A day spent in the head. Two films at The Tyneside: Brothers of the Head and The Collector. ‘Brothers of the Head is a fake documentary of a rock band featuring a guitarist and singer who are conjoined twins. It makes rather compelling viewing. It’s told as a gothic tale, like Wuthering Heights on the road to Nashville.
The Collector is a fantastic Polish film about a ruthless, unfeeling debt collector who attempts to find salvation having crossed a few too many lines of decency. Perhaps the low point that turns him is his attempt to wrestle an accordion from the terminally ill daughter of his long lost ex-girlfriend. He has a hard time trying to become good, having spent his working life creating a whole world of bad karma around him.
As I was leaving the cinema, desperately hungry and briskly starting the cold-socked walk home, I heard a girl’s voice say “excuse me, excuse me!”
I turned round to see two teenagers, a girl and a guy, trying to get my attention. Satisfied that I was listening, the girl pointed at my record bag and rather excitedly said,
“Bill Hicks! He’s my hero! That bag is awesome! Do you want to come see The Tempest? We have a ticket. Patrick Stewart’s in it! You should come!”
I smiled at them, and began to explain that I’d just come from the cinema where I’d seen two films back to back, and that I had managed to not really eat much all day.
As the words were leaving my mouth, I knew I sounded pathetic. To such youth, such vitality, I couldn’t stand there with my defiant haircut and my Bill Hick’s bag and tell them that solitary pasta was going to take precedent on a gift horse featuring the Star Trek captain. It would have scarred them.
They hurried me, explaining that it started straight away and that I had no time to get any food.
Before I had adjusted to this welcome interruption to my day’s plans, I found myself sitting in the upper circle of the Newcastle Theatre Royal. I was almost entirely engulfed in a sea of youth. Just about the entire top of the audience was comprised of English Lit and Drama Studies A level students. Talking energetically, and making me feel old and shapeless. Such perfect limbs and red faces.
The production was lavish and inventive, and Stewart put in a solid, earnest performance, making many loud exclamations and big faces.
The music of the production was particularly interesting. Ariel’s odd songs sung through a Mongolian throat singing style. Though he mostly sounded like Morrissey.
At half time, as I chatted to my host and her enthusiastic and charming friends, I remembered those days closely studying texts, instructed to go crawling for the most obscure points of significance. I remembered being outnumbered around fifteen girls to one me in my English class at school. I recalled that constant tiredness I felt at school. Always deprived of a good night’s sleep from hours idly watching tv or masturbating over computer screens. That perpetual sense of stimulation, feeling at once intellectually challenged and horny.
Always I had a red face. A glowing lava lamp of a face. At the slightest hint of embarrassment, shame, sexual attraction, attention or interaction, my cheeks would burn a sweaty red. Obviously that was most of the time. What a hideous thing to live with. Thankfully, I seem to have a little more control over my facial capillaries these days.
One lad tonight asked me about my job at the cinema. I told him I worked a few shifts a week. He asked if I was a student. No.
”So you’re a just a bum, basically?”
“You seem to have pretty quickly got the measure of me, son.”
What cheek. I was amused though. He confessed plans to follow in my footsteps.
“I just don’t like jobs” (I think he said).
As the production finished, my little gang told me that they were going to the stage door to meet Patrick Stewart, to congratulate him on his performance and be generally fawning, I expect. Already feeling a little uneasy about the thought of allowing such impressionable and pretty girls to become attached to me, I told them no, I would go eat now. Besides, I was never much of a Star Trek fan, and had nothing in particular that I wanted to say to the man.
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