Equus and The Sparrow Factory

I dont know how I got to browsing for Equus but I've been absorbed for hours. I seem to recall seeing the film (probably on BBC2 in those days) as a kid and being rather bored and unimpressed by it, maybe because it involved adults shouting at each other and I got enough of that at home.. but now I daresay I could see the film and really get it. I think I'd rather read the play though, because what comes direct from the author is perhaps more authentic and has the lifeblood coursing through the story without it ending in the grandiose musculature of fleshing out that the theatre or cinema forms for our weak 2oth/21st century imagination.
What I think would stand out for me is the idea that you have to be normal and passionless in society, and that people who would deem to be caring and looking after you would remove the love of your life. I cant myself figure out what is normal and what people want from me.
Funny how people say "everybody is different" and then go on to impose what is important to them as vital for other people. Take eating breakfast for example. How is it that it is supposed to be good for ones metabolism, when one person can skip breakfasts and lose weight and the other person, with an identical lifestyle in terms of exercise and age, has to eat first thing?
The other interesting thing is, visually, the props of the stage sets for this play. I wonder if the set designers and costume designers of the recent stage adaptation of the Lion King looked at the way horses were portrayed in productions of Equus. The heads and the stilts look the same!







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I have been working very closely with sparrows. Not literally, but I watch them a lot. They are always in the garden and their presence amuses and comforts me. Their antics probably are purposeful in terms of survival: mating, eating, fighting, that sort of thing; but to me they look like they are playing, that their flitting from tree to tree and diving off fences and rooftiles is just for the fun of it. Then I hear them like giggling imps, looking down at us. I wonder if fun is just as important to survival as those other behavours I have listed. We could learn a lot from our little Passer Domesticus.