The beginning...

Well, I packed up all my stuff in my place in San Francisco and I moved out. I got a ride share down to L.A and I’m currently residing on a guy’s couch in Beverly Hills. I haven’t seen Axle Foley yet. The houses are amazingly immaculate with palm and banana trees growing outside and the lawns are bright green and finely trimmed by small, jovial Mexican men. Frankly, this is the LAST place I would have thought I’d be looking to reside in. A commune in the outback of New Zealand. Yes. A small yoga retreat on the outskirts of India. Yes. An isolated temple in the nether-regions of the Himalayas. Probably. But smack bang in the middle of the epitome of Western culture with all it’s disconnectedness and technology and superficial trimmings!!? Didn’t see it coming. It sure is an unexpected and original turn. But then, I guess that was the only way it was ever going to go. I like to keep myself on my toes!

So what the fuck am I doing here? Well, I’m going to be an actor aren’t I! This is Hollywood. The only thing to do is to become a rich, successful actor! It’s my agent’s fault in San Francisco.  If they hadn’t have got me those big Apple and BMW commercials I wouldn’t have realized that anything is possible! Getting those jobs and experiencing the process behind them gave me a taste of something that I dreamed a long time ago in college when my heart led me to take Theatre Studies A/Level. I wanted to be an actor almost right from the start. But then things happened out of my control and I had to let go of it. Now I realise that I can still do it. I’m thirty four, not a fresh-faced spring chicken anymore! But it’s not too late! And it’s taken this time and experience to make it to this place where I can say YES, I can do this! It couldn’t have happened any other way. I needed to walk the road that led up to this. Now I feel seasoned, confident and able to do ANYTHING I want! And I want this! I want to live in L.A for a while and go to auditions and get picked up for a sitcom. I want to start making a few thousand dollars every week. I want to get a nice place on the beach with a veranda to do yoga on and some bedrooms so my brother’s and friend’s can come and stay. I want to start working more and more and be flown to New York to make a movie! I want to make another movie! I want to be able to put money towards charities and projects which do good in the world! I want to have chunks of time off between projects and take a road trip across America. Spend some time in Bali in a yoga retreat. Go on more Vipassana courses and keep getting rid of old, useless tension and baggage and keep getting lighter and lighter until I start to float away and people have to grab my ankles and stake me down to keep me earth-bound! And it’s all going to happen!

That’s the thing about living in America. You feel as if you really can accomplish anything. No-one will try to pull you down no matter what you try to succeed in. There is the liberating idea that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.



For now though I’m on the couch. I just got here and I’m settling into the place. I met this chap on the last day of a ten-day vipassana retreat. Neither of us had been able to speak for the first ten days of being in the same proximity due to the noble silence rule. Making eye-contact is also discouraged so basically the only thing we knew about each other was the way each other walked. But on the last day when everyone’s talking again we connected and he offered me a place to stay if ever I found myself in his neck of the woods. So now I’ve taken him up on it. His name is Jasper. He’s middle-aged, slight of frame , black, greying shoulder length hair, big, blue curious eyes, affable and a little nervous. He owns half a photography studio in Silverlake with another guy, Silvio.

Jasper's a great guy and seems to be a big net worker who everybody knows. So he goes off to work in the morning and I rise, have a cup of tea, meditate, do some yoga, do some work on getting my L.A acting profiles up and running, work on my tan, skype, and marvel and give gratitude at how incredible life is!!

There is another resident at Jasper's: Doug. He resides temporarily in a room for which he’s paying Jasper rent for. He’s a New Zealander, middle-aged, medium build, shaved head, small squinty eyes, slightly greying beard. He’s teaching at a university here for a while, but he usually lives in Amsterdam with his wife and small child, Lewis. He is a magical man of profound and joyful idiosyncrasies. As soon as he gets in from work he engages in what he calls “putting on the green helmet” which involves rolling and smoking a big spliff outside on the veranda. He’ll then lie down in his room with his eyes closed for about half an hour, which is lit by a naked, solitary, red-coloured bulb. He’ll then emerge, engage in some choppy, jovial banter, perhaps inquire about dinner ideas, head outside for another donning of the Green Helmet, groove to the smooth tunes being played on the radio, engage in some stimulating conversation, perhaps diving into theories about the failure of the American education system, maybe chop some vegetables, skype his family and make funny, muppet voices at his son, then go lay down in his red room again with his Green Helmet firmly fastened and rest for another half hour until he emerges once again to continue these activities in a slightly different order with a never faltering sense of energy and twisted, brilliant intellect! Sometimes I find myself paralysed with awe and hilarity at the profound and tantalising images and descriptions he pulls out of nowhere to describe the moment we’re in or a situation he once experienced. Like the time he had an enlightening experience with one of his friends, who, as he says, ‘peeled him apart like an onion and then put him back together again to show him that all the things he feared were bullshit and simply not worth being afraid of’.

In the mornings the first thing I hear is the sound of Dougie energetically stirring porridge. The first question I’ll be cheerfully asked in a broad Kiwi accent as I make my way to the toilet is “Do you want your name on the pot this morning Clarence??” Which is an inquiry into if I want to be included in the porridge offerings that morning.

I really couldn’t have found a couple of better individuals to have hooked up with in my transition than these two gentleman!

I have been a little impatient with my agent here so far though. One and a half weeks and not so much as a send out to a margarine commercial! (“Where is my agent?? Bastard must have died!”) Maybe I’m being a bit harsh though. It is the slow season right now. I almost fucked it all up this morning when I sent them an email telling them to pull their finger out! They sent me an email back telling me I was high maintenance and that they were terminating my contract and relinquishing me of all my contractual obligations! Shit!! There was a little confusion last week as somehow all the responses they were sending to me were being sent to my old email address and I wasn’t getting them so I thought they were ignoring me and so I kept at them. Found out Monday that they had been responding all the time! I explained it and somehow managed to smooth things over and they’ve taken me back. Jesus! Sometimes I feel as though I’m in a Hunter.S.Thompson novel. I can understand how this fast-paced, gaudy-coloured, bizarre side of America shaped the man’s inspiration for the drug fueled crack-pot characters who inhabit his twisted worlds.

Phew! It’s hot here. Hot and dry. I must say it’s actually doing wonders for my constitution! My body likes this climate. It never did feel at home growing up in the damp of England. Give me desert! And heat! There’s nothing as satisfying as seeing those first few beads of sweat appear on the skin in a yoga practice in this arid environment!

Looks like I’m the new kid on the block once again then. I was enjoying having been in a place (San Francisco) for three years and feeling established and like I KNEW the streets and the place and could help newcomers get what they needed. I’d established some good, steady work from my agent, made some friends and was secure and comfortable. Life wasn’t exactly as I wanted it though, but I’m getting the feeling it never can be if you’re looking to the outside to make it so. Now I’m the new boy once again. A newcomer in a strange land. The needy one. God, I hate being the needy one again! I’m contacting my agent too much, one of my acquaintances here has stopped texting me because I might be bothering her too much, I’m reaching out, help me help me!! Feed the hungry bee! I know this place. I’ve been here a few times now. Clarence, you just need to relax. You’ve been here before. This is how it is when you’re starting out in a new place. You’re just the new guy again, that’s all. Nobody knows you here yet. Everyone is living their lives with lots to do, while you have all the time in the world. Make the most of it because it won’t be like this for long!