Some Meanings of Made-up Words

From "Merry Andrew" (1958). Not everyone got the memo about driving on the left.

 You could of course argue all words are "made-up", but I wouldn't. I know too little about it, but I'm pretty sure the first language was a form of accounting, hence "subject verbs object". Language's first purpose was to describe interactions, not transmit the experience of solitude, which might explain why we're so often having to resort to the word "weird" when describing our current isolation. In other words, don't feel too bad about it. 

 Anyway, yes, made-up words: In today's episode of A Journal of the Plague Year posted below, Defoe's narrator fulminates against the selling of charms bearing the word "Abracadabra", which led me to investigate whether or not this was the word's earliest appearance in literature. In fact, its first recorded appearance is in the second century during the reign of Nero. However, nobody knew even then what it meant, only that one should tie it in a ribbon, and hang it round one's neck, preferably using the "lard of a lion".

 Which brings me, naturally, to the Steve Miller Band. 

 "Abra... Abra...cadabra... I wanna reach out and grab ya," they sang in 1982, so I don't know, maybe Rock 'n' Roll will die, but certainly, it gives no further clue as to what the word meant (although there is a lot going on in the video), but I remembered that the Steve Miller Band had quite a history with made-up words: Their 1973 hit The Joker sung of "the pompatus of love", so I decided to research the origin of that word instead and, uh, yeah, I hit gold. Horrible gold. According to Jon Cryer, star of the 1995 comedy The Pompatus of Love, the word is actually a corruption of a misheard Vernon Green lyric: "puppetutes of love", and puppetutes are... well, they're puppet prostitutes. So I learnt that today. Defoe talks however of the disappearance of "merry andrews" from the streets of London, and that's allowed me to sweeten today's post with the song at the top. I love Danny Kaye. Subject verbs object. Hope you're all tickety-boo. Here's episode 3:

Reality: A User's Guide

Jonah Non Grata's bag of things that are things, Alarum festival, Berlin, 2011. 
Photos by Lanna Meggy...

 

... whom I appear to have tagged here as "Keeps". Why am I even tagging personal acquaintances here? That's weird... Maybe that's why I stopped blogging. 

 Anyway, Keeps is currently studying macabre animation (Jan Svankmajer, the Brothers Quay, quills passing through wood like it was butter, ugly toys worn but not loved, meat and threads, that kind of thing) and, as she was looking for a way to write about it all – an "in" – I recalled something Chris Goode had posted on his now-closed blog "Thompson's Book of Communicable Desire" back in 2009, taking as his starting point the following animation by Adam Pesapane...

 

 

 In the comments to that post, which is here, I found I'd posted two days' train of thought about honesty in theatre, the uses of play, and the nature of reality and thinginess, a lot of which it turned out I still believe and am still investigating, and other stuff I'd forgotten that surprised and, I'll be honest, impressed me. "February 04 2009" was just days before the fire, which must be why I never got round to referencing it at the time, but as I say, I certainly haven't forgotten the gist, and in fact, it's played happily on my mind in everything I've made since. I don't know when I'll next be making theatre, but some of my best thinking has been thinking about theatre, and most of the best of that was done over at Thompson's. So, here: Chris closed thus...

"Until we can see who, and what, we are, in relation to each other and the objects and materials we use and the resources we share (or don't), the question of what else there could be and what the various things we call "this" or "here" might be like under other circumstances is nearly incomprehensible, except in a subjunctive, speculative fantasy... propelled by privilege -- whether that's the privilege of leisure time, or the privilege of being a child."

And in I chipped, eventually, and kept chipping for the next two days...

I was with you all the way until those last words... Because of course being a child is not a privilege, is it? It's the opposite. It is the one thing everyone's had a go at. And because "I am me" is so much less comprehensive a declaration than "That's a rope". "What am I?" is surely a very different question from "What is that rope?" (Is Hamlet actually mad? Well that depends on your definition of "is") and objects – not us – and people – potential usses – are two completely different propositions. Taking someone's clothes off will tell us more about them but it also much more won't...

 

And I often think about the professed moral of Vonnegut's "Mother Night" in relationship to performing: "We are who we pretend to be." Yes, yes we are. Pretending a book is a bird doesn't stop it being a book. However pretend to be angry, your body won't be able to tell the difference, you're angry. Pretend to be possessed of an untameable libido, you will become that thing, as I found out when I'd finished just some five night run of a Jacobean Tragedy in the Playroom, it was scary, giddying. This kind of play will not change your opinions or your education, but it might change you. Going back to your speech about Shakespeare and the wood, for me Feste is not walking talking theatre as much as is Edgar is in King Lear (although I like that Feste's always asking people for money). Edgar is the thing, yep...

What I would have to think on exactly, is that being a child – while associated with its often (yeah, we'd hope) attendant privileges... is not some posh school where we are allowed to play, it is in a but not that sense THE state of play. We're not taught to play if we're lucky. We play. But what IS that... that's what I've got to mull over. Because we learn by playing, that's a truism but also the point, which goes back to the idea of playing to find out what something is – yes? -– which in the case of my last comment was ourselves. "What can I do with this?" So when I said it wasn't a privilege I meant it is crucial to who we are...

And I'm not at all sure we should grow out of playing if playing is indeed born out of curiosity. (By the way, I am far more private now than I was when a child). I also think playing is a huge part of love. Today, we were all let off work and had a snowball fight. At first OF COURSE I did not participate, and then I did and there were instances of fun (ie out-of-myself-type ecstasy) and, but, all the time there was OF COURSE the deadening bilious knowledge that I was not experiencing the same childish abandon that that thing: "everyonelse" was. But. I Can't. "Know". That.
And had I been throwing snowballs with someone I really loved, rather than knocking about with some people I might or might not fancy who might or might not fancy each other, I would have played from the off...

The attraction of Play for children is NOT in the pretending. It is in what the pretending allows the child to do. Think about it, you don't actually need to climb inside a cardboard box to pretend you're in a tank. You pretend to be in a tank simply because it GIVES YOU THE EXCUSE TO CLIMB INSIDE THE CARDBOARD BOX. That's what's fun, being in a box. Should a child pick up a book and pretend it's a bird. that is something different, that is a child playing with perception, but that type of play is actually much rarer. All my memories of play are very specifically of basking in the reality of my environment – that hill, those roots, that adventure playground - NOT of some Muppet Babies bluescreen fantasy sequence...

 

No, I think pretending gives us more than the "excuse". It gives us the "means" to be inside the box – "be" in its fullest sense, or at least evinced by the vividness of my memories of those spaces in which I pretended (as I wrote before). All that you write about here, all of it, is (of course?) what I first got an inkling of when watching Jeremy[ Hardingham]'s production of Lear fifteen years ago – the show that made me want to return to theatre, the show in which I saw that a "wooden performance" did not preclude great "acting" – to take your meaning – the show in which I actually saw Gloucester blinded. [He had cotton pads taped over his eyes.] Yes, that changed everything...
But it was still a production of "King Lear". In this case, like the act of pretending, putting on "King Lear", and having people say those lines, and play those parts was not, here, simply an excuse to do what that production did, it was very definitely the means... 

  

The aftermath of one of Jeremy Hardingham's later Lears, Berlin, 2011

Parenthetically, it's now obvious to me why we feel so differently about the Shunt Lounge. My day-job's right next door, so of course that whole place is very much more part of my real world. (Still, though, I'd argue there's nothing that goes on inside that can't be taken out. London's just full of spatial non-sequiturs. It's oddness to me is very much part of its thereness.) Ha ha! I just wrote "it's". Its 5 in the morning, Chris, deal with it...

I totally agree though, Tassos, that there's a useful absence of trust – that's a terrible way of putting it – a presence of the possibility of the confounding of perceived reality – clearer but shitter – that means an audience will not be watching what goes on in front of them the same way they'll watch events taking place over the road (the one crucial difference in perception? They are safe). I also, however, really do see the value in having props that are only what they are and scenery that is only what it is and no blackouts and no exit no mime and no hidden source of sound... and NO BLOODY BLOODY BLOODY STAGE-FIGHTS, say... and in creating a manifesto for a theatre in which this is a given. Even in such a theatre though, the question of what the performer is remains, unresolved into statement. In fact one of the values of this theatre may be that it asks the question far more clearly...

My placeholder then...
Pretend-play IS generative engagement.
Evidence: memories.

 

(Bonus Brothers Quay BBC2 ident)

What is privacy for?

(originally posted on myspace here)

It's an odd thing but sitting in a spotlight in the dark you're constantly glimpsing bits of your own face in the peripheries. This happened as I watched Mel perform Iris Brunette sitting beside us one by one, assigning characters and engaging us in coversation. I was there as a member of the audience but also (like quite a few others there) as somebody who knew her and somebody used to performing off the cuff, so when it came time for her to address me it was difficult to know quite how to play it: She was being brilliant, should I shut up? Was I having to pretend to be a member of the audience even though I was one? I watched silently for as long as was polite. Then I was asked my name, which I guess was a question anybody could answer, so I answered that. Then I was asked what made my heart race? I said "noise" which was dumb - I was very conscious of my heart racing right then in fact as both she and the spotlight stayed on me. But what I wish I'd said was "hiding."

And I think I got an idea of how to end "Iago's Little Book of Calm" (the radio adaptation of something sweary I wrote for the stage five years ago which ends with the central character noticing the audience, a much harder trick to pull off if they're not there). I think the solution might have something to do with talking to yourself. So thanks for that, Mel. Her shows often give me ideas, not directly as such, they're just good places to think.

The same can be true of Chris Goode's blogging. Laid up with this cold I finally got round to looking at his rehearsal diary for Hey Mathew this afternoon (upon which Jamie opposite is currently employed). It's an eloquent, passionate, generous and witty account of a type of rehearsal process I instinctively distrust (perhaps, as Chris suggests, because it's not a process of rehearsal towards a show as such but a process of investigation that should - and on this evidence, justifiably does - exist for its own sake). It was here I saw posted: "Can anyone help me out with thinking about this thing about stripping away the privacy from intimacy? And -- if you fancy it -- what exactly are you using your privacy to do?"... and I tried to post the following in response. The capchta was sletedso:

"Privacy is simply being granted control over the company you keep, isn't it? 'Let's go somewhere private' means 'Let's get rid of the unknowns.' A couple of years ago I was thinking a lot about hiding... about writing a children's book about a boy who loved playing games involving hiding, and then found out that being onstage felt entirely the same (dozens of copies where then made of him, all of whom ended up after an initial polite camaraderie keeping out of each other's way). So yes I was thinking about the joy of hiding (on one's own, rather than in a den, although THAT IS YES THE SAME) and about the stage as a counter-intuitively perfect hiding place. When I turned eight I would spend every school break walking up and down talking to myself, and this continued until I graduated. It was and is simultaneously a completely private yet public activity, and inasmuch as I am taking on different voices while talking to myself and, in a sense improvising dialogue, it is also a performance, even though it is not done for an audience, which is only something that's just occurred to me. I would say you hide on stage because you disappear, but this takes us down needlessly controversial, well-farrowed tracks about the nature of truth in performance, so won't. Maybe I made some notes I'll have a look no I can't find them. What do we use our privacy for? People affect each other - (actually I'd accidentally written "People effect each other" which is a bit more profound) - It is polite to refrain from effecting somebody without their consent. So privacy I think exists in case we're scary. Intimacy, on the other hand, requires company. A person can't be intimate on their own, can they? As an adjective "intimate" almost means "descriptive of an atmosphere requiring privacy" or something you wouldn't do in front of a third party. Except in the case of performance where it really just means somebody's doing their job. Maybe."

So yes I wrote that and then I went and saw Melanie's show. Mental, eh? And it's true about the school breaks. They used to call me "Walkie Talkie". Cough.

HATS, FACES, BRAINS AND BODIES - Day 2

 

 Last night, my assistants sent me drama students, philosophers, and sex therapists. None of them played the piano. All of the women wanted to try on my hat. Why? In films, Nazi Germany seems full of parties with women doing nothing but trying on soldiers' hats. Maybe that's why we wear them. Actually, I wasn't at my desk much, it gets hot under that bulb. I hung around the bar and the doorways to lecture halls, quiet and inherently objectionable. Somebody was presenting a pretty crappily-prepared argument with a lot of clips from youtube about the future of privacy ("Here is Tom Cruise's eyes, in the future, being scanned in GAP, and that is in the future, and will happen in ten... twenty years, yes") but his central idea – that most of us don't actually WANT privacy – I found pretty interesting, particularly as I've just left facebook.

 

 (Heather made these out of industrial concrete, using sex dolls as moulds. They've been removed now to make way for the People's Republic.) Quite early into this second evening of interviews, I realized I had to make more of an effort to curb my automatic impulse to GENUINELY engage with the interviewees. There has to be a distance. So I introduced a little monologue from a later draft from "Iago's Little Book of Calm" about confusing the need to weep with the need to pee – just threw it into the interview, like the kind of thing Derren Brown might hold your attention with while making you forget your own name. And two of the interviewees started weeping. Not sobbing, just weeping, and they smiled as they wept. But it wasn't really the pay-off I was looking for... I don't know what I'm looking for. I should probably read the KUBARK files for some tips, although I'm beginning to doubt their authenticity – Oh! By the way! Googling "kubark" and "hoax" (good Martian law firm: Googling, Kubark and Hoax) I found this: another crappily-assembled non-argument using a lot of clips from youtube, but stuffed with esoteric government goodies for those of you who like that sort of thing, particularly the CHARMING Russian cover of "Let It Be" at the end (the more astute might recognize the humming lady from Ken Campbell's "Brainspotting"):

 

 

 When I got home, there was was a late-night movie I hadn't heard of before, called "The Final Cut", in which Robin Williams in his underrated "wrong 'un" mode,  plays a futuristic funeral director charged with splicing together compilation reels of dead people's memories, using footage from the cameras implanted in their heads at birth by rich parents. It was good, and made me think some more. Then I bunged on Christopher Hampton's mainly not-good adaptation of "The Secret Agent", in which Robin Williams turns up again, uncredited, as a greyish, Victorian suicide bomber. He's the best thing in it, which is one of the reasons I want to see it remade (I'm also keen on the idea of steampunk brainwashing). Here's some more of Heather's concrete sex dolls, now destroyed:

Protect the Revolution! Try on My Hat!