Deeply Personal | Megan's Head

Everything is Perspective

On November 16, 2019

In complaints dept, deeply personal, political, race

From the point of view of Peter (Zimbabwean, celebrating his 42nd birthday), the Uber driver who drove me yesterday, who has never flown on an airplane, he is worried that he will feel the effects of the SAA strike.

From the point of view of Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, union spokesperson, frustrated by Bruce Whitfield’s laughter and inability to understand why the ‘sacrifice of 900 odd jobs was about people and not things, SAA always knew it was coming. Instead of changing their procurement procedures to save money, as early as suggested by the unions in 2014, they are now failing their workers.

From the point of view of white people speaking and leaving voice notes on talk radio, the majority of whom seem to have flown a bit, they take the strike personally, as if SAA was the only option, and they are personally put out and inconvenienced. There is no understanding that they are the most tiny percentage of a tiny percentage of people in the country and the world who have access to flying.

From the point of view of millions of South Africans, their transport concerns are more basic and local and I don’t think any of them have given a single thought to SAA, other than the money government has totally wasted on it. It is another black hole that things disappear into. There are more people in this country that have never been inside a privately owned car than there are people who have, or will ever fly.

These are just a few points of view.

Reviewing my situation

By megan

On November 16, 2019

In Cape Town, deeply personal, me on stage, show reviews, theatre stuff, writing

Cue Fagan earworm for the rest of the day.

A particularly complicated space I have managed to carve out for myself is that of reviewer in the field in which I try to have a career (word used because there isn’t a proper one to describe the all over dabbleness of what it is I actually do). It is between a huge rock of irony and a hard place of communal despair (universal and timeless when it comes to theatre that isn’t in New York City and On Broadway) that I put myself. Because I write about other people’s theatre work to get people into the theatre. And I am honest (even though it comes at a terrible price) because I want people to be able to trust me, and get to know me by my likes and dislikes.

But it is a dance, and I suck at the choreography of innuendo, and politic, and getting comps, and being part of the system, and being outside of the system, and having to rely on the same when I put on my own work, and then seeing something that is brilliant that isn’t getting audiences, and then feeling like I can’t get my own work into the spaces because I am more valuable as an external voice, and then seeing something terrible and having my heart fill my mouth and make me wordless, and then straying from the pack and doing something different that nobody sees, and appreciating the effort and hating the result of something, or seeing through the hype, or believing my own hype, and around the mulberry bush I go, mostly at 430am in the morning.

So, I am going to say it here, and test it out on myself. It’s good to be writing from meganshead again.

Money

By megan

On November 15, 2019

In Cape Town, deeply personal, inspiration, political, random things

One hundred percent of my anxiety is about money. Probably, if I compare myself to other people, with jobs, I handle my anxiety better, because I haven’t submitted myself to an endless job, ever.

Still. That is what I worry about. And I don’t get it. I don’t get this world that needs us to do so much stuff for money to live. And I don’t get the inequality of it; I don’t get how a human body that does backbreaking manual labour, fetching things out of the ground, is less valuable money wise than the actions of the man who sends them down there. I don’t understand.

I drove past roadworks the day before yesterday and looked at the ragged team standing in a gash in the earth, splitting open the platinum real estate of Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront. These men, sweating in the sun, knew what they were doing in that gash. It involved a huge pipe and other cables and big machinery. There was a (lighter skinned) foreman watching them over his giant belly. He was the one who had a hardhat on. For his more valuable head. My radio was playing an advert for ‘affordable’ retirement homes that would never accommodate me, or these people.

I get hysterical when I hear about how really rich people do not want to pay more tax, and I cannot understand it, and then I get a traffic fine that is exactly how much I have earned while my car was parked illegally and nothing makes sense at all. Money, and how we perceive it, and how we use it, and how we are attached to it and how we bring it to our lives; sometimes in mythological and spiritual ways, doesn’t feel right. And truthfully, I don’t love that this is what it takes to be in the world, to measure our success, to rate our progress.

Change

By megan

On November 13, 2019

In Cape Town, deeply personal, improv, world of work

I have always believed that I am one of few people who are comfortable with, or at least used to, change. Having been a ‘freelancer’ my whole life, with no actual proper job, I have gotten used to living with uncertainty. I don’t know any other way. Sometimes my days are full and complicated, and sometimes I have no idea what all those things were that I so badly wanted to do ‘when I had the time’.

Being someone who doesn’t know how the days, weeks and months of the year are going to unfold also means putting things out into the world of work and hoping that some of them take root. Some do. Sometimes at the same time. Sometimes a barren wind blows and nothing grows.

Being an improviser has been the best, and most consistent help. The improvisation philosophy of being in the present is a powerful and positive tool, and it is also the tool that has shaken me out of passive lethargy and into action; sometimes just to do the mundane stuff of exercise or housework.

So the theory is that I should be able to cope well with change. And I do. Ish. I just get stuck when things change and they are worse than they were before, and the change is out of my hands.

A good example would be the change of a board of some or other organisation – let’s say, for argument’s sake and totally hypothetically, the board of a charity I support. Let’s say I have been working with these tired and committed board members because I believe in their cause. And they have sacrificed much. And then a new board takes over, with efficient plans to save money and make money, with comparisons to other charities who do things better elsewhere. All of this is needed, and it makes sense. And they are totally gung-ho, but still, some people leave the organisation, and others stay, not totally fitting into their new skins, And the change is all over – in management style, and tone of voice, and level of commitment. None of it is wrong. It is just different. Relationships are different. And my place is different. And my voice is differently heard, and felt, and maybe, possibly ignored.

This change is so hard for me. This kind of change.

I have no idea why the feeling of this kind of change brings me to this memory. Many, many years ago now, when the passings of our old Taiwanese dogs Bayla and Gally were properly mourned and I started thinking about adopting a new dog into our home I remember seeing a pic of a dog on an animal rescue website and I became convinced he was the one for us. (I am sure I wrote about this on this blog all those years ago). They sent a man to do a house inspection and he decided that our courtyard was too small and we failed the house inspection. No matter how hard I tried to explain that we had no intention ever of keeping the dog in the courtyard, that he would be an inside dog that we would walk every day, mostly twice a day, they refused to hear us.

Sometimes change makes me feel misunderstood.

PS. I have just gone back to those old posts about that time. Yup. Still smarts.

I feel them like nagging pilot fish…

By megan

On November 12, 2019

In deeply personal, political, random things, writing

these new thoughts of nameless frustration. This is a quote from The Deep Red Sea. I love it, even if I say so myself (as my granny Janie would say).

I am surrounded by nagging pilot fish at the moment. They are the prickle of ideas that have not solidified into things yet.

They are social media and the irritating little nibbles they take out of my brain and time that I just can’t seem to shake.

They are the edgy rasp of global politics that are part nauseating horror and part nauseating almost excitement. Is the world really changing? Everywhere is on fire and people are protesting, from Lebanon to Hong Kong to Chile. People have had enough. A tide could be, may be turning as the terrifying, terrified last dictators stamp their feet and dig their heels deeper. Are people booing at the clown they made or are they distracted as Pennywise takes hold? Or are these more nagging pilot fish? Do most people in the world want to stay as they are because change is even more terrifying than the hell that is known?

I watch things on Netflix with titles like The End of the F***ing World. Imagine that. I watch same sex sex on TV while our own politician tells us to mind our own business when homosexuality is criminalised and given a death sentence by our neighbours. Twitter hate explodes, reverses, twists in on itself, hates the hater. Words bite, burn and heal.

White people deny concepts rather than things and are hurt by the ideas of White Fragility and White Tears, more than the real lived experience of black people, who must be the other every day in a country where they are not the other.

Slaves are bought and sold. Animals are food. Vegans and climate change activists are lampooned. Billionaires are crying about having to pay tax. There is a lobby, a lobby ffs, that has successfully sold the false notion that Pro-Palestine means anti-Semitism.

In the meantime a man is 3D printing limbs for people without limbs. A schoolgirl stands against grown men in the world and makes her voice heard. Chickens run to get hugs from boys. And tiny stories of love, friendship, defiance and bonding float to the surface like blown kisses.

In Her Shoes

By megan

On November 11, 2019

In deeply personal, inspiration, reading, writing

I have just submitted my novel, my second attempt at writing a long thing, to a publisher.

This is the most intense combination of complicated feeling, even though it is not dissimilar to performing a one woman show.

Chapter 1 – There is a feeling when you decide to submit it, and then at least twenty push me pull you feelings arrive to make you question whether you are ready, whether the publishing house is the right one (they are the only ones actively asking for submissions at this time), whether you are delusional and have no talent, whether they have a newbie on the submissions desk, whether the time is right, whether you are too old, whether you are too funny/not funny, whether your work is derivative and if it is, who it derives from.

Chapter 2 – The overwhelm, when you have to make sure you have all the supporting documents they need, and you double check the manuscript and you count the chapters and see a mistake, and get caught up in some internal grammar dispute with yourself, and you suddenly question a character’s name, and you get self conscious that the work isn’t long enough, or that it isn’t original enough, and then you re-read a paragraph and you really like it, but the one next to it seems weak in comparison, and you want to go to an arbitrary page and check for consistency but you are too scared to leave where you are and forget what number you changed the mistake to.

Chapter 3 – You are reading a book, a brilliant book, about a writer in his 50s (like you) and his angst, and self doubt, and disbelief that he was any good, and his bleary neediness, and every brilliantly selected word feels like it is written for you, about you, and reminds you of what you are trying to do, only so much better. (The book is Less by Andrew Sean Greer) , and you watch stuff on TV, and it has your themes in it, from your one woman show you just did, and everything feels like it has been done before, only better.

Chapter 4 – The talking to. The pep talk. You give yourself the lecture, the mantra, the vision manifest, and the whole time you are remembering the criticism of the last thing you did – not all the brilliant things that were said, only the bad, and you get the paralysis.

Chapter 5 – You throw caution to the wind, and, like drunk WhatsApp, you press send before you can change your mind, and then you are deeply, irrationally embarrassed.

Chapter 6 – Five minutes later you are already in anxious waiting mode, even though they completely and repeatedly admitted that they would take at LEAST two months to get back to you.

Chapter 7 – in continuum. You write about your feelings, and publicly declare them on your blog, on the internet.

Megan's Head

A place where Megan gets off her head.

Category: deeply personal (Page 3 of 102)

Everything is Perspective

Reviewing my situation

Money

Change

I feel them like nagging pilot fish…

In Her Shoes

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