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Napes Needle
Napes Needle
-silence
J;Has anyone seen the needle?.
E:-It broke.
J: What!
E: Yeh, that bloke Billy was with last night was usin' it an' well....
J: You don't say. Where is it? Where's it gone?
E; Threw it.
J: Where?
E; Bin. Outside.
J-rushes for the door. Emma blocks his way.
E: You can't. Too dangerous. That Billy's friend, he's got aids.
J: Need it. Stuff you. (rushes out) E follows
Voices heard
E;Pack it in J. I told you. It's too dangerous.
J;I'll wash it. Soap. Water.. I need it.
E: No.You can't.
(Rummaging is heard as J roots through the bin, emptying its contents onto
the floor)
J; Need it. There it is.(He grabs it. Rushes back into the kitchen. Runs it
under the tap.)
Be alright now. Just get it clean first. Then away, hay, hay!
E: You know what? You're fuckin'mad you are.
J: Fuck you , love. This is whey hay, hay and do I care.
E; Jesus.
J:
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuck
slumps back in chair
motionless
E Oh, There you are. 'n' where 've you two luvvy doves been 'idin'?Idlin'
while we 've been out slavin'? A right state y'er in too.
Act 2
C: Listen to the voice within, confess. Today these words seem full, of
emptiness. Who cares today for spiritual growth. Prayer has withered,
cynicism spread, belief, indeed, fled. With the withering, creativity's dead,
consumers consume what they are fed. Pre-digested, prepacked, self-
contained, commercialisation maintains consumers enslaved to the
machine which they made. Indebted, productivity must be raised. Social
costs are not counted though weighty they be. Individualism has its rôle to
play. Ego's desires know no bounds.Ever-more, faster goes the rounds.
Pollution, the environment, climate change, toxic waste, the list is endless
as is the pace of change, ever accelerating, soon space to invade. The
machine outweighs the silence within.Empty as the tomb, an echo of sin.
Culture has become a product to sell. Best-sellers, top ten, Cannes. A
recipe fits-add the ingredients, wait for the hits.
Once under assault, bombarded, blitzed, the left-hand side of the brain has
surrended, atropiphied, withered and finally died.
Authority once held in high-esteem has been plundered and is hardly seen.
Contracts are negotiated between pairs where once obediance was
heard.Blind-faith, exploitation, misery too, but dignity, respect Man knew.
Savage barbarians now prevail. The concrete jungle and all it entails.
Drugs, prostitution, crime. A civilised society in decline!Egalitarian ideals
may be fine, but where is the work ethic which allows them to shine?
As prayer has perished the gods have fled. Man has been reduced to man,
humility humbled. Fear of the morrow, Nature's grasp is unknown in a
factory plant where machines dictate the optimal performance to date.
The consumer is king.The gods, once enslaved to man, have gone. For
gods could be supplicated, called, appeased. Mortals knew how to handle
them with prayer and gifts, seeking to please. Dependent on friends,
friendship taught bonding thought.Ideas were shared, energies spared.
J: Foget the instant, time is a flow, the instant, time does not know.
The flow is continuous, time never stops. Be alert and attentive, take a turn
on the watch. Attend, wait. Consequences will be forthcoming; open the
gate. To circumnavigate the world, a baton take. Observe its shadow turn
with the world, never stopping an instant, like the flight of a bird!Pause a
while, wait, observe time flee through the gate!There's no sign except
memories, to witness the passing of time! Seasons come and go and to
each a time to know. Linear, circular, how can time be defined, when when
we search, time we can't find, for its gone, in the wink of an eye, passed
by. Attend its passing, be it not too late!
C; Wait?
J; Of the fairer sex must we consider? What has't become of them, why are
they not here, with us to celebrate, to cheer, the victory of what we hold
dear?
C; Dear?
J: To the heart. Survival determines the strategy from the start. Long-term
aims, goals, carved in silence, in stone or sand, it matters not by whose
hand the words were writ, for in the awakening lies the script. Do thy bit.
Follow the stars. Awareness resides 'twixt Venus and Mars.
C; The girls? Which star did they fix? Which side of the brain dicatates
their tricks?
J; Why?
C; Such questions considered reveal as much as the quest. Be merry, jest.
J; Sub-merged, lost, lacking light, trapped in a world where there is no
escape other than seeling one's flesh. Butchered, can one be less than a
beast, unaware, of the pain of not being born where money flowed in a
vein untapped, where love glowed warm with the sun, warming the
meadow with the silence unsung, time yet to travel a distance unknown,
words yet to be sewn in the soil from which roots spring, searching
sustenance, the yang and the ying.
C; The choice is made.It doesn't matter. The table is laid, carts dealt.
Waiting to be played. Where are the actors who the show made?
Where are the props, the costumes, the rôles, the words, in short, the
public. For without spectators what weight is the word, be it spoken in
silence yet go unheard? For actors themselves the audience perceive.The
fee paying public they know they must please to sleep sound. The despotic
power flows round.
E ; Costumes we have beyond recognition. Let the fee paying public cheer
in admiration. We have strolled the streets. Destinies multiple need we
meet. Survival requires escape into the netherworld where we do what we
hate. Elsewhere we exist.Men take the pleasure, can we resist, when
enslaved to the machine which devours, consumes, engraves?Soldier on
we must, in the imaginary quest where lust enthralls, love stalls.
G :Bringing up the rear. Some choice! Hark? Heed? I hear no voice other
than lust, crying for more in the dust. Pity. Is there room for the meek in a
world where power is what all seek? Domination? Silence be damned!
Ever more vanity with which the world will be crammed to explode, burst,
as all desire to come first. Number One! Egos an' all.
J; The needles?
C; Nape's needle awaits to be climbed, in the Alps they are to the forefront
of the mind. Elsewhere, doubtless, they are not inclined to thrust their
challenge to man's lust for adventure, desire to climb higher than the spire
which waits, the wind turning, the shadows to abate.
J; Yet in the climbing, the challenge doth stretch. In the learning,
knowledge be fetched from the well within. Hark. Heed that tinkling!
Of what doth it tell? Ask not for whom the bell tolls. The puzzle is a jig-
saw which time juxtaposed!
C; Waiting by a well did a man request that water be drawn to quench his
thirst. A woman replied, with an intuitopn of the universe in the smile in
her eyes she divined.
J: Divined?
C: That the water was clear. The truth in the tinkling that she could hear.
For the silence foretold, past, present and future turning on old hinges
which squeaked, wept, for time in the silence crept, stole a march, was
gone. Change ever constant flow on!
J; Feel the energy flow. In touch with the source, let go. With the current
become one. Lost in the movement, flow on.
C: Taste the water so pure which flows from the well, as pure as the sound
of a ringing bell. Make a wish. For the water so pure encapsulates bliss.
Cleansing, refreshing slaking one's thirst. Blessèd be the water which
flows to the sea. Without water what would become of humanity?
J; Without wisdom,without prayer, oh ye gods, show me the stairs!
A lady...by a brook, by a tree, climbing a stairway to heaven ...Oh, it
makes me wonder....
C; Stevie Wonder,
J ; What strength is contained in sea shanties sung by the enslaved?
Escape! In dreams fligh. High.
E; Hi. (enters)We were waiting but you guys never showed. What kept
you? What load?
J The road was both winding and long. Shortened it was by our singing
along. Together making light. A lamp in the night shines forth. Saving
from stumbling one knows what it's worth!
E:A light in the window may shine, a symbol of the bicameral mind?
Escaping reality in the realm of dream flee those who society were rather
not seen. The excluded, the poor, the dispossessed, those forced to work
the street, the meek, beggars, thieves, the deformed. See how Christ
welcomes them all with open arms. All embracing, towards each facing,
through time which flows with the water from the well that women know,
in close contact with the universe, through giving rise to life in childbirth,
nourishing seedlings from the earth.
G: Artists who in their work create, in their creations escape.wandering
through the labyrinth of the meandering mind, amazed at the wisdom of
the blind. Gifted with insight, extra-ordinary perception, amazed at the
beauty of the universe's reflection, man's power, desire, self-destruction.
For whom the bell tolls, whose hour hath come, let the will of the world be
done.
E: The world?
G; The word. All those with a voice to voice.
E: The silent majority sleeps. Those who revendicate, speak.Throw stones.
Break bones.
G: Bones break. To ashes, dust, through hate.Cast not pearls before swine.
The future cometh, what will it bring? None know, yet sing!
E; Consider the future, consider her ways.Consider the nest which a couple
of birds build to raise their young. Soon the nest is empty, the offspring
sprung, released by the power of flight, the future to meet on the wing!
Yet whilst in the air do they sing!
G: Then praise the power of love, and sing! For songs of praise the spirit
raise. Tears flow.Emotions welled up within spill out in song.As life flows
then sing along!
E: Sing, muses, sing. For your songs make, me, not I them.
Composition trains the mind to speak the words which otherwise it would
not seek. Re-collecting, re-arranging thoughts in a search for clues to the
process which brought one hear, listening to the voice in one's mind dicate
the words flowing onto the screen in haste lest they disappear from the
brain, yet which sphere, or orb, they spring from is vague, endowed with
music they sing as they praise.
Yet without song what could one express?
Emotion, tenderness comes from the heart
May it be plucked by the Muses' art
that we cry, tears welling up, as the song floats by?
Scenes and songs memory doth store
How can one forget those first hits,
at the time of first love and first kiss
when the teens tore, wrenching the self to the fore?
Oh how songs make us to what we are,
Our attitude shape,
allowing in words feelings to escape
free the mind from the drudgery of the bind
in which one waits, a prisoner within one's own gates
by the well from which wisdom flows
be it sourced, sought in song
Drink from the creative act. Sing along!
Divine words heaven sent in rhyme
in music and melody sublime
freeing the heart so one feels fine
catching the rythm, stepping in time
to the tune which dictates
the flow of the words one awaits
to discover the path which they weave
through the consciousness in which we live
bubbling up voices sing
as we follow in vain the ring
in the song which erupts
like a volcano, from the depths of us
the guts which give birth
to the gods which walk on earth
in dreams, hallucinated
through the means which create
the creator who doth undertake
the journey to capture
the Muses who free themselves through rapture
as we listen entranced whilst we dance
they escape, we wait
the sound of the lyre
waxing lyrical in words which we won't tire
to sing, in hymn, we praise
psalms raise words of wisdom which guide
freeing those who Egypt fled
across the desert and sea which is red
in the words inscribed
in the heart, which the Muses inspired
making a people, a culture which spread
in the mingling music which fed
the imagination and flew
into the future anew.
C/ Hark the songs which Ginsberg, sings, note the notes on muses' wings
which soar in praise, note psalm 1 in which he says « But tlury nnoe
of teshe is aouccblatne for the mitsejac fwlas of mnid whcih hvae lfet my
biarn oepn to hoitnaicualln. »
G: One imagines constants - Change takes place – Death approaches –
Creates space- A void- Devoid of meaning, metaphors-yet Man(thought)
exists inside the word. Makaks dream, to them the world is as it doth
seem-they can articulate-emotions, fear, joy- yet there is no 'I' to reflect an
eye, nor aye!
E: In a coma, unconscious, where is the Man who once thought, spoke in a
language now forgot? Which side of the brain has declined to express what
there is not?
G; No thought? Slumbering, aye, whilst the brain restores the all seeing
eye which roves, rewiring the network that nature grows. Tissues restored,
awareness returns, expressionless a desire to communicate burns in the
embers of the soul.
E: The sole? Oh Ka! Perhaps it's in the double where we are! Potter's
wheel molded by Mother Nature, the Maker, turned on the disc, rotated in
time, from clay borne mist, life infused, with love igniting the fuse, from
which passions spring forth, regenerating that first birth, burst of energy
which all share, though it can not be seen, it floats through the air, on
wings, dove-like,angelic, and sings in the flowers of spring, the bursting
buds of May, the running brook, the smell of hay, a ship's horn in the fog,
an entry in the Captain's log.
C: For logging one's thoughts as they spring to be keyed feeds a must
which we need to forge an identity, an idea, in a word struck nowhere, for
the poet's last exists in thin-air long-gone, flown the coop, for words are
like swallows migrating in loops, looping the loop, beginning again the
end in the wake for the ladder follows the snake in the rise and the fall,
love, riding waves of emotion, all.
E;See the sea.Gulls on the shore. Hear them communicate, What for?
C; Survive! Only the fittest are fit to ride, surf the waves which wash, on
the shore of the present foam flecked tide.
E; Yet the lame see! Unburdening the hunch-back sings his ballad in song,
the burden has gone, in his eye he is strong, for his aye doth go on and his
'I' doth belong, thus he sees, creates anew through the thong which singing
along be transformed by the song, hallucinating, and is gone.
G: Water evaporates. Substance transformed. Recreates equilibrium. All
returns from whence it came. The spirit sings, the songs the same, with
different keys, words, rhymes and rythms. For the metaphor exists where
consciousness subsists.
J:Within Man's bicameral mind. Let imagination find outlet, escape, in the
desire of Man to create.
E: Coupling is required, mate.
C: Check-mate? A mast? A tunnel past?
Moving pieces on life's chess board, playing against one's self moves
memory stored which shapes the future moves one makes for one has
learnt indeed from the errors one made. Word-forged!The maker makes,
creation creates!
J; Hark the silent picture hanging in the void!
C; Picture imagined in childhood, seen before being understood,
unquestioned. Blind faith requisitioned in the construction of the 'I'.
J:Zeus, Bon Dieu!Sacré Bleu! Hercule. Récule mon vieux, récule!
Vers où tu menes cette barque, philommène?
C Ya. Si, Damn Oui! Noona!
J; c'est du patoi,ça!
C, The language of the land which raised the words on which we graze.
Language feeds ideas we need to grow, sew. In the mind's eye grow.
Cultivation is an art. Cultures don't grow in the dark. Conditions need be
met. The desire to communicate, the appetite wet.
Jwhet? The mind sharp, for word play, sword like, in the dark, with but
ideas to illuminate, indicate the moves we make?
C: See the whetstone made of grit. Take your sword and sharpen it! For in
the debate's cut and thrust, feel the spinning power of love.
E; The yang and the ying are enclosed within!
C: Let duality clash! Pick up the pieces from the mess.Re-arrange the
letters of the alphabet and wrdos yulol otbian.
J;Oh how mysterious is the brain! By Jove we have yet to hear it's last
word!c; Sing on in song, Venus and Mars will sing along!
C Yes gods!
E; Of mice and men.
G; Farewell to alms?
E; Alms?
C: Give, charitably, to live! Expecting naught in return, you'll be rewarded
thricefold should you learn to give, receive, live!
G: See the beggar with stumps for feet. How else can he eat? Yet so few
give a doit!
E; Doit?
G;Shakespeare quothe I!
C; Words flee fast, like time. Change is constant, coated in slime it slips
beyond the grips and grasp of words which can not hold it fast,'tas gone,
fled, leaving the words stone dead.
E; Brain-dead? A cabbage? A body hooked to a life-support machine.Is
there a spark of life? A dream to be seen? Detect? A flickering eye-lid in a
body wrecked by a boot from a lout, seeking money for drugs, one mid-
summer's night?
C; What booty be this? Thirty pieces of gold for a single kiss?
E;Brass. Located where muck is! For culture and civilisation hath come to
this. A boot put in, a person robbed, not of his life ,not yet, for the life-
support machine turneth.
C;In vain.The victim will ne'er be the same!
E;Victim is he that doth accuse! He robbed himself of his humanity when
violence he chose to use!
C: He chose it not.Alcohol-fuelled drugs began the rot!
Poor housing, brought up in the streets, little love in his life did the looting
victim meet!
E;Love!
C;A flow. For spiritual love then a higher being one must know. A parent
state. Kingdom, realm, a higher power at the helm.
E; The vessel?
C;Lieing in a hospital ward, in silence, not a word!
E; Perhaps he can sing? Maybe, one day! The brain's such a complex
machine! Perhaps it depends on love flows.
J; Explain.
E; Flows which energise, transmit, love, bit by bit.
J; Computer speak, illucidate.
C; Re-arrange the roads repaired so that the circle may be squared, ideas
flow, through the brain so the 'I' doth know itself in speach, to others
communicate, reach and touch, perceive, and perceiving, believe. Thus
returning to a state, kingdom, of consciousness, where the king is the
parent of whom Eric Berne did sing.
J:Hello, waht do you say? I lend ear, speak, I pray.
C: Goodfellow may it not be thus, that consciousness is a state within us?
J;Flow.
C: A stream. Words bubble to the surface, seem.
J:To exist.
C; They do, but only in the state.
J;Of consciousness. I grasp thy thread. But what if the brain be dead.
C;That term means naught. Under-repair be better.
E;What if the damage be such, that even the repair won't result in much?
C:A cabbage.
J; Should we pull the plug?
C; Why? Doth the body not serve as a museum piece, though still
breathing, to what society has become through weavin' words with gold in
a tapestry where words have been under-sold.
J.Discuss.
C; Devalued, debased.Spiritual life effaced. Gold idols built.
J; Yet the bicameral mind must hallucinate.
C; Drug fuelled since words lie dead. Language has been lost.Hear how
people communicate.
J; Pray.
C; They do not!
J; You don't say. But this is nothing new, dear fellow, have you not heard
the news today, oh boy? How many holes doth it take to fill the Albert
Hall?
C; Indeed. Man's destruction is sewn within the seed!
E; For the cycle doth flow. Day follows night, and so doth it go!
G; What language is this? I can't get my head round it!
C; Words betray the thought which lies whilst man resides in the skies he
paints, a tapestry of words which wait.
J:Weight?
C; Duality once again 'tis thus. For flows to flow there must be two of us.
J; Two in one?
C; And a third. To hear the word!
E; Created monster of the deep! To hear thy voice first we must speak!
J. Not so loud. Poseidon doth sleep.
C; In truth he doth. Not a movement, motion has come to us whilst at his
bedside we've been. The gods are dead, they fled unseen the night the boot
went in 'n' now yon chap lies in a dream.
E; An endless night, since words themselves took flight!
C; Oh Ka! Is this the state in which we are? Civilization? Peace and love?
I'm hallucinating, by ye gods above!
G; 'Tis true, internet confirms the attack took place, the assailant fled when
Samaritans he faced.
C; Oh strangers who pass, be ye angels in disguise? Sent to show us our
ways, our wiles, save us after a night on the tiles?
J Saviour?
C; Did he cross the street? Speak? To any meet? Or did those who
witnessed hallucinate? Touch? Perhaps this word-play is falling apart at
the seams!
E; Ragged and frayed. The tissues worn to a thread! Patched! Will it last as
a loin cloth to cover manhood's needs, quothe the serpent as it slipped
through the leaves on the tree, rooted in the sub-conscious bicameral
nature of humanity flowing free.
J; Can the centre hold? Wisdom regained is never lost. All comes in handy,
but at what cost?
E; The planet's population is unfolding, will the vessel last? Where's the
destination, the next port of call, who are the passengers, when began the
fall?
C; Questions the future will have to face, has faced since the beginning of
the human race
E; Against time.
G. Flowing in the moment divine. Divine. Shine.
C; Like Helfgott when the Rach Three he played. For by a woman, his
career had been saved. Writ in the stars, so 'twas siad, shine on you crazy
diamond, inside my head!
J; For the echo speaks. Evoke the words, the wisdom's message leaps to
the fore, though the events were of yore.
C; Imagintion.
J; Imagine all the people, living for the day. I wonder if you could.
C; Imagine!
J;Just!
C; Wow!
J; Hallucinating!
C;Right on, man, right on!
J; Unreal.
C;Surreal. André Breton. Dada. Kadinsky
J;Go with the flow.
C; Picasso.
J;Bacon. All up there, with the gods!
C; Lord help us! Look where we trod!
J; In the clouds, where the fool on the hill sees the world going round!
C: Day after day.
J Somethings are better unsaid.
C; Turn off the machine. He's dead!
E(Screaming) No.......................................Wait.................
There's a chance of survival.Still it's not too late.
I saw an eye-lid flicker. He's beginning to come round.Hallucinate!
C; In dreams? Be it so? He seems ….
(Lights go off. Audience hear the breathing of the sea, its unfolding and
unfurling waves washing the shore. Silence.)
Screams. Laughter.
M.What is this place, so cold and clammy? The very walls are soaked with
sweat. Will I escape? What next?
Stage directions.
Flash guns going off in the dark. Confetti falls from the ceiling, littering
the audience and the stage.
A mirror descends at the back of the stage.
The audience see themselves.
The lights dim, go out.
Lights return.
Lots of mirrors (smaller in size, mobile on strings) appear falling from
above the audience, around the audience, on the stage(whichever possible).
Audience now sees images of itself, light colours changing, hallucinating.
Sound of waves crashing on sea shore.
This is the end of the play. There is no returning of the actors & bows etc.
The audience is free to sit, absorb, listen & reflect, or leave.
The actors have gone round to the exit./entrance door. Thanks.Flowers.
Smiles etc.take place there!!!as the audience drift away in dribs 'n' drabs.
End.