Could My Life Be Any More Perfect?

Serious question.

Could my life be any more perfect?

I can only think of 3 things that could make my life more perfect than it is (and isn't that a grammatically incorrect question given that perfect is an absolute term? isn't it?):

1. I win the lottery
2. I get Dracula on the West End to great critical and audience acclaim
3. I loose a tonne of weight

However, my thinking is this. If I won the lottery I could afford to put Dracula on the West End and loose weight (and Dracula is such a cool show that it's going to open to great critical acclaim anyway provided its done the way I want it to be... Xander accepts no responsibility for it being crap). OR if Dracula was on the West End I'd have enough money that I wouldn't need to win the lottery and probably wouldn't care that I'm fat right now.

Why is my life so perfect?

Well the new job is going really good and I have managed after lots of sums and investigation to get a travel ticket that is cheap but means I can be in at work at the time they need me. Secondly, my new working hours of 8:30am to 3:30am mean that I get home early which is nice. In the two days I have been here I have been offered lots of free tickets for things including a concert comprised of grannies between the ages of 72-90 singing songs that have emotional significance given their wrinkly old smelliness. Apparently this is very moving (in the non-zimmerframe enhanced way)... and I hasten to add, not at our theatre. Also got offered tickets for some other stuff.

On Friday I was delighted to see a performance of WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT, a school's show about Diwali. For school children, not by them. This show was intended for an audience of 7-11 year olds, but was viewed by an audience of between 5-7 year old children.

Now given that the story of Diwali (or Divali) is one of the most complex in terms of plot points and number of characters AND given the fact that this was performed by two girls with symbolic costuming, I am sure you will forgive me for understanding the story of this show as much as the 5 year olds. Personally I don't blame them either for not being able to discern between Ravana the 10 headed demon and Sita the beautiful princess. Although the difference was obvious; when the actress was playing Ravana a scarf was put around her shoulders to represent the large snake that evil Ravana has around his shoulders and when the actress was portraying Sita, a scarf was put around her shoulders to represent a scarf that Sita might wear... particularly if it got cold in Ancient India. By the way, it's pronounced "Seeeeetaaaaaaaaaaaaah" If the name doesn't last a minute, then you're not doing it right (these actors had obviously been trained very well).

Clearly not content with the originally epic story condensed into one hour, this theatre company decided that the story should be narrated by an additional 2 characters (again played by the two actors) and told retrospectively so that they could include lots of flashbacks and flashforwards. Never mind, a lot of fun was to be had with the audience participation.

ACTRESS 1: Hanuman, the monkey king and the monkey army need to cross the river to the island of Lanka. How do you think they could get across?

CHILD1: They could swim.

ACTRESS2: Well monkeys don't like to swim, you see they're a bit scared of water. They're really wimps

(but they are more than happy to take on a 10 headed lizzard demon, of course)

CHILD 2: They could build a bridge.

ACTRESS1: Yeah, what a brilliant idea. What could they build a bridge out of?

CHILD2: Trees

ACTRESS2: Well the monkeys need the trees to swing in, so they couldn't build a bridge

CHILD3: Wood

ACTRESS1: Well wood comes from trees and we've already said they couldn't use those because there would be no more left for the monkeys to swing in

CHILD4: Twigs

ACTRESS2: Yeah but..... No more trees stuff.

Friday marked the old anniversary with Gordon. 2 years and still going strong despite the stresses and strains of new jobs, being poor and conflicting schedules. We went out to a restaurant in Reading with some of Gordon's friends and then I fell asleep on the living room floor wrapped up in a duvet while they played the PS2 game, Buzz. It's a music quiz game with real buzzers. Guess the tune... you know, that kind of thing.

Sunday was a super cool day because I went to see on of my favourite West End singers, Julie Alanah Brighten perform in a cabaret at Lauderdale House. Everything was going well travel wise until trains got delayed and so on. This left us with 20 minutes to get to the damn place (which has the shittest sign posting on the planet). I get the impression that this place considers itself so exclusive that if you don't know where it is, they don't want you to find it. And it's at the top of a hill. So we get there with about 10 minutes to spare but low and behold this place is too exclusive for the riff raff that have credit or debit cards. Not having enough cash, Gordon gallantly took my debit card and raced to the nearest ATM... which was empty. So then ingeniously went to Tesco to buy some chewing gum (the spearmint kind) and get cashback. This Tesco's has decided not to do cashback.

My impression of this function as being, to use the technical term, artsy-wanky was compounded by being asked "So do you know Julie or Jonathan?" (the performers), to which I replied I knew Julie-ALANAH (get it right bitch) through a friend and she invited me through said friend. I think this got us in quite frankly, but I had been prepared to stamp my feet and say "Julie-alanah is expecting me!".

So Gordon returns getting all hot and sweaty and says he has enough money to buy one ticket. The ticket lady, then decides that we can both go in provided we send her a cheque through the mail. Real appropriate timing love, but none-the-less very kind. Blatently gay producer of cabaret practically licks the sweat off Gordon's face and we sit to enjoy... the WARM UP ACT.

Warm up act decides that every song, no matter what it's about (you know, love, horse racing, you friend dying from AIDS) requires a big cheesy grin in the middle of it. He sang The Rain Keeps Falling Down from ELEGIES, which is a show I've produced and quite like the songs from with said cheesy grin. Xander suspects this guy doesn't actually listen to what comes out of his mouth. Evidently doesn't listen to what comes out of the mouths of other people, like I don't know, lyricists. Although his performance of A Fine, Fine Line from AVENUE Q was good (like everything else he sang), he mixed up all the rhyming couplets.

Hostess, who has already sung her introduction to the cabaret closes his act by saying:

"He's quite dishy isn't he? Lock up your teenage daughters.... and... possibly sons."

Talking to someone I know (who wasn't at the performance) who knows Warm Up Act Guy, he's actually straight. Could have fooled me.

After the interval and Gordon and I discussing how this couldn't be more musical theatre if it tried, Julie-alanah was introduced. Julie-alanah sang some cool stuff including a song called There's Always Someone Cooler Than You. Anybody know who that's by? Some stuff from shows but a lot of older pop/rock stuff as well. All pretty good.

After the cabaret I got to meet her and introduced myself as the friend of one of her old teachers (old teacher told her I was a fan, she invited me to the cabaret). She was so kind to me and said she was so glad I could come and wanted to introduce me to all her acting school friends who are featured in a recording that old teacher (Andrew Lowe-Watson) asked if he could give me. We exchanged small talk while I tried to stop myself from saying anything too sketchy like "I've been to every single show you've done". She was so cool.

Dianne Pilkington (recently star of THE FAR PAVILIONS) is performing in one of the cabaret's in November which I am tempted by, but it will be no fun if I can't even remotely pretend that I was personally invited by her.

Last night was the DreamTheatre gig at the Hammersmith Apollo. I expected the standard to be better and for their material to be more varied. They are very talented players, but given that the gig was about their 20th anniversary, I did kinda pray that they don't produce another 20 years of music.

Don't Force Inspiration

One of the big debates in the creative world is to what extent artists (composers, painters, sculpter, writers etc) actually create their work, or whether they are merely the realisers of the work. Some artists have been known to say that inspiration doesn't come from them, it comes through them.

Now, I was never really sure which one of these believe. It might be arrogant, but I wasn't keen on the idea that my creations didn't come from within me; that they were somehow not my own. I didn't like the idea that I was some kind of channel or machine that recieved instructions from another reality of formed ideas that just blurted them out. I mean I've always had the feeling that music I wrote, even at a very, very basic level was either right or wrong. Does that mean that it wasn't me who was writing it all along?

The point of this lengthy introduction is really to brag about how great I feel right now. For so long I have tried to push things with my music, especially Dracula. Recently, with all this change of job stuff and moving in and letting Margaret (Books, Lyrics and drunken fun) get settled here in the UK. I've decided that rather than get frustrated about my lack of creative energy I'd just say "so what?". This has proved a really cool stand point to take. For a start you don't get frustrated that you're not doing anything and secondly it's a great feeling when things come right out of the blue.

This week I've just been coming up with some great material, or at least some material which is nice. Sometimes you think there is just no point in trying. This is one of the reasons I wouldn't want to be a full time composer where I had to force myself to have ideas for an approaching deadline. It really has come right out of the blue. I'd been struggling with some motif ideas for THE PERILIOUS GARD and all of a sudden quite a few hit me; this is after months of trying to force the issue.

I guess I can also help the whole process along by seeking out inspiration. I decided this week that as reading novels on my commute into work is a good way to pass the time, I would return to Dracula. I haven't read this book for a couple of years now, yet I'm supposed to be writing a show on it? Yeah, I know, it's long overdue. Just reading the first couple of chapters I was hit with a massive wave of melodic ideas, timbres and orchestral textures. It is the best creative move I've made for a very long time. It also helps in discussing the direction of the libretto with Margaret. If I'm not connected with the source material I really can't help with suggestions.

I just feel so great about writing at the moment.

This could be a reflection of life in general. Every day I feel more certain about my decision that taking this job was the right thing to do. My mission as their administration assistant became all the more clear when the letter of acceptance they sent me to sign listed a start date that was a week early. This caused major complications with the notice I'd given at my present job because I'd arranged to go on a broker visit to early next week. So I'm now starting my new employment on Thursday. I have worked out that I could work with them 5 days a week and not have another job IF they let me start at 11am. Travel is more than half price if I arrive in London after 10am. I'll discuss it with them and see at my contract meeting.

Money still seems to be a major concern but again I'm positive in that I've created a budget and a plan and well, if the worst comes to the worst I can always temp in Reading and put things on hold until I have more money. My Dad has give me a loan of £1000 along with a very kind note of support. Although my parents have always supported me in my artistic endevours, they were always nervous about me going into theatre and music, because it is such a difficult industry to suceed in. It was a real boost to know that my Dad was behind me and in a sense was putting his mouth where his money was.

It's my band concert tonight and I feel thoroughly in the zone for it. I'm not totally prepared for it as I haven't been to that many practises but some of the music is dooable and I took the music home for a practise this week which really helped as I was able to look at it on my own and actually hear myself play for once. I have my own copy of the music now which I can mark up. For some reason my head of section (aka Flutebitch) has problems playing with ANY markings on the page that aren't her own. Flutebitch and I are getting on better now after I let her play my piccolo. She was so easily bought. Although that probably makes me a flute whore. Oh well I'll live.

There Are Some Things Money Can't Buy, For Everything Else There's Money

Still in the realm of the vaguely scared considering the whole new job thing and the prospect of having even less money than I do now. The salary drop from £21.5K to £14.5K is pretty daunting, but hopefully it will be worth it. At least my new boss Claire promises it will be. Can’t wait to work with her. 2 weeks before I start and I can’t wait. Well I can and frankly I have to because I need the money from temping just to get me through. My Dad has offered me £1000 to cover my initial migration costs and I can pay him back whenever I like which is nice. Even so money is going to be tight and with that in mind I’m selling my piccolo (which I haven’t had that long) because I don’t need it right now and I can make a fortune selling it on EBAY. Sacrifices must be made for my career.

Meanwhile things with The Perilous Gard are much better. This is because the heroine, Kate has stopped being such a bitch and the people of the hill are teaching her how to stop be as cool as they are. The people of the hill are great. It’s opening some great dramatic possibilities especially when Kate and Christopher are reunited. This puts me in mind of a scene from THE WOMAN IN WHITE where Laura and Marion are reunited in the asylum. Andrew Lloyd Webber uses previous gorgeous theme from the song, All For Laura. Just gorgeous. It’s an alto flute solo as well, what more could you ask for?

Sorry for spoiling the entire show for you if you haven’t seen it already or you didn’t read the book.

Either way, kick ass dramatic moment; so powerful. Unfortunately the nature of Kate and Christopher’s relationship is different in that it builds after the reunion; they didn’t really know each other beforehand. Perhaps some cool drama might come from their later encounters. Having only read this novel once before I can’t remember the specifics but I don’t remember Kate being so annoying so it looks like the change is for the better. She does seem to undergo quite a Pygmalion transformation. I’m getting quite excited about doing some more work on this project. Hopefully, book writer and lyricist Grace will refresh my memory with a copy of her script for me to look at again.

DRACULA is proving to be cumbersome. I want to do lots of work on it but can’t right now. I think if I get a new AC adaptor for my new synth I’ll be enthused and want to do more but without decent instrument samples I can’t be bothered to write anything else. It is also difficult to write without having a firm libretto; which due to all the structural work we’re doing at the moment tends to change all the time. I’m worried that with my new job I’ll have less time to write, although as it will be only 4 days a week and it may take time to find a 1 day a week position, I think I’ll use my spare day to do some work on the score of the show, the website and do household chores.

I read an article on how to write a musical once that said, “Don’t whatever you do think about writing AND having a career in theatre. People who work in theatre have busy enough lives without trying to find the time to write it as well”. I can understand where this is coming from, but at the same time, doesn’t working in the industry give you a much better chance of understanding the genre, getting useful contacts and ultimately understanding what can work and what cannot work in theatre? I say yes it does. So there.

Not that I like talking about food, but this weekend I made a banging dinner party. I did canapés which were pumpkin and butternut squash puree on toasted ciabatta with lime segments. People didn’t seem to like these too much. Perhaps the puree was a little non-descript, or perhaps they didn’t want to eat too much. We then started with Delia Smith’s Tuscan White Bean Soup which was gorgeous followed by my own recipe of Roasted Chicken Breast on a bed of stir-fried English vegetables with a potato and sweet potato rosti. I then finished off the meal with another Delia recipe, Chocolate Truffle Torte. This pretty much had my friends (or rather Gordon’s friends… but I guess they are mine too) having a culinary orgasm. Plus we still have half left because it’s exceptionally rich and you only serve people tiny pieces. The evening was rounded off by making cocktail hour at my local bar, HA HA!. I think the bar tended got a bit pissed off as we ordered every cocktail jug on the menu over the 3 hour period. Seems as at the moment it’s really only my American friends/collaborators who read this, Delia is a british institution of home cooking who creates great recipes that put some professional restaurants to shame and makes it easy to do at the same time. Understandably lots of chefs hate her. The head chef at the hotel restaurant I worked at during my GCSEs and A-levels, The Rose and Crown, always used to say “Delia isn’t a chef, she’s a cook, she’s not a chef, she’s a cook”, the reasoning being that Delia never had to cook in a restaurant for lots of people. I’m not sure whether this is true or not because she does own a restaurant and a football team.

That left 3 chicken carcasses which only had the breast meat removed. Gordon stripped them off dividing the chicken into sandwich/salad meat and “needs to be cooked in something” meat for curries etc. I’m going to make chicken stock with the rest and perhaps use the rest of the pumpkin/butternut squash disaster to make a soup which might taste nice rather than just boring.

Really all I need now is for DRACULA to make the West End earning me a stack load of cash at the same time so I can buy a house in London and have lots of holidays and frankly my life will be utterly fabulous. When I graduated from Royal Holloway I was careful not to beat myself up about not having it all. The only thing missing was a theatre job. Now I’ve got it things are really good. I could do with more money, but I can’t put a price on this opportunity. What am I saying? This opportunity comes at £7K. Cheap at half the price, don’t you think?

Xander Stops Being A Wuss

Ok so I went with the job. Life is too short and I can be poor any time I want, but the window of opportunity for this job exists here and now. Learning how to better control my money would be a good learning experience and this will hopefully be worth being poor in the short run.

I came to the conclusion that I was really just scared of taking a big step and moving out of my comfort zone. It was a leap of faith I needed to take, but all the same quite a daunting one. Thank god for Microsoft Excel, those handy little forumlae saved the day.

Big Decisions = Big Pain.

To save long winded stories here is the copy of the e-mail I sent to my Dad....

• I have been offered a job at this theatre in London.
• I love the theatre and the people and the job.
• They say they can give me an education and experience in pretty much anything I’d like to learn/do as they are a small team and always need help including in things like stage management, marketing, box office, programming etc.
• It seems like a great development opportunity. They get tryouts of new tours and prospective productions and the theatre is committed to diversifying performances so deal with things like Chinese opera, Welsh ballet and more normal “bums on seats” things.
• They also have an associated college of performing arts with state of the art studios etc etc and work closely with them. The theatre is owned by London council and has been redeveloped as part of a ongoing regeneration. It reopened in December 2004 so everything is new.
• This seems like it would be a thorough grounding in pretty much all aspects of professional theatre and certainly not being just an office boy.
  
  BUT the money is very poor. To pay for my rent and all my bills (including food, travel) I’d only have £50 left at the end of a month.
  
  I have conveyed this to them and we have discussed the possibility of:
  
  
• Flexible working hours to avoid commuter peak travel charges
• Weekend work (to avoid travel or in addition for extra cash)
• Possibility of taking on spare shifts doing front of house or at the box office to earn extra money
  
  I am also thinking about perhaps supplementing with a Saturday job to get some extra money for things like social life, clothes and so on.
  
  Anyway, I just wanted your opinion. In my heart I really want the job because it would be great and such an opportunity to develop BUT it would mean being very poor for a while. In the long term I’d be looking only to do this for up to 2 years and then just move on to something with more money.
  
  They are going to get back to me about if they could offer me something extra but I just wondered what you think I should do.

In the end they got back to me and offered to make it 4 days a week to save on travel and give me the opportunity of doing something else one day a week. Who would hire me one day a week? Unfortunately they couldn't up the salary and while they could offer some box office work over Christmas, it wouldn't be much.

My parents say I should pretty much take this and review at 3 and 6 months, leaving if it's too difficult to make ends meet. It would mean having no money to buy anything like clothes or go out with friends etc.

Tried to ring kindred theatre spirit Margaret but sounds like she was busy playing with naked drunk rugby boys. She'd understand.

Answers on a post card then. I have to give them an answer in under 1 hour.

Plodding Along

I really have nothing to report over the last couple of days. Nothing music related anyway as I haven't had the time to do any composition work at all.

At the moment I'm back in Chesterfield, home of the wonky spired church. According to a sample of Chesterfield taxi drivers, there are two emerging theories about the history of the wonky spire:

1) The spire is an artistic representation of the local government; in that it is crooked
2) When the spire was first built it was constructed with wood that was wet, when the wood dried it warped the shape of the spire.

I'll leave it to you to decide which one you believe. Either way being in Chesterfield is super fun. Or at least it would be if I wasn't drowning in the realisation that I am so far away from home and what appears to be civilisation. I mean these people don't even get Channel 5. Not that I particularly like Channel 5 or that my definition of civilisation is seriously based on the number of TV channels my hotel has at my disposal BUT when you are stuck in a hotel room with nothing to do, your choice of TV becomes particularly important.

Now yes, I could have read another exciting installment of The Perilous Gard by the lack of inspiration is starting to piss me off just as much as the heroine does. Seriously who does distance = speed / time calculations to try and work out where someone is being held captive? Sure she's a clever, plucky thing but quite frankly she should stop being a smart arse. Scrub that floor bitch. She's so ungrateful. The people of the hill give her some bangin new threads and offer her free narcotics and all she's trying to do is run away. I say she should stop being such a snob and become best mates with her fellow hill homies like Betty and love the drugs. It would make my life and hell of a lot more easier. Can't wait to ditch the novel along with the illustrations which make Kate look like an absolute minger and go with Grace's script as well as immerse myself in the collected works of Steeleye Span. Also looking forward to looking up some of the music of Ronan Hardiman (who wrote the score for LORD OF THE DANCE) and of course Bill Whelan (who wrote RIVERDANCE). While these composers stick to Irish music I feel I can learn something about presenting traditional music in a modern theatrical medium from them. Plus their music is so cool.

I also had the inspiration of looking more closely as Karl Jenkin's work. He's the guy who writes that Adiemus stuff. It's totally in a world of it's own and I just love his use of timbre, motif and orchestrations. He is one of the best and I believe it's a sound that would completely work with THE PERILOUS GARD.

Shouldn't I be thinking more about DRACULA? Well yes probably, but as most of the material that I need to write has been written I'm really waiting on Margaret to shove a finished draft of the script my way. We're going through it steadily bit by bit when Margaret isn't conking out at 11:30pm after appearing to have been sick many times from too much alcohol. She swears blind she wasn't though. Either way, progress on that front is slow but we'll get there. According to Margaret's blog I give her a complex when she's around me turning her into a nervous wreck. I don't know the source of this complex, but I am not sure that it is particularly condusive to a working relationship. the quote of the evening was....

(noticing Margaret sway from side to side gently)

Xander: We're really NOT going to get much more done on this are we?
Margaret: No, but that's good cos I would rather we were friends first and then a writing
relationship came from that than the other way round.
Xander: (smiles and nods)

So kids there you have it, you have to be friends to have a writing relationship. So expect considerable down time while Margaret and I strengthen our friendship before writing more kick-ass musical theatre. However, given Margaret's later completely shocking behaviour, made all the more shocking by her constant admissions of "I'm so going to regret this in the morning", I was left with the distinct impression that some of the conversations we had that night could ONLY have taken place between friends.

Do writers have to be friends to work well together? Not sure. On one hand it's important that you can say anything to your collaborator and being good friends makes that possible. However, when someone is your friend you can't tell them that something isn't working as easily as you can when you have a more objective relationship. It is also difficult with friends to talk about work with a glass of wine without the conversation being sidetracked onto who has been with the "biggest guy".... and believe me, we weren't talking about stock portfolios.

Friendship has been a big issue in my life recently having had a difficult time with a friend of mine who is all "I need to have a relationship with someone, not a friendship" and who blows hot and cold with how he feels about our friendship basically because he's worried he'd invest too much etc etc. This person has some real issues and I can't be bothered sometimes, but at the same time I know we could be really good mates. I loose patience with people especially when it reinforces the idea that you can't possibly be in a relationship AND have friends at the same time.

In other news the conductor the wind band I play in has resigned. This was a week after he said he'd direct the band for another year. This is also 3 weeks before a major concert. Given his speech at the AGM the week before, it was clear as a new member that this guy is a serious drama queen. Not only does this man appear to be a proper little gay (about 37, single, fake tan, gold chain, tight shirts, camp demeanor) but has some real issues about bitching ("Say it to my face").

The main problem is that this guy feels he cannot reconcile the band having fun and the band being good for a concert. The atmosphere in rehearsals was often tense and he tended to pick on people and wasn't able to encourage. Saying things like "Well let's do this piece, it's not like we're getting anywhere with it" doesn't really make people feel good about giving up 2 hours of their Friday night up after a 50 hour week and paying to do so at the same time. Good riddens I say. As a new committee member, I am party to all the hot gossip and bitching (you see I don't have problem with it) and can't wait to get a great reputation as the young upstart. That's if I can stay awake at the moment.

Interview on Thursday for the Broadway Theatre, Barking. Isn't it a cool theatre? Fingers crossed I will ace it and my race to stardom will finally have got off the ground.

Xander Can't Do The Maths

Margaret + Bottle and a half of wine = oh dear.