On Rommel, dogs and performance issues

Spent an hour yesterday, explaining the pictures and articles of the latest National Geographic to an imaginary someone who hasn’t really seen a National Geographic before, in German. And I don’t speak German. Yes, this may seem like the last act of a desperate person before the nice gentlemen in white come with a funky white jacket, but in truth, I am managing at tricking my brain from wanting to get all my gear and dragging my body through conflict zones for reals, as opposed to simply writing about it – from the safety of my no conflict hovel.

                The idea of making Kay a war reporter in the next book, after Goose, is a very attractive one. For the first few draft chapters I’ve mocked up, making Rommel the lead male is also interesting. The ease of certain decisions, gruesome as they might have been in actual life, can be made kinder when not everybody needs to know everything that’s happened. He probably won’t be the whole point of the story, but for the start in, he serves just the purpose. Imagining Ed Harris in the role also helps.

                Some of this came to me as an idea yesterday, when I doggie walked one of my worst walks in a while. I felt truly trapped. Drej and I got more company and as pleasant as the company was, the conversation went on and on and on about dogs. I can’t talk about dogs for two hours. Really, it makes me fucking want to hate dogs. They’re dogs for fuckssakes. We talk about them every single day!...  But okay, I get the feeling that when people don’t really want to talk to other people, this is a safe and ongoing subject. Then we were joined by more people. The dog conversation got temporarily interrupted by people talking about being fit and dieting and a 60 pound person said how she gained weight and a guy whom I didn’t know said that if you look at people in second World War concentration camps, those were skinny, too, because they worked more than they ate…

                I thought my stomach contents are going to come out of my nose. Are you fucking kidding me? You are going to mention people starved to death by a maniacal regime in the same sentence as your wife’s fat ass?

                I had my headphones in my ears so fast and so deep we were down a mile before I took any notice to what I am listening to. Usually I wouldn’t be as impolite, but as they never bothered to even acknowledge me in the first place (well, I am fat, so maybe I wouldn’t understand their dieting passion), I really couldn’t give a flying fuck how they felt. A couple of times I took the headphones out to try and talk to Drej, but, neup, still talking about dogs. I mentioned the idea of Kay being a war correspondent, to no particular reaction there. Still on dogs.  Two whole hours of a walk in the nicest weather of all summer. Talking about the same dogs we’ve been talking about for the past three years.

                Thank you, brain, though, for making the insta leap. The best ideas really do come from desperate circumstances.

                I spent the afternoon making the Marita Wrong video, though aware she will not approve of it.. I sent it to Drej as well to see what she makes of it, before I do as the client asks – while at the same time keeping the original, because this is not a paying client and I am not even going to waste a moment trying to explain why I do things the way I do them. I’ll just post what I want once she gets what she thinks she wants. It would probably go even faster if I didn’t work on the shape of the text or inserting photos to begin with. She dismissed them anyways and I wasn’t the least bit surprised.

                I have to go to another client meeting tomorrow, one of those unpleasant things regarding the final touches of a project long finished. But now they are fussing about things that we cleared at the very start of the deal and I suspect this is another one of those ‘well, we don’t really want to pay now that everything is done.’.. A waste of my time, really. But I do love to fight with executives.

                We had the second reading last night. Things are getting better and better. If the woman who just fell into the role of an old, strict village matron manages to memorise the lines, it will be unexpectedly perfect. The little girl who has the lead bounces off her so well. It’s the first scene and I’m loving the energy of it. Another reading tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have to finish the video and be done with it. My non-paying projects are always better, but I do get tangled in them for too long sometimes.

This play is going to be a lesson for me, some in patience of directing and some in finally understanding why when people tell me ‘this can’t be done’, some people really get a zeal out of it. I don’t fucking care if it can’t be done. While this is how I feel about it, I’m gonna keep on doing it.