The other David
Work, Severance and retirement
Severance has returned for its second season on Apple TV. The weird but brilliantly executed premise goes like this: employees have no recollection of their outside lives in an anonymous, enormous corporate building. When they enter the building for work, they forget everything. Their personal lives only return to them when they emerge from the building at the end of the day. Similarly, they can not recall anything their ‘work’ self has done. It creates a schism: the ‘work’ self and the ‘personal’ self. The tension becomes unbearable, and employees go insane, become violent, or attempt to heal themselves into a cohesive whole.
I am in production week for a large-scale concert the week before Christmas. I am a Stage Director, and for six days, I enter a building with no sunlight and am utterly consumed. My working days are filled with questions that seem important. When will the choir enter? What’s the cue for the flutter drop? What’s the correct wording for the MC once we get the segue into intermission? LX cue on the final note or the beat after?
I arrive home in the dead of night to a silent house. I sit on the couch, have a drink, and attempt to wind down. I try to remind myself that none of those questions are terribly important. The show will be a memory in a matter of days. My real life is here, on this couch. But for that week, it feels impossible.
Do normal working people have this? Is this part of what makes the performing arts so fucked up? A steady drip-feed of mundane work is almost impossible to find in the performing arts. Instead, there are only spikes of frenzied activity. So, who are you? The adrenaline-fuelled work-a-holic who exists in production weeks? Or the other one, at home, balancing shopping lists and child care?
A generation above me is retiring. A handful of mentors and family members are transitioning into non-work lives, and it’s not easy. The struggle is less about the practicalities of what to do with sudden periods but a more profound, spiritual angst. Who am I without work? Can my worthiness be separated from a pay cheque? What is there to achieve when there are no KPIs? Is achievement important?
I think of the Russians in times like this. In Anna Karenina, Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin goes on a personal journey to find meaning. The answer? Physical labour and honest work are in line with the seasons.
“Work is the only thing that serves to keep the consciousness of men in a healthy frame, and therefore work must be organized in such a way as to be attractive and productive of results.”
Simple enough, Mr. Tolstoy. Except now we’re over a century o,n and late-stage capitalism has just about ruined us. The technological revolution that lifted a generation out of the working class has created the excessive and neurotic middle class: millions who are doing ‘okay enough’ but are burned out, stressed and in existential dread. And your own country has suffered massively under the grinding heel of rulers who have used the labour of others to profit.
Leo…are you there?
I have fewer production weeks than I used to, but I find the ‘other David’ is there when I need him. I’m always so surprised when he shows up. He is outwardly competent, calm, and articulate. He can talk to hundreds of people without blinking. He can manage a team and make complex decisions. Using him comes at a cost to the real David, though - the one on the couch in the dead of night. That one looks at the other David with awe. But the relationship is mutual - neither understands the other. They are two selves, individual and unique. Both real and false.
For more posts on work, check out this one talking about the problem with theatre or this one about how the arts are structured.
Does something resonate? Leave a comment.
This hits home so powerfully, David. I think my work self has completely consumed my "real" self. When I don't have work and deadlines and those horrendous adrenaline spikes, I feel empty and meaningless. I'm trying to find balance but it's almost impossible. It's not the evil corporation that's won, it's something in me that only values striving for the impossible... You've given me lots to ponder. Thank you.