Arts that might be selected into the inclusive platonic republic.
4 Plays
4 Free Adaptations
Draft 1
Main Correpondents: Aeschylus and Aristophanes.
Press ganged [but not banged] platonic 'muses': A.; M.; Z. [Aka fiery ageing slags ... aka frumpy flabby middling-spreaders ... aka fair-minded fairly talented, fair maidens ... aka ...]
Probationary 'lady philosophy' - who should perhaps instead be locked up/away/out under an APSBO/O [= anti-philosophical-stinking-body-odour/order]: C. [C-word = 'Cunt'?!].
4A. Prometheus
4C. The Birds
4M. The Persians
4Z. Peace
Promising platonically off-beatingly ...
Something for everyone ... a tragical-comical-historical-philosophical-fantastical ... review ...
Under-credited support workers [include]:
... tTranslators, editors, production assistants, publishers, printers, book-binders, distributors, book-shop-staff, etc, etc, etc ...
Re-titling.
4A. Fore-thought Under House Arrest.
4C. Ravings in of a Madman in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.
4M. Purrs ............ Sighs .......... Ans.[incompletely]
4Z. Lost in Tranzlationz.
Re-type-ing.
4A. You are perhaps well advized to piss off and seek 'asylum' in someone else's mindset too [and hopefully not discovering in the 'processing' (that is done to 'things', isn't it - not human beings) what it is really like to be persecuted as a minority] - with Long Over-Due Unreturned Dismissive Disrespect For/To The Westminster Villagers.
4C. You Ignorant Self-Serving Fat Cow Slut.
4M. You have done a lot of serious but rather depressing 'aftermath' journalism - in real 'worlds of shit', mostly of human making - and perhaps have too bleak a view of 'human nature' and the 'human condition' as a consequence. [Something you once wrote to me, M., commenting on some outrage: 'We do these things to each other.' And in that statement there was just too much - unjust - 'acceptance' of the way things are, I think-fell.] I offer you, in reasonably good faith, hopefully, some hopeful forethought: viz, preventing potential wars and other violent acts before they happen is a better way to make a good living - and to invest in a truly secure pension plan - than to report their aftermaths after they have happened.
4Z. To a delightful iridescent-polyglottic-cosmopolitan correspondent, and others of her 'kind' [widely speaking] lost 'out there' somewhere, I offer a 'sign of peace' in reasonably good faith.
[Pausing for thought about why humans seem to find crudely abusive dialogue more delightfully amusing than the more mildly affectionate stuff and then ...]
Getting on with it ...
Fore-thought Recast
Provisional Re-Dedication:
4 A - with long over-due unreturned dismissive disrespect for the Westminster villagers ...
I [re-]Present ...
'Forethought-in-Chains'
[Provisional sub-title: You Ignorant Small-Minded Wider Possibility Stifling Gits!]
Provinsional Epigraph:
'What the later Shakespeare lacked was real social purpose.'
Cast:
Might [Face of Charles Clarke?]
Violence [Face of blended George Bush/Osama bin Laden?]
Smith [Face of ... Bob The Builder?]
Forethought [Face of ... someone 'absence-minded'?]
Water [Face of ... ?]
Woman [Face of ... Nivea Intensive Care Cream?]
Messenger [Face of ... one about to be shot?! ... or that of the postal worker who failed to deliver a letter to my house this morning? ...]
Chorus of Water-based Beings [Face of Face-Mite?]
Gang of Anonymous Robotic Demons hanging about menancingly in the background [Faces of Clones of Governor of California?]
Draft 1, Scene 1
Scene:
A bare and desolate waste-land.
[Enter Might, Violence, Anonymous Robotic Demons, Smith. They drag behind them, in chains, Forethought, who is suffering in stoical blank-faced silence.]
Might:
Stop! This is the place. This is the world's limit. This is the untrodden desolation at the end of the Male State - with Female Consent.
[All but Forethought look around them with looks of amazement approaching horror. They have never been here before, but seem to recognize the place from their nightmares. Having registered emotion, their faces blank to utilitarian work-masks and they concentrate on the business in hand.]
Might [opening official looking scroll and apparently reading]:
Smith, it is your duty to obey the commands of the Male State - with Female Consent - and secure this subversive in complete isolation in unbreakable chains in this desolate spot. Without due process of law, and mostly according to the unprincipled ways of blind ignorant pre-judice, his crime has been decreed to have been trying to steal trade secrets - including the power of controlled heat - with the intention of spreading it to wider humanity. This is a breach of the established order for which he must pay the penalty. He must learn to endure confinement - and, in his confined isolated state, may even come to love the ways of the Male State - with Female Consent - and quit his wider-humanity loving ways.
Violence:
Just do it to him!
Smith:
Might and Violence, in you the Male State - with Female Consent - has reached its ultimate expression. With you wills prevailing within it, there is nothing to stand in its way - though where that leads, I dread to think. For myself, I have no love of your ways, nor any desire to do the job of chaining this fellow being to a fixed place in this desolate isolating spot. He is more of my kind than you are, but I follow your orders not his - since he declines to give any. There are constraints on me too - even if less visible than those on him. For me not to do the ordered job would be to put myself in danger of the same fate. I will do it unwillingly, but I will do it nevertheless.
Might and Violence [impatiently]:
Just do it!
Smith:
Forethought, forgive me, the act I will do to you will be the result of neither your will nor mine. I will constrain you in chains on this desolate place, far from wider humanity. Here, by Male State decree - with Female Consent - you will have no company. You will hear no other voices but your own. You will meet no form of fellow feeling. You will stare all day at a grey unchanging sky. You might be glad when night comes to darken things further - at least that will be a change to your environment. But the grey will return later to further oppress you. And always the grievous burden of the powers of your name will be there to further wear you down. Forethought will mean that moments of relief will be no relief really, because you will always know that even when worse experiences ease, they will all too soon return. Such is the cruel reward that the Male State - with Female Consent - says you deserve for your wider humanity-loving disposition. Many a groan and lamentation from you will be your acknowledgements of this 'reward' from the state. Your expressions of pain will not be widely heard. And do not expect the state to later pity you, relent, and release you - because that would involve it acknowledging of its own fundamental errors and weaknesses, which - for all its claims of strength and power - it is just not strong or powerful enough to do.
[Forethought stares at Smith with fellow-feeling, but says nothing.]
Smith:
I can offer you some hopeful consolations Forethought - though I imagine you have already thought of them. The state orders me to 'completely isolate' you in 'unbreakable chains', and that order I will obey the best I can - to preserve my own life and liberty and paid employment. But the order is an impossible one - for reasons you and I understand but those like Might and Violence possibly do not. Experience of my craft - and intimations of your forethought - tell me that your condition will NOT be absolute. You will have more company than official degree has allowed for - 'complete' states of isolation are not possible, even in a place like this. And as for 'unbreakable' chains, they are impossible things too - they just can not be made. Time will erode the structures of the chains I will surround you with. Time will break them up - as it breaks up everything else. You shall be released in time.
Might:
Quit this foolish gibbering Smith. Why are you delaying actions with words? Why do you show him sympathy? Do you not hate one who defied the state that employs you? His ways threatened your business as much as ours - do you not know that?
Smith:
I am not sure what I know. I do know that his forethought challenges me and my work - but not necessarily in damaging ways. I will do my work on him - but not happily.
Might:
Many other people are unhappy in their work - why make an issue of that?
Violence:
You'll be unhappy if you do not do your work Smith - we'll get you chained up here too if you do not get on with it.
Smith:
I might be well-chained along-side him perhaps - I am more of his kind than either of yours. But there is no use in trying to explain why - you will take what I say the wrong way.
Might and Violence:
Are you calling us stupid?!
Smith.
No - I am too fearful of you and your unkind kind - singly and together - to call you stupid. I am trying to understand how stupid I might be for me to do what I have been ordered to do.
Might and Violence:
Just do it!
Smith:
I will. And I will do it because at this moment, I fear both of you - and the state through which you empower yourselves - more than I fear him - and what he stands for. But, as I consider what I am going to do to him, I do fear the consequences greatly.
Might:
There is no point in you trying to cover your bets like that. You are with us, or you are with him - simple as that.
Violence:
Simple as that.
Smith:
This is not so simple: it is shameful to have good skills that you use for a bad purpose - I might corrupt my own craft when I do what I will soon do.
Might:
What nonsense! Your craft is in no way the author of his misfortune.
Violence:
Just do it!
Smith:
I cannot resist the orders further.
Might:
Hurry now. Throw the chains around him.
Violence:
Do what you have to do.
[Smith starts to chain Forethought - who is blankly silent throughout.]
Smith:
There ... I am doing my job ... there are the chains ... and there are the locks ... look ... you can see them ... you can see me wrapping the chains round him ... tightening them ... and locking the locks ...
Might:
Put more on his hands - tie them up more tightly.
Violence:
Make sure they are as tight as you can make them.
Smith:
What you order is being done now. I am not idling at my work.
Might:
Tighten it all together more strongly. Don't leave a loose link anyway/anywhere - he's a cunning one, and will find any weakness in your work.
Violence:
And I will spot any deliberate mistake you make to lessen his suffering.
Smith:
Look! I am a master of my trade! He will be confined as tightly as it is possible to confine him!
Might:
Put in extra fittings. Double-up on everything.
Violence:
Show him no mercy!
Smith:
I will do my work so well, that only Forethought himself could rightly accuse me of doing a bad job - only he will understand the paradox of the job I do on him: the better I do my work, the worse a piece of work it is for him.
Violence:
Show him no pity!
Might:
Are you pitying him? We will report it if you are!
Smith:
I pity him his future sufferings, because I know what a good job I am doing on him.
Might:
Your pity is misplaced!
Violence:
Think only of what will be done to you if you fail in your work.
Smith:
Don't you see a sight that hurts your eyes?!
Might:
I see ... someone getting his deserts.
Violence:
I see ... something who is not one of us.
Smith:
I see ... the possibility that I am forced onwards towards a future share of his fate.
Might:
Is that defiance?!
Violence:
Sounds like it to me.
Smith:
I am only doing my job, and although it is to the best of my abilities, it is not the best work I have done - nor the best work I could be doing with my skills.
Might:
You will be well rewarded for it.
Violence:
And how can you complain when your trade is better paid than ours?!
Smith:
There ... I have done my work and earned whatever payment I deserve.
[Forethought is now bound by an incredibly complex bundle of chains and locks. Might and Violence and the squad of Anonymous Robotic Demons check over Smith's work.]
Might:
Just add a few more chains would you Smith ... just to be sure.
Violence:
Yes. And, while you are at it, hammer in a few more nails too!
[Smith does as ordered. Might and Violence and Anonymous Robotic Demons check over the work again.]
Might: Sorted!
Violence: Sorted!
Anonymous Robotic Demons: Sorted!
[All exit, Smith dallying briefly to say last words to Forethought.]
Smith:
Your state and your looks and your silence speak my exit line for me.
[Prometheus is now alone.]
Draft 1, Scene 2
Prometheus:
It is a fucking disgrace what they have done to me.
[Before going on to more polite expression, he recomposes himself. His mind might be imagined as ranging widely during an indefinite period of external silence - which potential producers of this uncopyrighted work are free to prolong or contract according to the time-demands of their productions.]
Ravings of a Madman-in-Cloud-Cuckoo-landz?
4C. [Rastaman he say that bad-faith bitch she dun too much sell-out trade with Babylon]
Characters [include]:
Hopeful [Face of a baby]
Trusting [Face of unwordly inexperience]
Poet [Pained face of 'poetics prostituting royalist lackey' Andrew Motion attempting to write something in good faith for the coming 'royal' wedding.]
Priest [Face of Pope being put through the totally undignified and humanity debasing public spectacle of his own decline.]
Inspector [Face of judge going through the motions of an official inquiry into 'weapons of mass destruction.]
Lawyer [Face of the solicitor who failed to turn up for at least 16 hours when I requested to see him when being held in a police cell last year - and if it happened to me being held under suspicion of relatively trivial offences, it must happen to many being held for much more serious offences - point being the lawyers should be there to protect the interest of detainees, guilty or not, and that their presence also protects detainers against charges of misconduct, true or false, that might be made against them, etc ...]
Soothsayer [Face of a government spin-doctor.]
Chorus of Birds [Faces of A...B...C...D...E...F...G...H...I...J...K...L...M...N...O...P...Q...R..S...T...U...V...W...X...Y...Z...
Draft 1, scene 1
Scene:
A barren plain.
[Enter Hopeful carrying a Magpie, Trustful carrying a Pigeon.]
Hopeful [to Magpie];
Where next?
Magpie:
Straight forward ... Straight forward ...
Trustful [to Pigeon]
Do you agree?
Pigeon
Side-ways a little ... Side-ways a little ...
Hopeful:
This m[e]andering about will surely lead us the right way.
Trustful:
We just have to trust them to know the way, naturally.
Hopeful:
But I do have doubts occasionally.
Trustful:
Me too. They seem to have it all mapped out between them, but when they sing apparently cheerfully chirply the little bustards might not be showing us the way in song, but only laughing at us mockingly.
Hopeful:
Where are we, exactly? Do you know that?
Trustful:
I am no more certain than: 'between here and there'.
Hopeful:
Oh Hell!
Trustful:
Not THERE - yet.
Hopeful:
Not heaven either - yet.
Trustful:
Remember where we began?
Hopeful:
Yes. In the petshop, the bird-brained lunatic philosopher Philo took a turn away from his usual gloom and cried out to us as if in direction: 'Trust the birds to guide you to the birds you seek.'
Trustful:
And, taking a turn away from our usual sceptical rationality, we decided to follow his advice.
Hopeful:
And it has led ... to here ...
Trustful:
Wherever this might be ...
Hopeful:
At least it is not ... there ...
... where ...
Trustful:
A once splendid nation spoiled itself and went paranoid with insecurities ...
Hopeful:
While following the direction of a dangerously deluded madman from across the pond ...
Trustful:
It seemed that all around us were going quackers ...
Hopeful:
So we ducked off out of it ...
Trustful:
Leaving them behind to their harmful folly ...
Hopeful:
While pursuing a harmless one of our own ...
[They pause for re-consideration.]
Re-patterning and re-dramatizing.
The Purse Snatchers
Draft 1
Characters [include]:
Chorus of Elders [Faces of stoical resignation?]
Queen [Face of M.?]
Herald [Face of Worried Hermaphrodite?]
Ghost of Dead King [Face of JFK?]
King [Face of consternation?]
Scene:
In the background a palace-like structure. In the foreground tomb of dead king.
[Enter Chorus of Elders.]
Chorus:
Of the people gone
of the bad deeds done
here in this grave spot
we sing out not a jot.
Instead, as trustees of better ways,
we turn away from a valium haze ...
[Enter irate critic]
Critic:
This is jingling jangling ditty dotty dross unfit for such an elevating theme!
[Chorus rearranges itself and divides into two sections, one stage left, the other stage right. Critic stands in the middle.]
Left Chorus:
It is a start, is it not?
Right Chorus:
And we have to start somewhere, do we not?
Critic:
But 'spot'! and 'jot'!
Is that the best you've got?!
Right Chorus:
We have also 'bot' and 'tot' and a 'lot'.
Left Chorus:
We have also 'bit' and 'tit' and 'lit'.
Critic:
And that passes for wit?!
Right Chorus:
In olden days a glimpse of snogging
was thought of as something mind-boggling ...
Left Chorus:
But hell only knows how low stockings
have to fall these days to get to the really shocking
bits and ...
Critic:
'Peaces' - I bet you don't even know how to spell that properly.
Give me 'pieces' please instead.
[They pause to reconsider the matter of 'pieces'/'peaces']
Re-[soft-shoe]shuffling.
Peaces/Pieces of Piece/Peace
Draft 1, scene 1
4Z
Provincial/Provisional Punning Epigraph:
'UPI IPU ... O'
Prosaic Preamble:
Rumour has it that, once upon a time, war-weariness and despair of relief led a aspirant cosmopolitan gardener to die of depression. Contrary to his atheistic expectations, he ascended to a heavenly afterlife - on the back of a beetle, of all unlikely carrier beings. He discovered there that the divine powers had washed their hands of humanity - on the reasonable grounds that human beings never really seemed to learn the lessons of their own histories, and kept on repeating variations of past mistakes. Hope was not completely lost, however, because the divine powers had buried the secrets of peace in a hidden spot on Earth. The following pleasant bit of whimsy will tell the story of how that buried secret of peace was rediscovered - to the consternation of those who profit by war and the hearty satisfaction of everyone else [the play leaves as a tantalizing open question which is the 'majority' and which the 'minority'].
There is strong evidence that the text has been corrupted. It appears to be a compound version of several similar texts. It has evidently been translated and untranslated and retranslated many times - and much will have been lost in the tranzlationz.
For all its messiness, the text is not without charm and good spirits.
The affectionate representation of rustic festivals it contains may be regarded as a fore-brightening of the potential pastoral revival.
Characters [include]:
Aspirant Cosmopolitan Gardener [Face of deeply frustrated man?]
Messenger [Face of a multicultural newsagent?]
War [Face of Woman excited as men fight over her?]
Riot [Face strangely suggestive of the inside of the House of Commons?]
Gardening Toolmaker [Face of person content to make a good living not a huge profit?]
Weapon-Maker [Face of person not content to make 'merely' a good living?]
Trumpeter [Face of person with large anus?]
Chorus of Workers [Varying faces, depending on occupation?]
Scene:
Foreground garden, background modest dwelling.
[Enter Chorus of Workers, which enters as a single group, but splits - by unrhythmic shuffling - into two disunited choruses: War Workers - settling stage right - and Peace Workers - settling stage left. Enter Aspirant Cosmopolitan Gardener - Cosmo. in reduced form - who instantly drops dead stage centre.]
War Workers:
Glory be! Glory be!
Dead and gone-gone-gone
and life-over done
and dusted is he!
Bring the dung cart
- and trumpet it with a worthy fart! -
to carry off his shitty parts
- with a cacky cacophony of fatalistic farts.
Peace Workers:
Please think more kindly.
Please feel less blindly.
This was a dignified man,
unfit to flush down the pan
like a worthless pile of shit
- please reconsider your bit of it.
[A straying critic strides angrily from another drama on to the centre stage of this - or that - or another - one.]
Critic:
It seems to me that we are getting nowhere and that we need to do is re-define the terms of address - or at least get some uncertainties cleared up.
4 e.g, 4 A? 4 C? 4 M? 4 Z? - wot's aall that aboot then, [wo(e)man] pets?
