The Eternal Slumber

So, whilst in the midst of trying to reawaken my Alien Playwright blog and morph it into a gaming blog, I had a realisation. What the hell am I doing? Why am I trying to force a change? I should let sleeping blogs lie, rather than try and change the purpose.

And there it goes, Alien Playwright is dormant until such a time as I am, you know, writing a play.

There will be a new blog for my current obsession, which you can see traces of on this blog: painting fantasy wargaming miniatures.

I'll still be around, simply not exactly here.

One Page Dungeon

I have created an entry for the one page dungeon contest (http://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DungeonMaps/One_Page_Dungeon_Contest_2012) called Beloved of Set. It is a jumbled mishmash of Egyptian oddness. I hope that it is interesting at least. It was very difficult to keep to the one page limit simply because I wanted to add more art.

The egyptian hieroglyphs are a substitution. I've probably insulted some long dead pharaoh's mum.

I did not use proper names. The original idea was a convoluted homage to Alan Moore and his magical workings theatre group. The scribe was going to be Alnmur and the priestess Melgeb. In the end I decided It might make it easier to slot the various bits into existing games if there were no names.

Well, the die is cast.

Alan Moore

I came late to the works of Alan Moore. I knew of him for a long time, from the pages of the horror magazine Skeleton Crew which did many a long essay on his work. There I saw scattered panels from his comics: V for Vendetta, From Hell, Big Numbers and Swamp Thing. There was a certain reverence in the words about him that made him appear as if a god among mortals. Though this is probably a response to the reality that monthly comics scriptwriting was fairly dire. Following leads, I went to 2000AD, the flagship comic of the UK to find the illusive Moore. Instead of Alan Moore, who had finished writing for the magazine years earlier, I found Peter Milligan, Grant Morrison and John Smith, writers I noticed attached to strips I enjoyed. I followed these writers to DC and Vertigo comics and discovered Neil Gaiman and others. Still I had not read any Alan Moore. It was a strange lacuna. I knew a lot about Alan Moore and about the comics he had written from reading the reactions and perceptions of others. Still I had not actually read any of the landmark work that he had created.

When I finally read V for Vendetta and Watchmen, I was in my mid 20s and I had read so many other comics that had used techniques and surface gloss from them that it all seemed old hat. Watchmen (and Frank Miller's the Dark Knight Returns) helped create the comics style that we have suffered through since the late 80s: grim, gritty, pretentious and hyper violent without actually taking note of what Moore was actually doing: taking superheroes to their logical, illogical end (something that the recent film decided to 'correct' slightly*).

My first realisation that Alan Moore was an amazing writer was when I read From Hell, illustrated in pen and ink by Eddie Campbell (one of the guys who worked at Graphix**, Andy, had bought a page of From Hell, and it amazed me to see that Campbell had used ballpoint to create some of the scratchiness in the art). From Hell is an exhaustive exploration of the Jack the Ripper mythology using the Stephen Knight theory (Freemasons perpetrated the Ripper murders at Queen Victoria's behest to cover up a Catholic marriage and an illegitimate heir to the throne) to hang an amazing stew of ideas and imagery off of. It is incredibly rich, in it's detail and  Moore provided extensive appendices where he discusses the references that he used.

There is an entire 30 odd page chapter dedicated to a mystical tour of London, a carriage trip where Doctor Gull, the murderer, lays out a cosmology and philosophy that ties architecture to magic and imagination. Later there is a similar amount of pages dedicated (dedicated? an oddly appropriate word) to the dismemberment of the ripper's final victim. It is silent, and relies on Campbell's art to depict the clinical horror of the destruction of a human being.

The final stroke is an afterword where Moore injects himself into the history of Ripperology and talks about the imploding nature of closed theories. It is my favourite part of the book, it is funny and tragic and it lays bear the obsessive desire of people to take ownership of a story, a mythology by uncovering the inner mystery. In From Hell, this is the identity of the killer, the reason for the murders. It is brilliant.

*More about the tragic Alan Moore adaptions later.
** Graphix is the premier comics store in Wellington, NZ. It would be perfect if only it displayed books in the window instead of toys. I judge other stores against this one. It does not have the stink of a geek's basement about it.

Sermon from the 25th March

I was invited to speak at my church, First Congregational Church, Battle Creek, which was a great privilege. It was huge because I am an atheist. This was an opportunity I felt I should take, and a trust that I should honour.

In the writing of this I must have followed more than a handful of impulses, and then gone back and killed my darlings. Some trails started but abandoned: family history discrimination, growing up, Lovecraft, Alan Moore, my belief in the human imagination, more Kurt Vonnegut, explorations of socialism, negative church experiences, the most recent time I prayef and the idea that for someone to dominate someone else must submit.

It was well received, and there was some nice feedback.

The given sermon differed slightly from the text that follows. I ad libbed a little, mainly some explanations of some stuff. I will update this text when I have had a chance to watch the video. Updates will be in [[bracketed italics]]. I also realised that I mispelt atheist through out (cursed 'i' before 'e')

Thanks, Simon

Kia ora koutou. Welcome.

In New Zealand we often start a speaking engagement with a little bit of maori.

Writing this sermon has been difficult. I realised yesterday that I have not exposed myself in quite this way since I first started talking to Carmen four years ago. I feel vulnerable, that by talking about this I am truly laying myself on the line to the extent that I know that things won't be the same, regardless of the reception of what I say. I will be the one who has changed.

What I'm going to reveal is not strictly a secret. Some of you, maybe most of you, already know it. I am an athiest.

When Tom asked me to preach here, he said it would be a challenge. I immediately thought that he meant a challenge in terms of writing a sermon and speaking in front of people. No, Tom was referring to the idea that me, an athiest, talking here, might be a challenge for the Open and Affirming-ness of FCC.

At it's simplest definition an athiest is a person who does not believe in a god or gods. From there, it accumulates meanings like a blue whale accumulates barnacles.

I don't like the word.

I don't like it because, while accurate, it only describes what I do not believe. It tells you nothing else about me.It tells you one spare detail about how I view the world. It does not explain why I am here, now, with you all in this sanctuary. It is a non-label, a word used to define 'the other' in relation to the 'us'.

What I believe unites us is that we are capable of sharing headspace. Of creating in the space between us all, something that is more that the sum of it's parts. We all have a unique perspective, informed by the many factors that make up our lives. So unique, that although we may be on the same page, we're probably all reading different paragraphs.

I will get to our verses, I promise. First, some of my beliefs. I want to talk about space.

Carmen has seen me in the thrall of outer space. I have drifted off mid sentence, eyes glowing and mouth split in a beatific grin as some physicist or astronomer sketches some detail of the universe. Science for me is a set of beautiful ideas, ripe for use. We are all involved in delving into the mystery. But the mystery is a mandelbrot set: the further in you go, the more mystery you find.

[[The mandelbrot set: a fractal image which when you enlarge a section of it, the edge repeats the pattern into infinity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set ]]

When we look at the night sky, I suspect we're all looking at the same thing. Only we each bring our own perspective to it. I see a vast, almost infinitely empty void. It is beautiful. It is scary. And we are alone. The universe does not care about us. It is not capable of caring. The earth could vanish tomorrow and the universe will carry on. Life here is fragile. Change any one thing about this planet and things get bad. For example, move Earth closer or further away from the sun and all our surface water freezes or burns off into space (Scientists call it the goldilocks zone: the planet is juuust the right distance away)

Who knows how many other planets have come close to being as lucky as ours.

And that makes life here precious, makes this planet precious. We are stewards, or we should be stewards of this planet. We don't have a spare out there, no galactic cousins willing to let us sleep on their couch.

I certainly believe that there is life out there. Not necessarily sentient, though how cool would that be? Right now, I'd settle for simple bacteria. The paradigm would change. We would not be the sole life in the universe. We would be sharing this place with another.

Of course it could be that we have simply missed signs of other life in the vast emptiness. Their civilisations could have collapsed and their broadcasts passed us by before we gained the technology to detect them. Conversely, they may be out there looking at the night sky, sitting in their tribal groups and telling tales of strange life on other stars, simply not having got to where we got to a hundred years ago.

We have been sending signals into space for nearly a hundred years. Who knows where and when and who will see them. I hope they don't judge us too harshly.

***

Theme: The Temptation to Dominate: Doing Enough

Text: Luke 4: 1-2, 5-8, 13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,

2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

5Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.

6And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.

7If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”

8Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

13When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

When reading these verses I found myself thinking of the devil as an internal voice. It suggests to me that Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness working through how to carry out his ministry. Working through the ways in which he could use his power, dragging the voice inside his head into the open and refuting it. William Burroughs called this kind of voice the Policeman inside. That insidious voice that tells you that you are wrong, that this is what you should be doing. It's the voice installed by your parents, by society, by institutions. A voice made out of all the rules, expectations, guilt trips and other nasty little tricks society uses to keep you in line.

Temptation for me is the voice telling me not to do something. "Don't swim. Don't drive. Don't talk to people. Don't go to that function" Usually, this voice is connected with fear ("Do you really think you can do this? Do this?" It's taken me a long time to recognise it and realise that if I hear it, it's a good sign that I should try and overcome it.

Jesus's temptation is to become king, and his overcoming of this temptation leads us from the wilderness to the sermon of the mount, where he gifts the kingdom to everyone.

For myself, when I read the verses, I find myself reflecting on my inexperience as a parent. I can see all the mistakes, all the pitfalls coming down the road for our kids. Some from personal experience, some from observation. We also have this grand vision of how we want life to be like for our children.

If only they would damned well listen.

We know what's best, and still it is not enough. You want to shake the sense into them. It always feels like there is one more thing you could do, one more thing you could say. And isn't that the hard part? To gain the experience to know that you have done all you can, have done enough. That ultimately you can't force your child to submit. That you've placed yourself in the devil's role.

***

The unanswered question from earlier: Why am I here? I came initially to support and encourage Carmen in her faith. I stayed because of the open and affirming belief of this faith and this church in particular. This is the only church where the welcome-ness I received on my first visit has been backed up by the rhetoric of the church leadership. All too often my visits to churches start like this (an open embrace) and then progress, quickly, to this (talk to the hand). Here I feel that my perspective is one of many, and not discounted because of what I do or do not believe.

I am here because this is my community. I have never had one quite like this one. Like you all. Here I feel that I can be myself: a heathen, a father, a foreigner, a human without any of the judgment that I have experienced elsewhere. Here in this shared space something is created when we come together.

I want to end with a koha. In New Zealand, traditionally a koha is presented at a special occasion. Loosely it's a gift of appreciation and thanks.

I want to koha you all with the following words that have special place in my life.

The first is Kurt Vonnegut's evocation of enoughness. Something that he acquired from his uncle Alex and passed to us through. among other works, his book 'A Man Without a Country'.

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

The second is a karakia, a prayer, that I said for four years in my bi-lingual class. It is the Lord's Prayer in Maori.

Let us pray.

E to matou Matua i te rangi
Kia tapu tou Ingoa
Kia tae mai tou rangatira-tanga.

Kia meatia tau e pai ai
ki runga ki te whenua,
kia rite ano ki to te rangi.

Homai ki a matou aianei
he taro ma matou mo tenei ra.

Murua o matou hara

Me matou hoki e muru nei
i o te hunga e hara ana ki a matou.

Aua hoki matou e kawea kia whaka-waia;

Me matou hoki e muru nei
i o te hunga e hara ana ki a matou.

Aua hoki matou e kawea kia whaka-waia;

[[Oops, accidentally repeated the previous 3 lines]]

Engari whaka-orangia matou, i te kino:

Nou hoki te rangatira-tanga,
te kaha,
me te kororia,

Ake, ake, ake.

Amine.

Thank you for letting be ramble. Peace be with you all.

A brief deviation: comics. Cultural DNA.

Oh, gee this post has been so long waiting to be posted that I've lost the point. I may have to revisit this.

***

One of my loves is comics. They are another form of media that has been around my life since I was born, whether my dad's Peanuts books, or my mum's Superman and Batman omnibuses, or Noggin the Nod, or Asterix or Tintin or Footrot Flats round at Grandma and Grandad's. Comics have been around me, provided to me by family, as essential as books and music. Creative oxygen.

For a long time in my late teens and very early twenties I read nothing but comics. I would say

"A comic takes 20 to 30 minutes to read, and usually I'll get at least one good idea. If not, I've only lost 20 minutes. A book can take a lot longer, and the ratio isn't usually as good."

This idea isn't originally mine (I suspect I mangled Alan Moore), but I adopted it wholeheartedly as a motto when talking to people about comics.

I think about this attitude now and I cringe. Critically thinking things like that through was a couple of years away, probably the 3rd year of university. I must have been reading some utter garbage back then.  Sure, I was reading some good comics, but there are ways to find good books.

I'd started this post with the intention of talking about continuity and a comic called the Doom Patrol (a magic name that captivated me when I first read it in a short writer interview in 2000AD). The Doom Patrol had the distinction of being one of the few comics I bought regardless of the writer. I liked it because it was such a marginal comic in the DC comics universe that it didn't suffer a reboot until the 5th incarnation of the comic. This meant that the story of the characters in the comic had remained unbroken since the 60s, that the characters had aged in near real time. Which was incredibly important to me- somehow I sensed that this comic embraced the ridiculousness of a medium where Batman was eternally 30, Superman had his history restarted, and many character's war experiences shifted from WW2 to Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf. There was something attractive about a comic where changes happened and, more importantly, stuck.

The original comic that began in 1963 ended in 1968 with the Doom Patrol sacrificing themselves to protect strangers.

Here endeth the first draft work.

I'm drawing a line under the work I've done so far. I'm finding that I have increasingly been generating material that, while it follows the research, does not make for a clear story. I've hamstrung myself by not deciding what the focus of this play will be.

This first draft is nowhere near a finished work.

I will collate a PDF of the draft and post it in the next few days. This will form the raw material for the 2nd draft.

***

Distractions are the biggest barriers to writing. If I'm doing the crossword, or reading the funnies, or playing on facebook; I am not writing. I have an abysmal writing practice. Which, for something I have been doing for the best parts of almost 18 years, is a source of personal irritation. Have I hit my 10 000 hours to be considered whatever it is that I would be considered after 10 000 hours of writing? I hope not, if only because I'd feel like the worst writer if I had surpassed that 10 000 hour mark.

[The 10000 hours comes from the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell.]

***

Next draft will be about story and the characters. It will be interesting to see if I can walk the tightrope to create scenes that remain true to the reality of the people involved.

I sometimes consider giving up this writing lark. There is sometimes too much fear involved in sharing my words with others. The fear is sometimes overwhelming and it makes it easy to see the flaws in my writing instead of enjoying the good stuff.

Before I even consider the next draft there will come some palate cleansers. I need to exercise other writing muscles.

Vox Pop from the IoM, notebook pages from 12/01

A little more from the IoMannite, then the Dalbyist  chimes in.

This first draft is going to look like a house made from strange materials found in building recyclers. Sure, there are five kitchen sinks and that roof is held up by something, good intentions perhaps, but the second draft is where the architect comes in, shakes his head and sits down and begins turning a shack into a respectable bungalow with an en suite and an open shared living space. Some of those kitchen sinks will have to go, of course.

IoMANNITE: When the Irvings sold up and left all of it stopped. I assumed that Gef went with them.

REPORTER: Why assume that?

IoMANNITE: All of it ended. The whispering, the spooked animals, the tiny footprints in the flower beds.

[I actually wanted to say "the tiny footprints in the butter" but I didn't think outright Pythonesque humour would have fit in]

***

DALBYIST: When Jim and the family left I was glad. That mental kid of theirs. Of course he vanished.

REPORTER: oh? Gef, right?

DALBYIST:  You can't have a puppet without the puppeteer, can you? For my money it'll be the daughter. She was a bit wild. I'd heard that Jim had to move her bed into his and Marge's bedroom to keep an eye on her. She seemed to like to roam all over the show killing rabbits, which ain't healthy. Jim is a stand up bloke. Always ready with a good word,. He was a traveler, to be sure. I'm certain that he has seen things that beggar belief. I might add she weren't right in the head. My boys didn't like her. She was always making funny voices in school. Pretending to be something that she weren't.

Forgive me the sliding in tense. This is all supposed to be discussing the past.

REPORTER: You seem certain that Voirrey made Gef.

DALBYIST: Oh yes, I'm certain of that.

REPORTER: How so?

DALBYIST: She could throw her voice and she had plenty of time on her hands to come up with a little bugger like Gef.

REPORTER: But why not Mr or Mrs Irving?

DALBYIST: They're too sensible for that. It's not in their character.

REPORTER: But not Voirrey. Did you meet Price?

DALBYIST: He's a slick one. I'm not sure why he came. Perhaps there was a whiff of something. He acted like a man on holiday. Swanned about, not a care in the world. He saw the sights and climbed to Cashen's gap. Did he believe? Do you know if he ever said?

REPORTER: Not to my knowledge. Price was usually pretty forthright and adamant in his debunking.

***
Price seems to have seen something to exploit in he situation. I don't have a clear idea of what Price's beliefs are in regard to the supernatural. I don't know if he believed or not. He certainly

 

 

 

 

 

12/4/2011- further notes.

I need to find the C.S. Lewis quote about putting away childish things when you grow up.

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." 

Appears to be from "On Three Ways for Writing for Children" 1953
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis
I don't know quite why I needed to find the quote.

Now for some repetition from earlier: I've written this scene already from a different tack here http://alienplaywright.blogspot.com/2011/04/z-challenge-love.html

FIANCE: You grew up on Man, right?

VOIRREY: ...sure.

FIANCE: Did you know the story of the mongoose?

VOIRREY: Yes, I know it.

FIANCE: Did you know the family?

VOIRREY: No. We lived on the other side of the island. A world apart.

FIANCE: I think that she was nuts. Mental.

Silence

VOIRREY: Maybe she wanted to be left alone

FIANCE: With her ghost?

VOIRREY: Why is that so bad?

FIANCE: Hey, what's wrong? Is it because I called that poor girl disturbed?

VOIRREY: You'd have found out right enough.

FIANCE: What? Found out what?

VOIRREY: That it was me, you daft bastard. I was that mental girl. It happened to me. To my family. All of these things that you've been guffawing over, those were my things. When you pity that girl, you are pitying me. So now you know. This is a weight I rebury. I am the girl with the ghost. The 'superb' ventriloquist creating sound at the drop of a hat. The nutter. The mentaller. The fake. The phony. How can you marry me knowing that I am insane?

FIANCE: I-

Black 

Vanish.

11/28/11 Written today! Lead up the garden path.

Shock, horror. I managed to post the day I wrote.

IoMANNITE: We considered trying them as witches, the lot of them, dog included. A little bit of dunking in the river* and a couple of tribulations before tying them to a stake each on the green and burning them as a true and just punishment.

Pause

But wiser heads prevailed and we decided against it. We are attempting to be modern and past that kind of small town, olde type thinking behind us.

REPORTER: Are you being serious?

IoMANNITE: Of course not, you daft bugger. This is the 1940s not the 1640s. This thing was simply a monumental pain in the arse and that isn;t a capital crime, last I heard,

REPORTER: What did he do?

IoMANNITE: Ah, now. I can only talk a little hearsay about what he did to others, but to me, well for starters he put the frighteners on my sheep. Simply by being in the same field. He would throw gravel at the house. He'd laugh during the night, you'd think it was a fox screaming, but it wasn't.

Beat

The more I say the less I find him a nuisance

"And the more I find him a terror" would be the following statement.
Also the asterix above is to remind me to check if there are actually  any rivers on the Isle of Man.
IoMANNITE is really Isle-of-Mannite.

The worst was the whispering. You'd not be able to make out words, but it was definitely someone. Not the wind. He could keep it up for hours, it'd follow you around. You'd try and find it, and it would never be where you'd expect it to be. He can move fast. One night, I was standing at the front door and the susurrus of whispering began. Tired of this nonsense, I went and found my shotgun. I didn't know why I did. It's not like I had a target to hit. I placed the butt to my shoulder and aimed into the dark. As I was about to squeeze the trigger a small hand touched the back of my knee. I just about died.

Pause.

There was no one there. Anyway, I put a load of shot into the front door. The little bastard couldn't stop laughing.

Pause

REPORTER: Susurrus?

IoMANNITE: I do the crossword.

REPORTER: I think I did the same one.

IoMANNITE: Did you know he used to steal golf balls at the club?

REPORTER: Really?

IoMANNITE: Sure. I don't know where they all went. There's probably a burrow somewhere.

REPORTER: So, Gef played golf.

IoMANNITE: As much as any wee beastie might. He probably chases reflected light too.

 That was a lot of fun to write. There will be more to follow. There are things to be said about the family too. My beloved, Carmen, suggested that Gef probably stole the golf balls and didn't really play. I reckon he actually had a set of perfectly scaled clubs. Your mileage may vary.

11/25/11- War and blood

Gef and Jim talk.

JIM: I've read that we may be at war again.

GEF: The gods of war live on the blood of young men. They're not fussy are they? Just give it to them raw. I used to live on blood for a while.

JIM: What made you stop? I imagine that it can't have been easy?

GEF: I loved it! Looooved it. Could not get enough. Chicken blood. Pig blood. Cow blood.

JIM: Human blood?

Silence

GEF: Oh no, not human blood. Cannibalism. I am no cyclops! Lambs blood is tastiest. Rabbits blood is easiest.

Beat 

I bring you the rabbits.

From notebook 11/25/2011

This set of notes was written after reading a friend's play and really thinking about the practicalities of the actual theatre space.

How to depict Gef?
Show him? Hear him?
Have characters interact with Gef in one-sided conversations?

Should Gef's voice be pre-recorded?
If so, should Gef be voiced by Voirrey's actress?

What should we see on stage?
[Idea: a claustrophobic box set] - [literally a box with a roof enclosing the characters. Light becomes an issue.]

The box set is made up of gapped slats - the gaps large enough to show light and movement behind them. [Stage hands then become performers as well] -[mongoose mask + tails!]

Light in set perhaps comes from diegetic sources: lamps, lanterns, candles, etc etc

Diegetic being the fancy word for "occurring within the same world as the characters."
i.e. The light in the scene won't come from the spots in the rafters of the theatre, it will come from the character's turning on the lamps or lighting candles.

Voirrey is always in the set box until she dies, then she leaves into Gef's area.
Gef is outside the box.

The last sentence is totally appropriate on a few levels.

Then a list of possible set furniture, with an eye to flexibility.

Table
Bed - chaise lounge
Chairs.

Pictures on walls
[sets start out crowded and then get more and more spare]

Who acts where?
How do they meaningfully interact?

I thinking I was talking out my backside on the last one. They meningfully interact because I write it so. I actually mean "How do they physically interact", which is more a directing and performance issue than a writing one. My job is to provide the motivation for however the cast/crew decide to do their jobs.

Make a moment out of Margaret touching Gef's claws. [Touch is important, touch causes problems]
Gef wishes contact, but contact is painful.

Vanish.

Sat 11/19, Sun 11/20 and Tues 11/22: Margaret and Voirrey talk some.

Each of these kind of follow each other, with some overlap. Each is just a little isolated from each other, and there is a little looping back between the 19th and the 20th: I remember thnking I'd restart the conversation. I have no clue where or when they are talking. Initially it falls out of the stuff between Jim, Voirrey and Margaret earlier.

(Also, I've just realised that Gef has gone from that earlier conversation between Jim and Voirrey. Hmm. Is that something I want?)

11/19

MARGARET: Did you fake him? Make him up out of thin air?

VOIRREY: I -

MARGARET: I'm not interested in lies.

 11/20

MARGARET: Did you make Gef?

VOIRREY: Why are you asking me?

MARGARET: I need to know.

VOIRREY: Why does it matter? It happened to us all. Who cares how or why? I don't know how Gef came to us. He told so many stories, versions of himself. Who knows what is true.

MARGARET: You didn't answer.

Pause

VOIRREY: Mum, what has changed to make you doubt what happened to us?

Pause

MARGARET: Your father is dead.

 11/22

MARGARET: Without your father, the fancy has worn off.

VOIRREY: It happened. You can't deny it

MARGARET: Yes it did, I grant. So how did it happen?

VOIRREY: How do I know?

Silence

VOIRREY: I don't have the faintest.

 Pause

 MARGARET: Then, how about why?

 ***

As an aside, making the formatting work in blogger is a pig.

Synchronous thoughts.

Just finished reading Grant Morrison's personal biographic history of superhero comics "Supergods" (Speigel & Grau 2011) and it talks a lot about magic and connection or synchronicity. The same thing occurring independantly at the same time and in it he talks about and gives the best definition of the tulpa. A nice coincidence, given that I'd been thinking about tulpas recently with Gef.

From page 408 of the hardcover:

Tulpa is a Tibetan description for a solid object, or person, created from thought alone; i.e., literally and deliberately willed into tangible form from nothing.

Grant Morrison is a chaos magician who has used the comics he has written to explore his philosophy and journey into magic. Chaos magic is a do-it-yourself way of ordering the world using rituals and belief systems from all over. So a chaos magician could potentially use kabbalah, bits of Dee, the Lord's Prayer and a heaping of Crowley to contact the fictional entities from Lovecraft's tales.  The idea that magic is fiction is a feature and not a flaw (for example Alan Moore, writer of Watchmen, From Hell and League of Extraordinairy Gentleman among others,  worships Glycon, a snake puppet used to commit fraud in 1st century AD Rome) because in magic fiction is another layer of reality.

Morrison describes superheroes beautifully as the ultimate ficitonal reality. We created them as the ultimate answer. There is no physical, mental, spiritual problem designed that we cannot have our superheroes overcome. They are designed to overcome and to inspire. He uses as an example the idea of The Bomb. From page xv of the introduction:

Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an idea.
Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea.
It's not that I needed Superman to be "real," I just needed him to be more real than the Idea of the Bomb that ravaged my dreams.

Grant Morrison then spends the rest of the book making the case that superheroes are humanity's aspirations toward perfection.

From note book. 11/18 James Dies

Looks like it was written on the 18th.
I've started writing in my notebook during my 15 minute breaks at work. It turns out a bit disjointed, but it's getting the job done.

***

JAMES: You've been a weight on us, crushing the breath from us. So you've come to beg forgiveness, eh?

MARGARET: Jim, must you?

VOIRREY: Forgive me for what?

JAMES: For deserting us, for all of the heartache you've subjected us to. For bringing the outside world crashing down on us. For tricking me.

VOIRREY: I never.

JAMES: I believed in Gef.

VOIRREY: Gef was real.

JAMES: Was he? I used to think that. For the longest time I was sure and then I got to thinking. He only ever talked to the three of us. I talked for hours to him and now... and now I am unsure. Voirrey, did you make him up? It's my one unanswered question.

VOIRREY: and assuming that's what I did, then what? I mean, which would you rather? Gef be a fabrication? Or Gef be real? 

 Pause

I didn't make him up.

JAMES: Oh God, Voirrey, I wish you'd stop. Just stop lying and tell the truth. You were a ventriloquist for God's sake.

MARGARET: I thought you made him up, Jim. You were his favourite.

VOIRREY: I'm not lying. I heard what I heard and saw what I saw and I'm still paying this exhorbitant price that everyone has levied on me. You were the one who wrote the diary and sent it to Price. You were the one who told tales at the local. You were the one who drove [brother] away and turned our lives into a circus. You ruined our lives, not me.

***

The line that sticks out to me is Margaret's "You were his favourite." It opens up whole other worlds of jealousies.

Edit: oddly enough, I realise that James doesn't actually die.

Notebook dump from 11/18: 'GEF' DIES!

Black

A rifle shot

FARMER: Got 'im

Lights up on FARMER with a sack.

Reporters? 

FARMER: I got the bugger. He was always playing tricks on me. He stole my morning's milk. He killed my hens. The little bastard would whisper to me at night.

REPORTER: Can you be sure it was really him?

FARMER: How can I be sure? Can I be bloody sure?

FARMER reaches into sack and pulls out a bundle of fur.

He tosses it at the reporters' feet.

FARMER: I'm pretty bloody sure,

REPORTER [toeing fur]: It looks like a mongoose.

FARMER: What are you? An idiot? It looks like it because it is! You can tell.

REPORTER 2: Yes, it looks like a mongoose, but is it Gef?

FARMER: It weren't singing a rude limerick but this is Gef.

Pause

REPORTER: You murdered Gef? 

FARMER: It's a mongoose!

REPORTER: A talking mongoose. Literally a miracle. And you shot him.

FARMER: You can get off my farm and all, you can. Go on, sod off. I removed a pest and that's all I'm going to say. You bastards of the fifth estate can go whistle for more more from me. You don't have to put up with the singing and the dancing,. all of the sightseers leaving the gates open and trampling the crops all in the hope of seeing some sodding pest. And according to you, you little oik, I've killed one talking bastard already. So, there he is. Satisfied? I'll stuff the bugger and use him as a door stop. Now clear off the lot of you.

 ***

The Farmer is fairly foulmouthed in a very british '3 Bs' way.  I imagine that the Gef tourism industry was still in play a decade after the initial uproar. I've really wonder about this guy (I have his name in my research docs) that he felt the need to alert the media to his kill, also the idea that he killed a creature as unique as Gef. He's cashing in to an extent. Spurred by damage to his property, the loss of privacy and, possibly, the realisation that the farm is hard work, located as it was high up among the rocks.

I doubt that Gef was even there to torment the guy, let alone there to be shot. He'd moved on to parts unknown.

Voirrey monologue fragments.

This from my notebook, written 11/5, 11/6 and 11/7 during breaks at work.

It's incredibly static, but it does something I like a lot. I can't recall if this was intended to be part of Voirrey's interviews or retirement. I am keenly aware that I have not been concentrating on  sharpening the conflict. Otherwise it is just pretty prose.

***

VOIRREY: I never returned home. Not in any real sense. I tried to keep in touch with my sister and her children.

I walked a lot. Read a lot.

I look back and I see a simultaneous retreat from the world and a stripping of identity. All so no-one would connect me with him.

***

VOIRREY: My mother, who had such wonderful talent for reading other people, missed what was happening under her own roof. She missed the festering resentment and yearning.

Pause

I don't know if she loved my father

Silence.

I don't know. Was she relieved when she died? A little, I think. He'd been ill a long while before he passed. I'd like to think that brother made his peace with him before the end. They were stubborn bastards. Too proud the pair of them.

I miss them, I do. I miss them all. They were the only family I had. The closest I had to friends, outside of my dogs.

Inside of a dog, it's black as pitch.

My friendships only went so far. People get too close, get curious. Ask questions and put two and two together and get the right answer.

***

They ask me about him and I become his, his creator, his ward, his master, his victim. Whichever.

Am I the girl dreaming of the mongoose? Or the mongoose dreaming of the girl?

I can't seem to wake up. When I sleep, I dream of the farm.

***

Another idea in the mix

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa

Hmm, this fits gloriously well as an idea of what Gef is and this is probably the neatest-ties-everything-up-in-a-bow theories out. But who's the creator of the Tulpa that is Gef?

In the grand scheme it doesn't really matter for me, Gef simply is.

More notes later.

Last page of catchup: a letter

This is based on something a flm director mentioned when talking about writing to Voirrey about an interview. She wrote a polite refusal. I like the idea of this being a way to shoehorn a monologue into the thing.

18 August 2011

VOIRREY voice over as CREATIVE TYPE reads a letter.

VOIRREY: Dear Hamilton.

I write this letter with some trepidation, as I write most of these letters and all too frequently. One

of the curses of being a voter with a name like mine is that I can be located with a little trouble

and a lot of leg work. I presume that the rolls are searchable online now?

As for your very polite request for an interview, I must decline. No, thank you. I cannot help you much with your production. I am old and the memory of those events nearly sixty (or is it seventy?) years ago grows ossified with the passing years. Questions beyond the barest facts I fear will be useless. I fail to remember much of the events. My father was the diaryist and I find travelling to the past painful and frustrating. Was I ever that young? Ever that innocent? I shudder at the very thought.

[[new thought 10/30/2011: "I fail to remember much of the times to begin with let alone those particular events]]

I am not and have never been insane despite the constant implication and outright accusations of many over the years. The events of those years have left a persistant taint throughout my life and have closed many options to me.

Also, I refute claims thagt my father abused me. He was strict but I have no doubts that he love me, my Ma and my older brother and sister. Regarding the insinuation of both Mr Price and Mr Nandor, how can I refute a negation except to say they read too much into a stressful time of our life.

I will not stop you in what you propose to do. Suffice to say I am not interested in knowing how your endeavour goes and have no wise to find out.

Before I sign off I will simply say this: most all of the events are true and to the record I can add nothing. Please understand I will not reply further.

Yours sincerely, Voirry Irving.

P.S. Please do not give my address to others

Voirrey dies. Notebook catchup

Another scene, written at my job during breaks. Rereading it, I think I need to make Voirrey a little more strident, the dialogue even more oblique. Some of it is too expository when more information can be revealed later in the play. I really need to work on the Priest and giving him a definite platform. As I'm re-learning, there are many flavours of Christianity. In the early scenes the characters outside the main mongoose story are our entry into it.

9 August 2011

Voirrey Dies

In darkness.

GEF (Repeats): Pop goes the Weasel.

An old (80+ years) Voirrey in bed.

Anglican Priest sits beside bed.

VOIRREY: A monkey chased a weasel.

Voirrey chuckles.

PRIEST: Voirrey, are you afraid?

VOIRREY: Afraid?

Beat

I'm terrified. I look back over my life and it is a load of regrets with one shining moment of

importance.

* * *

OLD VOIRREY: The entire world was watching us and I, we, were witnesses to something huge.

Pause

PRIEST: What did you witness?

VOIRREY: A diabolic miracle. A malignant blessing. A weasel in hen's clothing.

Pause

VOIRREY: A stream appeared which both quenched and drowned. I have no other way to describe what happened to us. To our family.

PRIEST: You told me once you grew up on Isle of Man. I have heard tales of the fair folk and their giftss that are as much curse as boon.

VOIRREY: Aye, the walls are thin there on the island.

Beat

I think you know more about my past than you let on.

PRIEST: I thought it impolite to say.

Pause

PRIEST: Have you made your peace with it?

VOIRREY: Hell no.

Silence

PRIEST: Well, that's that, then. Do you wish you had?

VOIRREY: Only every day. I wish I could put it behind me. I've had many opportunities.

VOIRREY: I should have put it all behind me. I could have at any time.

PRIEST: It can be hard to move on, but you did.

VOIRREY: No, I didn't. I ran. I ran from it all. The teasing, the media, the family and him.

PRIEST: Who? Your dad?

Voirrey laughs.

VOIRREY: Oh no, not him. Not him at all.

Beat

Well, maybe him a little. I meant Gef. Gef, it was, I ran from.

PRIEST: Why him?

VOIRREY (mimics): Why him? Why him?

PRIEST: You're avoiding the question.

VOIRREY: I am? Yes, I am. Why him? He cracked the world wide open. Everything hurt after that.

Pause.

VOIRREY: Everything.

PRIEST: Voirrey? Do you love him still?

Voirrey nods.

PRIEST: Shall we pray together? Shall we pray for him too?

Voirrey nods.

VOIRREY: Yes.

The Priest gently takes her hand.

As the Priest talks, Voirry gets stiller and stiller until she is no longer moves.

PRIEST: Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Snip goes the prayer.

PRIEST: Amen.

He holds Voirrey's hand a little longer

then he gently fold her hands across her chest

and closes her eyes.

There s a large thump overhead and a high pitched keening wail.

PRIEST: What on earth is that?

Silence.

PRIEST: Bloody dogs.

Black.

***

VOIRREY: Do we ever really die, father?

PRIEST: I don't know what happens when we die. I put my hands of Jesus on that score.

VOIRREY: Will I be saved? I don't think I will.

PRIEST: Have you lived a good Christian life?

VOIRREY: And what would that be?

PRIEST:

Catchup, from notebooks

So this is a dump from my notebook. I wrote most of these while at work.

This post is a long list of title ideas. I think I settled on "So said the Mongoose" as the most likely option. Some of them betray their influences to me. Some are close to Lovecraft stories ('The Mongoose in the Wall') while others have escaped from roleplaying game modules ("Death Memory Mongoose").

8th May 2011

The Mongoose Play

Playing Mongoose

The 5th Dimension

A Girl and Her Ghost

Mongoose Fidelis

Isle of Mongeese

Ghost Island

Voirrey's Ghost

Echoes of Angels

The Scratch

Scratches

Keeping Score

Echoes in the Wall

Behind the Walls

Beyond the Wall

Behind Locked Walls

Ghost Rat

Echo Rat

Voirrey's Echo

Echo Miracle

Miraculous

Ghost of Time

Echoes of Time

The Shadow of the Mongoose

The Shadow of the Rat

The Ghost's Shadow

Planet Mongoose

The Shadow on the Wall

The Shadow in the Wall

Voirrey has two Shadows

The Shade at Cashen

8th Wonder

Voirrey at Cashen's Gap

The Life of a Haunted Girl

Walled In

Echoes in the Walls

Mongoose Sub-Protector

Ghost Farm

Spook Farm

Voirrey's Spooked

Voices Beyond the Wall

Spoken Wall

Bound House

The Black Urn

Crop

Shadows on the Wall

Death Comes to Cashen

Death and the Mongoose

Death and the Rodent

Death Memory Mongoose

Voirrey, said the Mongoose

Love Death said the Mongoose

I protect, said the Mongoose

We All Died, said the Mongoose

I Live in Memory said the Mongoose

I am Memory, said the Mongoose

I am the 5th Dimension, said the Mongoose

Said the Mongoose

So Says the Mongoose

So Said the Mongoose

In the Walls, the Mongoose

The Mongoose Speaks