hotham Street. We would practically race the final few hundred metres of this hallowed turf towards each other. When I could be sure it was him walking toward me, my heart would skip a beat. A smile so wide and so wondrous would form of its own free will on my lips. In the distance, his body would change shape. As would mine. He would start running ... so would I. My visions of our embrace, our intimacy and our sex would force tempo changes in my pace and direction like nothing else ever could. Or ever has. I would find myself opening my arms to him ... collecting him, embracing him ... sweeping him and all his wonderful huggable, kissable, edible and almost impossibly desirable energy into my arms. We would overflow with joy ... and at the time, I was strong enough to experience it. Trust it ... and believe in the honesty and fairness of it. We exchanged the energy of love and we were both much stronger for it. This feeling, more than anything, is the one I miss more than any other.

Of course we moved in together. Of course it was lovely ... as you would expect having as much of everything good about someone and something is lovely. Right? Complete. Yes?

Over the years we share a beautiful apartment on Brighton Road, go on holidays together and bury his older brother. We would also acknowledge the anniversary of the death of his younger brother who had died before I had come onto the scene. He would mourn and I would hold him. He would lash out at the empty space around him and I would manage to fill some of it ... when appropriate, and nurse him into a sobbing almost-stillness. And eventually peace and silence ... where the mutual lack of understanding about the depth and extent of his pain and my share of it succumbed to something of another world - altogether.

*****

I have always believed that relationships end the way they begin ... in fact, I guarantee it. The one thing I have observed about the end of relationships is that where they begin (in my case, a gay men's sauna) is where they will end. And one thing is certain ... they will end. I lost my boyfriend in the mist ... somewhere near, I have always imagined, where I had found him. One night, some weeks after our hideously acrimonious separation, he fronted up to a local pub where my friends and I were drinking and dancing. He professed undying love and remorse for his actions (fucking any of our mutual friends had been the final rule I had dared to make ... which he had, of course, broken). He was forcefully escorted out of the bar and on to the street (by a couple of my friends and the security staff) and warned to stay away from me. He did. And always has - ever since.

*****

Coming back to Melbourne has, in the way similar to that of a sudden breeze flipping the pages of your newspaper over as you read it, ensured that certain chapters of my development ... my evolution ... have been held up for cheery reminiscence. I have scooted past our old apartment building on a couple of occasions in taxis, cars and on trams. I, like I am sure most of us do, select the happy memories to consider first. Our balcony garden and our huge, real Christmas Tree. Our holidays to Broken Hill, Rutherglen and Millawa. The Alpaca Farm.

But ultimately it is the pain of betrayal and loss which slowly rises to the surface ... and it is my conscious and worthwhile choice to never offer so much of my self, my time, my energy, support and love to any one ever again. Except possibly myself. I know people who are bound in loveless knots masquerading as relationships. I see compromised potential and sense discomfort that makes my heart sad and my head spin with boredom generated by the relentless saga of their sadness and frustration. I see rules being made and broken ... and I see expectations fallen short of - well short of. I hear tension and sadness in their voices and their life rhythms are corrupted by futile attempts to accept what others of us refuse to even acknowledge - the consolation prize. I watch dark clouds, not of their making or intention, hover over too much laughter and delight. I watch them defending themselves from their fears of lonliness by barricading themselves behind a wall of toilet-paper feebleness - built of false hopes and unrealistic expectations. Lies, fantasies and delusions.

Aloneness ... and the incomparable joy of individual freedom is the thing I value more than anything in the world. I always have. And I always will. I have known love ... and it was life-changing. So is compromise, but for entirely different reasons. I, for one, would prefer to live without one than to have to suffer the other.

There is, after all, a world of difference between being lonely and being alone.

Image The evolution of man

Dag Pride

Today I was walking back to my office having bought my lunch and coffee. It was a beautiful Melbourne Autumn day. I glanced across Chapel Street because something - or should I say someone - caught my eye ...

Yes! One of my Sainters! Nick Riewoldt! In the flesh!

I walked into a bin and spilt my coffee everywhere. But the public humiliation was worth it. Sometimes I'm just so proud to be a Big Dag at heart.

Death's Door: Part 2

It's quite incredible the way you consider the presence and company of strangers who share nothing more with you than the foothpath when you believe that, at any minute, you may be gasping for air at their feet. Would they look the other way? Would they, by association, be too afraid to come to your aid? Would they know what to do? It's a strikingly theatrical and filmic concept. I recommend it.

My first thoughts are that there is every possibility that I am not going to make to Emergency. The sun is impossibly bright and my skin is coated in an almost icy layer of sweat. My left leg is numb, and my left foot drags ... causing me to stumble over my own toes. My mobile phone crashes to the ground and my wallet glides effortlessly a foot or two away. The vision of a fat poof sprawling chaotically over this trissy South Yarra side-street makes me laugh ... but it hurts to laugh.

A young girl walking in the same direction as me on the opposite side of the road pauses. Her instinct is obviously to be sure I intend to do her no harm. She glances, briefly, in my direction and then resumes the urgent rhythm of her own life ... as, I suspect, we all do when we have ascertained that the result of another's sudden erratic jolt in our discernible collective rhythms is a return to the status quo.

It's all about direction. My senses are incredibly finely attuned to the direction the people around me are heading. I am, at once, calculating both their distance from me and their proximity to each other. It is like I have just directed a scene in a film and all the carefully choreographed 'background action' is being run through before the first take ... when the star falls helplessly to the ground, clutching his bragging, thumping heart ... and being silenced by his humility in the face of a painful death.

On my knees, I collect my mobile and my wallet ... dragging them back to me like precious icons. My eyes hurt and water. My wallet falls from my hand because there is no sensation in the fingers of my hand. I watch it fall and bounce off my knee and onto the ground.

It feels as though someone is behind me, holding me ... their arms wrapped tightly around my chest. I flex the fingers of my right hand ... the tips of which are white. Like marble. Like playing the piano in mid-air. I reach out for my wallet again and slide it toward me. Gripping it tightly, I slide it up my leg and into my coat pocket. It's like sliding a brick along the ground with cotton wool.

I am alert enough to know that I should not make any strenuous movement ... like standing up. My heart is thumping. I slide my hand inside my jacket and place the palm of my hand over my heart. It's like someone is trying to wake the household up at 3am because they've lost their keys and can't get in.

I look down toward Chapel Street and see pedestrians. But they are no longer anonymous bodies and faces ... they are like the people who may come to my aid. Or not. But these particular people will have long passed by the time I get down there. They'll read about it in the newspaper, possibly. Or they'll hear the ambulance. Maybe they'll go into a shop and come out ten or fifteen minutes later and see the crowd gathered around my relieved and grateful barely breathing body. Maybe one of them will ask a shopkeeper for a blanket ...

They are not doctors or nurses these people. Nor are the people who are yet to arrive at ground zero. I imagine them fifteen minutes or so further up Chapel Street ... wandering aimlessly along the footpath without any knowledge of the extent to which the heart attack victim is about to really spice up their dinner table conversation tonight.

****

It's an almost impossibly intimate concept - dying. I'm 43 years old. I'm a poof. I've smoked since I was seventeen. I have a bad heart. I'm carrying too much extra weight. I don't exercise. I eat meat pies and chocolate for lunch - in that order. I love fried food and I drink coffee to Olympic Gold Medal haul standards every day. Of course I am not going to survive this!

****

I decide to try standing up. The circulation in my fingers has returned and my fingers now ache because I am clenching my wallet so tightly. Slowly, I stand ... and the pain in my chest gradually begins to subside. I can almost see it leaving. I lift my head ... higher than it has been for the past few hours. I slowly inhale ... deeper. The pain has a weaker grasp of my chest. No intention. No control. I dare to breathe ... inhaling ... carefully. I take a couple of cautious steps toward Chapel Street and then stop. The pain in my chest is gone. Not entirely ... but almost. Now, it feels like a ill-fitting jumper. Polyester. Tingling. Nylon. Tight.

I have so much work to do. My little creative agency is literally bursting at the seams. I have nineteen 'live' jobs and, for the first time in the life of my small business, so many of the processes associated with the success of a small business are in place. I love my little office. I have a whiteboard with no more room on it. There are three jobs waiting to be dispatched ... which means invoices ... which means paying bills - and tax - the square root of the delay I have enforced on my life for at least five years. Maybe more.

Since I have come back to Melbourne, I have learned more about how important the success of my little business is than I ever imagined. I do good work. Sometimes I do great work. And right now, I'm doing really good work. I have new clients that I can nurture into major ongoing workflow.

I am not going to drop. Not today.

****

I turn the corner into the street that runs parallel to Chapel Street. There's a car detailing place on the corner, littered with jobbers polishing BMWs and ridiculously big artless cartrucks. I decide to walk around the block and go back to work. I slowly increase the pace of my strides ... not pushing it, not showing off to myself. I am determined to get back to my office and continue to work. I have deadlines to meet. People are relying on me. I love it that they do ... almost as much as I love it that they can.

It would seem that I am going to spare My Strangers their little bit of death today.

****

By the time I get back to my office, the pain in my chest has entirely subsided. Just the occasional stab ... one or two teeth-clenching bursts. I imagine that when it finally does happen, like it is bound to, it will be so immensely painful that death will be the only relief.

But no more of a relief than the DO NOT RESUSCITATE card I now have in that pesky little wallet of mine.

Death's Door: Part 1

Last Thursday was one of the most interesting days of my life. No, truly. Fascinating. Confronting. Frightening. Over-whelming ... in fact, awe-inspiring.

I had spent the better part of the day at a press approval with my associate James. It had been a long and ultimately fruitless exercise. Never in the life of my small business have I been unable to approve a job on the press. On some occasions it has been necessary to slightly alter the balance of the inks ... but on this occasion, there were significant problems with the job and it was with considerable reluctance that I (un)happily agreed to compromise the considerable value of my eye for detail in defining flaws in a print job ... and let it go. The Press Manager guaranteed me that my little list of flaws would be corrected, but apparently I was not to see the fruit of this particular promise. To his credit (and perhaps mine as the Designer and Finished Artist) he rather humbly acknowledged that I had set them a complex and difficult task. I was challenging the press (and the people who operate it) to deliver a brochure of such technical superiority that it would be some hours before they were happy to press the 'Go' button on the job.

James dropped me back at my office and I sat down at my computer to look through a dazzling array of emails that had flooded my inbox in my absence.

The chest pain started almost immediately ... a clamping, cramping pain of such immense, polarising discomfort that I thought I was going to pass out where I sat. My computer monitor was suddenly blurry and I was almost completely thrown by the thin layer of persperation almost bubbling to the surface of my forearms, my chest and - somewhat unusually I thought, my neck. My breathing was short and shallow and the tips of my fingers were tingling. The immediate fear was brain-numbing ... and my first instinct was to lie down on the floor of my office and relax. Breathe. Relax. The usefulness of years and years of breathing classes (I trained to be an opera singer for a long time ... and an actor for longer) evaporated. Try as I may, I could not 'send my breath' any further into my body than the top of my lungs, which were now aching and contracting ... as if someone else was doing my breathing for me.

The temptation to yield to the panic was overcome by my immense proclavity for common sense. I knew I was in a danger zone because, since I was about ten, I have known that I have "a heart problem". An irregular heart-beat. A semi-blocked left ventricle - the ventricle (valve) which is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood from the heart on its journey through my body. I have never been able to over-exert myself physically ... and at the risk of being considered weak and ineffectual (two attributes I despise in people of my sexual inclination), I have always managed a show of strength.

But not on this occasion ... which, unlike previous 'chest pain dramas', was rendering me totally and utterly inert. And afraid for my life.

My breathing was becoming shallower and shallower ... to the point where I thought I was, shortly, not going to be able to inhale at all. I prised myself from the floor and, gripping the edge of my desk, dragged myself up from the floor (which had provided no respite whatsoever from the pain) and fell back into my chair.

I've heard and read many descriptions of an episode of chest pain ... and every one of them fled my mind and my consciousness with record-breaking speed and alacrity: "concrete slab" ... "knives" ... "squeezing the air out of me" ... "such immense pressure" ... "unable to control the depth of my breathing" ...

Hunched over like a man 20 years my senior, I walked up the corridor to the stairwell at the back of my office building and did what I always do when I feel stressed and out of my depth ... not to mention my comfort zone: I had a ciggie.

Well, the tiniest bit of a ciggie ... because inhaling was impossible. My lips and my mouth were willing, but my chest and my lungs were not. I gagged on the smoke and immediately stubbed the cigarette out in my full to over-flowing ashcan. I sat on my 'smoking step' and wondered if this, in fact, was going to be the end of my life. Laughingly, I thought first and foremost about the amount of work I have on at the moment. Deadlines for this job ... and that. Concepts and ideas to be submitted. "Typical!" I remember thinking. "Here I am ... as busy as I have ever been - and now I have to go and have a fucking heart attack!"

I was amazingly unsentimental. Fear of what was happening overrode every other mental capability. I immediately wondered who in the building I would ask (and want) to help me. I pondered how to ask ... when to ask ... and, rather innocuously, decided that if I was going to shit myself (as people apparently do when their bodies go into death-throes) whose life did I have the right to change to that extent? In whose arms and at whose feet was I going to writhe in pain. And cry. And beg.

It pained me to discover that there was no-one within my immediate surrounds who I could turn to. I was on my own. It's the way I like it.

I knew the extent of this pain - not to mention the time it had gone on for - was a bad sign. A very bad sign.

I staggered back to my office and closed the door. I sat in my chair and Goggled 'heart attack symptoms'. I devoured every syllable of every piece of information like a vulture ... at the same time, buying myself great swathes of relief in the realisation that even though I was in such complete agony, nothing else like what was being described was happening to me. There was no pain in my head or my arms. Yes, the pain was immense and uncomfortable, but it wasn't like what was being described on the two or three websites that trumpeted information about the possibility of my impending and immediate demise.

And then it hit me. A stab of sheer eye-watering and mouth-drying pain in my heart like I have never experienced. I groaned from the intensity of it ... and with one hand to my chest, I grabbed my keys, my wallet and my mobile phone and decided to walk the four or five blocks to the Alfred Hospital.

I considered my options for company and support as I left the office ... and as I shuffled, blindly bound with pain along the footpath outside our building on my way to Emergency ... I wondered who in the world I would chose to die in the arms of.

And to what I imagine will be my unending surprise, I decided I wanted that person to be A Complete Stranger.

Table manners

This is a fabulous image emailed to me from my friend Salli in the UK.

The photo was posted on ebay where this man was hoping to sell his dining setting. How do we know it's a man? Clue: the mirror on the wall.

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.

Vale Tammy Faye

Tamara "Tammy" Faye Messner.

March 7, 1942 – July 20, 2007.

Thank you Tammy. I loved every minute of it!