Tuesday, November 10, 2009
This has been so mad a time.
This morning, when I had a massage, was the first time I have been able to be still and try to reflect on & process what has happened.
I have known Cindy a long time - at least twenty years - and the minute she put her hand between my shoulder-blades, in just the right place, as always, she started to release some of the terror I've been carrying.
A lot of the work in rehearsals and in the first performances has been about trying to overcome fear - the fear of performing, the fear of being disliked, the fear of being exposed and disliked as a transexual...
And that basic panic was so reinforced when I turned up for the first performance to find the street filled with protesters.
Or a couple of days later when a friend texted me to say: "You're on the front page of the Glasgow Herald". And i was.
Or Steven, who runs Glasgay, told me there are 135,000 blog entries about the play on the web...
I started to read some, which was a mistake, perhaps, because they tell me I am "an open sewer" that I am "filth" that Jesus is not a "pervert", that my play is disgusting. Someone, bizarrely, writes to call me a "cowardly, twisted piece of anthropoid garbage. You are a talentless pervert, a dullard deviant and your disgusting posturing deserves a terminal case of AIDS".
I am responsible, I also discover, for society's spiral into moral decline; and for Islam taking over the United Kingdom. I am part of a conspiracy to mock Christianity.. and hundreds of thousands of dreadful things besides.
I must redress the balance, of course, by getting round to quoting some of the very beautiful letters of support I have also been reading....
but I suppose I must be a very naive kind of person because i simply refused to consider the possibility of inspiring so much protest.
It seemed so unlikely.. and because I knew so strongly my intention was never to mock or deride i assumed everyone would see that, somehow.
I had really forgotten how much prejudice someone like me still inspires.
It is such an odd feeling being thought of as an object of disgust... does all that negative energy have an impact, I wonder...?
And all the positive energy too...?
Am i in some kind of battleground between the two?
Meantime I take care of Susie's mum as best i can. An odd occupation for an "open sewer".
She is suffering from palpitations at night; her heart jumps, and sometimes even stops beating for a moment, long enough for her to wonder if it will start again...
It gets worse because until now she hasn't had the right pillow to allow her to sleep upright and because she is alone at night.
I've lent her mine, and between us we are making sure someone is sleeping in the house with her.
I remember that feeling before my heart operation: the sheer terror of knowing there is something wrong with your heart and you have to face it alone...
"We will all hang on our cross.." the play says, and poor Jean is hanging on hers.
Meanwhile, for all the exhaustion, I feel so deep a pride about the play and what we all achieved in it.
And somehow I shuttle between the two worlds....
This morning, when I had a massage, was the first time I have been able to be still and try to reflect on & process what has happened.
I have known Cindy a long time - at least twenty years - and the minute she put her hand between my shoulder-blades, in just the right place, as always, she started to release some of the terror I've been carrying.
A lot of the work in rehearsals and in the first performances has been about trying to overcome fear - the fear of performing, the fear of being disliked, the fear of being exposed and disliked as a transexual...
And that basic panic was so reinforced when I turned up for the first performance to find the street filled with protesters.
Or a couple of days later when a friend texted me to say: "You're on the front page of the Glasgow Herald". And i was.
Or Steven, who runs Glasgay, told me there are 135,000 blog entries about the play on the web...
I started to read some, which was a mistake, perhaps, because they tell me I am "an open sewer" that I am "filth" that Jesus is not a "pervert", that my play is disgusting. Someone, bizarrely, writes to call me a "cowardly, twisted piece of anthropoid garbage. You are a talentless pervert, a dullard deviant and your disgusting posturing deserves a terminal case of AIDS".
I am responsible, I also discover, for society's spiral into moral decline; and for Islam taking over the United Kingdom. I am part of a conspiracy to mock Christianity.. and hundreds of thousands of dreadful things besides.
I must redress the balance, of course, by getting round to quoting some of the very beautiful letters of support I have also been reading....
but I suppose I must be a very naive kind of person because i simply refused to consider the possibility of inspiring so much protest.
It seemed so unlikely.. and because I knew so strongly my intention was never to mock or deride i assumed everyone would see that, somehow.
I had really forgotten how much prejudice someone like me still inspires.
It is such an odd feeling being thought of as an object of disgust... does all that negative energy have an impact, I wonder...?
And all the positive energy too...?
Am i in some kind of battleground between the two?
Meantime I take care of Susie's mum as best i can. An odd occupation for an "open sewer".
She is suffering from palpitations at night; her heart jumps, and sometimes even stops beating for a moment, long enough for her to wonder if it will start again...
It gets worse because until now she hasn't had the right pillow to allow her to sleep upright and because she is alone at night.
I've lent her mine, and between us we are making sure someone is sleeping in the house with her.
I remember that feeling before my heart operation: the sheer terror of knowing there is something wrong with your heart and you have to face it alone...
"We will all hang on our cross.." the play says, and poor Jean is hanging on hers.
Meanwhile, for all the exhaustion, I feel so deep a pride about the play and what we all achieved in it.
And somehow I shuttle between the two worlds....
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