It was perfect this evening in Malibu, I thought I would share it with you.
Alex and I hung the bronze lamp this morning. I found it in a Beverly Hills dumpster..where they throw this sort of thing away.
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Tag: Arts
Categories
John and Hank Green
How likely is that someone you know will kill themselves? How come I know so many people who have? How is it that I think suicide is a perfectly honorable death option? Killing oneself not out of self-pity but because it’s just the right thing to do? Because it’s time.
I am only 16 years younger than my mother. I watch old age creep over her and do not want that.
I never again want to feel the pain I felt last year.
Until the startlingly handsome decorator arrived yesterday that’s really all I could think about. In between tinkering with my book. Hence the odd video posted.
Blue grey eyes, perfectly formed. Beach, bleach blond hair.
You might think that I have been bored with all this death thinking but actually I have not. I have been doing stuff. Enough stuff. Dinner at Nobu last night. On Wednesday I went to the premiere of a TV show, yes…that’s LA for you. They premiere TV shows.
I met a Navy Seal. Dangerous.
I took Robby to the event at Gauchos in Glendale (such glamour!) where we were served about ten pounds of meat. My poor tummy.
I am still mightily pissed off at the Twins. Daily revealing themselves to be self-serving, manipulating and utterly self obsessed. I am creating MONSTERS. For example: when Robby drives, the rear view mirror is positioned so he can look at himself and not the road behind him.
Constantly checking his hat hair.
It never occurs to either of them that the adventures and people who I have introduced them to might be reciprocated in any way. They are off with my friends of friends who patently want to fuck them, thinking that their scintillating wit attracts them to others.
We sat in Joan’s on Third on Wednesday, Robby was overly concerned that other people might think that I was fucking him. What he doesn’t realize is that if a young man of dubious sexuality is out with any man…people will assume that they are fucking. I think everyone is fucking everyone in LA.
Yet, they are both so friendly.
Their friendliness is often misconstrued. It seems flirty. They touch you but woe betide if you touch them. I think Robby understands, he’s grateful…but not enough.
As for Miles…I can scarcely look at him.
They both take but rarely give. Where’s the humility Christian boys? Or are you just hung up on…what the fuck are you hung up on?
I am overdosing on the twins. I can’t wait for then end of the month. Not a day too soon.
I have been watching the Vlog Brothers YouTube videos. I watch them at least twice/three times a week. John and Hank Green. Hank is a bit of an idiot with a huge brain. A real nerd, well that’s what I thought…until…I’ll explain later. And John, I rather liked author John Green until yesterday.
He said something that made me despise him.
He said that he didn’t like meeting strangers.
He said that he couldn’t give random hugs.
His excuse was pathetic.
I don’t think John Green is a nerd, I think he became one to keep his brother company. I think John Green is erudite, sophisticated, intelligent and handsome. I think I would be scared by his intellect if I met him. I would be scared if I met him.
You should check these guys out.
On their own, performing for their cameras they become the men they always wanted to be..yet, because they are now famous…internet famous…and successful, this strange act is obviously just that.
The pressure to perform must be HUGE. It is apparent when they are together in the same room…who is more authentic. Hank is softer, more at ease. Gentle. Off stage Hank might be the one. Off stage John looks surly, miserable, dark.
John has a great deal to prove. He has the bigger career. He has the wife with a big life in the art world. The adorable kid. The conflicted Christian pre history.
He wanted to be ordained.
I’ve always thought that it takes a huge amount of ego to be a priest where as most people think that it requires the absence of ego. To stand up and channel the word of God wearing fancy hats and garb. You need balls. John Green has balls.
The decorator returns today.
I am going to VidCon at the end of the month.
I want to fuck a hooker.
The twins will all at once irritate, frustrate and delight me. Miles has this notion that he wants to direct. Am I expected to help him? He needs to make something. If he wants to direct…he needs to make a film so that he can show people what he’s made of.
If he has any art, has an understanding of detail.
Shoot something!
As for Robby this is maybe his moment. He wants to be an actor. He is not a great beauty. Not really, he has crude features yet there is something mesmerizing about him. He has something. I don’t know if he can act. If he has the strength. If he can overcome the fear that often walks hand in hand with self obsession.
Categories
Happy Birthday Me
Here are some of the pictures Dan took last week at my party…I will add them as and when they arrive. I am having my LA birthday party tonight….should be fun.
Lady Rizo sang Lilac Wine, Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend and a Brittany Spears mash up.
Aleksa came with her husband Devon…straight from the set of Boardwalk Empire
Dan took all the pics but thankfully had one of himself.
Ian Drew and Bradley from US Weekly…who told me yesterday that I am indeed in the upcoming A List.
Rob Roth who sang ‘I’ll Melt With You‘ rather wonderfully and the legend who is indeed Chandler Burr. The performance artist and NYT scent editor…
This trip to NYC changed darling Robby’s life.
Sweet friends from LA Jess and her lover.
Victoria Whitbread and her friend Tom with Dee Mansfield who flew from Hong Kong for my party.
Yaniv, Michael (GLADD) and Cyndi Stivers who started Time Out NY
Chase and Joey from The Black Soft came and not only performed their new song for me but totally wowed their new audience.
Zach and Alex
Joan, Lady Rizo and Joe
Greg Lucas and David Stillman Meyer
Kaolin, Friend and Zach
Lady Rizo and Donovan.
Duncan, Charlie Parsons and Tom Desanto
Jeff and Robby
And over to you LADY RIZO!!!
OK, that’s it! More tomorrow from tonight’s party.
Categories
None of My Business
It’s none of my business what you think about me. Remember that. Duncan Roy…asshole.
Busy past few days. Mostly interested by the end of my novel. Eluded me until last night. Then, just as we are serving dinner (Michael B), it hit me like a rock in the head. The dignified end that had been requested of me.
I have had to really listen these past few days. Listen to somebody I have never met yet whose opinions I trust. Somebody who although several thousand miles away, is as engaged as I am with my book. It is all at once disconcerting and exhilarating.
He asked if I was wedded to the idea that this be a ‘gay’ novel. Don’t! That’s what I thought. Please don’t do this to me. Then, without a moments thought I said that I wasn’t wedded to the idea but didn’t know if I could write it any other way. He suggested that I re read a certain novel with similar themes. That I might be inspired. Well, I did and I was. He was right.
As a result of his suggestion..everything has to be re-jigged but it is smoother, less…his words…’self conscious’. That seems to be what he levels at me most often…that my writing is ‘self conscious’. Then I think to myself, you are out there helping me write a better novel. Do you want to write? No, he says. That’s not my job. I don’t have those aspirations. Like a therapist he is loathed to talk about anything else other than my work and me. He is a closed book.
He helped me with the POV (Point of View) which I had thought about a million times when making a film but never when writing prose.
So, there’s a beginning, middle and an end. That’s that.
What else? Well, I have been in the garden for hours. It looks amazing. I am either at my desk editing or I am in the garden planting and pruning. My nails are constantly black with mud. There is a trail of dirt through the house where I can’t be bothered to take off my shoes but get very grumpy if anyone else forgets to.
I went to a dinner with Tom and wished he didn’t want to sleep with 19 year old boys but wanted to sleep with me. I had sex with the deaf boy whose deafness kinda turns me on. We fucked. I wish I knew him better.
The Dane arrives this evening and we set off on our adventure. What is it with me and adventures?
Have been to therapy every day. I feel great. I feel complete. I know, God damn it, that this will pass but being active in the body and the mind seems to placate my yearning heart. However, I am acutely aware that when I feel good like this I start hankering for more. Where’s mine?
Categories
Waiting To Be Dead
The day passed slowly and uneventfully.
I watered the garden. “Why don’t you have an automated system for that?” I hear you say. Well, I do. But…a bit like our mad bad Prince of Wales I like watering the plants individually and chatting with each of them. The citrus trees especially respond to gentle coaxing.
There is something charming and rather annoying about the ‘we’ pathology of twins. We are with each other a little too much. Consequently, when we left for Lake Malibou, I wasn’t in the best of moods.
We all helped Jennifer with her Out of The Box Wednesday pack then Miles set off with the delivery.
Robby and I drove into Hollywood. I wanted to stop in at Fresh and Easy where I buy English staples. Tea, bacon, marmalade etc. I can’t do with out them. We, me and the Little Dog, sat in the ugly court-yard outside the supermarket drinking coffee waiting for Robby watching lithe men heading for 24 hour fitness.
A woman from Chicago, who had arrived in Hollywood two nights previously, looked down at the dog and said, “There’s a little person trapped in there.” She fed him chicken breast. “This has got to last me two days.” She told the Little Dog. She was plump, dyed black hair and red lips. She told me that she was here in Hollywood to pitch reality TV ideas to…God know who. She was going to pay to pitch her ‘concepts’.
I was overcome with pity for her. She told me a couple of ‘ideas’ she had thought of pitching.
It occurred to me that for forty years not one original thought had been formed in that sappy brain.
I went for a walk.
Hollywood is grimy. There is nothing of any beauty to look at…to be inspired by. I yearn for my garden.
Robby picked me up after an hour in the gym. We had planned on going to an art/film/glamour party in Beverly Hills but I was tired and irritable so we drove home.
Well, we drove back to Malibou Lake and I helped Jason cook dinner for the children. After dinner, as the children were going to bed, I sat at their Steinway and tried playing the piano. I had not played for thirty years. I was shocked by how clumsy my fingers were. No longer able to slide effortlessly over the keys. I began to sweat. Evidence of my old age. Evidence of my own mortality. It was so frustrating! My left hand refused to even practice the scales in unison with the right.
I lay in bed last night thinking too much. Waiting to be dead.
Not so fast Batman!
Next week I set off on my ‘great adventure’ culminating in the birthday hootenanny. There are people flying from all sorts of wonderful places to help me celebrate my 50th Birthday…before I am not. I am stunned that so many old friends even exist for me let alone want to jump on a plane and be with me. You know, this is what I should have done last year…but last year I was with him in the back parlor of Wheelers.
Last year there was no room for anyone else. WTF?
For those of you who have this blog emailed to you daily I just want to remind you that after I post my blog I usually spend an hour or so editing it and making additions. Just to let you know. You may be missing essential details. Ha!
It is raining today. Can you believe it?
Yesterday I pickled some beetroot. I cleaned out the drain at the back of the house. I spent another day happily in the garden…weeding. Moving pots of rare shrubs. The strawberries are producing. Delicious. Pottering, just like my maternal grandfather. Picking at weeds amongst the cacti. I like that I might be like him as I get older. For all of his faults he was a good man. From what I can remember.
Perhaps my Mother might remember him differently.
He was useless with money, a real dreamer. I think it drove my Grandmother to distraction. He had asthma and died during an asthma attack beside her in bed. A terrible way to die. Choking to death. She never really recovered. Catholicism unable to calm her. She wasn’t a very happy woman.
I remember visiting my Grandfather in hospital, he was sitting outside in the sun surrounded by huge apricot coloured roses.
There was also a sick clown from Billy Smart’s Circus. He was sewing diamonte buttons onto a silk costume. The clown told me that he would be on television the following Christmas. I held onto that memory for six months. My parents hated watching the circus on TV but I insisted. I didn’t see the clown. He must have died…or lied…or both.
The clown gave me some spare diamonte, I still have them.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=62917
Listening to David Bowie. The boys are subdued. There is a huge cloud hanging over the canyon. The weather is most peculiar.
Last night Tom and Anna came to dinner. We grilled chicken, sautéed kale with garlic and I made a huge salad with Out of The Box produce. Tiny new red potatoes, green beans, free range eggs, olives, a tiny gem lettuce, golden beets. Delicious.
It was a chilly evening so we built a huge fire and gossiped. I felt oddly insecure knowing that Tom was so incredibly successful. I was tongue-tied and felt a bit foolish. For someone who has done so well he is just about the most humble person I have ever met.
Tom brought chicken, Anna brought a huge fruit salad and ice cream.
Finally, a friend of mine called to tell me how much I have changed these past few weeks.
“It’s like being with a different person.” She said.
It’s true. Without the demon penguin possessing me I am just my happily old self. Nothing to prove. I must just tell you…I forgot to mention it before: I had a treatment from a Dutch friend of Jennifer’s. She did this deep tissue massage/healing and made a rasping sound every time she touched me. It was amazing. She said that I was so full of poison she began coughing. Hacking.
The combination of her treatment (I was skeptical) and actually seeing him has done the trick.
Only now when I am out of it I can see clearly just how in my addiction I was. The demon drink, the demon opiate, the demon corn chip, the demon penguin.
It’s all the same.
Categories
Sometimes…
I look at my blog site stats. A bunch of fluctuating numbers posted throughout the day behind the scenes of this blog. I used to be mesmerised by these stats. Especially when thousands of people read the blog every day. Now, those numbers have dwindled.
I could do more to boost my numbers but choose not to.
Each morning I get up and write everything that is on my mind. It isn’t particularly interesting to most people what happens to a man living on both coasts of the USA. Living on a small stipend delivered monthly from various investments made many years ago. Living with a small dog and a pair of beautiful twins. Living with bi-polarity. Living in his dreams.
Yet, every morning I feel compelled to write my life for you to read. I try not to boast, I try not to be too self piteous. I try to tell it as it is. Sometimes I am just talking to myself, sometimes I am talking to my Mother. Mostly I am just talking. Last year I seemed to be engaged in a one way conversation with him.
As the days pass between who I was and who I am, the years pass between what I thought I wanted and what I actually achieved, the decades between an impetuous youth and a contemplative old age. I become less frightened, more at peace.
I know that my writing about him has chased many of my regular readers away. I worked out that terrible obsession here on this blog. Do I regret writing it? What sort of diary would this be if I hadn’t written it? What sort of man would I have been if I sat here suffering and just candy coated what was the most bitter of all pills?
Of course I am capable of telling you lies but for the most part I get up and tell you whatever truth is presently haunting me. I have not written things and regretted it. When I was with him I often excluded him from the narrative and as a consequence the most beautiful moments we shared have been lost. Making love in the wood. I didn’t write about that when it happened and now it is as if it never happened. Writing retrospectively about those moments somehow devalues them.
I know that you hate me writing about him but he has been on my mind. When I stop feeling angry, foolish, sad…I still find myself wanting the best for him. Wishing him well. Hoping that he resolved his stuff with her. Praying that he now has the gay life he wanted so badly.
After all is said and done…I loved him. For good or for bad.
I wish that I did not now have to see him in September.
At this moment I have climbed fully out of the straight jacket I designed for myself. Life has become simple and manageable once again. My head no longer in two time zones. No more longing, fantasy, false hope.
I listened to the singer Adele talking about how her first album was crafted after a nasty break up. How she punched her ex bf in the face then wrote her album. This is what artists do. Copper’s Bottom, the play I showed at Sadler’s Wells in my mid twenties was all about a love affair I had with a policeman. The deep scars it left in me. This is what artists do. We craft something from our own experiences, we do not disguise our vulnerabilities, our history. I cannot deliberately disfigure the past.
When I was nominated for the BAFTA I finally had proof of sorts that being true to oneself and the stories we tell can reach much further than those of us who hide away. I have hidden away for most of this year. Licking my wounds behind my site stats, my failed love affair.
If I am to remain credible I must do what I do best: create. Wasting the rest of my life hankering after what could have been is just plain stupid. Whilst many of the folk I grew up with are considering retirement I must do what thousands of artists before me have done and just get on with it. Do the work.
Regardless of how many people are watching.
This morning I have watered the garden. Listened to the birds. Made strong coffee.
Miles is vomiting in the bathroom. He drank too much last night at the Whale Wars premiere. He is missing his girlfriend who has moved to the mid-west. Watching him struggle somehow helps me. I have no idea why.
“I’ve never been this hung over.” He moans.
I don’t have ANY sympathy for people who drink too much.
Now, what next? Apparently the niche publisher is not so niche and the nice woman there has already read my book and wants to talk further. I wonder what that means?
I put my film on ice but am ready to warm it up. I am meeting producers this Sunday. Whilst I was in New York I met another producer.
I seem to be getting back into that grove.
PS I got a 4k reduction on my property tax..which is now only 13k a year. Hurrah!
Categories
New Love/Old Slags
Do I ever think about him? No, not really. He is gone now. How can I tell? Because I am listening to love songs and I just get the vaguest memory of him.
Here are some pictures of men I have explored:
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I had a lovely time today with you. You must have been twenty years old when I first met you. Now look at you. I like when you wear your jeans tighter. Cargo pants really don’t suit you. I like when you read poetry to me. I like when you crack my fingers.
Help yourself. You can have whatever you want. Take what ever you want.
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1.
Before I hit the doctor’s office I stepped into Regen Projects on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Owned by Shaun Regen this is by far the most interesting gallery in LA and consistently shows challenging and stimulating work.
Regen Projects is currently showing work by German artist John Bock.
Born 1965, Gribbohm, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin.
The show reminded me (inevitably) of fellow German Martin Kippenberger.
Kippenberger is one of my favorite artists. His work has been inexcusably and crudely plundered by the YBA (Young British Artists).
Bock influences include: Paul McCarthy, Otto Muehl, Paul Thek and Maurizio Cattelan.
John Bock is a performance artist and sculptor whose three-dimensional works often serve as props for his performances.
Bock creates entire universes using a wildly eclectic range of materials, described in multiple languages, and presented with an antic energy that is equal parts mad scientist and Buster Keaton.
A dizzying mix of pseudo-scientific, aesthetic, social, and political commentary, Bock’s works defy logic.
This view of the world has various precedents, notably in the post World War II Theatre of the Absurd, a movement whose goal was to shock audiences into facing up to life “in its ultimate, stark reality.”
Bock believes the pre-conscious associations inherent in words are unavoidable and that only through experience and empathy can we penetrate what he terms the “heavy numb dumb world” of daily life.
Bock’s lectures seduce and confound, simultaneously proving perhaps, the inexplicability of the interrelationship of man and his universe.
2.
When I let God take the reigns of the humble buggy I drive down the promised path of happy destiny I am sure of one thing: things are going to turn out just the way they are meant to. Good and bad.
When I angrily push him out-of-the-way and drive myself I am sure of nothing.
I used to think that if I let God take control of my life, my life might be ever so slightly boring but that simply isn’t the case. God and I can still go on a wild ride, we can still have excitement and ambition. We just do it the right way.
I get to have all that life has on offer without paying the terrible price I seem to pay when I wilfully drive the buggy myself.
I used to think (convinced myself) that doing the right thing meant that I had to live a pious life.
This simply isn’t true. God doesn’t want me kneeling at his feet all day praying that his will be done. He knows that I believe in his will being done, but what I have come to understand of late is that his will needn’t be dull.
Everyday things get better in my head. Everyday without the grip of obsession, compulsion and the like I am calmer, more centered, more and more in my own skin.
Getting back to work and in touch with my God-given desire to create (and a means to do so) I feel more like the man I was meant to be rather than the man I have been lately.
Yesterday I went back to the doctor, had more scans and lo and behold there are yet more problems to deal with. The difference between this time and the last is that I now have a skill set to deal immediately and healthily with these problems rather than the last time when I associated the problem with him.
It is remarkable to me that for nearly a year I let somebody else rule my head and my heart. By so doing I allowed the deep shadow cast by another to blot out the sunlight of the spirit.
When I talk about God I don’t mean a christian…organised religious God. I mean a God of my understanding, a higher power to whom I must defer at all times if I am going to live a healthy life.