i love the theatre.
i love theatre.
i love stories.
i love love stories.
i love musicals.
i love engrossing myself in other people’s problems.
i love believing, and experiencing other people’s lives.
i love absorbing it all as reality.
i love reopening and reexamining the plot subtleties.

*sigh*

the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ is the powerful magic which allows us (theatre patrons sitting in comfy overpriced seats) to believe that the actors (overly made up, over annunciating thespians) on stage (an elevated platform upon which are fake furniture and walls and so on) are not telling us a story, but are actually experiencing a snapshot of their lives in our presence. it’s been done repeatedly, thousands of times in thousands of places, with thousands of curtain calls and standing ovations and matinees.

but, you see, i’m a sucker.

i’m a confident, together, “with it” individual. i’m emotionally stable, wouldn’t consider myself to be insecure and have lived my life. i’ve experienced most of the romantic debacles, most of the sneaky plot twists that exist in today’s plays and musicals, and survived. well, so i claim at least. this is all a load of bollocks, methinks.

i have a bit of an obsessive personality. i latch on to things that i like, and don’t let go. i *really* like the pet shop boys. why? well, for the typical reasons people obsess over a music group — i love the music, i identify with the music, listening to their different hit songs takes me back to different chunks of my past. all in all, the pet shop boys are spot-on in their music making abilities — it’s not difficult for me to stretch my imagination and think that they wrote songs like “it’s a sin”, “left to my own devices”, “go west” (okay, actually by the village people), “for your own good” just for me. as anthems for me, eric, living my life.

so, imagine my delight when i discovered the pet shop boys had written music for a new musical! the story was written by jonathan harvey (of ‘beautiful thing’ fame). and i was moving to london — what a perfect combination! i researched it, and, not more than a week after moving to london, i convinced some friends to see it with me.

i was awestruck. engrossed. felt emotions, feelings, that i hadn’t felt in … a while. parts of my body tingled. my heart, my gut. amazing. moving.

the plot? quite simple… straight irish bartender moves to london, works in a gay club. nobody believe he’s straight. gay club’s gay owner’s straight daughter re-enters his life, and quickly meets the straight bartender. they date for a few months, the bartender starts to contemplate a life in show biz, meets a gay east-end drug dealing lad, they fool around, and then all hell breaks loose. drugs, drinking, showbiz, clubbing, bartenders, dancers, boybands, sex, parenting, sexuality… death. flamboyantly gimmicky, and catchy, and poppy, and flashy… and, true.

okay, so, on the surface, it’s easy for someone like me to say “i identify with the show”. well, duh. like, young guy, living in london, enjoying excesses, making mistakes. death, sex, drugs, et al. sure. nightclubbing? of course.

but — it’s the pain, the anxiety, the love, the lust, the desire and the heartbreak that i identified with. maybe i’m thick — but after seeing dozens of broadway and off-broadway and fringe theatre shows, i never quite felt these emotions before. maybe i can’t identify with french revolutionary fighters, or angst-filled 1990’s new york gen-xers. i dunno — this show, though moved me. i couldn’t shake it for days and days.

and, like with so many aspects of my life, i researched it. i became a fan — well, i pretty much stalked it. newsgroups, reviews, articles, biographies. shameless. and, i went back to see it. two more times. i’m not going to say “it was even better the second time” or “i understand it so much more deeply now”, cuz that’s a load of crap. it’s a simple story, and i absolutely enjoyed reliving it again.

yesterday in the mail i got the cast recording of the show on cd. 17 tracks, and after listening to it, i was a wreck. somehow just listening to the songs, through my headphones at work/on the tube/whatever, somehow this made the experience even more concentrated. made the powerful ‘title’ track “closer to heaven” amazingly powerful. by the time i got to the end of the show i was a wreck — disjointed. the opposite of how i “normally” exist.

wonderful.

thankfully, the show (and the soundtrack) ends on a positive note, with a song called “positive role model”. thankfully.

but, now the musical is gone. out of production, put on the shelf. maybe it’ll have another run in new york or berlin or something.

but, to me, i’ve woven the stories, the lessons learned, the power of the show into my life. very much like those “certain songs” you hear, those “familiar scents” you smell which spark powerful memories, this has left a handful of powerful emotions buried in my subconscious. well done, well done.

so now, i struggle with ways to resolve these stories. maybe i’ll write to jonathan harvey who wrote the script. “well done”, i’ll say. “thanks, glad you liked it”, he’ll say. hmm… or i can write the pet shop boys. nah — same response.

what to do? it’s just like life — some things can’t be resolved, or filed away, or shut down. perhaps that’s the point.

sigh.

when it rains, it pours, doesn’t it?

i really like that analogy. you can twist it however you like — rain is not inherently good nor bad, or pleasant, or wanted. sometimes you just have to acknowledge it.

my travel itch is finally being scratched a bit — after staying in one place for þgaspâ nearly 3 months, i now am finding myself recently arrived to my london home after stints in manchester and san francisco, with stockholm next week and the holidaze just around the corner. that’s a good thing. even in this day and age, i still absolutely love flying.

my concept of home is being firmed up a bit, too. after four months of living in london, i find myself feeling more at home here than in san francisco. i went back to sf for halloween last week, and had an absolutely wicked time, but london “feels like home — i should have known — from my first breath”. a fiver to anyone who can spot that lyric. going back to sf, though, reminded me of my [relative] loneliness here in london… my aweome, excellent, amazing, hilarious, beautiful friends in the states — it pains me so much to be 10o0’s of miles away. but, alas, london has much to offer. london appears to have much “on offer” as well. “but that’s another story altogether — i had to beat them to death with their own shoes” (another fiver for that reference). i’ve just placed my heart on the conveyor belt of love once again. no, that’s a horrible analogy. i’ve just hopped on to the ski lift of love again — will it be a blue, a green, or a double black diamond.

what the hell does that mean? i guess something like “here we go again”. in the best possible, most giddy sort of way.

and then there’s the new job prospect. after more than two more-or-less fulfilling years building corporate and dot-com websites, i’m contemplating a more impactful career becoming editor of a magazine for young gay men. you know, change the world, make a difference, help some kids, have some fun, feel damn good at the end of the day. hopefully. i guess my plans to become an incredibly wealthy bourgeoisie fat-cat will have to be put on hold.

all-in-all, a pleasantly eventful few weeks. it’s been a while.

when it rains it pours?