I Will Not Be Remembered

Celebrating a birthday is a strange tradition. The human mind exists in a fragile balance between delusion and reality. To survive the mind must believe that it is somewhat immortal. In acknowledging the day of one’s birth it is reminded of its mortality; in that today it once was born and, one day, will die.   That acknowledgement hit my mind for the thirty second time this past month.

On my thirty second birthday, somewhere around 9:00AM, the thin boney spectre of death appeared in a corner of my room. His skeletal fingers and raspy voice beckoned me to take stock of what I have thus far achieved. He reminded me, also, of what I have yet to achieve.  His whispers were strong, and the echoes of that encounter haunt me even four weeks later.

The haunt’s chant went something like this: ‘It takes a senile spirit to enter the art world. The goals that the artist seeks are ethereal, intangible, and subject to an audience; for a play is not a play if there is no one to watch it.’ The haunt reminded me that much of my life has been in pursuit of that audience and I have yet to find it.

In my senility, I’ve given myself over to a life of theatrical art; spent the last decade or more looking for that audience.  I’ve spent my waking moments creating, or thinking about creating, works in the theatre. The haunt blasted his fire on the piles of rubbish that are my creations and showed me burnt out husks. The husks reminded me that I entered the theatre for the wrong reason.

It is said, by I-Don’t-Know-Who, that ‘one should enter the theatre for the love of play;’ but, as many artists know, many of us don’t enter for that reason. We often pursue the field for another reason: love, adulation, to be seen; some for the warm embrace of an audience’s laughter. I entered it to be remembered.

I remember somewhere Winston Churchill said that he felt ‘a constant pull of fate in his life.’ He often used a title ‘man of fate’ to describe some innate sense that his life was one of importance.  Churchill was ignored at a young age; shoved aside by the illness of his father. His father may have had syphilis or a mental illness. Being ignored at a young age instilled in Winston a drive to be acknowledged for greatness. He published. He spoke at length. He self branded before there was such a term. He was a constant thorn in the side of political opponents and allies alike often just because he enjoyed the notoriety his obstinance resulted in.  Whether one remembers him for his stubbornness in the early days of World War Two, the disaster and deaths he caused at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli in World War One, or the genocide he approved in India and Kenya, Winston Churchill is remembered.

I will not be.

There is a part of me that is like Winston. I, too, come from a semi-sidelined childhood. Beset often with disability, struggle, and a parent who was involved little in my life, I, like him, have always felt alien to my peers; belonging more with the wallflower than the rose. When I entered the theatre, I found an avenue to be remembered. A soothing opiate to assuage an inner deficient addiction.  However, on my thirty-second birthday it became clear that I am no ‘man of fate.’  

For the last few years, I have been looking for a deeper meaning in the art I create. The theatre I started my creative life in was obsessed with Catell Surface Traits (e.g. casting, representation, didacticism) rather than the source traits (e.g. semiotics, genre, form) I was interested in. Finding these priorities not mine I set out to find some place to investigate my interests. In short, what I often found was not what I was looking for and my frustration began to pour out publicly.   At first, I was derided as ‘yelly,’ perhaps a negative critical force, by my peers for insisting upon some deeper understanding. I remember being called ‘a constant curmudgeon’ or a ‘pompous git,’ a name that I take pleasure in to a degree, but I continued my way being a thorn.

Alas, the thorn branded me as a naysayer against those who ‘try.’  I was now ‘out of date;’ as the theatrical world surface trait obsession morphed from a complaint to a movement. I was an oddity on the fringes of the Toronto world; one who is unwilling to revel in the campfire story telling sessions that is mainstream theatre.  Toronto Theatre began sharing smores in celebration for things it has achieved, and I wanted deeper, better, more satisfying work then just well represented rehashes of old ideas. Over time, I disappeared; became a phantom; a way way way outsider; a prickly invisible snob.

This reputation is my fault. Rather than making connections in the Toronto theatre world, I was too vocal in my frustration; artistic comrades see me as unapproachable. I have made tons of mistakes where others played the game better.  

The whispering will in my head croons: “Screw the game.  Art is about getting it wrong. Art should allow a horde of mistakes, so that a new successful phoenix can rise from the corpses of missteps.”

Death repeats in the corner: “Mistakes are not memorable. Plus, they only matter when audiences are watching them.”   

Getting people to pay attention has been a problem in my career. In our short attention span world, forgive the cliché, we are expected to have a perfect finished product instantly. I’ve never been able to offer that. My work is never finished. I want it to change but I can’t afford it to change; the average independent production (where all participants see a wage) costs $25,000; but ‘excuses, excuses,’ calls the boney figure in the corner.

I turn to this figure and ask it what it thinks I should do.

It stays silent.

No voice, where there was so much sound before.

And that’s where I sit now: thirty-two, a career full of corpses, few colleagues, and a cloud of anonymity over my creativity.

But then again, this is what survival is: breathing when no one is watching.