(written in 2001)
After coming come late and going to bed feeling like shit, I was awakened at 10:30am by a telephone call from my friend Sion. Sion’s friends were shooting for a film that day, he wanted me to come and be an extra on the set.
“It’s at some place called the Reverb Room, have you ever heard of this place?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it.” My eyes full of snot, my mouth stinking and dry, unshaven, the sunlight causing me to press my face back into my pillow, I cradled the phone against my head and replied in a cracked voice.
“It will be really great, they’re shooting a scene where the lady (she’s a dominatrix/poet in this film) reads some of her poetry live to an audience. There’s free food, cold cuts, it’ll be really cool…well ok, not cool, but I think you’ll have a good time.”
“Arrgh.” I said.
“All you have to do is be a guy in the audience, you can just sit at a table and relax, have a couple of beers, you know.”
“They don’t have any tables at the Reverb.”
“Well you can stand up and have a beer.”
“Fine.” I said. Apparently they were shooting from 2pm until six, so I told Sion I’d be there at two, ready to be filmed.
At 2:51pm Sion called and woke me again, and asked me if I was coming or not. I told him that I had assumed that this was a massive production, and that they didn’t really need me there, but he was adamant that I should come, and I felt kind of like a dickhead for just going back to sleep so I said I would come for sure this time.
There were a few complications. I was out of toothpaste, and I thought I could squeeze a little more out if I cut the tube in half and scooped out some with my brush, but then I couldn’t find a cutting implement suitable and finally I settled on a hacksaw. After that I didn’t feel much like grooming, so I left as I was and went to the Reverb.
When I got there, Sion was just about to leave. He showed me the cold cuts, but they looked pretty nasty: all that curled up ham hidden in a dark corner begging to be laid on a white Kaiser bun and swallowed down between mouthfuls of iceberg salad with orange plastic French dressing.
Sion introduced me to a few people. They seemed nice. He told some lady with a clip board that I was a famous actor.
“Really?” She asked, seeming to believe it.
“Oh yeah,” I told her, “I’m like the biggest star there is.”
Then Sion departed. God love him, he’s my oldest friend, but he left me at the mercy of all these makeup people who dragged me off to their makeup zone because they felt they had to powder me up for whatever it was that they intended me to do.
There were a lot of people in the makeup area who were madeup, looking very artificial with all the gunk they had on their skin. These people were talking in loud voices about how fabulous they were. One girl was talking about how good looking she was, and another guy was talking about all the photo-shoots he had worked on. I guessed that these people were the actors. The makeup lady sat me down on a stool, and made a few comments about how messy my hair was. I told her I’d just gotten up, and that her hair spray had better not mess with my salon perfected do. That apparently wasn’t a funny show-business type joke though, because she didn’t laugh.
Some more people with clip boards and headsets came up to me from out of the tangle of cameras and bodies on the audience floor. One asked me if I was the bartender. I told her I had no idea. Another came up to me and said they needed the back of my head. I told her that was fine, I never used it. Also not funny. Someone wanted to know if I was the big star that Sion had been talking about.
After this they all more or less ignored me for a while. They started shooting scenes where various poets got on stage and read their poetry to the imaginary crowd. It was some of the worst poetry I’d ever heard in my life. It sounded exactly they way you’d expect poetry to sound if it were written by a screen writer. I tried to read a bit of Apvlei Metamorphosen, which I had brought with me, thankfully, but the actors had the microphone, and so I didn’t make much progress.
At one point I looked up and this truly lovely girl, with long blonde hair, was staring back at me from the makeup chair. She looked away though when I looked at her, so I went back to my book. She started talking to the makeup people about how she was going to be appearing in a pop tart commercial.
This went on for a while, but my interest in stardom was waning quickly, so I got up out of my seat, put on my coat and walked off the set, down the steps of the Reverb, and out onto Queen Street, which looked much the same as it had before I became a big shot movie star.
Walking down Queen towards Spadina, I started to feel pretty bad. I mean, I didn’t give a fuck about the movie, but I felt kind of like I was letting Sion down. He really was trying to get things to happen for the people making that flick, and I suppose the least I could have done was stick around and make good on my commitment. But then I though about how much I hate being photographed, how much I hate stage make up, how much I hate actors. I though of how very little I had to do with those people, and I decided that I would go do something else instead.
I went up to College and Spadina and looked to see if the Mongolian Buffet was open, but it was not. I felt like shit. I got on the street car and rode back to Coxwell and then I went into the supermarket.
The girl working the cash was the one who is such a fan of Robbie Burns, or so she claims. I quoted Afton Waters to her and she gave me a smile, that made the day worthwhile. I don’t know how Burns read or was read in his day, but I feel certain that if he were in my place he would be equally unwilling to get himself tangled up in a low budget Canadian film.
A lot of people are waiting for their big break, a lot of people are dying for exposure. A lot of people are busting their asses so that they can become recognized by the general public, and so that they can live by the fruits of their artistic accomplishments.
I think this is noble, in its way. I would far rather live by art than by any manner of unrelenting physical labour, or by the clock in an office tower, dressed in a suit, and wading through stacks of paper. I don’t know if I ever shall, but that is another story.
The one thing I fear, though, is undying recognition. They say that if one wishes for immortality, one must live on in the minds of the following generations. This seems to me to be the worst sort of delusion. To be remembered is to leave a trace of yourself that takes too long to erase, too long to be reabsorbed into oneness. To be forgotten allows one to become nothing, to return freely to the basic and infinite matter of the cosmos. Indeed, to live forever, is to never exist.
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