Perceptions

i. You’ve got a miserable face

Rami and I are talking movies and actors. Rami has a thing for Kates. Blanchett, Winslet. He thinks they’re fabulous.

“Did you ever do any acting?” I ask him. I know he went to film school in New York, I don’t know if he ever did any acting himself.

“I did a couple of things,” he says, casually.

“Really?”

“I had representation.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“It was when I was living in Paris,” he says, “I auditioned for an agency. They wanted to see you act, so you went in with something you’d chosen yourself. There were lots of us. One after the other, we had to act out our piece for them. They were brutal. They were saying to people ‘That was terrible. You can’t act. Give up now. Get out of here.’ And then it was my turn…”

Rami knows how to tell a good story. He’s got me hooked.

“And?”

“And so I did my piece and afterwards the agent said to me ‘Have you ever acted before?’ I’d never acted before in my life, so I said ‘No’. He said ‘We can use you. You have a miserable face.’”

“What?”

“He asked me if I’d seen Amadeus. I said ‘Of course.’ He said ‘Remember the funeral? There were a lot of extras laughing during that scene.’ He said ‘We need people with miserable faces like yours.’ So I did a couple of things. Just extras work. Crowd scenes where they needed people to look miserable.”

“That’s hilarious. In some parallel universe maybe you’re a successful actor, famous for your miserable face.”

“In a parallel universe, I’m a star,” he grins, delighted by this idea.

“I don’t think you have a miserable face,” I tell him.

ii. Superfly

Astralfalcon didn’t buy a new coat in the end but he went to London again a week later, this time shopping for sunglasses. No exasperated shop assistant in the background of his photos this time, but some very bold choices in eye wear. Miles Davis would definitely have approved.

I also note that he has changed his Facebook occupation from ‘unemployed’ to ‘earth worker’, and that he has made some tweaks to his ‘Love Corner’ (Shelf! It’s a fucking shelf! It’s not even in a corner, it’s a collection of items on a mantelpiece! I might be getting a bit over-involved in the narrative of Astralfalcon’s Mating Quest at this point, but you didn’t see him in those shades…) He says he wants his Love Shelf to appeal more to younger women, so it also now includes two framed pictures of busty Kardashianesque models, that I’m assuming he’s either cut out of magazines or printed off the Internet (although the photos appear to be of surprisingly high quality, which I’m worried means he actually went and had them printed professionally).

No, I don’t know what the fuck he’s thinking either. He’s an earth worker, he’s operating on a different level to most of us. I’m not kidding. Astralfalcon has a Masters degree in physics. He might have some strange ideas about how to appeal to women but when it comes to understanding the fundamental particles of the universe he could fly rings around us all.

Let’s just hope that never becomes necessary.

iii. Beneath the waves, an ocean

Patricia, in her fifties with large round glasses and a chestnut bob, runs an art class for people recovering from mental health issues. Each week she picks a different theme to inspire the class – colour theory, op art, surrealism, collage. I’m helping her set up the room for this week’s group. We’re covering tables in old newspapers when she stops what she’s doing and looks up at me.

“I don’t think I ever said this,” she tells me, “but I wanted to thank you. When I started running this group two years ago, I was in a very different place. That first time I had twenty people in front of me -” She shakes her head. “I didn’t know if I could do it. It wasn’t long before that I’d been in the same place they were.”

Patricia tells me how, whilst recovering from her own mental health problems, she had an epiphany about wanting to use art, and her skills as an artist, to help others. The offer to run an art group herself came about by chance.

“I didn’t have any confidence in my ability to do it, at all,” she says. “I felt like a mess.”

“I’m surprised to hear that. I would never have guessed.”

“Really?”

“Not at all,” I answer, truthfully. “You looked like you knew exactly what you were doing.”

She smiles.

“So I just wanted to thank you,” she says, “for making me feel so welcome. It felt like you cared.”

“We do care.”

“I know you do. I can see it. I felt it too, the first time I came here.”

“It’s a transformative place.”

“It is. It really is.”

“It’s transformed lots of people’s lives. Mine included.”

“I’d like to hear that story. I hope one day you’ll tell it to me.”

“Of course,” I promise her as a nervous looking man in a fluorescent orange waistcoat enters the room.

“Is this the art class?” he asks, tentatively.

“Yes, yes it is,” Patricia tells him. “Hello.”