Blowing Your Nose On Stage.

I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Caesar,

And things unlucky charge my fantasy: I have no will to wander forth of doors, Yet something leads me forth.

Cinna the Poet – Julius Caesar – William Shakespeare

The broad imposing figure of Mark Anthony stands before the mass of faces, at the apex of everyone’s vision, he holds up his arms as passionate invective is pulled from his lips into the ears of the ravenous horde. Caesar is dead and betrayal and lusty ambition are to blame.

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

The stage is set out around the ornate white coffin of Caesar as Mark Anthony speaks into a big vintage silver microphone, holding aloft the perished blood splattered robe of Caesar, pointing out each bloodied slash in turn, his voice rumbling out into the dusky cloud-scarred sky. Looming over him is the concrete frame of the church with two large bullet shaped windows either side of him and big iron bells sitting 10 ft above his head waiting to ring out at the death of Caesar. The throng, increasingly rowdy shout and call for retribution, baying, the brethren is cocked:

All - Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live!

Behind Mark Anthony goat-masked figures prowl under the great black doors of the church plotting and fomenting the unrest with pointed thrusts:

All - We'll mutiny.

First Citizen - We'll burn the house of Brutus.

The multitude is ready to blow, the masked men shout and stamp their feet, betrayal, corruption, villainy, between the masks and the shouts stands a sweet elderly gentleman, wearing a black ill-fitting suit and full of doddery shaky fragility, he pulls a hanky from his pocket, scrunches it up in his rubbery old-man hand and casually blows his nose. There is...

Hang on a minute...

What was that?

***

I  was volunteering at the Iris Theatre at the Actors Church in Covent Garden and the following is something that happened that you won’t read in the news, but if the world was indeed in my command, you jolly well would be. Reality was at stake. *

I was an Usher, presiding over a production of Julius Caesar, fully comfortable with my role wearing black and standing in the shadows, when a little old man reached into reality and blew his nose with it.

Already leaning on the side of danger, the show was a promenade theatre piece that took place in the grounds of the church and moved around the garden with the different scenes of the play; the audience were told when to move to a new area and several of the spectators were recruited for small non-speaking parts. 
In terms of the potential flammability of reality, the 'dramatic petrol' had already been spilt but in none of the previous 15 performances had anyone dropped a match, I guess we had somehow got used to the acrid smell and didn’t see it coming.

During Act 3 scene II, after Caesar has been killed and his coffin is in the middle of the scene, there is a piece where Mark Anthony says this:

You will compel me, then, to read the will? Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?

The crucial bit here was about making a ring around Caesar (the coffin), ordinarily a few people in the front row, crept up self consciously and knelt in a semi circle on the steps around the coffin, all the while looking back at their friends and family giggling. There was no danger they would break through that film of the imaginary world and discard reality like a soiled tissue, they were mere visitors, fully secure in their role.

On this night however, the audience was a little too eager and with an unfortunate hand movement from Mark Anthony, the crowd thought it was time to move on and surged towards the stage, only to realise pretty quickly that the scene was still going.  Their faces moved in two directions at once and they did a strange dance of indecision, as two forces worked on them at once – fight, flight, fight, flight; chicken-like they prowled the stage. 

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent...   

They were suddenly trapped between worlds; actors mixed and collided with non-actors – people collided with characters, bodies with bodies – there was a moment of pure spontaneity and perplexity, a pause of infinity when no one knew what was going to happen.  Would the audience fight, push forward into the scene, take their mistake to the end, grab the microphone and overthrow Rome three acts before it should have been done – in a moment of pure hyperreality, reality and illusion disappears into each other and the play becomes all and nothing of our immanent perception; and for that transient recess in certainty, it seemed possible.

As they collided the two imaginary domains became no more real or present than the other - nobody knew who they were and confusion was the new emperor, we all waited for someone to take charge, reinstate reality and bring us all back to that sturdy plane of consistency. 

That person was inevitably Mark Anthony, his voice faltered for a second before restoring a sense of solidity as Shakespeare’s realm won out, putting everyone back in their place, and the new possible world of multiplicity and uncertainty died rather quickly. 

The misplaced audience, coming back to themselves, sort of awkwardly stood next to the coffin, with some going straight back to sit down, but our elderly hero had gone too far and had managed to get himself stuck behind the actors, the show went on:

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

And as Mark Anthony was lamenting, and gesticulating and wailing at the unsavoury death of Caesar, there stood our man, just off to the right, shuffling with his hands in his pockets; one last vestige of infinity, he had the look of a defeated man, a dribbly eyed silhouette, stood behind his wife, humming, waiting like a obedient puppy, while she talks to her friend in the street.  

He had sweetness about him that contrasted the incendiary mood of the context, but he was still caught in-between and he had a decision to make. To stay or to go, the show or the audience? In a moment of pure genius he sidestepped any decision and made all other reality redundant. 

There was nothing of a pretence, just serenity as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a hanky, blew his nose with it, in that strangely violent, trumpetty, old man way before putting it back in his pocket; and with that action he had created a third way, a new reality unhampered by expectation.  He blew his nose with convention and as Mark Anthony was holding up Caesar's blood splattered toga, our hero was holding up his soiled hanky and saying: ‘Yes, I am an uninvited audience member on-stage; yes, I am trespassing on the steps of the Forum in Rome during a state funeral; yes I am that sly shadow, that inky excess, to be hidden under, words and clothes and things and opinions and Yes! Yes! Yes!, deal with it’.

The juxtaposition was fantastic: death, betrayal, strength – vulnerability, hankey, doddery old man.#

The show went on and he still stood in utter tranquillity, other actors moving around him, he kept looking around, occasionally making a movement to tease a jump back into the audience. On went the show:

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it: they are wise and honourable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:

By now we were all getting used to him, he was a presence in his own right, no longer a mistake, he had won, he had defeated our collective binary perception, cracked it and smelted it into something new and shiny like it was the most normal thing in the world, his magic hanky had worked. 

And it was only when we were no longer looking that he disappeared from the stage, I scanned the crowd but he was nowhere to be seen, he had gone like some kind of mysterious saggy-faced shaman.  Of course the gap he left very quickly caved in, the scene ended and the play moved on to Philippi and the eventual tragedy ensued, but when the actors took their bow and the audience clapped and applauded I think we all knew who the real star of the show was.

*I refer to ‘reality’ here as a structure of expectation, the collective ego wrapping any given scene or situation in an imaginary certainty.

#I understand that Othello has that handkerchief malarkey going on, but at no point is it brandished and used, quite vigorously on-stage by an ageing man in an ill-fitting suit.

True Love occurs - but only for a glorious instant.

I stared at the side of her head in the hope she would fall in love with me. She was drinking some kind of lager and was obviously suffering from hay fever. Maybe it was her vulnerability, the way she held her hands sweetly in get lap against the fabric of her floral dress; the way she looked around the room like a child, the innocence and enthusiasm. Her neck was a heavenly  world. 

What was going on in those thoughts? 

 

Would I want to know, would it poop all over my vision of perfection?

Yes of course it would. Who wants that anyway. 

I will love her forever - as long as she doesn't speak to me.

My Riot Pt. 1 Pub Quiz

'A Multitude is a plurality of conscious and sensitive beings sharing no common intentionality, and showing no common pattern of behaviour.  The crowd shuffling in the city moves in countless different directions with countless different motivations.' - the Uprising -  Franco Beradi

I think it was on 7^th or 8^th of August 2011 that I was taking part in a pub quiz in Clapham, at a pub called the Lamb, and I was a tad squiffy. We were doing quite well, definitely in the top 3, we would maybe have won a bottle of wine or at least some money behind the bar, which makes what happened next even more galling. At a certain point in the evening, just over half way, there was a sudden and unexpected lull in the atmosphere and everyone somehow spontaneously got up to leave.  My companions and I looked around with confusion and didn’t really know what was going on, that was until a mysterious stranger, with straggly hair and wild eyes, put his ruddy hands on our table leaned in and whispered: ‘the riots coming’, before disappearing in an instant.  That may not be 100% accurate but that’s how it appears in my memory.

We got up, rather lazily I thought, but then again it was a hot day, dare I say perfect weather for a riot, and went outside, we stood for a while waiting for this beast with many parts to come over the horizon, but when it didn’t we said goodbye and headed in our relevant directions. 

***

It’s been 1,029,600 minutes, or nearly 2 years, since the riots of 2011 in London and suddenly the writing comes, like a brick through a shop window (apologies, due to that plastic resin they use, it may take a few hefty projectiles). Living in London I had a somewhat split perception of the events, both immanent and mediated – both in the flesh and through the media. The following is my experience of the ‘event’.

Ultimately, it wasn’t so much of a riot rather than an unauthorised consumer binge; the donkey bucking off its rider and finally munching the carrot, with as much intelligence and self consciousness as an ass would have. Was it born from a revolutionary muster, the people lashing back at their oppressors and sending them a message? The dissatisfaction with mediocre government, greedy bankers and mechanistic corporations, all lacking in emotion and spirit, spilling over into action? The actuality is no, well kind of, but I so wanted it to be more. Maybe so did everyone else. It seems to me that the press and media did its job in terms of conjuring a condemnation and general fear of the ‘terrible things’ that were happening, killing all the complexity and nuance, sounding out Professor Pavlov’s bell. My experience was very different and somewhat unaccounted for.

Ok, so I have studied many a revolutionary book and film relating to the French Revolution and May 68, so I was expecting principles and some kind of artistic spontaneous expression relating to a future freedom. I realise this may be a tad romantic and idealistic, but good, because that’s where I live. There was definitely spontaneity, expression and anger but there was also passion, humour and camaraderie and when it all kicked off and kept growing there was that fear that anything could happen, what if this was actually it, the end we have been imagining and playing out for years?  Sadly the only organising principle of the rioters seemed to be transient personal gain and there is nothing rousing or revolutionary about that, in fact it is quite the opposite.

For me, as well as other Londoners out on the streets, it was a thrill, the crack in a normal white line on a white page of existence. Things were out of their place, people were taking things and destroying things that used to be behind shiny surfaces; the surfaces were shattered, the boredom was shattered; it was exciting, an event for everyone; something happening in our own back garden. It had an eerie effect, things were misplaced; the mannequins were on the wrong side of the window, among us.

The images and news articles from the media (the unshatterable shiny surface) seemed to be coming from a different dimension to my empirical reality. It was an uncanny place to be, between the ‘real’ of the streets and the symbolic of the representation, it was presented like any other news story as if it was happening 500 miles away in some other place. I presume this is so that we could reassure ourselves that we are safe and morally superior, and maybe providing this detachment is the collective function of the media. The images kept it at a distance, but I looked out my window and it was there – I was caught in the middle and it made me re-evaluate how I thought about those news stories that actually were in places 500 miles away, what was I not seeing?

My only reference point for a riot was what I had seen on the news; I wasn’t sure which way around to work things. It was all so familiar on the TV: there were on the spot reports, replays of particularly lurid violence, we heard nothing from the rioters (just as we never hear from the Taliban etc). There were journalists that did interview some of the rioters after the fact, who were hooded and full of bravado, but this wasn’t on their own terms and produced mainly the same old crap fitted into the same old box; they fulfilled the expectations of the roles they were given – or edited as such.

Maybe there wasn’t a reason for the ‘violence’; it will go down as the great Dada revolution, no principles, no rules just expression – and a new pair of trainers.

***

As I walked to Clapham Junction...

 TBC

Welcome

Welcome to the synthesis of intelligence and idiocy, a new world, and you are all invited. Let us create, play and slay the dragons of our inhibitions.

Idiot  -  An utterly foolish or senseless person.

         -  A person with a mental age of less than 3 years old and an IQ of less than 25.

Intellectual -  A person possessing intellect or greater mental capacity.

                  -  A person given to study, reflection and speculation.

Idiotllectual - Me, you, everybody.  

I want to exist where the two meet – I want to be every person I have ever been.

Here’s how I came to this realisation and it’s not pretty, an instance of stupidity beyond the call of duty. 

Upon trip to the Isle of Wight I purchased a bottle of cider, I think it was from a English Heritage country house or something, it was a ‘this is special lsle of Wight cider’ type of thing, so being a connoisseur of the various kinds of fermented apples, or pretending I was, I bought the cider.

3 or 4 days, maybe a week later, I think it was a sunny day and I fancied a cold alcoholic beverage, I retrieved my bottle from the fridge and examined it proudly, you knew it was good because it was wrapped in that silvery tin foil stuff around the top, proper posh like, excessive and shiny. 

I went straight for the corkscrew, I was gonna pop that mofo and slurp it down, I punctured the top with the metal screw and twisted it down hard and the two arms lifted in a satisfying hailing to the gods of cider. I pushed the arms down and...punck... the screw didn’t take, popping out and leaving a small hole in the cork. Fuck, stupid thing, again and again this went on for 15 – 20 minutes. At which point, in a defeated annoyance, I opted to go for a can from the fridge and that’s where the story ends... unless you consider the fact that a few days later I decided to have another go, with the same results until, in my annoyance, I peeled the foil around the top to discover the bottle actually had a screw top and was not corked at all.

Now, this does strike me as a being a tad stupid, is there a philosophy to incorporate this behaviour? Probably, but just in case there isn’t: Kapow, here’s one.

Stupidity is, in a way, much more interesting than intelligence, people seem to take their intelligence so seriously.  I wouldn’t have had such a story or realisation if I had simply pulled off the foil and opened the bottle. I mean, I do have a providence of intelligence too, I have an MA and managed to successfully negotiate the intricacies of running a company as well as being moderately well-read and knowledgeable on a range of subjects, but I don't really have any remarkable stories about those things. 

I don’t want to privilege stupidity – that would be stupid, but create a synthesis, a mutual conversation.

Here we are stuck in the middle, not between common sense and book-smart, but between knowing and innocence.

In short:  Eat cheese, get drunk, read Nietzsche, watch romantic comedies, write an opera, play the cello, chase dogs down alleys, paint classical portraits, eat something after its been on the floor, read poetry out loud, smile at strangers, spell fings wrong, correct peoples’ grammar, fall over in ridiculous ways, ballet dance, create, destroy, create again, weep, laugh, high five your own stupidity then shake hands with your wisdom; or vice versa.

The Idiotllectual deals with with news articles and current events. My views, as ridiculous as they sometimes are, never seem to be represented in the media and so here is an attempt at seeing if they are possible to explicate. I don't strive for any themes or cogent weltanschauung, just an instinctive engagement with the world.