Waste in Space: “Reality is a vacuum”
The Drama’s
Personnel:
-
Carlos—Bowl—Man with no name
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Cat—Shadow figure
-
Broom—Herald Broom
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Props
o
One candle
o
Projector background—Sunset—Moonrise—Zenith
o
Blue broomstick
o
A bookshelf containing Wallace Stevens:
Collected Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom’s The Anatomy of Influence, Lucretius’
Of the Nature of Things, Solaris, etc…
o
Bowl—Bleak crown
o
Costumes
§
Carlos’ costume—dressed as a peasant
§
Cat—Cat mask
§
Broom—in all-black stage-techie costume,
carrying blue broom
Cited: Works of Wallace Stevens
o
Carlos
Amongst the Candles, 615
o
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,
311
o
Crude Foyer, 270
o
The Bowl,
Cat, and Broomstick, 621
o
Notes Towards A Supreme Fiction, 329
o
Of Modern Poetry, 218
o
Man Carrying Thing, 306
o
Three Men
Watching a Sunset, 601
o
Adagia, 900
-
Enter Carlos who has
a lengthy, quiet, and patient entrance onstage. Carlos enters stage right
through the front door, lights a candle on the table, and looks around the
room. He notices the shadows created by the light.
Carlos – Having
lit this candle in the darkness the solitude increases and the isolation it
provides is my own.
-
There’s a small
ominous shadow sitting nearby the window. Carlos chases after the
sneaky shadow which hides after he sees the figure’s shadow in the dark)
Carlos – Hey,
come out! You…thing! That I’ve by now frightened…Why don’t you just think, man?
Gah! Darned scaredy cat. Might it have been a figment of my imagination?
-
The shadow ceases to show itself so Carlos
concedes his search, and then he notices more things around the room.
Carlos – A
blue broom. A bowl. Ah…
What’s on this thing? (referring to bookshelf, Carlos
investigates the books on the bookshelf)
Ah, and on this thing? (referring to
the cover of the book Carlos picks up)
What’s in this thing? (referring to
the contents inside the book Carlos has in his hands)
Ah, and in this thing? (referring to the
single book on the table, open to page
311,
“The
House was Quiet and the world was calm”.)
Ah…The house was quiet
and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
-
Carlos picks up the book, closes it, and
looks at its blank, blue cover. Carlos then opens the book to a different
random page. The books pages fall upon Crude Foyer, page 270. Carlos’ lines start the poem.
Carlos – Crude Foyer:
Thought is false happiness: the idea
That merely by thinking one can,
Or may, penetrate, not may,
But can, that one is sure to be able—
That merely by thinking one can,
Or may, penetrate, not may,
But can, that one is sure to be able—
That there lies at the end of thought
A foyer of the spirit in a landscape
Of the mind, in which we sit
And wear humanity's bleak crown;
A foyer of the spirit in a landscape
Of the mind, in which we sit
And wear humanity's bleak crown;
-
Carlos
pauses, sees a round bowl on the ground which could resemble a crown, makes
sure nobody is watching him, and places the bowl on his head as it were a crown.
Carlos - In which we read the critique of paradise
And say it is the work
of a comedian,
-
Carlos
walks over towards a blue broom, then around the room and looks upon the contents
of the bookshelf. He curiously looks for a brief time, brings a book or two
from off the shelf back to the table, and continues the poem standing up…
Carlos - this critique
In which we sit and breathe
In which we sit and breathe
An innocence of an absolute…false
happiness…
-
Carlos
gets emotional flipping the pages of the book. [Something absolute is
inadequate, being subject to criticism. Absolution is innocent and therefore
fallacious, as is all literature.] Cat is looking on, concealed by the podium,
and sees Carlos’ anger and page turning act. Carlos leaves the table, unhappily
pacing around the podium area, then stops to open the “blinds” to find a sunset shining in the
sky (or: moon gleaming amongst the auroras), finally stops and looks out the window. Cat emerges,
sits down at the table leaning over the book, finds
the same page that Carlos was reading, and picks up where Carlos left the
poem off (or: Cat cannot find the page and thus turns to a random page and
begins reading). Carlos can neither hear nor see Cat because it’s “too dark and
too quiet.”
Cat - …false happiness…
Since we know that we use
Only the eye as faculty, that the mind
Is the eye, and that this landscape of the mind
Only the eye as faculty, that the mind
Is the eye, and that this landscape of the mind
Is a landscape only of the eyes; and that
We are ignorant men incapable
Of the least, minor, vital metaphor, content,
At last, there, when it turns out to be here.
We are ignorant men incapable
Of the least, minor, vital metaphor, content,
At last, there, when it turns out to be here.
-
After
finishing Crude Foyer, 270, Cat opens to a random page containing Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, page 329, and
begins to recite out of the book.
Cat – It Must be Abstract: I
Begin,
ephebe, by perceiving the idea
Of this invention, this invented world,
The inconceivable idea of the sun.
Of this invention, this invented world,
The inconceivable idea of the sun.
You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it.
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the idea of it.
AY, YES! That’s it! Don’t you see? To become an
ignorant man is to see the world as an invention, apprehended through our
conceptions or rather constant conception of it. It’s our own invention, and
thus it’s a fiction, OUR fiction. Reality is the idea of the sun, an idea…OF
COURSE! How can we perceive reality beyond our creation of it, our own inventiveness,
and see the world without at least one premeditated idea of it? TSK! Our
reality is invented, inventing itself as we speak in the face of a believable
fiction believed to be true within the context of thus truthfulness. YES! Our
reality is a conception of the mind. We must become ignorant, naïve. But how-so?
Imagination? Imagination is the power the enables us to perceive the normal things
in the abnormal being, the opposite of chaos in chaos [or: allowing an attempt
at performing a setting opposite of chaos, span in a realm delegated by chaos].
Imagination is seeing the vista and believing the ignorance of the perceiving
mind, it is letting go of what is real, forgetting, looking, grasping; and
then again creating. It is acceptance of such nonsense and believing therein
faith’s fullness of that supreme nonsense. Forget what you know or have
learned, and look through the pretend lens of ignorance; and you will see
everything in the idea of it. This is what gives life to the fiction of our
adapting, germinal reality. The problems of any man are the problems of the
normal, and all we need to solve them in nature is to order everything the imagination
has to give. And BELIEVE IT! In the service of imagination nothing can be too
lavish, too sublime, or too festive. This is what our reality…our fiction…needs.
([OPTIONAL DIALOGUE
INSERT] Carlos – (aside) The violet
moon is the biggest island in the ocean slathering about with coral reefs into
the blue. The northern aural green glittered prisms slice as serpents in the
vaporous night sky abysm. The earthy sheen deflects the moonshine to my eyes
through the dew’s into pupils, misprision the two as if examining the sun so
blissfully with such an ignorant glean coating mine own eyes. The saying shows
true, but being so I’ve either overlooked understating this so-called bliss or lost
my thread too quickly missing out on it altogether…Who could I ask, what do I
see; so I can get to where I’m going? The Bible? Hah! No. How about, the book!
But first…)
-
Carlos begins wandering the room again seeing
all the things that could give him light. There is a number of lights which he
proceeds to turn on. Carlos turns on the last light he can find in the room,
turns around, and notices a Cat-creature sitting at the table reading the books
after having turned on all the lights. Both the Cat and Carlos are startled. The
Cat accidentally bumps the book, turning to page 218 containing “Of Modern Poetry...”
Carlos – I don’t believe it!
Cat – Meow! The cat’s out of the bag!
Carlos – Whoa, hey, nay, wait, ay, hold up! What have you got there?
Cat – (startled, then looks at the book) Of Modern Poetry…
Carlos – How does it go?
-
Cat begins reading. Carlos begins
pacing skeptically around the table…
Cat – The
poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice.
It has not always had to find: the scene was set;
It has not always had to find: the scene was set;
It
repeated what was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed to something else.
Its
past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet the women of the time.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet the women of the time.
It
has to think about war and it has to find what will suffice.
It
has to construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and with meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, exactly, that which it wants to hear,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and with meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, exactly, that which it wants to hear,
At
the sound of which, an invisible audience listens, Not to the play, but to
itself,
Expressed
in an emotion as of two people, as of two emotions becoming one.
The
actor is a metaphysician in the dark, twanging an instrument,
Carlos
– Ah, an instrument? Ah yes, this will do.
-
Carlos
sees the blue broom, goes over to pick it up and play it…
Cat
– Twanging a wiry string that gives sounds passing through sudden rightnesses,
Wholly
containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond
which it has no will to rise. It must Be the finding of a satisfaction,
And
may be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman combing.
The
poem of the act of the mind.
Carlos – The poem must resist the intelligence
almost successfully. Illustration: A brune
figure in winter evening resists Identity… (He sets
down the broom and sits next to Cat at table reading the book)
Cat – The thing he carried resists the most necessitous sense. Accept them, then, as
secondary. Parts not quite perceived of the obvious whole…
-
Broom
stands up and walks over behind Carlos and Cat at the table with the book.
Broom – Secondary, that’s how you
bibliophiles see me?! I resent the notion!
Cat – Meow! I don’t believe it! Vive la
resistance!
Carlos – Prove your primacy broom, if
you would then. How are you a thinking thing? Speak up!
Broom – Ehem, tune in…If nature were
master, a broom I would be…But I am not…I am a blue guitar, you having played
me…
Carlos – Remarkable!
Cat – But the line goes, “a BRUNE
figure in winter evening,” broomstick. ‘Brune’ is French like…Clare Dupray.
Broom – I see. But by your definition,
second nature reigns supreme. The all-consuming fiction omni-presides in a
fixated fortitude set forth by fate and astral influx, desire and the cosmos, destiny,
death, and dust. It’s the perpetual war between the sun and the sea, infinity
and one…Do you see?
Carlos – I don’t…..quite see but, the
Cat, if I may vouch, was just saying,
you see, because the line goes—
Broom – Broom, brune, broom, bloom,
whom, assume as soon until I say Fie! It sounds like BRUME to me, so what’s the
difference between two consonants too close to call? Nevertheless and withal, I
am what I am to you and I am thus.
Cat – Charming, indeed.
Broom – What was the previous poem you did
read?
Cat – (flipping pages) That I
recited? I cannot recall…
Broom – Tragic.
Carlos – It’s actually always a comedy.
Broom – How little it would take to
turn the poets into the only true comedians! There’s no truer comedy than this
hodge-podge of men and sunlight, women and moonlight, houses and clouds, and so
on…
Cat – Nor any truer tragedy.
Carlos – Disputable…
Broom – So what do we have over here? (Proceeding to
examine the contents on the bookshelf)
Carlos – Ah yes, there are some good titles—
Cat – Whoa, wait. Come on you guys, get over here, we have
something here. We have (looks to the book’s spine) Stevens’ Collected
Poetry and Prose.
Broom – Point taken. (To
Carlos) Come on, you. Proceed, read some more. Inspire. Consider nothing.
Respire, aspire, then read anything.
Carlos – Alright, give me a moment, let me think out loud….Ah,
I see. It would be like…A poem is a play. Being so, should it be performed
first and then read, or should its audience read the script before seeing it performed?
Cat – I would first prefer a performance, so I have no
expectations.
Broom –
Indeed, agreed. Plus, “Authors are actors, books are theatres”, as the saying goes. And
you ain’t no author.
Carlos – Aye, eye. Being so a play in entirety goes from
doors’ open to curtain’s close, finely bound upon a line between two
twine-woven spines.
Cat – If the curtain were necessary in such a setting.
Carlos – That’s what makes poetry so tough. The playwrights’
genre, beheld onstage, can neither withhold nor rival the density of the poets’.
The medium of poesies remains thus curtain-less. Yet, there mustn’t be none of
that. An author wills a poem as a reader would a poem, and they always want
something else to happen. Neither is happy and they say, “is that it?!” And the
desire dissolves into the thinness. Nevertheless, we never feel influenced from
Beyonds, herein a given desirous body, wherein if thy body’s utmost desire is
satisfied, then ‘tis “not a great desire.” Therefore, I think there isn’t
proper sequel unless all poems are inferred equal…Ah, it would seem that plays
have…closure, of sorts. They’re not so abstract, yet more abrupt, I think. In
poetry there’s always something left to say, and what’s left to say ceases to
be...well, said. No! Instead, if I may say, well
sai—
Broom – A talking cat on the floor is worth two walking out
the door…
Cat – If poems are so intellectually frustrating then read
us a play.
Broom – Yes! Seconded.
Carlos – I can’t do that.
Broom – Sure you can.
Carlos – It doesn’t work that way. There are multiplied
facets of responsibility…I can’t play everybody—
Cat – (to Broom) Bowl
is an idealist, you know.
Broom – Aha! Tsk, tsk. I see, but fear not! If it makes it
easier we, the Cat and I, could play along...
Carlos – If you’re offering then surely. Shall we?
Cat – (to Broom) I don’t care.
Broom – (to Cat) We shall! (to Carlos) Provided
I select it.
Carlos –Nothing would please me more.
Broom – Aye! Let’s
see…Carlos amongst the Candles…no…The Bowl, Cat, and the…no…Aha, Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise, this is
the one!
Carlos – (leaning over
the page) Who do you want to be?
Cat – Let’s each take one of three Chinamen.
Broom – I’ll take the most heralded role!
Cat – Why can’t I play that one?
Broom – Because I’m the typecast.
Carlos – The heralded role, eh, how’s about you take the First
Chinese?
Cat – And we could call him…Herald Broom…
Carlos – (there’s a short pause) Brilliant!
Broom – (to Cat) We’ll call you the Second, then, and (to Carlos) you’ll take the Third Chinese.
Carlos – So…how
should we begin?
Cat – I will. (reads) “All you need to find poetry—
Broom – No! No!
Let’s first ask our self…well, what is a play before the lights hit the stage?
Suppose those indeterminate moments before the curtain is drawn, say the darkest
moment right before the light of a candle sputters to life, the moments when
you don’t know if the play is tragic, comedic, Italian, or French Canadian?
Carlos – Then say
the stage is the earth, and our stage lights the sun. The point of difference
from reality is this: That is: Illustration: the earth remains of one color, it
remains…red, and it remains what it…is. But when the sun shines upon the earth,
our stage most true, in reality it does not shine upon a thing that remains
what it was yesterday…Then the sun rises, as never before, upon whatever the
earth happens to be.
Cat – Imagine those
moments when a waxed wick sputtering up finds itself in seclusion, as falling
trees in the forest or rustling leaves in an abandoned street, and it shines
perhaps for the beauty of shining. It never knew—as one of the poor lights—and
it possessed neither love, nor inspiration, nor purpose, nor wisdom. Or could
the candle be an eye itself? Besides, it may be said that the invasion of
humanity is what counts.
Broom – My Russian
friend once said that hyper-consciousness is a serious disease…Imagine three
figures on a stage and all of the possible seats’ vistas. If there were three
warriors battling for blood or power upon the stage then the audience would
forget the stage for the sake of the three figures—the figures stand on it, the
foundation functionally fixed—for a certain feeling.
Carlos – And sunrise
is multiplied, like the earth on which it shines, by the eyes that open on it.
Cat – So really…Ehem
(reads), “All you need to find poetry is to look for it with a lantern.”
All: HA HA HA!! (There a short pause after they’ve indulged
in an enthymeme-induced laughter)
Carlos – And when
the play ends?
Broom – The invasion
of humanity is then secluded. Isolation, silence, solitude, sleep, death, and
dreams need no candle in their hermitage. The end of the play is only the end
of the play as you know it…
-
(Broom leans in to blow out the
candle. Carlos stops him.)
Carlos – Wait! But
what if I’m not ready for it to end?
Cat – A play must,
but poetry never does. Poetry is labyrinthine. It’s the great ellipsis…
-
(Decidedly, the three
simultaneously blow out the candle. The room goes pitch-black.)
Broom – (unseen in the dark) How
like him, everyone thought. Then he was gone, and the world was a blank. It was
cold and the air was still. Tell me, you people out there, what is poetry
anyway? Can anyone die without even a little?
-
(Exeunt)
