Okay, I admit it. This page – once so full of the joys of the world, so bursting with stories of its adventures, cantering into your virtual bedroom with its skirts about its knees and throwing itself on your bed with a tantalising “you will NOT believe this” – has been somewhat silent of late.

 

This is not (about this you can be certain) because it is seeing somebody else, or because it has grown bored and taken up smoking pot and playing videogames and drinking cheap whisky from a recently retired vegemite jar. The reason for its absence is this:

 

Once, in 2005, Rita and Stew and Paul (Superman) Daniel and I set up this site at one of those moments when it was either time to get a website or time to start walking around with sandwich boards like those miserable people in Bourke Street who stand outside that jewellery shop, staring into the middle distance and listening to death metal on their iPods. We needed the website for many reasons then. Mostly because we were producing theatre and the occasional video, and we loved our audiences so much we wanted to keep them even after they left their seats and wandered out into the night time.

 

And so this page lived on. And I loved it. And then, recently, a few things happened. They are (edited highlights) these:

 

1.    

I quit my Real Job. The Law Talking Job. It was excellent for a range of reasons but I had to finish up because:

2.    

Standing There Productions is working on a couple of projects, both of which are very long-term and both of which we are contractually obliged not to speak about.

3.    

I know. How exciting is that.

4.    

Thing is, the projects are exciting, but they’re not as exciting as being contractually obliged not to talk about them might indicate. So please do not expect the opening ceremony of the Olympics to be produced by Standing There Productions. Although we’re not – I’m being told by our legal department – prepared to rule that out.

5.    

We do not have a legal department.

 

As a result of the above scenario, I am now what they call a freelance writer. I looked that up once. It used to have something to do with swords. I intend, more or less immediately, to purchase a cape and claim it on tax.

 

Really though, what freelance means is that I jump from project to project, including, sometimes, working for Standing There Productions on what may or may not be the opening ceremony of the somethingorothereth Olympiad. Rita and Stewart do the same.

 

At the moment, if you miss me (my secretary will have to sort through the comments you post below, obviously, but I will try and answer you all individually) you can find me in the following:

 

MEANJIN – a gorgeous literary magazine available in bookshops and via subscription here – contains an essay this month about Australian theatre. It was written by me. Meanjin is very exciting. I got all tingly when I saw it in print.

 

THE BIG ISSUE – I have been writing occasional pieces for The Big Issue for a while now, including one I will post here when I have a moment. Starting next week, however, I am the television columnist for The Big Issue, which means you all need to watch television and tell me what you think of it so I can call it research. Already, I am trying to figure out how to work the 8 hours of Will & Grace I once watched into a column so I don’t need to feel as though that glorious, shocking day was a waste.

 

THE COMEDY FESTIVAL – I am directing Colin Lane’s festival show this year. Looking forward to another festival – my first for 2010.

 

Meanwhile, Rita and Stewart are still, well, awesome. I will tell you about their glorious achievements when I have access to the endless list of projects they are variously involved in, some of which have been nominated for - and won - awards.

 

For the moment, though, consider this page BACK. Fresh-faced, bright-eyed, wearing a brand-new frock and fabulous shoes and not caring what anybody thinks of it as it twirls in the middle of your metaphorical bedroom and welcomes you back, once again, into its pudgy, sun-browned, long-absent arms.

 

It missed you.

 

 Here is a list of things that re-energise me, apparently, if the past few weeks are anything to go by:

 

1. Ace friends. There really is nothing like the love and laughter of people you adore when you've been locked inside writing for weeks (nay months) on end. 

 

2. The sea. If I lived near it, I'd use it as a mental refresher towelette as often as possible. I DARE you not to feel better about the universe, and more equipped to attack a metaphorical blank page when:

 

- your hair is wet

- your feet are sandy

- you've gone from cold to warm (shower? socks? hot cup of tea? Brilliant)

- you've squealed involuntarily

 

3. Dancing with old friends. Special mention goes to the bollywood dance we all memorised for Mel and Prash's wedding and, as always, to the Bus Stop, the robot, the moonwalk, and whatever you call that thing the Two Tims did with the aid of several props and a full-length window.

 

4. One of you winning an award. I have to say, this last one falls into the category of Very Refreshing Indeed And Also Pantwettingly Exciting Just Quietly.

 

In case you hadn't heard (I mean, HONESTLY, how out of touch are YOU?)... Standing There's Stewart Thorn has won a cinematography award for Sunshower (a music video by the Little Stevies) at The Australian Cinematography Society's Victorian and Tasmanian State awards held last week in Melbourne. The video was also one of three music videos nominated for an IF award in Sydney. Congratulations to Stew, and to Robin (who directed the clip) and the Little Stevies. Yay for everyone, basically.

 

See how easy it is to shift gears and make a writer want to write again? Kind of embarrassing isn't it!

 

Still. 

 

Hurrah!

I suspect I’m not alone in wondering, while eating my popcorn at the movies, “What is the real rate of brides being left at the altar in the wider community?” 

 

Personally, I haven’t experienced nearly as many almost-weddings complete with storm-outs and punch-ups and drunken weeping as the history of cinema seems to indicate I should expect.

 

You know what else there haven’t been a lot of? Accidents resulting in amnesia. I do not – off the top of my head – know anybody who was in an accident as a result of which he or she started a new life in another town only to suddenly remember every devastating detail years later while holding a pepper shaker of enormous hitherto unremembered personal significance and staring out the window at Family Number Two frolicking gleefully in the backyard.

 

None of the twins I know were separated at birth. Not nearly enough of the people with whom I am acquainted have gone beserk in boardrooms and turned up the table and had to be escorted from the building by security. On the few times I have been to a forest at night, I have listened very hard but I have not heard a single creaky noise or the faintest hint of a cello.

 

This is okay. I do not miss these things from my life. What I do wonder, though, is where on screen are the Real Life Clichés I do experience? Where is the one-hour stretch right in the middle of the movie where our protagonist – maybe on the way to being dumped at a wedding – can’t find her car keys but in the process of looking finds a photo album from the early nineties and a folder full of receipts she swore she had sent to her accountant and vaguely remembers accusing the accountant of having lost? Where are the scenes where – not due to self-esteem issues or a devastating break-up but just because it’s in the fridge – someone accidentally eats three quarters of a cake in one afternoon including the “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” plaque and part of a candle? Are there as many people doing these things in films as there are in real life? I posit that there is a notable disparity.

 

There are reasons these moments don’t make it into film and TV. They’re in stand-up comedy routines (what is with that?) and they’re in books (such a true narrative voice) but they’re not exciting enough to make it into a two-hour narrative. Shame.

 

Unless there is a film about an absent-minded cake-eating crime-fighter at war with her accountant that I don’t know about. In which case, please, can someone let me know?

 

A version of the above originally appeared in The Big Issue, which is an excellent magazine that you should go out and buy immediately for a range of reasons only some of which are to do with the fact that I am possibly in the upcoming edition as well.

Writing is an odd job. I know I've said this a thousand times, but sometimes I look at myself and wonder, "Did you really think this through?"

 

The factor I didn't entirely think through is a factor known to science as "my entire personality".

 

I'm quite a social person. I love being around people. Talking, getting the giggles, even arguing with people is fun if everybody knows not to thump their fists on the table and scream "oh shut UP Darren you neofascist" and so forth. Being a writer involves extricating oneself from society. It means sitting alone and writing for long periods of time about people, none of whom you come into contact with, due to the fact that you're too busy writing about them to talk to any of them.

 

This is fine, I knew this would happen. I knew I would need the self-discipline to say, "Actually I can't do that fantastically interesting thing over there because I have to be utterly boring". It's like my old maths teacher Mr Raff used to say, "If you don't want to learn, that's fine by me". Because the person who's going to lose is always you.

 

As a result of this, I have become antisocial. This is in direct contravention of (see above) "my entire personality".

 

And even that's fine. I mean, it's awful, but it's a trade-off. I don't see my friends as much as I used to, but I've done the projects I set out to do and I've enjoyed them and I've quit my day-job and I'm feeling less like a caged bird than I used to when I was trying to juggle all these things at once and surely my friends understand, provided they remember who I am, and I love them, and they know that. 

 

What does bother me is what's happening now. Think of it, if you will, as a war. On one side there's my writing, and on the other side there's my personality. Sometimes my personality wants to kill my work because it causes my personality pain. Sometimes my work subdues my personality. Occasionally, they go into diplomatic talks and they organise a compromise whereby I can have a nice time with friends and also get some work done. 

 

What's happening now is: there's been a coup. My work is taking over. It's infiltrating my personality. Just like those diagrams of World War II with the pincer movements of troops across maps of Eastern Europe, my personality is under attack. 

 

Working by yourself is lonely. You don't talk to people in the office kitchen, or pick up the phone and call the department of whatsisface to talk to that lady with the scratchy voice about that invoice they should have sent. You don't have to deal with anybody at all if you don't want to. And in fact, it becomes more and more difficult the less you do it. As a result of this mental coup, I am becoming, I suspect, a true writer. I misjudge the moment at the dinner table and come off as obnoxious. I talk too loudly and too enthusiastically. I over-think. Afterwards, I wish I had said nothing at all.

 

 So if you know a writer, or someone who works freelance and gets to have coffee in the sun whenever they like and answers to nobody and refuses to get out of bed early unless there's a deadline: be nice to them. It's not always as fun as it looks. 

 

 

 

Standing There Productions had a big weekend this weekend. Rita came down from Sydney and we saw The Hayloft Project's fringe show, Yuri Wells. It were lovely. One man show. North Melbourne Town Hall. This week only.

 

We also saw our very own Paris Hilton, Miriam Glaser, in A Black Joy - another fringe festival show although one I should have seen earlier, given it has now finished and me telling you to go and see it would be somewhat pointless/cruel/unfair.

 

Anyway. One of the more important developments Standing There Productions made this week was the establishment of a new tradition: Fortune Cookie Monday.

 

The results of the inaugural Fortune Cookie Monday were as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

Bodes well. Don't you think?

Things Unhelpful in the Writing Process, part a bijjillion in a series:

 

1. The passing of time.

Although conversely this could be said to work, sometimes, in one's favour. EG when a piece of writing feels like it is perhaps the greatest thing ever written by man, woman, beast or Shakespeare and only the passing of time will reveal to you that in fact it is not the Bayeux tapestry, rather it is one of those children's drawings in crayon of giant heads on sticks with arms emerging from their foreheads.

 

2. Other imaginings.

Be it the imagining of a new idea, another existence ("Maybe I could be a CARPENTER!" etc), a fabulous line for an as yet unwritten piece of writing or the acceptance speech at an awards night celebrating said piece of writing, or even a sweet, brief, devastating but classy revenge speech delivered to a long-lost high school bully or similar. WHATEVER. I'm making these up. Mostly. The point is: shut up, brain. Concentrate on the creativity at hand. Do NOT attempt flower arranging/pottery/cooking classes/taking up a language and/or instrument.

 

3. People in libraries who may as well be spending their day at a bar and/or roller rink and/or rock concert for all the work they are doing oh please please stop talking with the vapid gossip and the loudy loudy oh please my ears are bleeding ogod what did I ever do to you boo hoo I'm going to get a coffee.

And yes, sure, writing by yourself can lead to insanity.

 

You have been warned.