The Joy of a Fool

Being a teacher at the Callan School of English was a dream job for me. It provided me with a social life on a plate, as well as enough money to finance the hours I spent each evening in the Champion public house in Wells Street where some time after 7.30pm after the final class had ended, student and teacher alike would meet to drink and talk and laugh and do as they wished until closing time. I'd usually leave at about 10.30pm to catch the last train home from Waterloo, although sometimes I'd miss it and have to catch a later train. On more than one occasion I'd fall asleep on this train and end up deep in the Surrey hinterland. I can swear I spent one night wrapped in newspaper on a station bench. At other times, there'd be a party to go to, or the Callan's disco, which would be held on an occasional basis on Wardour Street.
 Most of the teachers socialised with their own kind, but I preferred the company of the students, and at any given time it would be almost impossible to extricate me from my circle of favourites from Italy, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Poland, France etc. This proved frustrating to my good friends Stash and Noddy when they were trying to organise rehearsals for a band we were supposed to be getting together. Thanks to me, this never happened despite some early promise: Noddy was a gifted guitarist from Brazil; Stash a potentially good front man. Like myself  he was a "resting" actor, in fact one of several among the Callan teachers. They were a fascinating diverse crowd, and I made many friends from among them, but my best buddy was Stash. That is apart from Rob, who'd recommended the job to me in the first place.
 I spent my spare cash on clothes, cassettes, books...as well as rent during the months I spent as a tenant in Hanwell, a blue collar suburb close by to the more middle class district of Ealing, west London. My landlord Robin was a friend of my father's from the London session world. He was a small bearded always nattily dressed Welshman especially gifted at Folk and Jazz, and an almost preternaturally glamorous figure with a Celtic wildness who was yet enormously warm and charming. I also spent several hundreds of pounds being initiated into the art of self-hypnosis by a distinguished Harley Street doctor who specialised in hypnotherapy and nutritional medicine, in the hope of finding a solution not just to my excessive use of alcohol, but the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to which I was becoming increasingly subject in the late 1980s.
 Yet, despite the drinking and the OCD, I was exorbitantly happy during this period of my life. Any melancholy I affected - in my writings and elsewhere - should be taken with a pinch of salt in the light of the fact that for me sadness was the ultimate mark of artistic and emotional profundity, and I coveted it with all the passion of one who was by nature essentially high-spirited. Indeed it may be that it was this very carefree frivolity of mine, this absence of angst, that prevented me really getting anywhere as an actor. Looking back at my pre-Christian existence, the overwhelming impression I have is of a man whose primary emotional condition was one of utter exaltation and enraptured joy of life.
 The piece below, "Strange Coldness Perplexing" provides some indication of my emotional condition during my time at Callan's, including a tendency as I see it to veer wildly between the conscious effusive affectionateness I aspired to, and sudden irrational involuntary lapses of affect, as well as my intense devotion to my favourite students which was reciprocated by them with interest. It was forged using notes scrawled onto seven sides of an ancient now coverless notebook, possibly late at night following an evening's carousal and in a state of serene intoxication. All punctuation was removed and extracts from the notes tacked together not randomly as in the so-called cut up technique but selectively and all but sequentially.

Strange Coldness Perplexing

the catholic nurse
all sensitive
caring noticing
everything
what can she think
of my hot/cold torment

always near blowing it
living in the fast lane
so friendly kind
the girls
dewy eyed
wanda abandoned me
bolton is in my hands

and yet my coldness
hurts
the more emotional
they stay
trying to find a reason
for my ice-like suspicion
fish eyes
coldly indifferent eyes
suspect everything that moves

socialising just to be loud
compensate for cold
lack of essential trust
warmth
i love them
despite myself
my desire to love
is unconscious and gigantesque

i never know
when i'm going to miss someone
strange coldness perplexing
i've got to work to get devotion
but once i get it
i really get people on my side
there are carl people
who can survive
my shark-like coldness
and there are those
who want something
more personal
i can be very devoted to those
who can stay the course

my soul is aching
for an impartial love of people
i'm at war with myself…

A Cult of Nowness

In early 1990, I lost my position as a Callan teacher. I begged for the return of my beloved job...not just in person, but by letter and through poor Rob, but the Callan authorities refused to be persuaded and I don't blame them in the slightest. They'd shown incredible tolerance towards my insultingly slack approach to punctuality and other abuses of what was a very fair system for a good long time, until finally their patience snapped.
 So...a happy time in the greatest job I ever had ended in tandem with the crazy nineteen eighties. Looking back, the closing of this decade of excess seems like the end of a golden age. It was the last of a triad marked by frenzied persistent social upheaval and artistic innovation, much of this taking place within the two leading late Modern forms of creative expression, the cinema and Rock'n'Roll.

 Rock as I see it is has never been just a simple popular music derived from Rhythm and Blues, Rockabilly, Boogie Woogie and so on...so much as an enormously influential international subculture of varying artistic and intellectual substance. Some critics have even gone so far as to describe it as a religion, and they have a point…because Rock has possessed a spiritual dimension since its inception, and an intellectual one since about 1965; and many would single the one-time Protest singer Bob Dylan out as the person who more than any other helped to invest mere Beat music with genuine artistic credibility. 
 Since Dylan's glory days as Pop's first true poet, there have been many Rock artists who've looked to earlier strains of Modernism for lyrical inspiration - Romanticism, Symbolism, Beat, Existentialism, even Deconstruction - and it could be said that Rock has been the main engine of the avant garde impulse in the West since the late 1960s, with all the rebelliousness and nihilism this word entails. Those who like me were born in the mid 1950s, and so grew up in the sixties, were unavoidably affected on a deep and perhaps largely unconscious level by the post-war cultural revolution of which Rock was such an essential part. And I contend that from quitting formal education aged 16 to coming to faith some two decades later, I was in thrall to a cult of instant gratification that's been growing progressively more powerful throughout the west since about 1955.    
 If what I'm saying is false, then why didn't I build a future for myself during those years, in terms of a profession, a family, financial security, and so on? The truth is that before quitting the booze for good, I viewed all these with an indifference verging on contempt and it hurts me deeply to realise the extent to which I sabotaged my life with such a negative identity. Well, I'm certainly paying for it today…through the low social status which might seem cool to a privileged young hipster, but which is a terrible humiliation for a middle aged man. But perhaps a useful one.
 Reluctantly delivered after almost two years from the shackles of a job I genuinely loved, I briefly revived my acting career thanks once again to the influence of my dear friend Astrid. She recommended me for the part of Feste for a production of "Twelfth Night" due to be staged shortly at the Jacksons Lane theatre in Highgate, north London. Somehow she knew the director Lesley, and after a successful audition, I set about re-learning Feste's lines, and arranging the songs according to the original primitive melodies. These were well-received, as was my performance...one woman even going so far as to tell me that I was the greatest Feste she'd ever witnessed. Once again, the Fool of Illyria had served me well. In keeping with the festive spirit of the play, rehearsals and performances were followed and to a lesser extent accompanied by some pretty heavy partying by myself and most of the members of the cast, and we were thick as thieves foratime,untiltheinevitablesaddispersal.
 It was while travelling by train to and from Highgate for the "Twelfth Night" rehearsals that I started feeling the need to anaesthetize myself as never before against what I saw as nocturnal London's ever-present aura of menace, which may or may not have been more intense than a decade previously. After all, I'd been attracting hostile attention for the way I looked since the early seventies. What's more, years of hard living were almost certainly starting to take their toll on my nervous system. In addition to alcohol and nicotine, I'd been ingesting vast quantities of caffeine for years, although I may have stopped taking this in solid form by the onset of the nineties. Consequently, I started drinking on the way to rehearsals, and for the first time in my career as a professional actor during rehearsals; and was even drunk for the dress rehearsal itself, but never during the actual performances. I think I gave Leslie my word about that.
 Later in the year, in the autumn, I began another PGCE course, this time at the West London Institute of Education, now part of the University of Brunel, becoming resident in Worple Road in nearby Isleworth. I began quite promisingly, and fitted in well, making a lot of friends, and as might be expected, excelled in drama and physical education. I didn't drink during the day and on those rare occasions I did, it was just a question of a pint or so with lunch, and had mentally determined to complete the course, but as the following piece testifies, at night it was altogether another matter.
 It was adapted in 2006 from a letter typed during the WLIE days to an old Westfield friend Georgina, now a professional photographer. When it was recovered, having never been finished, nor sent, it was as scrap paper, lost in a sea of miscellaneous mementos.

A Letter Unsent

Dear Georgina
I haven't been in touch
for a long time.
Sorry.
The last time
I saw you
was in
St. Christopher's Place.
It was a lovely evening...
when I knocked
that chair over.
I am sorry.
Since then,
I've had not
a few accidents
of that kind.
Just three days ago,
I slipped out
in a garden
at a friend's house...
and keeled over,
not once,
not twice,
but three times,
like a log...
clonking my nut
so violently
that people heard me
in the sitting room.
What's more,
I can't remember
a single sentence
spoken
all evening.
The problem is...

A Thrilling but Lethal Lifestyle

My Teaching Practice was due to take place towards the end of the first term but I was desperately behind in my work, so provisionally removed myself from the course in order to decide whether it was worth my carrying on or not. The authorities were in agreement with my decision. In the event I decided to quit, and met with the head of my course to discuss this, and she was very agreeable, making no effort to dissuade me.
 However, rather than immediately return to my parents' home I stayed on in Isleworth in order to rekindle my five-year old career as a deliverer of novelty telegrams. I also continued to work as a walk-on artist for the TV series "The Bill", based in the tough south London suburb of Merton in Surrey.  Still in Isleworth, I became half of a musical duo formed with a charming young guy called Mark whom I met after he'd put an ad in the Stage newspaper for acts for a movable variety show he was putting together at the time, and I did a few shows for him as Mr Denmark 1979.  Although he was specialising as a singer-songwriter at the time, Mark's since developed into a true Renaissance man, and an accomplished actor, comedian, songwriter, performer, writer, film maker and esoteric thinker. We remain close friends to this day.
 I wanted to call the band Venus Xtravaganza, but we settled for Mark's choice of The Unknowns...if we were ever called anything. We began by busking together in Leicester Square, and then settled down for rehearsals in the hope of getting some gigs. Early on, our repertoire consisted largely of early Rock'n'Roll and Motown songs, but before long we started filling out our act with originals, one or two by me, but most by Mark.

Early in 1991 I took off to the seaside town of Hastings for a month or so to attempt to pass a TEFL course down there. How vividly I recall the thrill of seeing seagulls hovering over central Hastings soon after arriving at the station for my interview, which I passed, but I couldn't say it went well. I constantly avoided my interviewer's eyes until she virtually ordered me to look at her, then saying something like: "I said look at me, not stare". This as if to emphasize her belief that I didn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of passing.
 Winter 1991 was arctic in a way I haven't known an English winter to be since. Not literally of course, but I can remember wearing several coats just in order to be able to bear a cold that apparently doesn't exist any more in this country. I worked like a trojan but I was struggling terribly, tormented by OCD and its endless demands on my time and energies in the shape of rituals both physical and mental. I didn't drink at all during the day, but at night I was sometimes so stoned I was incoherent. Predictably perhaps I was failed. I asked the authorities if they might reconsider, but they made it clear to me that their decision was final.
 It was a bit of a let-down for sure, but I'd loved my time in Hastings, a beautiful old town that's since become a major London overspill area, even while continuing the search for some kind of spiritual solution to my mental troubles…this leading me to a "church" in Claremont Road which was far from the kind of I’d ultimately to seek out. At least part of the reason for my torment may be provided by the following extracts from a letter my mother wrote me during a fascinating but fruitless sojourn: 

 "...I had a chance to look at your library...I could not believe what I saw. These very strange books, beyond my comprehension, most of them, and I thought what a dissipation of a good mind that thought it right to read such matters...I feel very deeply that you have up to your present state, almost ruined your mind. Your happy, smiling face has left you, your humorous nature, ditto, your spirited state of mind, your cheerful, sunny, exuberant well-being, all gone. Too much thought given to the unhappiness and sad state of others (often those you can not help, in any way)...I've said recently that Iamconvincedthatanyonecangetoneself into a state of agitation or distress or anxiety by thinking or reading about, or witnessing unpleasant things, and the only thing to do is to, as much as possible, avoid such matters, to not let them get hold in the mind. Your fertile mind has led you astray. Why, and how?"
 How many millions of mothers over the course of the centuries have asked this of offspring who've been inexplicably drawn to the shadowlands of life only to lose their way back to sanity? Only God knows. Most of course, successfully make the journey back before settling into a normal mode of life, but the danger of becoming lost is always there, especially for those who remain in the shadows far beyond adolescence. Eternal adolescence is arguably one of the prime features of our era, facilitated by its exaltation of youth. And while there are those who'd insist that far fewer young people today are in thrall to the dark glamour of self-destructive genius than in previous Rock eras, the worldview still very much exists.
    
The following summer of 1992, I made another attempt at passing the TEFL course, this time at Regent's College in the beautiful north London park. But by this time I was drinking all day every day, and of course it was a disaster, even though I worked hard and even gave some good classes. I still have some video footage of myself giving a class and not for single second would anyone watching it believe that I was out of my head on booze.
 It was a fabulous summer, and much of it I spent in a state of manic hyperactivity. Bliss it was to stride in the warm suburban evening sun to my local station with the Orb's eerie "Blue Room" throbbing over and over in my head on my way to yet another long night of drinking and socialising to the point of ecstatic insensibility. I could've passed out on any one of these wild nights and awoken again in Hell, but that didn't concern me. The romantic decadence associated with the eighties was no longer even remotely current, and there was a new spirit as I saw it, a mystic techno-bohemianism which appeared to me to be everywhere in the early nineties. I wanted to visit as many clubs and venues as I could where it was being celebrated, but as things turned out I only ever went to one, CyberSeed in Covent Garden, which was poorly attended and only lasted a short time. However, had I not become a Christian, wild horses couldn't have prevented me from further exploration.
 Later on in this final beautiful lethal summer of intoxication, soon after appearing as Stefano in "The Tempest" at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, I  set out on yet another PGCE course...this time at the University of Greenwich in south east London. Bearing the suffix fe for Further Education  its purpose was to train myself and my fellow students to teach pupils in sixth form colleges and other further education establishments. On top of this, there were the gigs with Mark, the novelty telegrams, and who knows what else, and I loved every second of a frenetic lifestyle which the following piece – almost certainly drafted on 8 October 1992, or perhaps a year earlier - serves to evoke it at its apex...and there's a twilight mood to it, with the birthday boy performing his Dionysian solo dance in defiance of the wholesale ruinofmind,bodyandsoul he's so obviously invoking.

Lone Birthday Boy Dancing

Yesterday for my birthday,
I started off
with a bottle of wine...
I took the train
into town...
I had half a bitter
at the Cafe de Piaf
in Waterloo...
I went to work
for a couple of hours or so;
I had a pint after work;
I went for an audition;
after the audition,
I had another pint
and a half;
I had another half,
before meeting my mates,
for my b'day celebrations;
we had a pint together;
we went into
the night club,
where we had champagne
(I had three glasses);
I had a further
glass of vino,
by which time,
I was so gone
that I drew an audience
of about thirty
by performing a solo
dancing spot
in the middle
of the disco floor...
We all piled off to the pub
after that,
where I had another drink
(I can't remember
what it was)...
I then made my way home,
took the bus from Surbiton,
but ended up
in the wilds of Surrey;
I took another bus home,
and watched some telly
and had something to eat
before crashing out...
I really, really enjoyed
the eve, but today,
I've been walking around
like a zomb;
I've had only one drink today,
an early morning
restorative effort;
I spent the day working,
then I went to a bookshop,
where, like a monk,
I go for a day's
drying out session...
Drying out is really awful;
you jump at every shadow;
you feel dizzy,
you notice everything;
very often,
I don't follow through...