Just a game...a new level of incompetence

Wow, two blogs in almost as many days. Well the first one was a serious one with serious implications which my wonderful friends have all taken the time to comment on, and comment on beautifully as usual. So now I want to turn to something a little less serious, for all it's seriousnessnessness... ness.

I play a game called Dungeons and Dragons. I've blogged about my frustrations with my players in Durban, and now I'm going to blog about it again, here in Johannesburg. Here is a game that I love playing because it's an interactive story telling exercise, and wonderful couple of hours of pretending to be in another world.

And yet I keep finding myself at odds with people I normally wouldn't be at odds with. In Durban it was players who used the rules to control my game. Up here it's players demanding that I read the rules so that I can control my game. Rules, rules, rules. And why don't I read the rules I hear you ask? Why not just pick up the 1000's of pages of rules and commit them to memory? Well... there are 100's of pages to start with. I've got the core mechanics down, but all the little extra bits...

Why is it that I don't care about the rules in this game, and yet others are so obsessed by them? To me, if something is dramatic then that is great. Forget if rule X says that I must multiply 3.4 by the number of orcs to get some kind of ratio to work out how much gold its got. But it leads me to ponder: Why don't I want to read the rules? The more these poor players demand that I read them, the less inclined I am. The more they complain about me not knowing the rules, the more I refuse to know the rules.

Why? It's got to the point now where things that were leant out in friendship are being returned, money owed repaid, and all ties of friendship seem to be breaking apart. For me this means fairly little. I'm old enough to know who my true friends are, and cynical enough to not care about new ones that don't last because there are always more. It's sad because these particular 'mates' I really felt I could be friends with outside of 'the game'. But that doesn't answer the question as to why this simple little thing - the rules of a make-believe game - can be so important to people.

And more importantly why I am so flatly refusing to learn them. I was trying to think about it this morning, and then again after squash this evening and the only thing I can think of is that I'm afraid that even after I learn all the rules I still won't make a good game master. Perhaps I am using the rules as a defense? I'm not very good because I don't know the rules... not I'm not very good because I'm just not very good. Know your level of incompetence a cameraman once told me.

He feels that everyone has levels of incompetence - the point you reach when you are no longer competent or capable at a given task. Is my level of of incompetence so low with regards to this game that I am ashamed of it? Is my level of incompetence as a story-teller low? Am I a bad storyteller? I cannot believe so, although I was told by someone that I am a better actor than a director or writer... was that a compliment to my acting, or a serious dig at me as a storyteller?

Perhaps I am? Perhaps I am not a very good storyteller, but a better performer? Is this a bad thing? Should this stop me from trying to be a good storyteller? Should I look at my career and move from behind the camera to in front of it? John Candy made a fortune as the fat man in all his films. So perhaps I should. But at what point does one stop trying to reach ones dreams and go in a different direction?

Do I dream of getting an Oscar for playing a mental wheelchair-bound apartheid victim? No, but I do enjoy playing the various roles in dungeons and dragons. Putting on an act. Showing off my many accents, and breathing life into my characters. God is that it? Is that really it? Am I a Quinton Tarantino? A wannabe actor who needs to write his own material in order to get into a film?

I'm not convinced of it as a totality. I want to write my various documentaries and films because I feel they are an amazing subject that deserve to be told and recorded. But perhaps I should look at moving into the other side of the screen. I do enjoy the sound of my own voice, I must admit. I like the way it sounds, how it modulates, and can, at a thought shift and convey a totally 'different' me. It's one of the few things about myself that I can actually say: Fuck, I'm good at that. Hmmm....

This is an interesting place I find myself in. Secretly I get a rush out of people being entertained by me. I think I've even blogged about it before, but perhaps that is really where I want to be? Or is it simply an easier route? I think it is immeasurably easier to act than to write/direct/edit a film. Am I just trying to bow out? Again I don't think so. Have I been using my D&D groups all these years as captive audiences to my performance? No wonder they - most of them - got tired and frustrated. The Actor does not need to know the rules! The Actor must simply Act. Everyone else must just watch. That may be painting too heavy a portrait of my game, but I think it paints a fairly complete one.

So now that I need to question my career and start to look at moving outside of my world, I ask you reader - are you following your true calling or are you simply playing to a different captive audience? Begs a thought doesn't it?

Relationships...and other things

What is it that pulls two people together? And what is it that pulls them apart? When I think of the millions of people who are married (happily or otherwise) I wonder how they did it? How did they find people they could be compatible with? When I look at people I am attracted to - physically - I actually don't want the mind. I want that person for sex. I want to touch their body, rub up against it, and be fucked by it. Afterwards I want them to go home. I don't want them to sms me a thousand times, I don't want long phone conversations about nothing. I just want sex.

Then when I look at people I'd want to live with, to share my life with there is no single person I've met thus far that I would say: Forever till the day I die. Am I simply too self centered? Too specific in what I want? I know the word before I even try to spell it - narcissistic. I want myself. Except thin. I want someone who is funny, who reads Terry Pratchett, who loves Jean-Luc, thinks the last three star wars films were crap, finds it amusing to talk in funny accents... who is British by pretense and upbringing not by nationality. I want me.

Except why do I have such low self worth? It's getting better and better as time progresses, I think I'm learning not to care too much about things and how people see me. I think also that every time I take a knock to my ego, my temper flares. And I feel stupid, so terribly stupid at the same time. So why do I want me? And is it so bizarre that this is the case?

I don't know. When I look at my wonderful friends, each one of them possess some aspect that I want and take joy in and have fun with. Some are adventurous, some are comical, some are serious, others are fools. Some are creative geniuses, others are amazed and awed by simple things. If I could take each aspect from them, and build a human from it, that's the person I would want to spend the rest of my life with.

Does this make me a terrible person? So self absorbed that I can't look beyond myself? Am I so arrogant that I am perfect that I think of others as unworthy? I don't think so. I don't know. I don't want someone who compliments me. Someone who is quiet, reliable, hard-working, clever, who'll laugh at my jokes. I want someone who will stand up for themselves, argue, fight, laugh because it's funny, and then make a counter joke. I want an equal in design, not status.

Do I want a fat person? Or a large person as some people so kindly call me? I don't care. I'll have sex with the pretty boys, but will have a life partner with the One. So how is it that others don't seem to have this self desire? Surely what others strive for is what they want in their partners? I don't want a partner who is not creatively wild. I don't want a partner who doesn't obsess over their job. I don't want a partner who doesn't 'get' Monty P, or laugh at a Terry Pratchett. I'm not saying I want a partner who is in the film industry etc. Although that would be nice.

It would make things easy. And perhaps there is my true issue? Am I looking for the easy way out instead of the hard, making it work, route? Is it better to find it difficult to love someone than to find someone who is easy to love?

I think this is an interesting thought experiment for everyone to do. Get your pencils ready:

What would happen if I met myself?

Well I'd look him up and down and knock him off as some kind of gay creative who doesn't work out at all. Probably lazy. Then when he starts to speak I'd get a little buzz. Surely there are not that many people who know so much about so many irrelevant things? How could anyone be so passionate about some woman in the boer war? And now he's making stupid sarcastic jokes which are fairly amusing. But he's stubborn. God how stubborn. And he manipulates the crowds. Gets them thinking about other things whilst he makes decisions that benefit himself first... Hmmm... we shall fight over that. What is he doing now? Drawing? Writing? Making something. We could do that together... since we're both fairly good at it.

Although I might clash with myself in terms of leadership, proved that we both had enough savvy to talk about it - which I think we would - it could be shared. A united leadership is a strong leadership. What we couldn't do! Create, write, make, forge...

But I see my friends all trying to marry not themselves, but people who need something from them. Need support, need protection, need money, need to dominate. When I think about all the married relationships I know of, not one of them was equal. My grandparents used to have a power struggle with my grandfather always bowing down. My parents had the same problem, except my father refused to bow down to my grandmother (odd that isn't it, and she could never understand why).

Is that truly what love is then? The finding of someone whom you can 'use' to fill your need? A need to be relied upon? A need to go around helping? Why do people not marry because of a common desire? A common objective?

Again therein lies perhaps my downfall - why a common objective? Why can't people just marry because they want to? Why must there be some useful product at the end? Why must I find someone who will help me and I can help with in creating a painting or writing a play? Why should I not just be happy with someone who likes it when I write, will offer a bit of advice from a distance, but is busy clipping the begonia's?

My therapist once asked me why I am always so busy. At the time we decided it was because I was using as an ego boost, as a way of avoiding things that needed to be dealt with. I think he was right at that time, and I still think I do to a large degree do that, but as my patient boss keeps pointing out, I have to learn to not take on so much. Which I am doing thanks to him. But I still like to do things. A lazy Sunday with nothing to do? I don't really remember ever having one. I'm always doing something because I enjoy it.

Why write this blog? Because I enjoy it. And also it opens up my thoughts, gives me pause for thought as it were. And maybe it might help someone one day? Who knows.

So am I just a selfish, self absorbed arsehole who really just deserves to wank in a corner until I'm dead? Or am I simply too complex a person to manage to find the need for someone else in my world and so place such high demands on that someone that they can't exist? Or am I simply afraid of a relationship, and so use high standards? I don't know. If this was a film I'd have to learn to just live and let things flow, to stop thinking about them, and just go... but I know how those things are written, and I also know that I can't do that. It's not who I am.

Oh well reader, it is an interesting question I feel. One that I shall ponder for some time to come.

Ps. I just want to thank all of you wonderful people for putting up with all this crap over the last year. You have no idea how much it really has helped me. I really mean it. Thanks guys.