soul monologue
i have a confession to make. i am – have been – an actor – for the last eighteen years. and a half, and what? four days.
time flies, but i’m not having fun.
this is a script you’re reading; it’s a script i’m writing and performing – it’s been an ongoing project for the last 18-and-a-bit years. this script here’s just an excerpt.
it’s titled soul monologue because i wanted at one time, five minutes ago, to make an oblique reference to the vagina monologues. it doesn’t work – technicalities: singular, not plural; i don’t have a vagina for a soul (nor indeed do i have a vagina at all, thanks for asking, adam) – and this therefore sounds like i’m faking intellectual depth.
in a sense i am doing that: trying to fake intellectual depth. i’m not smart, just confused, and my friends and teachers and classmates mistake my confusion for mental capacity. which is fortunate for me. i am lucky that my confusion has been perceived in the shades and tones of intellect – i am sly, crafty, ingenious, disingenuous.
so it’s not smart at all, it’s just because i wanted to pretend that i was being smart. or am i trying to pretend that i’m pretending to be smart, when i really am? no. humility forbids; i'm not that smart. i’m pretending; i’m pretentious.
my confusion has induced contusion; my brain's bruised.
if i clarified what i meant by ‘i’ perhaps things might be clearer. i said i am an actor; it would be more accurate to say i am an actor, a playwright and a character, all together – my (physical) body acts what my mind writes in my life’s script, and that’s interpreted by those around me. my friends: you see aspects of me; to you i am a character.
my character plays many parts; he’s a student, a lit-er, a humanz scholar, a rafflesian, an economist, a cynic, an atheist, a humanist, a musician, a pianist and bassist, a composer, a writer, a critic, a pedant, an actor, a fantasist, a loner, a misanthrope; a ‘just-an-ordinary-sort-of-guy’ guy.
Rubbish.
i don’t want to act any more. i’m tired, i’m twisted inside, i’m too confused. i’m a liar. i’ve constructed an image of myself, an image which is increasingly hard to live up to, because the image of myself is growing, maturing, developing, while i’m not; i’m shrinking, shrivelling, stagnating. sick. (me, that is.)
i guess some people look up to me – i would like to think that’s the case, but i might just be misguided – let’s rephrase that. i would like to guess that some people look up to me, and i would like to do that because i want to tell them that i’m not the character they think i am. the me, the real me, is afraid of telling that and exposing the reality, afraid like a small kid in a thunderstorm when the sky’s black and the lightning streaks across the sky and the thunder rolls deep and booming and strikes you off-guard and makes you want to hide.
i have nowhere to hide – i have cultivated an image, that i have to live up to. i need to talk to my friends, but i dread that when they see the small kid instead of the me-image, i’ll lose them. i can’t afford to lose the few i’ve got. I need to talk to them, but i need to keep them too. that’s like division by zero, somehow, in its twisted logic.
one other character knows, i guess, more than any other; that person probably won’t hear this monologue. if he does start he’ll have gone away by now, he’s not the sort who might bother untangling the rubbish i’ve been saying up there. but i hope he understands, in his own way; i’m comforted by that hope.
i hope your mind’s sprained already; mine certainly is.
phew. writing that was seriously tough, i need a panadol now, got a headache. it's not fiction – if it was i might post it on writers’ blog – but it's not completely fact either. i don’t know, it’s my scream i guess. my identity-crisis-angst.
well i felt good, what with staying up late listening to fantastic songs from The Hee Bee Gee Bees (parodies of the Bee Gees) and watching episodes of The Sketch Show, meeting my pals and giving stuff to some of my teachers (thank-you-very-much-for-mucking-around-with-my-brains gifts) who were sincerely delighted to get the stuff. i guess its great to make people feel appreciated, and i guess teachers really need to feel appreciated considering the crap they get and the lengths to which they go and the thanklessness of it all.
so that made me feel good. then i felt guilty about feeling good and therefore i wrote the shit you’ve read above, so as to make me feel like crap again. it’s worked; i’ve restored mental equilibrium except for the splitting headache i’ve got. welcome to my world.
time flies, but i’m not having fun.
this is a script you’re reading; it’s a script i’m writing and performing – it’s been an ongoing project for the last 18-and-a-bit years. this script here’s just an excerpt.
it’s titled soul monologue because i wanted at one time, five minutes ago, to make an oblique reference to the vagina monologues. it doesn’t work – technicalities: singular, not plural; i don’t have a vagina for a soul (nor indeed do i have a vagina at all, thanks for asking, adam) – and this therefore sounds like i’m faking intellectual depth.
in a sense i am doing that: trying to fake intellectual depth. i’m not smart, just confused, and my friends and teachers and classmates mistake my confusion for mental capacity. which is fortunate for me. i am lucky that my confusion has been perceived in the shades and tones of intellect – i am sly, crafty, ingenious, disingenuous.
so it’s not smart at all, it’s just because i wanted to pretend that i was being smart. or am i trying to pretend that i’m pretending to be smart, when i really am? no. humility forbids; i'm not that smart. i’m pretending; i’m pretentious.
my confusion has induced contusion; my brain's bruised.
if i clarified what i meant by ‘i’ perhaps things might be clearer. i said i am an actor; it would be more accurate to say i am an actor, a playwright and a character, all together – my (physical) body acts what my mind writes in my life’s script, and that’s interpreted by those around me. my friends: you see aspects of me; to you i am a character.
my character plays many parts; he’s a student, a lit-er, a humanz scholar, a rafflesian, an economist, a cynic, an atheist, a humanist, a musician, a pianist and bassist, a composer, a writer, a critic, a pedant, an actor, a fantasist, a loner, a misanthrope; a ‘just-an-ordinary-sort-of-guy’ guy.
Rubbish.
i don’t want to act any more. i’m tired, i’m twisted inside, i’m too confused. i’m a liar. i’ve constructed an image of myself, an image which is increasingly hard to live up to, because the image of myself is growing, maturing, developing, while i’m not; i’m shrinking, shrivelling, stagnating. sick. (me, that is.)
i guess some people look up to me – i would like to think that’s the case, but i might just be misguided – let’s rephrase that. i would like to guess that some people look up to me, and i would like to do that because i want to tell them that i’m not the character they think i am. the me, the real me, is afraid of telling that and exposing the reality, afraid like a small kid in a thunderstorm when the sky’s black and the lightning streaks across the sky and the thunder rolls deep and booming and strikes you off-guard and makes you want to hide.
i have nowhere to hide – i have cultivated an image, that i have to live up to. i need to talk to my friends, but i dread that when they see the small kid instead of the me-image, i’ll lose them. i can’t afford to lose the few i’ve got. I need to talk to them, but i need to keep them too. that’s like division by zero, somehow, in its twisted logic.
one other character knows, i guess, more than any other; that person probably won’t hear this monologue. if he does start he’ll have gone away by now, he’s not the sort who might bother untangling the rubbish i’ve been saying up there. but i hope he understands, in his own way; i’m comforted by that hope.
i hope your mind’s sprained already; mine certainly is.
-----
phew. writing that was seriously tough, i need a panadol now, got a headache. it's not fiction – if it was i might post it on writers’ blog – but it's not completely fact either. i don’t know, it’s my scream i guess. my identity-crisis-angst.
well i felt good, what with staying up late listening to fantastic songs from The Hee Bee Gee Bees (parodies of the Bee Gees) and watching episodes of The Sketch Show, meeting my pals and giving stuff to some of my teachers (thank-you-very-much-for-mucking-around-with-my-brains gifts) who were sincerely delighted to get the stuff. i guess its great to make people feel appreciated, and i guess teachers really need to feel appreciated considering the crap they get and the lengths to which they go and the thanklessness of it all.
so that made me feel good. then i felt guilty about feeling good and therefore i wrote the shit you’ve read above, so as to make me feel like crap again. it’s worked; i’ve restored mental equilibrium except for the splitting headache i’ve got. welcome to my world.
-----
What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me.
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,
And I'll try not to sing out of key.
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I get high with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends.
What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me.
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,
And I'll try not to sing out of key.
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I get high with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends.
Labels: Life
posted by Unknown at
3:14 pm
4 Comments:
adam, my blog readership is about four, i'd have to be lobotomised to not be able to guess what they think when they read the bloody thing. =) besides i've known you for nearly 5 years now.
ps. thanks for the characteristic insult/compliment. greatly appreciated. no, really.
lol rayner. i've never heard of anyone feeling so happy he had to angst to regain equilibrium!
that aside, if your friends are real, they won't mind seeing the real you. in any case, what makes you think that they haven't seen the real you? what we think we project is often not what we project, and one can't be keeping up an act 24/7, while breathing, and plausibly firing some neurones as well.
and if your friends WOULD mind the real you, then what's the point of keeping them as friends?
everyone's pretty messed up anyway, no one expects you to be completely perfect. it's probably inhuman, and in some way flawed, to be perfect.
oh yeah, also, in order to 'fake intellectual depth' surely there must be some intellect involved? i don't think a math noob could come up with a faux mathematical proof that would fool everyone into adulation
ahh sorry i realize that was highly unhelpful; wrote it under lit-essay inspired duress lol (what makes a good lit essay anyway??)
what i REALLY meant to say is, pretty much everyone is horribler than they show other people, which is probably good since it enables life to continue with minimum warfare.
also that you rock! if anything, it's worth being horrible (not that you are), as long as one is witty (which you are).
what makes a good lit PC (heh i read your blog, eli... doing PC right?): getting to grips with the language. you have to go to the poem, figure out 1) what you're feeling when you read it, and 2) what exactly makes you feel the way you do. and then 3) write it down in a moderately coherent way. if you 4) swear, you automatically get 20/25 haha
thx for the encouragement too =) yup i get the feeling too, it's not human to be perfect (but perfect to be human O.o) i guess i got carried away with purvis' image-versus-reality obsession in Antony and Cleo.
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