This is a dumbshow, a slow dumbshow for you, and it starts with the OLD MAN leading the HE into a hole in the center of their table, one that they jump through like they were suddenly able to turn into little tiny people and jump through holes. Again, this will need some mirrors, or a projector. Keep up, there's technology in this, we've already discussed why.
In this particular dumbshow, however, things get dark and sad way too quickly, and we see a hall of mirrors that reflect all that they've gone through in their lives, separately, a hundred lost and inappropriate loves, but that's just because everyone else is getting busy loving appropriately these days, but not in Europe. They still understand what this is all about, what the stakes are. Loving appropriately is exactly what their grandparents used to do.
After all the pictures, they come to a white table in the center of a floor that's bathed with blood. Of course. This is, obviously, not necessarily Costa Rica any more. Because CR is a little different, a little safer from these kinds of old ghosts, especially the ones that stay in the ground after a genocide. CR has a different history, but obviously this is not that, because here there is blood, and because there is a white table in the middle of all the blood, and this is where the two men have their tea. It's some kind of special fucking feeling good and heal your inner child kind of tea, with a lot of motherfucking cardamon, because that's otherworldly it smells so fucking good it's otherworldly.
OLD GHOST: If I learned two things in this life...I mean that life...it's this:
As if from nowhere, a big white board appears with these words:
Your generation has always been afraid of acting on its own desires.
Your generation will come to its real secret identity when you start to act on your desires.
No one grows up until they act on their desires.
Hardly anyone ever really grows up.
OLD GHOST: Do you get the idea?
HE: I only get one idea.
OG: So?
HE: I thought there were two, two things.
OG: Oh. Oh, my gosh, I think I forgot the other thing...
OLD GHOST fades off and HE is in a mist now, a red floor covered with mist, and through the mist, SHE comes back, all misty-eyed and mysterious.
HE: I thought I would see you again one day, but I had no idea the day would come so soon, on the same day I lost you.
SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.
HE: Oh, just you shush yourself. I'm so happy. I've been looking for you for at least an hour, and I thought I lost you forever.
SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.
HE: I have a complex. I obviously have some issue that I still haven't worked out. I keep doing the same things over and over, but I'm always looking for the same result. That's real spiritual growth. I thought we would be Orpheus and Eurydice all over again.
SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.
That RUDE AND NASTY FAERIE NARRATOR comes in and tells things that we couldn't know on our own, not without more background, not without detailed program notes from the dramaturg (*we don't even know what that is).
FN: I already fucking told you, you are Orpheus or Eurydice and the sad part is not even that, it's worse, it's that you don't know which one you are. There is someone who misses you as much as you miss her, and she's lost, but so are you, and you both hear each other's voices every time someone pretty opens their mouth, as if you were stuck waiting for the world to sing to you the day it sang that day you were together.
HE: That all sounds terribly sentimental, and I've moved away from that altogether. Now I don't even kiss the flowers at my feet, I stomp them while I'm on my way to eat meat pies.
(Long pause.)
FN: No one eats meat pies.
HE: It's a metaphor! Goddam, no one gets me.
FN: Oh, ho ho, kiddies, but that's not true, because I do, I get him, and I don't have the heart to tell him that his one true love is really gone forever, not ever really even born in his lifetime, and this before him is only an apparition, but one he will grow to love like a sister.
SHE: I just want to be friends.
HE: Oh, my gosh, this apparition just wants to be friends, and I don't really know how to take that, because I don't know if I really loved her, maybe I didn't want to be with her, but was just trying to get to her sister.
FN: You, sir, are the sister, sir, you are the sister you seek.
HE: I hate these kinds of lessons, I wish we could shoot some pool and I would try very hard not to think about you when you were pretending that I was someone you could love.
Now they're in a wormhole, one where everyone can play pool for as long as they like, because everyone has change for a dollar. In this wormhole, everyone is just a little bit more naked than they were in other light, and because of that, all the ancestral ghosts wander through their pool hall a little bit excited, because something might happen at any given moment.
SHE: You're looking for someone.
HE: I'm looking for you.
SHE: You're not looking for me, I'm as dry as a ghost, and so easy to find.
HE: All right, I'm looking for someone. Do you know where I'm supposed to be looking?
SHE: I don't know anything specific, I just see reflections everywhere, your eyes, windows, pool balls, and the empty glasses of broken men.
HE: She was here before, and I swear she looked just like you.
SHE: I'm always mistaken for someone else, I'm not who you're looking for.
HE: I wish I could promise that I'll believe you.
SHE: I wish you could, and I wish I could promise that I'm safe, and that I'm above all of this, but I'm very tired and very lonely here, and I want to believe the little things you say because they make things seem better. But they're not. And the one you're looking for is that same one you'll never find, and I want to help you find her.
HE: You'll help me, then?
SHE: I'll play with you.
HE: I think that might be the same thing.
It doesn't matter that there are secrets on the table, the numbers and the colors all point to clear actions and clear intentions, but no one plays without telling them this is just a game, and it is, just like everything, but they tell themselves that the game doesn't mean anything more than what it is, and it's true, but it's not true, because these are all very simple signs, and they want clear things from us, but we forget because we try to think ahead of it too much, and miss the simple things that are in front of us. So, it's no surprise that when she sweeps the first table clean in just a few shots, that the one ball left is a yellow number five, which says, "This is your heart's desire, and it's not right for you, not not right at all, this is inappropriate, and to follow it will tear you to pieces at the edges of the river, and not to follow it will leave you as dry as the book you forgot to read, so you have to follow it, because it's your heart's desire."
And the game is over, but just begun.
Someone raises their hand.
SOMEONE: I don't have enough information, I don't understand this play at all, you need to include more dates and less videos about Shakira.
This starts up a video about Shakira, and everyone everywhere in the world starts to dance.
NF: Don't you feel the rhythm, it's the rhythm of the night.
SOMEONE: I don't feel anything but queasy, and I want my money back.
But it's just much too late, because the world is already dancing, and the dancers understand everything they need to understand. But the music shifts too quickly, and it morphs into Phil Ochs playing his sweet, sad songs, and they make everyone remember the good old days of the revolution.
But oh my gosh this is the revolution right now.
HE and SHE don the appropriate beards, and drink something a little wicked, a little bitter, and a little sweet, just like life.
SHE: We need something small to change the world, something small, a simple and small action.
HE: The people are in chains and they need our help. All the iPhones are bleeding, and no one is safe indoors any more. We have no where else to go.
SHE: Which is why we need a small and simple action.
HE: Like some kind of pirate ship.
SHE: A little big, a little too complicated in terms of gender, but for right now I am so very happy in my beard, and seeing you in your beard, that I don't don't don't know how to say no.
(Next up: Revolutionaries on a pirate ship, on a boat, on a motherfuckin boat.)
In this particular dumbshow, however, things get dark and sad way too quickly, and we see a hall of mirrors that reflect all that they've gone through in their lives, separately, a hundred lost and inappropriate loves, but that's just because everyone else is getting busy loving appropriately these days, but not in Europe. They still understand what this is all about, what the stakes are. Loving appropriately is exactly what their grandparents used to do.
After all the pictures, they come to a white table in the center of a floor that's bathed with blood. Of course. This is, obviously, not necessarily Costa Rica any more. Because CR is a little different, a little safer from these kinds of old ghosts, especially the ones that stay in the ground after a genocide. CR has a different history, but obviously this is not that, because here there is blood, and because there is a white table in the middle of all the blood, and this is where the two men have their tea. It's some kind of special fucking feeling good and heal your inner child kind of tea, with a lot of motherfucking cardamon, because that's otherworldly it smells so fucking good it's otherworldly.
OLD GHOST: If I learned two things in this life...I mean that life...it's this:
As if from nowhere, a big white board appears with these words:
Your generation has always been afraid of acting on its own desires.
Your generation will come to its real secret identity when you start to act on your desires.
No one grows up until they act on their desires.
Hardly anyone ever really grows up.
OLD GHOST: Do you get the idea?
HE: I only get one idea.
OG: So?
HE: I thought there were two, two things.
OG: Oh. Oh, my gosh, I think I forgot the other thing...
OLD GHOST fades off and HE is in a mist now, a red floor covered with mist, and through the mist, SHE comes back, all misty-eyed and mysterious.
HE: I thought I would see you again one day, but I had no idea the day would come so soon, on the same day I lost you.
SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.
HE: Oh, just you shush yourself. I'm so happy. I've been looking for you for at least an hour, and I thought I lost you forever.
SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.
HE: I have a complex. I obviously have some issue that I still haven't worked out. I keep doing the same things over and over, but I'm always looking for the same result. That's real spiritual growth. I thought we would be Orpheus and Eurydice all over again.
SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.
That RUDE AND NASTY FAERIE NARRATOR comes in and tells things that we couldn't know on our own, not without more background, not without detailed program notes from the dramaturg (*we don't even know what that is).
FN: I already fucking told you, you are Orpheus or Eurydice and the sad part is not even that, it's worse, it's that you don't know which one you are. There is someone who misses you as much as you miss her, and she's lost, but so are you, and you both hear each other's voices every time someone pretty opens their mouth, as if you were stuck waiting for the world to sing to you the day it sang that day you were together.
HE: That all sounds terribly sentimental, and I've moved away from that altogether. Now I don't even kiss the flowers at my feet, I stomp them while I'm on my way to eat meat pies.
(Long pause.)
FN: No one eats meat pies.
HE: It's a metaphor! Goddam, no one gets me.
FN: Oh, ho ho, kiddies, but that's not true, because I do, I get him, and I don't have the heart to tell him that his one true love is really gone forever, not ever really even born in his lifetime, and this before him is only an apparition, but one he will grow to love like a sister.
SHE: I just want to be friends.
HE: Oh, my gosh, this apparition just wants to be friends, and I don't really know how to take that, because I don't know if I really loved her, maybe I didn't want to be with her, but was just trying to get to her sister.
FN: You, sir, are the sister, sir, you are the sister you seek.
HE: I hate these kinds of lessons, I wish we could shoot some pool and I would try very hard not to think about you when you were pretending that I was someone you could love.
Now they're in a wormhole, one where everyone can play pool for as long as they like, because everyone has change for a dollar. In this wormhole, everyone is just a little bit more naked than they were in other light, and because of that, all the ancestral ghosts wander through their pool hall a little bit excited, because something might happen at any given moment.
SHE: You're looking for someone.
HE: I'm looking for you.
SHE: You're not looking for me, I'm as dry as a ghost, and so easy to find.
HE: All right, I'm looking for someone. Do you know where I'm supposed to be looking?
SHE: I don't know anything specific, I just see reflections everywhere, your eyes, windows, pool balls, and the empty glasses of broken men.
HE: She was here before, and I swear she looked just like you.
SHE: I'm always mistaken for someone else, I'm not who you're looking for.
HE: I wish I could promise that I'll believe you.
SHE: I wish you could, and I wish I could promise that I'm safe, and that I'm above all of this, but I'm very tired and very lonely here, and I want to believe the little things you say because they make things seem better. But they're not. And the one you're looking for is that same one you'll never find, and I want to help you find her.
HE: You'll help me, then?
SHE: I'll play with you.
HE: I think that might be the same thing.
It doesn't matter that there are secrets on the table, the numbers and the colors all point to clear actions and clear intentions, but no one plays without telling them this is just a game, and it is, just like everything, but they tell themselves that the game doesn't mean anything more than what it is, and it's true, but it's not true, because these are all very simple signs, and they want clear things from us, but we forget because we try to think ahead of it too much, and miss the simple things that are in front of us. So, it's no surprise that when she sweeps the first table clean in just a few shots, that the one ball left is a yellow number five, which says, "This is your heart's desire, and it's not right for you, not not right at all, this is inappropriate, and to follow it will tear you to pieces at the edges of the river, and not to follow it will leave you as dry as the book you forgot to read, so you have to follow it, because it's your heart's desire."
And the game is over, but just begun.
Someone raises their hand.
SOMEONE: I don't have enough information, I don't understand this play at all, you need to include more dates and less videos about Shakira.
This starts up a video about Shakira, and everyone everywhere in the world starts to dance.
NF: Don't you feel the rhythm, it's the rhythm of the night.
SOMEONE: I don't feel anything but queasy, and I want my money back.
But it's just much too late, because the world is already dancing, and the dancers understand everything they need to understand. But the music shifts too quickly, and it morphs into Phil Ochs playing his sweet, sad songs, and they make everyone remember the good old days of the revolution.
But oh my gosh this is the revolution right now.
HE and SHE don the appropriate beards, and drink something a little wicked, a little bitter, and a little sweet, just like life.
SHE: We need something small to change the world, something small, a simple and small action.
HE: The people are in chains and they need our help. All the iPhones are bleeding, and no one is safe indoors any more. We have no where else to go.
SHE: Which is why we need a small and simple action.
HE: Like some kind of pirate ship.
SHE: A little big, a little too complicated in terms of gender, but for right now I am so very happy in my beard, and seeing you in your beard, that I don't don't don't know how to say no.
(Next up: Revolutionaries on a pirate ship, on a boat, on a motherfuckin boat.)
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