Fascist
Living page
Fascist Living: A Musical Satire
(Copyright 2001 by Joel Forrester)
Book: Joel Forrester
Lyrics: Joel Forrester
Music: Joel Forrester
Notes on Font and Typesetting of Script
There are three font conventions:
one) name of actor speaking is in italic 12 point Courier New
two) what the actor speaks or sings is regular 12 point Courier New
three) stage directions are enclosed in square brackets in [12 point Times New Roman]
There are two indenting conventions:
one) When an actor sings a musical phrase the words begin on a new line one tab unit inward and continue to wrap to the next line if necessary until the musical phrase is finished.
two) When an actor speaks (as opposed to sings) the words begin two spaces to the right of the colon that follows the name of the actor speaking.
***
High Level Table of Contents
About Joel Forrester ...................... 4
Program Note .............................. 5
Fascist Living---inside stuff ............. 6
Index of Songs in order of appearance ..... 7
Index of Scenes by Page Number ............ 8
Fascist Living Script ..................... 9
Movement Moments .......................... 46
Notes on Fascist Knowing
(by H. B. Real, D.D) ....................... 48
Composer and pianist.
Author of 1,200 musical works. These include the Minimalist classic "Industrial Arts", the off-Broadway show Fascist Living, and the theme to National Public Radio's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross". This last is the jazz work perennially most-of ten-played on American radio (81,000 times in 2002 alone).
As a young man, Forrester composed music for the early films of Andy Warhol.
He studied composition with jazz great Thelonious Monk and received his personal encouragement.
Forrester co-founded the MICROSCOPIC SEPTET which recorded and toured European and American festivals for 12 years.
Although based in New York, he plays for silent films at the Louvre and the musee d'Orsay; the Paris Voice has hailed him as "the world's leading improvisational accompanist to silent film".
Currently, he maintains jazz quartets in both New York and Paris. His New York band, PEOPLE LIKE US, has recorded for KOCH International. His solo CD on KOCH, "Stop the Music!", is considered a best-seller for a jazz release. He performs periodically on Black Entertainment Television (BET).
His piano stylings draw from stride, boogie-woogie, bebop, and trance.
Forrester is listed yearly in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Jazz.
***
"Notwithstanding the seeming idiocy of all superstitious belief, in reality everything is beholden to a set of symbolic correspondences---but they are so complex, mutable, distant, or otherwise unknowable... that it might as well not be the case."
---H.B.Real, D.D. from" Dr. Real's Table Talk"
Dramatis personnae:
Dr. Real---a sophisticated hayseed; his tone wanders, lays on a thick accent at times; suspenders
Auntie Dote---earthy, plain-spoken, large; apron or antimacassar (piece of ornamented cloth that protects the back of chair from hair oils)
Mr. Rhee---a surly yegg but speaks as if programmed; cheap, tight suit
Me---a mock-ingenue, an adult in a child's clothes,
little-girl voice; a pinafore?
Manner: folksy and ingratiating (with the exception of Mr. Rhee). All are, actually, very cruel and cold. But each is so exaggerated as to admit the possibility of double-agency.
Note to actors: This show is a combo of songs and speechifyin'. During the between-songs patter, non-speaking actors may do bits of business they've worked up. Keep movin'!
Inspirational instruction:
Imagine a poisoned world... in which no kind act can be accepted as natural, unforced, whole-hearted, or even personal. And that because of a universal standard of right-and-wrong, a universal belief that all acts have consequences, and a universal suspicion, that one is constantly under observation. I have yet to meet an organized religion that would not have that world if it could contrive it. Nor one unwilling to dispense that poison within the smaller, more actual world of its own authority. AMEN.
Make-up: All actors are in white-face except for the one presenting, Mr. Rhee, who is in yellow-face.
Second program note: "This production contains simulated 'philosophical violence."
-) Lead-ins to songs and the first spoken words after a song are are always crafted for continuity---so hit 'em hard for meaning.
-) Treat the script like music; it's filled with echoes (rhymes, repeated ideas put differently, flat-out repetition and slightly-varied repetition)---don't be subtle with them: they're like themes; and if a passage suggests a rhythm, get into it.
-) There is relationship among the characters: DR is indulgent toward MR & ME; DR & AD are complementary--each being what the other is not DR, ME, AD are amused by MR; AD scorns ME; ME worships DR. But, more deeply, each considers this his/her show and no one else's; their
antagonism is the true consequence of the FREEDOM they've killed to possess.
-) The dialogue has 4 basic forms: (1) it makes points (e .g., stopping Time through drama; power; art as diversion; getting past Modernism but using some of its ideas; freedom and authority, etc); (2) it illustrates the points (songs often serve that purpose); (3) it digresses from the points or offers a past or future point in an oblique or truncated form; and, (4} it returns to a point after going elsewhere. If you've got a line that marks one of these returns, hit it hard.
-) The way the script is typed can help you. When you see square brackets "[]", wait until the action (or the music or the effect) happens before you continue your speech. Similarly...pause when you see three dots. Underlining means you stress that word. And a colon (:) means an illustration or a consequence is to follow: treat it like that.
***
Songs in FASCIST LIVING in order of appearance
I. The Christian State of Idaho .............. 9
II. The Christian State of Idaho (verse 2)..... 11
III. "Chosen" riff ............................. 12
IV. Join the Ku Klux Klan ..................... 14
V. Vivaldi riff .............................. 18
VI. Sacred Agents ............................. 19
VII. Status Quo riff ........................... 22
VIII. Marching Backwards ........................ 23
IX. When the Bombs Fall ....................... 26
X. C'est Normale ............................. 28
XI. The Loyalty Drag .......................... 31
XII. Don't Blame Me...I'm an Artist ............ 33
XIII. Armageddon riff ........................... 34
XIV. Take a Life riff .......................... 37
XV. Kill for Christianity ...................... 38
XVI. Oh Come all ye Feckless riff .............. 40
XVII. Don't You Believe It! ..................... 41
XVII. Coda ...................................... 44
***
Act I Scene 1 ............................ 9
Act I Scene 2 ............................ 11
Act I Scene 3 ............................ 13
Act I Scene 4 ............................ 19
Act I Scene 5 ............................ 23
Act I Scene 6 ............................ 26
Act I Scene 7 ............................ 28
Act I Scene 8 ............................ 31
Act I Scene 9 ............................ 35
Act I Scene 10 ........................... 37
Act I Scene 11 ........................... 40
Act I Scene 12 ........................... 44
[Empty stage with four stools. Enter four characters, bickering: Dr. Real, Auntie Dote, Mister Rhee, Me. Audible lines:
"Show some respect!" / "Make me! Make me!"
"Okay, I'm not real. But I represent something real." / "There's a difference?"
"You don't hafta watch, y'know: it's just one of them shows on the Guilt Channel."
"No, no! Established religion is an organized crime."
"Which side you on: that's the only question."
Argument continues as they assume their stools. Piano (or sax if possible) sounds a pitch. Bandleader tosses pitchpipe to Me. All fall silent.]
[SONG I ---> THE CHRISTIAN STATE OF IDAHO]
All (singing):
The Christian State of Idaho is
calling on all whom we resemble
to fall on their knees and worship Him
Who causeth the Infidel to tremble.
He knows when ye yield to temptation
and deny the cry of these thy brethren.
So shun not your Nation's toll-free line
and Heaven will return your call!!
[END SONG I ---> THE CHRISTIAN STATE OF IDAHO]
DR. REAL (spoken): Hi, y'all! I'd be the Reverend Hiram B. Real, D.D.! And, as predicted in Galoshes 2.2., you see before you four duly-annointed, Biblically-bibulous, bored-again sales representatives from the Christian State of Idaho. Here!, today!, in the world capital of spuritchewal decay
[Organ in]
...to bare witless to our belief in Belief-beyond-belief. To proffer hoax, AIDS, 'n' succour to the lonely put-upon white man who dwelleth here in alienated profusion. To let him know that every time he feels poisoned by the Gombeen Man and his media
[Others brandish signs: EVER AGAIN!]
...or has his job threatened by some career-minded, unclean, sexless freemale...or finds in his very family a nest of fairies...or worse: when he fears that the fear that has made him what he is is no longer bright hot ardor, but has become---all of a sudden---naught but ember....
[Organ Out: signs away]
He may remember!
[Woodblock galloping]
...that in the polestar northwest of this formerly-incorporated 1and of ours rides a rough-hewn posse culled from our clan's high drama-clergy---pathetic tragedians, situation comedians!--- ready at a mummer's notice to act out the power fantasies of yer sad neurotic who jes' cain't figger how
[Blocks out]
---in a sassiety where the white male has it all---he, personally, ain't gettin' any! Friend, we got yer problem... writ large! You can relax: The Christian state of Idaho is in the spiritual-identification business, structured along the lines of yer classic protection racket.
[Aside]
Use the same voice for the disclaimer 'n' yuh make it part of the ad, right?
[Back to the pitch]
Y'say you don't feel free to feel free anymore?: you just home in on us, Onan! Look here, Seed-spiller: every real man's a state trooper in his dreams. "Pullover, America! We'll do your dreamin' for you!" ---and out in real life, where dreams belong! That's where we four are coming from. 'N' if you're impressed with the little songs 'n' stories our agit-prop team puts before you this hour and you feel a sudden calling to jerk out yer checkbook, rest assured that your name---and, for a wee additional indulgence, that of your fambly ---will be added to that great roll of all those in whose name we take revenge ...when the DAY finally come.
AUNTIE DOTE/MISTER RHEE/ME (at first jangling, disputational): Come come! Come come!, etc.
[Then in monotonous cadence; arms & hands beckoning]
Come come! Come come!, etc.
[Continues until Dr. Real passes his hand over them]
DR: The DAY on which we as a species...finally come clean!
[Me sounds pitch]
[SONG II ---> THE CHRISTIAN STATE OF IDAHO (verse 2)]
ALL (singing):
The Christian State of Idaho
is manned by the Lamb's own chosen tribes.
We're sworn to perform those acts on earth
His awful Will prescribes.
We wait for the DAY OF PURGATION
when our purity will win permission
to taste of the blood of all we hate
made sweet by our Redeemer's love.
All-men!!
[END SONG II ---> THE CHRISTIAN STATE OF IDAHO (verse 2)]
AD (spoken): Well, not quite all men. We got some male-identified heifers among us. 'N' some longer in the tooth. Like myself: I'm Auntie Dote. Doctor Real's too ornery to say it, but all four of us is quite aware that we're taking our lives in our hands, appearing this deep in alien territory.
[They all shudder...then shrug and look pugnacious]
...or we would be. See: we're not actually here, Folks. We're just...would-be characters from the collective unconscious, okay?
ME: We're projections. We're only real through your belief.
AD: Right. But we're not without surprises. Eee gee:
even though I'm a mother many times over, I believe in mass exposure to the hillsides unless our species overcome its profoundly prolonged adolescence, right soon!
[Others offer brief, metronomic applause]
...or take the presence of Mr. Rhee, here. Don't it display the grandeur of our tolerance, though!, to have a Ko-rean runnin' with a white tribe!? 'N' he's earned his spurs, too. He's practically a honorary cock-Asian, a Chosen Person in his own right. Kom-so-hom-nee-dah, Mr. Rhee!
MR. RHEE (surly; to the Audience): I...am an individuated sentient being...in no way "representative" of the race into which I happened to be born.
AD: See, that there's the makin's of a good American!
MR: Nor do I "represent" the happy accidents of my national origin, my gender, or my social class!
DR: Y'all can see why we like havin' this boy along fer the ride...even if he is a tad weak in his 'prishiashun of Guard's pre-recorded plan.
MR: Moreover, I cannot be said to "stand for" my family, my order, my kingdom, my phylum---
DR: Waaalll, hold on there, Pardner, back up. Don't be speakin' blithely of family, not amongst us! For white Christophiles, the family structure is the Guard-given conduit for His holy Fear---the fear that doth inform us all! ...Fear: it's yer great pulse-quickener: it's what animates human existence. And the best way to meet fear is on its own terms...with tribal pride.
[Darker]
So when somebody starts talkin' about Chosen People, I say: "Choose yer weapons, Pal. You are speakin' to a white man!
[Musical lead-in]
ALL (singing):
We're the only truly Chosen People!
We're the only truly Chosen Feople!
MR (singing):
Everybody wants a Chinese girlfriend!
[END SONG III ---> "Chosen" riff]
DR (chuckles; spoken): Now, son, that just couldn't be the way the song goes!
[To the audience; in radio-preacher mode]
...Anyway, one early point to be made is this: Guard's commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill?, it only applies when the prospective killee and the killer be both among the chosen. When that ain't the case---
ME (pulls his coat; interrupting): Doctor Real? Doctor Real? What
about me? ME?
DR (again chuckles): Little Missy Me, I was just gettin' to thee.
[To the Audience:]
See: Me, here---
ME (to the Audience): I'm Me!
DR: ---she's the subjective element in our presentation.
She's forever in the objective case, when viewed from without. We in Idaho have found that women like it that way.
ME: I don't object to anything.
DR: Yup, she's the butt.
AD: Y'all might find it weakly-pleasing to identify with her. Or... if yer bold, you can chance losing your self in our more established personalities, like myself or the bad Doctor.
MR: Nor do I represent my species!
DR: That'll do, Mr. Rhee....
DR: Well, we'd like to sing a song for you now in which all four of us represent ourselves. It's a recruiting song for a spiritual ancestor of our'n, the virtual Wobblies of the Right Wing! 'N' it's ee-clayped "Join The KU Klux Klan" .
[SONG IV ---> Join the Ku Klux Klan]
ALL (singing):
K K -! KKK! Oh---!
DR:
Doctor Real
AD:
And Auntie Dote
MR:
And Mister Rhee
ME:
And Me
ALL:
We...rallied here to JOIN THE KU KLUX KLAN!
MR:
And wasn't it religious!
ME:
Born again!
AD:
She's born again!
ALL:
We're born again tonight... we saw the light and joined the Ku Klux Klan!
ME:
Oh Man....
AD/MR/DR:
We saw a burning cross
ME:
I fell to sleep
AD/MR/DR:
We made a spy confess!
ME:
I dreamed of death! And when I woke the smoke was in my brain!
AD/MR/DR:
Tonight we hunt the Jew
ME:
I heard them say
AD/MR/DR:
We think it might be you!
ME:
They turned my way.... No-no, I said: I'm not a Red!
AD/MR/DR:
Hail!
[Nazi salute]
ME:
Bound a sheet about my frame and signed my name in blood to show
[concurrently with ME above]
AD/MR/DR:
K K K!
ME (continued from above):
them all I loved the Ku Klux Klan---or else they might've killed me! Anyway it was all in fun! I've got my gun. I'm--
ALL:
ONE with all the men who JOIN THE KU KLUX KLAN!!
[16 bars for the band]
ME/DR:
We're living for the DAY
AD/MR:
Guard's on our side
ME/DR:
We blow the blacks away!
AD/MR:
That's why we ride
ALL:
in caravan to scare the-man-inside!
AD:
You never see my face
ME/DR:
So why prepare?
MR:
I'm in the Master Race
ME/AD/DR:
We're ev'rywhere!
DR:
Number your needs!
AD:
Finger yer beads!
ME/MR/DR:
Hail!
[Nazi salute]
ME:
Costume balls in haunted halls and barbeques at dawn
[concurrently with ME above]
AD/MR/DR:
K K K!
ALL:
While Silly Willie looks the other way!
MR:
Hey! Make the man a member!
ALL:
Pretty soon
ME:
with help from Guard
ALL:
we'll win the world for white folks and ev'ryone will JOIN THE KU KLUX KLAN! K! K! K! O.K.
[END SONG IV ---> Join the Ku Klux Klan]
ME (spoken): Thanks, Everyone.
[Drums play soft funk rhythm]
But for those who slithered in somewhere in the middle of that hymn, we should probably tell you where you are.
[Others line up behind Me and wave their arms Hindoo-fashion] This here is a kind-of reactionary hootenanny, Kali meets Shiva.
[Me giggles]
Underneath it all, we're trying to hawk our Idaho bonds, which'll go toward the purchase of enough arms... to render each of our citizens utterly impregnable!
[Others step out and gesture to their private parts, as does Me, latterly; then each consults an imaginary wristwatch]
But what of Time's wing-ed chariot, you say. Surely he could find a way in. That Devil! He thought he'd created enough momentum with his Fall that we'd all perforce tumble down with him. Looked that way forever! But, now, we in Idaho have discovered the means to resist Old Snatch!
AD: What the wordy girl means is that we got'a way---[with drum hits]
to STOP TIME!
[Silence; then drums revert to funk rhythm]
ME: That's right. 'Cause way out on the surface of things, we're about scouring the sex out of pornography... while retaining its three big-time benefits:
[With drum hits]
ME/DR/MR: One!
AD: Its strict objectification of the world.
ME/DR/MR: Two!
AD: Its substitution of images for what's actually going on. And, most impatiently---
ME/DR/MR: Three!
AD: Its dependence on what's already happened.
[Musical cue from Vivaldi]
ALL (singing):
Do you want to cling to the past?
[Vivaldi answer]
[END SONG V --> Vivaldi riff]
ME: We believe...
[Funk returns]
that any form can be occupied, once its vitality has said vaya con dios.
MR: We act as one to repossess the past and stop time in its tracks!
[Funk rhythm out]
DR: Well, now, that ain't strictly the case, Mister Rhee. You 'n' me, we are creepin' closer to the grave---a fine 'n' private place, I've always thought, a happy ending. Nope, it's rather that it don't feel like time's elapsin'...not when you're willingly caught in the sacred coils of identification with Authority. Folks, all dominance is purposeful identification with Guard.
Guard is immortal. I dominate in order to hide from my mortality. Us Skinshirts, we got ourselves hid good!
[A sign saying GUARD appears (most happily in the flies) and all give it the straight-arm salute, whereupon it vanishes]
AD: Maybe we'd best be called Fascinationists. You lose yourselves in us... as we are lost in the Divine Will. And, alright. so maybe time won't really stop--- but you'll never know the difference! And we Fallen critters can only go, by what we know, y'know.
DR: So... when all us characters be vibrating in sympathy with the capital A author, resonant with Purple Purpose... just what manner of script will He dictate?, you might wonder.... Well of course, it ain't given to us to know. But
[Tension music]
...as we look out over our contemptuary post-Modren whirrrled, we can divine the general drift
[Others Shiver]
of a chiliastic plot-line... and even spot them locky, lucky sons whom Guard has tapped to be His...Sacred Agents. Tell the crowd about it. Auntie!
[Shivers cease]
AD (singing verse 1):
Richard Speck and Charlie Manson and the Shining Son of Sam
sitting stoned in Wholesome Prison, talkin' 'bout the Fate of Man
when a ghostly apparition sent a terror through their bones
and they recognized their master: the Rev'rend Jimmy Jones...and he said:
(chorus)
"Boys, I've been Up Yonder and I want you all to know
that there's a place for you in Heaven when you go!
Because The Lord has tired of this lazy human race and its killers are His SACRED AGENTS now!"
MR (singing verse 2):
Richard Speck was put beside himself. He took the Rev to mean
that he'd soon be on the streets again, his bloody record clean.
"I can now enroll in nursing school," he said with quiet pride.
But the Rev'rend Jim just laughed at him
and poked him in the side, saying---
AD:
(chorus)
"Boys, I've been Up Yonder and I want you all to know
that there's a place for you in Heaven when you go!
Because The Lord has tired of this lazy human race and its killers are His SACRED AGENTS now!"
(singing verse 3)
Jim explained that Guard is angry with the humans far below
just 'cause ev'ry time He tunes us in He sees the same old show
and so He's rootin' for the bad-guys and He won't get in their way.
That's what Rev'rend Jim reported as the Good News of the day. He told 'em---
ALL:
(chorus)
"Boys, I've been Up Yonder and I want you all to know
that there's a place for you in Heaven when you go!
Because The Lord has tired of this lazy human race and its killers are His SACRED AGENTS now!"
ME:
(singing verse 4)
Then the Son of Sam he shouted out he'd always felt inspired.
It was no surprise for him to learn he'd been Divinely hired!
Why, he'd even fooled The Times' shrink into thinking he was sane.
And he used to work as a postal clerk [Others raise hands in apprehension] before he won his fame. Jim answered---
AD:
(chorus)
"Boys, I've been Up Yonder and I want you all to know
that there's a place for you in Heaven when you go!
Because The Lord has tired of this lazy human race and its killers are His SACRED AGENTS now!"
DR:
(singing verse 5)
Jim said Guard got tired of waitin' for the humans to evolve
and He doesn't like commercials where we beg Him for his love,
so He'll have to change the channel if our story stays the same
and we'll die to keep on living with our Dead to take the blame, and Jim said---
ALL (holding cue-cards for Audience sing-along):
(chorus)
"Boys, I've been Up Yonder and I want you all to know
that there's a place for you in Heaven when you go!
Because The Lord has tired of this lazy human race and its killers are His SACRED AGENTS now!"
AD (suddenly slow):
(singing verse 6)
Then at last old Charlie Manson said it didn't have to be,
that he thought the human mind could stretch beyond Eternity.
And he couldn't quite believe in any god he couldn't smell...
[Pause; then a tempo]
"And with guys like us in Heaven
Then it might as well be Hell! But Jim said---
ALL (rousing):
(chorus)
"Boys, I've been Up Yonder and I want you all to know
that there's a place for you in Heaven when you go!
Because The Lord has tired of this lazy human race and its killers are His SACRED AGENTS now!"
[END SONG VI --> Sacred Agents]
[SONG VII --> Status Quo riff]
AD (continues "now" from prior song by howling like a coyote): Owwwwwwwww!!!
[Others applaud Auntie Dote then break into rhythmic clapping: Auntie Dote dances until cue out; band joins for 8 bars]
DR/MR/ME:
(singing)
Restore the status quo, Auntie!
Put things back the way they were!
Restore the status quo, Auntie!
Put things back the way they were!
MR:
(singing)
Restore the status quo, Auntie!
[Drum hit;Auntie Dote stops dancing, looks dejected; Doctor Rea and Me beam]
A race possessed by Holy-Fear!
[END SONG VII --> Status Quo riff]
ME (spoken): Possession.. .is all there is: you either have it...or you're nowhere. Guard has it all: He's full of it! The best we can do is to dominate each other as He dominates us. The more purely we rank-order ourselves---the more accurate our chains of command---the more frequently and vibrantly are we apt to be visited [Dreamily]
with Power. Each lurch toward statistical impersonality is an homage to Guard the Great Impersonator!
AD: Not that we humans earn or deserve these visits.
Imitation is all the Fallen can muster: there is but one Creator.
MR: We are ourselves the monkeys from which the
evilutionists imagine we evolved
DR: But when we line up right
[Organ in]
---Dad rules the family; the cop rules the beat; the sheriff rules the county; the state-police the state [Organ out]
---then!, life becometh one grand prayer for Power. And when---in His rootin' tootin' absolute wisdom---Guard the Fathom All-Mental grants that prayer, the whole dang chain gets electrified!
AD (agreeing): Power is a current passing through us.
It's an A-number-one substitute fer that "moment" in quotes that them Zen Communists is always trying to crawl into.
MR: Fuck the "moment"!! The "moment" is history!
ME: But Power is also our currency. It enables us to buy time.
DR: Little Me's dead-on with that point! All that existeth in time is rotten; that's a given. So... 'stead of always striding hippity-hap-hazardly towards your personal date with The Maker, if'n you allow one moment of Divine possession today--- one touch of Power--- it may give ye the wherewithal... to march backwards.
[SONG VIII --> Marching Backwards]
ALL (singing while marching backwards):
Backwards! We're MARCHING BACKWARDS!
I'd like to know: where do we go from here?
All we've lived for is fast retreating
as we step steadily to the rear.
The terrain below makes the going slow
'cause our feet never know what they're tramping on!
MARCHING BACKWARDS while facing forwards.
You'd best obey: Out of our way! Get gone!!
Join the army. Watch your back! Learn computers. Air attack
Help those nifty client states get to be all they can be!
Follow orders: [Spoken] Take a chance! [Sung] Keep misgivings in your pants.
All your leaders got to be where they are by playing dumb....
Come then away from "real life"
and make a game out of the shame you feel.
MARCHING BACKWARKS away from freedom.
Banner unfurled [Unfurl banner reading: BRINGING THE WORLD TO HEEL] bringing the world to heel! Arf! Arf! Arf!
[24 bars to the band while All strut around backward with banner; then banner is furled as singing resumes]
The terrain below makes the going slow
'cause our feet never know what they're tramping on!
MARCHING BACKWARDS! Forever backwards!
There's no alarm over the harm we do, 'cause we ignore it!
Vict'ry will obscure it! Who'll be left to deplore it?
When the whole world goes MARCHING BACKWARDS?!?!
[END SONG VIII --> Marching Backwards]
DR (spoken): Yasss, we Fascists do have answers. We know what to do with Power. Oh, yeah, maybe it's possible to organize a way of life that curtails its exercise---speakin' of Power--- or steps down its ability to tempt. Or maybe its possible to re-align self-fulfillment with cooperation.
MR (with contempt): Or maybe huge human projects will announce themselves--- so massive in scope yet so charged with personal meaning for all
[Actor drops character, speaks from the heart if he can]
---that everybody will just COME OFF IT!!!
[Re-assumes character with spooky Kabuki warrior-pose]
AD: Or maybe...a new area of the brain will flower...
[All seem struck momentarily by this idea but then form a Marx Brothers circle]
ALL (trudging and chanting): BUT WE KINDA SORTA DOUBT IT!
WHILE WE KINDA SORTA DOUBT IT!
AND WE KINDA SORTA DOUBT IT!
IF WE KINDA SORTA DOUBT IT!
SO WE KINDA SORTA DOUBT IT!
[All stop]
DR (separating himself from the others): Nope. I fer one don't see any anti-Power-blocs formin'. Not on the event-horizon of
this species.
[Hefts an imaginary rifle]
I'd put 'em in my sights if'n I saw any. But I don't see any. Do you?
AD/MR/ME (singing with random pitches):
Not-see not-see not-see! [1 beat]
We do not see. We do not see [1 beat]
Not-see not-see not-see! [1 beat]
We do not see. We do not see [1 beat]
Not-see not-see not-see! [1 beat]
We do not see. We do not see [1 beat]
DR (spoken): No. And in the absence any force beyond Power, why not come to your senses and hide out behind the likes of us: folks who worship Power, yes, as an Impersonal Pull that we identify with Guard Hisselves: He's where the Power is banked. And He suffers us to draw on Him...like the pelican brood its mother's blood.
AD: Aw, shoot, Doc: nobody believes that anymore!
DR: Nor anything else! That's where we come in! We're about bring in' belief back to the surface where it kin work its wonders. Who else among you but the Fascists are aware of the occult power of sentimentality and its ultimate expression: nostalgia for nuclear annihilation?
ME: Everybody knows that yer yuppie will fuck himself, given a choice. Well...we Fashionists out-self yea even the cell-phonies! We say: If I must inevitably die, let the whole world go with me!
[SONG IX -->When the Bombs Fall]
[Band plays 4-bar intro; then Me sings:]
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL you can't hide in Istambul
It won't matter if you're cool or where your father went to school.
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL watch your problems fall away.
All those bills you'll never pay WHEN THE BOMBS FALL!
MR [sings]:
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL all us wage-slaves will be free! We'll have true democracy: no one better off than me!
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL no more hit-men left alive.
It's a shame you won't survive WHEN THE BOMBS FALL.
[8-bar interlude for the band]
AD [sings]:
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL things get strangely simplified.
you won't have to choose a side when your flesh is being fried.
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL you will meet your friends again and the future never ends WHEN THE BOMBS FALL.
ME [sings]:
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL there'll be danger in the air, mystic fallout everywhere..not that anyone will care.
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL, it's a drama dressed to kill just like Cecil B. deMille..WHEN THE BOMBS FALL.
[8-bar interlude for the band]
AD:
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL instant karma while you wait!
No one left to love or hate. Yes, we'll share a common fate.
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL you can answer Jesus' plea:
"Lord, I'm just as dead as Thee WHEN THE BOMBS FALL!!"
DR:
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL conscious memory disappears, drunks in dreamland raise their beers to the Music of the Spheres.
WHEN THE BOMBS FALL, you can lay your burden down.
Please make sure to be around WHEN THE BOMBS FALL.
[4-coda interlude for the band]
ALL (spoken): Boom....
[END SONG IX -->When the Bombs Fall]
[A sign descends reading: "the end of the world"; Auntie Dote, Mister Rhee, and Me continue to bow, even to milk applause...as if not only for the last song but for the parenthetical apocalypse. Doctor Real stands apart, seems to remember something important, pulls an envelope out of his back pocket with his left hand, shushes the others with his right]
[There follows a section in recitative; pianist should use harpishord mode and strike chords as marked; actor need only speak/sing the lines diatonically; first chord is struck]
DR (recitative):
[first chord]
Folks...I'm in receipt of a letter here from a well-wisher [Looks up coyly] ---beats a four-flusher!--- who sez
[puts on glasses (down the nose)]
[second chord]
"Dear Doctor Real--- I'd like to be a Fascist... mostly for the health benefits. But somehow I still feel there's something unnatural about being a bully."
[glasses away]
[cadence chords]
Actually, Folks, being a bully is the most natural
thing in the world. The biggest bully of them all is Guard-the-Fathom-All-Mental
[Chords]
And looky-here-now!: we get unexpected support in a borrowing from the godless Moderns: their notion of socal Darwinism!
[Cadence chords]
We too figger the strong should dictate to the weak. [Chord]
...A'course we don't think we survived as a species because we "evolved" that way--- as bullies. Nope, that's just how Guard made us.
[Cadence chords]
[end recitative]
[Spoken] Back in the Dead-ball Era, when Ty Cobb led the league, you think them Dee-troit fans had something "ethical" against his sharpened spikes?
ME: Too long ago, Doc.
MR: Too far away.
DR: All right. all right.
[Thinks]
How's this? : When the Frogs welcomed Adolf to their pond without so much as a croak, they knew they were...only being normal!
AD/MR/ME: Everybody's bent go-axe go-axe.
[Musical arpeggio]
DR (singing):
C'EST NORMALE! C'EST NORMALE!
[Auntie Dotie, Me, Mister Rhee one-by-one grab their necks and, stricken, collapse on the floor]
You think it matters if you hit the ball fair or foul??
Take your base anyhow. No one will love you 'til you've learned to throw your weight around.
Sound a trifle too outre? [pronounced: "oo-tray"; it means "unconventional"] Hey! No way!
It's not a Sin to stay within what most folks allow.
Nobody cares how fair the play. The rules are only a display.
So be a bully and you'll see your fellow felons shrug and tell you: C'EST NORMALE!
AD/MR/ME:
C'EST NORMALE! C'EST NORMAE!
[Singing from the floor]
You think it matters if you hit the ball fair or foul??
Take your base anyhow. No one will love you 'til you've learned to throw your weight around.
DR:
Sound a trifle too outre? Hey! No way!
AD/MR/ME:
It's not a sin to stay within what most folks allow. [Stand up]
DR:
I could get nervous in the night if people thought me too polite
'cause I'm a bully and I see my fellow felons shrug and tell me: C'EST NORMALE!
AD/MR/ME:
C'EST NORMALE! C'est a dire! [pronounced "say uh deer"]
DR:
So take advantage of the current climate of fear.
AD/MR/ME:
Disavow! Disappear! No one will bug you if you find a way to beat the rap!
DR:
Happy is the man whose name passes blame.
But if it doesn't, don't be quick to toss in the towel.
Yer brutal dude who thinks like me reflects the vast majority.
So act the bully and you'll see your fellow felons shrug and bellow:
ALL (bellowing; save Dr. Real, who sings):
C'EST NORMALE!!
DR:
Hew to the norm and you'll sleep through any storm!!
[End of SONG X ----> C'EST NORMALE]
AD (spoken): Say, Doc: Your song pre-minded me of that ol' French tickler: You kin lead the whores t'combat but ye cain't make 'em fight.
DR: All too true, Auntie. Yassss, once upon a time, there was a semite named Jesus---who came to earth with powers 'n' abilities waaaaaaayyyyy beyond---
ME (pleading, tugging at his sleeve): Dr. Real, Dr. Real.
DR: Yes, Honey.
[Brief recitative follows; first chord]
ME (recitative):
We all know that duly-constituted authority lays out the norm for all of us.
[Chord]
But sometimes the path of least resistance is hard to pick out.
[Cadence chords; end recitative]
MR (spoken): It's sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
ME: Or muddied with love.
AD: Or confounded by coincidence.
ME: Or that. ...Sometimes, Doc, I've a powerful temptation to be wayward. I know I should always try to stay the same, never drop character. But, sometimes, the Seducer undoes me and I find myself
[Shudders]
...changing.
[Auntie Dote/MR shake heads and fingers in disapprobation]
How can I maximize my recognition of the norm??
DR: Me, it is imperative that you purge yourself of this lily-livered freak of weakness, ya li'l poltroon!... 'N' here's how: Once you identify your personal authority ---Guard's sales representative in your life---you gotta learn to dance every time he spits out the bullets. Authority generates the norm; but loyalty is the enforcer. Loyalty, the hammer!
AD: Gotcha, Doc!
[SONG XI ---> THE LOYALTY DRAG]
[2-bar intro; Auntie Dote Sings:]
[Dr. Real, Mister Rhee. And ME act out Hamlet's “Mousetrap”; see “Movement Moments”]
Here's your liftime chance to learn to dance THE LOYALTY DRAG!
Jew and Gentile too must learn to do THE LOYALTY DRAG!
Just forget who you are! Only listen to me!
I will show you how to follow an order and give up the wish to be free! Yes!
Blind your selfish eyes! Why compromise? THE LOYALTY DRAG!
[32-bar interlude]
Find a stronger mind and get behind THE LOYALTY DRAG!
Queer odd thoughts and fear never creep near doin' THE LOYALTY DRAG!
You must do as you're told: put your hand on your nose!
Drop your jaw, my friend, and let it be sworn that you might have been born without clothes! Now!
Sleep through any storm, learn to perform....
THE LOYALTY...DRAG!!
[END SONG XI ---> THE LOYALTY DRAG]
DR (scans the crowd; spoken): You know, Folks, the four of us has been pretty easy on you, so far; as individuals, I mean.
[Minatory (i.e., threatening, menacing); while band builds tension]
But cain't ye feel... creepin' up on you, as if from behind... the likelihood that any moment ye might be made to face... THE TRUTH!!?!
[Band flourish and out]
...Of course, we have no idea what that might be, what the truth might look like... but it sounded
pretty good, didn't it?
[Chuckles]
AD/MR: Eu-phony! Eu-phony!
DR/ME: You phony! You phony!
AD/MR: Eu-phony! Eu-phony!
DR/ME: You phony! You phony!
AD/MR: Eu-phony! Eu-phony!
DR/ME: You phony! You phony!
[Soft marching drums through next speech]
DR: Yassss, the attractiveness of the surface is our hallmark, here in the Age of Drama. 'N' here again we copped that riff right out of the quiver of the Modrens, the Existentialists, in this case. ...'Course, we favors the Right-thinkin' ones... like ol' Butch High-digger---right off the bat, he recognized Tender Adolph as a man of the Moment.
MR: Fuck the "moment"!! Sleep through any storm!
DR: That's re-double-dundant, Mr. Rhee. ...Anyways, our celebration of the surface and our deep respect for Social Darwinism... surely show that we of the Drama-clergy don't heartlessly jettison the degenerate Modren era. Nope, we strive to learn from how those miserable, time-conscious sufferers tried to "live" in quotes their unredeemed, fleshy existences. True 'nuff, some of their paideuma [the word "PIDOOMA" means Pulled It Directly Out Of My Ass (estimating completion times)] will turn the Christian tummy.
But we got no problem with, fer instance, ART FOR ART'S
SAKE! That's a good ol' slogan!
[SONG XII ---> DON'T BLAME ME... I'M AN ARTIST]
[Dr Real, Auntie Dote, and Me one by-one yawn and fall asleep; wake up in time to sing]
MR (singing):
DON'T BLAME ME... I'M AN ARTIST!
My work means more to me than any petty cause.
I love transgression but I don't break any laws.
DON'T BLAME ME... I'M AN ARTIST!
I'm a social solipsist.
My life's a serial and I'm its leading man.
Can it be that the Deity's my imaginary fan?
DON'T BLAME ME... I'M AN ARTIST!
Oh I know what all the scientists are saying:
that one ought only truly trust what's been empiric'ly shown.
But each night I go to sleep a-praying
that I'll wake up (as I must) hemispheric'ly known!!!
I'm just a sublimated sadist:
fuck over suckerbait who call me hierophant!
I hate foundations but I'd love to get a grant!
DON'T BLAME ME... I'M AN ARTIST!
AD/DR/ME:
Oh we know what all the scientists are saying:
that one ought only trust what's been empiric'ly shown.
But each night, he goes to sleep a-praying
that he'll wake up (as he must) hemispheric'ly known!!!
MR:
I'm sure in time I'll sell my story.
I've not a friend I wouldn't scruple to betray.
I'm pretty sure they didn't like me anyway...
but that's all right: I'm an artist!!!
[With hums from the others] Don't... blame... me!!
[END SONG XII ---> DON'T BLAME ME... I'M AN ARTIST]
AD (spoken): That was right purty, Mister Rhee!
[Mister Rhee skulks off, left]
...And we all know that ART is useful for home
entertainment... and as a celebration of the surface, as
ol' Kung Fu sez...and in the way that mirrors be real, as
his hair, the yellow Red, lied to the Long March. ...But
things is crucial: our species has succeeded in boring
the piss out of its creator with half a millenium of Modren Humanism. I figgerGuard figgers: "If they ain't gonna pay due attention to me, then fuck 'em!" .. .Art won't answer
[Me is distracted by something offstage; walks off uncertainly, right]
DR: Yer right-as-rain, Auntie. We gotta find some kinda way to encourge ol' No-bo-daddy to intervene in our lives. But first we gotta get the ol' log's attention. We've said it before: He must be getting tired of waitin' for us to shape up, shy of the Last Day.
AD: Yep, 'n' if we let things slide that long, Doc, all the Jews'll be converted!
DR: Converted into what?, I've always wondered. ...No, we gotta face it:
[points up]
our whole routine... is trying Guard's sacred patience, six-ways-to-Sunday!
[Enter Me as a prospector, leading on a rope Mr. Rhee as a recalcitrant donkey]
[SONG XIII --> Armageddon riff]
ME (singing):
Armageddon tard! Armageddon weary! Armageddon woozy!
MR (braying):
Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!
ME:
Armageddon tard! Armageddon weary! Armageddon whine-y!
MR:
Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!
[END SONG XIII --> Armageddon riff]
[Me and Mr. Rhee scuttle off; re-emerge as before]
DR (spoken): Yessir! We figger there's only one true way to get Guard t'take us seriously once again, as a species that responds to His Authority. And that's to believe so danged hard that yer whole personhood turns imaginary. We four didn't used to be characters, you know. Before we were life-actors, we wuz puny humans, just like you.
[Steps to stage right]
AD: Now we're individual entities. We're loose!
ME: We've all taken that extra step. The one that allows you to break through. You know the one I mean. The one Saint Charlie Manson synthesized for us all, back in the 60s.
DR [standing apart from the others; gets up as Charlie Manson, ascends a pulpit; he's bathed in blue light; prison bars are also suggested; organ in]:
[Throughout sermon, the rest of the stage is dark and silent]
All my life.. .I've been told that each of us is alone. Well, I know I am. But I've my doubts about you. Tell me: Do you truly possess independent consciousness? Or do you only believe that you do? Two different things, you know. Certainly your actions manifest no independent thought: You've always done as you've been told... although you've managed to serve a variety of tellers, over time. I say: Your thoughts are not your own any more than your actions are. You're not alone: You belong to a slave species. Who will admit that?
"We believe in change," you'll say. To me, there's only one change worth the name, worth going through. I speak of the only change becoming to you: that which brings you to yourself, brings you around, has you come to, at long last. And if the freedom to assume a true identity beckons to you---and you'd have it master your soul---, know now that there is but one way to achieve it:
Break out!, throw off the tyranny of the flesh!, tear up the Social Contract that keeps humans huddled in a power-fearing tremble! HOW??? Take a life.
Take a life and retake your own. It is the one way. It is the martyrdom of all fellow-feeling and you will never miss that. No empowered existence ever does.
Would you deny this?: that the essence of all power is the generation of fear. And all fear has death behind it. As its object.... Ah, but we are its subjects.
Or you, better say. Fear is what you live for. It is prior to human consciousness and is its unspoken condition. Fear is the lure and prod of wakeful vigilance and the scourge of sleep. It is the tap-root of your storied civilization. Your ethics are rationalizations of fear. Your esthetics are but momentary holidays from fear: the longer the moment afforded, the more glorious the artist!
Who would be wholly other?: who would be truly herself?? Who---so far from fleeing fear---would court it and "make love to the employment"?, to quote your grandest prevaricator (eye-eee, elongationist). Who would adopt fear as his medium?, but treat it with the plain respect of any artisan for his tool of Choice: producing a unity of the making with the thing made---ever the goal of your sadly striving species.
I say "yours" because I'm on my own now, you see.
I became the man I sought. I am he who has affirmed his fear: called it out, countenanced it, withstood its ancient longing for oblivion, and--- in its name and with its full knowledge--- took human life. And that has cast me out...out beyond the human circle jerk. Out and away. Out among the free beings of this world, mine own wild kind.
Would you join me? If you are sore afraid...then there is hope for you! Oh, it's quite a step: from enforced boredom (re-inforced by momentary distraction) to the true source of all energy. Take it. Take a life.
Give over all shrugs at rectitude, all dabbling at transgression, and DO IT!
Take a life and realize your loneliness. Again:
It "s the only way. Only then can you make your stand with men and women who are already where you want to be: on their own. They are, to me, the only humans who deserve to live.
The free.
[To immediate black; organ out; unseen, Dr. Real doffs (i.e., takes off) Manson outfit and returns to the stools.; spotlight falls on Mr. Rhee, standing apart, stage left]
MR (singing):
Take a life, my friend.
That's all you have to do.
Take a life, my friend.
It's really up to you.
[END SONG XIV Take a Life riff]
DR (spoken): Yes, it's really up to each of us. But none of us kin do it alone. That's way we're Fascists. It's so much easier---and more fun!---to be a bully in a wolfpack than to practise yer natural aggressive drives all by yer lonesome. That's why we of Idaho are organizing the means for millions to take lives together. Together...as a family in Christ.
AD: 'N' that's why we need your financial support. Arms is precious. And them what owns 'em is 'way off, livin' in countries that got gun-control. There's shippin' and bribin' costs. So, after the show, we four'll walk down among you, holding aloft the open palm of blood brotherhood.
[Mister Rhee returns to the fold]
MR: Fill it...if you've had it with the way things are.
Cross our palms with plastic.
ME: And meet me halfway! .. .Remember: We're doing for you ...'til ye join up
DR: There's another way to put our message to you. And this is it!
[Spoken to a vertical spot]
we're purgin'! Do Ye hear me, Guard!?! We're purgin' ourselves, we humans, startin'.. .now!!
[SONG XV --> Kill for Christianity]
ALL (singing):
KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY!
It's the one way the gun may be taken a token of faith.
MR: (singing):
your own insanity!
DR/AD/ME (singing):
Bring it about! And you'll find your peace of mind will escape the war unscathed.
ALL:
If we all went crazy together, who can even imagine the thrill?
So KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY or you'll never get Guard's attention!
KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY!
DR:
It's the one way the gun may be taken a token of faith.
AD/MR/ME:
Will your own insanity!
DR:
Bring it about and you'll find your peace of mind will escape the war unscathed.
ME:
You know if we all went crazy together, who can even imagine the thrill
ALL:
So KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY or you'll never get Guard's attention!!
AD:
KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY! Save yer hide by choosin' the side with the lethal technology!
Vilify the vanity that claims that one guy can get by without bending her knee to the family!
DR/MR/ME (insanely):
If we all went crazy together, who can even imagine the thrill!?!
AD (insanely):
So you better KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY or you'll never get Guard's attention!
ALL:
KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY! Save yer hide by choosin' the side with the lethal technology!
Vilify the vanity that claims that one guy can get by without bending the knee to the family!
DR:
We are naught but murderers, anyway, since Adam took his spill!
ALL:
So KILL FOR CHRISTIANITY or you'll never catch the eye of Guard-on-High, no matter how pure your intention.
DR:
You better shed blood with mindless glee for the holy proto-Fascist who perished on the tree!
ME:
And make up your mind to act like me and kill with condecension!
ALL:
Now that'd get Guard's attention!!!
[END SONG XV --> Kill for Christianity]
DR (spoken): At ease! . . .Well, Gentles, this trolley has come within view of its terminus.
[Me sounds pitch]
[SONG XVI --> Oh Come all ye Feckless riff]
ALL (singing):
Come ye spiteful people come!
Grim the Reaper's harvest home!
[END SONG XVI --> Oh Come all ye Feckless riff]
DR (spoken): But before the four of us fade out or your visual field--
MR: ---only to drop in on your dream, tonight!
AD: ---vastly changed!
ME: ---and somehow made personal
DR: ---That's right. But before that happens, we've something of a confession to make, Y'all. Y'see: we're not really actors. Hell, no, we're the opposite of that! And nothing we've said tonight is true.
AD: Not even what he's sayin' now.
DR: That's right. . ..We know you're not a gaggle of prospective Fascists. Of course you're not!: You're the opposite of that. We were just pretending that you were pretending that we were pretending ...that you were pretending. So we're still on the same side ...even though it's the opposite side!
AD: You tell 'em, Doc!
DR: So you kin just forget near- 'bout everything ye heard tonight--
MR (nastily): ---so it can work on a deeper level--
ME (sweetly): ---where shame can't censor.
DR: ---remembering only two things: for humans, nothing's true until it's believed. And belief characterizes... the personality!
[SONG XVII --> Don't You Believe It!]
[Band begins vamp]
AD: (speaking over vamp): Y'all kin be as sincerely phoney as we are!!
MR (singing):
Our basic choice is live or die.
DR/AD/ME:
But DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
MR:
A wise man knows the reason why.
DR/AD/ME:
But DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
ME:
Some people think the president is Huckleberry Hound--
AD:
---while others claim our spaceships have never left the ground--
DR:
---and some maintain our spinning planet isn't even round!
ALL:
[Characters do-se-do against a "Celtic" drone of 4- bars;
then 4 bars of the vamp]
ME:
Now one plus one times one is two--
DR/AD/MR:
---but DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
ME:
And Guard is watching out for you--
DR/AD/MR:
---but DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
MR:
Some people hate the media and blame it on the Jews.
AD:
Some people think we whiteys lack the right to sing the blues---
DR:
---and Heaven knows! our kind arose from pre-primordial ooze!
ALL:
[Characters repeat do-se-do; then music vamp as before]
AD:
Nobody dies before her time.
DR/MR/ME:
But DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
AD:
And advertising's not a crime.
DR/MR/ME:
But DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
ME:
Some people search for meaning when they ask, "What does it cost?"
MR:
And brighter men will not depend on how the dice are tossed.
DR:
And once a soul is saved, it may never then be lost.
ALL:
[Characters attempt a repeat of do-se-do but are tired and clumsy and fall down, then give up; vamp]
DR:
We need our wildest feelings tamed---
AD/MR/ME:
---but DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
DR:
Your honest man is deeply shamed.
AD/MR/ME:
---but DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
MR:
Each soul is rightly classed among the stingers or the stung.
AD:
And the best are wriggling blindly up a ladder rung by rung.
ME:
And these words are twice as true as any song that's e'er been sung---
ALL:
---but DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
[Spoken] YES!!!
[Sung]
DON'T YOU BELIEVE...IT!
[Shuffle drums for 8 bars while characters bow to audience; then they sing while clapping on 2 and 4]
Believe it don't believe it!
[Characters repeat this riff, over and over, encouraging applause and revivalist clapping; then, led by Dr. Real, all hold up STOP hand to stifle the noise and the feeling]
[END SONG XVII --> Don't You Believe It!]
DR (singing: given pitch):
Thank you.
AD/MR/ME (matching DR's pitch):
Fuck you.
MR (new pitch):
Thank you.
DR (original pitch) /AD & ME (matching MR's pitch):
Fuck you.
AD (new pitch):
Thank you.
DR & MR (each his original pitch) / ME (matching AD' s pitch):
Fuck you.
[ALL hold ooo]
ME: (new pitch):
Thank you.
[ALL hold oooo; piano hits 3 tones]
[END SONG XVIII --> Coda]
[All four continue to hold oooo until MR steps forward and places hands to ears; this shuts everyone up immediately--producing the illusion that the show is, in reality, about him. But then DR bows his head and laces his fingers in prayer; coincident with that, AD turns about, bends over, and displays both her bloomers and her upsidedown face to audience. Lastly, ME falls to one knee, stretches out her arms, offering herself.]
[At the band's cue---l-bar intro to "Kill For Christianity"--- All return to original positions (MR back in line) and bow once (very mechanically). Then all march off, two left and two right.]
[Band ends that tune and breaks into "I Believe It" while the actors, as themselves, go begging in the audience; they blame each other and the author and the production for the evening's shortcomings, accuse each other of over-identifying with the role assumed: "He thinks he is Doctor Real!", etc.]
*** END ***
MM_01. Page 11 ... AD's accented speech (“apPEARing this DEEP in Alien TERRitory”) into gestures 2 beats each: shudder/shrug/pugnacious
MM_02. Page 17 ... hindoo arms behind ME after “probably tell you where you are.”
Page 17 ... ME's accented speech (“utterly impregnable”) into gestures 2 beats each: AD & MR & DR step out/point to their privates/ME does/ ALL consult wristwatch
(choreographer will help with dance below)
MM_03. Page 22 ... AD's dance (24+2 bars) which starts w/rhythmic figure and ends with a rim shot before "a race possessed of, etc."
MM_04. Page 23 ... Marching Backwards; "A" has ALL bodies sideways, head to Audience, marching in place; "B" not marching and facing forwards ("Join the Army, etc. ); "A" sideways, marching ( "come then, etc."); unfurl banner
(choreographer will help with drum solo below)
Page 24... drum solo/piano solo (24 bars) while ALL march backwards every which way.
Line up sideways again for out-chorus; march in place! Turn backs to Audience on last band hit.
MM_05. Page 24 ... DR turns around (“BACKWARDS?!?!”) (others stay) to speak
Page 24 ... MR turns around to speak, ends w/Kabuki pose; AD turns around to speak; ME turns around and considers (with DR and MR) AD's idea; then they trudge round in the Marx Brothers circle (left hand on next person's shoulder, right hand gesturing)
MM_06. Page 28 ... AD & MR & ME adopt frog posture after DR's "When the frogs".
Page 28...AD & MR & ME stay in posture as DR sings; at "fair or foul", they grab neck and collapse; they stay on the floor to sing Verse 2 of song; after "most folks allow", they stand up.
MM_07. Page 31... What happens during THE LOYALTY DRAG
MM_07_1. AD begins to sing and DR goes to his chair, MR & ME to their stools.
MM_07_2. Uninvolved, MR scowls and ME preens, as usual. But DR feels the beat, marks time with his cane.
MM_07_3. DR stands and haltingly begins the simple dance steps [the choreographer] Mary will already have taught him.
MM_07_4. DR hits his stride with the new dance. Pleased with himself, he pokes ME.
MM_07_5. ME stands and DR sets about instructing her in the new dance (using his cane like a Russian ballet martinet; making more of the dance than it is, breaking it down, etc.). Meanwhile, MR stands and walks off a bit, sneaks peeks at this instruction, tries his own grudging, leaden-footed version.
MM_07_6. Soon DR & ME are doing the step winningly. Then DR suffers an attack (his back? his heart? his Charley-horse?). ME stops her dance and embraces DR.
MM_07_7. As AD ends her 1st ch~s, ME helps DR lie down on the stools---if it's uneven, that's okay. [We're into the 2nd chorus now, the piano solo.] ME takes the blanket and tucks DR in, his head turned to one side. ME kisses the top of DR's, head and steps aside... in order to do the' dance on her own.
MM_07_8. MR sneaks over carrying a (cardboard?) prop bottle with a skull etc. on it. MR pours the poison into DR's exposed ear. DR twitches and goes lifeless.
MM_07_9. MR crosses to ME and embraces her. Then MR & ME do the step (triumphantly) until AD begins to sing the 3rd chorus, at which point DR rises and all 3 bow and return to their seats. '
The 3 choruses are of equal length: 32 bars divided into 4 sections of 8. Each bar has 4 beats.
MM_08. Page 33 ... DR & ME & AD yawn and nod out during 1st verse of MR's song (“DR: ... That's a a good ol' slogan”); snap-to for singing
(choreographer will help with jig below)
MM_09. Page 42 ... All (“But Don't You Believe It”) do (4 bars) energetic jig
Page 42 ... ALL (“But Don't You Believe It”) do (4 bars) clumsy, crashing version of jig;
Page 43... ALL (“But Don't You Believe It”) do (4 bars) who-cares?, gestural version.
MM_10. Page 45 ... MR's hands to head stops "oooo"; pause; DR's & AD's gestures, pause; ME's gesture. Band's I-bar intro: ALL return to original posture, bow mechanically; march off, 2 left & 2 right.
....... (end of Movment Moments) .......
by H. B. real, D.D.
Notes on Fascist Knowing
H. B. Real, D.D.
Because I write in the liberating knowledge that these words will be read by you and you alone, you will find herein nothing but the clockwork of an unguarded heart, wound and powered by the destructive hand of love, which, in withdrawing to an abandonment, left behind a static deism of the self. Can this be a place?; and habitable?; I would claim so and I would be the first statesman of this implausibility; I would pen its constitution... before the
feeling fade.
---HBR
1. Life is a fascist abstraction.
2. My being constantly refers to this fact, even when unconscious.
3. All that I perceive as living is reference.
***
4. Nothing is happening. The state of being is living.
5. The spiritual goal of humankind is union with stasis.
6. Habit is the characteristic human expression of the religious impulse. When one repeats himself, he is honoring the process of reproduction, responsible for his existence.
7. Each repetition implies a deepening involvement in the past, rendering ever more difficult the acceptance of change as anything but illusion.
8. Repetition is the imitation of eternity.
9. Eternity is always the same.
***
10. Possibility has, in itself; no meaning.
11. What is probable is all that counts: whether one can control or must fear it; also, from whence it cometh and when.
***
12. There is but one truth: death.
13. One way to truth: fear.
14. I fear, at times, I am beyond my own control. Without control, I do not exist, not as myself.
15. All respect is based on fear.
16. Laughter is the direct experience of fear.
17. Fear is the withdrawal from the incongruous.
18. Fear generates a picture or image of the self and positions it between me and that which is incongruous.
19. The energy of this activity serves to convince me that I am alive.
20. It is a timed activity, as is all fantasy. With its cessation, I have the choice of forcing those under my authority to sustain its illusion or achieving a similar effect by conscious reference to life in the abstract ("from Which cometh my strength"---canned laughter).
***
21. Life is the opposite of death. Life must be vigilantly defended against death. Death is change.
22. Life is good, death bad... in the sense that what's good is what's valuable and what's worthless is bad.
23. Evaluation is the primary human activity.
24. For a human to evaluate an object is for him to treat it as a human: i.e., with kind-ness; i.e., to "like" it. Even what we don't like.
25. Nature is unobjectified flowing chaos. But all things are objectified through evaluation...
26. ...in other words, they become involved in the consciousness of what is human: the past.
27. The evaluation of nature is the art of perception.
28. All ethics and aesthetics are value systems before they are anything else. The value of value is its value.
29. An object is good or beautiful only if it is valuable.
30. Nothing is valuable in and of itself. All value is assigned.
31. Value is enforced by authority.
32. Authority is invaluable: it presupposes itself.
***
33. The future is impossible. It is to be feared. But it is possible to have ideas about the future.
34. All ideas about the future come from the past. If they did not, they would be the future.
35. With this fact in mind, the future itself becomes the past.
36. Ideas generated from this perspective set up expectations, that is: things to wait for...
37. ...so one doesn't need to wait for things to happen because he is already waiting for things to happen.
38. In this way, things stay pretty much the same...
39. ...satisfying, temporarily, the very essence of human longing.
***
40. The normal response to life is fear.
41. Fear makes me aware. My life is the awareness of my life.
42. All fear is fear of death. Fear keeps me alive.
43. One hides out from death in the past and lives from there.
44. Probability is a form of prayer. As if I said, addressing authority in general: "Reveal unto me, Lord, the most likely means of my deliverance!" That is: the most successful hide-out.
45. The calculation of probability is inevitably based on the past.
***
46. Every being has its place.
47. If a conscious being doesn't know its place or refuses it, it is inappropriate.
48. Man's special fear is that he is inappropriate to the planet. That it is not his home.
49. The knowledge of death as revealed by the reality of passing time makes him fear he is inappropriate to life, makes him fear to live, fear in order to live: the essential human weakness.
50. The man made aware of this weakness, manifested in his life, will---together with the like-minded---quest after authority, seeking it in the enormity of all that has already existed.
51. There is strength in the unity of weakness.
52. Our heads thrust into the past, we may say with pride, "We are not here!!" (Cf. what was said of Jesus when the stone was rolled away.)
***
53. I behave.
54. This means: I am what I have. The more I have the more I am.
55. I have things in mind. This shows I am intelligent.
56. Intelligence is the recognition that being is having.
57. Even a man possessed possesses.
***
58. The only necessity is the past.
59. To know something is to have seen it in the past. We know something is real after it is over.
60. We need to remember the past in order to get through what's going on.
61. The knowledge got from reliving the past is called "learning". All learning is reactionary.
62. One cannot learn without a teacher (an outside source) to show the way.
63. The way is to hold on to the past. The greater my grasp of the past, the more aware I am.
64. I become aware that everything becomes the past. That everything is becoming to it. Beauty dwelleth in death.
***
65. Normal is what most people are, most of the time. Some people are always normal: such existences are sanctified.
66. Most people are abnormal sometimes.
67. What is normal is a statistical measurement of human behavior.
68. The only real things are those which can be statistically measured.
68a. There is a universal scale of statistically-measured time, constantly being added to. Hence, life becomes more and more real with passing time.
***
68c. To be normal is to be the same: the same as I was in the past, the same as others are now.
***
69. Nature is chaotic; man has his orders.
70. In chaotic nature, nothing happens other than by chance. So-called "natural patterns" run their temporal course and die; random inevitability continues.
71. Hence it is the human responsibility to bring order to the world, if order there will be.
72. This responsibility devolves upon each human being, once he gets the word.
73. The more order a man imposes, the more human he becomes, the less natural.
***
74. Justice consists in making things right.
75. To make things right, they must be lined up together.
76. Judgment about what a straight line is must be made from outside the line. Only the sane know a madman at sight.
77. The part has no feeling for the whole. Justice necessitates dramatic leaders; those who stand apart to judge.
***
78. Recognition is the act of knowing.
79. All knowledge is dramatic. To know is to possess; hence: to grasp ideas.
80. To recognize something means that in the past I stored its image in a mental place and I know it's still there: I'm seeing the thing again and the picture inside tells me that the object outside is really there too.
81. If I didn't have the image, I would be justified in doubting the object's reality. To know is to fear; hence: to apprehend ideas.
82. Imagination is the life of the cognitive party: Living images, placed within, tend to grow and to be grafted onto other images, making recognition ever more difficult with time.
83. Knowing consists in lining up the two pictures, within and without.
84. So-called "curiosity" or wanting-to-know implies a desire to make the two pictures conform. I want to be right.
85. That which is apart from life (the image) allows us to recognize the object of the living picture as alive---dramatically, i.e., by contrast.
***
86. Fascist (i.e., "true") perception consists in constantly referring to the past.
87. One trusts only what he recognizes, what he already knows. That way one stays the same, doesn't he?
88. If one imposes this way upon others, he can keep them from changing too.
89. This is our truest imitation of the past, which never changes.
90. If everyone stayed the same, there would be nothing to worry about. Everything would be immortal and static. Similarity is beautiful.
***
91. Similarity is the manifestation of the Divine in the everyday.
92. When one says he "likes" an object, he means he is like that object: that he has extended his identity---his only truth---to include it.
93. He accepts the identity between himself (subject) and it (object) and thereby he grows. The larger his identity, the more normal he becomes.
94. The more normal a man is, the more power he wields to restore his environment to normalcy. This is the chief discernible human purpose.
***
95. Freedom is discovered in emptiness.
96. Freedom is the absence of stimulii in the environment.
97. When I am still, when my body imitates stasis, it is not difficult to pretend the existence of the deity within me.
98. There is no god without me. But without me there is nature.
99. Nature is a dramatic environment for my life.
100. Nature is transformed through imagination. Before imagination, nature is empty. Its transformation is dramatic.
***
101. Boredom is dramatic.
102. The natural state of man is boredom.
103. Freedom is the reality of boredom. Boredom is normal and simple.
104. Freedom is complex. In that it is normal (boring), it is necessary. In that it is not stimulating, it is not desirable.
105. Only stimulation is desirable.
106. Complete stimulation involves identification with the stimulus: this is what's meant by fascination.
107. Fascination is the only true distinction from boredom.
***
108. Identification with nature (as emptiness) is death.
109. Death is free: normal but undesirable.
110. Life is identification with life.
111. To live naturally is to die. I ignore nature and identify with life in the abstract.
112. I live within myself and die to the world.
***
113. Living is boring but life in the abstract fascinates me.
114. Identification (with l.i.t.a.) locates an area of nature in the past. The area is objectified. It becomes sanctified through the communion spatiality: I place it in the past. It keeps its distance.
115. In exchange, it removes from my shoulders the burden of choice.
116. Choice is the willing recognition of alternative reality. Exercise of the will is the mechanism of choice.
117. Choice is never free. It is abnormal. Without choice, I am free to fear freedom. Identification wills away the will.
118. The process of identification, though wholly imaginary, succeeds in restoring my natural emptiness. Paradoxically, through a process of preoccupation. (Seen from without, the paradox disappears as the mental moment is recognized as a species of "killing time".)
119. To be relieved of choice is to forgo the pain of presentation.
120. The pain of presentation is best displayed as abnormal involvement in the incongruous. This is mad.
121. Madness lies in the refusal to ignore what is incongruous. madness is never desirable, is it?
122. The best way---indeed, the only way---to ignore the incongruous is to identify with the past.
***
123. Before identification, the stimulating object is separated from me. It is distant.
124. Distance is time. All stimuli exist in the past.
125. Fascination binds me to the past.
126. The past is sacred. Identification is a holy act. It is the most human act we can do.
***
127. I am positive that a random, objective world goes on without me. When I am normal, my impressions of this world are as accurate as my senses are operative. When I am normal, I feel myself detached from this world and I know things based upon their distinctions from me.
128. My knowledge is my defense against these distinctions. When I am normal, my senses are on guard so that the world will not rush in and become me.
129. Because I fear this as my death, I want my impressions of the world to be accurate.
130. Sometimes my senses are abnormally clouded by my imagination.
***
131. Imagination is the process of recording objective, random data and ordering it in terms of influence.
132. Fantasy is the projection of imagination onto the world.
133. Belief is the fantasy of non-objective, unified existence.
134. Belief is abnormal. But it is normal to be abnormal sometimes.
135. Belief is the uncritical involvement of consciousness. The mechanism of belief is the suspension of the normal process of detached knowledge-through-differentiation.
136. A behaving being will not lightly surrender normal detachment. But behaving beings control what they believe. Or believe so.
137. One's beliefs are the mirror of his influence patterns: the things which tell him what to do.
138. I believe in the reality of the past. The past tells me what to do. It poses my conditions.
139. All other belief is based on what seems to be the case. It cannot be positive.
140. All other belief is superficial and circumstantial.
141. All other belief is superstition.
***
142. Where superstition ends, the deity begins.
143. The divine is belief in belief.
144. To believe in a god is to have belief in the belief in belief.
145. I believe in God (whom I call Guard; being blithely defensive) when it is appropriate.
146. Guard dwells in the past. He knows his place.
***
147. Guard identifies with the past. I am positive that He is real.
148. Humankind becomes godly by dwelling in the past.
149. Belief in the past is fantasy made real. The interlude is over. The world is transformed and one is normal again, free to fear. Belief is the ingenious human means of forcing time to pass more quickly, while the mind registers the opposite: a luxuriant bath in the still waters beyond time.
150. But however it feels, the quicker one gets to the end, the sooner he'll know what was real and what was mere belief.
---------------------
Be careful about me, about those who think like me. For to the extent that we doubt our own words we must needs take lives to make the lines come out straight. And as to our relations, yours and mine: if your life lies
beyond me, beyond my grasp, I have at least succeeded in making off with whole minutes of what had otherwise been your own time. Or were we one, e'er so briefly?
*