Harry Giles : Home
the cyberpace home of the London-based theatre director, performance poet, and general doer of thingsSo that went pretty well
At the beginning of 2011 I sat down with a blinking cursor and a file named What am I doing with my life? I broke things down into headings like “Poetry” and “Theatre” and subheadings like “Where I’m at” and “What I want” and “What I’m going to do”. I was pretty lost a year ago and genuinely needed to sit down with something that could have fallen out of a culty little self help manual in order to get things sorted.
I looked at the bulleted lists quite regularly for the first couple of months, but as 2011 picked up speed I started to forget about it. I don’t thhink I’ve double-clicked it since June. So I opened it up yesterday, and was astonished to see how well it had worked. Last year went pretty well for me, and it felt a lot like one lucky break after another — but it seems that I did shape it from the beginning.
I wrote poetry regularly, and started to get it published, alongside running a really successful loca events series and Minifest in August. I made multiple theatre projects that satisfied my directorial interests. I found freelance work to keep me in the black and busy enough, but not so busy I couldn’t play plenty of games. I helped run our amazing social and arts centre, The Forest. I started work on a book and EP. A bunch of other stuff happened, and most of it’s there in that plan. How strange!
So today I sat down to do it again, and it feels a bit like trying to do a difficult second album. There’s nothing fresh about the file this year. It’s laden with the expectations of last year’s successes. With the idea that I have to build, progress, move forward. My theatre’s got to get bigger audiences and more recoognition. My poetry’s got to get in better journals. I want more and better contracts. I want to push myself further and better. I’ve found ways of managing myself and my interests that seem to work for me — but now, rather than being exciting, rather than feeling like a game or a treasure hunt, those same management methods are under pressure to pull it off again.
I’m a bit scared that it won’t work a second time round. That the pressure of trying to push harder will buckle me. However much I tried to plan, or maybe because I tried to plan, last year was exhiliratingg, and everything was new. I’ve typed up the file again for this year, but can’t help feeling that, if this year is going to be as good, or better, I’ve got to do something different. Any suggestions?
My Bailout
The other day I received this email:
HM Serial Number: 768369
BATCH No: HM/03/2011/UK
Amount Awarded: Ј550,000.00 GBPAttn Beneficiary:
We are pleased to announce to you that your Email Was selected at random as one of the individuals to be compensated with the sum of Ј550,000.00 GBP by the Royal House of Treasury (H.M TREASURY).Do Contact the Below Details via his personal email for immediate Claim:
Name: George Osborne MP (Chancellor)
Email: george.osborne12@hotmail.co.uk
You are advised to provide Chancellor George Osborne with the following accurate information of yours,
for claim: YOUR FULL NAMES/ ADDRESS /COUNTRY /HM SERIAL NUMBER / PHONE NUMBER/ AGE.
Have a nice day and Hope you use this Money profitably.Signed,John Thompson,
Finance Director,HM Treasury
So I wrote back:
Dear George Osborne,
Thank you very much for your email and offer of compensation. The money is much appreciated and certainly means a lot in these troubled times. I just wanted to ask a few questions before we proceed.
For what am I being compensated? Is this recompense for the difficulties of living under this Tory government? My initial assumption was that you have chosen to reassign all the money saved through benefit cuts by random lottery — certainly, that’s an economic strategy exactly as rational as using spending cuts to rescue a failing system. But then I realised that you were “compensating” me, and I wondered for what. Is it for the impossibility of finding a steady job that uses my two degrees? Is it for the difficulty in paying back mounting graduate debt for a new generation over mortgaged students? Is it to make up for how hard it would be to get disability benefit even if I lost all my limbs in a freak photocopier accident, because ATOS would determine that I could still operate an assembly line with my teeth?
Or maybe I’m thinking along the wrong lines here. Are you, in fact, bailing me out? It’s true I’ve made an awful hash of my life. Living in a capitalist society means that I suffer regularly from crippling anxiety, mostly around my inability to perceive myself as a success. Are you giving me a cash injection so that I can feel like a success, George? I too, once, thought that I was too big to fail. I too have collapsed my emotional assets through sub-prime lending to ungrateful borrowers. I too have tried to make things better by giving myself absurd bonuses. I could certainly do with a bail-out, so if that’s what you’re giving me, I’m grateful.
But then, maybe I don’t deserve one. I’m afraid, George, that I am a dissident. I have gone on protests. I have been arrested, and intend to continue commiting acts of civil disobedience to bring down the government. It’s true! But it’s also true that my activism is partly motivated by my desperation, my anxiety, my inability to see life as rich people see it. So perhaps your money can help. Is that what it’s all about, George? Is that what you’re trying to do? George, are you trying to buy my silence?
If so, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. £550k just isn’t enough. A cool million should do it.
I look forward to your reply, with the information I requested. I will be happy to send you my bank details and passwords within 24 hours of hearing from you. I’m more than keen to entrust my finances to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. You’ve done such a good job so far!
Regards,
Harry Giles
I await his reply.
Globalisation
So I’m lounging by a pool in Abu Dhabi, here to train street performers for an international Science Festival that isn’t allowed to talk about evolution. I’m reading Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” and there’s Western pop music pumping from a plastic rock behind my wicker lounger. The poolside bar sells mojitos. There’s a woman in a full black burkha, carrying an expensive Italian handbag, filming everything with an expensive Japanese camera. “National Express” by The Divine Comedy comes on, followed by The Police’s “Roxanne”. The poolside staff, as with all the low-waged staff in this city, are all southeast Asian, but have nametags reading “Allan” and “Matthew”. Last night was English night at the restaurant buffet, and they would freshly fry fish and chips for you. The hotel is half-empty. It’s November and it’s 30 degrees. My bedroom window looks out onto a mosque lit in green neon, a ten-stack oil refinery, a motorway, sprinkler-fed grass lawns and several building sites. The team I’m training are from Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Sudan. Paul McCartney and Britney Spears are coming here this week; my team will be performing carbon dioxide experiments by the stage where Fatboy Slim is playing. Large military transports have been taking off all day, and we’re not sure why. I didn’t read the news today.
