Draft #1 for my HSC Drama Monologue

This is, as the title says just my first draft for my monologue. My intention is to leave the audience perhaps feeling empathy for drug addicts or at the very least think twice before criticising and calling them scum. I am adapting it from the Heroin Diaries, by Nikki Sixx and I am actually playing Nikki Sixx, but in a way that the audience is oblivious to whether I am male or female.
Feedback would be much appreciated if anyone actually reads my blog.

Monologue Draft #1

When I was 15 years old I remember the Iggy and the stooges song "search and destroy" reaching out from my speakers to me like my own personal anthem. It was a theme I would carry for decades as my own hell-bent mantra. The song might as well have been tattooed across my knuckles 'cause there could be no truer words for a young, alienated teenager.

Alice Cooper was another musical hero. Like Nostradamus, Alice must have seen the future when he sang "welcome to my nightmare"...or at least my future.

Yet Alice's nightmare was show business, and this, this is something else entirely. This is me welcoming you to a genuine living nightmare that I endured, a nightmare so bad that it ended up killing me, twice.

But now I know it wasn't only the drugs- it was also my past unknowingly haunting me, and even a lethal cocktail of narcotics couldn't seem to kill the pain.

I guess if we could mix these two songs together you'd have the theme song of my adolescence.
On Christmas day 1986 I was a member of one of the biggest rock'n'roll bands in the world. I was also an alcoholic, a coke addict and a heroin addict heading into a pill-popping downward spiral of depression.

Musically I always thought of my band as a nasty combination of punk, rock, glam and pop mixed together with a lot of sarcasm, anger and humor, love and hate, happiness and sadness. Of course, depending on the recipe, there was always larger or smaller amounts of sex in there too. I mean what is rock'n'roll if it's not sexy? Sleazy? Usually, Chauvinist? Always.

So Christmas Day 1986, that day wasn't even that special. I was an addict well before then and stayed one for a while afterwards. Perhaps that day just brought my condition home to me. There is something about spending Christmas alone, naked, sitting by the Christmas tree gripping a shotgun that lets you know your life is spinning wildly out of control.

Over the years people have tried to say that being in my band turned me into an addict...but I don't think it did. That stroke of genius was all my own.

Even as a kid I was never inclined to dodge a bullet. I was always the first one to take it right between the eyes. I was stubborn, strong-willed and always willing to put myself in harms way for the betterment of chaos, confusion and rebellion- all the traits that made me famous and later, infamous.
The ingredients for success and failure all wrapped up in a nice package, with the emotional stability of a molotov cocktail. Then when I moved to LA in the late '70s and discovered cocaine, it only amplified these charming characteristics... But alcohol, acid, cocaine... they were just affairs. When I met heroin, it was true love.

After we made it big my band had given me more money than I knew what to do with, so naturally I spent it on the only thing I wanted to do: drugs.
Before the band, I lived only for music: after it started I lived only for drugs. OK so maybe the band gave me the resources to become an addict, but you know what? If it hadn't, I'd have found some other way to do it.

I guess all of us get to live out our destiny, even those of us who have to choose the worst one imaginable. So why did I take this strange, dark trip? Well, I have a little 1-2-3 theory on this.
1-My childhood was shitty. My Dad left when I was 3 years old and never came back.
2- My mum tried to love me, but everytime a new guy came on the scene I'd be in the way and she'd shuttle me off to live with my grandparents.
3- I was born an addict. It's no surprise I grew up feeling angry, unloved and somehow needing...revenge.
Revenge on who? on the world? on myself?

And How did I become a junkie? Well one year 2 major things happened to me, I had an album go platinum and I crashed my porsche, drunk, dislocated my shoulder and started smoking heroin to numb the pain. The problem was I carried on smoking- and then started injecting- long after the pain was gone.

Fuck, there were clues I was becoming a junkie. You'd need to be pretty self obsessed to miss them, but if I was one thing back then it was self obsessed. When Vince went to jail for 20 days I didn't even visit or phone our singer once, it never even occurred to me. It would have been a waste of valuable drug time.

By the end of our 1986 tour I was on my way to becoming a full blown junkie. I'd OD'd after a show in London and been left for dead in a dumpster. I turned up strung out to be Tommys best man at his wedding with syringes hidden in my cowboy boots. And I'd stayed home freebasing rather than attend my own grandmothers funeral- the woman who had loved and raised me. And things got worse. Much worse.

As I'm reflecting here all sorts of feelings are bubbling to the surface, I realise now that I'd totally lost perspective, Music took a backseat to the voices in my head and demons in my closet.
And a question that often comes up for me, how the fuck am I still alive? Simply put I think I'm still here cause I've still got stuff to do, music to write.

I mean I'll probably meet my maker doing something so uncool like golfing or gardening. I can see it now, sitting up there with Bon Scott, Sid Vicious and Hendrix hearing someone reading my obituary from below "NIKKI SIXX DIED TODAY...FUCKING GOLFING..."

OK, enough humor (you tend to make fun of death a lot once you've died and come back a few times)
You know, they say to keep what you have you have to give it away. I believe that. I also believe you can be cool as fuck, not give a fuck and kick ass in life without being fucked up. I'm still the first person to say "Fuck You", but I'm faster to say "I Love You"

I'm the same person, but I'm also a different one. You see there's Sikki, and then there's Nikki, Many years sober and in control, rather than outta control and crazed. Occasionally it occurs to me that I may be the kind of person that the Sikki of '86 would have hated. That's okay 'cause I don't think I'd like to know Sikki now, so we're even.

Things back then got so convoluted, polluted and distorted that I ran with what I was given, I turned it into my armour, my defense mechanism, my weapon of self destruction.

Part of me (Nikki? or Sikki?) thinks this was all part of a master plan to expose all these raw nerve endings of dysfunction so I could heal. But addicts, we think everything is about us, don't we?

My Speech on 'Into the world'

So last term sometime I had an assessment on the topic we're currently doing in English 'Into The World' our set text was Educating Rita and we had to choose 2 related texts. The assessment was a 5-6 minute speech to target the next generation, mine ran a little long and I completely forgot to add a conclusion... but I got good marks for it regardless :)

Into The World-
An address to the next generation.

Good Morning/Afternoon future year twelve students, I am here today to speak toy you, as a former year twelve myself, about making transitions 'into the world'. A thing you will all have to do yourselves in the very near future.

I'm going to be speaking about moving into the world, some of the obstacles that must be overcome to do so, and some of the varying degrees of success that come from these transitions in relation to three texts; 'Educating Rita' a two hander play by Willy Russell, 'Encino Man' a 1992 comedy directed by Les Mayfield and 'The Body' a novella written by Stephen King.

A number of technical devices are employed by composers to show a characters transition 'into the world' the most common being; the characters relationships and how they change with the transition, the setting, and the characters language, be it narration or dialogue. As well as the characters motives for moving 'into the world', whether their transition is forced or by personal choice and the sacrifices the character has to make in order to transition successfully.

For 'Educating Rita', Willy Russell has, without a doubt make the relationship between the main character, Rita, and her teacher, Frank, a very interesting one. Frank is to Rita a teacher, a mentor, a friend and at times a figure held in awe, at the beginning of the play. Through her transition, however, Rita begins to hold Frank in less and less high regard and by the end they stand as equals. Some may even say that by the end of the play Rita is of higher status than Frank.

'Educating Rita' has a very small setting, Franks study becomes their 'world' with the lawn outside of the window considered the world that Rita so desperately wants to become a part of.

Language is another technique that Willy Russell uses in an interesting way to show Ritas transition into the educated world. In the first act of the play Rita speaks in a way that makes it clear she comes from an un-educated, working class background using phrases such as "dead suprised", "meself" and the like. In the midst of her transition Rita decides to "talk properly" at the suggestion of her housemate, Trish. After Frank asks what's wrong with her voice Rita says "Nothing is wrong with it, Frank. I have merely decided to talk properly. As Trish says there is not a lot of point in discussing beautiful literature with an ugly voice". But by the end of the play, and her transition she has managed to find a happy medium in her vocabulary.

Ritas motivation for moving 'into the world' is to escape her working class background. She wants to be one of the educated people and "know everything". She transitions by choice and sacrifices her relationship with her husband and alienation from her family and class, she doesn't know how to talk to them anymore. She also sacrifices part of her individuality, becoming a 'frankenstein' of other peoples opinions to transition into the world with success...and she does.

The relationship between Dave, Stoney and the aptly named caveman, Link in 'Encino Man' is represented similarly to the relationship of Frank and Rita. Dave and Stoney are Links mentors as he moves into his new world and, like Rita seems to surpass Frank in status, Link surpasses Dave and Soney during his transition.

The setting of 'Encino Man' could also be described as somewhat similar to that of 'Educating Rita'. Both are set at places of education, with someone from another 'world' enrolling and ending up seemint to outshine the mentor(s) who were already established there, The difference being that in this case Link becomes more popular than his mentors.

Both Link and Rita adopt phrasing used by their peers. The boys teach Link to use their language and he picks it up similar to the way Rita uses words out of her fellow students and Trishs' mouths.

Links transition 'into the world' is not by choice, but by force. He has no other option but to assimilate. His transition means he has to forget his ancient culture and learn a whole new language and way of life, but he enjoys it, so is it really a sacrifice? Dave sacrifices his dream of going to prom with Robin Sweeney and becoming prom king, but he is at peace with this sacrifice as it is Link who goes to prom with Robin and is crowned prom king. Links transition is a smooth and successful one. And thanks to him Dave transitions from 'loser' to 'cool'.

In Stephen Kings novella 'The Body' the relationship between the narrating persona, and main character, Gordie Lachance and his friends Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio is that expected from a group of twelve year old boys, on the surface, but as the older Gordie (narrator) reflects upon it throughout their transition, the reader gets a different perspective. At the beginning and through a majority of their transition they are a group of four friends, but then as they mature they split into two groups, Teddy and Vern and Gordie and Chris, the brainless and the intelligent. They remain as two through junior high, and the rest of their lives, as the older gordie puts it "Teddy and Vern slowly became just two more faces in the halls, or 3:30 detention".

The setting for 'The Body' is small, the small town of Castle Rock is the whole world to the four boys, but as they transition the world becomes bigger. Chris wants to get out of Castle Rock like Rita wants to get out on that lawn.

The language and vocabulary in 'The Body' is used in a way that shows the contrast between the Gordie who is narrating and the Gordie who is undergoing his transition. The narration is more formal, reflective and deep. Clearly showing that the narrating persona is an adult, in stark contrast to the dialogue snippets of foul mouthed banter and fears of the twelve year old boys.

The boys transition into the world is, unknowingly, a choice. They conciously decided to go find the dead body of Ray Brower, but they didn't know that their journey to find the body would become a journey out of innocence. The boys all sacrificed their innocence the day they saw Ray Browers body, which made the fact that they also sacrificed their fifteen minutes of fame by not reporting the bodys' whereabouts seem irrelevant.

The outcomes of the boys transitions vary, Neither Teddy nor Vern transition into manhood successfully, they take the shop courses in junior high, Teddy never gets to join the army and both of their lives are menial and cut short. Chris, like Rita transitions successfully against all odds, he does the college courses, does fairly well and goes into college as a pre-law student before his life is also tragically cut short. Gordie also transitions successfully. He outlives his friends and lives out his dream of becoming a writer, he describes his life as "so much like a fairytale it's fucking absurd".

My Apologies

Well, that didn't get off to a very good start did it?
Between my internet running painfully slow, unbearably slow in fact and the hectic cramming to get ready to sit my HSC trials there has not been much time at all for sitting down and writing about stuff.
Now that I'm almost finished with my trials and my internet is working at a bearable speed it is time for me to continue the 30 Day Blog Challenge like none of this interruption even occurred xD