Yak Yak Yak

Two brilliant things have happened this week. The first is that I’ve seen the silent version of The Cat And The Canary, directed by Paul Leni. It’s wonderful. You can see the whole thing on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePhpx9kKa0s

I honestly don’t know which version is the best, this or the later talkie version with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. The silent one, anyway, is scarier, and there’s a surprisingly violent fight at the end when Paul, the leading man, played by Creighton Hale, who up until then has been a cowardly comic relief, tracks down the ‘monster’ in its lair. Director Leni brings a touch of Expressionism to the film, to the point where you never know that it’s an adaptation of a stage play. There are shadows, weird camera angles, subjective shots. Even the doctor who turns up at the end has a vague look of Nosferatu about him. The cast are terrific, and after a while you forget you’re even watching a silent film. One tip: have the volume on Mute, because the music they’ve given the film works against it.
I’ve been watching the film all week, in bits and pieces. Even when I’m on public duty. Whichever computer I’m working on, I find Youtube and set the film running. I must have seen the opening credit’s a million times- not that I’m complaining, they’re a work of art in themselves. Ten seconds here, fifteen seconds there, and eventually you’ve seen the whole film whilst you’re meant to be working, albeit piecemeal and out of sequence. But it’s a work of art, and it beats talking to the general public by a good few miles.
I wonder sometimes whether I ought to be more sociable. It’s a real struggle for me not to value fictional characters above human beings. Why is that? Is it something to do with me? With the general public, perhaps, I think I can be forgiven- they’re braindead. Sorry, but they are. I’d take Del Trotter or Count Dracula over them any day, to say nothing of Hamlet, Oedipus, Jane Eyre. They seem more human- that is, they have more nobility- than actual humans.
Obviously, that’s unfair. When you go to a work of fiction, the writer is only showing you the interesting stuff. The real King Lear couldn’t have been as interesting all the time as the fictional King Lear.
I think what I’m getting at is this. Wherever I go, whatever situation I’m in, I never think I’m going to be as interesting to someone else as a good novel. And that’s alright; who is? So I make a concerted effort, if I’ve got to tell somebody something, to try and make it interesting, and if I can’t make it interesting, to keep it short and to the point.
But hardly anybody else seems to make that effort. It drives me mad. I get cornered by people who seem to think I should be fascinated by their ailments, their finances, their choice of clothes, etc. I’ve never known a decade like this for nattering. Everywhere you go, people seem to be walking around as life is simply the Jenny Show or the Michael Show. She gets a thought in her head, she has to voice it, right there and then, to whoever’s around her. He thinks he’s bestowing a favour on you, enlivening your drab life, by giving you a guest appearance.
I will go to my grave blaming Margaret Thatcher for this; but I think she’s created, in this country, anyway, a society of egocentrics. The idea that nobody is more important than me. I used to think the people on the Jeremy Kyle show or Dragons Den or the X Factor were freaks; but no. People are going around as if they are pop stars or film stars without the necessity of making a record or a film. It’s why I can’t watch those shows: it’s too much like being at work.
Having said all that, I’ve got work colleagues. They’re nice, sane people. I ought to make the effort to talk to them.
It’s that word, though: effort. It seems like an effort. All conversation, it seems to me, leads to the same thing: someone else dumping his or her problems on you. It feels, sometimes, like getting your moan in first.
My wife can take a walk around the block and come back with a load of anecdotes from even complete strangers. How does she do it? Why does she do it? Am I missing out?
I read a book once, which I think was called The Art of conversation by Catherine Blyth. Because you hear so much about this great thing called conversation, you wonder whether you shouldn’t give it a go. The author begins by telling you that you’re shirking your social responsibility by not talking to complete strangers. Because otherwise they will feel isolated and go on to become spree killers. I’ve read a similar theory in a newspaper supplement: that adults have a duty to go over to young people and begin talking to them. Either to learn from them how to breakdance or to let them know what you used to be able to buy with two pence. So that they begin to see other human beings as human beings, and think twice before knifing them.
The author of the conversation book goes on to say that, if you find a person boring, it’s because you yourself are boring. Well, in my defence, all I can say is that, if I am boring, I’m brief.
I don’t know. It seems like such an effort.
*
The second brilliant thing was that I submitted a short story to Burial Day Books for their forthcoming Gothic Blue Book:

http://www.burialday.com/submit/horror-anthology-submission

Another horror story. I don’t know how good it is- I did my best with it. But sending that story through gives me hope.

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