For myself and no one else

Felix Cross writes, composes and directs. Personal experience allows us to say that he’s also a rather fine chef. You can read about him here AND below.

Photo:Chris Woe

My name is Felix Cross and I am a composer, theatre-maker and, currently, a PhD research student. At sixty-six I am delighted to still be in business, so to speak, but I know I do all these things out of an innate fear of being both redundant and irrelevant. I am told I work very hard and, if I do, it is almost certainly due to having messed around rather hopelessly in my earlier years, leaving me with a sense of a lot of catching up to do.

In my twenties I went off the rails somewhat and, having already been expelled from school and then art college, I drifted from one unsuccessful band to another. I wrote songs, for a publisher, with no success; I tried a bit of stand-up comedy, with barely more progress. Suddenly, I hit thirty, aimless and without an act to get together.

Salvation came in the form of the theatre – as I suspect it did for many others – when I was asked to write some songs for a show. I ended up writing the whole show and acting in it (badly). For some reason this play, a musical called Blues For Railton, was a moderate success, other people began to ask me to write shows for their theatres and, hey presto, I found a purpose and, in one form or another, theatre with music has been my home ever since.

That’s why I do what I do; I write it, compose it, direct it because I’m fairly good at it and people seem to ask me to do more. And they pay me. It’s a self-selecting process really; the things I was not that good at, nobody asked me to do again, so I haven’t.

After forty years of writing and making music, I occasionally allow myself to accept that I have a bit of talent – but as soon as I do that....whooosh! along comes some genius twelve-year old who’s composed her third symphony, or I listen to anyone from Hendrix to Schumann, or read some clever bastard saying something clever cleverly, and I’m back on the naughty-imposter step.

Yet, although I never had any formal training or higher education, I did learn one thing early on that I think has helped. When I was doing stand-up in my late twenties, I wrote all my own material. I would sit at home, writing jokes and stories and practice them in front of the mirror. In the early days I might try a new joke that I though was amusing and would tell myself that if I said it with perfect timing, the audience was in the right frame of mind and the wind was in the right direction, then it might be funny. Of course, I’d go out on stage and that particular joke would die on its arse and I soon learnt that if I tried out something at home and it instinctively made me laugh, then it would probably make other people laugh too. This meant that a) I had to write and throw away a lot more material to get a 20-minute set that was funny and b) I realized that I had to write for myself and no one else. And that is what I have been doing ever since. Those who don’t like it, who don’t laugh, well they won’t come again; but there will be (hopefully) enough who do, and that is the basis of my career.

I need very little to create work; encouragement, money and deadlines, and a warm, quiet, private space, where I will not be interrupted until I’m ready to be interrupted. I need a desk, a piano, a guitar, a laptop and an agent. Working life in this lockdown therefore is no different from how it has always been.

Actually, right now, there is a difference to my working schedule. Alongside trying to evade illness, I am researching for a PhD; probably more imposter, catching up syndrome. Anyway, this means reading a lot of books, which in turn means buying a lot of books. I read a couple of weeks ago that Amazon was turning over £10,000 per second; I may be responsible for a good proportion of that. I found myself surrounded by so many academic books I had to buy an extra scholarly bookshelf, which I of course got through Amazon – maybe I am in the wrong business?

I am lucky, my family is with me, our house is large enough for each of us to be separate when we want to, we have no mortgage to pay, I am old enough to receive a small pension that supplements the odd commission that comes my way. I am also old enough to worry about what might happen if I caught the dread stuff, so I stay safe indoors, with the odd exercising walk/run outside. All I need is time and to be organised; I have the former and I’m working on the latter.

The only thing that would help right now is a pill that could keep me alert (not in the government’s way...), creative and energised 24 hours a day; but in the absence of that, a form of alcohol that has no effect on one’s body or mind the day after.

Standup comedy skills never die.