3
" It was simply the way with Harry, like waiting for sunrise. But once you made clear that you wouldn't be going to bed with him, he'd look oddly relieved and calm down. And the matter once raised would not be revisited, I will say that for him. He didn't make a nuisance of himself. Funny old skellum. Never dull. There are men whom it is important not to take the slightest notice of when they're talking, if it's after ten o'clock at night and they've had a glass of beer. Harry was one such mammal.
They really and truly don't mean to be idiots. But it's like a Roman Catholic person not wanting to feel guilt. Might as well ask water to run uphill. Except that might conceivably be contrived. With a pump.
Once, he asked my sister to run away with him, to Rotterdam I think it was. She said no and he asked my brother. That was the most important thing to understand about Harry. Essentially, what he wanted--darling, who wouldn't--was someone to run away with him to Rotterdam.
It's what all of us want, isn't it? Of course, nobody gets it. Probably not even those misfortunates who are in Rotterdam already. One wonders where they want to run away to. Crouch End? "
― Joseph O'Connor , Shadowplay
5
" ...everyone has a Mr. Hyde, another version of the self. A direction not taken, perhaps. A road we didn't know existed, or had no name for, We each of us carry our choices about, don't we...? And every choice is a rejection, when you think.
But there is, too, a kind of shadowland where the Other always lives. Or at least, never dies. Just goes on. Hard to stumble into happiness if you don't leave your shadowland behind....Theatre people don't, as a rule. Goes with the job. Everything is so precarious, almost all of the time. Makes it hard to settle. One gets fidgety. And when you're someone else, every night, and twice on a Saturday, you can forget what it's like being you.
I always felt, you know, two hands are needed here. One to wave farewell, the other to close the heart....[E]asier said than done. I don't know that anyone succeeds.
Questionings. Dawn-thoughts. Mind ticking like a watch. Four in the morning but you're staring out a window. What if I had married that other person? Or remained unmarried? What if I had accepted that job, or emigrated or stayed, or lived my life in a different way, a way that was truer to me, perhaps, but I was afraid of what people might think or say?
You see, part of you DID do those things. To imagine is to do.
And there are moments when you feel a murderous envy of that part. The self that escaped. The self that chose freedom.
So, out comes the rage. But already too late.
It's the only thing one's learned. We're in shadowland.
[Ellen Terry] "
― Joseph O'Connor , Shadowplay
