Do you know what is superbly strange?

Do you know what is superbly strange? It is troubling and weird to write a blog when you consider yourself to be a totally private person, a recluse even. I go to the beach everyday and get out the house and exercise a lot, and see people at the coffee joints I go to but I find it unusual to write my diary essentially knowing that anyone who wants to can read it. But I tell you why I do it, every once in a while, because I like to mark time. I like to scrape a line in the stone and count the passing days. And I also have shit loads to say. And I also think it might be great for the coming generations to have this kind of documentation to read. Not that anyone will read this. The diaries I have from when I was growing up are falling apart or lost. Letters I send people are sent and probably in similar states as the fading diaries or they are binned. There is something that seems permanent about this. I don't blog everyday or anything like that so I have this sense of take it or leave it about it which I like and I feel I am getting more used to the idea. It doesn't feel so much like a fake endeavor anymore. The more I write here the less it feels forced and the more personal I am getting. 

I just did Joan Scheckel's acting lab and I have to write a hard core chunk about that experience. I had as always an illuminating fantastic time. http://www.joanscheckel.com/

In a about a week and a half we should know if NEDS gets into Cannes. Here is an article about it below from The Herald. I went to Hawaii for a week just now to hang with Jason while he shot The Event pilot, it turned out they pushed the shoot a week, so we got to have time together in Hawaii on Oahu for 8 days, I am tanned and very happy and lucky. It was brilliant. It was basically a free holiday, which neither of us were expecting, and we didn't realize how much we needed it. We work a ton and never stop, day, night, Sundays, everything can be interrupted for work, well most things generally. I haven't had a holiday for over a year and a half. Jason's still there now, shooting and I am back to writing in LA. I watched Martin Compston on the plane in a film on the way out there, THE DAMNED UNITED. He was fantastic, as usual. I can get full-on home sick sometimes and nothing can really cure me, it started as I was watching Martin being a genius in that film, and seeing the locations they shot in sent me into a tail spin home sick longing and it didn't go away. I thought about SWEET SIXTEEN and how gorgeous a film that is and I started thinking about Greennock and the Clyde Tunnel and stupid stuff like that, flashing images of the streets or the mugs at my pal Sammy Mulgrew's flat or the smell of my Babcia's house. Nothing seems to cure it when I get a wave of it. It's been over 10 years I've been here in the States. The NEDS shoot this summer ('09) was the longest I've been in Scotland in the past decade. It was an honor to be part of that phenomenal experience and to work with Peter. He is the king of Scottish cinema. Jason and I really hold every performance, ours and folks we are working with or performances we see, up to the standard Peter Mullan sets. Over the years, it has stood us in good stead that standard.

So anyhoo. I get this ultra strong wave of home sickness that no one over here can help me with, nothing cures it, not going to the British shop or making a cup of PG tea. My pals Fiona Glascott and Eva Birthistle have gone back to London now so that increased the wave's intensity this time around. I always search and search for a home sickness cure, I make a CD for one of my pals back home and send it, or I write to someone back home or text them, I text Stephen Sheriff and want him to be in my living room here, or I send a parcel to my niece, Tara, of pants that have the days of the week on them, or those things that attach to her crocs that she likes. I draw all over the parcel/envelope just so I have my pen dancing close to the address I've already written, as if that puts me closer to home somehow. But, after I leave the post office I still have to search and search for something to stop the ache in my chest. Then with nothing left in me and truly believing no solution will come, I just sit down and watch a Ken Loach film on DVD and I remember what I forgot, which is that no matter how much I yearn for home, a Loach film, no matter which one, always makes me feel better. To know that that quality of work is happening anywhere in the world is a relief of the greatest proportions. I am so relieved that I actually feel inspired to work on my writing, which is good because both scripts I have are due. It's actually a cycle, I'm realizing as I write this, I feel home sick and loose my desire to write/do anything, then I potter about for ages trying to fix it, then eventually I semi-accidentally watch a Loach film and get back to writing again. It's an almighty cure for a common ailment. It actually works with Peter Mullan films too. If he's directed it or not, a performance of his is always so profound that it knocks me for six every time and really sorts me out. It's the best antidote to practically anything: snake bites, deadly illnesses, definitely wee wavy feelings of homesickness. I just hear Peter's voice telling me to stop moaning and I get back to work. If I hadn't had him to write to or to sit and talk to when I came home to Glasgow over these years, I'd be a total fanny right now. I'd be a fanny of an actress. And I've told him that. I think he agrees. Or he should anyway.

The article is exciting, regarding the health of Scottish cinema. It makes me happier than my mega tan from Hawaii to read this article.

I'm doing a book on tape right now for Deyan Audio. I am loving it. I am meeting my pal Tyler Pierce for coffee tomorrow at Le Pain on Melrose. He is the first guy I ever acted with in NYC when I was 17. I remember looking at him the first day of class at The Atlantic Theater Company and saying to myself, "Right, Palka, there's no way you'll be friends with that one when you leave this school" And I totally am friends with him. We got very close.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/neds-romans-and-ewan-the-tartan-army-set-to-storm-cannes-1.1014912