JOURNAL "SCATTERING" 31OCT2022 (CLUES)

 A scattering. How to reckon? How to focus? How to make retinal, the burned afterimage? How to choose? Is it antithetical, working at cross purposes to go for precision, tightness, when that is the enemy? It is not the desert, wide and open. I do not know how to focus. Write what you know, and I do not know how to focus, to draw in on a single point, no. Not so much.

Blow it open, don’t close in, then. Expand outward. Not very zen of me, but I’m not very zen. Not very good at accepting, going with the flow. I do not feel peace when I breathe — lately, I feel mucus, heaving in my bronchioles, getting forced out now by weight of my immune system. Life feels a little like a catastrophe, beautifully broken-open. Split at the ribs.

She leaves, slipping away in white. I wish this was a complete fiction. By now, this is ordinary. By now, this is routine, the Standard Operating Procedure of the last two years of my life, to always be within reach of passing out of reach again. I touched soft skin from the passenger seat, somewhat unready to let go. Getting used to this now. Once it was catastrophic. The first time it rocked my cosmology, not a disaster, still a complete remodel. Longing.

Still, what is the point of explosion? Where is ground zero for the blast?

How to crack the ribs? How to expose the heart efficiency? Leave grace for the sculptors, and I want to practice theatre as a butchers’ trade, working in flesh and cutting. The fundamental medium is skin, bone, and meat. All else is optional and decorative. Flesh is the only obligation.

Whence does meaning come?

Where is the playwrights’ trade located? In the body, in encoded data. Data and not ink is the unifying component, especially when potentials for prompted improvisation and the variety of writing systems are considered. Simply a book of coded impulses, to trigger responses in a director, in actors, in technicians — simple as that. Where will these lead? Not my purview. What does it mean? Not my purview. Is it interesting? Is it a mystery? Is it potential-dense? Can it be felt viscerally? Is it clear? Can it reasonably be staged? It is nothing but changes, but WHAT CHANGES? This is where my work falls, for the moment, as far as I can see. Other work can come later, as I become editor and data-wrangler. Possible rule: only include that which changes.

It’s a little bit the work of an oracle, to indulge in the dramatic (as a dramatist, is there any other way?) to build predictions for a wondrous calamity. What new and interesting apocalypses will pour forth? To be be plain, the work is not much more than planning a pattern which will be more interesting than the back of someone’s head.

Unfortunately, while this simple principle does a little to erode my self-doubt, it’s not much of a guiding light. It neglects what I consider ethical responsibilities, nearly all matters of craft, all structures. It is ahistorical, impersonal, and audience-facing. What will be more interesting than the back of a head to one person is not for another, and I can only imagine what it is like to be one of those pairs of eyes. This, I think, is the fundamental conundrum: it is all risk.

On one hand, what’s there to be lost? On the other hand, wasted effort, which I can’t stand. The potential for so much wasted effort. Piles of waste. Heaps of it. The misuse of time and artistry in the service of the mundane. A traffic accident is certainly more interesting than the back of someone’s head. It is unlikely to bring anyone any comfort. It is unlikely to bring any illumination.

What a waste.

How can it be done with less? Less structure, less intent, less work, less planning, less command, and still result in more? More play, more meaning, more meat, more feeling? This kind of paring-down is certainly possible — I’ve done it in everything else I’ve done. There is usually a great deal of maximalist blubber on my end (discarded drafts, massive shuddering plans, overly extensive mapping), then boiled down into the essential impulses. What is left? What are the best parts? What is the least of it? What remains?

Remains. Clues. The fragments of a great beast of ideas, to be tracked. In this frame, my job is to make the imitation of a calamity, create a great corpus of information which is only trickled in, and leave it to other people to work out what happened.

The next question becomes sources.



(happy halloween!)