Untitled

I'm only speaking to one of you. Others are excluded

Even the one I'm speaking to. . .doubts. Is it to you I am really speaking and will you be able to understand the true thrust of my words.

I hope you haven't eaten.

This wonderful serving is for you.

This food is for you

Shut up.

Al the things I wanted to say are going back into the head, that's why the words are pouring out of me, and when we reach the end of that we reach the end. What flashes? Oh, a cloudless sky of a kind.

Take my fever? I meant to say temperature, of course

Let's return to that rush, and I-- shall I speak self-wise, I, I, I-- hey, I think what I have here is a stuck on a point.

You too should be me so I can afford to shut up. Shut up! Shut up!

(her head is held)

You see what my touch is capable of?

All this is a calcuulated effect, professor.

Don't call me professor

Not one

Prove it

A professor wouldn't deny being a professor

On certain occasions, through I admit I can't define them

I'm into magic

Prove it

It might hurt

Prove it

I don't saw people in half

One half of me believes it, one half doesn't

(into box)

The issue at hand seems relevent to the following consideration. Is it I who pour forth words, and having done so, am I emptied of or am I filling something, so the final objective is a full or emptied vessel.

That's genuine magic, professor

Pouring forth, or vice versa

Professor?

Words pouring forth , or vice versa.

Empting something or filling something, I look upon it as interchangeable, but that's only for the time being, and therefore it could mean a vast number of things. Also I call uponme, myself. 1.2.3.4.5-- whatever my repetitions

Professor

Multiple enough so that in fact, somebody else is speaking through me. Look what I find, a voice that's capable of taking over my own voice, so that when I, my voice, rests-- it's still going on in the resting, and I do like to put two hands here

(on his own throat)

as a kind of soothing gesture, even though it looks like something else

That's the magic, Right

That's the magic. Am I empty or full when I get emptied.

That confuses you, but if I say is IT empty or full, you get the picture.

Picture?

Snap.

Snap!His own lines:

What I mean by that, a series of forces exiting from the self-- wait a minute, there;'s no inside or outside. So what am I looking for if there's no inside or outside? And I'm issuing forth, a force.

So what is this force doing if it's not looking for something?

It seems to be pouring forth, but it could also be sucking in. Something out there. . . sucking in, and that pulling inside. makes lines, imagined.

Is Dr Laborde in the audience.

Alas no.

Alas no?

That puts me in an awkward position. My discourse is directed at making a certain impression on Dr Laborde. It is Doctor Laborde, uniquely, who is in a position to understand the full depth and pognancy of what I say, and without his presence, as receptical, my words dispurse in space; in a sense, lost.

I'm not speaking to everyone. Hello.

Dr Laborde exists...as fire in my imagination. And as that fire. . .burns my very words, something in the world becomes animated, invisible to most, but neverthless real, as nothing else is real.

Hwllo. I'm speaking to one of you. . .yet you doubt your own identity, except that you know my words are reverberating in you as they are self-evidently not reverberating in the minds that surround you, encased as they are in heads of stone.

(Gilloytine-- thrust head)So, long ago when young.

I located myself at the mouth of this verbal flow.

I tried to flood the world

I recognized that the source was inexhaustable

But then it was exhausted, only I hadn't at that point, the courage to feel better in my emptiness.

Pr was it slightly different, that I wasn't self-locatable in the emptiness which was elsewhere, and myself being separating from that by a kind of mental space--

Ah, well

Who would understand me?

The flow from inside me, was a flow from that other space, emptying itself through me but it wasn't me emptying.

Hello-- I dreamed a magic object

(opens several small doors)

Or better to say-- I made discoveries, without realizing that each discovery lead in the same, call it-- direction.

Because I knew it wasn't a question of direction, but of the source of that very multifacuted thing that seemed to be a direction when really it was an "Oh, here I am".

Somebody in the back of my head rises and says "I understand you, I understand where you're headed"

And I reach out my hand. But then I think to myself, Oh, that had better be your VERBAL hand, or could we say your internal hand?

No, we could not say verbal hand and mental hand in the same breath-idea.

That would be a total misconception.

And in fact, somebody in the back of my head says "Hello. I understand perfectly. Aim carefully-- this is what the companion or potential companion in the back of my head says to me-- aim carefully, and I turn that perfect aim into a vague trajectory that wobbles so fast it vibrates with light and look-- I've found my way for both os us"

I didn't make the mistake of reaching out my hand to somebody in the real last row.

Rather, if I reach out my hand. . .I send it on a trajectory that speeds forwayd in that linar direction which, if extended far enough, we all know must-- of proveable certainty-- circle back though never circling, always straight, into the heart cavity from which the hand first thrust. Mine. And there it meets, inside me, somebody else.

I've never seen you before

Me?

It's a different aspect of you.

I don't feel diffgerent

You don't look different

But you said--

--Don't hold me to what I said because I wasn't talking. I was letting the words pour from my heart but I couldn't give them a name and that meant, you're not named anything, and that's what I saw shining like a smile of recognition on your face--

I'd like to see that

Don't ask me to do an imitation. It has to come from my heart, and of course it does.

(They embrace)All in a box

Here, this box

But you quite misunderstand, because this box, entered into and extended from in at least a few, tiny holes,

which means those holes that seem to be a connection between inside and outside are really the thing itself,

and if the thing itself is nothing whicvh is what holes are, I think you can see how the thing itself is everywhere because nothing IS everywhere under and between and inside those occasional things that do arise on the perminant sea of nothing that's simply another name for something that extends itself immediately through all places, namly, holes, holes in things

If you can't understand me, you don't have to, because you pick up instead on the electrricity of my presentation

* * *

Maestro, are you emptying the world or are you emptying your own self

.Each word, tripple in my imagination, overheard, you again multiply that trippleness, and you who overhear are the last in a long line of overhearers, and each one tripples the heard.

And so, each word trippled to the millionth and millionth at least, power.

So the use of words, so that's how it is with the use of words and the overlapping trippleness and complexity that is inherited by you and me and everybody else. Nothing to be done about it. Multiplication of reference as a fact, so ride that trippleness because either you are used by it, or --you use it, though the choice is yours and it doesn't much matter which the choice is because the choice is similar owing to the fact that your words are just the tiny pinprick on the gian globule of words that rolls over you the minute you open your mouth or even think about doing so.The ultimate play began.

The stage emptied.

The curtain rose

The audience collapsed into itself, and travelled at great speed in a direction opposite to vectors penetrating the stage.

In that mutual recoil, the play began.

The stage, emptied, became the perfect arena.

It became 'un-noticed'.

The single spectator slept, and imagined reading a book, The real walls of the theater took on reality, in the form of a material much like stone, but not stone.

The light curled on itself and darkened, inside the head.

The imaginary book, melted into the imaginary theater, and words were both things of the spirit and things of heavy stone.

The actors, never existed, and danced the dance of their never existing.Nothing.

Atymy table:

Certainly

And nothing happens

But something happens

Because the moment

Eaten

Self-slides--

Nothing happens.

The silverwear writes my tongue,

X'd out verbal twist,

Swallowing words

Self erased

Behind which

The pure

Swolleness

Knows nothing

And suffices

So nourished.

Oh, Radient table!

(use opening of HE WAS EXPECTED?)I'm seaking to you, of your own life. Separate yourself from the people who sit next to you

Isn't that a misplaced ploy for theatrical experience?

This is not a theatrical experience

Of course it is.

There's an audience, people assembled, and there's the two of us, on display, presenting our thoughts, our impressions--

But I'm trying to negate that

Why? (Pause) Wouldn't it be best to leave the room and tell everybody to go home?

That's a problem

I think it's a problem, but following the implications of your position, it shouldn't be a problem.

I haven't made my presentation. I've only implied the direction of my thought

That sufficies

I choose not to think so.

(He pauses)

Well?

Let's be patient. (Pause) Let's even experience the blank space of my refusal to be rushed.Exhausted: the ultimate child

I'm in a bad way.

Every moment, every phrase, becomes so loaded, so ultimate, so connected to every other aspect of the situation and of reality that I feel no need to move on, to create anything more than what is already created.

It's true, that most writing, painting, composing, seems to limit the possibilities inherent and flaming and alive in each accidentally found moment or word configuration.

So for that reason, most art is rejected. By me.

But accident itself-- not chance, but accident, and I'll explain the difference.

Accident is what risaes up, unbidden if, and the if is important, if the mind is properly fuzzed. Not fuzzed by alcohol or drugs or frantic expectation, but fuzzed by a specific kind of openness that loses focus but produces equlibriant tension in the sustaining of wideness of vision.

Chance is the simple invocation of random happening, in which the mind's poise is not part of the equasion. I hope you understand the difference.

Now I'm waiting for a phrase, which means I'm waiting for an accident.Ahh

The theater

The curtain rises on nothing

The audience beats its breast

Rolling on the carpet, one or two spectators break their eyeglasses

When a possible actor exchanges lines of text, so that coherence has the power of an unapproachable goal

Scenery twists, calling attention to devious plots that deem themselves 'the unrecognizable'

The theater of the world collapses. The dust which rises, touches, like perfume, the very wind, and

Seats go to those who think about things.

Actors glide through ariving automobiles, whispering 'curtain time, curtain time' because nobody on real time sees anything

( and to arrive is to fall out of control)

Props lengthen-- is it a function of concentration?

The door into the theater closes:

mad decisions rain on time and many pages of text collect into a self protective system.

The theater of hesitations: sweet, the way a taste can be musical afterthoughts.

The theater that evades responsibility,

balancing just long enough

to make its collapse noticable,

wherein its beauty is re-learned;

Such beauty-- because so hidden, so unnoticed, so defective

So many missing parts, the mechanism fails to function:

beauty

exactly in that.Everything is wrong. Everything we taught each other was wrong. If you can understand that, you've made one more mistake, and if you know your mistakes, there is no way to redeem them.

So there's an impass

Oh yes. There's an impass

Should the curtain be opened? or drawn closed.

(Pause)

Is there a way both could be done at the same time?

I can't imagine a way to do that.

(Both think, then rise and go)

This moment. . .of turning away from each other, and leaving the stage, defeated by circumstances, but not really defeated, just giving up in a way that is still productive. . .

Such a moment should be extended. . . .

to imply almost a whole life.

Is there a way to extend this moment, or to imply its radical extention.

Calling attention to it by speaking of it--

That method lets it slip past. It's as if words make it. . .unstable.

(Pause. Exit)Between the stage proper, and the front row of the audience

Dead space

Potential space

Space that the audience does not see

Space that the audience looks through in order to see what happens on the stage

He entered the theater

He walked onto the stage and approached the space between the audience and the stage

He vanished, but was still present, still potent

He became visible as a disruptive factor

The play stopped being the play

The even was re-constituted

The mind of the spectator watching the play was forced to shift focus

It had no focus

It absorbed

But it could not catagorize what it absorbed

At those times when it catagorized what it absorbed, what it absorbed vanished into the appropriate catagory

At those times when it was unable to catagorize what it absorbed, what it absorbed became hidden and worked in secret

The space between the audience and the stage works in secret

If I enter that space, the secret work ceases, so I do not enter that space, but that space is at work inside the audience.

I have found a way, myself, to work in that space without entering that space

The ultimate theater works there, in secret, invisible. Undetected. Undiscovered.

The undiscovered theaterThe play beings

Men and women enter dressed in bright colors

The light is adjusted so that their colors seem less bright

When a body falls to the floor, music makes the intelligence travel in a direction that spells 'up is down'

The play begins. Just at that moment, audiences (of course there are more than one) realize the beginning of the play exists in impenetrable space and time. This brings sleep.

Nightime. Did you

Have something to say

To me?

A dish

China. Leaves.

Cool

Tobacco left-over

Lamps on end.

Depth crackers

To eat no-flakes

That's die

Cast in, an iron life

Porous enough

Fragments, disguises

One tablet

For one eye

See-thru

Holds.

Sleep into idea

Wake into meaning-not

But Holes

Radient, alone

Network acid

The calm

Dance

All done.

The play in which things are represented

erases the things that are represented

The play in which nothing is represented

grows the one real thing

Where does it grow?

Not on stage

In the mind

If no audience attends the play that grows the one real thing in the mind, then, alone, it grows in the play itself. This is the miracle.

In a perfect world, every member of that world joins a rehersal,

and the performances that issue from those rehersals are never attended by an audience.

Finally, the theater achieves its mission.

Not to please an audience,

not to redeem the individual spectator.

Something else.

Un-namable and therefore real.He agreed to participate in a real play

He was given a text

He understood that certain parts of the text were part of the text,

and certain other parts of the text were echos of the real text only and not the real text itself.

His task was to build into his body (into his performance) realization of that distinction,

even though that distinction was to then remain hidden within his performance

He understood that effort would not be rewarded

He circled his own effort, busying, insect-like, into the sweet heart of his own effort.

What emerged was nothing.

Failure and success were held in suspension, in the solidified liquid of his effort.

In the coagulated heat of his effort.

His effort became a mold from which other images were to be cast.

But he was forbidden (it seemed to rise from within himself) to cast images from that mold.

He was forbidden to effect 'realization'

-- and yet his body, and the gestures it performed, and the sounds it made, were still present for audiences to observe.

What were they given to observe?

Not the surface of these things

Not the depth of these things

(There was neither surface nor depth)

What there was that was there was time passing, except as it passed, it was, sequentially, not there also.

But the 'also' existed

What he presented to them was this 'also'

The theater of 'also'

It had no clear beginning or ending

and so it was hardly noticed,

but it was certainly there,

also,

where he was

Look, I am a theater

He didn't spread his arms to proclaim that,

or widen his eyes to suck into his head their lose

(no longer lose)

attention

He didn't raise his voice,

nor did he lower it into the range of un-natural

(attention grabbing)

intimacy

He vibrated, but held it in check

Look, I am a theater (also)

and he erased the word 'look' and the activity of looking

Of course he negated the 'I am" of "I am"

as it sped from his throat,

as the lips themselves smothered the sounds

in the very act of articulating pronounciation.

Theater crumbled,

since walls and curtains were made to crumble, finally.

"A"

-- was the radically evoked also of letters,

being the first and therefore available,

as the automatically ejaculated representative of all letters

and so, in that automaticness,

random and uninvolved,

and so, nothing and everything,

perfect.

So perfect

So non-manifest

So non-existent

The curtain, closed (by opening)

PerfectMy problem is as follows

I want an art that can function like a reminder, a medicinal pill, a correction.

Life sucks me into its concerns-- no, I haven't phrased that correctly.

Certainly, life sucks me into its concerns, but that's as it should be since I belong to life, having been born into life and carried on the crests of its waves.

The more exactly stated problem is that, immersed in life as I am, the tools and techniques offered to navagate it are a variety of tools and techniques and often, the ones at hand toward which I automatically reach (because they are at hand)

are those that float on the surface of life's ocean

around my ocean-tossed body precisely because THOSE are the tools and techniques regurgitated by life's ocean from the deep store of previous shipwreck upon shipwreck,

the countless shipwreck of lives that have not done well riding the waves of circumstance,

and precisely the inefficient tools of those poor shipwrecked souls, the millions and millions of them,

THOSE are the abandonded tools that float about me now,

towards which I so automatically reach because of their proximity;

but as they failed those who came before me, I must understand

that they will fail me now, if I secumb to the allure of their adjacentness.

What's needed are new tools, or old tools, but nevertheless tools packed deep inside me, stowed safely away from the ripping winds of the universal hurricane.

And what I need, want, desire from art, is the reminder or insistance or encouragement

to look past the blandishments of failed tools that continually surround me on the water's surface,

so that I may,

magic-like,

remember to grasp in the secret darkness inside myself,

to extract the hidden tool, or-- if you will--

extract that way of proceeding with my life that will enable me to ride its waves like the hero I might hopefully be.

So I don't reach toward what seduces and swamps me into an imaginary life in a pretended world;

I need an art that places tiny stratagies of re-tuning to my true self,

places pricks of help, somehow,

in the midst of my life, as-it-is.

So I need a theater that doesn't cover my life

with its own blanket of imagined life.

But how is that possible?

Since the theater is a place where my own life vanishes,

or is at least submerged in the surge of an imaginary life on-stage?

(Pause)

Here's the solution.

A play in which, nothing is convincing.

In which the situation is not 'solid'

"Solid"

A thing of shreds and pieces.

But I don't know hopw to keep even shreds and pieces from turning into a seamless whole,

welded together-- if by nothing else--

by the audience's focused attention.

(Pause)

I'm dreaming of an impossible play.

A play that falls to pieces so that truth-bombs,

launched by the play,

can explode in my own life rather than in the imaginary life invoked by the play.

(Pause)

I want, I want, I want, I want.

Please, take that repitition for what it is--

an echo of your own,

unanswerable longing.Why is a hint better than a complete documentation of reasons and emotional experience.

Why is a hint better than an explination, better than a deliniation of causes.

Why is a hint an explosion of life that seeds whole worlds.

If I hint at the truth, do you understand the truth?

Find it.

I can't find it

Find it

If I can't find it, I don't find it

If you don't find it, you find it; but it hurts. (Pause) Oh well, everything hurts, finally

Then I don't have to find you

Right. Either you find it, or it finds you

Either way it hurts.

Right.

Does it still find me--

What.

The truth-- does it still find me even if I hide myself inside a story?

Ah. You don't want to be hurt

If I hide myself in a story--

--If you lose yourself in a story--

Will I get hurt?

Yes. But later

O.K. I'll put it off--

--Time's up

Right now?

(Smiles) Later

(Pause. Laughs) I can hardly wait.He spent his life creating plays that slowly coagulated into a world in which the creation of plays was impossible,

in which the impulse to create plays faced an impass.

What have you done, Maestro.

I've backed myself into a corner

How Maestro?

I've written myself into a dead end, on purpose

Why on purpose?

Shhhh.

(Pause) Do you mean questions are not desirable?

Questions are to be listened to carefully, rather than answered

(Pause) Is writing, the answer to a question?

A better question. Is writing the search for a question that can't be answered

(Pause)

Is writing, the play that finally, cannot exist.

Make a proposition.

The play that exists is a fall into existence.

The fruit from the tree of knowledge, re-eaten.

Shhhh

(Pause)

If the fruit of the tree of knowledge is not eaten,

if the play does not fall into existence.. . . . .?

(Pause) I understand, Maestro.

You find a way to begin posing a question,

but it never becomes a question,

and so something poised--

hovers in space.

Shhhh

(tape) ShhhhThere is spontaniety

Something rushes

Rises

within us and exits

Like a gesture

or a word

unforced.

And that delight is uncapturable,

explodes into wide nothing

(Joyful)

But memory is greedy.

Having no being,

yet greediness

as its projected way of being

sucks it

into future life.

So memory

waits for us

Waits

to make its demands.

And under the sway of that tyrant which it is,

the spontanious gesture

leaves a trace

An inachieved,

and we are forced (seduced) to act,

re-act

Under its sway.

And that willed action

Effort we would ape

Brings power

Also brings pain.

And we are ruled

by avenues of pain

a network

Established like the stone roads that feet cannot slide over

No sliding possible

Except for those who

Painful

Make that effort

Sliding--

Who would drink oblivion again

Who would move and speak

From that scar

Nothingness

Again

Except

'again'

though fast is still

'again' which hovers

though transparent

Still, a cloud

A poison

over our primordal

Radience no-more.What feeds the world?

(I shouldn't say the world, but something larger, vaster)

Pain, of course

But in fact

All feeling generated by the fantesy that is the world-perceived by man

Inside his head

A universe constructed

The double

Of the waves of waves

invisible to us

that pulse.

But on that artificial and transient grid

of human response

to human fantesy

Is grown the feeling network

that bigger thing

invisible

needs

to feed its own invisible energy source.

And so the truth.

That fluctuating human feelings,

drifting, changing shape

Are jawed

Digested

by the God we cannot see or name.

And would those feelings cease

(the technique lies at hand)

then also

clouds

drifts

transluciencies

light creatures

No longer human

No longer food

Useless

In the realm of things

(The silence of things?)

Silence

SilenceAnd so,

Fighting his way into the theater:

at best, self destructive

At worst, amassing fragments of scenery and torn curtains,

He arrives, finally, on stage

Pouring blood, which fools nobody.

The pretense had to be made, however.

Bandages were applied to everything visible

And so, food for thought was provided.

But certain critical minds proclaimed 'false premises!"

Those wounds, so bound, non-existent.

Those developments that follow, non-justifiable.

But tears, false phrophets,

chased them from the theater.

Was it right to cry?

Was it wrong to preach mental rigor?

Yes and no.

It was helpful for some, (mental rigor)

self-limiting for others;

but the distribution of advantages and disadvantages could be transcribed and evaluated by no known methods.

So mystery was at work

Clothed in the baubble-laden dress of the occasion.

Then, suddenly

rolling in the aisle

the wonded eye, singular

of the storm.

Closing now.

Ah, that's what should have performed the destructive act;

that non-human,

visible machine

for the destruction of the visible.

That giant eye

Beholden to no-one.

Seeing

And swallowing what was seen

Hiding it

So its work can truly begin

Elsewhere

And the theater serves it's function,

which is

to go up in flames.

Destroyed

By the very moment in which our true hero

mounts, finally--

(With what effort,

with what long, disasterous

Blather)

the sinking

Stage.So

will it really happen-- that destructive finale?

It depends who asks

It depends who answers

YOU, probably don't want to suffer, a MIND attack

You want YOUR mind to remain invulnurable, the most intimate part of yourself. OK.

You will now suffer a mind attack

Theaters across america

will feature, inner details of YOUR mind

People will view, if not your thoughts, at least your associative tendencies

YOU WILL, to say the least, be humiliated

It is not happening at this moment, not yet, but the minute this aparatus is attached to your head, it will start happening.

Mind attack

But here's the GOOD news--

I've decided to save you from the mind attack,

by offering my own mind.

All you have to do to make this happen is to say thank you.

Thank you for offering to save me,(or us) from mind attack,

by offering your own mind

as the object of the mind attack.

But you do not have to say thank you with your verbal mechanism.

All you have to do is to think it

And I believe, that you think it

That's my belief.

I'm telling you my belief,

here in public

which is the first example of the way I offer MY mind

to save your own mind

from mind attack.This is the first time I have ever offered my mind to protect other minds, and the question must be asked-- why now?

Is it because I love you?

Is it perhaps because I don't love each one of you,

but one of you, I won't say who, is here, who I have looked at, seen, registered, loved.

(Blindfolds self)

And the rest of you are beholden not only to me,

but to the one my love has selected, though that one, that 'other', has no idea that 'he' or 'she' is the chosen one

and so each of you may well wonder, is it me? Am I the beloved? You can't know of course.

It could be.

(Pause)

It's true. I dare not speak openly, but one of you--

or rather I should speak directly and say

YOU

--without looking in the right direction of course

YOU

YOU.

(Off blindfold)

In fact

I don't think I really "love' you.

Mind attack?

What I need are a few good friends, to talk to.

Reflectors.

A life spent in search of a mirror

Now-- here's a mirror.

But why is a human being better than a mirror?

Because you can't see yourself as you REALLY are, in another human being,

but you can see yourself-- almost,

Especially if you CHOSE your friends carefully, and don't we all?

I like you? Don't like you? -- Well, what kind of a mirror are YOU?

Mind attack?

Of course,

because I believe myself to be so much more intelligent than the rest of you-- you know why?

Because I know so much more about my OWN life

than YOU do!

You have to admit that

The question is, do you accept my idea of intelligence?

You say no-- but seen from your own point of view, if you see what I mean, don't you think I'm right?

Mind attack!

Here are ten words plucked from my brain.

I didn't do the plucking, and if you're not interested, remember-- this is all to save YOU from mind attack.

Doubt

Co-incidence

Rigor

Travelling

Snow

Hopeful

Gap

Slippery

Ten

Error

Call that a personal pantheon, that's why I've been able to produce those words so quickly.

They come up on stage to stand in for

The handleable me,

Made available for so many years--

handled to great aclaim, almost--

because the total illusion contributed to the fiction that

What happened was my own personal effort on your behalf

being all OK.

But it was only . . .being handled that happened to me.

And now

to self-shock myself

the handeling gets. . . de-materialized.

and what looked like withdrawal from the scene of action

is really

plunging into the real action

that of course, has no scene.

All done

Ready to really begin

That's what it doesn't look like when you pull the curtain closed and go ostensibly to sleep--

so something else wakes up and gets down to REAL work

and the false face, burning,

LOOK AT IT!

covers itself in its own smoke--

Hold it right there--!

Enough said!

I went to the theater.

Bodies fell from the stage

Into the orchestra pit.

No music: Music.

I covered the correct ears,

Fists turning into the haphazard

Essential material.

I caused to tragedy,

Then again

The whole world of the imagination circled me like a plastic cocoon.

And I bled birth.

I folded the theater

Into theater.

The layers

Soft

Nothing.

I stepped into the theater from the street--

Was that a second time?

Where was the street?

What bright lights blinded me?

What automobiles decided to control their own collisions.?

I hesitated

No ticket in hand

But my seat was empty

And a funel of energy seemed to be deciding on its direction

But I heard nothing

Saw nothing

Turning my head to one side

When the curtain rose

And what entered me

Rose also,

Under the eyelids

Airoplaned into a ceiling that could ONLY

Fall down from the blow.

Look, look.

A hole instead of a story.I went to the theater. Light rose, arose, and I saw a curtain blocking my line of sight. Penetrating it-- I could not.

But, from the center of the curtain, which parted slightly, emerged someone in evening dress.

The subject matter encased itself in gold, but it was not real gold.

Artificiality rose under my eyes. Kingdom-- realm of the rejected anticipation, now enthroned. Septeur in hand, that septeur, passed to my own hand which lay hidden under the folds of my jacket.

Springing onto the stage, I-- pleateau of emergent sensations-- I glided, in my glide toward the unknowable center.

What twisted inside me was a taste for excess, that which had propelled me to the theater itself, temple of excess, undone, me-by-me.

I was behind the curtain

But in front of the curtain.

I realized that what had attracted me to the theater was not the notion of communion, but the notion of artrificiality. Life re-thought, established upon a ground of arbitrary and non-functional rules. The grotesque and the beautiful as partners, defying both convenience and utility, defying also that sweet flow of intention into intention-absorbed gesture that so stamped what was hereafter to be called 'real-life'.

No. What I prefered was the sharp crack of crystal shattering, as if life itself --stopped in any of its a-typical yet certainly occuring moments, no longer held firm against the strain of penetrating-- call it sight, but it was more than sight, it was inner necessity that just by accident in one particular biological convolution convulsed itself into eye-probe form from the brain, vestage of beginnings.

Look how I dress.

It isn't perscribed in the imagined way of doing things. It's a mirror.

(robes on)

I wiped my face with language. Did it wake me up? I don't know. Is language supposed to wake me up?

(ringing)

Do I need a telephone in order to use language? Or is my language telepathic. Do I float through it. Do I disappear under its waves.

The use I made of the theater was suddenly a revelation to me. I went to the theater. As the play began, I rose from my seat and found myself on stage. The moment I did that, the play became more interesting.

You ruined the play

Oh no

You ruined the play by interrupting it

("Theory": Read a unit, then write (freely) on language of

theater)

Did I interrupt it?

It stopped

How could it stop? It changed course.

It wasn't real, you made it real, which means you stopped it. You made it die, into life

It died into life

Yes

How remarkable

What a crime

Yes. Notice my face aglow. Notice something in side me falling away, like dyingThe "I"

I-- I-- I-- I

Where is it hiding

Let me tell you a story about myself.

We're going to examine a man , today, who's illness is difficult to define exactly. Let me say this. . . No, let me say something-- let's start from the base of a productive ignorance

(Enters) Sit down my friend. (Pause) Don't be nervous.

Oh no (Pause) I'm not used to this

Have you forgotten?

What a strange question to ask me

Tell me aboutg yourself. (Pause) What drives you.

Yes. I am driven

By what?

("My world, unfinished: just like the real world)

I don't know

(Pause) How do you think of your relation to the world?

Ah, that's the issue, isn't it.

Is it?

I want to have a profound effect upon that world. That's the basis of much misunderstanding

Go on?

Yes, go on. Go on.

Explain how it's the basis of much misunderstanding.

People misunderstand me, doctor.

Yes, but how?

(Pause) I don't know how. I don't know about the inner working of other people. That's your business. I'm a simple man.

Are you really simple?

You know better than myself, doctor

Why do you say that?

The questions you ask, I can see you;'re pulling things from my inside out.

That's not the answer of a simple man

Yes it is

What drives ytou, sir?

I want the world to keep going

Come again?

(Pause) Why did you say that?

It means, explain

It confused me

Then erase it

I can't (Laughs) I don't have an effective erraser

Why did you laugh?

At the idea

What idea

Oh-- you know

Now, we don't know anything about you

Really? But you've been watching me and listening to me for several weeks

We don't know what goes on INSIDE you

What comes out

Yes

That we know. And we understand, of course, that what comes out comes from an inside. But we think, inside, there is even more, some of which HASN'T come out. So we'd like to see it all come out

(Pause) I can't keep anything for myself

Why would you want to?

Because some of it is for myself (Pause) I don't want to be emptied out completely, doctor

What drives you. That's what you want to keep secret?

Not really

What drives you

I want the world to go on

Go on where. Go on how. You see, that's what we'd like to hear.

Oh well (sighs) I want to please you, of course. (Pause) It's like this. I let things come forward, things I say. . .in order to add. . . the unexpected, the unpredictable. . .because otherwise the world locks into place. Everybody seems to know how to behave and what to say. It's very. . .regulated, isn't it doctor. But the world needs something else. A little greese in the mechanism. A little. . .slipperiness-- so it can keep going.

So the world can keep going?

Yes

And that's your contribution

Yes

Slipperines

Yes

How, exactly

By what I say

(Pause) It's in what you say

Yes

It's in your language

Yes

Slipperiness

Yes. To keep things going, you see. Otherwise, the geers lock. Zip--I open things up. Zip--I keep things going. (Pause)_ That makes perfect sense, doesn't it? You think I sasy things that don't make sense, but now you understand my motives, so it makes perfect sense. (Pause) My true self is revealed. Our relationship is changed. That's why I wanted to keep something to myself-- because now I've explained everything. And our relationship is changed, and I liked it the way it was, your problematic object of examination; but now that I've explained, I suddenly take on the aspects of the wise man who holds the balance of things on the tip of his tongue, and you sit deholden, waiting for me to perform my therapy, and I liked it better when I had you more off balance, trying to figure things out.

But now that's done.--Off with the false faces, but they weren't false, doctor. And now, when I go rattling throiugh my language, -- your language also-- now it's not going to work so well, because you think you know what's happening and that will be broadcast, I dare say, to your associates-- and then what? It grinds to a halt.

Because whatever I say, now you have a pidgeon hole available, a catagorical box in which to zip whatever comes out like quicksilver-- zip! Into the box-- my goodness, look at all the boxes lined up--help! Help! I can't move-- excuse me, what I meant to say was help! Help! None of us are moving!

(Pause) Fine. Now take off the false face

Ah, what a relief. (rips off face) Look who's come to visit. (Pause) I think I'm going to hurt my facial muscles. Do I have permission to re-instal my false face? (Back on) Ah, thank you doctor.

No. Thank you

That's all?

That's all

(P) I can go back to my comfortable vestabule?

Of course

Remind me which direction

(Pointed out)

Of course. (Goes, hits) I'll be back in a jiffy (gets through) (OPther blows nose)(Thinking is. . . silence)

His own fist

Lamented, as it turned

From the body

Into a punchless space:

Kissed

Winded (lost in fistify)

A hundred kisses

Bawled at me

(He didn't expect "I" to roll again

into itself)

That agrandized, hollow

Of a non-spoken

Could-elbow-turned

Into the same-self

Doubled

Self and self;

Punch mowed

Into de-effect

(All stress.)

Look at your look--

I can be your echo

Then it was my idea

There's no reaching the starting point

Going backwards?

That's another miss

I like circling my mistakes

No center, it's blank

It's a center

Then hold onto it

You're right (Backing away) Let's go

Following orders isn't what you had in mind. Of that I'm confident

That, if nothing else.

Looking out the window was not problematic for Gerald. The buildings stood firm (there across the way) and the flags fluttered so as to wave, into the building like a thud. The building occupied, seen from a corresponding window, thud-made from each gesture, that came from the center of the body the flag in question waved.

(Happiness Dossier)

Happiness was easy. It was easy for Walter X to bre happy in Paris. All he had to do was experience the void. . .The failure of his relationship to the city. That made happiness in Paris. . .easy. I seem to be

I seem to be totally an inertia system. Totally bored. Totally wiped out. Something's wrong.

Everybody tells me

Everybody tells me life is various, a kalidoscope of events and stuff, stuff, stuff

I can't

I can't find, any of that stuff. Higher than high, I made with myself a resolution to touch home base, but when I got to home base, it was put out to pasture, apparently, and the base, home, positions re-positioned, there I still was in left field. No bird orchestra of any kind serenaded me. No twit, now, of the biological species to back me up in the sense of reality-- all gone.

Sop sitting down to a sandwhich even was no-go for me in my sad seer suckers. Ha, I'm lying about what I'm wearing-- but can ytou see me? That isn't radicallyh clear to my OWN peep into things, I'll take a powder.No more theater. What I pull back the curtain to show, is myself.

No more theater.

What replaced it. What replaces it?

I have no right to speak from the position of one who knows. Nevertheless, nevertheless, it's my belief. . .no. Let's say I think the following experiment would be useful. If you adapt, toward me, the position of. . .disciple. I mount. . .something.

A stage.

And you worship me. And no matter what I am in truth, it changes your life.

You're onstage, Maestro.

(Pause) Yes. (Pause) Have I changed your life for the better?

Too soon to tell.

(Pause) Right. But in the meantime, kneel. (done)I entered a room and I was in the theater

What's really here, pulsating behind things?

There was a table, which seemed ordinary. But a mirror on the table, propped from behind, hid more than it remembered, and looking into its light, I shielded my eyes which evoked a round of applause. Silence, Silence, I muttered under my breath, tryting to control an audience I could not see.

I pulled a curtain that, closed, bisected the room, thinking I would separate myself from those who observed me, but the curtain became a backdrop, and its red flesh gave color to my indescressions. What they were, I could not clearly identify, but I sensed that each part of my body held it's own attention provoking awkwardness.

Looking again into the available room, I saw that the room I had halved was again doubled, and I was both observer and spectator.

I sat, and it became an event. I turned my head slowly to the left, and my invisible profile hid a narrative that pierced and re-pierced itself like impluses from a variety of centers.

Such a theater, intimate yet sufficiently fragmented to echo a whole distant world. Plunging toward the inside, the night sky, between stars, echoed like something myself had sung, and the applause I remembered seemed now, not offensive, but indescriminantly perfect, like the waves of some nourishing and unavoidable sea.I entered the theater. Stone benches on stage (as the curtain rose) created a scene for action. And I thought-- this curtain rises as I enter. This play is the play in which I speak: and I tried to mount the stage to seat myself on one of the stone benches.

Then an actor appeared.

I recognized the paint on his face, the dark lines around his eyes. I recognized the grimaces, pulling his face toward inexplicable emotions.

I felt lost-- unable to return to my seat, yet unable to assert myself into that world that now surrounded me.

I was trapped, I realized, inside the theater. I appealed to the spectators by waving my hands.

My family appeared and half-recognized me, speaking to no one, feigning attention-- but from the look in their eyes-- elsewhere, as I was elsewhere.

I tried to calm myself, uttering the words "This is your new home"

It didn't work.

My heart was pounding in my chest.

The noise dominated the stage.

The curtain came down

No one would tell me what effect my performance produced.

Back on the streets, it was as if nothing had happened. I bought a newspaper.

No pictures.

Words. And I couldn't focus my mind on the words, and I looked at the sky, and was afraid to lower my gaze though I intuited that things were happening below me, in what was, heretofore, the street, where I, in fact, was placed.

If you dislike people as much as you claim, why is the theater chosen to be the arena of your activity, an arena oriented to people.

Perhaps I chose to proceed by a stratagy of frustration

Yours? Or your audiences.

Oh, this is really too painful (exits)

I bet soon he'll come back. (Pause) Instead, I'll assume his role, or position, or persona. I'll have a conversation with myself. (Starts-- stops) Oh, this is really too painful (exits)

(Music)We are not, tonight, going to perform a play. Yet here you are. Waiting, to turn this into a play. How can you be stopped from doing that?

(Pause)

I don't know. Music please?