Vale Stoppard

Spent $160 on buying a first edition signed copy of Travesties, hopefully genuine.

I remember my first visit to London, on the way to some matinee, and walking past a rare book shop that had a signed copy of Rock N Roll, and firstly being poor enough (says the man who could afford a holiday to London and Paris) that I didn’t want to spend the 100 quid or whatever on a play that wasn’t one I was emphatically attached to, and secondly not wanting to buy an indirect signature. I prefer to have something signed for myself, for sentimental reasons. Now I will take indirect, and be grateful.

Just last month I read Lord Malquist and Mr Moon for the first time. I have a habit of not wanting to complete an oeuvre to give myself something to look forward to. A habit that becomes more dangerous with each passing year, as I progressively risk undershooting my reading rate. And what a stupid idea, honestly. Should I endeavour to get consolation from the last work of an author on my death bed, or should I enjoy the fruits of it, then the refruits, then the triggered memories and conversational possibilities of earlier osmosis?

I had been thinking for many years to send a letter, attached with my own copy of Travesties to hopefully be signed, but I never did. Something about my wanting to have made something of myself first, before sending up a flare of gratitude. And that was what it was going to be, I think. A thankfulness for a lifelong interest in theatre that might not otherwise have been.

The STC, at the wharf, had an exhibition with costumes from old shows, with an inducement to donate some money. And they had the Travesties suit of Henry Carr’s, I think? One of the suits. But way up high behind a balcony railing, where I couldn’t get a close look, or an illicit feel. Still to this day (and before this miniature expo), there is the coin bag from Rosencrantz in a perspex box on the wall.

This was how the letter would’ve started, mentioning the full circle moment of me seeing the Travesties costume, however many years later.

I wonder if there are any other works, incomplete or otherwise, that’ll rattle out over the next few years. One can only hope.

I’m finding myself waylaid in London for a fortnight next year – my fourth visit – and I’m intending to watch something – at the moment the idea is Jumpers – at the National Theatre Archives. Will hardly be up to NT Live quality, but it will be an experience nonetheless. Or The Invention of Love. If I was immensely wealthy, I fantasise about being a theatrical patron. I would fund a production of The Coast of Utopia, purely for my own selfish pleasure.

Last year, I did an around the world trip, where I went to Broadway for the first time, then London with a couple of day foray to Edinburgh, and back home. A little under three weeks. 29 shows I saw (a record I doubt I’ll beat), including The Real Thing at the Old Vic. (Better than the Sydney production.) Stoppard wasn’t involved in any of the press, so I assume he didn’t have much involvement in the production, but it’s nice to hope that he did.

Sigh.

Life moves so quickly, and now Tom Stoppard has passed on, peacefully and surrounded by family, which is all one can hope for, really. To have such a proximity of love around that you never have the chance to feel that cold draught of death on your toes.

I was thinking on a walk last month that it would be a nice idea to only have the year you were born on your gravestone. Four numbers and an eternal dash. 1937 –

Anyway.

Thank you for all the words, Sir Stoppard.

Fog of Life

I was struggling to find something to write about today.  A theme, a topic, an idea – I had none of these.  And then, Sunday night being the capitalised Garbage Night in my neighbourhood, I went to put the bins out on the street.  It’s usually cold in June, and this year was no exception.  As I walked out, with the bin trundling along behind me, the hypnotic thump-thump of the wheels over the stencilled driveway piercing through the silent night, I noticed my breath misting in the air, misting in whorls and swirls and twisting and turning until melding into the dark as quickly as it had come into existence.

I was addicted.

Out I breathed, exhaling again and again, my inhalations short and sharp, followed by a long outpouring of gas, the dotted rhythm like a grand waltz, the dancers microscopic particles that flew around me.  In then out, out some more, and pause, then in and out again, out once more…  And so it went on.

The Mist

I looked down the street, along the damp road, its surface glistening from the streetlamps above, their light restricted to tight spheres around the globes, the oppressive night surrendering no ground to these electrified upstarts.  The fog, the mist, the gloom – it was thick tonight – heavy, weighing on my soul like an elephant would weigh on a set of bathroom scales.  And the light seemed as out of place as an elephant in a bathroom, but not the sound.  The silence was overwhelming.  Not a real silence, not a complete lack of noise – there were sounds of the trucks, with their caffeinated drivers, barrelling down the main road less than a kilometre away – what is from a close location a loud and terrible noise becomes, from a more distant viewpoint, a soothing lullaby, the muffled pistons rocking you to rest.

I couldn’t see all the way down the street – the fog was too thick.  But I knew there were other lights down that way, other lights behind me as well.  Walking out into the middle of the road provided no help.  As the mist emerged from my mouth once more, I wondered about life, and how it was similar to what I was experiencing at this very moment.  Just like the mist from my lungs was a microcosm of a great ball, so was this street a metaphor for life.  We all find ourselves in a fog, some thicker than others, but all of us not being able to see the whole distance down the road.  Some of us can’t even see the footpath – only the lights, the lights that struggle valiantly against the void, the nothingness that the darkness grows.  To move further down the street is risky, but staying has its own risks.

What if the light you were huddled under was extinguished?  What if you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life under that particular light?  How can you know when to move from one light to another?  What about those areas of fog that are so thick that it is impossible for you to walk from one glowing beacon to another without stepping, even momentarily, into the void?  That leap of faith, the leap to not just the unknown but also the unknowable.  Will you be swallowed up by the darkness, or will you emerge on the other side into the welcoming light of the next beacon?

Perhaps that is why we die – we no longer have the physical strength or the mental will to take on these light-gaps, these constant challenges, these evergreen leaps.  Either we stay where we know it is safe for the moment, and slowly perish, or we venture out to the next stop on our journey but never quite reach it.  One wonders whether the interesting parts of life happen at the lights, or whether they happen at the parts in between.

A question I don’t know the answer to, and that I have no more time to ponder – it’s bloody freezing out here!