curtains open on a stage in total dark. wait for 5 seconds. a single spotlight flicks on immediately, it stays in the same position throughout the play. the rest of the stage is blacked out. a hermit sits underneath the spotlight, centre stage on a wooden chair with no armrests for 20 seconds before the play begins. our hermit sits back in neutral: lifeless, like a puppet propped up on its master's lap; knees comfortably together but feet apart, right foot forward, left foot near the left foot of the chair; arms still, straight down by the sides; head up but moving naturally and freely as the hermit speaks; face neutral and eyes always gazing without emotion, looking slightly into the back of the audience. Interviewer is off stage to the right. Interviewer's voice is normal, with appropriate emotion of expression where relevant. our hermit delivers their lines like they are reciting poetry to an acquaintance.
ACT II
I: what would you think about becoming a hermit?
H: it'd be a pretty lonely life but
a solitary existence would be
quite nice for me. i could do
with the long quiet distance
in an instant an instance.
I: what indeed would you do?
H: i could be as naked as i want to
not worry about who might see,
could argue with my head
whether or not to put a
full stop. there or here.
[look down sharply to the right]
(though that depends on whether i
would keep the world exactly as i've grown
fond of it, or scrap the pause as i restart.)
[back to neutral.]
i could eat my cake then
vomit it back up and have it too
if that's what i so wanted to do.
(i needn't depend on anyone to
clear my sick up either because
who needs my burden but me.)
this is the dream.
I: so you want no cares or reprimands from society?
[hermit pushes with their feet, scrapes the chair back slightly,
resumes neutral position.]
H: essentially, you are correct.
i'll have none of its cares, pleases and
thank yous, i defend my self well from
robbers and assaults and all forms of
mankind's madness. only nature
will want to kill me and i'll be fine
with that. and if i'm shot down
somehow, then down i will stay;
there really is no better way to go
than to go. and why would society want to
reprimand me at all if i'm
a wholelife away from them?
I: i don't know, maybe because society is responsible for that which it produces?
[hermit pushes with their feet, scrapes the chair back slightly,
resumes neutral position.]
H: [mouth smiles as this sentence is said] that is the most truthful bullshit i've heard today.
i could turn your version of truth,
this vision of civilisation, into manure perhaps,
help you think of things another way perhaps.
I: how so?
[hermit pushes with their feet, scrapes the chair back slightly,
resumes neutral position. our hermit's head should be out of the spotlight by now.]
H: well i was on a coach from london
back into this so civilised bubble and
in front of me, sat a grey-haired woman.
above her head, attached to the roof of the vehicle
was a red hammer, 'in case of emergency'.
[left arm begins to lift straight in front of our hermit, hand poised as though reaching to hold something ahead of it, fist never closes.]
it was illuminated by her on-turned spotlight
and it was red and the shadows were deeper.
i reach out to touch the hammer,
meaning no ill intent, we hovered over her head.
[left arm stops rising above head level.]
i want to feel its weight
because i want to know how heavy it is.
[left arm falls immediately back to neutral.]
will it even break the glass window
'in case of emergency'? i meant no ill intent
but she jumped with a fright, gave me a
look. it's always their way of looking i'm wary of.
society's made of shifting eyes that sometimes
s t a r e wanting some
meaning to be looked into, and sometimes want
to look and look away, at the floor or over there
maybe. so she wants to communicate in this way
without any audible or coherent words and i am
fine with this so i widen my eyes unblinking
and she turns away so clearly disturbed.
the red red hammer returns to its seat and i sit
back comfortable and think about how my
mother and sisters and father are doing at this
time of 21.47 that i am headed back into the
bubble. the bubble. why does it have to be so?
why are there bubbles when a place could
just be so. it's all got to be so apart and protected.
I: so, from what i can grasp, you want to be queer in its most naked meaning - is that it?
[hermit pushes with their feet, scrapes the chair back slightly,
resumes neutral position.]
H: not really caring for your new language yet still just grasping it,
i'd be lying by your language if i didn't half agree.
i'm unique in my way alright, so the world should say,
but i'm definitely not so different. no body really is.
queer is a deviation from the norm, is it no?
well i say i don't know there is a norm to begin with, what a word.
there is no base, no starting point apart from that instant you're
pushed out and screaming for your first air. the rest is history
and what they tell you you must do and say and how you will think,
what they will have you believe and where you might go. its hardly you,
it's history and nothing more, yet. i don't understand it
most of the time because history is unending in the widest
possible view of it, in the way you'd try to understand it, but
history is born and dies every instant with one, doesn't it. oh,
can you write it no one way but one solitary way ourselves. i do
wish the way you live and speak and think about these bubbles are
not so rigid and unpoppable. how you can run if you weren't
always tripping over these spheres fixed to this ground.
I: ah, so you're an anti-realist?
[hermit pushes with their feet, scrapes the chair back slightly,
resumes neutral position.]
H: i perceive there is an objective truth at play around here;
i am vastly unconcerned by it and would be wary to trust it.
although i do struggle to convince myself there is a reality beyond the one that's in my head.
i am vastly unconcerned by it and would be wary to trust it.
although i do struggle to convince myself there is a reality beyond the one that's in my head.
don't you find it a strange idea that nothing lies
outside of our bodies unless you come into reality with it,
collide our senses with it? the matter is apparently there
and the thought of the matter is-- is what exactly?
i don't think a language could articulate such a thing
so easily as people would like to take comfort in believing.
not so simple, not so, no.
not so simple, not so, no.
I: that is interesting. i've always wondered about what it means to be 'real' and whether 'real' is just another word to try and enclose something far more inarticulable. it makes you really think about these things, language.
so, what else would happen if you were a hermit?
[hermit pushes with their feet, scrapes the chair back slightly,
resumes neutral position.]
H: time is something i'd give back to myself.
or perhaps I'd throw it away completely if i could shake it.
i might reinvent it on my hermit way and make
every time an instant hermitday. i ceased caring for time,
but hear the 'DUh'. cease-DUH: look how it still holds my tongue!
the language of it won't let me be. i guess
i would discard that too, seeing as i'd be all... my own.
and to become quicker with the letgo is what happens.
letgo the earth and you shall have it back anew, see
i practised filling up beautiful, coloured balloons
of a greenmeetsblue colour, one at a time with helium,
tying the string to the bottom and letting it softly strain
against my grip for want of the sky and
higher altitudes to burst in. i practised standing
and smiling up at them, raising them up to the sky in jest
then tugging them back down to bounce against my fist.
i practise opening my fingers and finally
letting those fuckers fly.
I: ok, any final words?
[hermit pushes with their feet, scrapes the chair back slightly,
resumes neutral position. right foot should only be visible in spotlight.]
H: few more. and then you go.
i'll not kid myself; i am
material and value what i am.
and a hermit is material as any other, but
tries to value that which is other than self.
how confused. confusing and confused. for
the self is to the mind is to the body is to
the ground is to the earth, you see. and there
are many many people making this ground
all the more frigid.
i may be solitary and reclusive but
there will always be people on the other side of it.
of that i am well aware. so now
could i be this hermit on earth?
no, rather, but a hermit in space.
there's much to be done there alone.
there's no air no atmosphere to interfere
and you can finally be silent for
as long as you want you can finally
be silent for as long as you
[our hermit's right foot taps audibly twice]
I: what can anyone gain from so much silence?
[our hermit pushes with their feet for the last time,
scrapes the chair back slightly and
scrapes the chair back slightly and
resumes neutral position, completely out of spotlight.]
I: are you being silent for any particular reason?
[silence, 5 seconds.]
I: please, fill the gaps. I need something more than that... for this, for the interview [increasingly desperate tone] - at least take my last questions:
Is it a poetic movement now? Dramatic? Or an artistic one? Is
that what this is all about? Where are you in this?
[silence, 5 seconds. the spotlight flicks off.
curtain.]