darklooks.com

Right. Jolly good. I’ve had the most marvellously busy couple of months, which has kept me out of trouble and off the interwebs, probably to everyone’s benefit.

I’ve had three conversations with three separate people* lately which brushed gently across the same territory. The topic is, as you have probably guessed by now, my artistic input. Since you’re reading this, you fairly certainly know or are aware of me to some extent. You know that I lead a telly-free life here in the civilised London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, spending my evenings running loads through the washing machine on inappropriate programmes for thrills, and occasionally dipping into the print media to keep the old thinker ticking over.

The problem is that I don’t get out of the house to do it often enough. I have splendid sofas and am happy to curl up with the Riverside Shakespeare or Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, but this doesn’t fulfil the important purpose of keeping me, to borrow some hideous corporate jargon, “in the loop” with Arnold’s “sweetness and light”. (Arnold explicitly borrowed the phrase from Swift, thus proving T. S. Eliot’s point in that most undergraduate of all essays, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. Although I suppose you could argue that it couldn’t prove Eliot’s point, given their relative dates, but then fossils do prove the odd point now and then, so perhaps it’s all just a matter of perspective — like so much in life, he said, by now so finely balanced on the fence he scarcely dared move.)

What to do? Well, since it’s (checks watch) Sweetmorn the 73rd of Discord, 3174, it feels like time for a little resolve. Since I don’t do them at New Year on principle (and with a heavy sense of my own human failing) I’m doing it at a randomly chosen date instead (rather like my birthday party and, I suppose, my housewarming, should I ever get round to it). And the resolution, O Ye of … well, Ye, is that I shall, on average, visit the theatre twelve times in one calendar year.

I don’t think a night in the circle a month is unmanageable, but busy / poor months happen, so we’re just measuring it on an average basis. This should ensure I a) don’t live like a permanent hermit, b) take more notice of the theatre-going I do do — more than I think, but I always forget about it ten minutes later — and c) give me something extra to mention at all those smug dinner parties I go to in Islington**.

I should be clear that this is not a call for tickets - I would love to come along with you, of course, but I need to organise this myself and have a sense of operacy, as I believe the smart young folk in the research institutes call it. Let’s see whether I manage. Bwahahaha.

PS Yes, I moved, yes, it’s lovely, and yes, my drying laundry is presently hanging from every possible ledge, how did you know?

* Yes, separate people. Not conjoined people. No value judgements about either group, you understand.

** Yes, you’re right, I don’t ever go to smug dinner parties in Islington. And I am rarely lost for words. In fact it’s rarer that I shut up. That’s a fault — I’m working on it, but I’m realistic. No resolving yet, thank you very much.