Sebastian Gillies – WRITER

Last night I sat, pulsating with irritation, watching a little multicoloured ball swirl around on a screen as my computer struggled to perform the simplest of tasks. Life is too short to sit here waiting for a mindless piece of machinery open and close some programmes, I thought. It turned out that the poor thing only needed to be turned off and then on again. The simplest explanation is always the last one that occurs. I forget that even machines need to take a rest. I assume that they are supposed to open and enable new superhighways of communication along which we can travel instantaneously, but with the i-life you must take the rough with the smooth. When they crash, we crash with them. When they freeze our lives feel frozen too – we cannot move or function. We feel disabled, though we retain all our limbs and organs. Computers and phones seem to have become our most enabling limbs and organs in day to day life. 

My laptop was recently taken away for repairs. When I heard that the process could take up to ten days I was shocked. How could I possibly manage without it? In my hunt for a job I need – I must feel that I am in constant contact with potential employers, lest they decide to interview me. Fortunately a friend alleviated my distress by generously lending me a spare mac. My unease was compounded by the sad recognition of my dependancy on my laptop, not just for communication, but also for writing, music, the Internet and this blog. The undoubted convenience of having everything so accessible in one place is offset by the fact that all your eggs are in one basket. If you lose it, you lose everything. But if things are deleted, or stolen, does it count as a loss anymore? You can backup, download and replace everything so cheaply now, it doesn't matter, we can always buy another one.

I used to turn my nose up at itunes, preferring my collection of CD's, but eventually I caved in and cleared a lot of space by donating them to Oxfam. I received an ipod last Christmas too. Will I at some point prefer reading on a Kindle to a book? I hope not, but I may yet. Yes, you can create and hold whole libraries in the palm of your hand, but a Kindle is simply a receptical for text, a text separated from you by a thin, clear, cold and hard screen. It is convenient, but without character and if books are there to be read they are also ornamental to have around. I dare say people harboured reservations about the printing press, the railways, the internal combustion engine and the automatic washing machine. I certainly think that it's a positive progression to make music, art and literature more widely available; anyone should have a right to access them. But the worrying side-effect, as these things become increasingly copied, replaceable and throwaway, is our diminished appreciation of the value of these things, especially their fragility. Knowledge is both a right and a gift to be treasured and it's difficult to treasure something that increasingly exists only in a virtual reality. 

It is appropriate that Orff's O Fortuna from Carmina Burana should be used as an X-Factor theme tune. 

O Fortune, variable as the moon
always dost thou wax and wane.
Detestable life, first dost thou mistreat us,
and then, whimsically, thou heedest our desire.
As the sun melts the ice, so dost thou dissolve
both poverty and power …
… To thy cruel pleasure I bare my back …

The lyrics fit the show perfectly. We all of us have to sometimes bare our backs to fortune (nothing ventured, nothing gained) but there is a difference between taking a chance whilst nurturing and building up a solid career over the years and leaping up to catch a chance with nothing solid to break your fall. X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent turn the curve of an artistic career on its head: the fame and applause comes first, then you have to either consolidate, find your feet and take root outside the talent contest sphere, or wither away. It works as a launch pad for some, not for others. 'That's show business', you might say. 

BBC2 caught up with the finalists of New Faces 1986 this week: I Had the X-Factor… 25 Years Ago. The stories weren't all bleak; fortune had brought each former contestant their own measure of regret and consolation. They weren't stars, but some of them were still doing what they loved. Some of them had tears to shed, just as overwhelmed X-Factor contestants today shed tears of joy and the camera was still there to catch them. It has to. It has no use for restraint, because restraint won't hold an audience's attention. Just as there is no merit in art that is without heart and soul, so an audience won't watch someone (whether fictional or real) who isn't in the grip of extreme joy, anger, sorrow, or fear. There has always been a fine line between being an audience and a voyeur. 

This week I have been staying at Pluscarden Abbey, near Elgin in the Scottish Highlands. It was my first retreat and the first time that I had been so far north since childhood, when we boarded the sleeper train to Inverness for a family holiday. Clutching my precious train tickets and my Railcard, my journey up the east coast was spent reading, taking in the view, listening to the guard remind us again about tickets, luggage and refreshments, hoping that I would meet my connection at Edinburgh on time, checking to make sure that I hadn't dropped any of my tickets and worrying about whether I had enough money to afford a train sandwich and the taxi fare from Elgin station. By a small miracle, I did.

Such anxieties about time and money don't arise at Pluscarden, at least for the guests, who are always coming and going. The Abbey lies in a valley six miles from Elgin, but the steep forested hills and folds of earth, water, wood and stone seal it from the outside. The Church is ancient and hallowed and the living quarters basic, but comfortable – a mixture of boarding school and youth hostel. 

The monks have their own enclosure, which guests may not visit. Even in the Church you sit in a side chapel that is roped off from them. Their habits, socks and sandals are a further difference. You feel conscious of being an outsider, though a very warmly welcomed outsider. This emphasis on separateness is designed to maintain the sense of holiness. To be holy you are called to be apart, to live differently with a different focus. You feel rather flat-footed in such a place and anxious not to clumsily disrupt their serenely ordered sphere of silence, work, study and prayer. Next to such difference you look at yourself with fresh eyes. We go away to lose ourselves, but whom do we find instead?

The only time when you enter the enclosure is to eat with the monks. You sit at a separate table and eat in silence, but it is a glimpse into a communal way of life that goes back unchanged over centuries. The fare is simple and filling; bread and butter, boiled eggs and apples, soup and potatoes, corned beef and baked beans, tea and sponge pudding. An exception was the Feast of St. Andrew: venison curry, organic beer and apple pie. 

The monks at first seem quite unknowable, living as they do. Who are they? Who were they? Where do they come from? How did they come to be here? It seems rude to ask. Outwardly they all look self-contained and self-disciplined, but they must contend with problems both real and petty, even here. I don't know if I could learn to wear such discipline lightly, such a highly ritualised world could end up feeling restrictive and burdensome. The test, of course, is to submit yourself to it. 

Upon leaving the Abbey, I realised that I had gone for five days without listening to a radio, reading a newspaper, or going online. Quite an achievement in this day and age. Anything could have happened and I wouldn't have known. I hadn't left the country, or gone into a different time zone, yet I had been further away and more out of it than ever before. There may be a world out there, but it is shrinking all the time. It is increasingly difficult to feel that you have escaped. But here was an entirely different world, hidden, yet close at hand. To return and shoulder worldly cares was quite a surprise. The old priorities of time and money reassert themselves again; deadlines must be met and pennies counted. 

On Monday 21st November, a short play of mine will be performed at Theatre503 on Battersea Park Road. Along with seven other writers, the work will be a response to the current production The Swallowing Dark, by Lizzie Nunnery. The director is Oliver Rose, of Rogue's Gallery.

The return of Rev. to BBC2 is very timely, after Occupy London appropriated the steps of St. Paul's. Both situations illuminate the uncomfortably straddling position that the Church occupies; being in the world without being of it; raising their eyes heavenward whilst keeping both feet on the ground and striving to meet the needs of both spirit and flesh. St. Paul's is an even more ironic example, it's similar to the Royal Court Theatre standing at the heart of Sloane Square. This position makes the Church fertile ground for dramatic conflict and the Vicar a rich source of comedy, since they embody the difference between how we ought to behave and how we really do. One person's comedy is another person's tragedy.

If protesters had pitched their tents outside News International and forced its closure they would have been accused of assaulting free speech. Closing the London Stock Exchange would have elicited the same charge of interference. Not so at St. Paul's, it seems. Since they are not supposed to be of this world, we assume that they don't play by the same rules. But they still have to pay their way. They may criticise capitalist greed and excess, but they have investments like the rest of us. Occupying two different spheres, struggling to meet two different needs, it's no wonder their response (like ours) has been rather muddled.

'Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.'

For over 400 years we have annually burnt Guy Fawkes in effigy on the anniversary of his failed plot to blow up The Palace of Westminster. He has his own legendary place in history, but the view of him has shifted thanks to the comic book and film 'V for Vendetta', where the hero anarchist uses a stylised Guy Fawkes mask as a disguise in his fight against a fascist government. He succeeds where Fawkes failed. With its rosy cheeks, styled facial hair and wide fixed smile, the mask looks both comic and menacing. It's only a symbol, but symbols say a lot. Paul Staines, who blogs under the name Guido Fawkes, says that the mask "signifies a loss of trust in politics – Guy Fawkes is the most anti-political figure you can pick".

In our own world, with its Arab Spring and movements to Occupy Wall Street and the City, Fawkes has reappeared as an anti-authoritarian, one-man-against-the-system, with the mask being used by protestors against politics and banks. Could Fawkes be the next Guerrillero Heroico? It is an irony that this Fawkes is represented by a mask; the anonymity that this affords is something we associate with criminals and terrorists. 

The protestors may have chosen the mask for style, but perhaps they should choose their role models more carefully. If Fawkes and his fellow extremists had succeeded in striking a fatal blow on behalf of their fellow persecuted Catholics then the result would have been a Stuart 9/11. Though it failed, the plot set back the cause of tolerance and emancipation for Catholics for decades. How would our Stuart ancestors feel if they saw us wearing Guy Fawkes masks? Probably the same as us if we saw future generations wearing the mask of another anti-political extremist who murderously struck at the heart of a nation. 

Who deserves to have a Theatre named after them: the successful, or the daring? John Gielgud, Ivor Novello, Noel Coward, Stephen Sondheim, Laurence Olivier, David Garrick and Harold Pinter have all had the honour. Is there a case for including Terrence Rattigan among their number? It's over thirty years since his death and audiences still respond to his well-made plays full of unspoken and understated emotions.

A lot has happened to theatre in between, a fact acknowledged by the naming of the Harold Pinter Theatre, but there are many more people who dared, often against the odds, to invigorate and expand the possibilities of theatre: John Osborne, Joan Littlewood, Mike Leigh, Shelagh Delaney, Joe Orton, Caryl Churchill, Edward Bond, Arnold Wesker, Samuel Beckett and Peter Brook to name a few. Some of these names are still going strong and enjoy successful revivals too – why not name a theatre after them? 

Content within the rule-bound four walls of a drawing room, Rattigan wasn't an innovative new force of theatre, but he knew a good story and had the talent for telling them successfully. I wouldn't call his work either radical or comforting, but it works and the stage is large enough to accommodate the commercial and the familiar with the fresh and the experimental – provided it works. 

Only time can help to define those playwrights who are deserving of having the fitting memorial of having a theatre named after them, but this can also feel like an act of possession. Just as a part doesn't belong to an actor, so a theatre doesn't belong to any single artist, but to the team that works together to bring a text to life and to the audience who pay to come and see it. However, the name of Rattigan would feel more at home on a traditional, proscenium arch theatre in the West End than the name of Pinter, or the name of Peter Brook, who said 'I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.'

It's been an interesting summer. Bin Laden was killed. The SNP gained a majority. Ratko Mladic was arrested. The Lib Dems took a hammering. South Sudan was created. The Queen visited the Irish Republic. Famine was declared in Somalia. News of the World ceased publication and Rupert Murdoch faced the music. Norway suffered terrorist attacks. St. Paul's celebrated 300 years. The Arab Spring continued in Syria and Yemen. Habitat went into administration. E-petitions demanded the death penalty. London and other cities were marred by riots and looting. The Gaddafi regime fell. We lost Amy Winehouse, Lucian Freud, Claude Choules and the 7th Earl of Harewood. Harry Potter fans went into mourning. 

It's been interesting too looking back to the summer of 100 years ago. Britain sweltered in a heat wave. A new King-Emperor was crowned. The powers of the House of lords were restricted. A General Transport Strike was held in Liverpool and came to a violent end when it was broken up by the army and police. MP's voted to receive salaries for the first time. Machu Picchu was discovered. The Mona Lisa was stolen. The Mexican Revolution continued. New arrivals included Terrance Rattigan, Ronald Reagan, Tennessee Williams, Wladyslaw Szpilman and Thornton Chocolatiers.

What has changed? Plenty. And perhaps not as much as we think. A sense of perspective through the centuries can be both reassuring and unsettling. Saki's Chronicles of Clovis, 100 years young this year, are ageless in their presentation of an ordered society that feels disturbed and menaced by chaotic undercurrents, whether real or imagined. In Saki, Mother Nature bites at Edwardian society. Today, the threat of global warming is forcing us to reassess our relationship with the planet. 

Question Time was in Norwich a few weeks ago and was discussing the root cause of the increasing sexualisation of children. In this clip, Peter Hitchens puts the blame on the 1960's, the decade when Britain either became more socially open, or permissive depending on your point of view. The fault lies in our 'decision to stop' being a Protestant Christian country, which held the puritan belief that the main form of sex was lifelong marriage. It was interesting that he described what he saw as a sex saturated society as 'post-chatterley', fixing on the famous moment in 1960 when nine men and three women decided that Lady Chatterley's Lover was not an obscene article. Do we really owe our current sexual manners and morals to that decision? 

Pre-1960's Britain was not a model of Christian sexual morality, for all the social rules that were in place. There was certainly a higher value placed on discretion, dignity and a fear of disgrace. An effect of this was to associate sex with shame, something secretive and dirty that had to be covered up through a snigger, a nudge and a wink. By refusing to draw the curtain over Connie and Mellors, Lawrence aimed to dispel the emotional immaturity surrounding sex by gazing frankly at 'It' and infusing what were popularly called 'the dirty bits' with such inflamed spirituality as to elevate them into something tender and sacred. It is ironic that Richard Hoggart also used the word 'puritanical', in the sense of being intensely responsible for one's conscience, to defend the book's depiction of sex.

Perhaps neither the socially liberal or conservative sides have quite taken the right message from Lady Chatterley's Lover and the obscenity trial. It may have sparked, or been symptomatic of greater openness and honesty, but Lawrence would have rejected how sex has become commercialised. Lawrence would not have shared Peter Hitchens' Christian view of sex either, but he didn't present Connie and Mellors as casual, depraved, irresponsible, or obtrusively pleasure-seeking. What they sought was wholeness, in body and soul. The root cause of the sexualisation of children lies in the market seeking to capitalise on the 'glamour of grown ups' that fascinates us all when we're young, not with Lady Chatterley. 

The Royal Court Theatre, 23rd June 2011

This was my first experience of Arnold Wesker and against my expectations I enjoyed myself. The period and concerns of the play (Jewish East End Socialism between 1936 – 1956) weren't ones that had interested me much. How relevant could they be after 53 years? The U.S.S.R. may be history and the 21st century may belong (temporarily) to the contentedly consumerist West, but lost causes are always fascinating to look back on. It can be like looking back on our younger selves in middle age. How passionately naive we were, we think. How much we have changed in a few years of maturing. But the play carries a deeper resonance about belief in an ideal, in a cause that gives life impetus towards a vision. Sarah Khan (played by the excellent Samantha Spiro) is untouchably pure and unshakeable in her ideals of socialist brotherhood, which she dispenses along with endless cups of tea and cake. Sarah holds on, while her family sell-out, become disillusioned, physically weaken, or simply prefer to stay in watching their new televisions instead of wearing themselves out marching. We see that Sarah is on the wrong side of history, but for her to abandon her beliefs would be the same as giving up breathing.Today we are wary of such people, having seen what the fruits of their fervour can be, but we still half-admire them for a strength of conviction that is lacking in our more contented, inward looking selves.

Wesker extends his sympathy and understanding to all his characters. We can understand how Sarah's family succumbed to the passing of time, or to the needs of their own families. People grow. People change. That's life. But we also feel sympathy for Sarah. Life may be complicated, but how complicated does it really need to be? Things are not painted in black and white, but we all have moments when we feel they should be. Has belief made Sarah blindly obtuse, or stoical and clear-sighted? Does she deserve admiration, or pity? Like most things, the answer depends on who you ask.