Armitage, sorcerer?
Richard Armitage, rehearsing The Crucible at the Old Vic Theater, summer 2014. Source: Old Vic on FB
***
I’ve wished for a long time that I understood how you do this to me and not only to me.
Did you sign your name in the Devil’s book? Does your familiar come to me at night? Is it a snake?
How do you enchant me, possess me?
Even if this is a production I will never see, that’s part of your enchantment, that you make me imagine in advance the things that could be. I know the storm will break before it starts because I see the prelude of thunder in your eyes.
This quality of your face makes it seem you should always have acted something — a quiet that paves over emotions even as the emotions are plain to read. Your face is a monolith except for your eyes, which are outraged. Everything is blank except for the look of misery that projects itself from your smile lines.
The stillness that masks seething emotion, the almost-about-to-move that’s constantly, effortlessly or defiantly restrained. The way you hold your head, in the posture of a dancer about to take an offended bow, but then you go somewhere I would never have imagined.
The way it seems you are always about to breathe, or about to breathe out — the freeze frame quality of your acting. As you move, I see (click) anger (click) rage (click) frustration (click) conflictedness (click) restraint (click) resignation (click) love. Your emotions have moved along the axis of a universe and yet your features hardly move, maximally over the blinks of an eye.
Do you live your emotions like that, discreet, brief sensations that flash across your features and are gone? Is that what enchants me, that I see something that I reach my hand toward — even as it is always already gone?
Your extravagant reserve surrounds you like a cloak — the way that you withdraw, the way that you are absent in the second before your emotion becomes explosively, viscerally present — draws me toward you like a magnet. You pull back and draw me forward, and when I am trapped then you strike.
You conjure through your withdrawal, your enchantment paralyzes me to the eyelids. You invoke this thing — with me — that draws me to you ineluctably, if I turn away — I always turn back to look at you just that one more time.
Your gift, it feels to me like a charm we swear together, that puts us in a world alone in which we touch and do not touch and even as I stretch my fingers out, you are gone.
Perfect.
How do you always articulate for me what I see and feel but cannot even know how to express to myself?
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Heather said this on June 17, 2014 at 5:42 am |
A beautiful piece. If only I could express myself so well. I have a feeling this production will soar to the heights.
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Wendy Butler said this on June 17, 2014 at 6:30 am |
I spent 90 min wavering yesterday, if I couldn’t manage to go anyway …
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:44 pm |
I’m always really delighted when something I write resonates with others. Thanks!
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:44 pm |
Beautiful!
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Gratiana Lovelace said this on June 17, 2014 at 6:34 am |
perfect!
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aly said this on June 17, 2014 at 7:40 am |
Beautiful!
C’est juste parfait (si la perfection existait ^^) Cela lui va à merveille et ton texte me plaît énormément. Touchant et expressif.
Qui sait? Cet homme a peut-être un pouvoir enchanteur….Je préfère me dire que je ne le verrais jamais de près pour constater que c’est faux.
Bravo en tout cas. Je ne dirais jamais assez combien j’apprécie ce genre de textes ( que je ne sais pas écrire du tout en anglais….).
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LadyButterfly said this on June 17, 2014 at 8:07 am |
well — you know the best sorcerers are the ones who can hide it at will. But I know that feeling, wondering if seeing him in real life would break the spell.
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:45 pm |
Doubt it! 🙂
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SH said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:48 pm |
As the others have said – beautifully written and expressing our feelings in a way most of us can’t… I wish we could both be in the audience but as a friend said on twitter. If Richard was performing that play in the U.S. we wouldn’t be able to fly over either…
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suse3 said this on June 17, 2014 at 8:07 am |
yeah. Someone will always not be there. That’s just the way it is — we have to rely on our friends who are there to tell us about it.
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:46 pm |
But you are a “word-sorcerer” too! I’m really bewitched by your words (and the T-Shirt of course wimmer) . Would love to read it in german, for the final 5% pleasure 🙂
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cRAmerry said this on June 17, 2014 at 8:24 am |
Ich bin auf Deutsch keine Stilheldin, ich kämpfe zu sehr mit dem Satzbau. Hier, das letzte Mal, daß ich auf Deutsch gebloggt habe: https://meandrichard.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/ot-lieber-volker/
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:49 pm |
I know it is rhetorical, and I feel the same. But then I berate myself and tell myself to stop asking for the why 😀
Beautifully put, Serv, “Your extravagant reserve surrounds you like a cloak”, I loved this.
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guylty said this on June 17, 2014 at 8:51 am |
Welcome to the Quartalswahnsinn debilgrins
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cRAmerry said this on June 17, 2014 at 8:55 am |
Yeah. The quarterly craze is getting more frequent by the day…
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guylty said this on June 17, 2014 at 8:56 am |
Zum Glück beginnt am 1.7. ein neues Quartal. Da können wir dann nahtlos in den Sommer reinschmachten 😀
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cRAmerry said this on June 17, 2014 at 9:00 am |
yeah, I think it’s definitely escalating in frequency.
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:55 pm |
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings, so beautifully expressed.
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Kathy Jones said this on June 17, 2014 at 9:00 am |
How do you do it?? how do you write what we are all thinking but have no way of expressing it like you do! I would just write Hubba Hubba! xxx
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Rosiepig said this on June 17, 2014 at 10:17 am |
that is totally legitimate!
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:56 pm |
I don’t know how you do it, but you express EXACTLY how I feel, and I mean exactly. Thank you ❤
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MoonRAker said this on June 17, 2014 at 10:24 am |
What a beautiful piece. You express so perfectly what I feel and would say if only I had the words . Thank you, Servetus.
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ladyalienor said this on June 17, 2014 at 12:36 pm |
My feelings for this man is so real and goes so deep that your words “your enchantment paralyzes me to the eyelids” runs a chill down my spine. You expressed the emotions of my inner turmoil. Feelings that seem to have no end, feelings I can’t stop and don’t want to stop.
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PLFall said this on June 17, 2014 at 1:00 pm |
Wow,this is so beautifully written! I wish that I could express myself like you do..I’m sure a lot of people feel the same as you do, I know I do😀.. I too feel this play will catapult him to greater heights.. 😀😀
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Maria said this on June 17, 2014 at 1:33 pm |
i am praying every day for that. Signs point to yes.
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:56 pm |
You are a lyric poet, as well as a scholar….. beautiful description of his unique “superpower” – “The freeze frame quality of your acting…. Your emotions have moved along the axis of a universe and yet your features hardly move….the way that you are absent in the second before your emotion becomes explosively, viscerally present ” Perfect. Clearly painstaking in his preparation, undoubtedly deliberate in his execution, yet (seemingly) unconscious of full effect. (How CAN that be?)
Thank you, Servetus.
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SH said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:38 pm |
“Lyric” as simple adjective, not generic description… I know you didn’t rhyme 🙂 Guess I was overcome with the emotion!
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SH said this on June 17, 2014 at 5:23 pm |
Yes indeed, he is a sorcerer. And so are you, a sorceress in your choice of words, yet so soothing….
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linda60 said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:44 pm |
What Linda60 said .
This was beautiful,Servetus 🙂
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Joanna said this on June 17, 2014 at 11:30 pm |
Thanks for all the sweet comments!
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 3:57 pm |
Sorry Serv, aber das ist DIE Untertreibung des Jahrhunderts! Scheiss auf die Grammatik: der Stil flasht genauso, wie ich es aus deinen englischen Texte nicht immer verstehe, aber intensivst spüre. So isses nunmal. Ein sehr bewegender Text! Danke für den Link.
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cRAmerry said this on June 17, 2014 at 4:18 pm |
das ist nett, danke.
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Servetus said this on June 17, 2014 at 5:03 pm |
I know why l LIKE Richard Armitage, but I don’t know why I LOVE Richard Armitage. Reading your words in this post may have brought me to understand my own under-currents a little better. Thank you.
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miapatagonia said this on June 17, 2014 at 8:15 pm |
your words send goosebumps down my spine .I am so Armitaged ! This man inspires so much .I hope he knows how much he is loved and how inspirational he is to his fans , army , followers .
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jane said this on June 17, 2014 at 10:12 pm |
yeah, the pictures do not lose their potency even after 24 hours …
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Servetus said this on June 18, 2014 at 12:09 am |
Just re read the crucible and kept thinking what a perfect role for him. The man in search for redemption.
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@Rob said this on June 18, 2014 at 4:14 am |
Thanks for writing the way you do.
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katie70 said this on June 18, 2014 at 5:09 am |
This essay is exquisite. Wow.
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armitagebesotted said this on June 21, 2014 at 6:38 am |
Thank you all.
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Servetus said this on June 22, 2014 at 9:29 pm |
[…] like a charging missile — till I saw these pictures. It’s not just your face although there’s so much to be said about that, sorcerer. But that extra little bit of slippage of feeling that comes through the gesture that’s just […]
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Theatrical Armitage | Me + Richard Armitage said this on July 2, 2014 at 10:08 am |
[…] Sorcerer, indeed. […]
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The Bubble Rule bursts (sort of): August 26th, part 2 | Me + Richard Armitage said this on September 5, 2014 at 11:16 pm |
[…] Sorcerer, indeed. […]
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Richard Armitage as god, or rather, tulpa | Me + Richard Armitage said this on May 20, 2015 at 4:50 am |
wow, that’s a beautiful piece of writing. I can never articulate myself very well verbally-i’m a physical person and i’m utterly in awe of this x
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Rachel said this on August 10, 2018 at 10:16 pm |
Thanks. Wow — four summers ago. It seems a bit florid now, but I was trying to express how much he seems to be a man / artist of contradictions and how that draws me in.
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Servetus said this on August 13, 2018 at 2:29 am |