Corporate America

Maybe if I were to find a rich and old boyfriend, ready to accept me in his home with one command only: write all day long! Then maybe I would get somewhere. At the moment I am just completely out of it.
It is not in Los Angeles that I will write my best work, I’m afraid. I can only wait and hope to be shipped somewhere else, with nothing else to do but write all day long. I cannot see how it could happen.
Maybe writing is not that important. Living is. How I wish I could at least live in Los Angeles. It could inspire me later on, once I’m gone. I’ve seen it now, I lived it now. There’s nothing more to say.
God, am I already ready to move on? Have I learned everything I was supposed to learn here? I don’t feel like I have lived or learned anything. Then again, it is maybe afterwards, in my literature, that it will all come out. And yes, you don’t know everything that has happened to me since I am in Los Angeles. I have a separate blog, and it is not here for you to read. That’s all I will say for now.
Apparently this year the time worldwide will change by one second. We will gain one second. A woman newsreader in Los Angeles suggested we use that second to drink some more alcohol. I was astonished.
I thought I was the only one drinking in L.A., since everybody else seems to be so perfect, that drinking does not appear in their vocabulary. I guess I lived in England for too long, as drinking myself to death on a regular basis is quite normal to me.
So, your woman newsreader invited us all to do so. So I guess, this is exactly what I will do next weekend. On that extra second we will gain, I’ll be drinking myself to death. And maybe write one more word to this blog. Which word should it be? Sex? Good idea. Perfect word. Maybe I’ll have sex then on that extra second we will gain on the New Year. I doubt it, but it would be nice.
And now you know, by how down the drain this blog has gone, that I have drank ten beers tonight. Sorry, I’ve been in London 10 years, what do you expect? At least I‘ll be going to bed early, and I would not have eaten anything, so I will still lose weight tonight.
I have lost weight since I am here. I did not want to, it just happened. Stress, hell, feeling of being lost, whatever. Eating is the last thing on mind at the moment. And I look much better for it, so I can’t complain.
It seems that I am determined to meet another mister right, here in Los Angeles, despite my lover being in London and being very depressed about it. I might as well try harder, and meet that mister right for real. Maybe it is just a fantasy of mine, but it is a nice one, one I can live with.
Especially at the turning of my 33rd year. I am getting old… one step closer to death. Realizing that we are mortal, is, I think, a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any disease that will speed up the process, and I am not willing to get one either. So again, death will have to fall from the sky. Cheer up, I might get run over by a car tomorrow morning on my way to work.
Merde, I should have worked on my conference tonight. Tomorrow I will pay the price. I am a prisoner of that job. I should try to find a way out, and still remain in L.A. somehow.
That would be the first step to my freedom. And it is ultimately what I am looking for. The freedom to write all day, whatever I want and feel like writing. That day will never come. Being in Hollywood does not change that fact.
There is no solution to my problem. Maybe if I stop eating all together for another few weeks, I will be good looking enough to attract a sugar daddy. I had many of them turning around me when I was younger, and I was too stupid then to accept their offers. I know better now… where is my sugar daddy? I’m ready!!! And beware, I’ll be wild in bed, because I’m so desperate anyway, that I could sleep with a dog.
I am listening right now to the song How soon is now, by The Smiths. And the video. There was never a better song written on this planet, and a better video to go with it. It is killing me that someone was able to reach what I consider to be perfection.
And what I still don’t understand is that none of the songs or the videos from that particular album where the song came from, sound or look like that song and video.
It is a fluke. Out of working hard, out of genius, suddenly something divine came out, something that no one ever will be able to top. Not even Depeche Mode was able to reach that point, I guess they were just not depressed enough.
I wish I had lived such a moment of genius in my life, that in three minutes I could make you listen and see something so perfect, that it would live and survive forever as perfection. God I wish I was capable of doing just that. I could die happily after that, all would be accomplished.
When I listen to How soon is now, I forget everything. I live somewhere, beyond my daily job, and my miserable existence. I reach some sort of new world where I am beyond all that.
It is the ultimate song and the ultimate video. Now, how could I ever write the ultimate book? Tell me? Or the ultimate short story, lasting three minutes, where I could have the same impact worldwide on everyone? It is just not possible.
I am wasting my time in the wrong medium. I don’t need to write books, I need to write songs! I need to learn music, I need time, I need to achieve that perfection! I am wasting my time. It is frustrating, it is killing me.
Somehow, I should be able to reach the same result through my books. I have to, that is all I have to make any sort of impact. And I think I have reached that point before, in my unpublished books, but I guess it had no impact whatsoever.
So I have to do it again, and this time, revolutionize literature in the process. Which means going beyond everything I have written so far, being even more extreme.
I have been so extreme, I don’t think I could go any further. I also think that I am beyond that now. So I guess I will have to live in the hope that one day some people will get back to these extreme books that I wrote, and see them for what they are.
And they are all my earlier work, my first books ever. After that I got lost, I tried to write to be published, and I was. What a mistake that was. I hope I have learned my lesson, and that from now on I will write what my heart tells me to write.
My best work must be ahead of me, I’m sure of it. Just give me the chance, and I will lay that perfect egg, the one which has been dying to get out for years, but never had the chance.
And it better come soon, before I shoot myself, because life is pretty depressing at the moment, and I just don’t know what to do to cling to it. I need another salvation, another savior, or anything, to save me from this hell… that conference job, those people.
Oh dear… is there a way out? I sincerely hope so.
30 December 2005
Dreaming or York and England. When will I be famous?
I was so tired tonight, I went to bed as soon as I arrived from work. I woke up at 1 in the morning, and now I don’t know what to do. Tomorrow is my last day before the New Year, but considering that it means only three days off, it is not exactly the most exciting thing ever. I’m not sure what I will do, however I am determined to do something at least on one of the days.
My baby went to Yorkshire this week, and it was snowing heavily apparently. He brought with him our baby cat, Mr. Weber, even though it is a female. She is called like that in memory of my old boss when I was working in WHSmith at Heathrow Airport 10 years ago. This is where I met Stephen.
This is where I started in London, at the very bottom, when I could not even understand what the customers wanted. You could say I went on to become successful in my jobs, in less than 10 years I quadrupled my salary. However it was directly proportional to my unhappiness and lack of freedom.
I cherish these old days when I did not have to worry about anything, and could barely survive. Strange enough, I am still at the same point financially, I can barely survive. So money does not change anything.
England did, and I learned to appreciate it even more as the time passed. It is hard to conceptualize when you are living there for many years. It is when you leave the U.K. that you can fully understand what you left behind and how wonderful a place it is.
These little villages by the sea side, filled with little cottages with roofs made of straw, and a few shops somewhere in the middle, with all the country side all around of a beauty to help poets no end, this is all true. It does exist. And it becomes normal to you until you move back to America.
Yorkshire for me, it is York, the most beautiful larger town in the world, I would venture to say. And it does look a lot like Québec City with their medieval type of walls all around, and ruins here in there.
I have met a very nice shop owner there, of a bookstore called the Worm Hole, and it was magical. It inspired me a film script, and gosh I would die to film that there. It is also one of the most haunted town in England, ghosts there are just normal. You see them and hear them everyday, and they do exploit it with all those tours. They have an infinite amount of stories to tell about it.
And the most interesting one is at the heart of my film. A story about a little girl who lost the keys to the city, of the main door of the town. Her dad lost his job as the main guardian, and now her ghost goes around searching for those keys that she will never find.
When you add to this that this is the town that gave its name to New York, and just about all the York towns there are around the world, you get a sense of the power and energy that could emanate from this small place in the north of England.
Today I was outside at work, looking at the huge mountain in the background, and the palm trees all over in front of it. I was going through some sort of dilemma, would I like to be going to York right now, have the chance to go at any time like I did one day after a fight with Stephen?
I just got into my Renault 5 and left for York. Stayed in a haunted hotel for the night, filmed interesting stuff, and then came back home the next day after visiting the old castle, the haunted places like the main gate and the museum. Came back with the loveliest story for a film. Perfect weekend.
Would I like to go there again? Or do I prefer now, after ten years, to experience something new, something equally huge psychologically, like Los Angeles? Was it not time for a change, to get to know America better, to learn to appreciate Los Angeles?
The real question I asked myself today, is that I would miss Los Angeles terribly. I just cannot see it right now. I have to give it a chance, and a good one. I would need to live here for years, get to know all there is to know, visit all the places around. And first, reach that mountain as soon as I have a car. I need to explore.
We don’t live very long, not sure how many more decades I have in front of me, and if I will be able to still make huge life decisions like going back to England if I stay here too long. I fear I might lose it, even though it would always be there I would imagine.
I cannot limit myself to one place, I still have to experience adventure, leave just like I did, get to know new people and new places. Live in my memories for the rest, for my nostalgia.
I don’t miss Paris, I don’t miss the South of France that I truly enjoyed, I can go back on holiday and that is acceptable. I truly miss England, as if I belong there. At work they talk to me as if I was British, I translate to them their weird British expressions, I understand that language, they don’t.
I feel more British than French-Canadian. And anyway, who’s interested in a French-Canadian in Los Angeles? No one. The odd province who is just as Americanized as the rest, except that they speak French and could give you a sense of France in America. I’m sure it has its appeal, but not to me, and not to the people I have met so far.
I am more British than French-Canadian, even with my thick French accent which would not fool anyone. When I leave Los Angeles one day, I’m going back to England, it is my home.
I would hope to be in L.A. for a few years, get to know it, get to love it, as equally as I love England. And I wonder if it is possible, and that is what I was wondering about today.
I have to give it a chance. Especially if one day I work full time in films, I will then have to be here a lot, it is a place I will be connected to one way or another. And this is what I am building here, the relationships that will connect me to Hollywood for years to come. There is nothing like being in the place and meeting the people, a website or an e-mail from a stranger on the other side of the planet just won’t do.
Most successful British now live in Los Angeles or New York. A lot of successful Americans now live in London, or at least have a second or third house there. There is a special connection between Los Angeles and London, they are always the two main town you would mention with New York, when you wish to convey some sense of what this world we live in is all about.
And just as French-Canadian are popular in France at the moment, British also earned a soft spot in all American souls. I’m afraid to admit that it is because of those terrorists, and how America and the United Kingdom confronted the rest of the world to clean up some countries, where unfortunately the U.N. failed miserably and shows no signs of ever being able to sort out this world.
A major reform of the U.N. would be necessary first, and a change of mandate. It should be stronger at the very least and its measures more far reaching. And then, the U.N. could become another danger to our civilization, so you can never have it both ways.
I am more philosophical tonight that I thought I would be. It is the end of the year after all. Time to reflect on the past year, to assess where I am, where the world is, and what is to come and if it is worth continuing on the same path.
I lack too much data to even think about assessing my own situation, let alone the one of the world. The truth is, I don’t know what is going to happen next in my life, and I don’t know where this world of ours is going.
I’d like to think that it is not annihilation as my friend in L.A. likes to repeat, I’m not such an extremist in my thoughts. There is hope for this world, even annihilation would leave a few survivors and that would be enough, and perhaps better, even if my lovely England would have disappeared in the process.
So there must be some sort of future for me too, even if I cannot imagine any of it. At least it is not at the past that I am looking, I have assumed my decisions, I have accepted my new life, and now I am sitting here hoping for the best, for the future.
This is exactly where America and England should be now. We have done things we may regret, we can debate it for years to come, ultimately it is to the future that we need to look now.
What is that big destiny we are living? Where is it that we are going? What is the future has in store for us? Will we be happier or more miserable? Will we be hit again by terrorists or Corporate America, can we make anyone happy by our actions, or can only alienate everyone crossing our path?
Will York still stand at the end of this war? York is very close to Scotland, it has been conquered and destroyed many times by the Scottish. Despite it all, it still stands proudly, full of its history and ruins. It is a great example to us all, that today it lives in peace and another war with Scotland is almost unthinkable.
Almost, since we never know what to expect of the future. Nothing is carved in stone, especially our rights and liberties which have been rewritten recently. And these new terror laws are about to become permanent. And I have heard no one scream about this. I tried to scream, of course, I was not heard. We will just have to live with it, I guess.
America as we knew it no longer exists, until at least we get a new President, and then, with all this playing with the voters’ ballots, I’m not sure if we can. Democracy has also gone out the window. Something else we will need to learn to live with.
We might as well have an actor from Austria as Governor, at least it makes politics more interesting, as it is so boooring, it could send anyone to sleep instantly.
At the moment I am more worried about the fact that it is 3 am, that I am on my third beer, and that I still have one day to go before the long weekend. I’m just hoping to be able to survive it without another call in the office to let me know how incompetent I am in my new job.
I was again given two projects to do at the same time, and of course, not enough time to do any of them. So I have done one, and I tell you, I had to be highly creative to get results in less then four hours, when I was given half an hour, and it would have taken me three days normally.
And tomorrow somehow I need to accomplish another miracle. I need to get in contact with the Governor of Alaska, no less, one day before the New Year. I wish to discuss gas pipelines please, dear me. I might just as well try to contact an alien species somewhere in the Delta quadrant, and ask them about weird rock formations on some lost planet. I could do that easy in a script.
In the sixty channels I have between my TV and my DVD Recorder, somehow my TV got stuck on the channel C-Span2 for the last few days. No wonder my brain is no longer working properly. Yesterday a woman told the whole of America that she was particularly interested in how we could kick out a senator from the senate. I regret now not having listened to the answer, I gather it is probably near impossible to do so. Whatever.
They have a senate in this country? Is more likely the question I would be asking if I were to call C-Span2. No, I haven’t learned how the political American system works, well I did, but I had the time to forget in time you see.
America is not the center of the world you know, we don’t know all there is to know about it. And sometimes, against our will, we get to know more about it than most Americans who just appear to love to bury their head under the sand, like an Ostrich would do.
Ignorance is a privilege these days, and the more ignorant I can remain, the better I feel. Filling my head with all that crap, brings me to the brink of insanity. Because so many people are just insane in America. Nowhere else in the world would you find so many people stating things that defy logic and reason, and find many supporters to state the same thing.
Maybe this kind of madness happens when your country has 300 million people, you will always find a few to support any crazy idea, and a few rich ones willing to spend millions and stake their life on it. I guess I am more idealistic than I would like to admit.
Should I get more local then? We have a powerful mayor in the Valley, who from what I have read so far, seems to approach despotism. He is definitely on some sort of power trip that went to his head, even though all I have read so far is on the front page of the newspaper of the valley.
I read it when I eat my toasted egg sandwich in the morning. I don’t know, maybe he is cleaning up the corruption around here, though this is not the impression I got.
The impression I got was that he has the newspaper on his side and if he farts, they report it on the first page the next day. Now, that cannot be healthy, surely… to control the media like that. I would imagine he does most of his politics in the newspaper office. That says it all. One step closer to propaganda.
I did not want to become political, especially that I am so ignorant about it (thank god!). So let’s talk about something else. Music. On my SD card right now I have some Depeche Mode, Gorillaz, Charlatans UK, Goldfrapp, Sinead O’Connor (no wonder I feel all screwed up) and some Suzanne Vega.
I’m afraid, once it is on my SD card in my phone, that is all I listen to for weeks and months. Because it takes me forever to decide to change the MP3s on my player. Suzanne Vega is the only artist I have seen in concert more than once, apart from Depeche Mode. I saw her in London in Shepherds Bush, and once in my region in the North of Québec years ago.
It is so special when someone so big comes to such a remote place as my region in the North of Canada. I loved every second of it, I felt in love right there with her. She is also a proof that somehow both my region and London are connected, as she must be the only person in this world who like me went to both these places in her lifetime.
I have to try hard to remember anything that happened to me whilst I was living in the North of Québec, it is like another lifetime to me, a past life. I can barely remember anything after Ottawa, Paris, Brussels, Toronto, New York, London and now Los Angeles.
It is like I would love to forget where I come from, as if it had never existed. However this is difficult, since all my family still live there. I am being brought back there all the time, even if I did not show up once in the last 5 years, and on my last visit, it had been five years since I put my foot there.
I hate it. I hate Québec, Canada, everything about it. Sure, better be from there than Africa or some weird Eastern European country, but this is not how I imagined I would live this life.
Would it not be better to say that I was born in the desert of Nevada? Or somewhere in Texas where they are building their huge Trans-Texas Corridor superhighway? Should I not have been born in the Los Angeles Valley? Or in York, England? Even the Canal du Midi in France or Paris would have done the trick. Then I would have been a nobody, who might have succeeded at some point, with nothing else to say about it.
Being a French-Canadian, you cannot exist outside of Québec. You can have some success in France, be recognized for it in Québec, pass on TV, and then that’s it. I don’t want that, I don’t want to be limited to one lost province of a lost country.
I want to be from everywhere, I want to live everywhere, I want to speak for the whole world, I want to be universal. It is just as well that so far I had more success everywhere else in the world than in Québec, who still don’t know who I am. I could not bare it anyway, I hate small minded people. And they certainly are.
I was born with the idea that I could never achieve anything in life. That I would be lucky to even get heard in Montreal. And such a great achievement would be necessary in order to do so, that it was more in the realm of the dreams than reality to reach that stage.
I am glad I skipped that step altogether and was recognized in France before anything remotely related to Québec. I am even glad that I connected to Hollywood and worked for the NBC before, and in England for Channel 4 (and the PBS).
I am from my time. I could have been born in the Nevada desert as far as anyone is concerned. I don’t have any background in Québec, I just don’t exist there. And if my family was living somewhere else, I would not talk about it, I would not go there anymore.
And yet, after all is done, it is probably the only place on the planet where they will not forget me, my books, my life. Because I belong there, I belong to them. There is no denying it. At least they are proud of their peers succeeding outside of the province, the country. It makes them dream that they could too reach out like this.
If ever all I have written in my life will help me survive, as some sort of pension, it will be because all the students in Québec will have to buy my books every year to read them and analyze them. I cannot say I don’t like this idea. It would be consecration. As I’m sure, this would never happened in France in my case. But then, what do I know about my future life as an author? Nothing, I cannot conceptualize it. Good, there is no limit then.
And that is the problem. Limits. Hard for someone to create anything, and for it to go beyond the borders of where he was born. Why is this so? I was born with the idea that I could never reach out to the world, that no one would ever read me outside of my province.