Megan's Head

A place where Megan gets off her head.

Category: inspiration (Page 2 of 39)

New York Diary by a dramatic vegan

Day 1

It wasn’t a great flight. No, the flight itself was fine and mostly uneventful, it was just that I was surrounded by some real weirdos. The guy behind me had a total meltdown and grabbed the air hostess to scream his frustration that the little TV screen wasn’t playing what he wanted it to. Then he kicked out this frustration on my seat for 15 hours. And he would not stop farting. It was pretty toxic. People moved out of the way. The very middle-aged woman across the aisle from me, in a cheeky velveteen dungaree onesie, decided to stand on her chair to sort out the stuff in the overhead locker and then projectile fell through the air, landing on her back next to me. My reflexes were good, I didn’t pack up laughing (like I usually do when someone falls), and I helped her to her feet. She spent the rest of the flight either glaring at me or ignoring me. I think she blamed me. When we were getting ready to disembark, she took a deliberately long time, and farter behind me got irritated, launching me into her to get us moving.

But, we arrived at JFK fresh and early in the morning, waited forever for our baggage which got stuck on an erratic conveyor belt, and then hit the traffic into Manhattan.

After a quick shower I walked to Central Park – really close to where I am so lucky to be staying. I have a best friend who lives in NYC. In the Upper East Side. A dream really.

And then in the evening, after an afternoon rain that left the city glistening, we went to Candle 79, a well-established, double story, incredible vegan restaurant for a mind-blowingly delicious diner. What a taste sensation.

A meandering walk through the park and the most vivid and exquisite sunset brought the jet lag to my face and body and I collapsed in a heap at 9.21pm local time, which was like 4am back home.

How exciting that I am here for my own work. We rehearse this weekend at the theatre in Jersey City. Life is good.

Thoughts on asking for Money

It took everything I had to ask for money to help me get to Jersey City for the reading of Lost Property. I am still trying to unpack why crowd funding made me feel a certain shame. As if I needed charity.

But the desire to go there and represent my work; read it myself, propelled me out of shame and into a shy proudness. And, of course, the process exceeded my expectations. Family, close friends, and even acquaintances helped in big and small amounts and I managed to reach my dream target (which will more than pay for my ticket and production costs in the US). I also managed to do this in a record 4 days. I can’t believe it, and I am overflowing with gratitude and amazement.

So, what I am taking away with me today, and taking with me when I go, and what I will bring back, is that there are people who believe in me. They believe in my work, words, and theatre making. This feeling I am now allowing to permeate into everything I do, and it is no mystery that the flow gates are opening.

I am working more, and dreaming more and making more. I am manifesting and visualising and excited and energised. Watch this space.

Or watch me. The Deep Red Sea comes to the Alexander Bar on 20 and 21 May, just before I leave on the 22nd.

PS. A weird, convoluted, heartfelt bow to Pieter Howes. In the strangest, and most uncomfortable of ways we saw each other. I am sorry the world wasn’t a good place for you to be in.

Dear Bruce Springsteen

This is a letter to Bruce Springsteen. If you know how to help me circulate it so that it may, against all odds, get to him, please help!

Dear Bruce

I’m writing to you as a friend because that’s how it feels. That is the genius of you, I know. That is how all of your fans feel. It feels like I grew up with you and that we’ve been together, as friends ever since I met you, through a friend, when I was twelve. That is 42 years ago. It’s a lasting friendship.

You were the background to my rebellion; growing up white in Apartheid South Africa, you were the voice of my freedom, the echo of my first heartbreak, the shocking reality of my politics, the narrative of my wildness, the love song (If I Should Fall Behind) at my wedding, my solace when my father died and the poet on my inner journey.

I first saw you live in Harare at the Amnesty International concert. (It was my friends and I who had cheekily painted the ‘We love you Brian Springsteen’ banner that made you laugh. It was many years later that I saw you again, first in Cape Town and then in Johannesburg. I couldn’t bear not seeing you in my hometown and so I flew up for that concert that was like a baptism in the rain. Nothing could have prepared me for how personally I took those shows.

Your words and music have been a profound and enduring inspiration to me. So, when my play Lost Property was chosen to be read at a tiny developmental play reading festival at the Jersey City Theatre Centre on the 31 of May, I couldn’t help myself.  I have been fantasising about you being there. I know that it is beyond ridiculous, and beyond all realistic expectation, but I had to ask. Bruce, if you are in that neck of the woods, and would like to come to hear my play being read, I would love to have you there.

Lost Property is a tiny two-hander dealing with land, and home, and houses, and ghosts, and gentrification, and loss. It is deeply personal, and political and also strangely whimsical. And I think you may like it.

Much love and gratitude

Megan

A Dream of a Beach

(A semi-true story. The feelings are real.)

I feel the pull back to familiarity. There is a soft, furry body lying alongside me. Early risers; those getting children to school or off early to miss the worst of the traffic slam car doors or call loudly from the street to someone still inside.

 

I keep my eyes closed, not ready to let go of the feelings of my dream even though the images are still to coalesce in my mind. Loss. Longing.

 

I dreamed of a beach.

 

I was on my way home, walking through familiar streets, totally confident that I knew the way. I greeted passers-by and smiled and waved. And then I took a different path between two pale and old buildings, following a kitten who had looked at me with recognition on its dirty ginger face.

 

Then I was staring at a beach.

 

I remember thinking in my dream that my street had been close to the sea, right up until a hundred years ago. Woodstock Beach had been filled with swimmers, fishermen and strollers. I remember seeing black and white photos suspended on metal wires in a trendy, retro craft gin store. And I remembered this in my dream. I remembered that I drive on Beach Road.

 

In my dream this was Woodstock Beach. Accessible only to me. I alone knew that it was right there, a few metres from home. Nobody in today’s world would ever find it. It was safe. Our secret.

 

Between the grey, crumbling dolosse birds had made nests. A white whale skeleton formed a ghost wedding arch in the sand. Gentle, pretty seaweed and crusty mussels grew in a rockpool. Another was filled with giant purple and ruby red gem stones. I looked down at my feet making soft dunes where I walked. At the water’s edge I turned around to look back. The city was a smouldering, crumbling urban monster. It was exploding in a disorganisation of more building, more development, more greed.

 

I saw an old woman wave at me from under the frame of a beach umbrella. She looked like she had always been there although I had only noticed her in that moment.

 

I wanted to stay. I started taking my clothes off to get into the water but up close the surface was densely packed with completely transparent plastic bottles.

 

“You can walk on it, but you can’t swim” yelled the woman. Now she was surrounded by crime tape, held by four estate agent boards. She stood up and I saw her police uniform.

 

I thought about leaving and my heart shuddered. If I left I would never find this secret Woodstock beach again. I started scooping the sand in my hand, the damp sand. Could I build a house here? There was nothing to make it with. A hole. I would dig a hole.

Beautiful Cabbage Salad

I just made this beautiful vegan cabbage salad and it is too good not to share.

The ingredients are; a small baby cabbage, shredded, a sliced stick of table celery, sliced sugar snap peas, grated raw turnip, fresh sliced green chillies, a few sliced dates, a spoonful of cocoa nibs, and sunflower seeds. The dressing is olive oil, white vinegar and lemon juice, with salt and pepper. It is so fresh and good.

Off to eat it now.

Story

I am thinking about stories, telling them, remembering them, listening to them, sharing them and even being in them. They are my work, blood, passion and entertainment.

And, I want to write about them. I am writing lots of stories at the moment, but none are in first person, even though everything I write is informed by me. But I also just want to write about my stuff. So this is a true story about last night.

I pitched up at my friend Leonard just before 6pm. He lives close to town, and we were waltzing off to What if the World gallery in Buiten Street to an exhibition opening. We decided to walk; something I don’t do often, especially in the evening.

We did a brisk trot down Long Street; avoiding looking like tourists and the accompanying people who have a long story of their own about why you need to help them.

The gallery lights spilled down the ramp way/steps of what used to be where people drove their cars for fixing. It’s a gorgeous clean space, with levels and grey floors, and special gallery lights. Pink bubbles were served in short stylish cylinders. Brilliant and provocative art (from white men) bounced off the walls and filled the spaces and were viewed by a slick, chic and exceptionally gorgeous segment of Cape Town’s white art viewers. I had a moment of feeling I was in Norway.

Then we scurried further down Long Street to Church Street for another exhibition opening; a friend of a friend’s friend. Another space, this time darkly lit with the focus on the finest lined drawings by Marsi van der Heuwel. I liked the tiny lines.

We crossed the pedestrian road to AVA. At last. Actual black people; both artists and attendees. I fell in love with Nkosinathi Quwe‘s work; huge brilliant paintings depicting rituals. This is what he says about himself and his work. “Nkosinati Quwe is a painter who considers himself a visual messenger carrying the ancient story of the people – telling stories that have been told before, but from his perspective…”

Upstairs I got sucked in to watching a video installation. I think the artist was Mexican. A man collected bricks from rubble, built a kind of wall, made wooden squares, set them on fire, then smashed the wall. I became entranced with the sounds. For the first time I understood the weird and pervasive contemporary phenomenon of the people who make those brushing, licking, scratching videos – ASMR – autonomous sensory meridian response.

Then, from the balcony I played a delicious mime game with a toddler on the ground floor. We pretended to throw and catch things to and from each other. We laughed.

Leonard and I spilled back onto the street and walked with purpose, ignoring the woman who needed me to get her milk and bread for her toddler please mam, not for me mam, but for my child. The irony was not lost. We entered the safe and most absolutely Cape Town Royale Eatery; for me a vegan burger, and for Leonard a bunless meat but no carbs option. The irony was further not lost.

It was a huge and delicious meal. I was so glad to have been there after such a long time. Afterwards I said to Leonard that we would have to run up the road I was so stuffed full. We started a brisk walking jog. A big black man shouted out “Easy!” I told Leonard, “I think he thinks we are afraid of him.” On the next corner another young black man approached us. “Hey, why did you guys run? Are you scared? Are you Jewish? I can see you are Jewish!”

It was Tebogo, a young Sotho man from the North West. We chatted on the corner, getting to know each other. We explained our full tummies, and he explained his love of Jewish people. Leonard and I also had to explain that we weren’t a couple. It was a complicated, confusing, fabulous and fresh chat; on the corner of Kloof and Rheede.

I jumped into my car. Talk radio was all about fynbos. I switched off so I could listen to the world while I drove. I was remembering what Leonard had reminded me of; the Chinese scientists who had come to Sutherland, known for its pristine skies and also for its quiet, so they could listen to the sound of the world turning.

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