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Remember
in one of my first columns I warned you to enjoy each day at a time and try not
to look too far into the glittering future? Well, here is another wake-up call
for those still snoozing on an airbed floating along the river of Time.
WAKE-UP! It is June, the longest day has you frozen in its headlights and after
that we are back down into the store to get the bag of winter clothes.

After
the half-time whistle is blown in a game of football and the manager has given
his stirring motivational team talk, the players (hopefully) return to the
pitch with a sense of urgency and fight for the remaining 45-minutes before
conceding a last-minute goal like my team usually does. I am your manager
giving you the dressing room talk and am reminding you that the sand in the
hourglass is vanishing one grain at a time – how philosophical.

There
are very few events in life that actually remind you that you are halfway, even
films no longer have an interval. You would probably take – here comes my
favourite subject – sex far more seriously if a buzzer went off when you were
halfway, although for some the buzz would come very, very early…prematurely
early. Ok, the buzzer would get on your nerves, but it would encourage you to
savour each of the remaining seconds with your partner.

Take
a moment to think about what has happened in your life since January. Have you
maintained your resolutions? Have you lost that excess weight? Have you taken
that dream holiday? Have you decorated the kitchen? Have you told the girl at
the local R-Kioski that you love her? Have you even defrosted the freezer or
turned the mattresses this year? Stop procrastinating!

“I’ll
do it tomorrow!” is the scourge reply of mankind and should be consigned to the
language bin of history along with “How old do you think I am, darling?”,
“Trust me, I know what I am doing!” and “Do you love me?” A bit cynical, but
how much good has ever resulted from any of those, plus we don’t have enough
time left in 2007 to have pointless arguments.

I
must hold my hands up and admit that this column was going to be written
yesterday, but I never said that I actually practice what I preach. Anyway,
please try to live each day to the full and satisfy those dreams before it is
too late – at least defrost the freezer because it will save you electricity.
Now I have to go, the buzzer just went off and my wife wants me to concentrate
for the remaining time we have left…

For an
English thespian, the so-called graveyard
contracts still in use in many Finnish theatres are simply beyond their
comprehension. An increasing number work as freelancers, but many theatres
still employ people on a lifetime contract: till death do us part. Sounds very
cushy, yet the reality is often far from it: a very tight schedule of
rehearsals and shows, which would squeeze the juice out of any artist.

The
philosopher Pekka Himanen talks about the Finns being suspicious about anything
new. We Finns say a definite no to anything we are not sure about – just in
case. Everything in Finland grows slowly: potatoes, blueberries, friendships,
and tolerance for anything new and different. That seems to be true of theatre
as well.

Theatre
here tends to be quite traditional: it’s good and well made, as it should be in
the land of Nokia. And it’s reliable, like the granite we stand on. Most of the
time when you go to the theatre you know exactly what you will get.

The
repertory theatres have a simple formula: they must get bums on seats. So the
shows must be accessible. They are custom made to serve busloads of middle-aged
women. There’s nothing wrong with that I suppose, it’s just a bit…blah.

There are
certainly people pushing the boundaries as well. There are companies making
theatre in odd places and others starting international groups: ambitious
enterprises with fierce artistic drive.

Helsingin
Sanomat has been criticised for the limited publicity they give to small-scale
productions. Artists are frustrated with a lack of resources. The system seems
to be stuck in the mud, like in the popular theatre game of the same name. In
the game you need someone to rescue you, so you can carry on playing.

In London,
the National Theatre rescued a financially struggling company that was doing
very experimental shows in the unused tunnels 
of the London underground. The shows still take place in this rough and
exciting location, but now the funding, and the much needed publicity, come
from the National. That way, both the experimental company and the National
reach new audiences. The two divided worlds meet: the margin and the
mainstream. And the benefits are plentiful.

The
National also hosts an outdoor festival every year, where they bring in an
array of international street theatre. Again, the old institution opens up to
the new possibilities.

I yearn for
a time when this kind of open-mindedness will rule in Finland: when the rusty
structures are crushed, and forward-looking theatre practitioners get the
opportunities they deserve. Then I’ll be excited about going to the theatre
again.

Why, why,
why? Tell me why! Why do we have to go through this torture every time we call
a customer service number of a big company or institution? If they do not have
enough personnel to attend the incoming calls, why do they not hire more staff?
Is this a worldwide Machiavellian plan to get on our nerves?

My second
favourite experience is when I call customer service numbers and they throw
recorded messages into your ears with a wide range of possibilities in three
different languages (I have to wait to for the English, which follows the
Finnish and Swedish explanations since I still do not have a mastery of this
beautiful Mikael Agricola language. So again, time to prepare coffee…).

 “If you want to consult your account
movements, press 1”. (this doesn’t make sense) “If you want to listen to the
last hockey match, press 2” etc. Most times you have to choose the last option
(“For other Inquiries”) since there is nothing that suits the simple question
you want to make. These are only the first steps of a tortuous ascent that,
usually, leads to the operator not understanding your enquiry, and you end up
being transferred from one department to another like a ping-pong ball.
Meanwhile, you pray that somebody with some common sense will attend to you.

So, my dear
friends, it cannot exactly be said that customer service culture in Finland is
highly developed. I still consider it a huge abuse to pay 2,5 euro in whatever
cafeteria of a city when I have to grab my cup, fill it with coffee, be careful
not to drop the milk jug and hunt for the sugar at the counter, while the
waiter/waitress’s only task is to hand you your bank card receipt to be signed.
Shouldn’t they be paying me for serving myself?

It is the
same when you try to purchase a train ticket at the station. Basically, the
customer service is there to make it more complicated when you want your money
back because you missed the train by a couple of minutes, or you buy a wrong
ticket because you do not understand the instructions in Finnish in the ticket
machine. Is it a part of the same worldwide Machiavellian plot that, with no
variation, half of the staff at the counters of railway stations cannot speak
proper English? No matter if it is in Helsinki, Beijing or Rome, the staff is
carefully selected and placed in customer service positions to make
communication more complicated. It is really a mysterious thing. Maybe Osama
Bin Laden is behind the recruitment processes for customer service positions
all over the world in order to create chaos and destruction.

Maybe, it is
just that I am getting old when I start to miss so many things from the good
old times: simple things such as making a phone call to ask a simple question,
and be greeted on the other end of the line by a real human being!

Within the
film or show business in general, actors are often considered a different
breed. They look like normal people but behave differently. Many of them seem
to fast-forward their lives, being greedy to consume marriages and ideologies.
They experiment with social masochism, seeming not to care about other people’s
reactions. The wild, eccentric and unpredictable actors. Drunk, filled with
lust, spontaneously jumping into anything that might provide a new dose of
emotions.

The
stereotype is unjustified, of course. I have friends who act. There is a vast
amount of actors I have worked with – good hard-working and reliable people.
There are intelligent actors. There are actors who live in balance with
themselves and people around them.

But still,
there is something in the profession. I think performing publicly strongly satisfies
one of the most basic human desires, the need to be seen and recognized. Many
actors consider themselves shy, and their choice of forces them towards the
greatest fear: fear of exposure.

The need
for exposure and feeling sick about too much attention is sometimes almost
bulimic.

Pamela
Tola, a very bright and talented young actress and photographer made a book
about acting (Miksi näyttelen – Why do I
act?). The book contains interviews with other actors and short comments on
the subject. It becomes obvious to the reader that especially for those new in
the profession, life can become really hard. Tearing themselves open publicly,
with the possibility of cruel criticism, can be sometimes too much for a fragile
soul. And we are all fragile souls.

An actor is
a professional who uses himself or herself as a tool – all the fears, hopes and
memories are material to work with. Building a fictitious character is not
(only) about pretending to be someone, one has to actually become someone else. Imagine becoming a serial killer, a victim of
gang rape or Adolf Hitler – starting to see the world through their eyes and
living their lives. It can be psychologically consuming.

This is
obviously true of any storyteller, even a writer, but nobody is as directly and
as completely in the game as an actor. A writer can write happy ends to all of
his life traumas (or kill the ones he loves most), but an actor follows the
lines drawn by the writer like faith itself – ending up in death or misery, or
glory, without being able to influence the course of events. (This is a cliché
but aren’t we all actors on the stage of life?)

Acting is a
challenging profession. I used to think that they were pussies, whining for
nothing and using cheap show tricks to get attention for themselves. Not
anymore. With great admiration I follow those who have the calling and talent
to change themselves – and come back.