Life is littered with forks in the road. Just like in the movie Sliding Doors where we see two different paths that the life of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character could take depending on whether or not she gets on a tube train.
Over the past few days I’ve felt like there’s another me, living his best life in a dimension where Covid-19 never happened. This past weekend The Robin Hood International Improv Festival was supposed to be happening in Nottingham. As Co-Artistic Director, I had dreamed about this four day fest of improvised indulgence, had watched submission videos, worked with a talented team and had booked flights for international performers. I was looking forward to nerding out about my favourite art form with wonderful people from all around the world.
Instead of a festival, I was alone in my apartment for a three day holiday weekend. I’m grateful for the couple of phone calls I had, of course, but instead of being a social animal, I was a solitary one. And I did not like it one bit. How we manage the today we have been given can be pretty difficult at the moment. That parallel world of festivals, birthdays, weddings and holidays exists in our calendars as a reminder of our Sliding Doors parallel world.
It’s not the only fork in the road, of course. Life is a series of potential paths and we don’t get to pick many of them ourselves. In a different world I’d have taken up improv earlier and be sitting at home making money off that Netflix special that I’d obviously have made by now if I’d only started earlier. Right? Right?? It’s pretty easy to get delusional when you start thinking about what could have been. However, with a bit of thought, it’s pretty easy to find those forks in the road that led to something better happening, so that’s what I’m trying to do. After all, in a parallel world, I never went to my first improv class at all. I arrived at the venue and thought “oh God, what is this place” and nearly left.
In another parallel world I’m not called Lloydie. The name caught on when I was in Bristol in the late 90s. I was working for a radio station and a friend had just started to call me Lloydie. It hadn’t really caught on. Not with anyone. No one else was saying it. However one day I interviewed Aqua, the band famous for the hit “Barbie Girl” and they offered to re-record the bit where the male singer says “Come on Barbie, let’s go party” for me. The name James only has one syllable so I suggested they went with “Come on Lloydie let’s go party” and so they did. In that very moment, a sliding door opened and a life where I am known as Lloydie began. It may seem a very small change but having a more memorable name has, without doubt, led me to more opportunities. So for that, I’m very grateful and hopeful that I’ll be on the right side of the sliding door again before too long.
Oh, and a fun fact? If you watch the film Sliding Doors you will hear a song it in called “Turn Back Time”. The people who wrote and performed that song? Aqua.
