The Practice

TexT Work:The Practice

Working Version March 2004

(click picture to the right for video)
Ae Ran / Ash Wednesday - T.S. Eliot

Alison / My Countrymen - Kahlil Gibran

Greg / The Age Demanded - Ezra Loomis Pound

Raymon / coordinator

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Play Act I

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Ae: (moan to clarity)
"Where is the enemy? We must kill
Him first!" (3X)

A: (vibration to voice)
What do you seek, My Countrymen?
Do you desire that I build for
You Gorgeous palaces, decorated
With words of empty meaning, or
Temples roofed with dreams? Or
Do you command me to destroy what
The liars and tyrants have built?
Shall I uproot with my fingers
What the hypocrites and the wicked
Have implanted? Speak your insane
Wish!Ae:
"In the depths
Of this valley our fathers lived,
And in its shadows they died, and in
Its caves they were buried. How can
We depart this place for one which
They failed to honor?"

A:
I have called you in the silence
Of the night to point out the
Glory of the moon and the dignity
Of the stars, but you startled
From your slumber and clutched
Your swords in fear, crying,

(silence)

Ae:
Lady of silences


(silence)

Ae:
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
Ae:
ACTION

A:
SONG

Ae:
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live?

A:
Your souls are freezing in the
Clutches of the priests and
Sorcerers, and your bodies
Tremble between the paws of the
Despots and the shedders of Blood,. . .



Ae:
And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:

A:
. . . and your country quakes
Under the marching feet of the
Conquering enemy;

Ae:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,



A:
what may you
Expect even though you stand
Proudly before the face of the
Sun? Your swords are sheathed
With rust, and your spears are
Broken, and your shields are
Laden with gaps;


Ae:
We shine with brightness.


A:
why, then, do
You stand in the field of battle?

Ae:
And I who am here . . .

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Play Act II

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Ae:
(vibration/chant inside the container)


G: (barely audible)
For this agility chance found
Him of all men, unfit
As the red-beaked steeds of
The Cytheræan for a chain bit

Ae:(laughter)

G:(stronger)
The glow of porcelain
Brought no reforming sense
To his perception
Of the social inconsequence.

Ae: (laughter)

G:(rising wrath)
Thus, if her colour
Came against his gaze,
Tempered as if
It were through a perfect glaze

Ae:
The Lady is withdrawn

G:
He made no immediate application

Ae:
In a white gown,

G:
Of this to relation of the state
To the individual, the month was more temperate


Ae:
to contemplation, in a white gown.


G:
Because this beauty had been.
The coral isle, the lion-coloured sand
Burst in upon the porcelain revery:

Ae:
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
G:
Impetuous troubling
Of his imagery.
Ae:
There is no life in them.
G:
Mildness, amid the neo-Nietzschaen . . .
Ae:(laughter)
As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose.
G:(barely audible)
clatter,His sense of graduations,
Quite out of place amid
Resistance to current exacerbations,

Ae:
And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.


Ae: (emerging from the container sniffing)
And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

(groping towards G - contact,a searching)
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject.
(a call for thunder)


A: (wild drumming)


G: (rising)
Invitation, mere invitation to perceptivity
Gradually led him to the isolation
Which these presents place
Under a more tolerant, perhaps, examination.
By constant elimination
The manifest universe
Yielded an armour
Against utter consternation,
A Minoan undulation,
Seen, we admit, amid ambrosial circumstances,
Strengthened him against
The discouraging doctrine of chances,
And his desire for survival,
Faint in the most strenuous moods,
Became an Olympian apathein
In the presence of selected perceptions

Ae:
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

G:
(leaves)

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PostScript

A word about the process.

Each participant chose a text which they learned to an automatic state. The text was used as a vehicle to research impulse, associations, source, energy, vibration, obstacle and as a study to fully engage the self in a living act. This TexTWork was a distinctive and personal work.


The Practice was an exploration of meetings. Individual TexTWork was placed into a shared context. Improvisations led to a fixed, repeatable structure. The Point of Concentration was the Text and the possibility to open to the partner.

"Artaud wanted to make a spoken language metaphysical by making it "express what it does not ordinarily express." If words are to be effective, they must be manipulated like solid objects by the muscles of the chest, throat and diaphragm to act upon each other and upon the spectator. Artaud intended to make use of the language of words: . . . in a new, exceptional, and unaccustomed fashion; to reveal its possibilities for producing physical shock; to divide and distribute it actively in space; to deal with intonations in an absolutely concrete manner, restoring their power to shatter as well as really to manifest something; . . . and finally, to consider language as the form of Incantation." (ANTONIN ARTAUD IN THEORY, PROCESS AND PRAXIS OR, FOR FUN AND PROPHET BY RICHARD LEE GAFFIELD-KNIGHT)

All documentation, pictures and video executed by Raymon Montalbetti