Monday 16 February 2009

Let's Talk About The Story.

We are mesmerised by the story. I especially like my story. It's the best one of all! We are deeply involved in the fascination of being separate. There are so many expectations of what should happen. There is so much pain and resistance. It is particularly painful when others seem to reject us; there is such an echo of our own degraded sense of worth in that. If the story involves lots of grown-up striving for mental health, we're taught to love and accept ourselves with the unspoken deal that when we are emanating this energy of self-love, others will love us better. If all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players, my play involves a lot of rough handling by others, acceptance of them, coming to the point of realising that they are damaged and act out their sense of rejection by rejecting me, and finally forgiving them. My play has a lot of fear-driven self-protection, both in my behaviour and the behaviour of others. The second act has loads of self-enquiry and deep understanding of my character. The third begins with a lot of love for others, a lot of self-forgetting, a sense of not needing to be validated by those around me. Then the whole thing imploded. Instead of the big payoff of happiness and contentment, the protagonist died. That's me. I died. And the story was just a story, albeit one that still has great passion and intensity. The play is now about living, in free fall, not knowing, not making deals with life, just being. Pain is still painful; joy soars. But it's not going anywhere, there is no big climactic resolution. Anything might appear to happen at anytime. The story is just a parable, yet just as involving as ever. The story is it. This is it, and it's happening to no one. Happening as it must. The character is not understood, but lived. And although there is no agenda to sell this story, and simply being is impossible to describe, it is bigger and more profound than anything my character could imagine. It is without bounds, and not in time. It is.

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