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The
situation
is dramatic.
I don't know how to write dramas and I have to write one, because just a drama has come to my mind. It is to be quite normal drama, just a play, maybe a very tragic comedy, with actors having their parts, with dramatis personae. Well, with everything that is necessary to let drama be a drama. Luckily this drama is not intended for a stage for a typical, normal, classical theatre stage with a curtain and wings, with cardboard or paper props. Everything shall be taking place in natural surroundings. Yes, I know, I won't let stage designers earn money, nor any staff. Yes, I know. Nor I will employ any composers - I presume the presence of only natural, ordinary sounds which will appear as a result of natural sequence of events, never predicted, never planned, maybe only provoked the same way as we produce various noises walking. Sound engineers won't earn money, either, although this is not sure: it may happen somebody brings a personal sound system to shout down the others; however this can not be anticipated in the very beginning. Nor in the middle. Nor in the end. So, it looks like the writer will not earn money, either, for his role is to provoke, to cue, to throw a stone that will cause an avalanche. Probably the actors will not earn, either, because they will not be necessary nobody will pretend, nobody will act, nobody will disguise, all participants will be themselves and they will not even know they take part in a drama, although the events can be really very dramatic. The drama of writing a drama is not a point here, since it is nothing compared with the real ongoing drama... |
However, the situation is less dramatic than it was a few days ago. Although it only seems so. It's just a special effect. It was snowing a little and now it's white all around. Just a little white. Because when it is neither green, nor gold, nor white here, it's dirty and hideous. Hideousness rules, hideousness is the king. And a concrete fence is the emperor... This doesn't mean my drama will take place just then, when it is neither green, nor gold, nor white, when it is cold, wet, foggy and filthy. It should be a warm, long, bright day. It could be an evening as well, a long summer evening not willingly transforming into a night. In fact, it could be also a night. Well, any part of a day will suit. This drama will be lasting quite long, maybe even many days and many nights. So a part of a day is not important. The temperature is important - I don't like to freeze. Probably nobody likes trembling and teeth chattering. I think cold is not so good for intriguing intrigues don't feel fine when it's cold, they stiffen too much and don't tangle enough. But maybe I'm wrong. Doesn't matter... And if the time is not important, so is the place. Unless there's a concrete fence. The pattern of the fence is not important, either. Each one will suit, because each one is devastating. Although more devastating would be a concrete fence painted with vivid, bright, almost phosphorescent colours: green-red-white-blue (the names can be troublesome it is clear that tones and shades decide whether this or that combination is admirable and delighting or hideous and disgusting well, there's no need to complain, nor to make any attempts to define the colours according to the Pantone scale we have to trust the ubiquitous lack of taste) or just brown-white. Oh, we shouldn't be so picky. The action will go from place to place and each act can be played at different fence. The choice seems limitless. (Luckily it only seems so the imagination is limited not only by the limited imagination of the audience). Is there really a need to move all the time all around? But staying fixed in one place like a fence picket (the metaphor valid only when referring to a wooden paling fence it doesn't work in the case of concrete fence doesn't matter how precisely and virtuoso it will imitate the wooden pickets) is not a good idea, too... |
ACT
will
acts-and-scenes system
be
justified
in this very case?
the
props
will
not be changed, unless
they are destroyed what would be with no
doubt
a part of the drama the supposed change would be
rather the
result of moving the entire action to another place,
smooth and
continuous moving and not just skipping and how about
the scenes?
all the time somebody will come and go, so the scenes
will get mixed
and messed up, will overlap each other, collide, and do
we really
need additional chaos? and all these
coming-in-and-going-out would
happen without any control, just any time, when somebody
would only
like and such any-timeness would be strictly limited by
the
absolutely unpredictable plot... It is warm and mild. As it is often said: nothing indicates a storm gusts of wind, dark blue heavy clouds, throbbing thunders, lightnings tearing the sky into pieces, splashing rain, these are the things that surely will not come to one's head right now. Only a little bit of sultriness may threaten, or makes somebody slightly anxious. Probably only those who suffer some problems with their hearts or blood pressure may feel this sultriness, the other ones won't notice it. In front of a concrete fence, which is averagely hideous and this averageness makes its hideousness invisible, and due to this more dangerous for the poor remnants of aesthetic sensitivity hidden somewhere in the corners of average minds, people begin to gather. It's hard to say whether they are actors or audience. I'm afraid it will not be clear till the very end. In fact it is not clear since the very beginning an actor is also a spectator, you can't deny that an actor also watches the performance he takes part in; while a spectator is, to some extent, an actor here, we can say, to very large extent. |
It is also
not
clear
what
time
the drama will begin.
It means: if
somebody comes in this very moment, then the drama will
begin, for
him or her, just in that very moment; if somebody comes
two hours
later, the show will begin just then; and if somebody
comes next day,
the show will start next day, provided that it is not
finished
already, what is very difficult to predict; right now, at
the
beginning of my work, the ending time it much less clear
than the
beginning time. With no doubt the drama will be quite
long, although
I can not exclude a very violent, abrupt, almost or
literally
explosive ending, or end explosion. People gathering at the fence belong to the Wooden Fence Lovers Association. At first nobody can guess it because the woofeloes do not differ at all from the members of many other associations and societies. But maybe they differ somehow from those belonging to the Concrete Fence Lovers Association (nothing is known whether they founded any association maybe they will do it very soon). The cofeloes shouldn't be mistaken with cofepoes (or the possessors of concrete fences) who shouldn't be identified as cofeproes (or the producers of concrete fences), although it can happen that somebody is both, a possessor is a producer or vice versa. All combinations are acceptable. Even the most extreme combinations should be thought about; what seems for us extreme and absolutely impossible, is something normal, ordinary and not surprising for life. |
What's-going-on-here-
-what-are-they-standing-for kind of
situation, or
chaotic swarming
slowly begins to reveal its reasons.
Statements
having the power of slogans emerge from the cacophony of
conversations. They are louder and louder, turn into
shouts and
shrieks. Some vowels are pronounced long enough to
transform
themselves into howling, though this wailing and moaning
are not yet
full of aggression and rage, are empty of demolishing
despair. It may
happen that above their heads, or on the fence, a banner
will be
spread: OFF WITH CONCRETE FENCES! or something more harsh:
HIDEOUS
CONCRETE FENCES FUCK OFF! Alas, the letters are as
hideous as
concrete fences, but nobody seems to notice that. Maybe
somebody will
make the most of it. There are more and more individual
speeches and
utterances. People call for something. To destroy and
knock down
something. To replace something with something else. To
build and
construct this instead of that. Speeches similar to
lectures can be
heard, too, however it's not easy open space is not a
soundbox, a
resonating chamber, same as the university auditorium. And
the
argumentation and reasoning quite poor and not convincing.
Why a
wooden fence with cripple pickets and warped boards is to
be fine or
even beautiful, while a concrete plate, a few centimetres
thick,
having quite precise details, pretending both a solid,
strong, thick,
rustic wall made of broken stones and round, bulbous
balusters with
waspy waists, is to be hideous? That's the point, that's
how it is:
obvious things are the most difficult to be explained...
And why this
should be so obvious? At first it should be explained what
beauty and
hideousness are. And maybe there will be enough time to do
so. It has
just turned out, there's but silence on the other side of
the fence.
No symptoms of life. No swarming. Nothing. No dog barking.
No cat
miaowing. No mouse squeaking. No birds chirping. A
horrifying
silence. Makes you feel ill at ease. Shiver.
Uncomfortable. What can
be done? Has talking in vain any sense? In front of the
speaker there
are people who heard many times what he or she is going to
tell, and
this one time more can be a spark causing explosion and
they will
rush frantically and demolish wooden fences making huge
stake of
broken boards to burn themselves down suicidally unable to
accept the
victory of concrete imitations.... |
And then,
quite
surprisingly,
out
from
there, from beyond the hill
or
from beyond the corner, it depends on the shape of the
road or the
street, a big lump, a giant clod of mud on wheels, almost
a
monster-mud-truck emerges. It moves slowly and silently,
though it
could go fast and roaringly, as if afraid of getting
cracked and
breaking into pieces, turning into dust. It stops with
hesitation
keeping the distance that can be defined as safe, or
disabling the
crowd to attack it directly. A moment of suspension. Of
both tension
and flat-tyreness. Dread and relief. Suddenly the lump of
mud cracks.
The owner of the concrete fence jumps out of it. He
himself is also
dirty and covered with mud. With a help from a few friends
(nothing
is know what kind of fences they possess, if any they
are also
covered with mud what indicates they have taken part in an
expedition
together) he takes the gate by storm. Now he is on the
other side.
The surprised and offended crowd is swaying. But the crowd
is also a
little delighted, although not that much as the owner of
the estate
under siege. He is a great lover, an real enthusiast of
laying siege
to old castles the crowd knows nothing about it, the
crowd
doesn't know either that the fence so much desired to be
knocked down
is a result of great compromise: his wife is a supporter
of
chain-link fences (we will not tell you why, you don't
have to put
your nose into somebody's business) while her husband
imagined around
the house, already possessing two fat, stocky defensive
towers, a
powerful, thick, stone wall with merlons, crenels,
machicolations,
buttresses, parapets and whatever, maybe also some
ramparts and at
least a kind of moat (he is the vice-president of the
Fortification
Lovers Association so he's a folovass) finally they
agreed to
put concrete panels pretending a rustic wall at the bottom
and a
chain-link, or rather treillage, trellis, kind of
latticework
considering the thickness of wires, at the top. Now he's
had a
unique chance to transform, at least in his imagination,
this rickety
fence into a powerful fortification maybe even to blow
it up
later as a frenetic act of heroic defence, thus proving
its weakness
and uselessness, as well as the necessity to build real
fortification. |
is speeding up. Events are galloping. Atrocities keep multiplying. Boiling water and hot tar are being poured on the yelling crowd. Arrows are raining. Lectures, warnings, appeals, analyses disappear in increasing tumult. Look, reinforcements are coming! Is it true? That's a kind of levy in mass of the Concrete Fence Producers Association. They are followed by the regular army of the cement producers supported by stone miners, bulldozer and excavator operators. Who are followed by the producers of these excavators, by the engineers and designers, by those who feed and dress and cure them, and so on and on, up to the horizon... While from the other side the brigades and platoons of carpenters, joiners, woodcutters, lumberjacks followed by the divisions and corps of the producers of axes, saws, hammers, nails and pliers... And so on and on up to the horizon... I will not tell you what kind of arguments they are armed with, not to get your cheeks too pale and your blood too dense threatening with various strokes and vein destructions. But when seventeen quarrel, an eighteenth wins. Quite unexpectedly a group of chain-link supporters appear on the stage (guess whose doing this might be?). They are shouting that their fences are the best because almost invisible, covering nothing. But nobody listen to them, even they don't listen and hear themselves. They (who are they?) push aside, knock down and trample the supporters of the compromise who keep trying to convince that a fence can be combination of concrete, wooden and metal elements. They are shouted down by not so numerous yet very loud supporters of living fences who are supported by nobody knows who. With no doubt not by the green the ecologists toss and turn trying to judge what is more harmful: cutting trees for pickets, grinding hills for cement, tearing away from the earth iron ores or making embankments that transform entirely the landscape... And so on and on. Up to the collision of civilisations. Up to the war of galaxies. Up to the cosmic catastrophe what had happened on the fields of Kurukshetra would be but an after match riots comparing to it. And if it was described properly and precisely, then great Vyasa would blush with shame. <<<< |