Categories
art

6am

 

The day started out well enough.  Happy, creative and calm.  Then, after a nasty conversation with the bank, an unrewarding chat with my lawyer and a scary call from my doctor I was hit with a wave of resentment and fear so overwhelming and debilitating I was sent into a paroxysm of fury.

Before I knew it I had written a whole blog about Jake, more revealing than anything I had written before.  More detail, names etc.

I am not going to post it.

I just want to forget about him.  I just want him out of my fucking head.

I rue the days he contacted me.  Lied to me.  Slept with me.  Text me.  Traveled with me.  Relied on me.  Lent on me.  Loved me.

A tsunami of emotion that, THANK GOD!…this morning has subsided.

I cried with joy for the release of the Chilean miners.

There was an interesting piece in the NY Times.  The journalist was amazed that none of the miners were prescribed antidepressants but wanted cigarettes instead.    It says a great deal about how deluded Americans are when it comes to the insidious use of these terrible pills.

Alberto Iturra, a psychologist who worked with the miners, talked to them, sometimes several times a day, to sort through their frustrations and depression.  After first sending down nicotine patches, officials later sent down cigarettes to the miners, most of whom were smokers.  Still, Dr. Iturra said that doctors never ended up sending down medication for depression.

So,  late afternoon, Ashley dragged me out of the house to the Getty to see A Conversation with Frederic Tuten and Steve Martin.   I pulled on some old Helmet Lang black pants that now fit me once again.  I have lost so much weight.  I wanted to wear an old tweed suit but I couldn’t find the pants.

I’m not really familiar with Tuten’s work (I knew vaguely about his Lichtenstein connection)  although after I met him I realized, or rather we realized that we had met before many years ago with Freddy Hughes.  They both read excerpts from their respective books.  Tuten’s by far the more interesting although I am going to read Martin’s first as he has written a fictionalized account of the era I was most connected to the art world.

There was a lively and entertaining discussion after they had both read.  The moderator was really bad.  TERRIBLE.  Thankfully these two men were more than capable of entertaining a huge football stadium with amusing anecdotes and bon mot without the intervention of a  moderator.

After the Q&A we all ate a rather delicious dinner together.

Ed Moses, nice to see him.

Ironically the passage that Steve read from his book was a fictionalized description of Art Collector Eugenio Lopez’s house and dinner party.  Eugenio’s name in the book becomes Flores rather that Lopez.   Details included: Eugenio’s legendary lateness for his own events.  The art.  The meticulous renovation of that amazing house.  Christian, the house boy/assistant who lives with Eugenio, was described as wearing black leather.

“Do you think he’ll appreciate the description of his house?”  Steve asked.

“The house yes, the house boy no..”  I replied.

“Oh..”  Steve’s eyes widened.  “Black leather?”

Saw Bettina Kourek who had organized the event and Jonathon from Lead Apron.  Amongst other saw Kevin West and his new boyfriend a psychologist called Justin.  Very sweet couple.  It was good to see Kevin.  He is the West Coast editor of W.

We arrived home to two very excited pups.  I brought them both a huge plate of Kobi beef that was going to be thrown out after the event.  The little dog was THRILLED.

Categories
art

Drawing

Did you know that I used to be a fashion illustrator?  I found these images..I will post them as and when I post new blog entries…

Really enjoying my free head.  Really loving being free from the shackles of obsessive love.  Really talented.

Willy, the new dog, has found the hat we wore in France and is eating it.

Today I am working more on the treatment.  JA got back to me late last night..loving the idea.   This is a keeper.

It’s 8am and Ashley and I are sitting together working on our respective projects.  It’s like being at Film School all over again.  Except, of course, we are in the thick of it.  Hollywood I mean.

Anyway, must get on.  Have a lovely day my darling blog readers.

I keep adding more as I find them.  Some of these are really beautiful.

Ok, these will be the last for today.

Categories
art

Treatment

Today I wrote the first outline of the treatment.

The film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between the GREAT IDEA and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture.  The first step to making what will be my 6th low-budget feature.

It flowed, as I thought it might, with considerable ease.  I called Charlie and discussed it with him, he gave great notes.  He just has that sort of brain.

Why did I call Charlie?  Because I want him to pay for it.  I then sent the outline to JA.  Why did I send it to JA?  Because between us there isn’t anyone anywhere who makes or is in some small way involved with or finances or post produces film who we can’t get to.

He will get back to me when he has time.

Now, that is the first great lesson when you start the process of making a film..patience.  You must have PATIENCE.  There are rarely, at this stage, immediate responses.  In fact, as you will see, the long wait is what the film maker is forced to accept again and again…things happen in God’s time rather than yours.

If you are in any way impatient…well..forget being a film maker.

The other great fact about low-budget film making:  NOBODY WANTS TO MAKE YOUR FILM.  So, you may as well get used to people saying NO from day one.  If you are in any way sensitive to the word ‘no’ then film making is not going to be a game you will ever enjoy.  Yet, saying that, I always advise any film maker to never accept no for an answer.  Somebody, somewhere will eventually say yes.

Be tenacious!

Derek Jarman taught me that.  He said, “Never take no for an answer Duncan.”

Within a few hours of deciding to make my movie I made a classic error:  I told a far more established writer at my therapy group my great idea.  BAD MOVE.  Keep good ideas to your chest!  This particular writer knows what a vindictive freak I can be so he better keep his mouth shut.

Still, I fretted all day about it.

Making a gay film for a gay audience.  A niche film?  In many ways this will be the most commercial of any of the films I have ever written.

It deals with: Big Ideas! and Universal Truths!

I am comfortable making niche films.  I know my audience, I know the business model and I enjoy trolling around the gay film festival circuit when the film is made.

You will be pleased to hear that this film will not be about Jake!  Although, that particular story would indeed make a great film…closeted lieing homo meets TV Reality Star and regrets it..deeply.  I just can’t be bothered.

YOU make that film.

Needless to say I am excited about starting this process and knowing me it will one day be a movie.  Now, that’s a word  I rarely use…excited.

Everyday, in some way, do something that will make your film a reality.

Yesterday went to Sharon’s birthday party.  Took a fine piece of art out of my collection and gave it to her.  Hope she appreciates it.  She can always give it back.

Days and nights filling up with fascination and intrigue.  I may indeed give sperm this week to my friend who wants a baby.

Categories
Hollywood

New Beginnings/Happy Endings

I sometimes wonder if it is me or the planets that determine my relationship with the world?

With Venus in retrograde (huh?) I have a lightened spirit today.

Actually, regardless of the orbiting planets, nothing has really changed other than the volume of the conspiring demons in my head.

Let’s do a little inventory.

Firstly, having Ashley living at the house makes everything more fun.  The truth is if she can get to me with coffee and fags before I write my blog the whole tenor of this blog changes significantly.  I tend not to dwell on Jake for instance….who ever that (Jake) is…so much time has passed since we communicated I am just left with a few shards of unresolved resentments and a few hundred pictures of him in various states of undress.

What the hell were we doing together?  Two desperate renegades or two men who had a genuine connection that I should learn to honor?  If I compare him to the men I meet now, have met..then the attraction is obvious!  I loved his pickled brain, his logic, I was even attracted to the shadow in which he lived as it heightened the emotional chiaroscuro.

I hope I get to the point when I can think about him fondly, not skip over the many, many pictures of him in my photo library, not endlessly relive the betrayal,  get some perspective….some forgiveness.  What am I writing?  Have I forgiven him?

Today I absolve you Mr. B.  Just for today.

So, what forced me out of the hideous funk?

Getting out of the house sure does help.

Yesterday,  JA arrived after the therapy group that we were meant to go to together but I haven’t been to for some time.  We drove to PC Greens and bought a delicious lunch.  I saw Sarah.  We hugged.  I cooked two steaks on the grill and tossed organic vine tomatoes and spinach together with a salty vinaigrette.  We sat on the terrace overlooking the sea and ate it.

I have this idea for a film.  The sort of idea that I know will end up on the screen.  I may not write it myself or even direct it but I sure am going to be its midwife.

I tentatively discussed the idea with JA.  He loved it!

So, after we talked it through I offered to write the treatment and finish it by the end of the week.  A little research..but mostly it’s there in my fingers waiting to be written.

I spent a little time on a gay hook up site and arranged to meet a particularly attractive young man in West H’wood.  We shall call him Manhunt date No. 8.  JA also invited friends.  One of his friends turned out to be a small, timid, New York Jew.   29-years-old.   Talent agent.  Very intelligent.  SOUND FAMILIAR?  I laughed at how God plays games with the heart.  I was very nice to the NYC Jewish guy and knew that had I not gone through what I had just so recently been through I might have gotten further involved.

After all..a good brain is worth a thousand abs.

No.

My hook-up arrived, tall, willowy, perfect face and body..lovely demeanor.   The attraction was mutual and before very long we were headed toward Malibu.  I invited him home on the understanding that I did not want to have sex but after a few hours asleep I woke up feeling like breaking that particular promise.  The problem is: the passion that Jake and I shared in the bedroom/forest/shower does not transfer easily to another.   Our passion was based on knowing each other.  A magnetic attraction.  A profound level of connection.

Sexually, I am very aggressive.  I am not interested in being taken.  Never have been.  I know what I wanted at dawn but I also knew what I was doing: bringing the passion I shared with Jake into another bedroom…it simply does not work.

By the time Ashley brewed the coffee this morning the beautiful stranger was gone.  Will I see him again?  No idea.  Up to him really.

Birthday party today.  I WILL go.  Eli Roth etc.  Maybe fun.

Of course I am thinking about the treacherously intelligent agent.  Funny little man.

I did not hear back from my old love yesterday.  He is in Vegas so probably very busy.  I would adore to see him but strangely just having a brief chat on the phone gave me confidence that there is always closure however long it takes.

Then, when the resentments have been laid to rest, only love remains.

I have a treatment to write.  Let’s see if I can write the diary of a film getting made with the same verve as I have Jake these past nine months?

A film getting made rather than a doomed love affair?  I don’t doubt that some of you will be interested in this process but not nearly so much as you were in my imploding relationship.

Everybody loves a train wreck..

Categories
Dogs Malibu Rant

Old Friend

Billy Childish Painting

A very old friend returned my call yesterday.  I had no idea that he was here in California and not in London.  It really lifted my spirits.  I could stop writing right there.  My spirits are lifted.  At peace.  The comfort of listening to the voice of a man who had known me and loved me through thick and thin.  I am greedy to hear him again.  He is within 100 miles of me.  I need to see him.  I need to spend time with him.

I was so unwilling to let him love me when we were together.  My loss.

When are we ready to accept love?  I wasn’t ready to accept love for very many years.  I did not understand how love between men worked.  It terrified and confused me.  My old friend loved me very much but I didn’t know what that meant.  I suppose that Jake must have felt the same way.  My loving him was confusing and scary.  How do men love each other?   How do I say I love you to another man?

When I have fallen in love with women the very act of saying I love you is said with ease, after all..every song on the radio, every poem about romantic love seems written about the love that exists between men and women.

When Elton or George Michael sang about love and disguised that they were singing about men I felt betrayed.  Tell me what it feels like to fall in love with another man.  To lose them.  To reflect on that separation.  Sing that song.  Read that poem.

No wonder our popular culture has sunk into a world of miserable hook ups.

I met someone else from off-line.  He brought me toys for the dogs.  This morning the cow and the bear lay abandoned on the carpet.

Like children have been playing here.

Eric popped by.   Other people came in the morning.  I was grumpy because my leg hurt.  Had massage which seemed to help.  Realised that I have not been touched with any kindness since Jake.  To be touched.  When my Mother stayed I offered to get her a massage but she balked.  She said that she didn’t like the idea of a stranger touching her.

Eric asked how I was doing.  How am I dealing with the Jake thing?  Well, I think about him occasionally..when the masseur was working on my back.  Thoughts shifting between loving and loathing.  I allowed him into my very soul.  It’s hard to wash away this particular stain.

So, when the old friend called, my old love..it reminded me that we can all heal. We heal, that time is the greatest distance between two people. That one day no vestige of him will remain.

I thought about Jake when the man arrived bearing gifts.  That he would have had sex with the man but I could not.  Part of me wanted to prove that I could.  I wanted to leap on him and do what was expected of me but I could not.  I simply can’t have sex with strangers.  I can’t.  To know someone is my aim.   He stayed for a couple of hours chatting and by the time he was about to leave I felt that in some small way I knew him.  The very act of leaving made him attractive to me.

Everything seems ruined by Jake.  The joy, the enthusiasm, the monumental optimism that I used to begin my day.

After Eric left I watched make-over shows and cooking competitions.  I did not go out and meet friends as I had agreed.  Every night this week there have been invitations.  Every single night.  I could have hobbled out last night but I did not…favouring this perfect isolation.

I am going to hang pictures.  One picture that has stubbornly refused to find a place to hang.

Late night call from another addict..struggling with his life.   I am so glad he called.  It gave purpose to another day.

Of all the men I have loved I seldom see any of them.  To hear the voice of my old love within 100 miles of where I am…well…it is possible to forgive.  To love and be loved by those you never thought you would love again.  It is possible.  I know it.

As for my tiny black maggot? I can’t leave here until I know that everything is OK.  I don’t want to lose everything.  I need to go home.  I need to get this sorted but I just can’t until I know that nothing is going to go wrong here.

Categories
Health

Isolating Can be Fun!

Woke up too late for therapy.  Haven’t been for days.  As my leg heals and I begin to face the onslaught I feel myself edge toward isolation once again.   A perfect prison.  This house is so beautiful..why leave?

Isolation: the great and enduring refuge of the addict/alcoholic.

I have a bunch of Billy Childish paintings that I am going to sell, apparently there is now a market for them.  I am limping through this economic disaster like so many people.  I have paintings for sale in two major auctions this winter.

I’ll get by.  Just like all the rest.

The economic situation will not kill me.  My balls may.

Jennifer popped by yesterday as I lay on the couch with my leg elevated wrapped alternately in ice and thick socks.   This morning it feels a whole heap better but I don’t want to test it by jogging down the hill now do I?

Everything in the valley is green once again after the heavy rain.  It takes no time at all for nature to change its clothes.  It’s going to take a few weeks to dry out over here in Malibu.  Now, now that it’s California Autumn.  My deck is still damp.  As Jen pointed out within one week we have had a 50 degree temperature slide.  This time last week it was 110 degrees.  I always think about the firemen when it rains heavily.  Just how happy they must be.  Perhaps we have escaped the fires once again this year..yet..as the rain falls the fuel grows around me for the next big fire.

Watching home buying/selling/renovating shows on TV.  Houses back East are OK.  The further West, the worse the interiors.  Until you get to LA: The Land That Taste Forgot.  I watch one show after another..unless the houses/people are too ghastly then I look at the food network.  Chefs battling with each other to win thousands of dollars.  Chefs as gladiators.

Funny.

I have no interest watching anything even vaguely dramatic.  I dip into TV drama occasionally but the acting is stilted.  The stories are dull.  The lighting, more often than not, too dark and moody.   Less light seems to equal serious to the average director/DP.

The dogs are totally bored.

Ashley and Aaron took Willie out yesterday but The Lil Dog refuses to leave my side.

They have stopped grading the Rambla Pacifico road repair.  There is some small legal issue that they need to solve.  It depresses me when I can’t see them working down there.  Rapunzel up here needs that fucking road finished.

I must admit that I spend more and more time looking at unsavoury, addictive web sites.  The less time I spend in therapy the more time I am at my computer screen..looking…wondering…thank GOD Ashley is downstairs.

Categories
art Malibu Rant

Sweet Thing

The rain has finally stopped pouring over the house and into the view.  The skies have cleared. The sun is shining.  The sea is glistening…etc.

Confined to my room with painfully torn ligaments.

Ashley has been running around fetching and carrying.

Sweet thing.

Paying gardeners, buying logs, feeding me pain pills.

This evening she and her friend Aaron Rose sat by the roaring fire whilst my blue eyed friend Bowdy entertained us with unusually funny impressions. When he started his ‘performance’ I was dreading that he was going to be terrible.  He was GREAT!

It’s incredibly unusual in LA to meet a young actor who can actually act.

Aaron is curating a street art show at MOCA.  Next week he is in Paris working with young artists.  A commercials director..apparently they make a ton of money.  Do I wish that I had the ability to make commercials?  Just talking about it, the prospect of it…made the inside of my mouth dry up.

With Ashley making busy around the house life is filling up again with unusual and interesting people.  She is such a doll.

We discussed these three words:  Nigger.  Cunt.  Faggot.  The impact each word has and the power we invest in them.  It was a fascinating conversation.  We felt really naughty talking about each of them…as if overheard we might be arrested or torn from our lives.  It felt subversive.

We were talking about the concentration camps and Aaron revealed that he didn’t know that the pink triangle, symbol of gay pride, originated there.  The pink triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify homosexual men, as well as those imprisoned for sexual offenses such as rape, bestiality, and pedophilia. Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle (often inverted from its Nazi usage)  is second in popularity within the gay community only to the rainbow flag.

Alan Davies the British comedian and I had a fight in the Neptune Pub, Whitstable twenty-five years ago when he started wearing the Pink Triangle to prove his solidarity with gays and lesbians.  The problem was,  he was homophobic towards me.  After a huge shouting match and a bitchy struggle he removed the pink triangle.

I have been reading my old blogs.  The ones written when I first arrived here in the USA.   Not only are they a very good read but life sure was full up with people places and things.  Of late (and more contemplative) the written journey has been internal rather than external.

Every day I get closer to my goal of exorcising the ghosts of past love.  Things are getting so much better.  Not so very long ago I didn’t think I could go anywhere that we had been together..not Paris nor New York or Whitstable.   I feared that just walking down the same street we had strolled would ruin it for me.  But, you know, that was the voice of shame whispering seductively in my ear.  The shame I felt about failing to keep him.  The shame of making bad choices in love.

I am better than that.  Paris is a big city.  I am a bigger man.

I sometimes wonder in whose arms he rests now?  Placating him.  Telling him the lies he needs to hear.  Is he happy?  I know in my heart, I know that he will never truly be happy.  He has made terrible mistakes and those mistakes may never be forgiven.  He will try to put it right but not for her.  He wants her to forgive him so he can feel better about himself.

He will be in perpetual torment until he truly understands a selfless apology. Equally, she needs to fully embrace the act of forgiveness.  Can she forgive him?  Eventually she will.  She has no option.

Living with hate or resentment in one’s heart can ruin your life.

Forgive him for being frail and flawed and weak and cowardly and for telling inexcusable lies?  Yes, we can do that.  Eventually.

We are connected forever.  A dance with death.  A marriage with the Devil.  There is something oddly Gothic about it.

I called the small claims court to have the date moved so I can go to London and deal with this bollocks stuff.  Directly to London.

Sooner or later Jake and I will face each other.  Whether it is in the court room or on the street he will pay what he owes me.  He would be such a fool not to.

We will bump into each other.  I know that scenario.  If he has worked properly on himself he will have undergone the change he so badly wanted.  He will be gay.  Not like when I first met him:  A gay man sheltering in the husk of a straight man’s life.  He will be true to his own nature, to the mannerisms and voice that he was so scared to reveal.  I began to see the occasional gay moment when we were in France, the twist of the mouth, the limp wrist, the effeminate draw on the cigarette.  All quite normal for a delicate, passive homosexual.  Endearing.

Like so many ‘straight acting’ gay men he is petrified of being seen to be gay.

He will be revealed.  He will find happiness.  I pray for it.

Categories
art Gay Health Malibu

Dreaming of Being Healed

As is things couldn’t get any worse I fell in the garden yesterday and ripped the tendons in the back of my right leg.

Thankfully Ashley was at home and wrapped me in ice.  I dare not go to the hospital because it will bankrupt me.  Now at home totally incapacitated.

Began to panic about getting back to the UK with one functioning leg and a dog.

Have to go via Paris again.  Not even directly to Paris but via NYC to go to court to get the money that Jake owes me.  This really stinks.   Everything conspiring to make life more difficult than it needs be.  It was such a silly thing to do.  How did I do it?  I tripped up the path and instantaneously I could feel the tendons detach.  Pop.  Oh God.

Ashley cooked dinner for us.  Her friend Emma arrived. They made steak and greek salad.  After all that meat we ate chocolate and drank hot tea.

It rained heavily all night.

The night.  Plagued with nightmares.  A kitten hidden in a chair.  Me as a child wandering into the road outside my Grandmother’s house in Herne Bay overlooked by my step-father.  Torrential leaks from the ceiling coursing unchecked through the house.

This year has been ghastly.  Made more so by Jake’s despicable antics.

Unthinking, callous, selfish.

I sometimes wonder how his parents put up with his lying shit?   Of course!  They love him unconditionally.

This leg situation is going to take at least a month to fix…more without treatment.

I wrote to Jake’s father asking him to persuade his son to just pay me the money.   We have a court date fixed now.  This is fucking bore.  He is holding onto me.  Refusing to let go of the final tendril.  The last vestige.  Let me go Jake.  Pay me the money so I can go to the UK and get on with my life.

I am sure that he feels the same way…we were perfectly synchronised.

The drawings are by Jennie.  She sent them yesterday.  Drew them when we were in rehab. They have a real Picasso feel about them.

Categories
Malibu

He Deserved It

Sunday, forgot to tell you,  chatted with Lady Rizo.  I love her so much.  The call lasted all the way from West Hollywood to the PCH…giggling and analysing.

Spent the larger part of this morning in bed skyping with Tim Willis whose book about Nigel Dempster hits the shelves today in the UK.

Dempster was an old-fashioned gossip columnist who worked for the Daily Mail and the satirical rag Private Eye.

When I was a small boy living in Stanley Road, Whitstable I used to just love reading his column.  A window into another altogether more exciting world.  A world with which my Mother was very familiar from her days working as a waitress in the Carlton Club.

I was secretly shocked and delighted by his salacious Royal gossip.  Dempster’s code name for the Queen when he wrote about her in Private Eye: Brenda.

I think more than anyone it was he who inspired prepubescent me to search out the fun-loving aristocrat and the demi-monde.  I alluded to him at the beginning of my film AKA.

Years later he wrote about me unfavourably after I was caught pretending to be ‘one of them’.

Nigel Dempster and the Death of Discretion published by Short Books.  Buy it.

Today I am strangely at peace with myself.  It’s been this way more often than not these past few days.  I have no idea why.  I guess because I am no longer in love.  No longer pining.  No longer focused on another.  I am listening to Copeland, majestic strings elevating the view, the moment..this life!

Two good friends called for advice.  Isn’t that strange?  I can help others when I tend not to be able to help myself.

Now that my fantasy of loving another has been safely stowed in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front of me I can concentrate on what I do best.  Dreaming.  The dream of love is so much better than the reality.  Good God it is so exhausting being in love.  So consuming.  Being in hate can be just as tiring.  Thankfully I am neither.

I have named the lil maggot on my ball.  A pain in the balls.  I have a picture of my tumor.  I will put it up when I can.

Categories
Malibu Rant

Raining

Raining hard here in Malibu but you wouldn’t know it if you look at the weather websites.

There is a leak from the skylight.   I really didn’t expect the rain for another few months.

Unexpected and welcome water for the garden.

My tummy aches and so do my balls.  Nothing much to report today.  I have to work my way through a pile of papers that need dealing with.

Neither of the dogs are enamoured by the rain.

Yesterday friends popped over.  It was nice to see them.

I may just go back to bed.

Oh yes, I went to WeHo to a gay AA meeting to get a 14 year ‘cake’ then dropped in on John.

I should get on my knees and pray.

I keep thinking about all those men I knew who died of AIDS.  Years ago.

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