I am questioning, everything.
What I have/n’t learnt.
What I have/n’t been taught.
What I know.
What I can do with that knowledge.
What I should do with it.
Where I should go.
How our past impresses upon our future path.
What we deem ‘important’ and ‘proper’.
What answers am I looking for and where will I find them?
A snippet of text that created itself one distracted evening… (Excuse my grammatically incorrect use of commas to distinguish vocal pauses.)
So, I wanted to tell you a story. That’s, kind of the point of this whole thing; me being here, you being here. The whole, construct that we’re working with here means that you’re going to listen to me, whether you enjoy yourselves or hate every second is kind of by the by, that’s down to you as much as it is down to me. But, enjoyment aside, I have 8-12 minutes of your attention, give or take. Which, considering I’ve been talking for about 90 seconds already and haven’t given you the least clue as to what story I’m about to tell you, isn’t all that long. And when I realised that, suddenly this felt like a pretty serious responsibility, that is, choosing which story to tell. I mean, I wasn’t quite sure which story I wanted to tell…
I spent some time working out how directly Borges’ The Library of Babel was going to be involved in my actual script. This is a collection of, in my opinion, the most important extracts that I would like to involve in my final piece.
Come, come, come. I hope you enjoyed your time in Great British Literature from the 19th and 20th century! Everyone does; plenty of familiar names in there. What I’ve got to show you is something quite different. For all isn’t as it seems to be.
The Great Library in which we stand, some call it the universe, contains all. Every story that is, has been and will be exists within this great library for I declare that the library is endless, infinite. Though today we stand in just one of an endless number of rooms, each constructed just as this one is, with six sides and four bookcases each holding 32 books of 410 pages, each page of 40 lines each line of approximately 40 letters, standing side by side, on every side, and one on top of the other, each with a single square shaft through which one can glimpse the others, continuing on from one another endlessly, and so know the limitlessness of the great library.
There is no combination of characters one can make that the divine library has not forseen, [and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance] for the Library is total, perfect, complete and whole. [For every rational line or forth-right statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense and incoherency.] The certainty that everything has already been written, annuls us.
Clearly no one expects to discover anything. And yet, I think, therefore I am, I wonder how it is then, tell me this, if every story exists why hasn’t every tale been told?
Why is it that we know and ‘love’ and remember those stories and simply accept them as the ones we should read, without question?
What if I could tell you a story that you had never heard, for you had never sought to find it?
This is my goal, my collection, my legacy. [Methodological composition distracts me from the present condition of humanity] Here stands the works of a collector who sought the unseen stories, for, in order for a book to exist it is sufficient only that it be possible…
Yet, let me tell you this; the Library itself is infinite, that we have established, yet if every story can be written in 410 pages, each page of 40 lines each line of approximately 40 letters, those letters being only those belonging to our pre-existing, predetermined alphabet, the combination of those letters though unimaginably vast is not infinite.
Those who picture the world as unlimited forget that the possible number of books is not. Therefore, the library is unlimited, yet periodic. Travelling for the greatest length of time one would find them same volumes repeated in the same disorder which, in being so, becomes order.
[When I am dead, compassionate hands will throw me over the railing, my tomb will be the unfathomable air, my body will sink for ages, and will decay and dissolve in the wind engendered by my fall, which will be infinite.]
I am cheered by that. But must leave you with this and urge you to remember, it is not as it seems to be.
Searching through my untidy piles of papers, I came across a few sides I remember writing when unable to sleep, having just chosen to take Solo Performance.
I titled them ‘Connect,’ this is how they read;
How I connect to the world, you, me, my world / place in it
Vocalising all connections
Love / comfort found in maths – Something to do with Sam McCarthy – who broke my heart by not living up to my 16-year-old standards/ expectations of him
Him – though that name was given to someone else entirely who made me smile
Ways my life has been I have written documents/ documented in written form which form / connect parts of my life? – Personal Statement, Letter to Rob, Post-it notes from first year, Keep reading Pumpkin
Trying to write the James Diary
Poetry – Wild Geese, Silken Tent – Poem for the Day – Ben and the ‘one night stand’ story – Shouting at Tom w/ the beautiful blue eyes
-My other blue eyed boy // Sludge eyed girl – cards, tags – gifts
Scrabble?
Writing on me? – Stories – scars – piercings —> deeper?
Mum:
DEFINITIONS
Dad: No words – Songs – Feeling – Actions > Words Happy Girl
Emma: Screaming at her wedding
Set: A 10 x 10ish circle of chairs – in the round: I want to see you, I’m letting you see me – because!
Daughter: “and if you’re still breathing you’re the lucky ones” – Arm swoop around head, cup / pinch chin and look in the eye
Chest / suitcase full of books – my – / texts / props – a pile of scrabble tiles
I recall envisioning a spiders web, made of string, connecting photographs, in an ascending spiral around the audience, which they could view and touch pre-show.
I remember feeling like I wanted to feel vulnerable, or rather show them that I was feeling vulnerable. In the hope that…? I am unsure what I needed from them.
Whilst the form (structural, textual and visual) of my final piece is far from this early idea – though it will still be predominantly performed in the round – I can see a lot of connective themes with my latest work. I am now in a place where I am thinking less about my recent past, which at the time of writing these notes was particularly painful post-break up, and am considering my past in terms of the journey that has led me to this point, what I have learnt along the way and where I will travel next. However, the sense of looking for meaning and connections in personal experience lingers; a general uneasiness with the ‘importance’ or the ‘significance’ of things, of my life, of me.
Having been writing on Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, an interpreted prequel to Brontë’s Jane Eyre, for my English dissertation I was certain I wanted to use the story of the ‘mad woman in the attic’ in some way. Rhys’s empathetic, partially autobiographical, novel details ‘Bertha’s’ life before marriage. Considering this text for my final performance would therefore not only allow me to address my ideas about there being more than one side to any story, but form a good example for my argument on which stories we privilege and why. I suppose that the drive behind this idea was me questioning the worth and validity of my own story – whether it would one day be overwritten and left in the attic or set upon the mantle for all to read.
An early draft…
They say when trouble comes, close ranks. And so the white people did.
The Jamaican ladies never, approved, of my mother.
But, we were not in Their ranks…
When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish town to Coulibri Estate – where we lived – was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past.
My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed all belonged in the past
One night, our neighbour who lived at Nelson’s Rest, Mr Luttrell, he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always
No one came to look after his house. The strangers came only to gossip
**They are falling apart, the old estates, all of them! Live? At Nelson’s Rest? Not for love nor money! An unlucky place **
One morning, my mother’s horse was lying under a tree, he was not sick, he was dead
I ran away and did not speak of it. I thought if I told no one it might not be true.
“Now we are marooned” she said. “Now what will become of us.”
She tied my plaits with string, there was no money for ribbon.
I got used to a solitary life.
Until Mr Mason
I was a bridesmaid when my mother married Mr Mason and everything I wore was new. I had a beautiful red ribbon and a beautiful dress.
Everyone came to see them. There was music and laughing and dancing
**Dance?! He didn’t come here to dance, he came to make money. The big estates are going cheap.**
**A fantastic marriage and he will regret it! She is not like the English girls, she will put up a fight.**
They were happy.
She road into town with him for he brought more horses. She showed him the hidden roads through the hills…
He took her to parties and they held them too for he repaired the house and brought the staff back again
And I, was sent away to school…
When I returned, she had been sent away too.
“Your mother is looked after there, she is, very, unwell”
I did not speak of it, I thought if I told no one it might not be true
“You may not visit”
I got used to a solitary life.
Until Mr Rochester…
Mr Mason, I would never call him Step-Father, introduced us…
“I have asked some English friends to visit us here, you won’t be dull? I want you to be happy, secure, I’ve tried to arrange it. We’ll talk about it later.”
-Say nothing and-
When at last we met I played the part I was supposed to play, for better or for worse
It nearly didn’t happen. I said, I said,
Say nothing and it might not be true
I said I was, afraid.
He said when I was his wife there’d be no more reason to be afraid.
“I’ll trust you, if you trust me”
He did not like our honeymoon house at Granbois, hidden from view by the trees.
He did not like the rain or the rivers, the beauty of it, the magic, the secrets…
I have seen to everything, arranged, everything. We shall not linger long here. You will be most at home at Thornfield, Bertha.
But what about, happiness I thought at first, is there no happiness? There must be. Oh, happiness, of course. Happiness, well.
He liked the rum, very much, and the maid Amelie
If I told no one it might not be true.
**The marriage made him a wealthy man but now his father and brother have died he’s inherited everything – Some people are fortunate.
If you imagine this gentleman is the devil you never made a greater mistake in your life. I knew him as a boy, as a young man, he was gentle, generous, brave. His journey has changed him. **
It is always cold here, in this room, cold and grey, with its locked door hidden from the passage by a tapestry…
There is one window, high up, you cannot see out of it.
There is not much else here. Everything is made of cardboard.
There is no looking-glass in here. I don’t know what I’m like now.
Please take me away from this place where it is so cold and grey, I think I am dying.
If I told no one it all might not be true
I am very unwell
It isn’t like it seems to be.