Laying your cards on the table.

June 2011 note: I originally wrote this essay on the 2nd or 3rd January this year. I was at my Dad's house in the middle of nowhere, still recovering a little bit from an all-night New Year's Eve bar shift. I wrote it in a blur, barely proof-read it, and posted it. Shortly afterwards I began to question my intentions in writing and posting this - appropriately enough, I began to feel very self-conscious about it and deleted it. I think it was online for about 20 minutes. I think that the only person who read it was Oli Goldman - a young and talented film scholar who I had the pleasure to teach in his first year at university - who caught up with me on Facebook a few days later to tell me how much he had enjoyed reading it. I think I have been meaning to re-post it since then, but it came up in conversation the other day - and I have been hoping to write more - so it seems like a good time to post. So, my objectives in posting it are different to what they were in January. Nevertheless, I hope - like I did then - that they are honest.

In Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972) - which I watched on television last night, as part of a Father Ted season, introduced by Graham Linehan who didn’t seem to know much about it - Lenny (Charles Grodin) really can’t stand the fact that Lila, his wife-of-2-days (Jeannie Berlin) talks during sex. This wasn’t something that he was aware of before their marriage - the film makes a point of telling us that Lila wouldn’t sleep with him before they were wed. Furthermore, Lenny is convinced that Kelly (Cybill Shepherd), the girl he has met on his honeymoon, wouldn’t talk during sex. He has no evidence to support that theory, but he is convinced. I reckon I could get him to wager that Kelly also doesn’t put on make-up or wear haircare products either. Unlike his new wife, she is a mathematical sum that has already solved itself so that you don’t have to.

Jeannie Berlin in THE HEARTBREAK KID

Lenny is so convinced of this that he is prepared to get honest with Kelly’s father (Eddie Albert), he is - in a phrase that Kelly gleefully takes up - ready to ‘lay his cards on the table’. He is going to be honest, he is going to reveal all of his thoughts and emotions pertaining to Kelly and Lila. He does this in a highly pressurised environment: in a busy nightclub, tightly framed opposite Eddie Albert with Cybill Shepherd, in bemusement, and Audra Lindley (Kelly’s mother), with some sympathy. But it doesn’t do him any favours: the Father sees Lenny as a snivelling toad, unworthy of his daughter; and Kelly loses interest very quickly, is there any fun in someone who just keeps telling you that he has been waiting for someone like you? She would lose interest completely if Lenny didn’t rapidly become someone else: threatening boyfriends and jocks across her high school campus.

This is a preamble to other ideas that have been on my mind, ideas that feel very familiar in their formulation but actually quite rare in their expression. I suspect, and I am not proud of it, that what I really want to write about is love. The art of being in love, the rules for expressing that love (or, at the least, making that love known), and perhaps the craft of allowing people to love you (because it is a craft, it is something that you can learn how to do - to some extent, at least). Maybe it’s not love that I am writing/thinking about - it could be attraction - but I like to refer to it as love. It’s definitely on my mind at the moment, as it seems to be come every New Year (who can explain THAT), probably because it keeps coming up in things. I felt a slight unease until I did write this, an itching in the tummy, an inability to concentrate on the football game that is on the television at the moment. At this early stage of writing (because I have begun with this paragraph, although I suspect that it will not be the first paragraph) I don’t even know if I am going to publish this. I don’t know if I am even going to finish it, it could be that I just need to write this and one other paragraph. Yet here goes, a bit of scratching that itch in the tummy (which isn’t physically possible, but I like the image).

Traditionally, I have had an intuition that the key to a love affair - definitely in the first part, probably less so in the later phases although I am not interested in them here - is to not give the game away, to keep your cards close to your chest. You plan ahead to be able to give enough of yourself away as to be interesting, but not too much. You don’t, above all, reveal your attraction, your desire, your love. As a young, socially awkward but emotionally heavy, scamp, I would hold firm to this rule. I would hold so firm to this rule that I even once lied about my attraction when confronted about it - a lie that, in hindsight, clearly cost me any shot at that particular relationship. I don’t think I am alone in this thought: I could, if challenged, name a handful of other people who would rather be lonely and dissatisfied than reveal their love to its object.

But, er, why? Wouldn’t it be better to be honest, to be clear? Are not, above all else, our chances of romantic success higher if we take this course of action? If we, you know, actually tell somebody? And the answer would be: yes, of course it would be better, but experience suggests that it just doesn’t work. Experience suggests - to me, at least (I need to allow for the possibility that my personal experience of love is so idiosyncratic that it will be completely alien to everyone else, which might actually explain a lot) - that as soon as you reveal too much of yourself, again particularly your love, then everything falls apart. There is nothing left to ‘find out’, and if there’s nothing left to ‘find out’ then the game is up, you had better give up any hope of that particular good time. I have, sad to say, experienced this from both sides of the table. You can say that the change starts with your own behaviour, but truth of the matter is that as soon as you feel like your dance partner has given too much of themselves - has revealed a particular vulnerability, perhaps, or shown too much interest in you, then you just don’t want to play any more. You could consciously try to change this - to do the right thing, perhaps - but you would sure as hell be doing something that you don’t want to do.

So, you have to give away enough of yourself to keep it all interesting but not so much that it will ruin the love. I have a vague idea that the reasoning for the above is that if you give away too much, the other person feels like you will be a burden upon them, that they will somehow have to change some part of their everyday life to accommodate you in a way that they are not prepared to do. Of course, being in love - PROPER LOVE - involves this process of change, it involves harmonising your life with another in a way that is pleasant for both partners. But, at the earlier stages - the butterfly stages, the points at which you-can’t-think-about-anything-else-in-a-manner-that-is-completely-disproportionate-to-the-situation-and-which-most-often-is-not-reciprocal (we’ve all experienced it) - you want the other person to think that you will be able to create pleasure in a way that doesn’t impinge too far upon everyday life. Yet there are points at which you have to put yourself on the line, at which you have to make those bold movements - in Before Sunrise, for example, (the film which I habitually use to think through love in all of its different manifestations) Jesse (Ethan Hawke) has to ask Celine (Julie Delpy) to get off the train in Vienna rather than her intended destination. It’s an early, bold move, and he risks giving away too much of himself too early. Turns out that he doesn’t. Turns out that it was the right thing to do at that moment in time. The danger of those bold moves, though, is that you have misjudged it, that you have given too much of yourself away and fallen into that ‘nice-but-over-earnest’ trap.

It is ‘giving too much away’ that drives the first third of The Heartbreak Kid, because the film suggests that Lila gives away far too much of herself after marriage. In a matter of days (if not hours), she reveals that she sings out-of-tune constantly, she is a messy eater (particularly where egg salad is concerned) and - shock! horror! Worst of all! - She has to spend time organising her hair before entering public space. When I watched the film again last night, the phrase ‘showing your working’ came into my head - the films depicts Lila showing her working. Lenny, her newlywed husband, is no longer shown just the final product but is exposed to the mistakes, the circuitous route taken to reach the final product.

Jeannie Berlin and Charles Grodin in THE HEARTBREAK KID

The film, much like Lenny, is very unfair to Lila during these early stages (although it does make up some ground with its human sympathy for Lila after Lenny has decided to get their marriage annulled - Jeannie Berlin’s performance in the seafood restaurant scene is excellent, burying her head in Charles Grodin’s shoulder whilst letting out a high-pitched, melodramatic cry that feels entirely lifelike in the circumstances). This unfairness is further counterbalanced by the slow-burning suggestion that it is actually Lenny with the problem, it is Lenny who is unhappy with his own life, that it is Lenny, ultimately, who will not let himself get married because the depth of the commitment reminds him of the passing of time and - that old chestnut - his own mortality. (As a side note, the film is also deeply uncomfortable with the institution of marriage as well as the death-fears of its male protagonists - the ease with which the religions are switched around, the farcical formality of the ceremony seem to add up to a suggestion that marriage may be at odds with the way that human beings actually think, but less of that here).

Yet, Lila falls victim to the problem I have prescribed - she reveals too much of herself, she lays her cards onto the table, and she pays the bitter price (her marriage is ended, she is banished from the film, it tramples all over her, reduces her to a shrieking wreck in Miami seafood restaurant and then spits her out, never to be heard from again). The film counterposes this against Kelly - a character who purposely reveals herself drip-by-drip, providing a seductive and mysterious exterior for Lenny to obsess over. In fact, Kelly’s mystery causes Lenny to reveal entirely too much of himself - he becomes an overearnest wreck, encroaching into everyone’s frame, their personal space, telling her he loves her after just hours. In order to stay attractive to Kelly in Minnesota, Lenny has to invent a different exterior, pieced together from lies and bullshit that Kelly’s father sees through immediately.

These thoughts are dovetailing with thoughts inspired by Chris Goode’s latest blog post (if we are talking 2010 reflections - which we’re not, by the way - then Chris’s blog, with its rich and detailed thoughts about art, theatre and life, has been a major find for me - one which has helped my thinking about theatre, and provided hours of interest when I have been waiting for people to collect their coats at work) in which he suggests that what is needed is the space for people to be honest, to be open, to reveal themselves and be able to truthfully and fully announce ‘how they are’ and be listened and responded to. This made me think about the time - just a week at present, although another semi-regular class is imminent - I have spent learning directing with Elen Bowman. One of the things that I found most useful, most comforting, most liberating, most creative, about Elen’s classes was the feeling that you are being listened to and the space she creates to discuss thoughts, feelings and reflections on the work so far. There was space, for example, for me to discuss a theatre industry-related dream/nightmare that had arisen in the light of consciously feeling very free about my work thanks to Elen’s space and input. It made me think that I have also tried to create this space - not to the depth or, probably, to such use as Chris describes in, for example, rehearsals for The Author - in my teaching work (particularly when I was teaching a difficult literary criticism class, where it felt important to do a more casual ‘warming up’ session at the beginning) and, to an even more casual extent, when I was making Tape in 2009. I definitely agree with Chris that such a space is necessary, that its usefulness would be extraordinary, that the thought of it is rather beautiful.

But how do we square that with the idea, articulated in The Heartbreak Kid and familiar from experience, that exposing ourselves in this way may remove our mystery? It may even make us unattractive or, even worse, unlovable. This isn’t a description of how it should be, but a fear that revealing ourselves in the way that is necessary may actually be a burden on other people - or may be received as a burden on other people. We reveal ourselves at the risk of making someone else think that they will have to change their everyday existence to accommodate us. As I write this, I find myself disagreeing with it, objecting to its existence, so I should re-assert that this is an anxiety rather than a cast iron ‘this is how it is and always will be.’ To resolve this anxiety I want to separate ‘revealing ourselves’ from ‘being a burden’, I want to assure you that if you tell me how you are feeling - how you are really, honestly, properly feeling - then you are not being a burden on me. I think it also has something to do with your objective when you do reveal yourself. I am not sure if any of this possible - so perhaps my objective in writing this, in this particular act of self-revelation, is to hear from people whose experience suggests that this is untrue. People who can persuade me that it is safe to be honest and to be open, and that it is possible to do this without making someone feel like you are an unnecessary burden upon them.

And that brings me to the act of writing itself, of writing this which, now that it is winding up, will surely find its way onto the Internet. Have I revealed too much of myself here? Have I revealed myself as someone who thinks too much, someone who over-analyses, someone who is no fun? I have written some things - particularly in that previous paragraph - that feel true but undesirable (I even deleted a sentence that involved imposing conditions on revealing oneself, because I realised that it wasn’t how I thought at all). Am I making quite a political move here? Do I want somebody in particular to think of me as interesting, or as thoughtful, or as sensitive? Or maybe I want the opposite, to make someone think that I am pathetic and ridiculous? And who could that person be?

The most likely explanation is that I just had a funny itch in my stomach. A funny itch that started when I read Josie Long’s Dodgem Logic #1 comic on New Years Eve on the tube (which has a terrifying panel through the middle of the two pages, disarmed only slightly by a cartoon Josie Long apologising for interrupting her train of thought, in which she states that “…but when something is right, it is; not it should be, or is supposed to be, or will be once blah blah blah”); which intensified on New Year’s Eve itself when I reflected upon relationships past - illusory, lost, and broken - which have come to a head on that oft booze-fuelled night; which was taken even further with The Heartbreak Kid; and something which I finally connected to Chris’s blog. Over 2000 words later, that itch has subsided a little, and I feel like I can concentrate on that football game a bit better.

Let’s not forget that the itch has gone away because I have just given myself the space to think and to work out. The space to say what I am thinking about.

P.S. I am quite aware that this piece doesn’t have a conclusion, doesn’t really have a point because I am too scared to follow the logic to its end because of the inhibitions and restrictions that it contains.

Yet, about half-way through writing this I was reminded of the insight of my friend Abigail who also spent two weeks learning directing with Katie Mitchell this past January (but I’M NOT REFLECTING ON 2010, DAMMIT). We were talking climate change - as we were wont to do in that group - and we were talking about how a full appreciation of the enormity of the issue can put other things into perspective. I remember her example, “things like telling boys you fancy them…you realise they’re just not important”. So, let that be a conclusion to you: this all feels important but it’s really just the minutiae with which we concern ourselves, none of it really matters. (But that’s not true. Is it?)