Public Beatings

Can it really be the case that watching tennis makes me irritable? 

Could be.

Sport works on the nerves- and wakes the tribal instinct. I would like to think I watch tennis as a display of skills- and am indifferent as to the outcome of matches- but the fact is I did want Roger to win.

Or- to use less regenerate language- to "beat" Rafa. Not very high consciousness: to enjoy watching one man "beat" another. And not so far from what went on in the Roman circuses. 

Here's the essential difference between sport and art- that no-one ever came out of the theatre wanting to beat someone up because Lear and Cordelia are dead. 

Well, I Never...

My sister recently got back in touch with a childhood friend who fondly remembers being cast in one of the silent movies I wrote and directed in my late teens. It was a jolly little drama about black magic and demonic possession- and we shot it with a wind-up 8mm movie camera in and around Hadlow Castle- which is as gothick a location as could be wished for. The film is a lost masterpiece and my ambitions to be the next Jean-Luc Godard soon faded but this woman credits her involvement in the project with firing her life-long interest in the performing arts.

Which goes to show you never fully understand what you're doing or how you may be affecting and influencing other people...