An excerpt of a
piece of Art and Language work... recommendation to be read under certain conditions (Post-modern if you like): -7 in far night, or +7 in May the 25th light.
Dedicated... to all of my adopted half-baked selves.
An excerpt... from "A Can opener for the small print"
The story begins with a play I've recently seen... The curtain opened but it appeared as if they had forgotten something like... the spotlights for example. A pregnant moment and another and... Then the sound of a match. The light came from a candle and I see a fifty-something-year-old woman sitting in a meditation pose... I adjust my vision to the faint light... she gets up and moves towards the right side of the stage and turns on the lights... the sound of a switch... She sits down again on the stage floor and stays like this for quite a while... very still...
I start admiring the stillness of the directing...
Woman actor: "Let's open this suitcase then."
(She closes a book... )...
"Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I am reminded of a Hitler somewhere, everywhere."
(Pause)
"... maybe it's this moustache in the wrong place, or is it the mouth that's out of place? Oh well, probably it's just the wrong face."
(Pause)
"At other times, I change my mode of thinking and I prefer to see things differently: there are pears, and there is one apple tree, similarly to many Hitlers and one Giacometti, but you cannot put different individuals in the same old basket, or someone will end up as a full basket case."
(Sound of a doorbell)
(Sound of a doorbell)
She doesn't get up to answer the door, but continues with her monologue .
Woman actor: "I didn't order a pizza tonight, I've got vanilla in the ice-box.
Post-modern flats are the part-apart-mends of our allegorical ways.
They have one window framing the past,
one bay window picturing the post-frames and
one front door facing the fire brigade on the left side.
We gaze forward into what a basement lawyer tries to conceal, while the governments always play it safe. Such times are often trying for passionate nations, especially when they are imperfectly prepared, since they've spent their valuable time outside the tumble dryer sorting out other nations' underwear and undergarments. That puts a cherry on top of some cake, doesn't it?"
She gets up and turns on the radio; bad selection of 80's popular songs. Then R.E.M. and "I'm losing my religion" She sits down on the stage floor again.
Woman actor: "Someone told me once that Surrealism was dead... years later someone else put in the same basket fascism and Communism. They were also honest about it, Art and Power... we are not judging the politics, it's about ... Socialist Realism...
I had a liquid head then again. It was that time I made a mental promise
instead of a requiem : there are things best for the floor and others that suit better the walls,
like wallpapers for example."
She smiles and takes out a small box from the inside of her blouse. It's a tobacco case. The telephone rings. She gets up and answers it.
(Telephone conversation...)
She hangs up and lights that roll-up and then turns around to smile at us. She comes closer to the edge of the stage and sits down again-facing us this time...
Woman actor: "Aren't you lucky? You will have the chance to see my granddaughter. Oh, I don't think your money is that good for her smiley eyes, but it's enough I guess. Now then, let me tell you a story before she arrives."
(She keeps smoking)
Woman actor: "Once upon a time, now pay attention to this, it is a peoples' life-art fairy tale, which like all of them stories never made any sense at all. Are you sitting comfortably? Shall I begin?"
Someone from the audience: "No, we've heard that one; give us a different one."
Woman actor: "OK then, No2 coming up."
(She turns her head around as if she's ordering the audience's request.)
Woman actor: "This is new and you haven't heard it before. I'm even going to ad-lib it for you.OK? Let's begin. ...
There was time and again (once and again) a man and a woman.
Their names could have been changed or chained one time, once again.
Allegedly they were in love.
The simulation of their love was taking place inside a spacial corner of our world, let's say, called Cinema Paradiso, that long remembered area with the apple tree and the snake.
The apple tree had very strong roots -because like all routes it was very old- and had greenish apples hanging from its branches.
One could easily mistake it for something else, than for what it was.
Sometimes people do that: they see an apple tree but they see cherries hanging from the branches...
They had a favourite life project... it was a bit of a puzzle, a bit of a crossword, a bit of a duvet and a bit of patchwork, without the dry sense of humour.
Before every game they had a ritual, part of it was reciting a poem. It went something like this:
Only after the last tree has been cut DOWN ?
Between the PRESENT That between NOW
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then will you know that money cannot be eaten
Between that is now The present
Between that was then There between then
Between there was when
there is a space ever shift
switch donor cards for the play exchanged for a cross-game road
or something of this kind, I never remember all the details."
(She lights another one and starts pacing up and down.).
Woman actor: "What comes first? What came first, the idea or the means to express it?
Ways of seeing, someone said, I can't remember the place, who left first? What was the reason? What was the purpose that time, the ridiculous, the bizarre or the incongruously irrational? She was so small and only appeared to be fragile, but she wasn't you see,
that was always the problem: appearances and distorted images... illusions... of our lives..."
(The telephone rings again, but she doesn't answer it, she goes to the door instead and waits there besides a coat hanger -it has only umbrellas hanging from it.).
A knock on the door makes her smile. She puts out her cigarette.
...
...
...
Curtains down
