I Live Next to the Fire Station
Recent reflection has led me to suspect that I may be incredibly vain. This is by no means intentional, but vanity frequently creeps up on me, pulls back my shower curtain and perforates my very being as if I were a Hitchcock-style watermelon. Life is a constant struggle - how do I balance my responsibilities and passions with mirror time, how can I ensure that my selfie camera angles are just right, and so on? It's a tricky one. Recently, and quite concerningly, I have actually begun to spend a not inconsiderable portion of my day writing purely about myself; and, what's more, a not considerable number of suckers read the damn thing.
Despite this, I remain divorced from the principal institutions of 21st-century vanity. No snapchat, no Instagram for me: and I only ever used my twitter account to advertise one show (but you should definitely follow me! @RJL_Franklin). I think I sort of missed the boat on all that stuff, which I suppose is fine, because good old Facebook does a dandy job, and because if I did have all those things I would do nothing else in the day. YouTube is bad enough. Also Instagram filters confuse me.
Acting is considered a pretty vain profession, and admittedly some actors and actresses are utterly self-obsessed, but I genuinely don't think it's as bad as people make out. Lots of other types of job and passion are, if less performative, then no less self-congratulatory - and what's more, a huge part of acting is about submitting and subordinating yourself to what directors want of you, what fellow performers want, what the text and the characters demand and so on. It's fashionable in some quarters (especially in Cambridge, it has to be said!) to be a bit nasty about actors and their apparent self-obsession, their 'lack of awareness' re: what techies in particular contribute to the creation of theatre, but my own experience does not bear this out. Most performers are grateful to be given the opportunities they have by everyone else they work with and aware of how much it takes from other parties to create brilliant art.
History as a discipline it seems to me promotes the opposite of vanity, because that too is about respect and submission. Certainly adopting a veneer of superiority with regards to the past only ever creates bad history: it wipes Native Americans off the historical record, for instance, it provides the poor and labouring classes only with 'enormous condescension' (as E. P. Thompson would have put it), it makes us conceive of past practices as 'irrational' (even stupid!) rather than merely as 'different'. On the other hand, there is a sense in which the expansion of 'expertise' that comes with studying the past gives some historians with a conscious self-importance that is very unlikeable, and arrogant historians are rather dangerous creatures, because they tend to do a lot of assuming. All the best historians (and academics in general) are intellectually humble, because it's only by knowing how little you know that you can know what exactly you know. To flip once again, one could adopt the position of Blaise Pascal (Anna-Marie surely you approve of this) and indict any kind of curiosity for vanity, because after all "We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it”!
All the jokes of the start of this post aside, I used to be terribly nervous about coming across as arrogant. I think various people at school felt I was, and it's not how I wanted to seem at all; I remember being actually quite affected when the Head Girl at our school told me she thought people were wrong when they said that's how I was! It's a peculiarly isolating feeling, though I'm content enough in myself not to worry about it anymore. I just try as best as I can to empathise with people, which I think is the best antidote to any of those inclinations I think most people have towards occasional bouts of egoism.
I do sometimes worry, though, that even if not in an arrogant manner I spend too much time on the things that interest me most directly - history and theatre if ya hadn't guessed! - rather than on things that matter beyond them. In the first place, I certainly don't want to go through life having all sorts of opinions on what is wrong with the world and never doing anything about them, and I think that academia and the stage aren't sufficient enough mediums through which to tackle the big issues of the day. Secondly, I frequently worry about not having enough time for friends, and have failed repeatedly in that regard, but if anyone is reading this than please know that I do try!!
This post was not about nearly any of the things that I was thinking I might write about! In brief I'd better tell you about the EXTREMELY exciting fact that I have just been offered a free ticket to Latitude Festival to see one of my favourite bands, Fleet Foxes, back in action for the first time in 4 years, courtesy of my lovely friend Greg, who I know from my old band, Cantate and school!!
In other news, I'm attempting to avoid being sick on Easter Sunday for the third year running, and have been considering Birthday plans for this year out of boredom: hence the vanity theme of this post. I'm going to be 20, which means I will no longer be a teenager or biologically immortal, and so whatever I will organise will probably be a solemn affair.
RJLF
P.S. My friend Arianna has written an article about the art scene in Cambridge, which anyone interested in such affairs should definitely read: https://www.varsity.co.uk/culture/12703.
Despite this, I remain divorced from the principal institutions of 21st-century vanity. No snapchat, no Instagram for me: and I only ever used my twitter account to advertise one show (but you should definitely follow me! @RJL_Franklin). I think I sort of missed the boat on all that stuff, which I suppose is fine, because good old Facebook does a dandy job, and because if I did have all those things I would do nothing else in the day. YouTube is bad enough. Also Instagram filters confuse me.
 |
| What a pretentious and vain headshot. I mean, seriously. Look at this guy. Ugh. His hair doesn't even have a direction. |
Acting is considered a pretty vain profession, and admittedly some actors and actresses are utterly self-obsessed, but I genuinely don't think it's as bad as people make out. Lots of other types of job and passion are, if less performative, then no less self-congratulatory - and what's more, a huge part of acting is about submitting and subordinating yourself to what directors want of you, what fellow performers want, what the text and the characters demand and so on. It's fashionable in some quarters (especially in Cambridge, it has to be said!) to be a bit nasty about actors and their apparent self-obsession, their 'lack of awareness' re: what techies in particular contribute to the creation of theatre, but my own experience does not bear this out. Most performers are grateful to be given the opportunities they have by everyone else they work with and aware of how much it takes from other parties to create brilliant art.
History as a discipline it seems to me promotes the opposite of vanity, because that too is about respect and submission. Certainly adopting a veneer of superiority with regards to the past only ever creates bad history: it wipes Native Americans off the historical record, for instance, it provides the poor and labouring classes only with 'enormous condescension' (as E. P. Thompson would have put it), it makes us conceive of past practices as 'irrational' (even stupid!) rather than merely as 'different'. On the other hand, there is a sense in which the expansion of 'expertise' that comes with studying the past gives some historians with a conscious self-importance that is very unlikeable, and arrogant historians are rather dangerous creatures, because they tend to do a lot of assuming. All the best historians (and academics in general) are intellectually humble, because it's only by knowing how little you know that you can know what exactly you know. To flip once again, one could adopt the position of Blaise Pascal (Anna-Marie surely you approve of this) and indict any kind of curiosity for vanity, because after all "We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it”!
 |
| Here I am on trial for my vanity. (Credit: Matt Hargraves) |
All the jokes of the start of this post aside, I used to be terribly nervous about coming across as arrogant. I think various people at school felt I was, and it's not how I wanted to seem at all; I remember being actually quite affected when the Head Girl at our school told me she thought people were wrong when they said that's how I was! It's a peculiarly isolating feeling, though I'm content enough in myself not to worry about it anymore. I just try as best as I can to empathise with people, which I think is the best antidote to any of those inclinations I think most people have towards occasional bouts of egoism.
I do sometimes worry, though, that even if not in an arrogant manner I spend too much time on the things that interest me most directly - history and theatre if ya hadn't guessed! - rather than on things that matter beyond them. In the first place, I certainly don't want to go through life having all sorts of opinions on what is wrong with the world and never doing anything about them, and I think that academia and the stage aren't sufficient enough mediums through which to tackle the big issues of the day. Secondly, I frequently worry about not having enough time for friends, and have failed repeatedly in that regard, but if anyone is reading this than please know that I do try!!
This post was not about nearly any of the things that I was thinking I might write about! In brief I'd better tell you about the EXTREMELY exciting fact that I have just been offered a free ticket to Latitude Festival to see one of my favourite bands, Fleet Foxes, back in action for the first time in 4 years, courtesy of my lovely friend Greg, who I know from my old band, Cantate and school!!
 |
| This still applies, though, Greg. |
In other news, I'm attempting to avoid being sick on Easter Sunday for the third year running, and have been considering Birthday plans for this year out of boredom: hence the vanity theme of this post. I'm going to be 20, which means I will no longer be a teenager or biologically immortal, and so whatever I will organise will probably be a solemn affair.
RJLF
P.S. My friend Arianna has written an article about the art scene in Cambridge, which anyone interested in such affairs should definitely read: https://www.varsity.co.uk/culture/12703.
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