TOYAH’S BLOG: SEPT 2019

HELLO THERE!

Today I am in Menton, France learning my lines for TO BE SOMEONE, which starts principle photography on the 16^th Sept.

It is over 30 degrees outside and uncomfortably hot.

France gives me a chance to catch up on reading.

I live in wonderful isolation. Apart from the 100 e-mails a day.

I am heavily into Stephen King at the moment. King’s ON WRITING: A Memoir Of The Craft, first published in 2000, was recommended by a director friend who said how it influenced his writing, now I have Frippy and Bill Rieflin reading it and fast and funny quips are passing via e-mail quoting our favourite parts…. mine is the Babysitter sitting on his head and farting when he was 6 years old, so politically incorrect and horribly easy to visualise.

I adore the genre of horror. Last month I worked on the horror film DOLL HOUSE, only a few scenes but the script gave me the opportunity to do a “possession” scene and I went hell for leather.

We shot the possession with only myself and the director in the room, the director not knowing what I was going to do, I think he was somewhat surprised at the detail I managed to squeeze in, the scene being a sudden possession in front of an audience. When he went for the wide shots with the audience in he didn’t tell them what was going to happen and it was really satisfying to see how shocked they were……. a lovely moment……. it can’t be normal to love horror so much.

The remainder of 2019 is exciting.

TO BE SOMEONE has a month to shoot; working around my September/October shows then I am onto the autumn tour before an arena tour with LET’S ROCK CHRISTMAS.  (AND of course 2020 brings HAZEL AND TOYAH: ELECTRIC LADIES…..YEAH!)

Frippy and I are going out to Seattle in November to see Bill and hug him endlessly for 4 days. Bill hates being touched, he has to build a “no hug” scaffold around himself to keep us away, but he is our soul brother and we are going to air hug him if nothing more while we have precious time with him.

He has just seen Bohemian Rhapsody and admitted he liked it and I recommend he see ROCKETMAN, which I think, is bloody brilliant.

For all you HUMANS fans there is a lovely announcement coming for 2020.

A question I read in a newspaper article, The Financial Times “How To Spend It Magazine”, I love this supplement, I read it and tut a lot, has profoundly moved me. It was a rhetorical question a world-renowned designer asked himself during an Epiphany.

The question was:

“How would I live if I wasn’t afraid?”

My God this resounded. It was an alarm clock going off.

To some extent I live in constant fear of not living to my full creative ability, almost to the point of being frozen.

It is Ironic.

I live in the privilege of relative peace yet I am in a state of fear every day.

Let me define my fear, because it has nothing to do with Horror films, it has to do with living:

Fear of the mundane…..useless shit draining into our lives from the Internet.

Fear of wasting time.

Fear of missing opportunities.

Fear of ostentation.

Fear of poverty.

Fear of widowhood.

Fear and distrust of others motivations.

Fear of not being a good person.

Fear of what I eat, how I look, of being me.

Fear of …..oh what the F—, Fear has become a habit.

Or another way to put it is “How would I live if I didn’t give a fuck?”

I have been pulled in two directions for a while and never once have I stood directly in the middle and thought “why the hell do I do this to myself ie: constantly pushing my career along on what seems like a totally independent and isolated path, the other option being to “walk away, no one would notice.”

The conclusion I have come to with a passion is everything I believe in is worth fighting for …… without fear.

This has manifested in some pretty forthright behaviour. I am currently suing a promoter/ about to sue a property company / embarking on finding new creatives in my life who don’t look at mobile phones all day.

Everything I have ever done is worth fighting for, and if I get stuck with deluded dullards who think they are actively engaging with the creative world whilst uttering single syllables I will walk away and find brilliant new human beings to create with.

Everything is worth fighting for and I have to accept I really don’t like the modern world that much…… I like Stephen King, Michel Faber, all the writers who push out the boundaries of storytelling. I like The Financial Times and everything that holds onto Human Ingenuity.

So whom would I be if I lived without fear, the most controlling emotion in the history of the human race?

I think I would live without an actual address and without personal possessions, trusting all that I need is to hand when needed. That thought terrifies me because I don’t believe it for one minute!

Then as a person striving to be productive on a creative level I would constantly move on trusting that creative social interaction is in all we need and is in all of us.

Stephen King says if you don’t fly in a state of ecstasy when doing what you love then you are not in the right job. Also that writers are born great, you can’t make someone great. You can improve what you have but greatness is a gift from the heavens.

I say the act of being creative makes us greater people. It’s the “in motion”, the “act of intention” that makes life, desire, self discovery and shared growth better individuals of us all.

If this is oppressed by fear, bye bye culture.

So if I lived without fear I don’t think I’d be practising Aristippus hedonism, but I’d definitely be freed.

SEE YOU OUT THERE FOR A ROLLER COASTER AUTUMN.

BE LOUD, BE PROUD, BE HEARD!
LOTS OF LOVE
TOYAH

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