Does This Look Straight To You?

Written in the summer of 2017, during what I hope will prove to be the last few weeks of work on my forthcoming play.

It is much like landing an airplane in high winds, as the turbulence threatens to turn you over, plunging you to almost certain destruction.

As the loss of full human functionality continues, each morning consists of exactly the same routine.

I grab a book.

I grab a fresh pad of index markers.

I scurry onto the tube.

I start to “flag up” the book, once I have taken a seat.

I promise myself I am on course.

I tell myself to stay strong.

I am on course to land this plane safely on the runway.

Everything is going to finally come together.

I wear a suit to work. As a matter of OCD routine, I make sure that I look and smell good, and I am well presented – because it supplies me with a sensory level of consistency.

Perhaps as a consequence, I very often spot a lady sitting opposite just watching me as meticulously as I work, index marker tab in one hand, book in the other.

I look up and sense that there may be some sort of “He is quite handsome actually.”

realisation.

I continue unabated. Scanning line after line with merciless efficiency and precision, only to stop and sigh to myself occasionally, as I stare into space and ponder my plight.

Very soon the brightly lit index markers with which I decorate the pages of the book begin to look like a fan, as I add more and more, seemingly unwilling to overlook a single worthy idea in it.

The lady sitting opposite me will pretend not to stare. Yet I can feel her eyes upon me. “I wonder what he is like in bed” she might be thinking, with a hint of intrigue, and possibly even admiration.

But I press on. I urge myself to zone out of my surroundings completely.

And then I stop.

I turn the previous page, and re-examine the placing of that index marker.

Does that index marker look straight to you?

I mean it looks straight enough at a first glance. But upon closer inspection the left edge of it does not lie completely parallel to the edge of the ends of the letters forming the text of the page next to where I have placed it.

I need to peel it off and do it again.

All of them.

I am veering off course.

I am going to miss the runway.

So I pick them off. One by one.

And I re-stick them.

Again, and again – until I am satisfied that they are straight.

This usually requires me to peel and re-stick around 4 or 5 times.

I can no longer feel the intensity of the woman sitting opposite me staring.

“Ok he is obviously just crazy.”

That is right darling.

Tell me something I don’t know.

To have done what I have done, for so long, you would have to be crazy in at least one very real sense. Think of the investment in time and effort it takes. Think of the very high risk that it will never “pay off”.

I mean of course I have never been motivated by money.

Ambitions for money or fame would never have given me the drive to keep going for all of these years.

Yet this is London. And I am me.

Expectations were once unspeakably huge. There are still former school-teachers out there who are wondering why I have not yet become Prime Minister.

But when I walked out of school at 18, my mind was already made up about what I would spend the remainder of my life doing.

I saw a former best friend from school in Ljubljana a couple of months ago, but we pretended not to see each other. I had not seen him since leaving, and that was now 15 years ago. Almost the same number of years since (not really) saying goodbye had passed, as our ages were at the time.

For the first 2-3 years after, there were not many signs of life from my end, yet the buzz of expectation in that circle was still there. The years of academic superstardom throughout those druggy, volatile and sometimes violent teenage years had meant that the faith was still strong, and hopes were very high.

2004/5:

“I wonder what he is doing now. It must be something epic and huge. Something which will change the course of history.”

“I heard he has been working on a play.”

“That makes sense. I can imagine him doing something like that.”

2007/8:

“I wonder what he is doing now. It must almost be finished.”

“I heard he has still been working on that play.”

“Oh. Wow. Still working on that same play? I wonder what it’s like.”

2011:

“I wonder what he is doing now. Did he ever finish that play he was working on?”

“No... Actually I heard he is still going.”

“Oh really? That’s weird.”

2017:

“And what about him? What happened to that play he was working on?”

“I don’t think anyone really knows what happened apart from him. And he is not about to break the silence.”

My play. My motherfucking play.

Its dimensions are unfathomably huge, and brimming with a tectonic volatility.

There are days when I read excerpts of it and think “Wow. Did I really write that?” - the element of genuine surprise coming from the singular fearlessness and sheer weight of its intellectual ambition, my own failure to conceptually understand the theories its characters collide to argue over, and the length of time that has passed since I wrote them.

There days when I read parts of it, and conclude in moments of morbid self-awareness that the only type of person who would even think of doing the things I do in it, the way I do it, would be one displaying some signs of some high functioning form of mental unrest.

And then there are those other days when I judge it to be complete and utter garbage.

During a day in which my mood is a manic one, I talk freely and passionately about how its subject is one of pressing urgency – forming as it does a very strange satire of British views towards immigration.

On another day my play is not really one about immigration at all – it is more a play about the subjugation of individual free will to the dictates of authority and the way that diminishes our collective humanity.

And then there are those other days when I look people in the eye and tell them calmly and authoritatively that it is in fact a play about the types of forces which could conspire to drive a man to insanity.

Yet somehow, by some mystical magnetism pulling me away from it all, I decide to do something extraordinary.

To journey to Tunis to meet the light that has shone more brightly than any other in my life.

For one day only.

In the middle of the week, and with (whisper it quietly) no real planning.

I find myself sitting alone at the departure gate of the airport - for the first time in long long time completely and utterly content, and at peace with my decision.

I have left all of the books and pages and pages of scribble, flow-charts, and diagrams behind.

I have been compelled to do this by a force that is bigger than my play, my OCD, and bigger than I am – and I know that I have to give in to it.

Even though my flight is delayed by an hour, as I had been told was to be expected, I know that the plane will land safely, and I will reach the destination which I wanted to reach, and be with the person I wanted to be with.