Entry #2

My task is to make something on stage into which you can project--And yet you are not bored because there is no “narrative or psychological (vis a vis characters) involvement”. Boredom is avoided because two levels go on at once—film and stage--
Yet neither is complete. And you oscillate between the two—-there is a “spark gap” which your consciousness jumps—and this keeps you awake.

Neither level is complete—(which is always the problem with both theater and film, in which all levels—language, image, movement in 3-dimensional space fill in all levels of perceptual experience) as opposed to other art forms which leave at least one level empty.

(And this relates to Gertrude Stein saying that in theater she was always either behind or ahead of the transpiring play—so she wrote ”landscapes” through which consciousness could wander.)

Why can I return to a painting, a poem, aphorisms, music—? Yet to see a play or film more than once is usually unbearably boring? Because these other forms elude one by leaving out at least one level of perceptual experience. So a play must discover how to “leave out” a level—yet, a play with no dialogue for instance, isn’t necessarily interesting; it’s simply another full world but composed of people “not talking”—it’s not a world (like dance) which is strangely “lacking” in a particular dimension.

But splitting focus between film and stage, the way I do it—-that lacks a dimension, which is the dimension of “making the connection” between these modes. Yet it’s not simply “2 separate tracks running parallel” --which would be the case if any old film were just shown while the play transpired. No—-the static tableaus I employ “imply” a potential relation (symbolic) — while the fact of live performers occasionally reacting to the screen imply a different kind of relation (dynamic and psychological)—-but the dimension in which this could indeed happen must be left out-—just as, for instance, the visual is ‘left out’ of a poem, or language is ‘left out’ of music that nevertheless seems to copy the fluctuations of consciousness that seem to surface automatically in speech.

No—-we seek a form that forces the perceiving mind to “jump” like a spark from one level of “potential content” (film) to another (on-stage performance)—-which means that normal “tracking consciousness” is bypassed while the new field created between spectator and the “in between” space manifest on-stage in a field of total alertness --without a subject! (The minute you have a subject, you have a prison created by that subject—and the deep content of this art is freedom)

This object
Is about itself.
That is to say
It is about impulse
Occurring against the backdrop
Of an event horizon
That changes slowly (the film)(slow seems permanent)
And that impulse—-
Pokes holes (void) in the on-going film
(generating gaps—-non-definable)
creating a space between impulse and event horizon
where truth arises

(my life story, desire to be ‘good boy’ and hated success of that as ‘killing’ self, so I sneak in proof (circus) I don’t want to kill audience. . .
Cut sound (shock!)






Don’t write clever phrases,
Just register

No to complexity

No, to seductiveness
(philosophical) of “write to make exception to system, a statement that generates its own disappearance:”
perhaps
this is achieved by the REGISTER of film tableau,
and statement



and “thrown” (impulse) action
the combination of which is “real” (truth)

Non-narrative

Problem is always—there are bits that seize one
And others that don’t


(narrative—in and out
stein- landscape (vs before or behind)
but how to deal with in-out
of landscape
(stein— normally you are not in control as you watch, so there is relief, not completion)
but—is between screen and stage? A way of control?
(in between, minimal space
like in between first row and stage

museum is solution, as is 3-ring circus
screen and stage—3 ring circus

you are in control if you FOCUS?
Every human face
Is a double
Accident




Reaching into the future
To simulate
Human beings




Listening to oneself
Becoming
Infallible




The next moment
Is a miscalculation




Collapsible furniture
‘beckons’




Intelligence means
No way out




Wait for the bus
It smiles
On your favorite
Endeavor




Never
participate
hopeful
one automatically
capitulates




specific motives
confuse heroes




The dog
Wept
Without thinking




Scissors
to build
a real world




Intense feelings
But empty




A subliminal exercise
Gone wrong

When the reality of the world
Comes under investigation
Then

What do the next few moments--
hold




What maneuver
And style of playfulness
Will surface between us




Living in a world where the un-manifest part—the greatest part—is being denied


“in some sense”
“so to speak”




(suppose I “WERE”....... that tense)




Dear Richard
There are things that can’t be known. Your task is to find them.



In between. In between



Be afraid. The unconscious may be dying.



Away with bad objects




This is the only way
Of traveling
Towards the future.
Smile.
Smile.



To read part two of the complete notes click here