The 'Now' Between The Long And The Short

TERMIN-HAIR-TER

Hair: I grow.

Scalp: I itch.

Finger: I scratch.

Brain: I cut.

Scalp: I must say, this breeze is lovely.

Hair: I’m back.

Although I am not sure that I admire (I would use the words “really like”) Relient K as an artistic collective, I was very impressed by one of their songs when I was about seventeen years old. I remember listening to Death Bed while I did my homework and getting distracted because the song seemed never-ending. In addition to that, it progressed more as a story rather than going via the somewhat traditional route of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. There were discernible verses, but they kind of changed as the story required rather than maintaining a predictable progression. The song is ten minutes long; quite tame in comparison to John Cage's As Slow As Possible. It follows the story of a man who lives a long, tumultuous life and finally comes face to face with God. The song begins with the man on his deathbed, and re-visits his experiences from birth to current state of being in what I suppose can be called a series of flashbacks. Occasions to play this song out loud without explaining myself are far and few between, so I often listen to it alone with my headphones in. There is also an instrumental in the middle. Check it out;

On the other end of the spectrum, Relient K also has a song on the same album that is only ten seconds long. With the mind-boggling title Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care, this song is a masterpiece that encapsulates man’s eternal endeavor to make good use of his time. No, really. This brief track always stimulated a mixture of irritation, disgust, amusement and sheepishness in me when I took too many solitaire breaks. The singer is cheeky and chiding at the same time, and his self-awareness often reminded me of my own brief existence;

Death Bed and Crayons Can Melt On Us For All I Care can both be defined as songs, if the definition is as follows;

“A short poem or other set of words set to music or meant to be sung.”

They both have a journey, travelling from a clear beginning, through a contestable middle to a clear end. They also both have some kind of message and/or purpose imbued in their lyrics, which they communicate to their listener. This got me wondering about the relationship between the length of a song and its message. Not all songs have a message, but I think it is safe to say that every song is about something, and this something that compelled the song’s creator(s) to write it inevitably comes through. The same can be said for a theatrical production. It should be said however, that most theatre does not have the 4-minute luxury possessed by most songs of the current era. Productions have to walk the fine line between being too short that audiences don’t get their money’s worth, and being too long that audiences would pay double to exit without causing a disturbance. Theatre needs to create a bubble of time that is heavy enough to rest unobtrusively on the audience’s conscious, but also light enough that the conscious is not aware that it is there. It needs to occupy that space between middle and end with an artistry of presence. A “here but not here” quality.

In her fantastic article, Aleksandra recalls the words of St. Augustine, mentioning that “…time has no being, since the future is not yet, the past is gone, and the present does not linger…”

This quotation applies to real life just as equally, if not more importantly than it applies to theatre. It moves me to think of the many ways in which mankind strives to stretch out the seconds that slip through the sieve of his control. Mike’s prompt makes some great observations about the ways in which we manipulate time in the hallowed halls of play and playmaking. He speaks about the ways in which we work on “…tightening a moment here, adding breath and space to a moment there, honoring a beat, a pause, a silence…” in order to create a performance worth remembering. It is almost as though the theatre creates a hyper-awareness of time in the worlds we create, ensuring that we plan each moment down to the second – leaving room for  organic discoveries of course. And yet, in the theatre, as in real life, Aleksandra’s article highlights the fact that Father Time plods onwards without rest. Looking neither to the right nor to the left, he strides forward with purpose and determination towards an undeterminable end.

While we may not know the final destination of Father Time however, we do know the destination of our theatrical compositions. And even if we don’t really ‘know’ what is going to happen (as can be the case with improvisation or performance art), we do know that at some point we will pack up our gear and head home to our comfortably dormant residences. I cannot count how many times I have heard myself and those around me sigh and say “I can’t wait for this thing to be over” during the run of a play. Very often in between scenes or during intermissions, cellphones, water bottles, pens, makeup brushes, lozenges and a volley of other materials will emerge, that have absolutely nothing to do with the sacred time bubble that has been months, if not years in the making. The actor’s ‘real life’ spills over into the bubble’s surrounding and changes the temperature, wreaking unknown havoc inside the world that has been delicately set in motion. The actor is like an athlete, running a race in intervals and stopping for a break to rejuvenate her body to cope with the demands of containing Father Time – or at restraining him for a short while. But at the end of the day, the actor goes home to her own bubble and rests in its safety until she needs to return and exist in the fiction of an eternal ‘present’.

But what about the people who go home? Aleksandra touches on the subject of memory, and how one of the many goals of Theatre is to leave a lasting impression. I came across a helpful video that outlines the scientific details of memory;

How Memories Form and How We Lose Them – Catherine Young

In a nutshell; with the aid of good food and regular exercise, we remember what is meaningful to us, until age renders our memories incapable. As we go through life, we only retain that which really matters to us, and everything else is lost forever in an inaccessible bank somewhere in our heads. Jim Croce’s Time In a Bottle speaks about the melancholy dance we all take part in with the mortal, the eternal and the meaningful:

Time in A Bottle – Jim Croce

“If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I'd like to do

Is to save every day

'Til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you”

The question then becomes: how does theatre become meaningful enough for its audience to remember? How can a bubble of time win a spot of eternity in the finite memory of the masses? The honest answer is that I do not know. What I do know however, is that theatre needs to matter to its own. Instead of seeking preservation in the minds of people to whom we very likely do not matter, we as the collective body of the theatre need to buy into our product so completely that our entire effort is directed to preserving the bubble. We are the walking encyclopedia of our product and it will never be more firmly preserved anywhere else than in our own memories. Of course, theatre is made to be shared, and rightfully so! However, whether or not it ‘sticks’ or ‘makes an impression’ or ‘lives on’ should be left entirely to the people. As we find meaning in our craft, we may be assured that they will find meaning in us.

All we have is air

Intangible and weightless

Living inside

And outside

Our souls and bodies

Simultaneously

Insubstantially

Eternally

We are

What we

Can never have.

BONUS:  

For your viewing pleasure, here are 10 hours of The Song That Doesn't End. (Or Does It?)

SOURCES:

Song Definition