[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvAwoUvXNzU[/youtube]
Jun 292013
Jun 282013
…the U.S. is experiencing a dangerous moment in which political and financial forces are pushing people to think of themselves as abnormal, and “the counterbalancing forces pushing normal don’t remotely counterbalance and aren’t nearly forceful enough.” In other words, there are many people who profit from the idea that a staggering proportion of Americans are mentally ill, and these groups are powerful, well organized, and politically effective.
via America’s Epidemic of Psychiatric Over-Diagnosis – The Daily Beast.
Jun 272013
A couple of weeks ago on the Omens blog, I published a link to a piece on the NSA Internet surveillance revelations and Foucault’s prescient warnings about the Panopticon (a theoretical prison designed by Jeremy Bentham). That generated considerable comment, especially on Facebook. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce readers to the larger philosophy of Michel Foucault, who wrote especially about madness, punishment and sex, his interest focused on power relations. Herewith two fascinating introductory lectures from Rick Roderick (a Duke University professor, now, alas, deceased) and the other by Michael Roth who is now the president of Wesleyan University.
dg
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHkZvRQIQ5s[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP79SfCfRzo[/youtube]
Jun 262013
Neither do we think what we really think, he might have added.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U88jj6PSD7w[/youtube]
Jun 252013
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oxaSJJzJFI[/youtube]
And the original.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0Dm-OaTNk[/youtube]
Jun 252013
A bit of logrolling, I think. Not so much here we don’t know but packaged to inspire cocktail chitchat of a depressing sort. We’re all going to the dogs (an unthought turn of phrase that gives dogs a bad name). Run for the exits. Well, no, don’t run: saunter. Have a little style, for goodness sake. Watch out for drones.
Much has been written about the effects of globalisation during the past generation. Much less has been said about the change in social norms that accompanied it. American elites took the vast transformation of the economy as a signal to rewrite the rules that used to govern their behaviour: a senator only resorting to the filibuster on rare occasions; a CEO limiting his salary to only 40 times what his average employees made instead of 800 times; a giant corporation paying its share of taxes instead of inventing creative ways to pay next to zero. There will always be isolated lawbreakers in high places; what destroys morale below is the systematic corner-cutting, the rule-bending, the self-dealing.
Earlier this year, Al Gore made $100m (£64m) in a single month by selling Current TV to al-Jazeera for $70m and cashing in his shares of Apple stock for $30m. Never mind that al-Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, whose oil exports and views of women and minorities make a mockery of the ideas that Gore propounds in a book or film every other year. Never mind that his Apple stock came with his position on the company’s board, a gift to a former presidential contender. Gore used to be a patrician politician whose career seemed inspired by the ideal of public service. Today – not unlike Tony Blair – he has traded on a life in politics to join the rarefied class of the global super-rich.
via Decline and fall: how American society unravelled | World news | The Guardian.
Jun 252013
The Writers’ Trust of Canada recently asked me (along with several other estimable authors) to send a list of what I hoped to read this summer and what I think other people might be interested in reading. The result was just published online. Here is my bit. Now you’re set for beach reading.
dg
I am going to shortly read George Fetherling’s The Writing Life, Journals, 1975-2005. Also re-reading Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, André Breton’s novel Nadja. New books: Ror Wolf’s Two or Three Years Later: Forty Nine Digressions, also Tranquility by Attila Bartis.
A work I just read that I recommend highly is Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter, a short novel, fascinating for its construction (multiple orphans and adoptions) and its ironic and elegant use of genre (the family memoir). There’s a wonderful essay you can read along with it “Pushkin’s Novel The Captain’s Daughter as Fictional Family Memoir” by Leslie O’Bell published online by the North American Pushkin Society.
Douglas Glover’s latest collection of stories Savage Love will be published in September 2013.
via The Writers’ Trust of Canada – Recommended Reading.
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Jun 222013
Here’s the opening to my new back page piece at Global Brief. For the whole series, look here.
dg
There are individuals and there are the anonymous. Most of us are individuals to ourselves, family and friends, but anonymous to the rest of the human race. We are anonymous in crowded cities, in the vast bureaucracies of government and multinational corporations. We are anonymous in statistics, and when we are dead. We are anonymous except in the hearts of loved ones. But that memory eventually burns out as well. Before history, we are all anonymous – a tide of humanity swept up in events, lucky to die in a bed of our own with loved ones around (feeling like an individual).
The idea of an individual is paradoxical, like Wittgenstein’s famous duck-rabbit parable: look at a diagram one way and it’s a duck, tilt the paper and it’s a rabbit. Or it trembles, to use Jacques Derrida’s felicitous verb. Individual/anonymous. We strut our individuality, but we are haunted by images of the beehive and the anthill, where the individual is subsumed under the sign of the collective. Are we simply carriers of genes – worker bees in a hive? Is civilization merely an accumulation of minute anonymous gestures by replaceable minions? Or are we individuals with a particular claim on the infinite – infinitely precious (to a superior being, perhaps), with a will and the power to create and alter forever the course of history?
Jun 212013
Um, at least they’re not killing anybody, right?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ0ue-XGl9c[/youtube]
Jun 212013
I think I have mentioned his before: I’m buying a beach house on Baffin Island. Greenland is looking good, too (once they get all the ice cleared off).
If we go on like this, we will certainly produce a “4 degrees C. world” — a worst case scenario, in which our climate becomes unstable and there are floods, droughts and heat waves on a scale that make a typical Hollywood summer disaster movie look like a Smurf cartoon.
The report says that the warming will produce massive flooding in parts of Asia, a 50% reduction in the fish catch in southeast Asia, and severe and prolonged drought in Africa.
via Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion.
Jun 172013
Watching movies is a sentimental education. They work through images and change the way we feel, especially if they come at an impressionable moment. Strange how, for reasons of history and empire, a boy in southwestern Ontario grew up humming an Australian bush song and learned his politics watching the Australian actor Chips Rafferty in Eureka Stockade (1949), fighting for justice in the Ballarat Goldfields on the family’s first black and white TV in the late 1950s. I don’t suppose anyone else remembers Chips Rafferty, and looking at him now he is hardly leading man material. But there you are. Much later the great Australian films Gallipoli and Breaker Morant served to upend my view of self and history, my historical self, with their mutinous revision of Australia’s glorious Imperial past (which, it seemed, applied equally to Canada’s Imperial past). I give you here first Eureka Stockade, the entire movie [actually, the entire movie has disappeared from Youtube; I can only give you a clip for now, and not the final battle scene at that], made at the famous Ealing Studios in England. I was a boy when I saw this, as I say, completely enthralled with Chips Rafferty, my hero-idol for years (though I only saw the movie once). Then the famous Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle performing his song “The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda” which turns the famous bush ballad upside down, into a lament for the gallant spirit of a country that bought the British imperial blarney about loyalty to the Mother country and saw its boys wasted in an unforgivable debacle. Then I give you the last scene from Gallipoli where the Australians have been ordered to attack across open ground against Turkish machine guns (this is at Suvla Bay, the operational area referred to in Eric Bogle’s song). It’s a gorgeous sequence. Mel Gibson is racing with a message to call off the attack; his race against Death mirrors the boyhood race at the beginning of the movie — he loses both races. (Watches and time-keeping imagery throughout as well.) Then I give you last scene of Breaker Morant, the two Australians being executed as an example during the Boer War to save Imperial face after a so-called atrocity. Beautiful irony in the dialogue about “pagan.” The pagan trooper cites the precise Bible verse to cover his case; the chaplain has to look it up. As I say, these films educated me, not intellectually at first so much as sentimentally, changed the templates, transformed my view of Canadian history, the official version never to be trusted again, authority(ies) never to be trusted again. Just as I am sure these imaginary geographies will always be more real to me than the ones you find on maps (which are truly Imaginary). For Canadians, I suggest getting a copy of Tony Wilden’s The Imaginary Canadian, a Lacanian analysis of Canadian history now out of print.
dg
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Q3l5SZvbA[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG48Ftsr3OI[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Ankn-AzC4[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI7KJnRlsS4[/youtube]
Jun 162013
I can’t understand why everyone isn’t attracted to modernism. How can we disagree with the idea that there is subjective as well as chronological time? One of the things that really fascinates me about the novels of Anita Brookner is that I regard her male and female characters as 18th century characters living in the 20th century. This is not a dig at a skilled writer — it genuinely interests me. How can anyone who is engaged with literature be arrogant and dumb enough to dismiss the writing of (in no particular order) Whitman, Baudelaire, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Pound, Stein, Eliot, Genet, Beckett, Woolf, and Mansfield as an irrelevant experiment? I was born into a world that was utterly changed by modernism. Modernism is the soft typewriter of the womb that made me. How can point of view not be multi-angled? Don’t they have to blinker horses with a leather blind to stop them from having a multi-angled point of view?
Read the rest at In the Soft Typewriter of the Womb » 3:AM Magazine.
Jun 162013
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/15326552[/vimeo]
Jun 152013
Iris and Lydia are watching a divinely tasteless tourist wedding on a beach in Mexic0, the ceremony punctuated by the recorded voice of the groom singing “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Ominously, the word “narcotraficantes” floats into the conversation, not given another thought, except that the reader knows, the READER KNOWS! Something will come of this. Iris is 78 and charges through life with a certain comic grandeur, tossing off Spanish phrases. Lydia, her daughter, is cautious, middleclass — her husband has “escaped” her. The air is one of golden sand and indolence. Attentive, amenable Mexican waiters humor the gringos with money; the wedding counterpoints Lydia’s anxious memories of a lost husband; a delightful irony suffuses the entire scene, coupled with threat. And, yes, we’ve only just begun.
This a section plucked from the opening of Contributing Editor Ann Ireland‘s novel-in-progress Where’s Bob. Her fourth novel The Blue Guitar was just published this spring.
dg
—-
‘That’s for us,’ Iris said, pointing to the final item on the activity menu. ‘Archery is excellent for balance and concentration. I always thought I might be good at it. But you must join me, in case I start to tip over.’
Squeals of laughter rose from the swimming pool where a member of the Star Team was conducting an aerobics class, though not very vigorously, judging by the unmanaged hopping up and down as salsa music blared from the speaker.
Lydia, Iris’s middle aged daughter, frowned, and not at the noise. ‘Not such a good idea, Mama, considering your fragile bits.’
‘I have no fragile bits,’ Iris insisted and gave her thigh a hearty slap. ‘You might say that I’m better than ever.’ The left hip had been replaced two years ago, an arduous couple of months, but well worth it. ‘I am perfectly intact in limb and joint, probably tougher than you, given the fact that there’s titanium in there.’ She paused and added in a softer tone: ‘We may as well have it out now on day one of our vacation: You are not to fuss about me.’
‘I don’t fuss,’ Lydia objected. But she sounded cross.
‘Tipping over refers to a slight tendency to vertigo. As your father might have said – ‘Expect the unexpected’ – and should a rescue be required, I’ll let you know, loud and clear.’ Iris smiled at the anticipated drama of such a moment, where her daughter, no spring chicken herself, might race across the beach to catch her teetering mother.
‘Got that?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ Lydia said.
‘You do not.’
The two women, one tall and majestic (Iris), the other shorter and thin with sparse hair (Lydia) sloughed past the beach volleyball court where girls in bikinis lunged for the ball aided by bare-chested men, not all them young. Long-limbed, the girls neighed like thoroughbreds, tossing blonde hair over shoulders. Iris and Lydia treaded in their sandaled feet through the fine-grained sand of the Yucatan coast. To one side, the shore sloped to the turquoise sea which was scattered with bathers, who, for the most part, stood in place and let gentle surf wash over them. To the other side was La Piramide, a five star sprawling resort whose main building was shaped in the form of a Mayan pyramid. Their room was in the Toucan wing where public areas were painted cheerful tropical colors, as opposed to the Colonial wing with its tasteful dark wood and murals of the conquistadores. Everyone wore plastic wristbands indicating where they could dine and drink without having to worry about carrying money – Iris’s idea of heaven. Money, anywhere, in any manifestation, was a pain in the neck.
She stopped beside the end of the meandering swimming pool with its tiered series of waterfalls.
‘Have you ever imagined such a place?’ Iris said, taking in a long breath of sea air, tinged with coconut oil.
‘Not in my wildest dreams,’ Lydia said.
In her tone Iris detected a certain contempt, an easy disregard for the sort of people who demanded artificial waterfalls and non-stop entertainment when they left home, not to mention five restaurants, six bars, two buffets and a snack bar that was open 24/7. The sort of places Lydia and Charlie took the kids, when Lydia and Charlie were still a team, were proudly shabby, tiles missing in the bathroom, a toilet that didn’t quite flush, iffy water flow and air conditioning, a simple hostel in some off the beaten path, perhaps in Cuba. They would bring toothpaste and underwear to the chambermaids, if there were chambermaids, and a parcel of magic markers and exercise books for local school children.
The two women threaded between loungers laden with oiled-up vacationers, their eyes now fixed on the rustic hut where a trio of blenders scoured fruit into luridly colored cocktails.
Discreetly, Lydia tucked an arm under her mother’s elbow as the sand shifted and Iris had begun to sway. She was 78 and had suffered her share of surgeries in recent years.
‘Shoot me if I get like that,’ she spoke into in her daughter’s ear.
She indicated with a nod a hefty woman of advanced years (though not as advanced as Iris) lying on a cot – a woman who had peeled down the top of her bathing suit to reveal the upper portion of two massive freckled breasts. A fanned out copy of a Harry Potter novel rose and fell on her impressive belly.
‘No one has the right to let herself go to that degree,’ Iris continued, sotto voce. ‘It’s a disgrace.’
‘To womankind?’ Lydia supplied.
‘Exactly!’ Iris nodded, pleased that they were in agreement.
Iris held herself well and had retained a defined waistline that she was proud of; her silver bathing suit featured a braided belt around the midriff and her feet were encased by strappy sandals– a pointed contrast to her daughter’s sensible espadrilles.
‘Ah, there’s my lad,’ Iris declared, arriving at the palapa, slightly breathless from the effort of crossing the beach. ‘Miguel!’ she hailed the young man in a crisp checked shirt who was operating a blender with one hand and pouring beer with the other. She fully expected him to remember her from last night when she and Lydia had arrived, hot, dirty, and fed up from the airline journey and the hour-long bus ride to the resort. Miguel had fortified them with jolts of tequila.
Today he greeted her with a wide smile, for of course he remembered the gringa who spoke Spanish.
‘Por favor, toss us a couple of margaritas, con limon fresco,’ Iris said.
The small crowd around the bar parted to make way for Iris, who didn’t seem to notice that she’d slipped to the head of the line: a prerogative of age. Iris looked so delighted that no one wanted to spoil her moment.
Her daughter offered an apologetic smile while Miguel set two foaming margaritas in plastic glasses on the sticky counter.
‘You got pesos for a tip?’ Iris whispered back to her daughter. Like the queen, she rarely carried money.
Lydia dug a coin from her beach bag and flipped it into the jar.
‘Now where shall we position ourselves?’ Iris said, spinning around, holding both drinks.
Lydia pointed to a shady area near the infinity pool. ‘I’ll take the booze over then come back for you.’
Iris frowned, as if she hadn’t heard. Soon she was beetling across the hot sand, making her way to a pair of loungers at the end of a row on the beach.
‘Mum!’ Lydia called sharply. ‘There are towels on them. They are occupied.’
Her mother called over her shoulder. ‘I see no occupants.’
As Iris pressed forward she thought it would have been wise to give the drinks to Lydia. But now she was stuck with them and crossing ridged sand that had been meticulously raked by staff in the morning, cigarette butts and other detritus collected into bags, not to mention the horse manure that cascaded from the rear ends of the sorry beasts that paraded up and down the beach at dusk. Iris set a grin firmly in place: this would not be the time to pitch forward and bust a limb, sticking Lydia with the task of carting her off to some dubious hospital. She tossed back her blonde-and silver tinted hair, noting that people were watching her progress. Well hell’s bells, she was used to a certain amount of attention, and not just from geezers. She did not cater to the commonly held belief that women of a certain age couldn’t hope to attract notice. A person creates her own visibility, insists on it.
She stood alone, wavering, barely keeping the margaritas upside. The sun was fierce. She felt her lips under crimson lipstick pucker in the salty air and she squinted, light bouncing off the water.
Lydia scampered to her side, grabbed the drinks, and said in an exasperated tone: ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘You are dear, I can see that.’
‘Just don’t go running off like that.’
Iris took advantage of the moment to gather her equilibrium. Time to slather on lotion, throw back a drink and get on with the business of relaxation. You could tell where one one hotel property stopped and the next began by the color of the pillows on the loungers. Blue striped (theirs) became salmon pink at Mission de La Rosa.
‘I’m sorry, dear. Hard for me to slow down,’ Iris said, conciliatory. She’d raised such an earnest, well meaning sort of girl.
Lydia lifted her arm like a wing so that her mother could cling to it, and she wasn’t too proud to do so. Glancing down, Iris noted that Lydia had neglected to shave her legs; it was some sort of feminist thing, and Iris almost remarked on it – then decided not to. It was sometimes wise to keep one’s counsel. Lydia had been a sparky child, prone to singing and dancing about the house and inventing imaginary friends; in other words, promising. I want an interesting child, not an obedient one, Iris used to say while other mothers cast disapproving glances. Perhaps most mothers felt this about their grown up children, a sad realization that they had become ordinary. Iris herself had never felt ordinary and no one had ever mistaken her as such.
They reached the cots, webbed plastic with gaily striped vinyl cushions, and a pair of damp towels – so Lydia was right about that: clear evidence of being claimed. Could be that young couple bobbing in the water close to shore.
‘Need help?’ Lydia said. She’d noted her mother staring, like an engineer, at the low slung pieces of furniture.
Whoever designed these loungers didn’t take into account that a segment of the population needed something to grab onto while dropping themselves to shin level.
Lydia wedged the drinks in the sand, giving each a half-turn so it screwed in, then offered her hand for Iris to clasp.
After a few scary seconds of hovering in no man’s land, followed by an alarming thud and a wheeze of vinyl –Iris was settled. In every way except flexibility the new hip was grand. Beside her, Lydia glided effortlessly onto the other lounger, draping the wet towel over its end. People must not claim turf that they didn’t need; if the world paid attention to this basic principle they’d all be in less trouble. Iris shut her eyes against the sun. She could hear the rustling of her daughter as she fetched a crossword puzzle book from her beach bag and set to work. Behind them a Mexican family, mother and father and two small children, chattered in Spanish, something about their aunt who would, or would not, be joining them this weekend. A slap of a card game to one side. A thrilled shriek as an unexpectedly big wave rolled in.
‘Mum? Your drink. I’ll set it on the table next to you.’
Noises retreated; the body stretched into languor, muscles cramped from air travel released and it was like drowning in new air, giving up, limb by limb. Iris fell asleep for perhaps twenty minutes. When her eyes fluttered open, the Mexican family had disappeared, leaving cameras, books, towels and beach toys behind. Her drink, what was left of it, was baking in the sun, ice cubes long since dissolved. Lydia was sitting cross-legged on her cot, reading intently with a pen in hand, ready to underline pertinent passages.
Iris said in a lazy tone: ‘Are we allowed to mention Charlie?’
‘Of course,’ her daughter replied.
‘Because, no matter how this unfolds, he remains the father of your children.’
Lydia cast those huge brown eyes towards the glistening sea, as if the obvious had been spoken, as indeed it had. Cliches popped out of Iris’s mouth around Lydia. It was because she was trying to act ‘motherly’, a role she’d never taken to in a natural way. It was Lydia’s father, Richard, Iris’s first husband, who used to point this out, saying – ‘Not everyone is cut out to be Old Mother Hubbard.’
‘When you share kids, you share for good,’ Iris added.
This unoriginal comment warranted no reply.
Lydia continued to stare out to sea, a widow searching the horizon for her husband’s vessel. Charlie did disappear on water, though hardly in a whaling boat; he heaved off from the dock in his carefully restored Chestnut canoe, storm clouds bundling overhead, while Lydia stood barefoot on shore in her hippie dress, fretting about lifejackets and lightening strikes, worry escalating into pleas, then anger. Iris could imagine this scene all too easily.
Charlie was escaping.
That’s how Iris saw it, because she was a champion escaper herself – and who could blame the poor man? Lydia made it out to be a spontaneous gesture, but Charles Kingsley had never been a man to act recklessly: his disappearance was most certainly plotted. By profession, he was vice principal at Danforth Technical and Vocational Collegiate in east end Toronto – hardly a pirate. He’d sent his mother in law a crisp email after the fact, a cryptic message that Iris had never shared with her daughter. It read simply: ‘Sorry.’
‘Have you heard from him lately?’ Iris asked.
‘We’re on speaking terms. Things to do with the kids.’
Well, that was something.
Iris would tread carefully. ‘How are Doug and Annie doing?’
‘Very well, thank you.’
‘I suppose they are angry.’
‘Of course they’re angry, Mum. A parent disappears one summer afternoon; it’s pretty traumatic.’
The arrow hit its mark, for Iris had done a similar bunk when her children were young, though you could hardly compare the two episodes: she had never claimed to be stable. She was as restless as a cat and it taught Lydia and her brother to expect the unexpected.
This sky was intensely blue, a color reflected in the sea, and these poor winter eyes creased into slits, to accommodate. Iris had left behind the enveloping fog of the Bay area, Lydia, her modest house in east end Toronto in the depths of winter, Doug not much use in the snow shoveling department or other manly tasks. According to his mother, he spent hours in his room with the door closed, eyes glued to the monitor of his computer. One could venture a guess as to what he was up to. She wondered if Lydia had a clue.
Lydia sipped blithely at her margarita. This was her first; Iris reached for her second: Gracias Miguel. Or was it Pedro?
‘Another couple of suckers enter marital hellfire,’ Lydia said, tucking her feet under her, letting the book slide off her lap. The crossword puzzle magazine had fallen to the sand.
A pair of young men in sharply pressed safari suits were hauling two Roman columns, each easily eight feet tall, off a dolly. With odd ease, for these props were made of styrofoam, they planted the columns upright in the sand. When this task was done, they unrolled a strip of red carpet leading up to a dais then set up rows of folding chairs, clicking them open with one foot. Destination weddings were all the rage.
‘Shall I warn the happy couple what they’re getting into?’ Lydia said.
The caustic tone didn’t suit her.
The sun was beginning to swell directly overhead, casting a shadowless heat over the proceedings. Then the wedding party began to arrive, women in breezy cocktail dresses and high heels picked their way over the stone walkway and onto the carpet, laughing and clinging to the elbows of male escorts who wore neat shorts and tropical shirts. Some of these shirts were monogramed with the name of the resort and sported a graphic of a pyramid.
Iris propped herself up up to see better. Lydia, despite her sneering, couldn’t keep her eyes off the ceremony and she shifted her lounger so that she had an unobstructed view. She wasn’t the only one to do this. All around them, scores of sunbathers tilted their visors for an unfettered gaze.
‘Senora, you are finished?’ The young waiter hovered, one hand ready to grab the empty plastic cups.
Yes, estoy terminada. Iris used the opportunity to practice her Spanish: What is your name?
Patricio.
And where is your hometown?
‘Patzucaro, Michoacan.’
Unlike waiters at home in the United States, he didn’t feel the need to speed off to the next task.
‘Patzcuaro!’ She’d spent time there, many years ago– ‘hace mucho anos’, had rented a house with – her memory failed her for a moment – with Jake the sculptor. It had been her second extended trip to this country. Such a beautiful mountain town with views over a reedy lake, though there had been word in recent years of goings-on due to the drug trade.
‘Muy bonito!’ she declared and she and Patricio exchanged nods of agreement. Back home in Berkeley, she always spoke to her Salvadorian cleaning lady in her native tongue.
Patricio’s smooth brow suddenly furrowed and he rattled off a sentence just as the wedding party began to blast that ballad from Titanic.
Iris cupped one hand by her ear, the universal symbol.
There were ‘problemitas’ in Michoacan, Patricio confided as he dropped the empty cups into his trash bag. Bad people. ‘Narcotraficantes.’
Mexico was plagued with violence from the drug cartels; she didn’t live in a cave. She’d read about the beheadings, assassinations, and dismembered bodies dropped into pails of acid. These ghastly events were mostly clotted along the border – but wasn’t the state of Michoacan noted for growing marijuana in the hills? Now there were meth labs. Tourists flocked to this beach in the Yucatan, under the illusion that resorts were immune from trouble – Iris knew better. The country had always been lawless. She and Jake were drinking mezcal in a cantina in Chiapas one evening when a borracho barreled through the louvered doors and pulled out an antique gun and started firing at the bartender – everyone hit the floor, the terrified gringos included. No one was hurt, and the police eventually came along, piled in the back of a pick up truck, holding rifles and looking excited. The drunk had long since vanished.
Many gringos would have high-tailed back to the States at that point, but Iris’s opinion was –why travel if you want things to be the same as back home?
She fixed her gaze on Patricio, shielding her eyes with one hand. ‘What a difficult time for your country,’ she said.
The lad revived his tourist-friendly smile, even while nodding ‘yes’. Behind that smile, Iris decided, lurked a possible family catastrophe, perhaps a murder or kidnapping, or an uncle lost to meta-amphetamines. One did not know what hid behind the happy expressions that staff were obliged to wear, along with their crisply laundered uniforms. She glanced around at the other tourists – they didn’t have a clue. The knowledge swelled inside her: she had a bond with this country. She’d knocked around its mountains and deserts and beaches for many months, so long ago. She was about to say this to the young waiter, but he was suddenly gone and the little table was bare.
As Celine Dion’s voice crested towards the chorus, the wedding party continued to assemble, observed by the audience of oil-slicked, leathery tourists humped on loungers, dazed by sun and too many pina coladas. The bride and groom hadn’t anticipated onlookers when they’d pored over the brochures back home, photographs showing Romanesque columns and acres of empty sand and the glistening Caribbean sea. Brochures wouldn’t show that fat man with hairy shoulders emerging from the water, snorkel mask in hand, shorts dragging off his rear end, nor would they illustrate the squalling children tossing sand at each other at water’s edge. A member of staff carrying a clipboard positioned herself to the side of the proceedings and politely fended off the curious in their drooping bathing suits, asking them to please not interfere with the photographers’ sight lines. These tourists in flip flops seemed to want to stride into the middle of the event, one reality colliding with another. It reminded Iris of those Shakespeare productions back in the 1970’s, where the audience was obliged to take part in the action, shouting encouragement to Hamlet, or handing Lady Macbeth her dagger.
‘Maybe we’ll end up at the margins of their photos,’ Lydia said. As if preparing for this eventuality, she slipped into her crinkly blouse and fluffed up her hair. A photographer was busily snapping pictures as the party made their way to the folding chairs which balanced precariously on carpet laid over sand. A trickle of applause, and at last the bride appeared, click-clacking down the stone pathway, wearing a fairy dress of white chiffon, a camilla in her hair. That must be her father, a surprisingly young looking fellow in tropical shirt and khakis, sporting a formidable handlebar mustache. He was beaming even more than his daughter who was intent on not stumbling.
‘What a remarkable garment,’ Lydia said, referring to the dress. ‘Do you think it’s made of surgical gauze?’
‘Shhh,’ Iris cautioned.
Everyone crooned an appreciative ‘Ahh’ as father and daughter stepped cautiously onto the red carpet. The bride was pale-skinned and dark haired, possibly Irish, and very slender, showing off toned arms, a nervous smile careening off her face. Not wanting to wear sunglasses, she squinted, an expression caught for posterity by the young man who might be her brother, snapping wildly with his point and shoot.
Iris was starting to tear up, as was her more cynical daughter. They didn’t dare exchange glances, in case the floodgates were unleashed. For once, Lydia made no snotty remarks and merely watched as a light breeze coasted across the beach, fluttering the pages of novels and magazines then catching the hem of the bride’s dress in a provocative way. The father, surely no more than forty-five, helped his daughter negotiate the transition from cobblestone to carpet, clutching her elbow firmly. His face gleamed with health and happiness, though he seemed self-conscious: who wouldn’t be with all these strangers watching –and with his free hand he patted down his lanky hair that didn’t quite manage to cover his bald spot. The younger men all had shaved heads and looked like marines on furlough. The bride’s dark hair didn’t come from her Dad’s side of the family. That would be her mother sitting in the front row, also slender, wearing a pink top and silk trousers, twisting on her seat to watch the pair walk up the makeshift aisle. The bride gave a little squeak of alarm as her heel caught in the threads of carpet but Father expertly kept her aloft. The groom would be that stocky man standing at the front watching his bride’s approach. He wore a tropical shirt decorated with a pattern of shells. His face was pink, his head shiny. Iris leaned forward to see better: he was already puffy around the cheeks and neck– a man who liked his liquor. Should the girl be warned?
Iris knew enough about drinkers to last a lifetime.
Someone had turned down the music and now they could hear the relentless salsa beats coming from the activity pool and the Star girl urging all swimmers to clap their hands and ‘Dance! Dance!’ The bride reached the groom and was handed off by her father who retreated, one suspected with relief, to the empty chair by his wife. This wife didn’t squeeze his hand or pat his knee, and Iris decided that they were estranged, brought together for this event.
‘I know him!’ Lydia whispered loudly. She looked excited and was pointing to a small neat man standing next to the groom. ‘We met in the Internet room. He’s a Unitarian minister who goes up and down the coast marrying people.’
The dark-skinned Mexican in a white shirt with pleats had flipped open a folder and began to read from a set piece as bride and groom held hands and listened. Iris could hear just enough to note that there was no hint of religiosity in the text and no Khalil Gibran drivel.
The breeze ratcheted up a notch and now the bride was having to fight her dress as the photographer snapped away. The minister hesitated while the groom murmured something that made people laugh, then he plucked a ring from his pocket and slipped it onto his bride’s finger. At this photogenic moment, a child carrying an inflatable whale darted behind the couple, forever captured in the event.
Lydia let out a giggle. The alcohol was finally getting to her and that tense face had begun to relax, the hatch of lines smoothing between her eyebrows. In baby pictures, Lydia always looked anxious; she was born with a furrowed brow and the weight of the ages. They used to think it was cute, because, of course, what did a baby know of the trials of the world?
By the end of the week, if Iris had her way, Lydia would lose half a dozen years and they’d be a couple of dizzy females making their way to the bar in the evening. Lydia was apt to give up on future romance; just because Charlie had blown off didn’t mean nobody else would come sniffing around. Where on earth did she ever get such a defeatist attitude? Certainly not from her mother.
The minister had the high sloping forehead of the Mayans, indigenous to these parts. He gazed over the wedding party, eyes indicating a level of boredom, as for a moment, he forgot where he was and who these people were gathered before him.
Cheers erupted from the volleyball court and a ball coasted skyward, narrowly missing the bride’s head. It landed on the makeshift dais, where it stayed, no one nervy enough to fetch it.
Then, quite unexpectedly, the minister craned his neck and stared straight at Lydia and Iris, and he waved discreetly. Iris felt herself pinken at being singled out, then realized that it was her daughter’s presence that had caught his attention. Let Lydia claim her due. She was still an attractive woman, ‘still’ being one of those qualifying words that signaled anyone pushing fifty who was managing to hold onto her looks.
If Lydia would just relax that perpetual frown that made her look so fierce and hard to get along with. Her posture could use a little work too; an erect spine and tilted chin took years off a woman’s age.
The recorded music switched to jazz piano, one of those innocuous modern pieces, as the bride and groom remained standing in front of the small party, clasping hands. Finished his recitation, the minister dropped back. Everyone seemed to be waiting, then suddenly a booming recorded voice filled the speakers, startling the onlookers: ‘We’ve only Just Begun’ rang out in a pleasant although amateur baritone voice, rough around the edges but in tune.
The bride tipped her head against the groom’s broad shoulder, her eyes glassy.
So the groom was a singer, and this recorded performance was his surprise.
The voice sketched out the song with moderate accuracy, running out of breath here and there, yet this was what made the song so moving. When a note caught in his throat, Iris felt it catch in her own and she unabashedly let tears run down her cheeks. Lydia rummaged around in her beach bag, pulled out a bunched up tissue and began to blow her nose. Weren’t they a sentimental pair? Lydia caught her eye and began to laugh and soon they were both laughing as they wept.
Iris reached out and touched her daughter’s forearm, and for a moment Lydia was a little girl, wounded from some playground accident, racing home for consolation and finding fresh tears the moment she spotted her mother. Perhaps Iris hadn’t been as patient as she might have been with these episodes: the girl was melodramatic, craving attention long after the crisis was over and the wound bandaged – not an appealing quality in a child.
Iris stroked her daughter’s forearm again and gave it a squeeze, but not without a sensation of being artificial.
Lydia drew her arm away.
All of this happened in a moment and Iris felt disturbed, as if she’d been found wanting. One tried to do right, but mothers were doomed to fail. Surely Lydia knew that by now, having two nearly grown children of her own.
As if recalling this fact, her daughter swung her legs over the side of the lounger.
‘It’s 2 o’clock Toronto time,’ she announced before slipping her feet into her espadrilles and taking off towards the pathway that led to the Internet room. Lydia bustled in there every few hours.
She was going to Skype Annie, who’d enrolled at a second rate University in northern Ontario, majoring in something called Environmental Studies, a profession that didn’t exist when Iris went to school. Annie and her mother communicated every day. Lydia would comment more often than necessary that she and Annie were ‘great good friends’; this always sounded like a judgement, for didn’t she and Iris go for weeks, even months, on end without communicating?
Suddenly alone, Iris set herself as upright as possible on the lounger. The marriage ceremony was winding down, the compact group making its way towards one of the private event rooms.
—Ann Ireland
——————————-
Ann Ireland is the author of four novels, most recently THE BLUE GUITAR, which has been getting excellent reviews all across Canada. She coordinates the Writing Workshops department at the Chang School of Continuing Education, Ryerson University, in Toronto. She teaches on line writing courses and edits novels for other writers from time to time. She also writes profiles of artists for Canadian Art Magazine and Numéro Cinq Magazine (where she is Contributing Editor). Dundurn Press will be re-publishing Ann’s second novel: THE INSTRUCTOR over the summer of 2013.
Jun 142013
One of the world’s great memoirs, The Confessions is a constant delight (earlier we find out how the young Rousseau peed in the housekeeper’s kettle). I set these passages of intimate self-exposure next to the glorious bits that deal with Rousseau and his father, how they would read romances (novels) together, sometimes getting so involved they would stay up till dawn reading to each other. [I am on the road again; listening to this in the car.]
In this passage, Rousseau has been sent away to a private tutoring situation and is living in the home of the Lamberciers, brother and sister. Miss Lambercier is about thirty. And to be serious about it, he is trying, in his confessions, to get at the secret, most intimate underpinnings of consciousness and desire. How does the sexual wiring get fixed? Why do the most trivial events have such permanent, risible and even tragic consequences in our relations with other?
Also we can see here the genre crossover from private confession to a priest to the modern version, public confession in detail to the whole world via the book.
dg
As Miss Lambercier felt a mother’s affection, she sometimes exerted a mother’s authority, even to inflicting on us when we deserved it, the punishment of infants. She had often threatened it, and this threat of a treatment entirely new, appeared to me extremely dreadful; but I found the reality much less terrible than the idea, and what is still more unaccountable, this punishment increased my affection for the person who had inflicted it. All this affection, aided by my natural mildness, was scarcely sufficient to prevent my seeking, by fresh offences, a return of the same chastisement; for a degree of sensuality had mingled with the smart and shame, which left more desire than fear of a repetition. I was well convinced the same discipline from her brother would have produced a quite contrary effect; but from a man of his disposition this was not probable, and if I abstained from meriting correction it was merely from a fear of offending Miss Lambercier, for benevolence, aided by the passions, has ever maintained an empire over me which has given law to my heart.
This event, which, though desirable, I had not endeavored to accelerate, arrived without my fault; I should say, without my seeking; and I profited by it with a safe conscience; but this second, was also the last time, for Miss Lambercier, who doubtless had some reason to imagine this chastisement did not produce the desired effect, declared it was too fatiguing, and that she renounced it for the future. Till now we had slept in her chamber, and during the winter, even in her bed; but two days after another room was prepared for us, and from that moment I had the honor (which I could very well have dispensed with) of being treated by her as a great boy.
Who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a contrary sense from what might naturally have been expected? The very incident that inflamed my senses, gave my desires such an extraordinary turn, that, confined to what I had already experienced, I sought no further, and, with blood boiling with sensuality, almost from my birth, preserved my purity beyond the age when the coldest constitutions lose their insensibility; long tormented, without knowing by what, I gazed on every handsome woman with delight; imagination incessantly brought their charms to my remembrance, only to transform them into so many Miss Lamberciers.
Jun 142013
“Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.”
Anne Francey considers her artwork the visual equivalent of a diary, where spontaneous jottings of all kinds of events sketch the fabric of life. She often uses nature as a point of departure, freely oscillating between representation and abstraction in order to reveal a deeper meaning. Born in Switzerland, Anne is bilingual, speaking French as fluently as English. Adept at the artistic language of metaphor as well, Anne welcomes the unpredictable and revels in moments when she has control of what’s being shown and what’s being hidden. I met Anne in the years I worked in an art gallery at Skidmore College, where she teaches part time; or before that – at a regional arts center in downtown Saratoga Springs, through which Anne exhibited and received grants to conduct marvelous, progressive art workshops for children. Many have long admired her love of nature, commitment to her craft, thirst for knowledge, and involvement with the community and next generation. These forces recently fused with profound strength, when her daughter, Suleika Jaouad, developed leukemia. Her response, in part, when at times she could do nothing else at all, was a daily painting project titled Cariatide de Papier.
— Mary Kathryn Jablonski
§
A propos de “Cariatide de Papier”
C’est d’un journal de bord personnel, voire intime, qu’il s’agit. Chaque semaine, une nouvelle image aquarelle sur papier format carré. Assemblés, ces jours en carré forment colonne, cariatide légère porteuse d’une période lourde de 36 semaines de temps difficiles.
Chez les anciens Grecs, la cariatide était une statue de pierre porteuse d’une masse architecturale. Sur l’espace du mur qui sépare et rapproche ciel et terre, cette Cariatide de Papier composée de 36 carrés sur lesquels s’inscrivent en couleurs l’oiseau dans tous ses états et l’éléphant forcé hors de sa force, réfléchit à l’équilibre précaire entre l’endurance et la fragilité de l’être humain face à sa propre mortalité.
D’où vient la force quand la gravité nous lâche, quand ce qui nous soutient nous est enlevé ? Quand l’oiseau tombe et l’éléphant perd pied ? Quand l’éléphant ne pèse que plume et l’oiseau en oublie sa légèreté?
—Anne Francey
Cariatide de papier
It began as a diary. Each week, I would paint my days on a square piece of watercolor paper, reflecting on events in my life that were both too personal and too large to evoke with words.
Now assembled, these squares form a column, a light caryatid bearer of a period laden with thirty-six difficult weeks.
In Ancient Greece, a Caryatid was a sculpted female figure that supported an architectural mass, the entablature of a temple.
Placed on a wall, a space that separates and connects sky and earth, this “Cariatide de Papier” reflects on the precarious equilibrium between human endurance and fragility when facing mortality. It is composed of thirty-six colorful squares portraying all kinds of birds in different states of mind, and various elephants whose force is being challenged.
Where does strength come from when gravity lets go of us, when what supports us is taken away from us?
When birds fall and elephants loose their footing?
When an elephant is no heavier than a feather and a bird forgets its lightness?
—Anne Francey
§
Complete Work, Floor to Ceiling
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Detail Images
space
space
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—Anne Francey
See also:
From NY Times Blog – Life Interrupted, A Family Gets Cancer – Video of Anne & her family.
Daughter Suleika Jaouad’s NY Times Blog – Life Interrupted.
——————————–
Anne Francey was born in Switzerland where she studied painting at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, before moving to New York where she received an MFA from Hunter College. She now lives in Saratoga Springs, NY, where she has her art studio, teaches, and has been involved in creating community ceramic murals throughout the capital region. In addition to drawing and painting, she developed an interest in ceramics during her travels in Tunisia, and has incorporated the ceramic mediums into her practice.
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Jun 132013
In John B. Lee’s study, there are piles of stones, cobbles to pebbles. He’s a collector, no doubt mystifying endless airport security agents monitoring his luggage. One wonders about this, except that stones are mnemonic devices (this one means a day on the beach in Korea with my son and his son). And words are like stones, bearing the same trace mineral flecks, striations, layers, conglomerates and evidence of former life. You put them together and a mysterious meaning radiates (call it a poem). John is a frequent contributor to these pages. He’s the poet laureate of Norfolk County where I was born. He lives in Port Dover on Lake Erie, home of what was once the world’s largest freshwater fishing fleet (oddly shaped boats made of steel, called turtlebacks). He hosted the the April Extravaganza on the Lake, when NC Contributing Editor Sydney Lea and myself journeyed thither and read and grown men were heard to use the word “beauty” as if it were a real thing like a Porsche or an Audemars Piguet wristwatch. After which we drove down the lake to Highgate for a second reading, gossiping about the loves and suicides of famous southwestern Ontario writers, stopping to look a graves or the farm where John grew up. Reading John’s poems like a similar marvelous adventure.
dg
——-
Suseuk — Viewing Stones
my son, my grandson and I
were walking
the gravelly shores
of the Yellow Sea
on Daebun Island
looking west through amber sky
west to the entirely imaginary far-away
coast of mainland China
the sun
shining like a dulled brass gong
hung in soundless heaven
over the low-tide mudflats of Korea
and we were
looking to gather up
the most interesting stones
and only recently empty shells
the small cochlear conches
that hold the ocean winds of the world
as poems might hold
a meaningful breath
at the moment of deep-breath knowing
and I have gathered
my own little tea bowl
of chalk and silvery anthracite
carrying home the light of hope
brought here from these broken mountains
and that scaling off of iron oxide
from the water-loud coves
with their coming in and going away
of moon-drawn amplitudes
that swallow the road and drown the ankles
where the beach turns to vanish under
the afternoon drop-shadows
of the great engines of the sea
and as I hold council here
with silent beauty of granite
and pink rock
cobbled with dead creatures
who cling, barnacled
to the underbelly of a time-crushed
stratum and substratum
of cold vermillion
I think back
to the finding
when our three shades crossed
like the slow dampness of dragged black cloth
and there is this consolation to loss
the way memory
brightens
the shades and hues of meaning
like wave wash on dry rock
and tomorrow’s freeze
that set the coast
in hard-white unwalkable shards of dropped ice
what we’d seen
beneath the heavy burden of winter
unpacking its load
on the threshold of a second morning
made everything
unavailable to the hands
but there
the heart reached through
Timmy’s Down the Well
as I am conscious
of the perils
of living in a world
that is bellum
and full with the falsity
of the fierce and terrible yawp of war
I send out
the kinder dog
of my most beautiful thought
and I am
wagging memory at important windows
I am barking
at the scriptoriums
of mad leaders
where oak drawers slide shut
on the keepsakes of life
I am howling
at the Lupercalia of a romantic moon
where light
and the mirror of light
are drawing in the muddy skirts
of my hometown waters
while the deeper ambitions of love
arrive and leave in waves
like the bridal bed
evenings and mornings
of warmed dreamers
who wake and sleep
in the swan tuck of angels
my son
who works and thrives
in the government regions of Seoul
tells me
his school is at the epicenter
of the animosity of big guns
training their dark zeroes
at the soul of the city
and I know—
any sunrise
has its own Gallipoli
all moonsets in yellow air
might break the shining glass
with a seismic whump of a great shattering noise
where we are all bad hammers
we are all
the pelt and pummel
of red stone and sharp sticks
on soft flesh
Mr. President
you with the burning tongue
take your crimson axe away
from my broken brain
I am here
singing from the common tree
among the magpies
among the crows
I come
palm line open to the blue ceiling
give the greater graves
the balm of a short shadow
I cast my longer darkness
onto the green recline
of an out-of-reach light
where we both breathe
we all breathe
and into this lasting language
of even the most ancient poets
I say, let Caesar weep
on the senate stair
let him weep at the river
I refuse
the map lines of his desire
I bark
at the buoyant well holes
of my body
and am dangerous with a different
and far more powerfully resonant echolalia
of the resounding voice of a father’s love
—John B. Lee
———————————
John B. Lee is the author of over sixty published books. In February he won the Winston Collins / Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem for the second time. Inducted as Poet Laureate of the city of Brantford in perpetuity, he was also recently appointed Poet Laureate of Norfolk County where he now lives in Port Dover, a fishing town located on the south coast of Lake Erie.
Jun 122013
Structure is almost everything, says Peter Handke, in an epigraph to this wildly whimsical, often hilarious (“aversion” one character puns on “a virgin”), mid-life, existential love drama between a husband and a wife. Don Druick is a master of musicality. Watch the repetitions: words like scars, quagmire, diminished, love. Jack comically gathers scars as he keeps reasserting that he will not be diminished. The text shimmers. Moments of horror: Jack dropping his hands into a cooking pot full of boiling water. Moments of intense comedy: Audrey misplaces a medallion in a patient’s rectum (the patient is her neighbour, perhaps a lover; the patient gave her the medallion; the medallion bears the words “The fear of everything is love”). To communicate Jack calls his wife’s cell from bed; his wife answers; she is in bed with him. Regularly, the characters revert to speaking in the voices of animals, caws and moos; and just as regularly there are moments of trembling beauty, line after line, poignant and true.
AUDREY Did you say: kyomu?
HUMPHREY Nothingness. The Japanese have four hundred words for it.
AUDREY Really? That many?
HUMPHREY It seems necessary
dg
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
– W H Auden
A human being is a genius while dreaming, fearless and brave….
– Akira Kurosawa
For a work of art, material is almost nothing, structure almost everything.
– Peter Handke
•
A play in eighteen scenes and two acts for six actors.
•
to Jane Phillips, whose own dreams fill a lifetime of shelves.
CHARACTERS
Jack, 60’s
Audrey, 50’s
Jack and Audrey are married; these actors do not double.
Four actors play the following ten characters:
ACTOR 01
Delores – Audrey’s personal assistant
Natalie – a next door neighbor; Humphrey’s wife
Curly – a bad bad dude
ACTOR 02
The Prince Mithroth – Audrey’s dearest friend
Horst – a frightening man
Old Bill – Jack and Sandy’s dead father
ACTOR 03
Humphrey – a next door neighbor; Natalie’s husband
Shlomo – a Hassidic jew
ACTOR 04
Sandy – Jack’s sister
Baby Jack – Shlomo’s precocious son
As well:
Offstage Characters
Pooky, Natalie’s dog
Talking Newspaper
Another Soldier
Chorus, as required
Note: NATALIE has a French accent; HUMPHREY has an English accent.
A visual development: JACK is progressively more scarred as the play proceeds (except: scene 18 where he is scar-free).
•
ACT ONE
SCENE SET 01 – A PROLOGUE
scene one
Jack, at home, paces the kitchen. The air is ripe with the heady odour of baking bread.
JACK I will not be diminished
JACK at his chopping block, the knife fast and furious. He cuts himself.
JACK Jesus, boys, that’ll be another scar. Drat.
The sink is chock-a-block full of simpering wet socks. JACK wrestles with the sodden mass, water spilling everywhere.
JACK Shit.
Suddenly, the lentils on the stove boil over.
JACK turns; the wet socks sloosh to the floor.
JACK Shit.
Smoke cascades from the oven.
JACK Amazing shit, a whole bloody package of it. Drat. It’ll never be as good again. What? Yes. A package of shite. That’s it, boys, that’s it exactly.
PAUSE, as JACK ponders.
JACK But what exactly? Man O man, I don’t understand myself….
JACK goes to the phone. Dials.
JACK (on phone) Delores? Let me talk to Herself.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) My wife, Audrey….
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) Delores, it’s me, Jack. Jesus….
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I’m not trying to be funny. Or arrogant. I’m not feeling funny. Or arrogant. Nothing’s funny anymore.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I don’t know. A glimmer of something but I don’t get it.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I don’t care if you don’t. Understand. Nevermind – too late, too late. There’s no more time, boy O boy, you can’t go backwards.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) Because time does not move backwards. Everybody knows that. Hey, maybe it doesn’t even move forward. Have you ever considered that?
BEAT.
JACK Tell Herself I’m coming right down.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I don’t care.
JACK hangs up the phone.
JACK Drat, another scar.
JACK exits, slamming the door.
SFX: The sound of a car engine starting up. The screeching of tires.
A sudden vicious crash, horrendous.
SFX: Car crash, long and frightening. Shattering glass falling; a blizzard of tiny tinkles.
Silence.
END OF SCENE.
TO BLACK.
•
SCENE SET 02 – OLD BILL GONE
scene two
AUDREY’s medical office. Day.
The blinds are drawn; phone conversations are quietly everywhere.
Prominent: a large collection of colourful Eiffel Tower models.
SFX: The continuous sound of animals.
These two speeches together:
AUDREY (on phone) A leopard, a leopard seen? No…. No no, impossible. Not in my operating room. I mean it makes no sense….. Maybe from a zoo? Maybe a pet?…. Impossible…. Well, don’t go in there – especially if you hear loud growling.
DELORES (on phone) The book of crows? Book of crows? Book of crows? Book of crows?…. No…. No…. No no no. What can it mean? Radical surgery? It worries me. Is it about crows or just a really really good title?
AUDREY and DELORES laugh.
AUDREY (on phone) Anyway, I’m not a vet.
DELORES (on phone) Do you need an appointment?
JACK enters.
JACK Audrey. Audrey. I need to talk.
AUDREY sees JACK; she winks and waves – it’s very friendly.
DELORES I told you, Jack, Jack, on the phone I told you, Jack – she’s busy.
JACK You can be as jealous as you want, Delores – she’s still my wife.
Another phone rings.
DELORES (on phone) Just a mo – the other line.
JACK I was out underwear shopping – I made a call – you’ll never guess what happened. Never. Horrible…. horrible….
DELORES (to AUDREY) It’s for you.
AUDREY (to JACK) Just a minute, darling – I’ll be right with you.
JACK Promise?
AUDREY Promise promise.
DELORES scoffs.
JACK sneers at DELORES.
DELORES She’s working….
These two speeches together:
AUDREY (on phone) Ya…. Ya ya…. She’s pissed off? So? What? Hurt?…. Why? She’s weird. I was home – she could have called…. Hey, I’m not a mind reader, just a doctor…. I’m not even sure I know who she is…. I already did that. I searched a large pile of newspapers looking for someone who might actually have her number….
DELORES (on phone) No…. No…. really?…. Simply, I push the wrong button and the x-ray thing hassles itself apart. Whirring whirring all the time. Wow…. The patients get really nervous…. Ya but now I have no idea how to put it all back together again…. Well what do I care?…. No, really…. Really….
JACK Can I speak now?
DELORES She’s busy.
JACK Drat.
These two speeches together:
DELORES (on phone) Do you think so? Do you? I’m really happy here. Really really happy really really really happy….
AUDREY (on phone) I’m going to read it right now…. Right right now…. Promise promise. Promise promise promise….
AUDREY hangs up the phone.
AUDREY Delores….
DELORES (on phone) I’ve got to go.
DELORES hangs up the phone.
AUDREY (to DELORES) Listen to this.
JACK Am I invisible?
JACK is shushed.
JACK Jesus, what a quagmire.
AUDREY You too, Jack. Listen….
JACK So unkind.
AUDREY Please please please – it’ll be fun.
JACK Nobody cares about me.
AUDREY, making an impatient sound, opens a magazine.
AUDREY Jack…. Jack. Look at me. Stop it. Please wait. I’m working.
JACK Drat.
AUDREY (to DELORES) Here. Here it is. You read this. I’ll start. (reading) OK OK OK, you the patient, right here downstage.
DELORES (reading) Here?
AUDREY (reading) No, right on the lip.
DELORES (reading) Up your moo.
AUDREY (reading, shouting) Up your moo.
DELORES (reading) Moo up you.
AUDREY (reading) You too moo.
DELORES (reading) Too moo you.
AUDREY (reading) Fuck you moo moo.
DELORES (reading) You fuck moo moo.
AUDREY and DELORES laugh – especially AUDREY.
AUDREY It’s hysterical.
DELORES I just love it, I love it.
AUDREY I knew you would. The wise doctor in the world. Ta-taaaaa.
JACK (crow-like, loudly) Caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh.
JACK (crow-like) Kraa caw caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh mmuuh möö.
JACK (crow-like) Kraa caw caw caw kraa….
Suddenly the sun, large very large, large very large as it sets.
AUDREY & DELORES turn to admire it.
AUDREY & DELORES Beautiful.
JACK (quietly) My dad died. Poor old Bill. Poor old Bill is dead. Stroke. Such a quiet word, stroke. Another scar.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene three
Night. JACK and AUDREY in bed; asleep.
JACK is snoring, and somewhat reasonable and gentle it is. He wakes up with a start. In a panic, he opens the light. He flaps around the night table until he finds his cellphone; he dials a number.
The cell phone on AUDREY’s night table rings.
AUDREY (very sleepy, on phone) Hello
JACK (on phone) It’s me.
AUDREY (on phone) Jack? Where are you?
JACK (on phone) What a laugh, eh? I’m right here.
AUDREY turns to see him.
AUDREY What?
JACK (on phone) I woke up and there were a million little red flies swarming all over me and you too. Fucking Mithroth was there too.
AUDREY The Prince Mithroth?
JACK (on phone) My heart’s pounding – I wish you could touch it. I feel very lonely.
AUDREY puts down her phone, and reaches out to JACK.
AUDREY O, you poor thing.
JACK is restless.
JACK (on phone) I feel…. I don’t know…. edgy like….
AUDREY O relax relax relax.
JACK (on phone) Like a wild child.
AUDREY And get off the phone – it’s crazy. I’m right here.
JACK (on phone) O I have a good plan – it doesn’t cost anything.
JACK starts to fondle her.
AUDREY What are you doing?
JACK (on phone) I feel lightheaded and very…. very horny.
AUDREY O for god’s sake – stop it. Stop it.
AUDREY pushes him away.
JACK gets up; wanders about the room.
JACK (on phone) No no no. No no not now. I have a headache. My poor little head aches. What about me what about little lonely me? – I’m horny. So bloody horny. Nothing’s working anymore. Nevermind. What if I can’t write any more novels?
AUDREY sighs.
AUDREY You don’t write novels.
JACK (on phone) I can’t hear you – the connection’s bad.
AUDREY That’s cause I’m not on the bloody phone.
JACK (on phone) What did you say?
AUDREY (shouting) I said: you don’t write novels.
JACK (on phone) But I could if I wanted to. If I had any decent stories. Which I don’t. Drat. What a quagmire. What if I’ve just squandered – wasted – my talent? What if I’m just a fucking old fucking old fuck fuck fucking old sad old has been?
JACK has a penknife.
AUDREY Where did you get that?
JACK (on phone) It’s mine.
AUDREY It looks like mine.
JACK (on phone) It’s mine.
AUDREY What are you doing?
JACK (on phone) Keeping it warm. Useful little scar machine.
AUDREY O, for god’s sake, we don’t need any more scars.
AUDREY takes the penknife from JACK.
JACK Fuck that. I will not be diminished.
AUDREY Relax, for god’s sake. Relax. Please relax. Come back to bed.
JACK (on phone) Why? Are you offering any…. comfort.
AUDREY Yes, I am.
JACK (on phone) Sex would be nice. Ya, sex. Ya. Full throttled, passionate, wild and wet and horribly illegal.
AUDREY Well, I’m not offering that.
JACK (on phone) You’re so hard. Drat drat drat, I’m just a slave to my hormones and desires. And here I thought I was a Buddhist. Maybe I am a Buddhist? Anyway – and I’ve just figured this one out …. or not – something about a package. A package? You’re not listening you’re not listening to a single word I say.
AUDREY picks up her phone.
AUDREY (on phone) I’m here I’m here. I hear you. Yes yes yes, I hear you.
AUDREY gets out of bed.
AUDREY (on phone) Come back to bed.
JACK (on phone) I don’t know. I don’t know.
AUDREY There there, that’s enough telephoning for tonight.
AUDREY takes his cellphone. She tenderly takes him back to bed. She fixes the bed clothes and tucks him in.
AUDREY There there.
JACK I had a dream you had died. Horrible.
AUDREY I had a dream we had never met.
JACK & AUDREY Nightmares.
AUDREY laughs, warm and full.
They kiss. They kiss again.
JACK (crow-like) Caw…
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh mmuuh….
JACK (crow-like) Caw caw….
AUDREY (calf-like) Möö mmuuh möö….
AUDREY laughs with pleasure and anticipation.
JACK & AUDREY Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.
SFX: Moans and building sexual groans.
JACK & AUDREY CLANG CLANG CLANG.
Fireworks.
JACK & AUDREY (quietly) Went the trolley.
BEAT.
END OF SCENE
•
scene four
Temple Beth Shalom, a synagogue. A Friday evening in summer. Services are in progress – we hear Jewish liturgical chanting off.
JACK enters the foyer of the temple. There is a bazaar in progress. Its very active. People are dancing.
JACK looks around.
JACK People people everywhere – everywhere I look there’s new people – and I don’t know any of them.
A Hassidic Jew is sitting on a strange bench – stone and rough wood; decorated with colourful eiffel towers.
SHLOMO Are you looking for something you can’t find?
JACK I am.
SHLOMO The truth?
JACK Ha. Good. Possibly.
SHLOMO Thus you are a philosopher?
JACK But am I really actually looking?
SHLOMO Some do.
JACK Or just mumbling within myself?
SHLOMO That might be the same thing. Jewish? You’re jewish?
JACK Half.
SHLOMO Half jewish? How can this be?
JACK My father was jewish. He went here for services. Prayers.
JACK is a bit unsteady on his feet.
SHLOMO Sit sit – I made this bench myself.
JACK sits.
SHLOMO So, what do you think? Isn’t it beautiful?
JACK I love the Eiffel Towers.
SHLOMO Thank you. It was my son’s idea.
JACK You know, you remind me of my late father.
SHLOMO Is that a good thing?
JACK Eventually it was.
The BABY gurgles.
JACK Your baby?
SHLOMO My son.
SHLOMO beams.
BABY JACK I am the perfect reason to always to be happy.
JACK He talks.
SHLOMO Yes.
JACK But he’s a baby.
BABY JACK Thus, I have the perfect reason for superannuated contentment.
JACK And smart.
SHLOMO Thank you. We are a good team, he and I.
JACK (to BABY) Hello, you dear little thing.
BABY JACK Hello yourself, strange troubled sad man.
SHLOMO We call him: Jack.
JACK Well, isn’t that just something else – that’s my name too. (to BABY) We have the same name, little thing. I must tell my dear darling nephew about that. His name is Bob – he’s a baby too.
BABY JACK Is that relevant here? One must not be too cloying or pathetic with respect to one’s overly rated sentimentality.
JACK O?
SHLOMO No no no, child, don’t abuse the man.
BABY JACK To speak the truth to a penitent, dearest father – as our great talmudic teachers say – is not without the bounds of decorum. (to JACK) You seem out of sorts, if I may be so bold as to pronounce an opinion on your obvious demeanor.
JACK I do feel disoriented – the town seems somehow different. And nothing in my life seems to make sense.
BABY JACK I know what you feel.
SHLOMO But can you know this, my darling son? These same great talmudic teachers – who are our guides in all things – preclude the knowledge of another’s suffering.
BABY JACK But do they, my father? As is said: a person is only a person when and only when she or he is known to all. (to JACK) I do know what you feel, and not just in the indisputably mystical though culturally exhausted kabbalistic connotation.
BABY JACK shrugs.
BABY JACK Change is deep within us. Yet, there are troubles.
JACK There are more mountains than there used to be.
BABY JACK That is indeed terrible.
SHLOMO And challenging.
JACK And more snow on the mountains.
SHLOMO Mountains are the same as love.
BABY JACK Yes, they are, dear father. As is death.
JACK O?
BABY JACK I think, I believe, please please listen to me, that you will require…. a timeshare in these mountains. It will ease your anxiety and erase your sadness.
JACK What?
BABY JACK When I grow up and I am big and wonderful, I will want to work for the Northern Winter Real Estate Association. Perhaps even as their chairman of the board.
SHLOMO Now now, child, don’t overstate your ambition.
BABY JACK But I must, my dearest father – its my destiny. Under my leadership, our product line will be extensive: chalets, time-shares, winter getaways of all sorts….
JACK Ha. Well, I’m sorry – I know that’s not what I need.
BABY JACK Ah well, yes, no, no no, you are right. I have a flash, I’m getting a clear signal. Yes yes, that’s it that’s it – you’d be much better off as a chef.
JACK O? I was – how did you know that?
BABY JACK Once a chef, always a chef.
BABY JACK smiles.
SHLOMO And why – please tell us if its not too problematic for you – so why did you stop?
BABY JACK Too too much indescribable gluttony, I would imagine.
SHLOMO Now now, let the man speak.
JACK Crazy. You wouldn’t believe the yelling, noise, chaos. Just a kitchen, you say. But…. the endless crux of my life. I had a large and succulent tendrons de veau à la provençale in the oven and twenty tarts and farts in the dining room starving for it. Its time its time, yelled my souschef, its time. Alright, fuck you, alright. I shoved my hands into that seething cauldron of an oven – and forgot the mitts.
BABY JACK Your description is startling.
SHLOMO And vivid too.
BABY JACK I actually smell your searing burning flesh.
BABY JACK gags.
JACK I froze, just stood there, debating quite clearly in my mind while my hands burned. White pain intense and banal. What a quagmire. I just gave it all up after I left the hospital. Haven’t worked since. Drat drat drat drat.
BABY JACK Your hands are all scared.
JACK So many scars in a life.
BABY JACK So ugly.
SHLOMO Now now, child.
JACK I’m so confused. Can you help, help me?
SHLOMO But yes, of course. We will sing an opera.
JACK Opera?
SHLOMO We like to sing. We have found, over the centuries – we jews – that it is a good cure for sadness.
BABY JACK But, dearest and beloved father, we need a woman’s voice.
SHLOMO Yes, we do.
SHLOMO looks about.
JACK My dad – old Bill – used to sing a mean countertenor. But he’s dead.
SHLOMO Hmmmmm….
JACK And there’s Audrey – my wife – she used to sing quite well back when we were young.
AUDREY appears.
AUDREY I have no time for this, Jack. I have three surgeries scheduled. And anyway, you know I hate opera.
JACK I don’t think I did.
BABY JACK Frustration and incontinent busyness – surely that will be seen – in the centuries to come – as the principle reasons for the tragic demise of our civilization, so-called.
AUDREY laughs, robust and sexy.
AUDREY You’re a funny little thing. A pity I cannot abide babies.
BABY JACK Do it, dear beauteous hostile lady, sing our opera – how much time can it take?
AUDREY laughs.
BABY JACK The story will be about you.
AUDREY O?
BABY JACK And him.
AUDREY O?
SHLOMO Do it. It will make him feel alive.
AUDREY laughs.
AUDREY O well, for old Jack, the purported love of my life.
SHLOMO Attention, everyone. Attention.
BABY JACK Please listen to my dear and much beloved father.
SHLOMO Now, we do an opera by the wondrous Giacomo Antonio Domenico Puccini….
BABY JACK Amore Abbandonato. And what can ever be wrong with the twin and harmonious notions of love and destiny?
SHLOMO It is the day after Yom Kippur. Maria, the goat girl from the village meets Feivel, the chief rabbi of Riga….
BABY JACK Who is traveling to the great rabbinical court of Torino.
SHLOMO They fall in love….
BABY JACK She with him despite his many unsightly and disfiguring scars.
SHLOMO And he with her despite the fact that she is not jewish.
BABY JACK They spend an extremely meaningful- though chaste – night together under the dining room table.
SHLOMO Locked in each other’s arms
BABY JACK But chaste.
JACK I love this opera.
AUDREY I don’t care for the story.
JACK But its marvelous.
AUDREY Is it?
JACK And somehow familiar. It seems…. perfect.
AUDREY No.
JACK I’m sorry you don’t like it. The opera makes me feel hopeful – I don’t know why.
AUDREY shrugs.
SHLOMO Come come, we start. This is the chorus at the beginning.
CHORUS (singing)
Now the crow may be singing
Singing singing singing
Singing
Singing singing
Instead of the calf
Calf calf calf calf
BEAT.
CHORUS (singing) Instead of the calf.
JACK (singing) Instead of the calf.
JACK stops singing.
BABY JACK But the chorus isn’t finished.
JACK I’m getting a bad feeling. I can’t go on.
SHLOMO But you must.
JACK I was wrong to be so hopeful. The crow and the calf, that’s what I really have. Brutality and conflict. Its the package I’m left with. Drat. Almost nothing – but I guess that’s better then absolutely nothing.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene five
Outdoors. JACK’s building a fire.
SFX The sounds of a Georgian Bay summer night. Loons.
JACK looks up.
JACK Who’s that? (calling) Hello. Hello. I can see you. You’d better come out – I have a gun. (to himself) What a quirky quagmire. O god, is it Mithroth? Drat. Fuck. Fucking Mithroth.
MITHROTH emerges from the shadows.
JACK What the fuck are you doing here?
MITHROTH Don’t let’s quarrel, Jack.
JACK Not a week goes by when I’m not forced to remember you exist. Drat, scars everywhere I look.
MITHROTH O Jack – you’re always mumbling.
JACK – impatient gesture.
MITHROTH Well, then…. Jack, I wonder if you could enhance my thinking on you and Audrey? Is there a problem here?
JACK Fucking Mithroth – what the fuck do you care?
MITHROTH Very funny, Jack. Always witty is our Jack. Ha ha.
JACK Fortunately – there’s an easy answer….
MITHROTH And that would be?
JACK None of your business.
MITHROTH Ah. Yes, of course. Still, I continue. You and Audrey seem – so it always appeared to me and I have known you both a long long time….
JACK Too long.
MITHROTH What was that, Jack? Yes…. but…. you and Audrey seem more than ever burdened by the breath of experience.
JACK Yes. Good. Not bad. Exactly right.
MITHROTH There is a flavour – a hint – of melancholy. The past as an unbearable burden….
JACK Scars.
MITHROTH Dear O dear. As from the wing no scar the sky retains. So what happens?
JACK She denies it. She denies it but she lies.
MITHROTH puts his hand to his ear.
MITHROTH What was that?
JACK Jesus… what a quagmire.
JACK and MITHROTH are on a street.
JACK My bike is gone. Drat. I’ve had that bike since I was a kid.
MITHROTH throws garbage on the street.
JACK Stop that.
MITHROTH It’s my right. My right and privilege.
JACK It’s always about you, Mithroth….
MITHROTH It’s always me, Jack. Nevermind…. look at this….
MITHROTH points to a boat on a trailer.
MITHROTH Give us a hand. This bloody quixotic thing keeps slipping off. I’ve been at it for a week.
JACK Well the…. hmmmmm?…. we could…. hmmmmmm…. we’ll just wrap this rope around here.
JACK and MITHROTH tie and fuss.
JACK Nice little outboard.
MITHROTH Listen to it sing….
SFX: The outboard engine springs to life.
The boat starts to move.
MITHROTH O look – there’s Audrey. Grab her, will you?
AUDREY I can’t reach.
JACK Lean…. foreword…. more…. more….
AUDREY is hoisted onboard.
AUDREY Have I gained that much weight?
MITHROTH You look trim and lovely.
AUDREY Thanks, dearest.
As if an old habit, AUDREY nuzzles MITHROTH.
AUDREY O look at Jack – Jack loves boats.
JACK Those summers, ya, on Schroon Lake, had a lovely little boat. Five horsepower.
AUDREY (to JACK) You can be so sweet. Look, I’ve got some time – we could be in Paris. We always had a good time in Paris.
JACK Seems a long way.
AUDREY Jack, come on. Jack Jack Jack Jack.
MITHROTH The Bistro Papillon….
AUDREY Or Chez François – I used to go there all the time when I was at the Sorbonne.
MITHROTH Those were salad days. Lovely days.
JACK I love François. He taught me how to cook, you know.
AUDREY I think we all knew that.
They laugh.
JACK O look who’s there. It’s Sandy. (calling) Sandy…. Sandy….
The boat stops.
SANDY Jack. And also Audrey. This is a quality moment.
AUDREY Hello, Sandy. This is The Prince Mithroth.
SANDY O?
MITHROTH Hello.
SANDY Audrey, and prince person, this is Bob.
MITHROTH & AUDREY Bob?
SANDY My baby. Bob the beloved baby Bob. Bob Bob Bobber Bobby Bob Bob Boo. He’s just so new, the dear little thing.
AUDREY We’re going to Paris.
SANDY O they all do at your age. And for the same reasons….
JACK is nuzzling BOB.
JACK O, he’s so sweet. My nephew. My darling little nephew. He looks just like you.
SANDY Really? I though he looked just like Terry.
JACK Actually he looks like Dad.
SANDY I know. I miss Dad.
JACK Me too.
AUDREY is reading a newspaper.
AUDREY Your baby thing is in the newspaper.
SANDY O let me see.
NEWSPAPER (loudly) Desperation! Poverty! Blood! Greed! Death!
AUDREY You know you’re in deep trouble when the newspaper you’re reading starts talking to you.
AUDREY and MITHROTH laugh.
JACK Audrey…. Audrey, come nuzzle Bob, Audrey.
END OF SCENE
•
scene six
Summer evening. A lovely light. Birds chirping. JACK and AUDREY are sitting on their porch.
AUDREY Hot.
JACK Very hot.
AUDREY Much hot.
JACK Hot hot hot.
AUDREY What?
JACK What?
AUDREY What’s that?
JACK What’s what?
AUDREY That.
JACK Where?
AUDREY There.
SFX: Aircraft engines.
AUDREY It’s a plane. A very low plane.
JACK Right, I see it. Much too low. Wait a minute wait a minute – that’s a, that’s a Lancaster bomber. What year is this? They haven’t flown those since that war.
AUDREY They’re circling around, coming back….
JACK O my god….
AUDREY O my god….
JACK O my god….
AUDREY O my god….
SFX: A big crash.
OFF: POOKY starts barking.
AUDREY Who’s got a dog? I hate dogs.
SANDY (off) What’s the emergency number?
AUDREY O my god…. It cartwheeled, O my god….
JACK (calling off) What?
SANDY (off) The emergency number.
JACK (calling off) Nine one one.
SANDY enters, clutching BOB and joins them on the porch.
SANDY Are you sure?
AUDREY It cartwheeled. O my god….
SFX: Sirens in the distance.
JACK Somebody called it already.
SANDY Do you think they’re hurt?
SFX: another explosion
AUDREY O my god.
JACK protects BOB. BOB cries.
JACK O wait. Wait. Wait, there’s somebody.
AUDREY Jack, don’t….
SANDY We should call Terry.
JACK Wait here with Audrey. I’ve got to help….
JACK rushes off.
AUDREY & SANDY (calling off) Be careful, Jack.
AUDREY Bad, very bad.
SANDY Do you think they’re dead?
AUDREY Very very bad.
JACK enters with HUMPHREY and BILL. HUMPHREY wears a bombardier jacket; he has a beard, but only on one side of his face. BILL, very old and frail, is quite natty in a corduroy suit.
JACK They’re alive. There’ll be scars, there’ll be scars for sure.
HUMPHREY What happened?
JACK I’d better see if there’s anyone else.
AUDREY Jack….
JACK exits.
SANDY You crashed on our street.
HUMPHREY I crashed? Who are you?
SANDY I’m Sandy, Jack’s sister.
AUDREY And cartwheeled.
HUMPHREY I cartwheeled? What a mess. I’m so sorry.
SANDY Just as long as you’re OK. And him….
SANDY gestures to the silent BILL.
HUMPHREY Who?
SANDY Him. He looks familiar somehow.
HUMPHREY Never saw the chap before.
SANDY (to BILL) Are you alright?
BILL is silent.
SANDY (to AUDREY) He looks a lot like Jack, do you think?
AUDREY What?
SANDY The same charming bits.
AUDREY Would you, mmmm?, would you – what? – would you like a drink?
HUMPHREY That would be tasty right now. I’d better not – no no, I’d better not – they’ll think I’d been drinking. And I would have been, you see? The manifold pressure just went. Just like that….
HUMPHREY snaps his fingers.
HUMPHREY And what does it mean? What can it all mean? Does it mean anything? Other than death, certain death raining down upon you. I could’ve crashed right on your house, right on you, right down on you. Right straight down right here on you. And you know, I’m not sure I would’ve cared. I’m not sure I would’ve cared at all.
BILL falters.
SANDY (to BILL) Here you’d better sit down. Why does he seem so familiar?
HUMPHREY I’m so happy to be alive.
AUDREY I’m glad. O my…. I’m still so shocked. Are you alight? I’m a doctor.
AUDREY fans herself with her hand.
HUMPHREY You’re so beautiful. You know, I can see your dialogue written right there – right in your eyes.
AUDREY O, everybody can do that.
HUMPHREY I knew you were going to say that.
AUDREY You sure know how to sweet talk a gal.
HUMPHREY There, there, I knew you were going to say that too.
AUDREY What a party. Yikes, I need a drink.
HUMPHREY And I knew that too….
AUDREY exits. BILL starts to follow her.
AUDREY (to BILL) You stay here.
SANDY I’ll take him. He seems just like Jack. Here…. sit sit….
BILL Gazu gazu wabaza. Gazu. Za zu zee. Wugada. Wugada. Toto was wugada. Yabugu dugubu dugada. Gaga zee zu zee za zu.
SANDY What?
JACK enters.
JACK There’s nobody else.
JACK sees BILL.
JACK Wait. O wait wait wait. O my god, Sandy – its Bill, its Bill. Sandy, its Dad.
SANDY Dad?
JACK Dad. Bill…. its me, Jack. And Sandy.
BILL Towns I’ve never heard of but feel as if I do. Or have.
SANDY I thought he seemed familiar. But didn’t he, you know, die?
BILL (singing) I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair.
SANDY Hi, Dad. This is Bob. Your grandson.
AUDREY enters with a tray.
AUDREY Who wants drinks?
SFX: Loud car crash.
JACK turns, terrified, towards the sound.
END OF SCENE.
TO BLACK.
•
SCENE SET 03 – LOVE LEAVING
scene seven
Early evening. JACK is puttering in his kitchen.
We hear barking offstage.
AUDREY (off) Shut that bloody hound up.
JACK (calling off) We don’t have a bloody hound.
AUDREY (off) Then what the fuck is that?
JACK She’s in a foul quagmire.
JACK pokes about looking for the dog.
JACK (calling off) Its definitely inside.
AUDREY (off) Kill it.
JACK shakes his head. He opens the door to the basement and goes down.
BEAT.
Knocking at the kitchen door.
BEAT.
More knocking. JACK enters from the basement and answers the door. Its the new neighbors – HUMPHREY and NATALIE.
HUMPHREY Hello. Hello. We’re the new neighbors.
JACK Neighbors?
HUMPHREY Right over there.
JACK peers – it’s the house next door.
JACK O yes, right ya, there. The old Crowe place. Hi, I’m Jack.
HUMPHREY I’m Humphrey and this is my wife, Natalie.
JACK Natalie Natalie…. and Humphrey – please come in.
NATALIE We’re not disturbing you?
JACK No. No no no no. I was just thinking about making a supper.
NATALIE Then we are disturbing you.
JACK No no. Mostly all prepped – a little fun cassoulet.
JACK smiles.
Dog barks off.
NATALIE That’s Pooky.
JACK You know that hound?
HUMPHREY It’s our dog. I thought I recognized his happy bark. (calling off) Bark. Bark bark.
POOKY (off) Bark bark.
HUMPHREY (calling off) Bark.
NATALIE (calling) Pooky. Pooky Pooky Pooky….
HUMPHREY (calling off) Bark.
BEAT.
JACK Come, we’ll go look see.
JACK and HUMPHREY exit to the basement.
NATALIE looks about the kitchen.
AUDREY (off) Did you kill the bloody thing?
BEAT.
AUDREY (off) Jack?
NATALIE (calling off) He’ll, he’ll be back in just a minute.
We hear JACK and HUMPHREY fussing in the basement.
HUMPHREY (off) Pooky…. Pooky Pooky….
AUDREY (off) What the hell’s going on?
NATALIE (calling off) I don’t know.
JACK and HUMPHREY enter from the basement.
JACK There’s a tunnel.
NATALIE What?
HUMPHREY Yes, from our place to theirs.
AUDREY enters from upstairs.
AUDREY What the bloody hell is going on?
JACK It’s the bloody new neighbors dropped by for a look see. And guess what?
AUDREY What?
JACK Their dog’s found a tunnel between our houses.
AUDREY A tunnel? A tunnel?
JACK In the furnace room. The hound popped right through it.
NATALIE Clever little Pooky. Such a hero. Is he downstairs? Let’s bring him up.
JACK He’s run back.
HUMPHREY He must been looking for rats.
AUDREY Rats.
AUDREY shudders.
NATALIE Pooky loves rats.
HUMPHREY Rat meat is a delicacy in China, you know.
JACK I heard that. I wonder if if there’s a recipe?
JACK goes to his cookbook library.
AUDREY Jack, I will not live in a house with rats.
JACK Well, Pooky will kill them, dear little beast, and then we can eat them. Hey look at this. (reading) rat with chestnut and duck – this is good. Black pepper rat shoulders hot pot.
JACK looks up, beaming.
JACK This is a whole new thing. (reading) And the ultimate signature tour de force: mushu steamed rat.
AUDREY Fuck the world of culinary delights. I need a drink.
JACK O I think we can manage something for you, darling….
JACK opens a large wooden cabinet – its filled with bottles.
AUDREY All grappa, all the time.
JACK Each a special sweet and succulent kiss – bocchino francoli marolo brunello candolini….
AUDREY It’s Jack’s hobby.
JACK Hard to know what to choose….
AUDREY Serve the drinks for god’s sake, Jack
AUDREY scoffs.
JACK examines a glass; he scowls.
JACK This glass has a scar.
JACK bangs about in the kitchen.
HUMPHREY So, ah…. what is it you do?
AUDREY What the fuck do you care?
HUMPHREY O?….
NATALIE and HUMPHREY whisper and play with their noses.
AUDREY What are you doing?
HUMPHREY Nose calisthenics – we always do them when we feel stressed.
NATALIE You push the tip up and down, back and forth.
AUDREY O god.
NATALIE It’s quite refreshing – let me show you.
NATALIE reaches towards AUDREY’s nose.
AUDREY Don’t touch my nose.
A painful silence.
NATALIE Perhaps it is time we go.
AUDREY Well, if you must.
AUDREY looks into HUMPHREY’s eyes.
AUDREY Wait a minute. I know you.
HUMPHREY You do?
AUDREY Wait a minute wait a minute I know you, I do I do. You’re the pilot. (calling to JACK) He’s the pilot.
JACK Which pilot?
AUDREY The one who crashed on the street.
HUMPHREY Point in fact, I rather liked the neighborhood.
AUDREY laughs delightedly.
HUMPHREY (to JACK) How’s your father?
JACK He’s still dead.
HUMPHREY We all live by such selected fictions.
AUDREY What?
HUMPHREY Shall I explain? I feel I’d like to.
AUDREY And I’d like you to.
SANDY enters.
AUDREY O my god, not now.
JACK Hey, sissy.
SANDY Just popping by.
JACK Is Terry here?
SANDY He’s working on the car. Bob’s helping him.
JACK That’s sweet. Come meet our new neighbors. Humphrey and…. ah…. and…. ah….
NATALIE Natalie.
JACK Natalie. My sister, Sandy. (to SANDY) He’s the pilot.
SANDY is sniffing.
SANDY What’s that? Smoke. I smell smoke.
They all sniff.
HUMPHREY It’s true – smoke.
SANDY looks out the window.
SANDY The house next door is on fire.
HUMPHREY What?
They all rush to the windows.
SANDY Whose house is it? O goodness…. a raging inferno.
HUMPHREY It’s our house.
SANDY What?
HUMPHREY Just moved in, point of fact.
NATALIE Our house is burning.
HUMPHREY and NATALIE exit in a panic.
SANDY Bob? I‘d better go find Terry and Bob.
SANDY exits in a rush.
SFX: Noise, shouting, melee, sirens. The roof collapses.
The room is illuminated as the flames grow larger, flare. Sparks.
AUDREY is overcome.
AUDREY O my god.
JACK puts his arms around her. AUDREY sobs.
JACK So fast.
Disheveled, covered in soot, HUMPHREY and NATALIE return.
NATALIE Horrible horrible…. we’ve lost everything.
HUMPHREY Everything.
JACK Might be a good time for grappa. Ya….
END OF SCENE
•
scene eight
HUMPHREY and AUDREY walk in an art museum. Bright and white. Large canvases of sublime and simple gestures.
A CHORUS sings softly in the background.
HUMPHREY I’ve fallen in love with you.
AUDREY laughs – a ripe Anna Magnani laugh.
HUMPHREY O? I didn’t want to….
AUDREY Thanks for that.
HUMPHREY Yes, but there it is. I love you, Audrey.
AUDREY Maudlin.
HUMPHREY I hope not.
AUDREY Ummmmmmm….
They stand in front of a large canvas. (JACK is the canvas.)
HUMPHREY This one means: kyomu.
AUDREY Did you say: kyomu?
HUMPHREY Nothingness. The Japanese have four hundred words for it.
AUDREY Really? That many?
HUMPHREY It seems necessary
AUDREY Well, we have ten thousand words for: dysfunctional human endeavor including body parts so I guess I understand.
HUMPHREY Give me an example.
AUDREY O? Almost anything. Oufffff. Ah…. good intentions, loyalty, betrayal, killed with a kissing knife, love….
HUMPHREY That’s very complex. You are very complex.
AUDREY I find it comforting.
HUMPHREY You’re smashing. That means: attractive.
They move to another canvas.
AUDREY This one has a faded quality…. more attractive than the last, anyway….
HUMPHREY Yes, I suppose.
AUDREY (imitating HUMPHREY) Yes, I suppose. (normal) You always seem reticent to commit yourself.
HUMPHREY Do I? I said I loved you.
AUDREY Do you say it to Natalie?
HUMPHREY Do you say it to Jack?
AUDREY Shush.
HUMPHREY Now you seem reticent.
AUDREY So? And?
HUMPHREY Yes yes yes. That’s it. Right. Exactly. You are so attractive. More than that. Beautiful. Its why I love you.
AUDREY You don’t love me. You don’t know me.
HUMPHREY I want to. Would you like to sit? You seem to be limping.
They sit.
HUMPHREY What’s, what’s this bandage?
AUDREY This old thing? I cut myself.
HUMPHREY How?
AUDREY Stupid.
HUMPHREY Me?
AUDREY No, me.
AUDREY takes out her penknife.
AUDREY With this.
HUMPHREY Whittling again, were you? O, there’s a scar. Is it serious?
AUDREY O, for god’s sake, I am a doctor. I should be working now – I cancelled a surgery for this, you know.
HUMPHREY gets down on his knees; he kisses the bandage.
AUDREY Stop that.
HUMPHREY I want to make it better.
AUDREY Thank you. Now, get up.
HUMPHREY Tell me something….
AUDREY Well, I love you too.
HUMPHREY makes a face.
AUDREY What?
HUMPHREY “I love you too” is passive. “I love you” is active.
AUDREY So?
HUMPHREY More attractive.
AUDREY I…. I don’t want to be attractive.
HUMPHREY Alive and in the moment? A strong core? Compassionate above all? It seems good.
AUDREY Hmmmmm? What I want to be – alright I’ll tell you: fragile as paper, bold as the north wind. The Queen of all the demons.
HUMPHREY Well, I think you’ve succeeded admirably. And then some.
AUDREY Can I tell you what I really want? – intimacy and…. vulnerability. Can you offer me that?
HUMPHREY What about Jack?
AUDREY I never found Jack attractive. No intimacy with Jack, no vulnerability.
HUMPHREY But love?
AUDREY Of a sort. Some sort. I don’t know. I don’t want to be with Jack. He brings out the worst in me.
HUMPHREY Why did you marry?
AUDREY Stupid.
HUMPHREY Me?
AUDREY This time – yes. At the start, who knows anything?
HUMPHREY I loved Natalie from the start.
AUDREY You keep bringing her up. Don’t. And don’t underestimate Jack, just because he seems like nothing.
HUMPHREY He does, doesn’t he. Very kyomu.
AUDREY Ha. Jack was a great chef. His restaurant was always packed. Always. Three stars, all of that. He gave it up.
HUMPHREY Why?
AUDREY A long story. An old story. Our story, more interesting to me now. Nevermind Jack. What’s the one single thing you would change in your life if you could?
HUMPHREY I’d have you as my wife.
AUDREY That’s sweet. Me, I wish I could have more – a bigger dollop – of the kindness gene.
JACK, the painting, sighs.
HUMPHREY The kindness gene?….
HUMPHREY laughs.
AUDREY Well, I don’t have it.
HUMPHREY Are you kind to your patients?
AUDREY Am I kind to them? I take care of their problems as best I can. Some of them survive. Is that kindness? I don’t think so.
HUMPHREY Do you mean “nice”?
AUDREY snorts.
AUDREY Do you think I’m nice?
AUDREY throws apples at HUMPHREY. She laughs – full throated and sexy.
HUMPHREY Hey, stop that.
AUDREY See?
HUMPHREY Jesus, what a bloody thing.
AUDREY laughs and poses.
HUMPHREY You are impressive.
HUMPHREY gives AUDREY a brass chain with a medallion attached.
AUDREY What’s this?
AUDREY reads the medallion.
AUDREY (reading) The fear of everything is love.
HUMPHREY Put it on.
AUDREY I don’t think so.
HUMPHREY Please.
AUDREY No.
JACK, the canvas, falls off the wall.
END OF SCENE
•
scene nine
Evening. JACK and AUDREY in Chez Zuzu, a restaurant. They’ve finished dining, and wend their way to the coatcheck.
JACK Goulash? What’s suddenly so wrong with goulash? Chez Zuzu makes the best goulash in the accessible world. Fluffy, it is.
AUDREY What?
JACK Jesus, boys, I wish my goulash was that fluffy.
AUDREY O stop it.
AUDREY burps; JACK chuckles.
At the cloakroom. DELORES is helping SHLOMO on with his coat.
SHLOMO Thank you, thank you very much. You are very kind. Very kind.
SHLOMO smiles at JACK as he exits.
SHLOMO Good yom tov, good yom tov….
JACK I know him. I’m sure I know him. God, I can’t remember where. Or when. I feel so disoriented. I’m leaving my coat.
AUDREY What?
JACK I’m leaving my coat.
AUDREY snorts.
AUDREY I’m taking mine.
AUDREY hands the ticket to DELORES (She doesn’t notice DELORES).
JACK It’s not that cold out.
AUDREY It’s bloody winter.
JACK I don’t want to be dragging it around all night.
DELORES So what are you saying, Jack – you don’t want your coat?
AUDREY Delores?
DELORES Audrey?
AUDREY What are you doing here?
DELORES Making ends meet. So…. Jack, you want your coat?
JACK No, I’m leaving it for the evening.
DELORES That’s real dumb.
JACK Shut up.
DELORES You shut up.
JACK Or what? You’ll take me down?
DELORES I don’t want any trouble, Jack.
AUDREY So what are you saying?: I don’t pay you enough?
DELORES No one is ever paid enough.
AUDREY I could pay you more.
DELORES But would you?
JACK Hey, handle that coat carefully – do you hear me? – its cashmere.
DELORES sighs.
DELORES I don’t want any trouble, Jack – my hands are tied. If the coat stays, you pay.
JACK More money?
DELORES It’s all about money, Jack.
JACK God, that’s depressing.
DELORES It’s the way it works.
AUDREY You are crazy.
DELORES (to AUDREY) Who?
JACK Alright alright alright.
DELORES A hundred and twenty-seven dollars.
JACK A hundred and twenty-seven? Jesus, I could buy another coat for that.
DELORES The price would be optimistic, if you wished (imitating JACK) genuine cashmere.
AUDREY laughs.
JACK Please don’t laugh.
AUDREY Don’t tell me what to do.
JACK (to DELORES) What time do you close?
SANDY enters.
SANDY Jack.
JACK Hey, sissy. Did you have the goulash? Good, eh?
SANDY I’m a vegetarian now.
AUDREY laughs.
JACK (to AUDREY) Please don’t laugh.
SANDY Have you seen Terry?
AUDREY Not in a rat’s age.
SANDY Is that a no?
JACK Ha.
SANDY Anyway, I think he’s in the can puking his guts out. Hey I had a nice chat with Dad today.
JACK Dad?
SANDY He sounded great. Well, you know Dad.
AUDREY But he’s dead.
SANDY shrugs.
JACK Where’s Bob?
SANDY He’s on the table.
JACK peers.
SANDY See you….
SANDY exits.
AUDREY Your sister gets on my nerves.
AUDREY rolls her eyes.
JACK Do not roll your eyes at me. I will not be diminished. Look at that, look at that.
AUDREY What?
JACK She’s dragging my coat on the floor. (calling) Stop that. Delores, stop that.
DELORES Don’t do anything, Jack…. please don’t do anything.
AUDREY Jack, take your bloody fucking coat and let’s go.
JACK I don’t want to take my coat.
AUDREY You’re driving me crazy.
DELORES Is it my turn yet?
JACK laughs.
AUDREY (to DELORES) Its embarrassing to me that you’re here. I only do what I can. We have fun.
DELORES snorts.
AUDREY We do. We laugh
DELORES You laugh – I laugh with you
JACK Is nobody listening to me? Drat.
DELORES (to AUDREY) You used to give more.
JACK (crow-like) Caw kraa caw. Caw. Caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh möö. Möö.
JACK (crow-like) Caw. Caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Möö. Mmuuh.
JACK (crow-like) Kraa.
These two speeches together:
AUDREY (calf-like) Möö. Möö. Möö. Möö. Mmuuuuuuuuuuuh.
JACK (crow-like) Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
BEAT.
JACK I can’t do this anymore.
AUDREY What?
JACK Möö möö caw caw möööööö caaaaaaaw. That.
AUDREY You’re crazy.
JACK Be that as it may.
HORST comes over.
HORST Is there a problem here?
JACK You’re fucking right there is. Nobody’s listening to me: I resent being diminished. That coupled with a general pervasive debilitating sense of disorientation. I’d say that was a problem – wouldn’t you?
HORST I’m generally not interested – generally – in your problems.
DELORES laughs.
JACK Who are you? Wait. Wait. I know you. See? This is exactly what I’m saying.
AUDREY You’re raving.
JACK Again? What a quagmire.
DELORES I know these people, boss – they’re trouble. Scary trouble.
JACK All scarred up and nowhere to go.
DELORES whispers in HORST’s ear.
HORST O? (to AUDREY & JACK) I presume you’ve come to dine….
AUDREY We’ve already eaten. It was very fluffy.
AUDREY laughs.
JACK It was.
HORST Good. So now you wish to retrieve your coat?
JACK No, I wish to leave it here.
HORST O I see, a joke. Very funny.
HORST does something very very frightening.
JACK Jesus, stop that. You’re scaring me.
HORST Yes, exactly.
DELORES laughs.
JACK I want merely to continue leaving my coat here – and later – at some other moment – to retrieve it.
AUDREY Take the bloody coat. Let’s just go.
JACK (to HORST) You render me speechless – as you’ll all agree: a rare occurrence. Would that generally register as a concern with you?
HORST Perhaps. Perhaps not.
JACK And your sudden and imminent death?
HORST Perhaps. Perhaps not.
AUDREY Jack! You’re mad.
JACK O, I’m sorry, was I speaking out loud?
HORST Delores, give this gentleman his coat and the freedom of the street.
JACK (to AUDREY) Do you love me now?
END OF SCENE.
•
scene ten
AUDREY’s office. AUDREY is examining HUMPHREY. He is wearing a split hospital gown.
Bending over the examination table, AUDREY is looking up HUMPHREY’s rectum with a flashlight. She is wearing the medallion he gave her in the previous scene.
Meanwhile, outside the frame, a watching JACK….
AUDREY Bend a little lower please. Lower….
HUMPHREY Is this good. Ow.
AUDREY’S robust laugh.
AUDREY Just relax. Lower please…. O?
HUMPHREY Is it bad?
AUDREY Very complex.
HUMPHREY Is that bad?
As AUDREY pokes and prods, the medallion catches in his rectum.
AUDREY Oops.
HUMPHREY Ow.
AUDREY Watch a minute….
HUMPHREY Ow ow ow….
AUDREY Don’t move – the bloody medallion’s gotten stuck….
HUMPHREY I gave you that medallion.
AUDREY Well, I’m taking it back….
She pulls the medallion out.
CHORUS SFX (Pop).
AUDREY There.
The watching JACK suddenly exits only to immediately reappear. A ruckus, as JACK breaks in, with DELORES on his back.
JACK Stop hitting me.
DELORES You can’t come in here.
JACK You’re always blocking the door.
DELORES That’s my job, honey.
JACK Don’t you dare “honey” me.
AUDREY Jack?
HUMPHREY tries to hide his semi-nakedness.
JACK I have to talk to you.
DELORES I could take you down. I could take you down right now.
JACK I really really doubt it.
AUDREY Jack….
JACK We have to talk.
AUDREY At home? Later?
JACK Ha ha. That’s cute. You’re never home. Never. And I know you’re having an affair – a dreary word and a dreary world, the two – with him.
HUMPHREY What?
JACK (to HUMPHREY) Don’t dare deny it, you sleazy shitey scumbag. All protests are futile.
DELORES That’s crazy talk.
JACK Sad sad sad. I’m having a bad year and even singing doesn’t work anymore. And meanwhile you’re doing what with this – tacky tacky tacky – this….
JACK sneers.
JACK This…. person.
HUMPHREY I am a person.
JACK Shit up your ass. Ha. (to AUDREY) Admit it. Admit it admit it admit it.
AUDREY and HUMPHREY, a long look. Is it true?
JACK (to DELORES) What are you looking at?
DELORES Shut up.
JACK You shut up.
DELORES You shut up.
JACK Ha.
DELORES I’m taking you down. Right now.
JACK and DELORES fight.
SFX: More crashes and bangs.
DELORES renders JACK immobile.
JACK (to DELORES) Brute.
JACK picks himself up.
JACK Jesus, my head hurts. Please, please O don’t concern yourself – I’m alright, Jack. Whatever happened to kindness?
MITHROTH enters.
AUDREY & DELORES & HUMPHREY The Prince Mithroth.
JACK Drat. Fucking Mithroth.
MITHROTH O, Jack…. I am only myself.
A vulnerable AUDREY goes to MITHROTH.
AUDREY Daddy, I’m having such a hard time
MITHROTH There, there, I’m here now.
JACK (to MITHROTH) Why is it you’re everywhere I look?….
JACK pirouettes.
JACK He’s always here? Its Paris all over again. Its never stopped, never stopped. You two living together….
MITHROTH In Paris, Jack? Do you mean in Paris? Merely friends sharing a kitchen.
JACK And a bedroom.
MITHROTH Two bedrooms.
JACK Scars.
MITHROTH I am a Prince, Jack – and a virgin as well. If that’s any consolation….
JACK Aversion?
JACK’s pun is ignored by all.
JACK Nevermind this. You want to know something? It turns out I had had a dream. So what Audrey just said to me was just exactly what I had dreamt. Amazing? It goes on. Finally, naturally, we’re in a fussy mood, she and I and self-inflict damage on ourselves.
DELORES Audrey is fabulous. Fabulous.
AUDREY smiles winningly at DELORES.
DELORES Jack is nothing. Washed up has-been. Not just my opinion – her’s too.
JACK (to AUDREY) Is that true?
AUDREY nods.
JACK Blood. Misery. Pain. Degradation. Humiliation. Misery – O I said that already.
MITHROTH I am so so sorry it has all come to this impasse. A pity. It was better at the beginning. I need more delectable and delicious detail.
JACK No.
MITHROTH Please, Jack, please please please. Please please please please….
JACK (to AUDREY) This has to be told. (to MITHROTH) Audrey slashes her ankle. I stick my blade into my arm – lucky me, I hit an artery. The paramedic is forthcoming and less than sympathetic. You stupid stupid people, she said. I had to agree. Scar poxed.
DELORES This is all wrong. He’s telling the story wrong.
JACK You weren’t there.
DELORES If I had been, I’d have taken you down.
JACK But you weren’t there, were you? And you didn’t, did you? You know what? It’ll never be as good again. I remember you when you were less…. unkind. We used to be friends, you and I. (to MITHROTH) Anyway, enough detail?
MITHROTH Not bad. You know, Jack, I’ve come to think despite all your ravings – this has to be said – I suspect you know nothing of truth.
JACK Ya? When I look into your eyes I can see what you’re going to say next.
MITHROTH What?
JACK I can see your dialogue written right there. (as MITHROTH) You mean – what do you mean?
MITHROTH You mean – what do you mean?
AUDREY I am having an affair with Humphrey.
JACK Aha.
AUDREY I love him.
HUMPHREY You do?
AUDREY Madly.
HUMPHREY I’m so so…. moved. You dear sweet person.
AUDREY You dear sweet person.
HUMPHREY O, I say.
JACK What confused consternated crap. What is it?
AUDREY Humphrey is sensitive.
JACK I’m sensitive.
AUDREY He’s considerate.
JACK I’m considerate.
AUDREY He’s caring.
JACK I’m caring.
AUDREY He’s passionate.
JACK This is stupid. Don’t, for god sake, don’t. Don’t do this. Why? Tell me that at least. Stay. I’ll cook only Italian all the time. Just Italian. Classic mezzogiorno. No more experiments.
AUDREY I hate your cooking.
MITHROTH Never explain, Audrey.
JACK is beside himself.
JACK I’ll get lawyers. You’ll wish you’d never been born.
AUDREY I already do.
JACK sighs.
AUDREY We wanted too much of each other
JACK But that’s what love is. That’s exactly what love is. Its a whole package…. That’s it, a whole package. A whole bloody package. What a quagmire.
JACK silently leaves.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene eleven
AUDREY’s office. A discrete collection of model Eiffel Towers. AUDREY stands, contemplating a large medical drawing, a cutaway of a rectum.
JACK enters.
AUDREY Jack.
JACK Audrey.
AUDREY How surprising to see you.
JACK Why not?
AUDREY Why not indeed.
JACK looks at the medical drawing.
JACK Interesting….
AUDREY A trifling post-conceptual rendering.
JACK But large.
AUDREY Yes. So goes the scale, so goes the mind.
JACK looks out the window.
JACK I feel so disoriented – I’ve lost my way – the town seems different somehow.
AUDREY Demonstrate, please.
JACK More mountains. And more scars on said mountains. Drat. And why is this? I am distressed, again anxious. A veritable quagmire.
AUDREY Poor dear thing.
JACK picks up an Eiffel model.
JACK This one?
AUDREY Yes?
JACK I believe it was the first.
AUDREY Was it?
JACK Yes. Bought on the Boulevard Saint-Jacques.
AUDREY The day François promoted you to souschef.
JACK Yes. We had such a lovely time.
AUDREY In Paris?
JACK Yes.
AUDREY Yes. My work at the Sorbonne. Life was powerful then.
JACK Yes. Now sad.
AUDREY Why?
JACK I will not be diminished by anything less that the truth. I wish to be loved.
AUDREY You dear mad thing.
JACK I will hardly accept such rendering of my fragile social persona.
AUDREY is wearing the HUMPHREY medallion; JACK notices it.
JACK What is that, pray tell?
AUDREY What, dearest?
JACK That medallion – I do not recall it.
AUDREY This? It’s nothing.
JACK O?
JACK sighs.
JACK I know you don’t love me anymore – what am I to do?
SFX: Loud car crash.
JACK turns, terrified, towards the sound.
Suddenly, AUDREY is in great pain. She clutches her midriff.
JACK What’s this? What’s this?
AUDREY Pain.
JACK Digestion?
AUDREY Not. A possibility has been suggested by The Prince Mithroth…. I wish you liked The Prince Mithroth.
JACK His diagnosis, please.
AUDREY Inflamed gall bladder.
JACK Where is this gall bladder? Demonstrate please.
AUDREY Attached to the liver.
JACK How dark and confusing.
AUDREY There. There…. its passed.
JACK Good. Still….
AUDREY What?
JACK Dust, nothing but dust.
AUDREY How nice – you remember Mr Eliot. I must, I must go. A surgery to perform.
AUDREY exits.
JACK weeps.
JACK Bitter tears
SANDY appears, carrying a swaddled BOB.
SANDY You did good, Jack. You stood up to her.
JACK I will not be diminished, Sandy.
SANDY I know. Here, hold Bob.
JACK nuzzles Bob.
JACK I love this.
SANDY It’s Terry’s favourite thing too.
JACK You think I did good?
SANDY nods.
JACK Then why do I feel so bad? Poor me, poor me, ever the jealous brooder. A sink full of wet socks. What to do but wring them out and hang them to dry? Spilling the lentils. The sound of it. O fuck, I say. Well, wouldn’t you?
SANDY Jack. Dear Jack. Jack Jack Jack – I know I would.
JACK smiles.
JACK Would you?
SANDY Of course.
JACK, a sigh, a moan.
JACK I’m fading fast, sissy. Dear Jack says you, poor Jack says I, but, hey, a life definitely on the wane. O man. O man. I go to her office, I confront her, I express my pain. All the time I’ve wasted. Always Audrey. (as AUDREY) After all these years, Jack, you poor slob, what can be left between us? (as HIMSELF) Always Audrey. Only Audrey.
JACK, a small sob. BOB joins in. SANDY tries to take BOB – JACK gently but firmly holds onto the child.
JACK (to BOB) You dear little thing.
JACK looks at BOB; hugs him.
JACK (to SANDY) And I am, yes I am a poor slob – and that’s what’s left and that’s the very point. It’ll never be as good again, Sandy. Never. A package of shite. That’s it, that’s it exactly…. a package of shite.
BEAT.
JACK Drat.
END OF ACT
TO BLACK
•
ACT TWO
SCENE SET 04 – DARKNESS AND BLACKNESS
scene twelve
A prison camp. JACK, AUDREY and HUMPHREY in the yard. Is it raining? Or just a mean and bitter drizzle?
HORST, the commandant, and CURLY, a soldier, enter.
CURLY Attention, attention prisoners. Line up for inspection. Now now now – you can do better than that mealy slugged-faced fucking moronic shit for brains beasts of the rectum fucking shites.
JACK groans.
AUDREY Shush.
HORST (to HUMPHREY) You.
HUMPHREY Yes, Doctor.
HORST (to HUMPHREY) Your personal hygiene is disgusting.
HUMPHREY Yes, Doctor.
HORST No food for this man for two days.
CURLY Sir.
HORST (to JACK) You. I don’t like the glint in your eyes.
JACK Ha.
CURLY What?
HORST Beat this man.
AUDREY No, Doctor, don’t.
HORST What?
JACK What she means is – ah….
HORST What?
JACK I know what – there’s been a small error.
HORST An error?
AUDREY We shouldn’t actually be here.
CURLY laughs.
HORST (to CURLY) Shut up.
CURLY Sir.
HORST indicates AUDREY’s medallion.
HORST What is that?
HORST tears the medallion from her neck.
AUDREY Ow….
HORST (reading) The fear of everything is love.
HORST scoffs.
HORST I don’t think so. Pathetic.
HORST slaps AUDREY.
HORST No, less than pathetic – pathetic would be an achievement for you.
HORST spits in AUDREY’s face.
HORST Where did you get this?
AUDREY He gave it to me.
HORST indicates JACK.
HORST This one?
AUDREY indicates HUMPHREY.
AUDREY No…. him.
HORST No food – three days.
CURLY Sir.
AUDREY We are not the people you think we are.
HORST No? Aha….
AUDREY We’re Audrey and Jack.
JACK Harmless.
AUDREY Perfectly harmless.
JACK A smidge complicated.
AUDREY But who isn’t.
HUMPHREY That’s so very interesting. I was thinking that very same thing earlier today. Your hospitality, Doctor, allows me much and plenty time to think. I’ve discovered my life isn’t always what I thought it was. Can you believe it?
HORST Beat this man.
CURLY beats HUMPHREY.
JACK I hate this.
AUDREY Shush.
JACK And there’s always new people – everywhere I look I see new people – and I don’t know them and I don’t want to know them. Does that make me a bad person?
AUDREY If only we could get a message to The Prince Mithroth.
JACK I can’t bear this anymore. I feel so disoriented. I can’t wait, I don’t want to wait, I’d rather die. Drat. This, this is a quagmire.
The sun is large as it suddenly sets. Very large. Very stunning.
HORST and CURLY turn to admire the setting sun; they are captivated by the sight.
HORST Beautiful, simply beautiful.
CURLY So so beautiful.
JACK Here’s our chance to escape.
HUMPHREY Take me with you.
BABY JACK appears.
BABY JACK And me. Please take me – please – if you would be so gracious and forever kind.
JACK It’s Baby Jack.
BABY JACK How are you, my dear benevolent generous sir.
JACK (to HUMPHREY) Scoop up the kid and let’s boot it.
HUMPHREY scoops up little BABY JACK; they run fast and far. Eventually they are on a city street.
AUDREY Which way should we go?
JACK I don’t know. I don’t know this place. I feel so disoriented.
HUMPHREY I’m going to wait at that bus stop.
BABY JACK A most excellent plan; I agree completely.
AUDREY Bus stop?
HUMPHREY The two of us, we’ll just blend right in. What could be more natural than a man and a baby?
AUDREY A bad idea.
JACK Very bad.
BABY JACK We simply don’t concur – surely a most reasonable product of discourse? – and that is that. A pity but regrets, ah yes, regrets, I’ve had some few. Still, one must go on….
HUMPHREY The bus stop is a perfectly sensible idea.
AUDREY Jack, do something.
JACK shrugs.
Suddenly a truck screeching to a halt. SFX: truck breaks, noisy.
JACK and AUDREY hide behind a potted plant.
CURLY and HORST jump out. HUMPHREY panics, drops BABY JACK, and runs.
CURLY Hey, stop. Stop.
HORST Nevermind – kill him.
SFX: Machine gun fire.
CURLY shoots the fleeing HUMPHREY who falls horribly dead.
AUDREY & JACK O my god.
BABY JACK And me? What of me? What of poor dear little innocent me? Am I to die in the street as if a impoverished persecuted plague ridden god-forsaken rodent?
HORST (to CURLY) This one, this one I want to keep.
AUDREY & JACK O my god.
JACK and AUDREY turn and run.
JACK Which way?
AUDREY What about those woods?
JACK Where?
AUDREY There.
JACK O you are clever.
AUDREY Act natural.
JACK O ya, like I’m feeling really natural.
AUDREY Let’s not run.
JACK But I want to run.
AUDREY Put your arm around me.
JACK I’ve forgotten how.
AUDREY Shush….
JACK and AUDREY reach the woods and hide.
JACK O my god – look.
HORST is lurking about at the fringes of the woods.
JACK This was a stupid place to hide.
AUDREY O ya, right – and we had a whole lot of choice.
JACK Paris would’ve been a better choice.
AUDREY smiles.
AUDREY Shush….
HORST is just in front of JACK and AUDREY – he doesn’t see them.
JACK jumps out and tackles HORST. They struggle.
HORST You…. will regret…. this….
JACK Audrey…. Audrey…. kick him in the balls.
AUDREY Jack, what a horrible thought.
JACK O I’m sorry, was I speaking out loud?
AUDREY laughs as she attacks HORST. HORST falls back, gasping in pain. JACK kills him with a large rock.
JACK Wow….
JACK falls over.
AUDREY Jack, what’s wrong?
JACK He cut me. Here….
JACK points to his thigh.
JACK Is it bad?
AUDREY Pretty bad.
JACK Drat, disorientation suddenly seems a nothing problem compared to this.
AUDREY Rest.
JACK You are kind to me
AUDREY No I’m not. Now be quiet.
JACK Tell me a story.
AUDREY Do you remember when we met?
JACK No. Yes. No.
JACK winces in pain.
AUDREY At that party. After finals. You came up to me and said: you’re the only one here I don’t know.
JACK I did, didn’t I?
AUDREY And then we spent the night under the dining room table.
JACK Ya.
AUDREY So many years ago.
JACK A lifetime ago.
AUDREY I’ve never loved anyone else.
AUDREY & JACK (singing softly) Clang, clang, clang went the trolley
Ding, ding, ding went the bell
Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings
From the moment I saw you I fell….
CURLY enters.
CURLY (calling off) Where’s the Commandant?
ANOTHER SOLDIER (off) I saw him go into the woods.
CURLY (calling) Hello…. Hello…. (calling off) Cover me….
CURLY enters the woods.
CURLY Hey, I see them….
JACK covers his face as explosions firestorms shrapnel as well as general impaling and uncontrollable spasms engulf the stage.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene thirteen
JACK’s kitchen. Early morning – the sun is just about coming up.
JACK enters, carrying a goldfish bowl.
The lights go out.
JACK Drat – what happened to the lights?
JACK, flashlight in hand, looks about the kitchen.
The kitchen is filled with various and many goldfish bowls; some of the fish are quite large though this may be a distortion due to the extreme curvature of the glass.
JACK (shouting) We have to protect the fish from the cat. If we had a cat….
Suddenly JACK rushes to gently pick up a fish.
JACK How did this get here?
A tear from JACK. Is it still alive?
AUDREY enters, dressed in a power suit.
AUDREY What happens?
JACK I don’t know.
JACK puts the fish in the water – it floats on the top.
AUDREY Dead?
JACK I don’t think so. O wait – its mouth is moving.
AUDREY Ha.
JACK looks at AUDREY – a pained look.
AUDREY Good. Well, I’m off.
AUDREY exits.
JACK (quietly) Will you be home for dinner?
SFX: A slashing whirling noise off.
AUDREY laughs, off.
JACK What?
AUDREY (off) You’re going to want to deal with this.
In a flap and a flurry, JACK exits to the garden. One of the salient features: layers of giant hedges. HORST and CURLY are cutting and slashing the hedges.
JACK Excuse me.
BEAT.
JACK (shouting) Excuse me.
BEAT.
JACK (shouting) Hey….
CURLY and HORST stop.
JACK What the fuck?
HORST Please refrain from foul language, sir.
JACK I’ll say exactly what I fucking well want to.
HORST I would advise you not.
HORST advances on JACK.
JACK This is my property. I advise you to shove your tongue up you rectum.
CURLY What did he say?
HORST I won’t repeat it.
CURLY Hey, was that the wife? What a peach.
JACK is aghast; he is about to speak when SANDY enters (pulling BOB behind her in a little red wagon).
SANDY What are they doing, Jack?
JACK Just a minute – wait – I don’t know.
HORST These types of hedges, they’ll be trouble latter on.
CURLY Lovely specimens….
HORST But frankly planted too close.
CURLY Much too close together.
HORST Later this will be a problem.
CURLY A big problem.
HORST You’ll thank us for this.
CURLY They always do.
HORST You’ll thank us.
CURLY And you’ll pay us.
SANDY What should we do?
JACK shakes his head.
SANDY A hedge as old as the hills. Ugly, now. Pity….
CURLY It needed to be done.
SANDY We should do something. Should we call Audrey?
JACK No god no.
HORST and CURLY laugh and laugh.
SANDY We should do something.
JACK Stop stop stop stop what you’re doing.
CURLY Or what?
JACK pulls out his penknife.
JACK Or this.
HORST and CURLY laugh, the tears steaming down their faces.
SANDY Wait a minute. Terry has something better.
SANDY exits, with BOB.
HORST Is that the knife she stabbed you with?
JACK Who?
HORST and CURLY laugh.
CURLY That Audrey person.
JACK No.
HORST Its not what we heard.
JACK I stabbed myself. Jesus….
CURLY While we’re talking we’re still on the clock.
HORST Paid by the hour.
JACK Not by me.
HORST Every second of your life that passes is gone – lost – forever.
CURLY The bill keeps getting bigger and bigger.
HORST An understanding will be required.
JACK Go. Go away. I don’t like you.
CURLY Boo hoo.
HORST Someone named The Prince Mithroth asked us to do this.
CURLY Or maybe it was the wife, eh?
JACK groans.
HORST You know this said The Prince Mithroth, do you, sir?
CURLY He told us to do this job.
HORST Then he run away.
CURLY He run far away.
HORST He run away into the night.
CURLY The deepest darkest night.
HORST Run run run run run away.
JACK I’m…. I’m I’m….
HORST sneers.
SANDY enters with a massive automatic weapon. A bazooka?
CURLY and HORST laugh.
SANDY I’ll take care of this, Jack. Stand back….
HORST More trouble, eh, Curly.
CURLY Always trouble, Horst.
HORST It follows us wherever we go.
SANDY cocks the weapon.
JACK O for god’s sake, Sandy, be careful.
HORST Yes, be careful, little woman.
SANDY Get out. Now.
SFX: SANDY fires off a burst.
CURLY The woman’s crazy.
HORST But I like her style.
CURLY We’re not finished.
HORST Not even close.
CURLY First, we’re going to do the work here.
HORST Then we’re going to do this little woman’s house.
CURLY Take it right down to the ground?
HORST That’s it – take it right down to the ground.
CURLY I’d like that. I’d really like that. I’d really really really really really like that.
HORST And then let’s crush that little baby Bob while we’re at it.
CURLY Ya, Let’s get rid of that Bob.
CURLY & HORST Oink oink oink.
CURLY and HORST laugh.
SANDY Take that…. and that….
SANDY shoots CURLY and HORST. SFX: Many gunshots. CURLY and HORST scream and fall dead. A messy affair.
SANDY You did good, Jack. You stood up to them.
JACK I don’t know.
SANDY You’re a brave man, Jack.
JACK I suppose….
SANDY I love you for it.
Police sirens in the distance.
SANDY Ugly, now. Poor hedge.
The lights come on.
JACK O, the power’s back.
The lights go out.
JACK Drat. What happened to the lights?
SFX: Loud car crash.
JACK turns, terrified, towards the sound.
END OF SCENE.
TO BLACK.
•
SCENE SET 05 – THE DEATH OF AUDREY
scene fourteen
JACK (off) Forget it, just forget it, Sandy.
Daytime. JACK’s large sunny kitchen. A large collection of colourful Eiffel Tower models squirreled here and there.
Bowls of goldfish – there are many such now in the kitchen.
JACK enters with a goldfish bowl. He puts down the bowl, opens a window and yells outside.
JACK (calling off) OK, I’m listening.
SANDY (off) Terry took the message.
JACK (calling off) What did she want? Her freedom?
SANDY (off) The message was: no message.
BOB cries.
SANDY (off) There there, you dear little piggy poo.
JACK & SANDY Oink oink.
JACK (calling off) Is she coming back, you dear old thing?
SANDY (off) O I’m sure I don’t know, you dear old thing. That’s too complicated for me. (singing) I will not languish.
JACK joins her.
JACK & SANDY (singing) I will not laaaaaaang-guish.
BOB joins in.
JACK (calling off) Just a minute, just a minute…. when did Terry take the message?
SANDY (off) Was there a message?….
JACK (calling off) Just a minute….
JACK exits outside.
BEAT.
AUDREY enters with a few suitcases and a large package.
BEAT.
JACK enters with goldfish.
JACK Ah. You. Well. Well well – this is a surprise.
AUDREY Look what I brought you.
JACK For me?
JACK opens the package – it’s a very large skillet.
JACK O? And will it fit on the cooktop?
AUDREY I wonder….
JACK gets into the skillet. He washes the salad greens. AUDREY laughs her big laugh.
AUDREY What are you doing?
JACK I’m making a salad for dinys.
AUDREY Like that?
JACK I always make my salads like this.
JACK sighs.
JACK When I do anything. Mostly nothing I do nothing.
AUDREY O what are you talking about?
JACK And where have you been? You used to live here. Its all running down. To nothing much. Drat. What if its all like…. like a bloody uncooked haggis. I will not be diminished. (doing a Scottish voice) You lie to me, you lie to me all the time.
AUDREY O my god, you sound just like my father.
JACK (Scottish voice) You’ve been gone for months. Or is it days? I might have wanted to go with you.
AUDREY There’s my freedom to consider.
JACK Freedom…. freedom. There’s a punchline to that…. I forget it. Drat. O I remember – you used to be honest. I loved you for it. Now the crow may be singing instead of the calf.
AUDREY O shut up. If you’re looking for a reason, honey, this is it.
JACK Don’t call me “honey” if you don’t mean it.
AUDREY snorts.
JACK You used to….
AUDREY What now?
JACK Mean it. I felt that anyway.
AUDREY You used to be someone who wasn’t knock kneed crazy.
JACK O stop it. Look – my opinion….
AUDREY scoffs.
JACK Wait wait, I’m having an idea….
JACK picks up an Eiffel Tower.
JACK My opinion: Paris was a package.
AUDREY What?
JACK We were all together, of a thing, you and I and the rue Rivoli. And the metro and Chez François and everything. Every breath was a laugh.
AUDREY I don’t remember it like that.
JACK At least a chuckle? Work with me. Even fucking Mithroth had it right. Salad days. Lovely days. Paris was a package – that’s why we loved it. Its all about Paris. And the package, the whole package. That’s it – the whole package, you got to take the whole package. That’s it that’s it. There’s no substitution. The whole package. No. No no. No no no no. Don’t say anything – hear me out. I’ll lose my thread. Its like at a country auction. You bid a box, you bid on a box – its a lot. You bid on a lot – three bucks – and you take the whole box – lock stock and box. That’s it, mama. You have to take the whole package.
AUDREY I hated Paris.
JACK How could you? Paris was kindness.
AUDREY wavers, uncertain on her feet.
AUDREY What do you mean? Kindness? What do you mean?
JACK Kindness? Its the opposite of – what? – fear. What, what are you afraid of? It all started in Paris. Don’t you remember?
AUDREY I was never in Paris.
JACK The scar capital of France?….
AUDREY laughs. Suddenly, she collapses, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.
JACK What? What?
JACK takes AUDREY in his arms.
AUDREY mumbles.
AUDREY Kindness….
JACK What?
AUDREY All those times I said I loved you…. all those times…. was I lying?
BEAT.
AUDREY You should’ve be kinder.
JACK Me? You, you’ve never been kind enough. No no, I can’t do this anymore.
AUDREY Dear O dear, its too late.
JACK It’s never too late.
AUDREY I think I meant it.
JACK About love?
AUDREY Or did I?
AUDREY dies.
SFX: Car crash, far in the distance.
JACK is in shock; he feeds the fish.
END OF SCENE
TO BLACK
•
SCENE SET 06 – LIVING ALONE
scene fifteen
JACK is standing in the foyer of a large art museum. We see a sign: THE LIFE OF AUDREY.
HUMPHREY and NATALIE enter. JACK rubs his hands gleefully.
JACK Humphrey and Natalie, thanks so much for coming by. I wanted you to be the first to see the exhibition.
NATALIE It’s not open yet?
JACK Not yet. Soon, though, and a jovial time it’ll be – I’m already having a good time.
HUMPHREY Well then I’m honoured. We both are….
JACK I thought it was important you see it. Give me your opinion….
NATALIE I’m sure we’ll love it – just as we loved Audrey.
JACK Thank you. (to HUMPHREY) You’ve been here before, haven’t you?
HUMPHREY Here? Yes, of course. An important art museum, this.
JACK Yes, I thought you’d say that. Come….
They enter the first room. Large photographs of a young AUDREY.
NATALIE O, she’s so young.
HUMPHREY Is it all arranged chronologically?
JACK It might be.
NATALIE So sweet…. especially this one is so sweet.
They stand in front of a photo of AUDREY; her first communion. She is dressed in white.
JACK Her first communion.
SFX: Liturgical music.
HUMPHREY Yet there is something – what is it? – something in the eyes.
JACK Excellent of you to notice. The glint. Hard light, the bride of Christ.
HUMPHREY Yes, quite….
JACK Yes, quite.
NATALIE Is that a scar under her eye?
JACK That? Just some dirt
JACK wipes the photo.
NATALIE It’s still there. It looks like a cut.
JACK Naw, it’s just a blemish on the photo. Nevermind. And this one….
They stand in front of an another photo – A teenaged AUDREY on a railroad bridge.
JACK She was obsessed with bridges.
NATALIE Was she?
JACK Yes. Afraid to be on them – afraid to ignore them. Something about juxtaposition.
HUMPHREY O? Interesting.
NATALIE Is that why she’s hanging – O my god can you believe it? – by one hand.
HUMPHREY Did she fall?
JACK Fall?
HUMPHREY After the picture was snapped.
JACK O? No. She let herself down slowly with just one arm.
HUMPHREY Impressive.
JACK A human being is a genius while truly engaged, fearless strong and brave.
NATALIE Her legs are all scared.
JACK Yes, so many scars in this life.
NATALIE Did she fall…. some other time?
JACK She never said. Well, enough of that. Come to the next room – there’s still much more.
They enter the next room. They stand in front of a picture of AUDREY and MITHROTH.
NATALIE Who’s that?
JACK Ah yes – Audrey’s long mysterious connection with Mithroth.
NATALIE The Prince Mithroth?
JACK Fucking Mithroth. She was always on about him. The Prince Mithroth wouldn’t like that. The Prince Mithroth couldn’t justify this. The Prince Mithroth always buttered his bread on the left side. The Prince Mithroth never jumped if he could hop. The Prince Mithroth was a friend of the poor and lonely. Especially the lonely.
HUMPHREY Was he an old lover of her’s? The first perhaps?
JACK I never knew for sure. I never asked. When she was working at the Sorbonne, she lived with him. Shared a flat. All I remember is tea, of course. Tea, bloody tea. Tea all the time tea. Here he’s looking for paper to write her phone number. But everything there was already used – not even a scrap available. They were so upset. Eventually he wrote it on his hand. You can just see it if you look closely.
HUMPHREY and NATALIE peer at the photo.
NATALIE Right…. you can just make it out. Regent seven, three something something two. The scar seems bigger here. From her communion, the same scar only bigger. See that penknife.
JACK Where?
NATALIE On the table. Is that what caused the scar?
JACK I don’t know. Yes. Yes, they’re over here – her’s and mine.
They move to the penknife case.
HUMPHREY And beautiful objects they are too.
JACK Not bad. They’re Croatian army issue.
NATALIE You mean: Swiss.
JACK No, we couldn’t afford those. I’m sick of this room – let’s move on. Coming, Humphrey?….
HUMPHREY O yes.
They enter the next room. They stand in front of a picture of naked AUDREY and naked HUMPHREY routinely rutting.
NATALIE is shocked.
NATALIE O….
JACK I thought you’d find it interesting. Not really porno. More like cheesecake.
JACK laughs.
JACK In and out in and out. Groaning and moaning. I love you I love you I love you. Humpty Dumpty humping Humphrey.
JACK laughs.
HUMPHREY How how did you get this picture?
NATALIE glares at HUMPHREY.
JACK Being invisible can be very very advantageous.
NATALIE Invisible?
JACK I’ll teach you sometime. Old Tibetan technique. Ha.
JACK laughs.
NATALIE This is horrible.
JACK Quite right. (to HUMPHREY) Every bloody ejaculation you had scarred me. Me.
NATALIE sobs.
JACK And you too. Sure, why not? Why should you be exempt? All we do is give each other scars. The realization, horrible that it is, that she is lying, lies, was lying to me all all the time.
AUDREY IN MEMORY I said I was at the office, but I was at a conference.
JACK IN MEMORY And you didn’t tell me. I might have wanted to go.
AUDREY IN MEMORY I don’t have to be everywhere with you.
JACK IN MEMORY There’s a punchline somewhere here, but I forget it.
JACK turns to HUMPHREY and NATALIE
JACK What good is it?
HUMPHREY Is that the punchline?
JACK Not yet. I wanted her to accept my scars but I never would accept her’s. Drat. Unkind of me.
HUMPHREY Is that the punchline?
JACK You have to take the whole package, take your fictions – match your fantasies. That’s the punchline. God, you know, I just thought of something. I always wanted her to take the whole package – but I never did myself. What was I thinking? The whole package, taking the whole package, that thing, that thing works both ways. Its a two way street, brother. And it never occurred to me – imagine. Drat. Too late now, eh? Let’s move on, shall we?
NATALIE Is there?…. more?….
JACK Cheesecake? No, that’s done.
HUMPHREY But maybe we’ve had enough…. of this.
JACK Apparently you never do.
HUMPHREY What?
JACK Have enough. Ha.
NATALIE I don’t feel well.
JACK No no, finish the tour – please please please. I promise you’ll love the last room.
They enter the last room. A large photo of dead AUDREY.
JACK Just moments after.
NATALIE It’s horrible. The blood….
NATALIE falters.
JACK Death – the final scar.
AUDREY IN PHOTO Is that about kindness? About being kind? Is that what you mean?
JACK IN PHOTO Kindness? What? What are you afraid of?
Suddenly, AUDREY IN PHOTO collapses, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.
AUDREY IN PHOTO Dear O dear. It’s too late.
AUDREY IN PHOTO dies.
JACK So…. the final question: is it worth the tour?
HUMPHREY Is any life ever worth it?
NATALIE cries.
JACK O dear. I’m so sorry, Natalie. Inadvertent scars are the worst. The very worst. I’m so sorry. Here, take my hand….
END OF SCENE.
•
scene sixteen
In a large supermarket; everywhere lovely piles of colourful foods – parsnips, oranges, tomatoes, kale.
JACK, holding a sleeping BOB, is raving at SANDY.
JACK Who was it who always said: she’s looking for you?
SANDY That was me, Jack, me – your sister.
JACK Yes, that’s right. She was pissed off. Hurt. Why? I was at home, always at home. She knew where to reach me. She could have called. I’m not even sure I now know who she was. After all those years. And for what? Dear O dear. Regret, nothing but regret now. I feel so disoriented.
SANDY Poor Jack.
SANDY takes his hand.
JACK What I thought I would do. Books I would read. The War and Peace syndrome. Books I would write.
SANDY Cookbooks?
JACK Gushy fiction.
SANDY How clever you are. Terry thinks so too.
JACK My life is like being on the beach. Waves pounding in on me. The singing crow instead of the calf. If you could change one thing from your past, one single thing? What would you choose? Me, I’d be smarter about who I marry.
SANDY Everybody says that.
JACK shrugs.
Suddenly, across the supermarket JACK sees MITHROTH arm in arm with HUMPHREY.
JACK O my god – it’s him. And that other guy….
SANDY Who, Jack, who?
JACK Fucking Mithroth…. and bloody Humpty-Dumpty. What a quagmire.
SANDY You mean over there in front of the zucchinis?
JACK is speechless – he nods.
SANDY Didn’t I meet them somewhere?
SANDY starts to peer – JACK pulls her down behind the oranges.
JACK Don’t look, don’t look – I don’t want them to see me.
SANDY That’s so sad.
BOB wakes up; starts to cry. JACK is startled; he knocks over the oranges which roll everywhere.
JACK O god, we have to keep him quiet – I don’t want them to come over. (to BOB) There there, you dear little piggy – Uncle Jack is here.
BOB stops crying.
JACK Fucking Mithroth. I wish he would get Heartgohighhigh and be really sick and puke all over himself and bleed from his eyes. And Humphrey too, why not?
SANDY O, Jack….
JACK I am horrible.
BEAT.
JACK But I will not be diminished. I used to be a chef.
SANDY And a great chef.
JACK And a great chef – I’ll give you that – and then – suddenly – nothing.
BEAT.
JACK Audrey.
SANDY She was always difficult.
JACK Well it works both ways – I wanted her to take me as I was but did I accept everything she was? No. O my god. Wait a minute wait a minute I get it I get it. What was I thinking? I am diminished. Totally bloody fucking diminished. Drat drat drat drat drat. Diminished and scarred as bloody hell – and scary to boot. And nobody to blame but me.
END OF SCENE
•
scene seventeen
On a busy city street. Afternoon. A hint of snow in the air.
JACK, dressed like a conquistador, waits at a bus stop.
JACK (singing) I will not languish. I will not laaaaaaang-guish.
HUMPHREY – driving by in his car – stops when he sees JACK.
HUMPHREY Hey, great…. It’s you, right?
JACK What?
HUMPHREY That’s it – well put – what’s up? Like it, like it a lot. What’s up, Jack, what’s up? What’s up? What’s up what’s up?
JACK Do I know you?
JACK knows darn well who he is.
HUMPHREY It’s me…. Humphrey.
JACK Humphrey?
HUMPHREY The pilot. The one who crashed on your street.
JACK Right. The pilot. Right. Humping Humphrey. Humpty Dumpty Hamster Wamster Humphrey. Why should I talk to you?
HUMPHREY Saw a fellow by the side of the road – thought I’d stop.
HUMPHREY cries.
HUMPHREY I’m sorry I’m sorry…. I am bad. I am. Bad bad bad. Nobody likes me. My life has fallen apart. Everything I touch, dies.
JACK Ya, right, well, ya, we all have problems.
HUMPHREY (between the tears) Going somewhere?
JACK What?
HUMPHREY (between the tears) You’re at a bus stop. So I figured….
JACK Got to catch a plane. If ever there was a bus, which there isn’t and anyway, got to catch a plane.
HUMPHREY Where to?
JACK Paris.
HUMPHREY Paris?
JACK Someone I was. Want to be again. Or something.
HUMPHREY I’ve been feeling like that too.
JACK Everyone does – it’s the curse.
HUMPHREY (tears) Except I don’t know where to go.
JACK I learnt how to cook in Paris. God, that was good. Those were great times.
HUMPHREY Always got to help a man get to Paris. Article of faith. Pop on in – I’ll give you a lift.
JACK Beyond salvage.
HUMPHREY Why, when’s the flight?
JACK looks at his watch.
JACK Three minutes ago. Drat. What a quagmire.
HUMPHREY O?
JACK You know, you can never start out too early. Man O man O man – my enthusiasm is running way down.
HUMPHREY Ha. Well then – why not? – let’s go for a coffee. Have a chat.
JACK sighs.
JACK May as well – life is shorter by the minute.
JACK gets in the car.
They drive around.
HUMPHREY You seem quiet.
JACK You don’t really know me.
HUMPHREY But I’d like to.
JACK Truth, old Humphrey, I’m feeling distracted.
HUMPHREY As if your life has become a very particular sort of unrecognizable fiction?
JACK Pretty darn accurate – how did you know that?
HUMPHREY Just lucky. Here’s a good place.
They park in front of a big complex housing a number of restaurants.
HUMPHREY That place up there.
JACK It’s a bar.
HUMPHREY Too early for you?
JACK Sure. Why not? Wait, I know this place. Its Chez Zuzu. I thought it was somewhere else.
DELORES bars the entrance.
DELORES Private party.
JACK Delores – hey it’s me, Jack.
DELORES I know it’s you, Jack. Chez Zuzu is now forever closed to you. No trouble, Jack. Please, no trouble.
HUMPHREY Bloody hell.
DELORES I’ll thank you not to be abusive.
HUMPHREY You don’t know who I am, do you?
DELORES And I’m darn sure not interested.
HUMPHREY God, you sound just like me. We could be friends.
DELORES I have more than enough friends already.
JACK laughs.
JACK Please, Delores – for old time sake? I could use a little pick-me-up this morning. Its cold – I could use my coat.
DELORES laughs.
DELORES Sorry, Jack. I wish I could.
HUMPHREY Do you? Do you? I don’t think so. You’re a bitch queen, that’s what you are – a bloody bitch queen.
DELORES cries.
JACK Jesus, Humpy – take it easy.
HUMPHREY Women and their tears – can’t take it. Never could. Reminds me too much of old Mum.
SANDY enters.
SANDY (to DELORES) O you poor thing.
SANDY puts her arm around DELORES.
JACK What’s happening, Jack?
JACK Where’s Bob?
SANDY Terry’s got him.
HUMPHREY I’ll tell you what’s happening – she won’t let us in – that’s what. Quite nasty about it.
SANDY Who are you?
JACK Humphrey, this is my sister, Sandy.
HUMPHREY But we’ve met.
SANDY I doubt it.
HUMPHREY Just like Old Mum. Buggers….
SANDY (to HUMPHREY) Be quiet. (to JACK) Is this about that damned penknife?
JACK Drat. How do you know about that?
HUMPHREY O we all know about that.
SANDY How could you, Jack?
JACK I didn’t do anything to Audrey.
HUMPHREY That’s not what I heard. I saw the scars.
SANDY You did it to yourself – its the same as doing it to her.
JACK She did it too.
HUMPHREY But did she?
SANDY Audrey can be very difficult but you all loved her. Anyway, loving isn’t owning. Look, I’ve got to go – got a date with Dad.
SANDY exits.
We see OLD BILL in the distance; BILL waves and is gone.
DELORES She’s nice, your sister.
HUMPHREY I can’t say I care much for her.
JACK Shut up.
DELORES Ya, shut up.
JACK takes DELORES’ hand
JACK It’s good to see you.
DELORES You too.
JACK We used to be good friends.
DELORES Ya.
JACK What happened?
DELORES Life got in the way.
HUMPHREY It always does.
JACK and DELORES ignore HUMPHREY.
HUMPHREY I said: it always does.
They continue to ignore HUMPHREY.
DELORES I miss her. That laugh…. I loved that laugh.
JACK Ya.
JACK nods.
JACK Ya.
DELORES Sometimes I hear it on the wind.
JACK That’s sweet.
HUMPHREY Isn’t it interesting you say that. I was thinking….
DELORES: a hard look at HUMPHREY.
DELORES (to JACK) Be careful.
JACK Why?
DELORES indicates HUMPHREY.
DELORES I don’t trust him.
HUMPHREY Me? How can you say that about me?
DELORES I got a bad feeling.
JACK Thanks, Delores. Thanks.
DELORES and JACK hug.
HUMPHREY and JACK exit to the car.
JACK Well, that was sort of good.
HUMPHREY Merely mundane. You see a lot of that these days.
JACK Look Humphrey, I’ve had just about enough of you. I’m going….
HUMPHREY O no don’t – we’re getting on so well.
JACK looks at HUMPHREY.
JACK I don’t think so.
HUMPHREY I’m famished. We could go to L’Express. The poulet au citron is utterly fabulous these days.
JACK It’s Jean-Jacques’ secret saffron source.
HUMPHREY So I’ve been told. Uses grappa to marinate the bird….
JACK Alright, let’s go. But I have to drive.
HUMPHREY O? Can’t do that, I’m afraid. Can’t do that. This is a prototype, this is a special – a very special – automobile. I’ve promised my mechanic chap I would be the only one who drove it. Sort of a family heirloom in waiting if you get my drift. Sorry….
JACK I have to drive.
HUMPHREY But its left hand drive. You know, the opposite of the right hand drive. Which – if your stop to consider it – is dashed confusing. Cause left hand drive is on the…. right hand side of the car. Which is rum and confusing also. Dashed confusing. And then there’s the question of pedals. Because they don’t seem to be reversed. They’re the same whether they’re on the right or on the left. Or are they?
JACK I have to drive.
HUMPHREY sighs; he tosses the keys to JACK.
JACK Which one is the break pedal again?
HUMPHREY grimaces. They drive.
JACK This is fun. I can see why everybody does it. I’ll tell you something for nothing, old Humph. Revenge is never never sweet. Never never sweet. Somehow, now, there’s no point to it. All I can feel is everything I’ve lost. Drat. Could I ever get it back again?, that’s the question. That’s why I was going to Paris. And the answer is….
HUMPHREY Hey wait – can’t concentrate – this is the wrong direction to L’Express.
JACK O? No problem. Easy to fix. Today, everything’s easy to fix.
JACK does an illegal U-turn.
HUMPHREY Are you crazy?
JACK Relax…. (singing) I will not languish. I will not laaaaaaang-guish.
SFX: Screeching of breaks; a speeding car hits in the middle of the turn; an ugly nasty noisy crash.
JACK is killed; he is covered in scars and blood.
HUMPHREY O my god – he’s dead. And they’re all going to blame me. You’re all going to blame me. I didn’t cause these scars. And the blood. Blood. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t even driving. I wasn’t even driving. Dear O dear O god O god.
END OF SCENE
TO BLACK
•
SCENE SET 07 – A REDEMPTION OF SORTS
scene eighteen
Evening. Chez Zuzu.
Bustle and noise. The occasional snatch of singing. Its all very familiar.
JACK and AUDREY enter.
JACK I don’t like this place any more.
AUDREY laughs, full and rich.
AUDREY We always come here.
JACK But now I only see its flaws: vast disconglomerated nothingness, lacking in true variety.
AUDREY Disconglomerated?
AUDREY chuckles.
JACK And brutal management and bloody hot.
AUDREY Take off your bloody coat.
JACK Ya? No. Once they almost destroyed it – I won’t give them the satisfaction.
AUDREY It’s summer, Jack.
JACK I love this coat.
AUDREY sighs.
JACK O well, it’s just a coat.
JACK takes off his coat, throws it on the floor.
AUDREY is surprised, then impressed.
They sit at a table.
A folksinger, off, croons through an early Bob Dylan song.
FOLKSINGER (HUMPHREY) (off) How many roads must a man go down
Before you call him a man?
How many roads?
How many roads?
How many roads?
AUDREY O my god – that folksinger….
JACK I hate folk music.
AUDREY It’s Humphrey.
JACK No….
AUDREY Look.
JACK laughs.
JACK The evening is definitely picking up.
AUDREY Be nice. It’s my birthday.
JACK Don’t worry – I don’t mind if he’s out of tune.
AUDREY You’re acting strangely tonight.
JACK O, I don’t think so. Just same old bloody Jack.
JACK laughs.
AUDREY Ummmm?….
SANDY enters. She struggles to the table carrying a tray of tiny succulents and baby BOB in a carrier.
SANDY (calling) Hi there….
SANDY gives AUDREY the succulents.
SANDY Happy birthday, you dear old thing.
JACK And you brought Bob.
SANDY I brought Bob.
JACK Where’s Terry?
SANDY The poor thing – he feels crazy. (to AUDREY) He sends his love.
AUDREY That’s sweet.
JACK nuzzles BOB.
JACK Baby baby Bob, you’re such a baby baby darling.
SANDY Audrey? Would you like to nuzzle Bob?
AUDREY Ah…. ummmm….
MITHROTH enters.
AUDREY It’s The Prince Mithroth….
JACK Fu….fu…..fu….fu….
AUDREY Jack….
JACK Fu…. fu…. Fabulous Mithroth.
JACK laughs.
JACK Ha.
AUDREY Ha indeed. (calling) Prince Mithroth, Prince Mithroth. We’re over here.
MITHROTH waves and comes to the table.
MITHROTH Hello, hello all…. I’ve brought no gift. See? No gift. Why?, you ask. I’ll tell….
JACK Looking forward to it.
AUDREY glares at JACK.
JACK (to AUDREY) No I mean it.
MITHROTH Thank you, dear boy. First, I thought: only emeralds would do. But alas, the emerald market is deplorably depressed. Only pathetic, though admittedly greenish pebbles remain. So – instead – I brought you myself to do with as you will….
MITHROTH and AUDREY laugh.
AUDREY How charming you are.
SANDY rolls her eyes and JACK laughs.
AUDREY Sit over here by me.
JACK Do you know my sister, Mithroth?
AUDREY (sotto voce to JACK) The Prince Mithroth.
JACK How could I have ever forgotten? Its The Prince Mithroth, Sandy.
MITHROTH I have not had the pleasure. O wait. O wait. I have had the pleasure. Both you and your Bob. I trust you’re both well.
SANDY I seem to remember, prince person, that you were in a boat?
MITHROTH O? Perhaps. Yes. Now, what’s the cuisine here?, might one ask.
MITHROTH raises his eyebrows.
MITHROTH Vitally continental?
SANDY I would call the menu here at Zuzu exactly standard plebeian bistro fare, prince person. Tasty…. if you’re hungry.
SANDY smiles at JACK.
MITHROTH O? Well said….
MITHROTH looks into SANDY’s eyes.
MITHROTH You know, I can see what you’re going to say next.
SANDY You mean – what do you mean?
MITHROTH I can see your dialogue written right there in your eyes.
SANDY O?
MITHROTH I knew you were going to say that.
SANDY Did you now?
MITHROTH And that too.
SANDY Well then, in that case, apparently now the calf may be singing instead of the crow.
MITHROTH O? Wait. No. I didn’t see that.
MITHROTH peers into SANDY’s eyes.
MITHROTH No, it’s not there. Strange. What does it mean?- the crow thing what what what the singing calf.
SANDY I think Bob said it first, prince person. (to BOB) Didn’t you, little piggy.
MITHROTH Oink oink.
MITHROTH and AUDREY laugh.
JACK glares at audrey.
JACK Let’s not have too many Bob jokes tonight, shall we?
MITHROTH Quite right. Now this crow thing, is it – perhaps? – the victory of violence? Better yet: the violence of hegemony?
JACK That’s very interesting, Mithroth – the crows over the calfs.
MITHROTH Exactly, dear Jack.
JACK Otherwise – dear O dear – and this becomes a revolution, it would mean it could mean: no more veal scaloppini.
MITHROTH Is that a tragedy?
SANDY Not if you’re a calf, prince person.
AUDREY laughs till tears come.
AUDREY That’s very funny, Sandy.
HUMPHREY enters, dressed in bell bottoms and carrying a guitar.
AUDREY Whatever are you wearing?
HUMPHREY Do you like it? Do you? You do, don’t you. I can tell.
JACK Humphrey, this is my sister, Sandy.
HUMPHREY We’ve already met – at your place. It was the day our house burnt down. (musing) Might have been the actual beginning of the end….
SANDY O yes…. did you rebuild?
HUMPHREY No, we just continued living in the rubble.
LAUGHTER.
AUDREY And this is The Prince Mithroth.
JACK They’ve already met.
HUMPHREY The Prince Mithroth? O my goodness. This is…. so special.
JACK You’ve already met him.
MITHROTH And why not do it again, dear Jack, why not do it again? (to HUMPHREY) Now tell me – be honest now – did anything every come of that rectal business?
AUDREY Shush.
HUMPHREY (stammering) O, I say….
JACK O, leave him alone, you two. Let’s not have too many Humphrey jokes either.
HUMPHREY Ah, yes, thanks. Birthday time, birthday. (to AUDREY) A little birthday something.
HUMPHREY hands AUDREY a book.
HUMPHREY An autographed copy of the erotic stories of Anais Nin. Very lovely…. very – well, it must be said – erotic.
AUDREY Ah….
MITHROTH I knew her, of course.
HUMPHREY Did you?
SANDY What was she like?
MITHROTH Very stylish. Very vain. Very secretive. I believe one of those stories is about me.
LAUGHTER.
JACK Very impressive.
MITHROTH – a little bow by way of reply.
HUMPHREY Do you like it? Is it just what you always wanted?
AUDREY’s fulsome laugh.
HUMPHREY Ah yes, funny, yes. But do you like it? Say you do.
BEAT.
MITHROTH So what exactly are you up to, Humphrey?
HUMPHREY I know this will sound strange, but I’ve had this vision – quite frightening really – and so I’ve decided to run away and embrace the bardic lifestyle.
SANDY What a fun idea.
AUDREY The bardic lifestyle? O, I see.
JACK Perfect. Just perfect.
MITHROTH I myself am not interested in such things. Anyway, I no longer have the voice for it.
SANDY Voice?
MITHROTH It’s all about singing, isn’t it, this bardic lifestyle? It always was when I was a lad.
MITHROTH sings Puccini, and quite good it is.
MITHROTH Best of luck, my dear fellow.
MITHROTH snaps his fingers. NATALIE comes over with champagne.
AUDREY Natalie?
NATALIE Hi everyone.
HUMPHREY Hello, Natalie.
NATALIE ignores him.
HUMPHREY Hello, Natalie.
NATALIE cries.
JACK O you poor thing. Here, sit down….
NATALIE Not only content to destroy my life and its innocent pleasures, this…. horny salacious lecherous…. hippy has given away all our money.
NATALIE glares at HUMPHREY.
HUMPHREY It seemed wrong, suddenly – do you know what I mean? – to own things.
MITHROTH Dear girl, I can see we need our champagne now more than ever. I have ordered the Pol Roger – 1990. A dark vintage.
NATALIE pours the champagne.
MITHROTH Does everyone have a glass? You too, dear Natalie.
NATALIE Merci.
MITHROTH A toast to the Goddess – Audrey – you are more beautiful with each passing year. And also – I feel genuinely inspired to do this – also to little baby Bob – may he grow up to be worthy of his name.
SANDY (to BOB) Did you hear that, piggy-poo? Piggy-poo piggy-poo.
JACK That’s kind, Mithroth.
MITHROTH, a slight bow to JACK. They all clink and drink.
JACK & AUDREY Yummy.
JACK and AUDREY laugh.
NATALIE And perhaps a book while you wait?….
NATALIE has a wagon filled with books. SANDY touches a few books.
SANDY I’m getting very hungry.
AUDREY Me too.
JACK Soon…. soon….
AUDREY But I’m hungry now.
JACK Wait a minute, can’t you?
AUDREY You never could plate up on time.
JACK If it’s worth waiting for….
MITHROTH Quite right, Jack.
JACK (to AUDREY) See?
MITHROTH Let’s have more of this fabulous champagne. Make it two more bottles, please, dear Natalie.
NATALIE Of course, Prince Mithroth….
Brushing HUMPHREY aside, NATALIE sets off.
JACK examines the books.
JACK Ah. Ha. This is a library full of scars.
AUDREY O shut up.
JACK Wait wait. I’ll show you a scar. All these books are by Anais Nin.
AUDREY Really?
MITHROTH Let me see that book.
MITHROTH examines the gift book.
MITHROTH Wait wait wait. This is decidedly not the Nin signature. I know her signature. This simply isn’t it. Wait wait wait. I know what our sly Humphrey’s done – he’s autographed the book himself, haven’t you, Humphrey?
HUMPHREY stammers.
JACK Well, when you’ve given away all your money what else can you do? (to AUDREY) That’s what I’m talking about – that’s a scar. (to HUMPHREY) You silly fool.
An embarrassed HUMPHREY looks out of the window.
HUMPHREY That big black cloud does seems rather large, doesn’t it? Or is it just me? Wait. Its…. crashed into that house. What? People running screaming. I feel very vulnerable at this moment. Very vulnerable. Its not a cloud at all. How could I have been so mistaken? Its…. its a giant fir tree and its fallen over. Now there’s fire. Flames. I shall never now never never survive.
NATALIE arrives with more champagne.
HUMPHREY That can’t be good.
NATALIE You’re a stupid stupid man.
NATALIE spits on HUMPHREY, who sobs quietly; BOB joins in.
JACK And that’s another scar….
SANDY There there, little piggy poo.
JACK Poor old Humpty-Dumpty.
JACK helps HUMPHREY to a chair.
JACK Humphrey, stop sniveling and sit down and join the party. I promise you – it’ll all be better.
HUMPHREY (between the tears) Will it?
JACK nods.
JACK Scars heal.
AUDREY rolls her eyes. In response: JACK rolls his eyes.
AUDREY Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me. I too – I too have genuine wounds and scars to show for it all.
AUDREY pulls up her pant leg.
JACK O ya, that one. Ya ya, that one – I’ve seen that one before.
AUDREY It bled.
JACK Ya, but not as much as mine.
JACK rips off his sleeve.
JACK I hit an artery – this one bled like a slaughtered bunny. The paramedic was less than sympathetic.
AUDREY I think she called us stupid.
JACK I had to agree.
AUDREY Maybe, I did too. Now this one….
AUDREY swivels to show her back.
AUDREY I did this one for you. Hard to reach….
JACK So, does that make it more important?
JACK takes off his shoe; shows the bottom of his foot.
JACK I did this one for you. Didn’t even use a mirror.
AUDREY hikes up her shirt.
AUDREY Now this – this – this one is a really ugly one.
SANDY Oooooo….
JACK What’s that?
AUDREY I fell out of a tree when I was seven.
JACK Yikes.
JACK lowers his pants.
JACK Me, this is the creme de la creme.
AUDREY That’s ugly. That’s really ugly.
JACK Is it the ugliest?
AUDREY Could be. So what is it?
JACK Can’t remember.
JACK and AUDREY laugh.
SANDY That was a Christmas scar, Jack. The tree fell on you.
JACK O goodness, I do remember. OK now, now its my turn.
JACK looks around the table, pleased. This is his place, his life.
MITHROTH More scars, Jack? Dear me, I don’t know if we’re up for it.
LAUGHTER.
JACK No more scars. I propose a toast to my darling wife and her whole package – the good the bad and the ugly – you have to darn well take it all. Which is probably on a good day the kindest thing we can do. To Audrey and all that you are.
ALL To Audrey.
They clink and drink.
NATALIE Tried my best, I tried my best to be kind to the people I love…. or thought I loved.
SANDY puts her arm around NATALIE.
SANDY I’m always kind to the people I love. (to BOB) Aren’t I, little piggy poo?
BOB coos. JACK kisses SANDY on the forehead.
JACK Yes, you are.
MITHROTH Kindness is often overlooked in the fracas of our lives but it is worth something.
AUDREY I always wanted to be kinder. I did.
MITHROTH Never too late, my dear.
AUDREY No?
JACK No. Never too late.
AUDREY (to JACK) All those times I said I loved you…. all those times…. I thought I meant it – was I lying?
JACK About love?
AUDREY Or was I?
JACK Do it for me? Do it for me.
AUDREY Be kinder?
JACK Yes. It is a birthday after all – a new beginning.
AUDREY A birthday.
JACK Happy birthday.
AUDREY Thank you.
AUDREY’s full passionate laugh.
AUDREY Alright, now where’s that Bob. Give me that Bob. I’m going to nuzzle Bob.
JACK My my….
SANDY Did you hear that, little piggy? Aunt Audrey now loves you.
MITHROTH I’m – dare I say it? – I’m pleased. Can those be tears in my eyes?
JACK Prince Mithroth, you are a true hombre and a half. How could I have not seen it? Have a glass, you old thing, and let me tell you all about the life of the mind.
MITHROTH Delighted, dear boy.
AUDREY Can we eat now?….
JACK catches NATALIE’s eye; he nods.
NATALIE The menu for tonight: Oysters à la florentine, épigramme of mutton, and for dolce – our specialty – coquilles Saint-Jacques de François.
AUDREY claps her hands in delight.
AUDREY My absolute three favourite dishes. Jack. Memories of Paris…. and dear young sweet love.
JACK Happy Birthday.
AUDREY O Jack. I take it.
JACK The whole package, eh?
AUDREY Still sweet.
JACK and AUDREY kiss.
Applause.
AUDREY takes JACK’s hand. Chez Zuzu to black; JACK and AUDREY to light.
JACK Look at you….
AUDREY Look at you….
SFX: Dance music. JACK and AUDREY dance.
Their waltz ends with hostilities – they pull viciously at each other’s noses.
AUDREY & JACK Ow.
AUDREY Stop that.
JACK You stop that.
AUDREY O shut up, and dance.
Again and again they dance.
AUDREY Zing zing.
JACK Zing zing zing zing zing….
AUDREY Went my heartstrings.
JACK & AUDREY I love you.
JACK Yes. Yes.
Falling in a heap, they laugh and laugh.
Till tears.
LONG FADE TO BLACK.
•
END OF PLAY
— Don Druick
————————
DON DRUICK is an award winning playwright, translator & librettist, a baroque musician, and a gardener and chef. In a career spanning more than 40 years, Don Druick’s plays have been produced on stage, radio and television in Canada, Europe, Japan, and the USA. His publications include playtexts, translations and critical writings. Publications of his plays, WHERE IS KABUKI? and THROUGH THE EYES, have both been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Awards. His current plays are: GEORGEVILLE (passion and poetry in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, 1816; the darkest night of Lord Byron), WILDEST DREAMS (a deconstructed narrative; something close to love amongst the elders), and a translation of Emmanuelle Roy’s play, LAZETTE. Druick lives in Elmira, a small Mennonite farming town near Waterloo Ontario, with artist Jane Buyers.
Jun 112013
bill hayward just sent me this dance piece, put together by Korhan Basaran over the last few days. If you’ve been following the news from Turkey, you’ll be able to read the “text.” Sad, sad, sad.
Korhan Basaran is Turkish dancer/choreographer, with whom bill has done a good deal of filming and dance choreography.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-MytkL_f6s[/youtube]
Jun 112013
Gordon Lish: Photo by bill hayward
Gordon Lish, despite his pesky notoriety vis a vis Raymond Carver, bestrides the American literary scene like a colossus but not, you know, in an obvious way because he stands outside the non-tradition of the marketplace, that other colossus. He is a restlessly prolific author, editor and teacher; his influence seeps into the interstices of the culture. He has established a taste and a method (see Jason Lucarelli’s “The Consecution of Gordon Lish: An Essay on Form and Influence“). His ghostly signature lies on what a lot of readers and writers today think of as good writing. There are websites devoted to listing the writers he has touched. The last American prose writer who had this kind of impact on the minds of the best writers of her era was Gertrude Stein. Like Stein, Lish is in the ranks of the avant garde, the Modernists. Once he was known as Captain Fiction and edited fiction for Esquire and later books for Knopf. I always found that amazing, a disjunct. Because the first piece of Gordon Lish fiction I read was his 1989 novel Extravaganza, which was unlike any American fiction I had read before (and, I thought, completely NOT mainstream — how could this guy be working for Esquire?). Extravaganza is 200 pages of borscht-belt standup comedy, one Jewish joke after another. There is no story at all, but gradually the language of the jokes becomes infected with references to the Holocaust, the hoary old jokes are disrupted with references to whips and cattle cars. It is a beautiful, scary, maddeningly recursive adventure. The recursiveness, the throw of grammar, lulls the reader, defines expectation. Then Lish defies expectation; violence, depradation, sadism, mayhem explode into the sentences.
So, yes, when I think of Gordon Lish, I think of Gertrude Stein, I think of Flaubert (Extravaganza seems like an heir to Bouvard and Pécuchet). I think of the avant garde. I think of a writer super-conscious of the role of language in the shaping of reality. I think of a writer steeped in Continental philosophy (Deleuze, Kristeva — and I think how extremely small-minded and beside the point are the debates about his role in Raymond Carver’s career). I think of a writer who has an almost mystical appreciation for the relationship of words (type, text) and the white space, the frame. I interviewed Lish once (I have published the sound file on NC: Causing Damage — Captain Fiction Redivivus: DG Interview With Gordon Lish), and we spent some time talking about this, his idea of cutting words to expose the “mystery,” the word “mystery” having, yes, a technical armature, almost tangible for Lish. We are talking here not of a mere writer of stories, but of a man who self-dramatizes as being on the world’s rim, the space between language and not-language. He gets your blood up, does Gordon Lish. His sentences make you itch to write.
All this by way of introducing the following brief, shocking excerpt from Lish’s 1986 novel Peru, just republished by Dalkey Archive Press with an introduction by the author. Peru is a compulsively “spoken,” recursive, stylized monologue that circles around and around the moment in 1940, when, at the age of six, the narrator murdered another six-year-old boy with a toy hoe in a sandbox. I give you here one of the great death/murder scenes, bizarrely dispassionate, full of a kind of schizophrenic detail and a consciousness on the narrator’s part of wanting to tell you the story correctly. So, at the outset, the first detail he tells you about the murder is that he could hear water running for the garden spigot, a detail that seems irrelevant and then compelling. We see the pitted marks the hoe leaves on the victim’s face. We see the victim getting up from his dying and stumbling around, watching his own dying. Everything is strange, focused, and unexpected. Lish escapes the novelese of conventional expectation and launches us into a realm of language and horror.
In addition to the excerpt, I point you here to David Winters’ excellent essay on the novel in 3AM Magazine: “Truth, Force, Composition.” Also, as linked above, Jason Lucarelli’s essay on Lish’s compositional method, called consecution, and my interview with Lish. Finally, the photographer bill hayward, long an associate and friend of Gordon Lish, recently allowed NC to publish a series of Lish portraits: Gordon Lish: Photographs — bill hayward.
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I’ll tell you one of the worst things in my life. This is one of the worst things in my life—a day when the nanny said that I couldn’t come over and play but one when she went ahead and changed her mind later on and said that I could actually do it—and then it started raining just a little bit after she’d said it, like just instants, just instants after she had given me her blessing—and then for the whole rest of the day, all the rest of that day after Andy Lieblich went in and the nanny went in with him, I sat down inside of our garage and kept feeling funny and out of the ordinary, like as if I was in some kind of trouble and that certain things which I did not exactly know about yet were probably dangerously unfinished, lying lopsided somewhere and being dangerous, and it made me feel a terrible wildness, this strange feeling, which I think, to my way of thinking as a child, was the worse one, the feeling before the feeling of wildness, the feeling of incompletion and of chaos, a feeling of things getting started and of never getting them over with, of parts of them being impossible for you to ever get them totally taken care of yourself.
In a halfway sense, I think I can say that the day I killed Steven Adinoff, that is, that that particular day—but only in this halfway sense of things which I have mentioned—was a day like that. On the other hand, now that I have said that, I think it is only fair for me to say that I have the feeling that I am making too much out of the thing, that I am probably not really remembering anything.
I should be skipping the feelings and be sticking to other things, anyway. To what I remember because I actually heard it or saw it or so forth and so on—I should be sticking to things like this before things start getting too mixed up.
I heard the water going.
The whole time I was killing him I heard the water getting out of where the colored man had it hooked up to the Lieblich’s spigot—the water he was using for the Buick, the whole time the other thing was happening, the water for the fit between the hose, on the one hand, and the spigot, on the other, was a little bit loose, even though it was the colored man who had it hooked up and who—next to me, next to me—was the world’s most watchful human being in the whole wide world.
Even afterwards, even when I was going home, it was still going then, the tiny hissing was, like a sizzle, like the way a frying pan with some drops of water in it will sizzle, or make a sizzle, or sound like it’s sizzling.
The nanny saw it. Andy Lieblich saw it. So did Steven Adinoff himself. We all saw it. We all watched. Steven Adinoff watched just as much as anybody else.
That’s the thing about it—you watch.
That’s the unbelievable thing about it—that you watch it even if it’s you yourself that’s getting killed.
He watched himself get chopped up.
To me it looked like he was interested in just lying there and watching it. Because isn’t it interesting to watch it even if it’s happening to you? That you’re the one who’s getting it doesn’t make any difference. Actually, if my own personal experience can be counted for anything, that part of it—my opinion is that that part of it is the part of it which just makes you al the more interested in it.
But maybe he did not understand what was going on anymore, what connection there was between him getting killed and the hoe anymore, between what was happening to him and what I myself was doing to him with the hoe anymore. Maybe the thing was that Steven Adinoff was probably thinking of something else.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s what you do—you think of something else. Maybe you can’t even help it. Maybe you can’t even stop yourself from just going ahead and thinking of something which doesn’t have anything to do with the thing that is happening to you, except I myself don’t think that’s it, that that explains it, no.
But I don’t know what does, what would. I can’t even begin to guess, except for the fact that I think it’s got something to do with a nice feeling, with having a nice dreamy sleepy very special, very sleepy now feeling.
Or else I am overdoing it or am anyway just wrong. Maybe he just wanted to see how getting killed looked. Maybe it didn’t matter to him who was getting killed. Because for a lot of the time he just lay there watching instead of trying to get up and fight back and try to kill me back—and then he finally did, finally did get up—except that by then he was almost dead, except by then I think he was almost dead, even though he wasn’t actually acting dead, even though he just got up and started acting baffled and shocked instead of being sorrowful or mad at me. But I don’t think it was so much on account of someone having almost killed him as it was on account of his realizing how he’d missed the boat on this thing by getting distracted, by letting himself get distracted, and by not paying enough attention to it, or at least not to the part of it which really counted, until it was just too late and you felt silly for more or less being the center of attention of what’s going on but the last one to be informed as to what it is all about and means. I mean, I’ll bet it’s like finding out that you are the last one to get in on a secret which turns out to have been much more about you than you ever dreamed it was, ever could have, in your wildest dreams, dreamed of or thought of anything.
To my mind, Steven Adinoff was just woolgathering and then caught himself at it and went ahead and woke himself up and then noticed he was almost dead.
Except that it was just probably only a gesture by then.
There were pieces of his face—there were all of these cuts which were deep in his head.
Not that he couldn’t actually get up when he tried. He got right back up on his feet again and went and got the rake again and then he walked around for a while, then he walked in and out of the sandbox for a while, stepping up to get in it and then stepping down to get out of it, and meanwhile saying these different things and looking in his pockets almost all of this time, but some of it, some of the time, looking at me again and trying to get me with the rake again before I myself got ready to really buckle down to business again and kill him again and then he fell over again almost as soon as I got busy on him again and really dug in.
Anybody could tell that this time it was for good. It didn’t matter if you were just a six-year-old boy.
Any six-year-old could have killed Steven Adinoff.
Jun 112013
What he [Snowden] stressed is how they all work under a false premise; “If a surveillance program produces information of value, it legitimizes it … In one step, we’ve managed to justify the operation of the Panopticon”.
Oh yes, make no mistake; Snowden has carefully read his Michel Foucault (he also stressed his revulsion facing “the capabilities of this architecture of oppression”).
Foucault’s deconstruction of the Panopticon’s architecture is now a classic (see it here in an excerpt of his 1975 masterpiece Discipline and Punish). The Panopticon was the ultimate surveillance system, designed by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The Panopticon – a tower surrounded by cells, a pre-Orwellian example of “architecture of oppression” – was not originally conceived for the surveillance of a prison, but of a factory crammed with landless peasants on forced labor.
Jun 112013
“Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unverifiable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.”
Jun 102013
Steven Schwartz writes to his obsessions. Currently, he’s obsessed by success, failure, and redemption, fixations which contextualize the main conflicts of his short stories and novels. In the title story of his first collection, To Leningrad in Winter, Schwartz tells the story of manwho attempts to distance himself from his Jewish heritage even when faced with acts of anti-Semitism that compel him to join a cause. Lives of the Fathers, his second collection, follows relationships between family members as they attempt to grow up and distance themselves from their parentage. Schwartz’s title story of this collection is told from the perspective of a son who simply wants to help his father move after his mother’s death. But when his father ropes him into helping him pursue Victoria, his father’s ailing, long-lost love, the narrator realizes he may be unable to avoid repeating his father’s mistakes. Schwartz’s first novel Therapy is told from the perspectives of three interconnected characters, each working through family dilemmas, personal trauma, and therapy to find meaning and love in their lives. In his second novel, A Good Doctor’s Son, Schwartz tells the story of a teenager who grows up in a racially intolerant small town in Pennsylvania. After accidentally killing the child of a black family while drag racing, the main character refocuses his life by attempting to deal with the moral repercussions of his actions. Schwartz’s most recent collection, Little Raw Souls, features stories of characters faced with difficult situations that force them to question their complacency with their lives, such as a man who can’t seem to let go of the adolescent crush he’d had when his transgender cousin was a girl; a rancher easily fooled by a couple vagrants who camp on his property; a woman at an airport who contemplates spending the night with a stranger rather than telling her husband her wallet was stolen.
Following the release of Little Raw Souls and his recent reading at an independent bookstore in Denver, CO, I spoke with Schwartz on how he maintains flexibility in his writer’s voice, pursues his obsessions, and wrestles his material into character-driven narratives.
—Jacqueline Kharouf
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Jacqueline Kharouf: You wrote a very interesting essay about voice called “Finding a Voice in America,” which was published in the AWP Chronicle (Oct.-Nov. 1991) and later published in the craft anthology Bringing the Devil to His Knees. In the essay, you briefly discuss the discovery (or acceptance) of your “material” and that once you finally stopped avoiding it, you came into your voice: “[…] the writer’s voice emerges at the place where her unique experience meets the larger culture.” I think of the writer’s voice as an ever-evolving aspect of being a writer (or that as we have new experiences, we meet that “larger culture” in ever-different and unexpected ways) and I wonder how you’ve noted (or embraced) that evolution in your own career.
Steven Schwartz: I think it’s important to say that writers, especially younger writers, although this can happen at any stage, spend a lot of time running away from their material. And why do they do this? Well, for any number of reasons. They’re afraid of being boring, that is, what happened to them couldn’t possibly be of any interest to anyone else simply because it did happen to them. They’re worried about dredging up material that might hurt those close to them—even when it’s disguised as fiction or only inspired by real events. But you can’t run away from your material because you don’t choose it, it chooses you. Even writers who claim not to be autobiographical at all—as if this is something to be ashamed about, suggesting they have no imagination—you’re still unconsciously going to run into your own obsessions if you write long enough.
For me, I had this idea that plot alone would make me an interesting writer, until I came to understand that I was only using plot to avoid revealing anything about myself that might stray into dangerous emotional territory and risk being sentimental. But it quickly became obvious—and I remember the story in particular, “Monkey Business” in my first collection To Leningrad in Winter—that when I finally wrote about the pain of a lover having an affair, (and allowed the real life event to take imaginative flight) and saw the impact it had on readers, I understood voice came out of the depths of character.
That intersection you mention about voice emerging at the place where your unique experience meets the larger culture is always variable. Which is another way to say that your voice does change over time depending on everything from your new experiences to what you’re reading to what you choose to write about. The idea of “finding your voice”—that chestnut of writerly advice—makes you think once you have it, that’s it. Good. I’ve got mine, hope you get yours. But actually you have to lose your voice periodically to keep it alive. Otherwise it becomes stale because you’re clinging to what worked before.
One caveat here: I remember speaking with the writer Charles D’Ambrosio after he gave a reading of his wonderful story “Screenwriter” and asking him about its genesis. He told me something very interesting. He said, in fact, the story was all voice at one point, and he had to proceed in the opposite direction, find what undergirded the voice, a structure for that voice that had some sort of narrative arc. So you have to be aware that your work can actually depend too much on voice and neglect all the other fundamentals of craft.
JK: One of the most intriguing and moving components of your prose is your dialogue, which is always a showcase of the differences that put your characters at odds with each other and an opportunity for those differences—and degrees of separation—to reveal what the characters most want. I wonder if you could discuss how you work on dialogue and if you could explain a bit of your process for fusing motivation with desire in terms of the particular context you want to create for the story. Do you begin a story with a particular context already in mind? Or does the character (and his/her particular situation/conflict) shape the story context?
SS: As a child I was always listening, always the witness to a lot of other more flamboyant family members. I think many writers, who tend to be watchers or witnesses in their families, silently take on the voices around them for lack of having any voice themselves. They become mimics. They study their subjects. They teach themselves to imitate others in order to get attention. But with the polyglot of voices you’ve collected, you begin to populate an inner world, and you do that by a sort of talking to yourself. You then come to appreciate how sound can be associated with image and before long you’re creating stories that are more interesting than what’s going on around you. Soon you discover that lived life isn’t enough for you, that it needs to be heightened, in particular by language. That’s how you learn to speak.
Dialogue as everyone knows can’t just be about delivering information. It has to be about creating character. So while other people may be listening for information, all that watching and listening that you’ve done has primed you to hear resonance. You hear all the shadings of meaning, the tones and intentionality, the emotional landscape behind the words. Without realizing it, in the silence of your listening, you’ve been teaching yourself about subtext.
When I’m working on a story, I usually have some idea of when a scene has to occur and how vital it is to bring in the actual voices of the characters. In one of the more dialogue-heavy stories in Little Raw Souls, “Stranger,” I needed to allow these two strangers who meet in an airport and contemplate having an affair to speak for themselves, as if only direct testimony from them could explain their actions. So you might say that dialogue comes into play when it’s most urgent for characters to speak and no other words than theirs will do. Dialogue has to feel special in a story. What I mean by that is that when you come across it, you have to be a little thrilled to hear directly from a character, and if you’re not, then it’s either bad dialogue or it’s being overused. Dialogue has to have force behind it—a pressure to speak.
JK: I really enjoyed your reading and I especially admired how you handled the variety of questions that you received from the audience. The first question, in particular, was pretty interesting because someone asked about the risky subject matter of the story you read (the story includes a transgender character). The audience member didn’t say whether he liked the story or not, but if you had hesitations about sharing it. Do you think—in this current state of the culture, which tends toward shock value and grabbing the consumer’s attention with as little effort from the consumer as possible—an author should worry about what readers will think of their work?
SS: Well, the short answer is no, of course not. But let’s be honest. What writer doesn’t—especially in this age of populace commentary—peek at those sometimes nasty comments on Amazon or Goodreads. In the past, writers were more insulated from that opining. You published a book. Someone maybe sent a letter to you. Or to your publisher. But it was all relatively private. Not anymore. And those comments stay.
All that said, it still shouldn’t matter one bit. If you want to take risks as a writer, and you’d better, if they’re honest risks, then you have to find a way to block those outside voices that are more prevalent today than ever before and would like to tell you everything from how you should write (or not) to tips about your personal hygiene.
JK: What are your obsessions that you write towards in your work? Do you actively cultivate these obsessions in other aspects of your life (aside from writing) or, in writing about your obsessions, do you work through those obsessions as a way of learning and letting them go?
SS: You have to make friends with your obsessions. But the catch is you don’t know your obsessions until you write enough to discover them. What you think you’re obsessed with may in fact not turn out to be the matter at all. I know for a fact that I’m obsessed with success, failure, and redemption, but how those forces will play out I never know, and in fact, don’t want to know.
You can’t rid yourself of your obsessions but you don’t have to assume you’ll always be trapped into writing about them either. If you say, I’m not going to repeat myself in this book by writing about X or Y, you’ll undoubtedly do just that. On the other hand, if you don’t fear that you’ll repeat your obsessions, you’ll find that they evolve into fascinating elaborations on a theme. Thomas Wolf couldn’t seem to stop writing about going home, Fitzgerald about wealth, Flannery O’Connor about mother figures, Dostoyevsky about suffering, judgment, goodness, violence and a whole bunch of other obsessions bursting at the seams of his books. In short, you have to embrace your obsessions with a faith that they’re both inexhaustible and capable of transmutation.
JK:I’m curious about the hierarchy of characters in your first novel, Therapy. Each character has such depth and dimension that, as I was reading, I often thought that they could each carry on in their own separate narratives. The novel’s close third-person point of view mostly centers on Cap, but also dips into the perspectives of Wallis (Cap’s wife), Julian (one of Cap’s therapy clients), Celia (Julian’s classmate), and Anna (Julian’s reclusive mother). I wonder if you could talk about what you hoped these other points of view would reveal about the story. I think there’s a certain danger in having too many points of view—a need to collect more information than the reader needs to feel invested in the story—and a risk in creating red-herrings (events or people who turn up, seem important, and then don’t necessarily influence lasting change on the main characters or their situations). However, each of your characters, with their various issues and desires, propel the plot forward and you return to and revisit other characters (and simultaneously drop others) in a kind of juggling act that raises the stakes of the story the longer you keep this number of characters in play. Ultimately, the novel (and the point of view) culminates at the point in which Cap recognizes what I think is at the heart of all desires: “It was what he’d always wanted to know too. The riddle of The Thing: Am I loved?” (331).
SS: Among the different points of view in Therapy, I have, Julian, a young man in college who is epileptic, Cap, a psychologist, and Wallis, Cap’s wife. At one time I was trying to write three individual books about each of these characters, toiling away over a period of a decade. Then I realized they could all be united in one story by the device of therapy and benefit from working off of each other.
It’s always interesting trying to decide exactly who will be a primary character and who a secondary one. I just wrote a paper for a panel about this topic for the AWP conference, and one of the conclusions I came to is that secondary characters have to be distinct in their own right. They can resemble types but at the same time they have to freshen that type. Secondary doesn’t mean second rate. But they are basically there to illuminate the struggles of the major characters, as Celia does for Julian when she meets and falls in love with him. So secondary characters can often fulfill their role, contradict it, or exceed it, and you have to be alert to the possibility of discovering your secondary characters are outgrowing their intended potential.
This is far often more true for a novel than a short story, a short story being an exclusive operation that weeds out material and a novel being an enterprise that wants to suck in everything around it including the idle conversation you just had with your neighbor about cantaloupe at the market (“I know I can work that in!”). So one of the characters in Therapy, Maureen, with her highly charged sexual behavior, started out more as a minor character but blossomed into a major one as she got more involved with Julian and I had to understand her motivation. And once you start mucking around with a character’s actions, and those actions are perhaps damaging to others as in the case of Maureen, you almost have an obligation to investigate the complexity of why a character behaves as she does, and that in itself indicates you’re on to creating a primary character. You have to explore motivation in a way that even if an act appears random the possibilities of what caused that act are myriad and compelling, otherwise you’re light on character. In Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Bartleby literally winds up doing nothing, fading away as a human being, but it’s the why of his nothingness that makes this story a fascinating study of motivation with its possible social, economic, psychological, spiritual, philosophical explanations for behavior that can’t be reduced to one cause.
And this is where point of view often comes in, regardless of whether we’re talking about a primary or secondary character. I knew for most of the principal characters I could go into their heads, but with Maureen, I had to stay out of it, despite her being a major character. I simply could not do justice to—and in fact would be subtracting from—the nature of her behavior if I tried to explain her from the inside out. It was an intuitive decision to stay out of her head, as many decisions about point of view are, knowing that she would have more raw power as a character seen from the outside than from the inside. My friend, Robert Boswell, talks about the half-known world of characters, that “you can measure how successfully you’ve revealed a character by the extent to which his acts, words, history, and thoughts fail to explain him,” and I think that’s true of all characters: you don’t want to over-solve. If you do, their mystery disappears. You have to take the measure of how fully you’re going to expose each character, or to use your phrase, complete or make incomplete their lives.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with not developing a character to the fullest—all characters need to have their trajectories followed through on—but with psychological constructs of a character, if you still believe in that sort of thing as a writer of mostly realistic stories, as I am. And since I’ve brought up the subject of realism versus other modes, I should say that I think it’s often an artificial or perhaps useless distinction. A Jonathan Franzen versus an Aimee Bender. Borges versus Roth (who’s taken a few fantasy turns in his fiction himself). In Therapy, I have an absolutely bizarre sequence of events that takes place in the basement of a psychiatrist’s office. People always ask me about that scene, and I really can’t give any more justification for it other than it fits and that’s where the story took me. Likewise in Little Raw Souls, in “Absolute Zero,” there’s no explaining the Seer. But nothing could persuade me to take these moments out just to make the stories “consistent.” Insisting on categorization can only inhibit the work and the possibility of a truly original moment happening. I published an essay in The Writer’s Chronicle called “In Defense of Contrivance,” and one of my arguments I make is that it’s not what happens but what happens afterward that makes an event believable or not. Create the right context and follow up and there are no limits on how a so-called magical moment might pop up and become integral and credible to an otherwise erstwhile realistic work.
JK: In your new story collection Little Raw Souls, you create situations for your characters and then introduce conflict that threatens to disrupt or end these situations. For example, in “Bless Everybody,” the narrator Charlie is retired, divorced, and living off the land he’d always wanted to own, but then two hippies arrive and want to stay for a time. In “Absolute Zero,” Connor’s dying mother won’t sign the papers allowing him to enlist for the Marines, but then he spends time with a classmate who is also dying. In “Seeing Miles,” David reconnects with his second cousin who—over the years—has changed her gender. Did you begin your stories with these situations in mind first? Or did you think of the conflict first before crafting a situation that contextualizes the resolution of that conflict?
SS: I really don’t think one knows the conflict in advance of writing stories. In “Bless Everybody,” Charlie has a run in with some young hippies who take a liking to his land but turn out to be different people than they appear at first. That story came out of an experience of a couple who did call us out of the blue and ask to stay on some land we owned. They turned out to be deceitful and though it’s not necessary to go into exactly how, I can say, what intrigued me about the situation for years before I could write about it was how easily I was hoodwinked. In other words, I couldn’t get over my own susceptibility. In writing the story I had to find a way to investigate that initial miscalculation of mine, given I consider myself a good reader of people, which broadened into a conflict about a man confronting the idea of what it means to be a good person and whether he’s failed at that over the years or been too rigid in his pursuit of that goal.
So the original conflict that might initially intrigue me and be based on my own experience has to evolve into something more universal in the course of writing a story, otherwise it just stays limited—a situation, not a story. Likewise for “Seeing Miles.” I was always fascinated by how I had my first crush on my lovely cousin at thirteen, who turned out in her thirties to have a sex change, and what that meant about me. The real conflict, however, involved wrestling with a story about the nature of desire. Did I at any point sit there and say to myself, I’m writing a story about the nature of desire? Absolutely not. I probably would have hit myself over the head with hammer first and said get back to work, Steven! Wake up and write a story, not an idea.
—Steven Schwartz & Jacqueline Kharouf
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Steven Schwartz grew up outside Chester, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Colorado for the past twenty-eight years. He is the author of two story collections, To Leningrad in Winter (University of Missouri) and Lives of the Fathers (University of Illinois), and two novels, Therapy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and A Good Doctor’s Son (William Morrow). His fiction has received the Nelson Algren Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the Cohen Award, the Colorado Book Award for the Novel, two O. Henry Prize Story Awards, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Bread Loaf. His essays have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Crazyhorse, Image, and have been awarded the Cleanth Brooks Prize in Nonfiction from The Southern Review. He teaches in the low-residency MFA Program at Warren Wilson College and the MFA program at Colorado State University, where he also serves as fiction editor for the Colorado Review. Married to the writer Emily Hammond, they have two grown children. His new collection of stories, Little Raw Souls, was published by Autumn House Press in January 2013.
Jacqueline Kharouf is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A native of Rapid City, SD, Jacqueline currently lives in Denver. Her work has appeared in Numéro Cinq, Otis Nebula and H.O.W. Journal, where she won third place in a fiction contest judged by Mary Gaitskill. She had work forthcoming in NANO Fiction. Jacqueline blogs at: jacquelinekharouf.wordpress.com and tweets @writejacqueline.
Jun 092013
The other day I put up a link to a piece about the posthumous publication of Witold Gombrowicz’s diary quarry or pre-diary (what are now published as his diaries were actually magazine or newspaper columns, sort of blog posts before there was an Internet). In the published diaries, there is practically no mention of sexual activity, though one can read between the lines here and there. But in Kronos there is full disclosure of sorts. My interest here is not prurient (moi?) but somewhat provoked by my reading of the diaries, which are wonderful in themselves (I copied out long passages in my notebooks: texts about the construction of the self by language, by social interaction, and the self being thrown back on the negative position, defining itself as NOT-THAT; I find that I go through life refining myself against roles and definitions into which I find I cannot fit myself). But in the diaries the veiled references seem almost to taunt the reader, inspire curiosity. And then, of course, late in life, soon before he died actually, Gombrowicz did marry (a French-Canadian woman). All very curious.
In any case, after I posted the note and link, Ewa Bender at a wonderfully informative (about all things literary, cultural and Polish) site called Culture.pl sent me the link to the following overview of Kronos. The author is Mikołaj Gliński. Fascinating. Lists of lovers, male, female and those who could be either. Abbreviations. Circles to connote intercourse.
Just so you know: I am working on an essay on Gombrowicz, long time coming.
dg
The beginnings of this erotic chronology, as well as Gombrowicz’s bisexuality, can be traced to a note from 1934. It was next to this date that, years later, in an attempt at reconstructing the period, Gombrowicz jotted down “The first ‘pe’ attempts”. We can guess that “pe” is short for pederastic, but can learn nothing more. Subsequent pages of this reconstruction consist in prewar lists of his partners, often presented with an invective: the hysteric whore from Hala (during the stay in Zakopane), a servant from Zaborow, Gelbardowa’s servant, a waitress from Zodiac, Jadźka’s friend, two whores from Mokotowska Street, a whore with gonorrhea, a virgin, Franek, and the one with legs in rubber slippers.
Jun 092013
I love the strange triangulations that take place on NC regularly. This time we have a Halifax librarian, novelist, and short story writer, Ian Colford, writing a profile about Tess Wiley, a Texas-born singer and songwriter, who makes her home and career in Germany. Ian is a longtime contributor to NC: stories, novel excerpts, profiles, and everything he writes has the idiosyncratic aura of a thoughtful outsider poking about in the culture, turning up half-hidden treasures. See this! he says. Amazing! he says. Ian has his own particular angle of vision; that’s one of the prerequisites for appearing at NC. And the music? Tess Wiley? Just listen. She’s to die for.
And while you’re at it, please take a look at our growing and heterodox collection of music posts.
dg
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaupGHN-1Rw[/youtube]
An Accidental Meeting
I discovered Tess Wiley by accident. In late 2002 I was searching for music by a band called Rainy Day Assembly (I had downloaded a couple of their tunes from a free site). Thinking this band might have an album, I tried Amazon.com. They did not have an album (and, so far as I can tell, never have). But, oddly enough (given it’s an unusual phrase), my search returned an unrelated result, a CD called Rainy Day Assembly by an artist I had never heard of named Tess Wiley. Curious, I listened to a few of the song samples. I was impressed.
Rainy Day Assembly entered my regular rotation immediately upon delivery. I buy a lot of music and when I discover an artist I like, I buy everything they’ve recorded. Over the years this has led to numerous successes, but also some disappointments and a few miscalculations. A lot of songs, CDs, and artists have come and gone. But in 2013 Tess Wiley’s three studio albums, the most recent of which was released in 2007, continue to receive significant playing time. Unashamedly, I have become a fan.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSk40mVdXTk[/youtube]
Tess makes music that grabs the listener’s attention for all the right reasons. It is music that is memorable but never cloying, carefully crafted pop that does not follow a formula and is still revealing surprising details on the fiftieth listen. This is music for thoughtful, inquisitive people, not because it is revolutionary or especially challenging, but because it is immediately apparent that the driving force behind it is probing and untypical. The elements are familiar, but they are deployed in a manner that does not readily call to mind the work of anyone else. You can enjoy these songs for their tasteful arrangements and clear, ringing harmonies and go no further than that. But Tess’s music offers the curious listener the further choice to dig deeper, to find out where these songs come from, and to learn something about the person who created them.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mrGV_sGE20[/youtube]
Tess Wiley was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1974. Her father, Fletch Wiley, is a working musician who in the 1970s recorded with the gospel group Andraé Crouch and the Disciples. The family moved around, and Tess spent her childhood in Houston, Seattle, and San Francisco, before returning to Houston. With her mother a writer and her father a musician, there was little chance she would grow up without exhibiting a creative side, and she embarked early on her musical career, taking up piano at age five, violin at 12 and guitar at 14. She spent her school years writing songs and performing in a band, before capping her education with studies in classical piano at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
In 1995 Tess joined the Texas-based pop/rock band Sixpence None the Richer, touring and recording with them and contributing the song “Disconnect” to their second full-length CD, This Beautiful Mess. Her year with Sixpence was not an easy one. The band’s label went bankrupt and refused to release the group from their contract. Tess was one of the members who left the band during this period. For the next several years, working on her own and with producer and recording engineer Chris Colbert, she recorded and performed her songs under a variety of names (Splendora, Phantasmic and Tess Wiley and her Orchestra).
Adding an interesting twist to her biography, when Tess fell in love it was with a photo-journalist from Germany, Christian Roth. She met Roth while with Sixpence, when the band was performing at the Flevo Festival in the Netherlands. Roth attended the festival and interviewed the band for a magazine. After she left Sixpence the two kept in touch, meeting again when Roth visited the US to attend some musical events. Roth’s photos and artwork adorn the Rainy Day Assembly CD case. They married and in 2003 settled in Geissen, a university town in central Germany, which is perhaps best known for the Botanischer Garten Gießen, the oldest botanical gardens in the country. Tess has two sons and still resides in Geissen, though her personal life has become more complex lately.
Rainy Day Assembly (2002) was recorded in New York with the aid of American musicians. Her subsequent studio albums, Not Quite Me (2004) and Superfast Rock’n Roll Played Slow (2007), were both recorded in Germany with German musicians.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOBw153qPyM[/youtube]
Tess Wiley’s music is rooted in a North American pop sensibility, the inventive and richly detailed arrangements heavily reliant on acoustic and electric guitars and keyboards, along with the occasional electronic beat. Her songs carry unmistakable echoes of classic folk, 1980s alt-rock, even late 1970s post-punk. Her lyrics can be message-laden or brutally confessional. She is not afraid to be loud, to mix tempos, to juxtapose pop rhythms and loosely structured mood pieces. Even her most upbeat songs have a melancholy edge to them, and enough depth, ingenuity and unpredictability to keep them off the pop charts. Her independent voice and musical daring—perhaps her greatest artistic assets and two reasons why her fans are so deeply devoted and pulling for her to succeed—also mean that a mass following has proven elusive. I feel lucky to have encountered Tess early in her solo career, and to have followed her development as an artist and songwriter through three full-length albums that exhibit an astounding breadth of musical ambition and achievement. The wait for a fourth studio album has been lengthy (a “live-in-the-studio” CD with one new song was released in 2010). But 2012 saw the release of the EP Tornados. Based on this most recent output, how can there be any doubt that commercial success is on the horizon?
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To Begin at the Beginning …
We become fans of musicians, actors, painters, filmmakers, authors, playwrights, for many reasons, but usually because we sense an affiliation of some kind, and/or a deep appreciation for what the artist is trying to say. The artist is expressing something that we, if only we possessed the tools, would express for ourselves. I came upon Tess’s album Rainy Day Assembly not long after it was released, and after listening to the CD more times than I can count, I am intimately familiar with the songs it contains. Because it can be both challenging and totally accessible—keeping the listener guessing while at the same time drawing us in—it continues to hold a fascination years after I first listened to it. My attempts to identify where the songs come from have failed: their antecedents remain obscure. Sixpence None the Richer is a pop/rock band with several hit singles to their credit and a reputation for making music that is both brainy and catchy. There is a relationship between them and the music Tess Wiley is making in the late 1990s and early 2000s, though hardly a direct one. Recorded from 1999-2001 and released in September 2002, Rainy Day Assembly seems in some respects to drop out of nowhere, a product of stark originality that feeds 1980s and 1990s pop influences through a subversive and mischievous aesthetic filter. With their mix of pure pop ambition and occasional structural eccentricities, songs like “Small Things Define,” the title track, and “Out of My Head” seem a distillation of everything she has accomplished since and serve as a perfect introduction to her music.
I realized, of course, that I had got my hands on something special. In 2002 Tess Wiley was making music for grown-ups at a time when much of the music dominating the airwaves was for kids. By the time the fourth track, “Breathe,” was over, I knew I would be listening to this album often.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEsxZ2RKIyQ[/youtube]
Her second album, 2004’s Not Quite Me, places more of an emphasis on linear pop structures and downplays some of the delightful eccentricities that make Rainy Day Assembly a unique listening experience. Taking their place is a more straightforward approach to crafting harmonious sounds and radio-ready songs that have a broader appeal. Naked pop rhythms abound, such as in the title track and the sinewy and seductive “How Does Silence Feel?” But Not Quite Me is a Tess Wiley album, and there is something different going on. This becomes apparent on “Let it Come,” when toward the end of the song the instruments fade into the background, vanishing behind a rising swell of voices, a rich wordless chorus. Overall, despite the jaunty closing cut, “This Shadow,” and a track titled “Happy Now,” the album weighs in on the meditative, melancholy side, with an abundance of minor keys and lyrics that do more questioning than celebrating.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lf8XyfGYLs[/youtube]
In 2007 she released Superfast Rock’n Roll Played Slow, which leaves behind the electric polish of Not Quite Me in favor of a simplicity and rawness in its predominantly acoustic arrangements and occasional whimsical flourishes that give the album the spontaneous feel of a demo. The primary instrument here is Tess’s voice, which is front and center throughout the recording, and exhibits an expressive range that is nothing short of remarkable. There is a quality to her voice and her approach to singing on this album that on a few songs seems to leave her utterly exposed, dangling somewhere between tough and vulnerable. As you listen you begin to suspect that maybe the toughness is nothing more than an attempt to mask the vulnerability. To this point in her career Tess’s lyrics have included confessional elements and at times can even be described as self-critical, but here the self-doubting becomes explicit. This is most noticeable in the sublime “Idle,” in which she admits:
No matter how much I protest,
No matter how much I am blessed,
I’ll always have to prove myself to me.
I can’t let it go. I don’t know what they might think of me,
And I know I shouldn’t care, but I can’t let it go.
I don’t know how I should feel.
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Question & Answer
IC: You come from a creative family. What music were you listening to growing up?
TW: I heard a ton of jazz and classical, of course: Steely Dan, Miles Davis, Beethoven, Mahler. But I was drawn to the radio like any other kid. My first “favorite song” was “The Tide is High” by Blondie. I can remember telling my mom that when I was four. I’m sure she was thrilled. Later I loved Billy Joel, Whitney Houston. My dad got me the Amy Grant cassette tape “Unguarded” to finally give me something else to listen to than Whitney’s debut! I wore both of those tapes out in the end. My very first purchase with my own money, oddly, was the first Skid Row LP. That was the beginning of my “metal” phase, although it was probably more glam. Dangerous Toys, Mr.Big, but of course: Guns n’ Roses.
IC: Tell me about your earliest attempts at making music.
TW: I recall having fooled around on the piano early on, and when I turned five my parents signed me up for piano lessons. My mom would tell you I started singing before I spoke in full sentences, though. “Tender Shepard” and “Create in me a Clean Heart” were in the early repetoire. Apparently, at my recitals even age 5 or 6 I would improvise when I made a mistake or forgot how the song went, until I could find my way back into the piece. Unfortunately, my improvisational skills may have been nipped in the bud by too much classical music, too much reading notes and not being free with it. I do have one of my first recordings still on cassette tape. My dad brought home a synthesizer to try out, and I recorded a piece that had an A-B-A form and found two different sounds that fit the different moods. A bit ahead of my time at 7.
IC: Who were you trying to emulate?
TW: That didn’t start until later on when I actually started making my “own” music, it was with a band of high school friends. They had a lot of idols: Bob Mould, REM, U2. To be honest, mostly stuff I wasn’t interested in. I can’t exactly recall what I was listening to in the 9th grade (other than the classic rock radio station), but soon after I discovered indie. Throwing Muses, Belly, Juliana Hatfield, Lemonheads. Then our bass player found out about The Frames. They were on the listening booth at the local music store, promoted by Glen Hansard’s part in The Commitments. That and very early Green Day consumed us for a while.
As far as singing, I can’t really say I ever tried to emulate anyone, honestly. I’ve always felt that the influences I had were more things I internalized, and what came out of me didn’t necessarily reflect those sounds. Maybe I’m just a true original?
IC: What prompted your decision, at the age of 22 and after only one album, to leave Sixpence None the Richer and embark on a solo career?
TW: Well, ahem, I was 20 at the time, so – ya – really immature. The problem with Sixpence in that phase was that they were going in circles, no one seemed to be pushing them out of the microcosm they toured, and no one in the band had a whole lot of gumption to take things further (it seemed). I was antsy, plus they wanted to move to Nashville, which at the time seemed like a hellish idea. I can’t explain why. Maybe because it represented country and christian music, two genres I didn’t want to have much to do with. I didn’t see the singer/songwriter aspect of it, and I didn’t see myself as a singer/songwriter then, anyway. I was punk! I was indie! I was alternative! I was way more Austin than Nashville, so that’s where I decided to stay. In addition, a certain someone in the band was in love with me and frustrated that I was dating the sound guy. We butted heads, both in our stubborn ways, and I basically got kicked out. There you go.
IC: What was it like, at 25, to be recording your first solo album in NYC?
TW: The entire NYC experience was pretty mind-boggling. I knew it then, but I keep having flashes of, “OMG, I can’t believe THAT person played on my record, too, and now he’s playing with David Bowie/Aimee Mann/Sam Phillips/Solomon Burke/Elvis Costello.” The list goes on and on. At the time, the most amazing thing was to have Jeff Buckley’s drummer play on it. It was definitely one of the fancier studios I’ve been in, and being able to say that Kevin Killen mixed the thing still provides me with credibility from those who know.
But on the other hand, I was an awfully shy thing for a long time in my life, and it absolutely intimidated me. I didn’t really find my true voice anyway until a few years later, but I feel like I sound a bit stifled. It’s a shame. I kind of wish I could re-record the vocals to it one day.
IC: Has your approach to songwriting changed over the course of a career that now spans almost 20 years?
TW: Holy moly – 20 years. Can’t believe I can say that. Yeah, I’d say I’m trying hard to be less precious about it. I try to think less, not use such “big” words or be so grammatically correct (although it is a desire of mine to promote good language!) I also start more often with lyrics. I try my best to write down everything that comes into my head, hoping to be able to use it later. Sometimes something doesn’t make sense until later. And in any case, if I don’t write it down immediately, it’s gone, gone, gone. So frustrating.
IC: You moved to Germany in your twenties and just as your career was getting underway. Musically speaking, how do you view that move today?
TW: Hmm, musically speaking, it wasn’t the best idea. I used to joke that the Beatles kick-started their career in Germany, but of course, they were in Hamburg, not Giessen, which I like to refer to as Germany’s armpit. That’s not really fair anymore – a lot of music has been coming out of this town for a while now, and the city planners are starting to finally get a bit of a grip on aesthetics. It’s changing. Slowly. And I get out more, I have a manager with a vision, and I’m MUCH less intimidated than I was before. I shot myself in the foot every day with my “humility”. Was a waste of time! But better to learn late than never, eh?
IC: Does your career have a defining moment?
TW: I think that’s on the immediate horizon.
IC: What are your hopes for the new CD?
TW: That it provide that defining moment.
I really hope to be able to find a good niche for myself. I don’t want to become a huge star, which is good, because I imagine I’m a bit too old for that now, but I simply don’t want to be on the road constantly. I have two wonderful boys who need their mommy close to them as much as possible. I hope to enter the songwriting world more, possibly write with and for other people. I love to sing, and I enjoy performing, but there’s something enticing about hearing what other people do with my creations. Plus I imagine it must be nice to stay at home and let the checks come in.
.
Timeline
1995
This Beautiful Mess (Sixpence None the Richer)
2002
Rainy Day Assembly (full-length CD)
2004
Not Quite Me (full-length CD)
2007
Superfast Rock’n Roll Played Slow (full-length CD)
2010
Tess Wiley – Live (live in the studio recording)
2012
Tornados (EP)
—Ian Colford
—Tess Wiley Photographs by Apolonia Wieland at Bang Bang Photography; you can watch more Tess Wiley videos on her Youtube channel, TessWileyMusic. Her new CD, Little Secrets, is due out this fall.
——————————————————–
Ian Colford has been publishing stories and reviews for a long time. This profile of songstress Tess Wiley is his first venture into music journalism. His short story collection, Evidence (2008), was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed, Raddall Atlantic Fiction and ReLit awards, and his novel, The Crimes of Hector Tomas (2012) recently won Trade Book of the Year at the 2013 Alberta Book Awards. Most of his disposable income goes on books and the rest goes on music. Recently he has been mourning the death of Ray Manzarek by listening to too much of the Doors. He works as a reference librarian at the Sexton Design & Technology Library at Dalhousie University.
Jun 092013
“It isn’t just out here, it’s down here, it’s with us,” he said. “We join in.”
Jun 092013
It is indeed sobering when the Harvard Business Review comes off sounding like Julian Assange or someone in the Occupy movement. Time to RUN FOR THE EXIT!
There is no exit.
Watching peoples’ ideas form as they type, in order to protect against someone who might become a terrorist in the future. George Orwell, eat your heart out.
via Your Smartphone Works for the Surveillance State – James Allworth – Harvard Business Review.
Jun 082013
Droll, mischievous and wonderfully intelligent confection, a Modernist riposte to the vacancy (absence) of E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, in which Gabriel Josipovici has a walk-on role and the protagonist imagines himself as Caspar Friedrich’s Wanderer AND Roy Scheider in Jaws in the same instant and someone wears a Clarice Lispector frock. It all begins with a mother telling a bedtime story, yes, yes, a scene of sadistic psychic violence like none other. Brilliantly witty. Deploys many of the Modern erotic positions: sex and text, love as desire for absence, and self as ghost (we all have that sense of the self being something that haunts itself). The teaser below accurately describes love and art, or maybe not. By Andrew Gallix who edits 3AM Magazine.
dg
Your heart still skips like a trip of jackrabbits in the Arizona desert, where we carved our names on a bench close to the abyss. But when I look at you, well, I just feel dead inside. It has to be like this and no other way; otherwise it wouldn’t be art, would it? I’m in love with Jay now: I feed him mini Milano cookies and give him snug harbor. Anyway, I was never quite all there, was I? Long before we met, I was a character in one of your stories — ‘Sweet Fanny Adams.’ Young man goes looking for girl of his dreams in order to break up straight away. ‘At last,’ he says upon meeting her, ‘I have found my sense of loss.’ See? I haven’t forgotten. I started off as fiction, and to fiction I have returned. Our relationship was only a movement towards my disappearance. I am your sense of loss: the self-effacing subject of your work…”
“Emilie…” said Valentin.
“When you say my name, you retain nothing of me but my absence. And nobody is present behind these words I speak.”
Read the rest at Fifty Shades of Grey Matter | ANDREW GALLIX.
Jun 082013
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kugiufHh800[/youtube]
Jun 082013
Canadian politics has always been ripe for satire, perhaps never more than at this very moment. Two fat men dominate the situation: Senator Mike Duffy nailed for fiddling his expenses (currently under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto famous for a video that appears to show him smoking crack cocaine. The Duffy scandal has reached into Prime Minister’s Office; his chief of staff has resigned, and the smoke cloud only grows (a criminal trial is currently on hiatus).
Enter Governor-General’s Award-winning short story writer and novelist Greg Hollingshead with a cunning literary instinct for the jugular. “Ottawa Confidential” is an absolutely hilarious satire on a certain unnamed Prime Minister and Canadian politics in general written from the point of view of the Prime Minister’s “intimate confidant,” his righthand man, a failed novelist (had to be) turned political hack (with a dog named Wags). This story really is brilliant, seething with dry wit. I have a list of quotable lines as long as my arm. “Of course, the Prime Minister was not exactly an old man, or even an adult, but something more along the lines of an enlarged boy.” “The Prime Minister further confided that as a child he had an imaginary friend, but when his parents found out about it they forced him to put it to death.” “Politicians tend to be human to a fault, which is to say they are first and foremost animals, whereas the Prime Minister, with his unreadable demeanour and that funny little smile, if that’s what it was, and his one-brick-at-a-time approach, had the personality of an algorithm…”
My favourite (it’s long but I can’t resist) is when Hollingshead draws an analogy between the rise of the Prime Minister (yes, yes, unnamed) and his party (also unnamed, wink) to the behaviour of slime mold. “Dynamic system theorists tell us we should not be surprised by the behaviour of slime mold, but what are they thinking? In good times, slime mold consists of an aggregation of cells, each going about its individual life. But when the going gets tough, these cells cohere into a slug, which proceeds, trailing slime, to a prominent location. There it grows a stalk with a head, which explodes, releasing spores, after which the mold reverts to a loose collection of cells with no apparent common interest, until the next time. It was the combination of tough times for the FPMC’s [Future Prime Minister of Canada] party and his rapid rise to dominance within it that would turn a desultory collection of politicians into a slime-trailing slug juggernaut with an exploding head.”
dg
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Where on Earth Did He Come From?
According to his wife, with whom I have conducted a series of interviews in an attempt to arrive at a working sense of what the heck goes through her mind, it happened like this:
She was crossing what remains of the Columbia Icefield, just out of hearing of a small party of other guests from Jasper Park Lodge. Directly in front of her, walking backwards, was her fiancé at the time, Lt. Wayne McLeod, who was looking deep into her eyes as he verbally abused her for what he had detected over lunch back at the Lodge as a liberal view of Afghani cultural practices. Oh that’s very nice, he was saying, so you would willingly sell your firstborn daughter to the highest bidder even before she was born? Why, that’s extremely enlightened of you. I’m sure you’d make an excellent Afghani mother. The only problem, which even a dumb cluck like me might think would have occurred to someone as highly intelligent as yourself, but it just so happens we live in a civilized—
And so on.
The rest of the party had slowed their pace so as not to have to listen to this or to her saying over and over Wayne keep your voice down. It was possible that as a four-year veteran of our peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, Lt. Wayne McLeod had once been a fine young man and was not to be held responsible for his current behaviour as a dull-normal abuser. Only the woman who loved him could hope to know the real Wayne McLeod, but how much more could she take?
Anyway, as McLeod was walking backwards in front of her, with his face so close to hers that she could smell the garlic on his breath from lunch, he suddenly dropped out of sight. When she saw the hole in the snow crust and screamed, the others came running, led by their guide, who had a rope. The rope was lowered into the hole, and when the tug came, everybody heaved, but imagine their surprise when it wasn’t Wayne McLeod they hauled up but the future Prime Minister of Canada (FPMC).
What an astonishing story! I cried. What happened to Wayne?
At first the FPMC’s wife didn’t answer, and then she shook her head slowly, holding my eyes.
And the FPMC? I cried. What was he doing down there?
Wedged, she said. It was a crevasse. And she explained that the FPMC had been staying at the Rimrock Hotel, near Banff, taking a weekend in the mountains to decide whether or not to go into politics.
A momentous mountain weekend for Canada, I pointed out.
Ignoring this, the FPMC’s wife continued her story. Familiar with the theory that cool air promotes effective decision-making and inspired by a brochure in a rack by the Rimrock check-in desk, the FPMC had gone for a walk on the Columbia Icefield. He started out long enough ahead of the Jasper Park Lodge party that they didn’t see him but not so long that he was wedged down there for more than a few hours. He reported that McLeod had passed him falling. Slighter of build than the FPMC, McLeod had longer to fall before wedging.
If he wedged, the FPMC’s wife added, with a significant look that I could do no more than mentally file before she’d resumed her story. So we stood around, she said, shouting down the hole and listening for an answer from Wayne. Nothing.
He must have been unconscious, I said.
Or playing possum.
Why would he do that?
A survival reflex. He was a mess of them. You should have tried to sleep through the night in the same room.
Hardly a useful survival reflex in this case, I pointed out.
Listen, she said. One went down, the other came up. What more do you want from me?
The one who came up—
I know. I married. Not as soon as I’d have married Wayne, but I’d known Wayne longer. With the FPMC it was a conventional courtship, a traditional wedding. Nothing unusual or untoward about any of it. Boy, was there nothing unusual or untoward.
And the marriage?
She threw back her head and laughed. The marriage? Are you kidding me? Where have you been? That’s when the circus came to town! Are you the only one in the country who doesn’t know this?
SPACE
Slime Mold Homology
Dynamic system theorists tell us we should not be surprised by the behaviour of slime mold, but what are they thinking? In good times, slime mold consists of an aggregation of cells, each going about its individual life. But when the going gets tough, these cells cohere into a slug, which proceeds, trailing slime, to a prominent location. There it grows a stalk with a head, which explodes, releasing spores, after which the mold reverts to a loose collection of cells with no apparent common interest, until the next time.
It was the combination of tough times for the FPMC’s party and his rapid rise to dominance within it that would turn a desultory collection of politicians into a slime-trailing slug juggernaut with an exploding head. And while this transformation required that the range of behaviours of individual politicians be radically reconfigured and restrained, in fact the higher-level behaviours enabled by their universal submission to top-down management so vastly outperformed anything they could have accomplished individually that even the mouth-breathers among them sensed the wisdom of their entrainment. If the FPMC cramped their style, never in the political life of this country has there been a concatenation of styles more in need of cramping. In fact so thoroughly were they cramped, so comprehensively under their leader’s control, that it was evident from early on that were this party ever given a chance to form a government, Watch out, Nellie!
SPACE
Early Losses
Long before I became the Prime Minister’s trusted confidant, I was living with my dog on a small, remote lake in a rock tract of bush and muskeg equidistant between Sudbury and Timmins. Wags and I were all that remained of a three-couples-plus-chickens-and-pets quasi-commune that had lasted less than a year, owing to the close quarters, the same faces day in and day out, the constant physical work just to keep a fire in the stove and food on the table, and the endless grey winter skies. The only reason Wags and I stayed on was I had a novel to finish.
In those days I was the quintessential political bystander, but at the dump the day after a national election I asked the custodian who had won, and he told me the Opposition, by a landslide.
Really? I said. Wow. That wasn’t in the cards.
No, it wasn’t, he agreed.
That same day, conscious of history in the making and here I was living out in the middle of nowhere but what did the world care about that and why should I? I canoed to the village for a paper and was further surprised to see, on an inside page, a picture of the FPMC sitting in the back seat of a limousine looking ill. The picture reminded me that information from the custodian of the dump, although readily provided, usually had something the matter with it or was dead wrong.
Why do you even talk to him? my then-partner used to ask me. He’s an idiot.
I talk to him because I happen to believe that you can learn from anybody.
Another point on which you and I fundamentally disagree.
One day the dump custodian and I fell into conversation, and he revealed that as a young man he had gone out to Alberta, where he worked for several years as a cowboy. He told me that he loved the life and everything about it: the country, the living rough, the hard work. In fact, he had never been happier. He thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
But you came back, I said.
Why, that’s true, he said, as if he hadn’t quite thought of it that way.
Why? I asked.
He said he didn’t know.
Anyway, you had a good time, I said.
I sure did. The best time of my life. Bar none.
Sounds like the name of a ranch.
What?
Bar None. The name of a ranch.
Is that so, now?
Later the same day that I read about the Opposition’s devastating loss, I was in the liquor store. There I got caught up in a game of peekaboo across the Crown Royal display with a mad-eyed geek, hyper-alert with bush fever. It wasn’t until I noticed that the display was ranged along a mirror that I knew my novel had never been any good and it was time to return to the city and make a lasting contribution to society.
SPACE
His Man Friday
One of the more dubious strategies employed by the human male to justify his routinely sleazy behaviour is the appeal to Darwin. As a young man, I certainly wasn’t proud of the rage I inwardly experienced in the presence of an older man, particularly a kinder, gentler one. It was a blinding compulsion to take the old boy down, and it felt pretty Darwinian to me, but you didn’t catch me going around implying that that made it OK. By the same token, I think it said something about the Prime Minister that in all my years as his confidant these feelings never once surfaced. Even before I knew him, as I rolled and tumbled, inexorably as it seemed at time—though it was sheer luck, I swear—through the hoops and red tape that landed me the position, ultimately, of his intimate confidant, I was conscious of no hostility toward him whatsoever.
Of course, the Prime Minister was not exactly an old man, or even an adult, but something more along the lines of an enlarged boy. Also, he played the game on a whole other level. Politicians tend to be human to a fault, which is to say they are first and foremost animals, whereas the Prime Minister, with his unreadable demeanour and that funny little smile, if that’s what it was, and his one-brick-at-a-time approach, had the personality of an algorithm, a boy’s-own Turing machine, or a Crusoe, on his desert island. Because here’s the thing about Crusoe: he’s king, but of what? There’s a poignancy there. Not a figure you necessarily feel driven to bring down. Besides, I was there when one or two tried, and it was horrible to watch. They didn’t have a clue what they were getting into. Nothing in their political training had prepared them for this. The depth and range, the sheer anticipatory power, of the Crusoe method, was beyond their abilities. They were squawking gulls struck down by a brickbat tossed by a tall stout boy in goatskin, they were dead in the water.
SPACE
Election Day
On the day the FPMC would become the Prime Minister, I was standing by his side at the Plexiglass window of the press box high above the Ottawa Convention Centre, gazing down at a sea of waving placards. Chants and songs with lyrics rejigged to be topical were sweeping through the crowd that waited for him to go down there and restate what they already believed so memorably that they would be able to smell it and taste it and carry it home under their arm like a giant panda or Naugahyde ottoman.
How does it feel, I asked him, to know that every person down there is waiting to hear what you have to tell them?
The FPMC’s reply was enigmatic. I think what he said was it felt like every day from now on would be Pajama Day.
I nodded, thinking confusedly of the festive atmosphere of the classic Broadway musical The Pajama Game, but weeks later he would let fall a detail from his early life that revealed his true meaning here. (See below.)
Meanwhile, as we continued to gaze down at the swaying throng, he murmured, Isn’t that the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen.
Yes, it is! I cried, but reaching across to seize his right hand in both mine, I found it unavailable, and so I pretended I was gripping a baseball bat to knock one out of the park but on second thought made it a hockey stick, which I used to drive the puck deep into the net.
SPACE
Early Life
Transferring power over an entire country into your own hands is a complex, thankless task, and not surprisingly the Prime Minister found himself with little time or inclination for emotional excavation. But that was not my style, and every once in a while I’d toss him a random question. Don’t try this at home. Sometimes his head was so packed with data that a question out of nowhere caused it to explode, most often, fortunately for me, in a contained way, and he would fade to smiling bemusement and from there sink into a quasi-narcoleptic stupor. But soon enough he’d rouse himself and resume his deliberations. On other occasions he’d return a thoughtful answer, sometimes stunning in its candour, as when he cleared up my earlier confusion concerning his Pajama Day comment by casually mentioning that as a child he attended Grades Two to Five in his pajamas. In response to my surprise, first that he had done this, and second that his parents and the school had allowed it, he assured me there was nothing in the schoolboard dress code to prevent it, as he knew because when he first got the idea he had checked. As for his parents, they considered it a phase he would soon outgrow.
I guess you showed them, I said with a smirk.
Let’s be clear, he said. All I wanted to do was stay in my pajamas.
Would he characterize his parents as liberals?
When her son pees in the teacher’s wastebasket, he inquired by way of an answer, does a liberal mother drive him to the gates of the local penitentiary and tell him that’s where he’ll end up if he fails to mend his course?
Good Lord, I said. That is hardball. How old were you?
Seven.
The Prime Minister further confided that as a child he had an imaginary friend, but when his parents found out about it they forced him to put it to death.
Why, that’s terrible! I cried. What were they—?
Good parents. It was a talking snake. Unlimbed Evil. Any child in his right mind would be grateful to get that thing off his neck. You know how on a plane you’ll sometimes hear Beatles songs in the roar of the engines? As I used my hockey stick to bash in its head, with each blow I heard my father say Good job. I can hear dad now. G’dj’b! G’dj’b! G’dj’b!
The Prime Minister also told me that as a child, on board ship once, he caught a glimpse of himself on the crowded foredeck.
In a mirror—? I said, thinking of my experience in the liquor store.
No, from behind. I recognized the haircut. I tried to push forward through the crowd but was lost to myself.
After a pause, I respectfully asked how being lost to himself had felt.
How do you think it felt? he replied irritably. Frustrating. Annoying. Disappointing. How would it feel to you?
Uncanny?
OK, fine. Uncanny. It felt uncanny. Woo-woo.
The Prime Minister’s favourite story as a child was the one about the master stonemason of Rosslyn Chapel, who set out on a ten-year journey in search of inspiration for the primary pillar, and when he returned with a first-rate idea for how to do it, his apprentice had already carved it exactly that way, so he killed him.
What do you think it is about this story that speaks to you? I asked, with a chill.
Its palpable unlikelihood, the Prime Minister replied. What obviously happened was, when the master stonemason saw the apprentice’s pillar, he knew right away it was far better than anything he himself could do. This was a guy who hadn’t lifted a chisel in ten years. Thinking fast, he told everybody that the pillar was exactly the way he’d have done it. It didn’t matter that people gave each other looks and thought, Yeah right, and pigs fly. The pillar problem was solved. Now there was only the apprentice to be punished, for the insubordination. That’s where the stonemason made his mistake: doing it himself. He’d almost certainly underestimate the amount of bottled-up energy he was carrying around, not just from being pumped to carve a primary pillar after such a prolonged build-up but from finding the job already done better than he could ever do it. I’m sure the unanticipated relief mixed up with the disappointment of a lost opportunity for a career-capping achievement, not to mention understandable intimations of inadequacy, failure, and mortality, made for a perfect cocktail of energy in need of an outlet, and though a perfunctory, face-saving, appearance-sake sort of beating was what was called for, he got a little carried away.
I never thought of the Rosslyn Chapel story that way, I admitted.
It’s the only way that crazy story makes any sense, the Prime Minister said. Unless the apprentice had a weak heart and keeled over dead at the first tap, but fly that one past the Occam’s Razor people and see how long you last.
When I asked the Prime Minister if there was any one thing he’d done as a child that he particularly regretted, his bottom lip wobbled as he confessed that he had once forced three kittens to swim back and forth across the neighbours’ pond, for over an hour. I don’t know what I was thinking, he said. The water was freezing. I still have nightmares.
Were they OK?
They didn’t drown, if that’s what you mean. For those kittens my fun game was a living hell.
Was there a moral in that for you?
A moral? In what? Shivering little kitty bodies?
Do unto others?
I was doing that! I love swimming, it’s the chlorine that gets to me, and this was a freshwater pond, with minnows! When I saw the consequences of my actions, I scooped out a couple for the kitties, but they were shivering too violently to focus.
Here the Prime Minister took his face in his hands and appeared to sob. Smoothly, with the tact he would come to know me for, I changed the subject. Let me ask you something, I said. Is a minnow a developmental stage of any number of kinds of fish or is it a piscine variety in its own right?
The Prime Minister lowered his hands from his face and gave me a look that was arguably grateful and yet, when all was said and done, utterly inscrutable.
Minnows don’t have rights, he said.
SPACE
Recreational Suspension
I’d worked closely with the Prime Minister for some time before I discovered his practice of relaxing, when he could make the time, by hanging in the doorway between his inner and outer office wearing nothing but his black dress socks and women’s underwear. The first time I blundered in on him like this, we both pretended he was “hanging” in the doorway in the usual, metaphorical sense of the term. But the third or fourth time I came upon him like this, despite the fact that I had never seen him hanging from anything except his ankles, I ventured an autoerotic asphyxiation comment.
It’s interesting, I said, that the root of the word embarrassment should be the old Portuguese for noose, baraça. Presumably the flush of embarrassment resembles the look on the face of a man being strangled. It’s always seemed to me that there can be few activities more embarrassing to be discovered engaged in than autoerotically asphyxiating oneself. And yet etymologically the act could be said to presuppose, if not actually render redundant, the embarrassment of being discovered at it.
Instead of considering my point, the Prime Minister brusquely informed me that any flush I saw down there was due to gravity, and I reflected how it’s funny but also a little bit sad when the Great, in their vigilance against being misunderstood, run roughshod over an observation however acute.
The whole idea, he added, is I’m upside-down. To increase blood flow to the brain while I connect with my feminine side.
Women are voters too, I verified.
He seemed to reflect for a moment. But you’ve probably wondered why you’ve never seen me even slightly embarrassed. I mean, considering everything.
I said I had noticed but never wondered. I’d always assumed he had nothing to be embarrassed about.
Oh, get off it. I weaned myself. I consciously set about to ensure that nothing can embarrass me. Too much depends.
You do, I shot back wittily. But his mind was on other things. So how did you do it? I prompted him.
Inoculation. I placed myself in one disgraceful and humiliating situation after another. Gradually I became inured. Literally free of shame.
This inspired me to tell him the story of my first summer in the bush, when I was so badly bug-bitten that I developed encephalitis and nearly died but ever since have been immune to insect bites.
A good analogy, the Prime Minister confirmed.
What kinds of disgraceful and humiliating situations? I asked.
You have been following this? I went into politics.
Sometimes a confidant to Greatness will be afforded a glimpse of the extraordinary dedication required of the one who would be Great. Those of us who have abandoned the quest for Mastery, let alone Greatness, will especially appreciate a reminder of how much harder and longer we would have needed to work, and even then it would have been a crapshoot. In this way we assure ourselves we made the right decision, for the truth is that the reason we are not Great is not because we lack potential for Greatness but because we are not made of stern enough stuff.
On the subject of transvestite autoerotic asphyxiation, I remarked that the notorious pirate Calico Jack had a fondness for wearing women’s underwear. I added that he and his all-female crew were finally captured in 1702, in Negril, I believed it was.
This Calico character was probably a woman, the Prime Minister said.
Gosh, I never thought of that.
Could you give me a hand down here, the Prime Minister said.
SPACE
In the Trenches
Before my relocation from deeper in the bush, like most people I thought of Ottawa as a dull city, a poor man’s Edmonton-in-Ontario sort of place, and yet too much a Shield town to be a feasible home for so many people wearing jackets and ties, or jackets and skirts, or pantsuits with blouses, or even turtlenecks some of them. But the town soon revealed itself as a go-for-broke playground of pomp and high-jinks, of wonder and intrigue.
That said, a little of the politicians went a long way. With the exception of the Prime Minister and a handful of others of assorted political persuasions, the politicians were the weak link. Specious, untrustworthy, expendable. Outsiders clamouring to be insiders. Incontinent talkers, broadcasting seamless flows so inchoate that the seamlessness was the seamlessness of no distinguishable parts. Not listeners. Their strategy was talk so incessant as to prevent a word in, and if one did get in and it wasn’t short and graspable by a non-thinker then it would be as if it hadn’t got in at all, and when you wearied of being talked at by someone incapable of listening and tried to move away, he’d follow you, still talking, until an aide appeared from a doorway to lead him away to his next meeting, and even as he disappeared down the corridor he would still be talking.
Fortunately, with the Prime Minister at the helm, even the members of his own party knew nothing and to that extent were powerless. Their briefing notes, in the form of loose-leaf pamphlets in 28-point font, children’s picture books without pictures, were tossed to them in their offices like bones to animals in their cages. All they knew, and all they needed to know, was the tops of the waves. Meanwhile the Prime Minister worked full-time to ensure a calm sea. This way, if anything happened, they found out about it no sooner than everybody else. This way, they could talk all they wanted and nothing would get out. Their noise was white noise. It provided necessary insulation as the Prime Minister worked away to remake the country in an image of Greatness entirely his own.
When the Prime Minister did meet with members of his caucus, nobody was left with any doubt who was boss, and this was just as well because they were morons. They assumed because the Prime Minister wanted them in shirtsleeves and always placed his hand on their back as they left the meeting that it had been an intense session of camaraderie and hard work. But the Prime Minister was not naturally a toucher, and when I asked about the hand on the back, he explained that he was making sure he could see his entire handprint. The ones who failed to sweat enough were soon out, the ones who regularly went so far as also to wet their pants he promoted, and those who found it necessary to wear brown pants became his closest “advisors.”
The politicians could have been, and often had been, insurance salesmen, mortgage brokers, petty thieves, outpatients. The bureaucrats were a cut above. The real shame of Ottawa was that the Prime Minister was never able to extract unquestioning cooperation from this remarkable pool of ability. Some civil servants were amenable, of course, on principle or because they had none, but not enough of them. Privately the Prime Minister said they were worse than Jews: too intelligent to be counted on, too likely to have a working moral compass. Even amongst those bureaucrats who did their best to be team players, as soon as a Prime Ministerial initiative entered a legal or parliamentary grey area, invariably somebody would suffer a failure of nerve or an attack of conscience, and a plan the Prime Minister had been working on for years would go sideways. Nothing caused the Prime Minister’s head to explode like being foiled by the foolish compunction of some latté-guzzling nonentity. We’d all duck for cover and wait for the relative calm that came with detumescence.
The reality is that when the rubber hits the road, every slime mold cell is either a component of the slug or it’s not. And every cell not a component is a potential enemy. Why didn’t it surrender its autonomy when it had the chance? The Prime Minister’s method for dealing with non-aligned cells was twofold, a double refusal: of money and of information. By cutting off funding to the civil service and keeping it in the dark, he reduced its capacity for creating impediments. How else do you get things done in a place so hide-bound? Fail to cut off renegades at the knees and you had a government at the mercy of precedent and what the Prime Minister during in camera sessions with his “advisors” would put on a droll face and use a God voice to designate as the democratic process. When he was in a good mood he’d sometimes insert this phrase with increasing frequency, until he had us falling about in our seats, weeping with laughter.
On the surface, for the most part, things proceeded smoothly: that calm sea. But every once in a while something would hit home vis-à-vis how things actually were. I remember on one occasion the Office of the Assistant to the Acting Assistant to the Deputy Minister of _________—which consisted, I later learned, of the Assistant himself in a poorly lit, badly ventilated temporary cubicle in a Ministry basement hallway—was given twenty-four hours to produce two substantive reports, which it did, right on time. Not widely available, the two reports were the sort of thing people would prefer to know existed than actually read. But somehow they both landed on my desk, simultaneously, and while I was leafing through them over lunch one day, it came to my attention that they were identical. Word for word. Different titles, same content.
When I called the Office of the Assistant to the Acting Assistant to let them know about this clerical glitch, the Assistant himself answered. When I told him there had been a glitch, he informed me there was no glitch. They were different reports because they had different subjects. Different referent, he said, enunciating clearly, as to a child, different meaning. Anyway, he added, what are the odds anybody’s going to read either one of these works of deathless fucking prose, never mind closely enough and close enough in time to notice any similarities?
I read both just now, at lunch, I said. Well, not read—
I was going to say.
Checked through. The two texts are identical.
Yes, but who are you? Who listens to you?
The Prime Minister listens to me.
Give me a break.
On another occasion, when a respected member of the Opposition was making hay out of a claim that the Prime Minister’s party was guilty of some sort of mismanagement of party funds, the national press, at a loss for anything on this Government capable of holding the public’s attention for longer than a day, played up the story. It was clearly a let’s throw this one at the wall and see if it sticks tactic, but an unfortunate succession of leaks, gaffes, revelations, whatever, followed, and soon we were headed straight for a non-confidence vote in the House. (Let me just say here that whoever said a week is a year in politics got it right. How can nothing ever seem to get done and yet everything change in a day? In the morning you wake up a god, that night you pass out dead drunk a Muppet. Or vice versa. By the end of the week you’ve gone from god to Muppet and back again so many times you’re ready to say or do anything for anybody who can guarantee you’ll remain a god. But it doesn’t work that way. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Not for anybody. This is politics.)
So with a non-confidence vote barreling down the track toward us, I accosted the Prime Minister, practically wringing my hands, crying, What are we going to do?
His reply was worthy of Socrates. Has something somebody once said ever come back to you later, he asked me, and you were struck by its profundity, and then you remembered who said it, and suddenly it didn’t even seem especially true?
Why, yes. That has happened to me.
It’s happened to all of us. It’s why you so often hear the phrase Consider the source. Nobody likes the truth, so we put a human face on it and that way minimize it, making it easy to dismiss. With any luck it’ll be forgotten completely, until the next time it comes out of the mouth of some flawed individual and it becomes necessary to go through the process again.
Discredit the Honourable Member? I asked, shocked at how far we were prepared to go when push came to shove.
A human life is rarely pretty in the details, the Prime Minister affirmed quietly, with a smile, though perhaps only baring his teeth.
They speak like angels, I murmured, but they live like men.
Who said that?
Dr. Johnson.
Did he? Good. We’ll use it.
SPACE
The Stash
Unlike his wife, who told me herself that she would stay in one every single night of the year if she could, the Prime Minister wasn’t fussy one way or another about hotels—with one exception, the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal, but then it had to be Suite 1203. There were better suites than 1203 at the Ritz-Carlton , far better, but the Prime Minister always insisted on having that particular one. In fact, if for some reason Suite 1203 at the Ritz-Carlton proved unavailable, he would sometimes even choose to stay at the Four Seasons.
When this quirk became known beyond the PMO, some of the younger staffers were rumoured to be offering wagers on what exactly it was about 1203. These ranged from a weight-reducing mirror to a hole drilled through to the next room. One day, checking into the Ritz-Carlton to prepare for the Prime Minister’s arrival later that evening, I found the staffers in a giddy state. By informing the front desk that the Prime Minister needed certain files in place before his arrival, they had got hold of the key to 1203. The plan was to search the room for what it was about it that made it the Prime Minister’s suite of choice at the Ritz-Carlton. When my own preparations were complete, I went along to see what turned up.
Since three of us had stayed or were now staying in rooms identical to 1203, only on different floors, it was easy to discount extraordinary features. The view, of Sherbrooke Street, was unexceptional. Nothing advantageous about the bathroom fixtures, no extra force from the shower head. Standard closet space. After half an hour of fruitless searching, all we could think was that something of sentimental value must have happened to the Prime Minister in 1203: news of the shaming or suicide of an opponent, or perhaps the number itself spoke to him in some Christian or Masonic way. When one of the staffers drew a Robinson screwdriver from his pocket, slipped off his shoes, climbed onto the desk, and set about unscrewing the grate over a ventilation duct, we quietly stood and watched. By that point, none of us had much hope. After lowering the grate to us, the staffer reached into the duct and finding nothing, reached deeper and drew out a pair of beat-up old Size-13, moccasin-style Sperry Top-Siders.
These, after examining closely, he handed down to us. When we too had finished turning these articles over in our hands, we passed them back to him and watched in silence as he replaced them deep inside the duct and rescrewed the grate. And then, like whipped hounds, we got out of there.
Nobody talked much afterward about what we had found. Some of us were pretty badly shaken, though I suspect most were simply disappointed not to have won the bet, or to have come anywhere close. For myself, I was left with the sober reflection that the discovery of a person’s deepest secret can leave you knowing far less about them than you knew before, not because it has opened up a whole new set of questions but because what you have found, this enigmatic object, or objects, that you may even have held in your hands and gazed at in queasy wonder, have tipped you into an aporia of absolute unknowing.
SPACE
Arts and Sciences
Two years into the Prime Minister’s second term, it was my great honour to be invited to attend a teepee handover ceremony on a grassy margin at the Delta Lodge at Kananaskis. Strictly speaking, only the Prime Minister and the Heritage Minister were allowed to join the Blackfoot elders inside the teepee, but the ceremony was held next door to a high-power, two-day conference entitled “Whither the Arts?” hosted by the Heritage Minister himself, and so I passed the time at that. But I found that despite being handpicked and not so much artists as arts administrators and lobbyists, the attendees’ general tone was surly and intemperate, as exemplified by the raucous laughter that erupted when somebody remarked that the h in “Whither” had surely been a misprint. This was beggar-on-horseback stuff. Rarely has this country been under the direct personal control of a Prime Minister so devoted to the arts. What people fail to realize is that Greatness is not just a quality you have, it’s a full-time job. Its unacknowledged cost to the Great One is the foregoing of every last glittering night at the opera and sleepy afternoon curled up with a tome penned by one of our army of international-household-name authors. These extraordinary pastimes, whose galvanizing effects on the Canadian soul have been well documented, are simply not in the cards when your creative energies are dedicated to remaking a country from the ground up.
At any rate, the teepee handover ceremony was held in the late morning of the second day of the conference, a day that began in a literally auspicious way. First, at dawn, a hawk swooped from the sky to carry off a prairie dog from the mouth of its burrow close to the door of the teepee. Not half an hour later, a passing coyote entered the (empty) teepee and sniffed around before continuing on its way. Finally, after the elders and the Heritage Minister had gathered inside and the Prime Minister was about to step in himself, a raven alighted at the tip of one of the teepee support poles. As the ceremony started up inside, with the Heritage Minister thus engaged, the rest of us broke from our conference, which had been taking place in a meeting room a few steps away, and stood around in the sun outside the teepee, cooling our heels.
It was nobody’s fault that we waited out there over three hours, and when the Prime Minister and the Heritage Minister emerged from the tent, their faces painted in celebration of the native titles that they had been awarded along with the teepee (the Prime Minister was The Grey One Who Toils in Secret, while the Heritage Minister was simply [unprintable]), they were visibly elated, but the Prime Minister, with a flight out of Calgary to catch, had to dash, and when the Heritage Minister rejoined our conference and the discussion resumed, you could see the elation draining out of him, and before we knew it he was pacing up and down, berating his aides for interrupting this crucial conference on the arts for a ceremony that had gone on far too long and chastising us for having achieved so little the day before and earlier today and now here we were with hardly any time left at all to continue to drill down on the question of whither the arts. After delivering himself of this senseless tirade, he shouted, And if you don’t think I know this is churlish behaviour on my part, you’re dead wrong, but that’s the kind of person I am, and then he stormed out and we never saw him again. We were forced to pass on our conclusions concerning whither the arts in the form of an email attachment and never did receive from his Office an acknowledgment of our efforts.
Later, when I mentioned this unprofessional outburst to the Prime Minister, he said,
Hal can be a bit of a hothead sometimes.
Hal? I thought his name was Bob.
It might not be Hal, the Prime Minister admitted, but I don’t believe it’s Bob. I think I might have heard him answer to Bill once or twice, but never Bob. Not that I couldn’t get him to answer to Bob, if I felt like it . . . .
The only other noteworthy exchange at the conference had occurred earlier, when the Prime Minister looked in on us. As it happened, the attendees, though all from the arts community and explicitly charged with talking about the arts, had got themselves into a lather about global warming—I know; go figure—and in response to a speech disguised as a question from a young native woman, the Prime Minister replied native-style, with a story from India. In a rice-processing facility, an employee comes running into the boss’s office with a cockroach he’s found in the rice. Here! he cries. Conclusive evidence, sir, that we have roaches! The boss says, Let’s see that. He pops the roach into his mouth, swallows it, and says, That was not a roach, it was a betel leaf!
The sheer, blinding wisdom of this story caused a hush to descend upon the attendees. You could practically see its ramifications causing them to reevaluate everything they had ever assumed about global warming. Finally the young native woman said,
But that’s completely dishonest.
Dishonest? the Prime Minister wondered. Or quick thinking in the name of an overriding economic reality? Who shuts down a rice facility in India because one problem employee starts running around crying Roach? Honest, dishonest, who’s what? Employee? Boss? Who can say? In China or Russia, a troublemaker like that would be jailed, or shot. In the West we do things differently. In Canada, for example, he’d be fired, and if not he should be, and once some of these laws we’ve been working on take effect, also fined, and if possible, deported.
This was something to think about, but before the native woman could continue to dominate the mic, the Prime Minister was obliged to step away to attend the teepee handover ceremony.
SPACE
First Trip Abroad
Though one or two commentators were on it right away, and several took to carping on it weekly, it didn’t seem to matter to the general public that the Prime Minister was in office for some time before he ventured abroad. The reason was simple: he needed control, and because he didn’t know what abroad was like, he couldn’t be sure that he would have it there. I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday the afternoon of the day he was scheduled to take his first trip outside the country—an early evening flight to South America. I had never seen him in such a state. He was like a drunk who does everything with overscrupulous care because he is too drunk to admit to himself how drunk he is.
He packed and unpacked and packed again. He chose and discarded reading material for his carry-on. At the last possible moment he took a bath, of all things. He’d just had his hair cut specially for this trip, but he’d decided it was uneven at the back, and I remember at one point him sitting on a dining room chair in the garden of 24 Sussex and me with a pair of kitchen scissors trimming his hair, while he held up a mirror that kept flashing the sun in my eyes, until I took it out of his hand. Now that I think of it, he was sitting there with his pant cuffs pinned up with safety pins. He’d convinced himself they were too long, but he hadn’t been able to get them the same length, whereas all I could think was who at this late hour we could possibly get to re-hem them. As I snipped, to take his mind off his anxiety and at the same time yank his chain a little, I described the classic Sid Caesar routine in which Sid tries to get his sideburns even and ends up taking his entire hairline back an inch, but the Prime Minister wasn’t listening. Already his thoughts were deep inside the jungle-green and beige-walled labyrinth that is South America.
Probably the reason we humans feel compelled on no evidence whatsoever to distinguish ourselves from the other animals is that 99% of what we do is pure animal routine: rote, unconscious, we’ve done it all so many times before we’re on automatic. Only when we move out into unaccustomed territory do we become what we think of ourselves as being all the time, “human,” because only out there do we become conscious and need to think about everything we do. Only out there is life arbitrary and fearsome, as well it should be. Out there is where the other animals wisely fear to tread, because out there is where the big mistakes are made. This was the place the Prime Minister was in that day, but what I would see in South America was a man who quickly made himself right at home. Once he’d met a few world leaders and witnessed for himself that they were only human, perhaps brighter or more assertive or more charismatic than the rest of us, though not, in the Prime Minister’s view, than himself, and certainly shorter and slighter, most of them anyway, he relaxed, and before long he was stepping on a plane and flying off to South-east Asia as casually as you or I would hop on a bus to Arnprior.
SPACE
Law and Order
The Halloween of my second year in Ottawa, my sister’s boy, who was eight, wanted to go trick-or-treating as a terrorist, and so my sister, who shares the family’s artistic bent even though she lives in Vancouver (joking!), spent the day with him and a friend, making pretend pipe bombs out of toilet paper rolls and sewing camouflage fatigues and headscarves. Once she had the boys kitted out as terrorists, she took a few pictures, which she dropped off at Costco, and on Halloween the boys in their gear were a big hit around the neighbourhood. But two weeks later, in the middle of the night, a SWAT team kicked down my sister’s front door and pulled the family from their beds and went through the house for weapons and ammunition. The last thing the officer in charge of the operation told my sister and brother-in-law as his team was packing up to leave was,
There’s something you people need to understand. This is the world we live in. From now on, what happened here tonight is how it’s going to be.
I thought of my sister and her unnerving experience when I recently found myself standing in the street, trying to snap a picture of the Prime Minister as he rode in a motorcade along Spring Garden Road in Halifax. It was a sunny day, and the people if they weren’t exactly cheering were trying, as people will, to register a glimpse of Greatness. Unfortunately, the group I happened to be standing with found itself on the wrong side of a police cordon. One minute everybody was straining to see, the next we were being unceremoniously pushed backward. When people objected and even tried to resist physically, truncheons started flying, and one must have caught me across the side of the head.
The next thing I knew I was sitting on the curb with the worst headache of my life. I tried to tell the officers who I was and that I needed a doctor because my brain seemed to be filling with blood, but they had people with injuries far worse than mine to deny assistance to. In all we were held for just under ten hours. During that time and for the next three weeks I kept passing in and out of self-awareness. At the end of the day I’d be missing entire blocks of time. But once the swelling went down and the headaches grew less severe and more infrequent, I gratefully put the incident behind me. Now I simply avoid crowds and arrange to be out of town on parade days.
When I told the Prime Minister about my experience, he proposed a thought experiment: A. Assume I’m a terrorist. B. Ask myself: Did this treatment meet with my approval as a law-abiding citizen?
Not really, I said.
You’ve assumed you’re a terrorist, he reminded me.
Assumed, until proven guilty, I countered.
There’s no proven, the Prime Minister said, eerily reifying the sentiment expressed by the SWAT team leader. Not any more. It’s too late for proven.
To explain where I was coming from, I assured him that few people had ever felt more warmly disposed toward the police than I used to. All my life I’d found them almost painfully polite and considerate. To take just one example, when I lived in the bush, two of them crossed the lake to our dock in a motorized canoe. The one in the bow, a beefy fellow, got out and, after ascertaining who I was, snapped to attention, stood at ease, placed his hat on his heart, and said,
I regret to inform you that your grandfather has died.
And had he? the Prime Minister asked.
Yes. What a civilized country this is, where the police provide a service like that for a citizen. I wasn’t even on the grid!
If you’d been on the grid, the Prime Minister observed, they wouldn’t have needed to go out there. You could have saved the taxpayer a hefty chunk o’ change.
Still, I said.
Did you thank them?
Not at first. I laughed nervously, the way one does.
From the grief, the Prime Minister said.
Not really. Bamp was a hundred and two. He was ready to go. I tried to explain this, but it came out as Hey, no worries, the guy was incredibly old. I should have kept that to myself. They must have wondered why they’d gone to the trouble of putting a boat in the water.
Did you get any good pictures? the Prime Minister asked.
What? Of the police on our dock?
No, of the motorcade.
I told him I got one or two, but they were blurry with flying truncheons.
SPACE
Last Days
Talk of slime mold is all well and good, but every slug has its day, prominence is achieved, the stalk grows a head, the head explodes, and sooner or later the time comes for a return to its constituent parts. To put this another way, not even a Great Man can keep a lid screwed tight forever on a cauldron of monkeys. The Prime Minister saw the end coming long before I did. One day he told me a story that let me know without letting me know.
The Prime Minister’s father had supported his little family on the income from a car-refurbishing business. One summer he came into the possession of a mint-green ’56 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, for next to nothing because someone had died in it. Several days must have passed before the body was discovered, because the car had a smell to it that the seller had been unable to mask. But as a skilled renovator of automobile interiors, the Prime Minister’s father replaced the floor mats and took out the seats and recovered them and essentially recreated the car’s interior. For two summers he drove it with the top down, but when the cold weather returned and the top went up, the smell was still there, and eventually he too had to sell it.
Why am I telling you this? the Prime Minister asked me.
I don’t know, I said.
I’ve been driving that mint green Cadillac Eldorado for seven years, the Prime Minister said. Summer and winter.
Who died? I said.
I don’t know, he said. All I know is it stinks and the stink isn’t going to go away.
That should have been my first clue that the Prime Minister had entered that late stage of an endeavour when, as we prepare psychologically to step away, all the dreadful things that, in our eagerness to be here, doing this, we’ve chosen not to see, rise to the surface and stare us in the face. The thrill has died, the bloom has gone off. Nothing is what it was. Peers and superiors, once gods to be emulated, to rebel against, are now Muppets, not worth the bother.
It’s at a time like this, when youth has fled, a time of disillusion and decline, that fissures form in the structure of reality, and the Lt. Wayne McLeods and their ilk crawl out and walk backwards among us, their faces thrust into ours. One thing that can’t be appreciated enough about the Prime Minister’s immigration policy was its friendliness to multicultural diversity. No one saw more clearly than he did the vote-generating potential of a platform designed to assuage newcomer fears of social instability while silencing any conceivable charge of structural governmental racism. McLeod’s party, with its Great White North bombast, was a knuckle-dragging throwback. If this was exactly what the country didn’t need, it was also the only kind of political challenge that could have at the same time unseated the Prime Minister and made him, and everything he had accomplished, appear to be—depending on your politics—either the step that had taken us closer to the world according to McLeod or the last great flowering of effective one-man government.
A tell-tale characteristic of Greatness is that no one, not even his closest confidant, can hope to possess the scope of mind necessary to grasp the larger picture. But then somebody will always come along with a story that seizes the imagination of the people, who will all of a sudden tire of the ineffable leader who served them with such unswerving devotion, and in their fickle way they will hitch their wagon to a little man who has told them a story they can hold in their minds. It doesn’t even need to be his own story, it can be a story he’s picked up somewhere, that happened to somebody else. All it needs to be is a story that will stick to him through the thick and thin of all the empty promises he will make and the lies he will tell. A master narrative, in other words, and thanks to the tour of duty and the row of medals on the chest and the nasty hectoring speeches and the crazy eyes and the crooked arm, this one stuck.
It was the Prime Minister’s wife, appropriately, who filled me in, some months before McLeod’s people put it out there for public consumption. The story went like this.
McLeod did eventually wedge in the crevasse, upside down, with a wall of clear ice between him and the melting face of the glacier. Requiring an implement to chip his way through, he snapped off his left arm just above the wrist and used the sharp end of the compound fracture to dig himself out. His account of this ordeal always ended with the passionate declaration that human life can offer no greater thrill than the one experienced by a man as he plunges from glacial entrapment into freezing water. McLeod’s promise to the Canadian people was that his election would result in an experience for each of us not unlike plunging into a glacial lake while cradling an arm we’d just used our free hand to break off.
This was heady stuff. It also left the impression that the Prime Minister had somehow kept us encased in ice, even though it was hardly like that at all, as anyone can tell you who ever ran for cover when his head exploded or luxuriated in the halflight of his smile, if that’s what it was. But the Canadian people, knowing even less about the Prime Minister and what he was up to than the politicians did, were hungry for a story, preferably, in this age of darkness and decline, something heroic, or its imitation, as we swim for our lives.
SPACE
Coda
The last time I saw the Prime Minister I was standing in the press box of the Ottawa Convention Centre, gazing down at that vast, lonely space, and there he was in his grey suit, moving heavily up and down the floor with an air hockey stick, and when he reached one end he’d take a hard shot on goal, pick up the rebound, stickhandle his way to the other end, and take another hard shot, and watching him down there I understood that after we hauled him up out of the ice like a Colossus, this was what his life had been, and in a vision I saw that it will be a cold day in Hell before we are again bestridden as the Prime Minister bestrode us in the full majesty of his Greatness.
–Greg Hollingshead
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Greg Hollingshead has published six books of fiction, including The Roaring Girl, The Healer, and Bedlam. He has won the Governor General’s Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Giller Prize. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta and director of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre. In 2011-12 he served as Chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. In 2012 he received the Order of Canada. He now lives in Toronto.