Whirled

This is a poem that I wrote about a week back, and then performed two nights ago at the Narellan Poetry Slam in Harry Hartog - and I came second! :D So I said I'd put it up. Here you go.

This world is a tortured place.

Tortured by us; and it’s hard to count the ways

In which we’ve managed to make it worse

Than it was - we’ve become this planet’s curse.

Whether it be plastic in the oceans, or smoke in the air,

Or things just dying - we seem to not care

About what’s happening around us, we shut our eyes

To the evidence that’s so clear, we believe the lies

That say it will sort itself out. We don’t need to worry.

The earth takes care of itself. Well I’m sorry,

But that might be true if we weren’t so good

At beating it within an inch of its life! You would

Think that we’d have more sense than to kill

The very thing that sustained us, but history will

Testify that this is clearly not the case.

There’s no greedier species than the human race.

And race it is, because we just can’t stop,

We have to go faster, we have to get to the top,

No matter the cost, no matter the pain,

It’s always about the little we can gain,

And we don’t really care what we do to get there.

But, if we can pause for just a moment, can you please tell me where

Do we go from here? What’s the plan?

Do we just use up what we have, and

Hike it off to the moon, or Mars, and use up those too?

Are we that parasitic? Is that really true?

Or is it possible for us to turn around

And heal this world? Heal this ground

That has grown us, and shaped us, and made

Us who we are. The hand that we’ve played

Are not the only cards we’ve been dealt.

We just think they’re never good enough, we’ve felt

That we’re worth more, and so we keep pushing for more power,

More strength, more of everything in this hour.

And the thing is, we are worth more.

But more doesn’t mean burning the floor

Just to get an inch ahead of the rest -

It’s about working with this planet that we’ve been blessed

With, not against it. Because as much as we think

That we are stronger than Nature, in a blink

We could disappear if we keep going this way.

That’s how strong she is. And we try to push her away.

But together, think of what we could do -

Rather than torture, remember that it takes two.

We were given a gift, but instead we destroyed.

But if we stopped - if we employed

Even a modicum of the brains that we’ve been given,

And did something good. Maybe then, we’d be living

Well. 

On Directing.

Having finished the run of The Crucible now, I have an opportunity to look back on my first attempt at directing, and the various failures and failings therein. While it was a successful show that did quite well, we certainly had our hurdles.

I think a large part of the issue comes from the idea of the role of 'director', and what different people see them as.
To many, it seems that the director should be the be all and end all, the buck stops with them, they make all the calls and all the plays, and the success or failure of the show ultimately rides on their shoulders.
For those that know me, though, they'll know that this doesn't really sit with who I am, or how I work, very well at all. Rather, I like to work collaboratively. And the word that is crucial for me here is 'ownership'. (NB: not meaning owning people! Very important.)

What I've strived to do as a director - and I think what I try to do when I lead creatively in general - is give people ownership over specific things. Not everything; but specific things.

For example. For the person who is in charge of sound, or lights, or props, or costumes, or whatever it might be. I give them ownership over that. I enable them, as much as it is in my power, to make their own decisions with those things. By and large, I don't have much knowledge in these areas. Me dictating what I think they should do makes no sense. I'll give them my ideas that I have from my knowledge of the show, of course - but I'm not going to prescribe what they do.

I do a similar thing with the actors; but with them, I give them ownership over their characters. Yes, I'll have ideas about how the character should look, or feel, or say. But ultimately, they're going to have a lot more time to dive into their character than I probably will, when I need to have a working knowledge of all the characters and scenes and relationships. They'll also (hopefully) have a deeper knowledge of the specific things they do than I will. I've cast them because of their acting ability, because of how I believe they can build and portray a character, not for their capacity to replicate what I say. I don't want to be a puppetmaster. I want to be a collaborator, a facilitator.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking and working, while allowing some lovely flexibility and creativity, lacks decisiveness. It lacks clarity. It lacks (strangely enough) direction. And I think that's the difficulty that I faced, in finding these things hard to give to people, and I think that's what some of the actors and team found tricky as well at times, particularly as we got towards the pointy end of things, and bits needed to be a bit more nailed down. Thankfully, I had other people that were good at that sort of thing, and able to step in there.

I'm not sure if there's a good balance in between somewhere; or perhaps what I'm talking about is something very different to what a director is. I don't know. But I don't think I'll be doing another go at this any time in the near future. For now, I'm happy to rest.

I do want to note - considering it was my first time doing this, and seeing as it was such a big show, I think I did pretty well. And that's what I've heard from most people as well, which has been very encouraging. This is just me looking back at the things that I did and didn't do well, seeing the patterns, and being able to articulate and formulate them more clearly than I was able to in the midst of all of it.

Slowly Dying.

They say that death comes as a surprise to most of us.
But not all of us.
Some feel her approach, slow and sweet, drawing us in, bit by bit.
We are already hers by the time she arrives.

I am a slave to my emotions, and my emotions are a slave to my circumstance.
My body might look young, but it doesn't feel young. It feels ragged, worn, and heavy. Leaden. My moves are as through treacle, or custard.
My brain sees it all happening, but can do naught about it. It slowly wears from lack of use, finding only moments of clarity.

The world feels like a dream. Or something distant, far away.
There is too much pain, too much suffering, too much injustice, too much idiocy, too much violence, that could be so easily ended - but it is not.
And the world continues to turn. And the world continues to burn.

I once had hope for this world. For this people.
But it feels as though this hope has been snatched away, obscured by the harsh realities of today.
The world is dying. In so many different ways. And we could stop it. But we won't.

Because we're too busy. Or too comfortable. Or too rich. Or too stubborn. Or too oblivious. Or too ill-informed.
Or too unable to do anything, when the weight of the world seems to be on our very shoulders, and it is slowly crushing us into the ground.

I feel like I am slowly dying. I have felt this for a long time, in different ways. But never more than now.
Never worse than now.
And I do not know how to stop.
I do not know if I have the strength, or the energy, to stop.

I do not particularly want to die. Neither do I want to hurt myself, or anyone else.
But living just keeps getting harder. And harder.
And I'm a middle-class white guy in a good house in Australia. If it's this shit for me, then damn.

This is an emergency, folks. Whether you believe it or not, our planet is in crisis. In so many ways.
If we don't do something about it now - we might not be around for that much longer.