Why?

So january 2nd, returned to the ‘Damage. Amsterdamage. The kitschy shot above of the magere brug (skinny bridge) across the Amstel, Het Carre is in the background. Funnily enough if you’re a coinkidinky type, when aged 21 I lived on a barge kitty corner to Het Carre, a renowned theatre in NL..

Age 26 I took up acting with the intention to make a living out of it. To be honest (actors are notorious stretchers of the truth) I didn’t want to become famous, I hate the schmoozing and false people scare me.

I succeeded. I’ve done pretty much every category on the actor’s skill list and been paid for it. My accomplishments might not impress on the ‘wow’ scale but hey that’s the real world 98% of paid actors’ live in.
For the money, I’ve been f**ed-over, scr***d to the wall, held up false hope, and still I keep coming back for more. The big payoff is a dream only for the gorgeous, talented, and the connected, especially if family is involved, only 1 or 2% of working actors’ will ever achieve it.

Pathetic really isn’t it, this scrambling for the limelight, all eyes on you. Attention, I need attention! You validate my existence by watching me pretend to be someone I’m not. The creators of  Team America hate actors, and I must say I prefer the company of musicians, artists, dancers and architects myself.

Comedians? They’re a breed apart.

Shakespeare, or as we shall refer to him from now on, Sh. is not a christ-substitute but a confucious substitute: a spiritual humanism instead of a Dogmatic entity. Sh. understood his theatre as an Art, his writing as an Art and his life as a human, all faults and virtues.

His works, particularly Q1609 Sonnets, are for me as for many Sh. nerds, private and personal. I’m simply the embarassing nerd who gets up and mouths them off. Know Thyself is a commandment the Elizabethan Age was chanting. It still applies.