A weird 48 hours, all in all.

I went out for drinks after work on Thursday and proceeded to get absolutely canned. Why oh why do I do that? It's like I have no off switch. I just kept pouring cocktails down my throat. No dinner or anything smart like that. What a great night I picked for it, too. The bar was packed, and all these people from theatres across the country, people that I know and respect and would like to have respect me, are in town for this theatre festival and they were all there in the bar. I'm sure I made a total ass of myself.

I thought I remembered the whole evening, but as it turns out, there are bits I don't remember. Christian phoned me yesterday afternoon, laughing at me for some long very drunked message I'd left on his phone. And I guess I became obsessed with trying to phone B in Austria. What the fuck?? I guess it didn't matter to me that his cell phone won't work in Austria. Shari says I kept saying I could call him. What was I planning to do? Phone Austria and ask if they have a tall blond guy there? It would be funny, if I didn't feel like a jack-ass. Now I'm worried about who else I might have phoned. I hope to god I didn't phone R and leave some long drunken crazy message on his phone too. But who knows. I'm a danger to myself and others with a cell phone when over-served.

And I wiped out on my drunken ass on the ice when leaving the bar. Big bruise on my hip, not to mention my pride.

I spent most of yesterday recovering. It was a good thing I had already planned to take Friday off from work. Shanny came over and hung out with me and stayed the night. We ate dinner and played Snood and knitted and watched TV. The poor girl, she's pretty low right now. I think things are just piling up on her - no job, no money, still feeling heart-broken over the Turd, worrying about her audition tomorrow. I hope she felt a little better this morning.

This afternoon, I went and saw one of the plays in the festival. It was pretty damned good. Excellent directing. I'm glad I didn't miss it. I'm supposed to go back and see another one tonight, but I don't know if I'm going to do it. Now that I'm back home, it just seems so cosy here, and I don't really want to go out and end up at the bar again. I think it might just turn out to be one of those "curl up with a good book" nights.

I ran into an old friend this afternoon, leaving the theatre. He's an older man (60ish), one of the most respected playwrights in Canada. He used to be somewhat of a mentor to me, when he still lived in town. I used to go over to his house for lunch from time to time and we'd just sit and eat soup and talk about art and travel and food. He was so inspiring. He's the kindest, nicest, smartest man. It was lovely to see him and chatting with him for a few minutes. I miss him.

He told me he's off to Quebec City on Monday, to meet with these folks who are creating this show, a fusion of a newly composed chamber music piece with some kind of theatrical performance, which they'll be presenting at the festival he runs this summer. I guess the composer realized while he was creating the piece that it was about worship. Not any specific religion, but the place and role of worship in our lives. The creative team that has been hired to work on the piece, the designers and performers, are mostly all ex-Catholics, and really resistant to the idea of exploring worship, especially anything to do with organized religion. So the composer has pulled out of the project. He respects their need to express their own creative ideas, but the piece isn't heading in the direction he envisioned and he's decided to step away and leave it to them. Now it's all a big tumoil. John said he finds it facinating, because they all seem to just want it to be easy and fun and everybody loves everybody. But it's not. It's difficult and personally contraversial. He said maybe it's just because he's old, but he thinks that's more interesting. That sometimes the bext work comes from what's hard to do. Instead, they seem to all just want to quit now.

It made me think. I believe he's right. We all too often want our experiences to be pleasant and easy and fun, but does that always make the best art?

That was about a seven minute conversation. That's why I miss not having him to talk to more often. He always makes me feel inspired and interested in thinking about, and talking about, the process of making art.

The moral for this weekend? More mentors. Less booze.