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Mythos of a non-Equilateral Sound

 

A play

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Act I. Scene I. In Which I’m Getting a Masters in Pathetics

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Nighttime. Sounds of insects. Stressful soundscape begins. Stage has a small table, chair, and guitar on a stand.

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Enter Roland. Concentration elsewhere. With a steady pace he stops center. He moves four steps audience left and looks up to the gods and squints. He turns audience right and walks towards edge of stage stumbling as if he is about to be blown over by the wind.

 

Roland.
[Aside] (He looks offstage hand cupping ear) So--annoying.

Walks over to guitar, examines and picks it up. Puts on guitar strap. Takes a second to get his hands in position on the fretboard and finally strums a bad sounding chord.

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[Aloud] God, I can’t remember a single song. I used to play all the time. This is so embarrassing. Wait, wait. I have some recordings, I know I do somewhere (pats his pockets), I know it’s not the same but it’s proof that I was good.

[Fumbles for his phone and scrolls]
“Pathetic Apology #1”? Roland shakes his head. “Lost ‘the One’” December 10am? No, no.
“Rant About Why We Should Get Back Together”

I thought I had recorded more music on here. [short pause] Ah what’s this? [Plays from Phone sets phone on the little table]

 

Phone.
I know you're probably thinking: “I just want to get out of here, who is this loser?”

 

Roland.
Shakes head surprised.

Ah stop it.

Presses finger on the phone but it keeps playing.

 

Phone.
You are absolutely right. Who am I? No one.

 

Roland.
What I really wanted to say by coming here is
I'm sorry things didn't turn out the way that either of us were hoping—

 

Phone.
But I want to continue this relationship.

 

Roland.

Listens but tries to press stop.

 

Phone.
I feel like there's something to be explored here—there's something deeper. But the more I think about it the more it drives me insane and and I don't know if you feel the same way or if you're willing to give this a shot.

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Roland gives up trying to stop it and listens making faces after sentences.

I know I haven't been present physically or emotionally (Roland strums an ugly chord on the guitar). I haven't always been there for you. But I wanna be a better person and I want to share at least a little more our stories together and just see where this goes. Again, I mean I—I completely understand you think I'm a jerk and that we should just give this up, but there's something magic here, there's some kind of untraveled map.

 

Roland.

Ah yes.
[paces around and points to spots on the floor] (sarcastically) You see into my soul like a crystal ball, [still pointing to an imaginary map]

 

I wanna go here, and here, and here—oh there is not so good.

(Strums another ugly chord and little solo)

 

Phone.
I feel the intelligence of your eyes scanning, on me, and you read both our desires and somehow that is when I fall in love. And I’ve been sort of aloof of course but just please please just take some time, I think we both need our space, and I would love to reconvene at some point.

Take care ok. Thank you for listening. I'd say I'll call you, but I don't know if you would want that, so I guess I'll just say see you later.
[presses a button and it finally stops]
 

Roland.

Well, that was terrible. [Lights dim to dark]

 

Act I. Scene II.
[Multi-colored disco lights. Psychedelic dancey music begins.] Bar. Voices.
[Music slows down]

 

Roland. (Holding newspaper)
Barthes says this: in the absence of a lover, the other person is in a state of perpetual departing, of travel; they are by vocation migratory, fugitive, and me, me who loves, is by vocation the inverse: sedentary, motionless, at hand, nailed to the spot—in suspense. Like a package in some forgotten corner of a train station.

Barthes gave an interview in 1978 in his tweed jacket about Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. He says it reads like a dictionary but not a dictionary of meaning, more like a dictionary of sentiment. Under absence it says:

“Amorous absence functions in a single direction, expressed by the one who stays — and never by the one who leaves: an always present I is only constituted in front of you, who is ceaselessly absent. To speak this absence is from the start to propose that the subject’s place and the other’s place cannot permute; that is to say: "I am loved less than I love" (Barthes 13).

 

Act I. Scene III.
[In a little TV, a clip of Roland Barthes interview plays]

https://youtu.be/ypLMHCFWZDM?t=263

 

[aside] What could I contribute to a dictionary on L’amour Passion? I am a writer. I’ve loved. Why do all my ideas seem to go all over the place? I start a project, then let it grow and fizzle out just before it gets good. Just before it gets good. [maybe goes into a cheesy musical number “Just before it Gets Good” *snaps fingers*]

[Looking at a sheet of paper] These phrases Barthes chose are all cliché: Je t’aime. Ah Oui.

Je t’aime mon amour!

Then there’s:
The body of the other.

Je suis fou. I’m crazy. La Catastrophe.

And Waiting.

What am I waiting for? Love too I guess. But do I agree that Je t’aime is a cliché?

Is it a declaration of love, or a cultural response based on narratives we were trained to embody or reenact?

What else can we say instead, if we truly are in fact “in love?”

 

How can we not perpetually disappoint each other?

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Is love like a wrestling match or a judo match? Obvious signs of suffering and theatrics and excess, or a series of hidden subconscious messages and subversions?

[aside]

“I only seem pinned down but wait until you see this move!”
Which one is truer? After all we are only humans trying to figure this stuff out.

We should have had this conversation.

[Video clip of an old Parisian style wrestling match on TV]
[Takes a sip of wine (milk).]
Looks at wine glass and swirls the wine/milk. Observes how his face is changing in the glass. The lighting saturates and maybe MIDI music appears softly.

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Why do we have to be this character on prime time? I can just watch from the crowd. But then I’ll feel like I’m not really living it. So is being in the ring inevitable, do you have to play the game to be happy?

Love is a filter. [Puts on tinted sunglasses]

Therefore, an ideology? La vie en verte.
Yes, I’ll have another, thank you Rose. [looks at imaginary bartender.] [Lights dim. Music gets louder and more dream like.]

[End of Act 1]