No the first bit, the first bit.
What?
He did what?
Who was that?
What are you talking about?
What did you say to me?
No the first bit, the first bit. What? He did what? Who was that? What are you talking about?
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pale rose on a pale green stem above all of the rest a mushy dead crimson mess a nebulous clot of material love a red bed to leak pale virginity on to when all of the princes are gone from dreams fairytales of castles like trees towering on water so murky it has no reflection (the dull brown table beneath) . She met Harry before the war, he was a colour-mixer.
What's the fish this morning? Water in a bag with energies. It has compared poorly on functionality but well on amusement.
The human vessel is a complex network of affect & breath. The human vessel is motion. All parts of it are motion. Upon death and true stillness it is no longer human. Digestion, Sleeping, Cognitions, feeling, sex, expression, travel, communication, always motion The human vessel is helpful in order (to get us from point A to point B) to tell us what to do. But a little unnerving, it seems, robotic. This has been a bodily experience, wondrous, explorative, using senses, heightening senses the ability to ingest and excrete has been efficacious in giving it regenerative properties The learning breath Communication/travel (same thing really?) (The most efficacious part has been listening) Telling us where to go. The whole listening experience - gathering in close around the speaker, only hearing snatches of speech Sex I guess Turning underwater in sunlight feeling Trying to find clues. Finding the objects left behind in the glass case Its ability to express itself, at every opportunity without reason. Brussel sprout growing in winter gardens empty sexuality Looking back when we were told not to. Missing one of the signs its ability to disintegrate and reform Seamlessness travel - Showing someone you love/care for them the vessel is empty Chasing you down the corridor. Your absence. - Feeling of suspense created by the abandoned corridors mixed with the objects Open me
Play Track One (a label tied on the phone with string) 1 minute 15 to the door of the Windle Building. Track One goes: VOICE 1: Pick us up. Leave this room and walk out the door into the air. Turn right and walk around the wall of this building then cross the car park to come to the front door of the Windle Building. There, look for a sign. VOICE 2: It's like, a beautiful thing I suppose, I just think it's beautiful. I know people might be like appalled and mortified, or some people want something to remember and stuff, or like a place to visit, but that kind of fades into insignificance compared to what you might be doing. I mean, because of what you do, maybe something happens for someone else to make it okay for them or whatever, or like I suppose changes the world even. Like we are what we are, and that's all, and you can go on and on about theory and science and ideas and hypotheses and whatever, you can do seminars and experiments and stuff but at the end of the day we just are. We just are. You can't get away from it. And to know that, and like to have the compassion and the awareness to know what that means for other people, YOU, what YOU are, for other people... Anyway I just think it's beautiful. And there is something, at the end I mean. There's something. Sign on Windle Bin: a label again Walk through the door Play Track Two (Do not be afraid) 40 sec to Corridor door VOICE 1: Go up the stairs. At the top, look for a sign. VOICE 2: ...a sense of, rising or ascending or something. A sense...of fading...or something [voice fades]...of turning...turning into...it's beautiful...and breaths to 40 Sign: another label on door handle, and an arrow pointing to it somewhere else (made of gauze or swaddling cloth, or a hand like an olden sign, or a miniature: Open the door Play Track Three (I go before you always) Track Three: 23 sec to classroom door VOICE 1: walk towards the end. Do not look back. Look for a sign. VOICE 2: ...it was never what I expected. People talked about walking into the light and things, it was a bit that way I suppose, but it was different. I cant explain it, I can't...I want to be able to say what it is, so much, because there's nothing wrong, there's no...nothing. It's so different...do you see it? Do you see the sign yet? Sign: a label on classroom door handle and an arrow somewhere else pointing to it Go inside Complete the test paper assigned to you (Come, follow me) Time for completion: final seconds. Answer truthfully and to the best of your ability. All answers carry equal weight. Describe the human vessel in its components, actions and activities. How has it compared? Which of the actions of this vessel would you say has been the most efficacious? Which of the actions have been most pleasurable? Which of the actions have been most regrettable? Which never-performed action is most regrettable? Other comments/supplementary information: You may bring your paper with you for the next part. Play Track Four (And I will give you rest) Two breaths, slow, hesitant. VOICE 1: Leave through the door you did not enter by and continue on your journey. At the end, look for a sign. Look for all the signs. VOICE 2: breaths continue to end, on and on and on and on. Let them stop at a point when they are gathered around the body. VOICE 1: When you are ready, choose your instrument and make your first incision. I lie on the floor in the centre. A length of swaddling cloth over my face. On it is written what is below. My right arm revealed to the elbow. In each palm I hold knives and markers. I don't know if I could choose a day, or a thing. There was so much. And it doesn't just come back like a film, like people say. I think sun, mostly. Just the sun. (The strange man cups my face on the bleeding side in the field.)
It is me and mammy and daddy and jesus. Mammy and daddy are fools with spades. Jesus is cool to the touch, has wet feet. The house is behind us, thatchy, cottagey, whitewashy. The hole is uneven, wet. The grass is wet. There are daisies. My blood falls into the cups of the daisies like that blackbird my daddy killed to show us how to hang upside down. I am holding jesus' hand. My mammy and daddy are on the other side holding their spades. The house is small behind, like a child's drawing. It is the end of a summer day, no sun left but still blue for awhile. There is the sense of an animal nearby, a nice one. Maybe it is just jesus. I feel things crawling on my bare wet toes. Things attracted by the blood on my neck, on jesus' hand, the hand he used to cup my face. He did not stop the bleeding, that was not his aim. His hand was warm and not wet. My parents' hands are cold from their spades. I am running very fast through the hall like A: the boiler, the baby
always. The floor is shiny varnish. Going B: I'm shit, a bad person, around the corner into the bedrooms where I'll be broke, I'll lose the mammy is I skid (am I wearing socks?) and house, I'm shit, I'm alone I slam into the blue metal desk my father C: Anxiety works at (what is it doing in the hallway?) Panic . I feel a sharp sting in my ear. I stand up. Anger I am shouting and screaming. I think there are B: It's okay. These things others there, shouting and screaming too. happen and I have the In my mind I am wearing dungarees and I am time to sort it out. This so embarrassed because it is my fault because is not my fault I have been told over and over not to run in the house and I have somehow hurt her more than me. There is blood but I don't feel it. Later the stitches are in a jar. Less dialogue (Milk Teeth).
Characters immediately memorable. Likeable characters are not. We guess what truth is using all our prior knowledge of human nature. Information must be immediately intriguing - we must care if it is true. True dreams: forceps/universe/trees. You have to wait for the payoff, for the admission of truth. You get more than confirmation of your hunch. Is your word able to carry the weight of the phenomenon behind it? What people say carries the burden of what they're not saying (subtext). One thing is said, and what's lurking in the room beside it. The audience comes up with the shorthand. The drama shows what we can't see [7% is what we say: the rest is bodies]. Some people don't identify with lying when they're lying. The first moments present the game, the rules. Embarrassment is lurking somewhere. How are you in your circle? It is a laboratory creating conditions for human behaviour. Sociologists say everyday life is structured like a play, we enter a situation, assess likely scripts. What won't be scandalous? What will connect? Everything done must recognisably belong to the rule-set for this one. There is risk. Why should you engage? Why should they? [David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars]. Where is this going? |
AboutThis blog was created as part of the 'Writing and Experiment' module in UCC's Creative Writing Department. I hope to develop it as an experiment in poetry and blogging - feedback and creative comments very welcome. Archives
March 2015
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