Thursday, March 12, 2015

3 scenes from a new Hamlet play

These are the three fates that watch over this story and they are a bunch of fucking morons.

HEK (at the dinner table, pontificating, sober with water, but mad, out of his mind, mad mad mad): The neck, the back of the neck, it’s related to the tip of the tongue.

LEAK: In what way?

HEK: Pardon?

LEAK: In what way?

HEK: Please let me finish.  You are always doing that, interrupting like that, stop being so interrupting.

LEAK: You seemed done because you stopped talking.

HEK: My god, here we go again.

NEK: Let’s keep talking about the neck please because I have so many questions about the neck.  

LEAK: Because you are a neck.

(They all laugh until something comes out of someone’s nose.)

HEK: The body is marvelous.

NEK: A mystery.

LEAK: It sure is, it sure is.




(now HAMLET on a phone call, a video phone call).
HAMLET: Hello.  Oh, I want to try…I want to…that was bad.  Let me.  Hello.  No, that was still bad, I’m being all, bad boy flirty whatever, I uh.  Um.  Hello.  No, that was too self-conscious, too sensitive in a self-conscious, uh…listen.  This is video so also look.  Listen and look.  (Laughs).  This is going to take a really long time before I actually say something.  This.  I think I.  I see ghosts.  But I think we’re ghosts.  Do you see them?  Do you see them too?  Do you think we might be ghosts too?



Scene: psychiatrist couch.

H: I worry that I might be mad and you might have to spend the rest of your life taking care of me.

O: That’s my fear, too, that’s what I was going to say, too, that’s what it’s like for me, too.  Switch!

(A fire drill song, they get up and dance and switch places, there should be some singing in the middle of this.  Something really mundane, like;)

Now I’m gonna let you know,
I’m never gonna let you go,
so now I can let you know,
that I don’t want to let you go,
and so I wanna let you know,
I’m never gonna let you go.

H: Tell me about your mother.

O: Why? She’s just like me.

H: That’s exactly like my father.

O: Your father is like me?

H: No, dead, my father is dead.

O: I don’t follow.

H: A ghost, just like me.

O: This therapy is not going to work for me at all unless you start thinking of me at least a little bit.

H: That’s a little narcissistic, don’t you think?

O: I don’t, because it’s not, fucking idiot.

H: I’m going to eat popcorn now so you can talk and I won’t interrupt.

O: Well, that’s something.  At least that’s something.  That is something, at least.  You, sir, are a bone.  A bone covered with flesh.  Not a particularly straight bone, and not a particularly attractive bone.  I’m not really attractive to bones.  I mean attracted! I mean attracted not attractive! Is that a thing?  When words go sideways like that, is that a thing?

H (mouth full of popcorn): I have no idea, dear.  

O: People are bones.  The living, I mean.  I mean the living people are bones.  This has been going on for, for some time now, it’s been.
(She cries but it is not real.)
I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.  That’s not real.  Those are not real tears.  I’m sorry, I just really want to have a breakthrough so much, so very much.  I thought that was close that I was almost there.

H: Oh, I think you’re close though, I think you’re so so close.


Monday, March 9, 2015

we wanted to freeze that moment.  there they were, 50 years older, on that bridge, that same bridge.  we wanted things to freeze in that moment, even if it was only for a moment.

but the angel of history was already flying past, tumbling, her wings stained with the blood of another black boy. 

i tried to stop it, she said, i tried to save that boy, i couldn't stop it, she said. this is going to be a long winter, she said.


but it's spring, we said, it's almost spring, we were so sure that it was almost spring.  

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...