The Things You Didn't Read

I was uneasy, fidgety, lower abdomen nervous; I have a weird compulsion where I methodically stroke the end of my nose over and over, and on this day it was red and getting sore. The interview was to take place at 5:45, it was a day of drizzle and grey moving objects; I started drinking about 4:30 while on the train to the theatre: my special brand of cider that makes everyone else turn up their nose, but I like it, it does the job as quick as possible. I know all this seems melodramatic – I was simply going to interview an actress at a small theatre in central London– but being a fellow of slow meticulous procedure, the first time of anything is always an ever slipping trauma as my lacklustre methods of containment grope at stability, always too late. I simply don’t trust my unconscious, it has a proclivity for spazzing out when faced with the unknown like a tourettic hobo suddenly spurting antisocial invective. My fear, which kept playing in my mind, was that any moment during the interview my nerves would boil over and I would do something silly like punch her in the face, get her in a Kata-ha-jime and make her pass out – and I wouldn't class that as a good interview.  So, you see, a little bit of cider – being part of the meticulous procedure – just takes the edge off and saves a lot of embarrassment and possibly lives; and of course we must always remember the advice of the famous scientist and doctor* Charles Baudelaire:

Some people are improved so markedly by [cider] that their legs grow steadier, and their hearing becomes more acute. I once knew a fellow whose weak eyesight was restored to its original keenness whenever he was drunk.# 

The Dutch-courage, along with a few words of encouragement from a friend via text, was enough to get the beast subdued enough to get me to the doors of the theatre at the correct time. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise the theatre wasn’t open yet so I pushed the door way too hard and way too loud 3 or 4 times before realising I had to be buzzed in – once inside I made a ‘oh aren’t I silly and borderline mentally retarded’ face to the box office woman before informing her of my plight – to interview the Star of the show – which was met with a raised eye brow as she turned and, followed by a splay of tight curls, flounced out from her cubicle and ushered me into the foyer while she disappeared  behind another door.

I laid out my pad on a table in the bar, checked my phone for the sound recording software I had downloaded that morning, popped a mint into my mouth and sat back to ruminate. What was I expecting? I had been replaying scenes in my head all day where she was sat opposite me at the table, being all respectful, naturally beautiful and charismatic, just like all the pictures I had seen during my research, while I asked my questions in a style that varied to bumbling and inadequate to confident and charming – obviously the default position in my fantasies is the former. The box-office girl reappeared, with her hair, to inform me the Star would be a few minutes; I waited, I strolled around the foyer, looked absently at leaflets for other shows in other places, I waited some more. The nerves were starting to return; the door kept opening and closing, each time causing a peak of adrenaline in my body, but, no, just boring normal people: no stars. I left my pad and phone and went into the toilet, the last thing I wanted was to be desperate for the loo while attempting to capture a perfect crystal moment of pure truth from my interviewee, and wetting oneself does not mix well with the truth; cans of cider also tend to make toilet visits more frequent and more pressing, so I was well prepared. Sadly, all I managed was a rather unsatisfactory trickle of peaty yellow liquid, not what one wants to see, but oh well. I finished up and returned to my table. 

After more dawdling and pacing, my box-office friend reappeared, with her hair – which really was amazing, to tell me there had been a change of plan and shepherded me through the big black door, I felt a tad intimidated by this fact, like I was plunging forth into the forbidden – that meticulous method of containment I had built up was unravelling pretty quick and there were no knitting needles in sight, just the brute force of the unknown. We went down and down metallic stairs, there was banging and clattering and the occasional wail and screech from the contorted mouths of actors from somewhere in the distance. We continued down a dingy hallway with pipes running along the walls, a light bulb flickered overhead – we got to a door, box-office girl knocked then looked inside, it was empty; we went to the next, she knocked again, there was a muffled response from inside and in we went.

And there she was, hair splayed in many directions, wiping her face with a wipe, her face twisted into a perturbed madness. She sprung into action. ‘Oh, hello...hello...hello’, I leaned around a clothing rail populated with a panoply of colours and materials to shake her hand, it was brief and limp. Her attention was taken by a klunk and a bump coming from the corner of the room. She went over to the source, a tumble dryer, she started pressing buttons, looking at it from several different angles, my box-office friend joined in as still the rumbling continued: ‘sorry, sorry, oh god, someone’s shoes got wet and they are trying to dry them’. I sort of stood, awkwardly by the rail, smiling and laughing in my usual ‘ha ha everything’s fine everything’s fine’ kind of way. Eventually box-office girl simply pulled open the door of the machine and two more klunks and two soggy grey bodies lay sprawled on the bottom of the bowl. There was a moment - a couple of beats as we all stared, feeling something like a shadowy intoxication. Box-office girl disappeared and the pleasantries began. 

The Star returned to her seat and continued wiping her face and tending to her hair. I sat on a fold-out chair next to the clothing rail, half my shoulder being eaten by a pink voile garment that kept catching the corner of my shirt. We looked at each other in the mirror as she performed her preparations – which was for, I was told, a following interview that was being videoed.  I turned on my recorder, crossed my legs, popped a mint in my mouth and prepared to begin: ‘Ok so, I’m just gonna ask so some questions’.

...opposite of all the slick head shots and...

And it was nothing like I had envisioned – it was almost the opposite of all the slick head shots and performance photos I had seen online; there were clothes and detritus splayed around the room, a wanton smash up as it were, as well as the sound of a particularly screechy children’s party coming from the speaker in the corner was relaying happenings on the stage. The Star was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a zip hoody, she was present in all her imperfections: her wild hair, her unmade skin, herself in all roughness and spontaneity, and I suddenly felt privileged, I was getting much more than the guys with the video interview. This was where she was really exquisite, not on the stage under the lights. Then I realised, despite the questions I asked and what I eventually wrote up in the interview, this is what I wanted to capture; not the trite words that passed between us; but her youthful energy, the tenor of our combined laugh, the connection, the imperfection and the vulnerability; the moment of truth. This is what interviews should be about: the naiveté and beauty of someone when they are not being watched. 

And all of a sudden it was over, she ran out of words and I ran out of questions and rather than explore the silence between us, we said goodbye; I left, went back up the stairs, through the foyer and out into the rain. Then, I’m not sure why I did it, maybe it was the release of the nerves, but I looked up at the sky and held out my arms, opening my hands, as the rain peppered my skin and with that my mind lifted and disappeared into the ether and the pricks of water felt like a million kisses.

But I didn’t put this into the interview, I couldn’t, it would be too radical, they wouldn’t understand and it wasn’t the time or place; so I wrote up the interview in all of the tenets of a text of pleasure, in the same way it has been done a thousand times before, I ticked all the boxes and it was an OK piece. The above are the things you didn’t read. 

*I'm being jocular of curse, Baudelaire is indeed a poet, far better than a scientist or doctor.

# Baudelaire, C. Artificial Paradise - On Wine and Hashish.