A dialogue about the moving image

 

XXX

 

Characters

 

A ghost of middlewestern descent

 

The old and noble man

 

His young and secretly smarter lover

 

A bird, any bird

 

XXX

 

The old and noble man and his young lover are under house arrest. The old man sits at the head of a long dinner table, eating apple slices prepared by his lover, who sits to his left. The mood is jovial.

 

 

OLD MAN    

     I don’t understand why anyone would say “Happiness is a warm gun.” It’s simply ludicris!

 

YOUNG LOVER     

     Maybe there is nothing to understand. Maybe it’s just a silly song.

 

OLD MAN

     You are wise. Do you want to fuck?

 

YOUNG LOVER

     Let’s watch something instead.

 

OLD MAN

     A good idea. Nothing like a good show to kill time. What should we watch?

 

( GHOST materializes out of nowhere and hovers to the right of the OLD MAN )

 

OLD MAN

     Perfect timing! Now let us treat this matter properly, that is to say, democratically! Let us act like a self-respecting democracy and give the first vote to the dead! ( OLD MAN fakes a bow sitting in his chair)

 

GHOST

     Something foreign.

 

( OLD MAN and YOUNG LOVER clap loudly and shake as if they are in epileptic fits)

 

OLD MAN

     Yes, Yes! I concur. The foreigner the better!

 

YOUNG LOVER

     (In a faux serious voice) I will not concur. I would like to hear some details first.

     How foreign?

 

GHOST

     Something foreign and eastern.

 

( OLD MAN and YOUNG LOVER clap loudly and shake as if they are in epileptic fits)

 

YOUNG LOVER

     Yes! Something eastern can be provocative and interesting.

 

OLD MAN

     Just like something western!

 

YOUNG LOVER

     Yes. But it would be better if we imagined a bit more on what else we want from what we want to watch, which in a strange way, narrows our choices at the same time.

 

OLD MAN

     It is curious, but surely necessary if we are to decide on what to watch.

 

GHOST

     Something foreign. And eastern. And repetitive.

 

( OLD MAN and YOUNG LOVER clap loudly and shake as if they are in epileptic fits)

 

YOUNG LOVER

     Yes, for repetition yields unexpected nuances that can make it seem unrepetitive.

 

OLD MAN

     I fully agree. The nature of moving images is truly marvelous in how it can inhabit seemingly incompatible states of being at the same time.

 

YOUNG LOVER

     Like light itself! Which exist as a wave and a photon at the same time!

 

OLD MAN

     Yes my young lover. You are so handsome when you are smart. Do you want to...

 

GHOST

     Something foreign and familiar. And eastern and western. And repetitive and unrepetitive. And…

 

(BIRD flies in through the iron bars of the window and lands on the half eaten plate of sliced apples)

 

BIRD

     (in a loud horrifying scream) No!

 

OLD MAN

     Heavens bird, why do you scare us so?

 

BIRD

     (in a loud horrifying scream) No!

 

YOUNG LOVER

     We don’t understand you. No to what?

 

BIRD

     (in a loud horrifying scream) No!

 

GHOST

     Something yes

 

BIRD

     (in a loud horrifying scream) No!

 

(Light suddenly fills all the windows, as if dawn greeted every side of the house. The light lingers and illuminates every corner and crack. BIRD flies frantically around the room. OLD MAN closes his eyes. YOUNG LOVER stares at the light through the window and becomes blinded. Light slowly recedes from the room. BIRD calms and perches on the shoulders of YOUNG LOVER)

 

BIRD

     (In a whisper) No.

 

YOUNG LOVER

     I’m afraid so.

 

OLD MAN

     Good grief, you did it again?

 

YOUNG LOVER

     I’m afraid so.

 

OLD MAN

     Have you no sense? You know it happens every day, or is it every other day, whatever, it happens again and again. And yet you insist on injuring yourself every time. You foolish hole.

 

YOUNG LOVER

     (Hands outstretched) You are the fool, old man. You will never understand the sensation that comes over the body when it is deprived of sense. The solid and speechless joy in the hands and loins is enough to free me from this house which is in truth our hole. Your sight is the sense that weighs you down with the dignatas of an imaginary reason. The shape of your sense is in the form of another house arrest!

 

BIRD

     Akrjeqnvajh!3*#!

 

(BIRD flies off the shoulders of YOUNG LOVER and lands on the head of OLD MAN. YOUNG LOVER stares at OLD MAN. GHOST hovers away from OLD MAN)

 

GHOST

     Something declarative.

 

OLD MAN

     We have been here too long.

 

BIRD

     Adraknrq9451 nbkfga rkyhj[‘ poq4j+drkej2ni!?

 

 

OLD MAN

     We have been here before.

 

GHOST

     Something something

 

OLD MAN

     (resigned) Time passes like a mighty wind and stinks just as much.

 

(OLD MAN looks up toward the ceiling. BIRD flies off the head of OLD MAN)

 

OLD MAN

     And nothing dulls the fear of this passing. Perhaps there are other ways besides dulling. I would think that having spent so much time in one place another way would reveal itself. Nothing has come. Am I that stupid? You see the seeing as the trap of being in the midst of space. And perhaps that’s true. To see is to be. There is nothing else left for me.

 

(OLD MAN sighs)

 

OLD MAN

     My raggedy limbs and sagging skin pin me to time’s pull. It is cruel and it is invisible. I cannot see it. But neither can you, in yourself. I must see it in you! But not only see, to feel the sight of you in me is the only reason left to imagine there is more to this than this. To see is to see something I cannot see in myself but know is present in us and perhaps all things that is no longer a thing because it fancies itself as a self. And it is this grand illusion that keeps me from succumbing to the narcotic that heightens the senses by depriving it of sense.

 

(GHOST moves toward OLD MAN)

 

GHOST

     Something else, some some thing now a thing in else. In fact no fact can succumb to some thing that knows itself. Like birds in flight, chasing a flash that in an instance fades no where else but now. No: a place flashes too. And it knows the thing that some becomes.

 

YOUNG LOVER

     To see or not to be is not the question. It is whether sight grants sense its dignity and whether this dignity is worth its weight in suffering.

 

BIRD

Kanq4095ukn lmnqe qa qin.oie3klmka.

 

YOUNG LOVER

     What do you mean dear bird?

 

BIRD

     Dkaa;zm%eo.

 

GHOST

     Something about sacrifice

 

OLD Man

     Yes, the exchange between the joy and the sacrifice. As if it’s either or. In time this is played out as causality, I believe. A leads to B which makes C that kicks into D. The play that is in fact the push. The push that is in truth the shove.

 

YOUNG LOVER

     I love the shove. Letting go of my shape to be shaped anew is the task of anyone truly invested in the enrichment of the self. I love the shove!

 

 

OLD Man

     I love the shove too! But only from you. In things that are truly things but act as if life animates them in motion and in light, I want another kind of shove, perhaps an altogether different kind of love.

 

YOUNG LOVER

     You are romantic, aren’t you old man.

 

BIRD

     YES!

 

YOUNG LOVER

     What does this other love look like then?

 

GHOST

     Something neither nor.

 

(OLD MAN and YOUNG LOVER turn towards GHOST)

 

GHOST

     You heard me.

 

BIRD

     Wernlado;$92. Neither nor. Neither nor. Moving within the permanent disjunction between true and false. Neither nor neither nor. AhLafkjgl09((0)!

 

OLD MAN

     But what do we have that is neither nor?

 

XXX