Page 3 - Marcus Civin Self-Storage Church

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MEGAPHONE 1

Repeat after me:

Beware the false everywhere!

Blue threatens yellow!

Bow tie experts ram out a roomful of bullhorns!

Can you feel it?

Castles from trash!

Closed is about to open!

Dirty!

Do you like my shoes?

Everything is NOT OK!

Fade out into dark green!

From now on, I will only answer e-mails about radical consciousness!

From today forward, I will only lecture at teach-ins!

Human or lima bean, I don't care!

I am a neighborhood of combinations!

I am a neighborhood of contradictions!

I am a-thinking!

I am angry!

I am decent!

I am ink on paper, a cheap simple poster in the window!

I am legs that kick ass!

I am little!

I am low rent!

I am neighborhood!

I am no puppet!

I am no pusher-man!

I am not alone!

I am nothing if not new language!

I am nowhere!

I am OK with colliding!

I am on my own!

I am on the train!

I am open-ended!

I am overseas!

I am painting internal organs!

I am perfect this way!

I am queen today!

I am that old gnarled sweater!

I am the place I left behind!

I am underdog!

I am with you!

I can reach out to here!

I don't really need this… or this…

I FT-FT-GUH-BUP!

I get cranky and that's OK!

I get mad and that's OK!

I give over my power!

I gotta lotta things on my mind!

I have a longview!

I have an identity!

I have ants, and I have alligators!

I have my eyes!

I have rights!

I know who I am!

I like your nose!

I see the face of things to come!

I speak my mind!

I think we could taste power for lunch!

I type on the toilet!

I want to make it right!

I want to talk to the world!

I will write that letter!

I win!

I work hard for it honey!

I work hard for my money!

I’m here all the time!

Inherent in security is insecurity!

It is good to hear your voice!

It's my birthday!

Maybe I’m an idiot!

Minimalism, by reduction, erasure of the heroic dominant masculine, opened a floodgate for what had been forcibly left out!

Museum closed for the day!

My head is a cookie!

My head is artillery!

My love has grown!

No time for design, this is urgent!

Nothing replaces anything!

Oh baby, baby baby baby!

OK let’s compare calendars!

Play me a tune!

Present imperfect!

Put down the beer can!

RRRRRRRUFF, RRRUFF, RUFF, RUFF!

Saints in sinister circumstance!

Serious business!

Sing!

Someone is making a gun with a commercially accessible printer!

That which is good might not ever fully appear!

The false is everywhere!

The fool is just like the king!

There is no clean story!

This is the situation! This is what you need to know!

This moment is all history smashed together!

This moment right now!

Touch!

Treasures go to trash!

True, a moment of false!

Try this: B-b-b-b-b-burrrrocrocracy.

Vincent Van Gogh said Notre Dame wouldn’t have existed without Quasimodo!

Vincent Van Gogh was writing, wading through winter!

Vincent Van Gogh’s old shoes are just like Paul Revere's cream pot!

War!

We do need an underpinning of strength!

We don't have to like it!

Wrestle!

Orange threatens blue!

Yes, we’re on for Wednesday!

Yes, you can do what you want!

Yes... You can't have me, though!

You get me, you get questions!

You know my great uncles were all un-american!

You know you can't hold me!

You’re the one who's crazy!

Your blog sucks!

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From A Play Called Scenes from a Love Story (Draft)

SCENE THREE
(An apartment. CASS loves BOLDO. BOLDO loves CASS. CASS sits at a table, eating a meager meal; CASS eats on and off for the whole scene. BOLDO has a broom, he sweeps for the whole scene. BOLDO and CASS are unusually physically close all through their activity and dialogue. In general, in this play, when not active, the ASSISTANTS ready props or hang out at the back of the performance space, facing the audience, watching the action.)

ASSISTANT TWO (speaking to the audience): This is a play. This is about two lovers who have trouble getting out of their small, humble apartment. They would like to act, they are concerned about the great issues of their time, but they are stuck. They imagine a kind of non-violent direct action for change in relationship to the power structure in the United States; they would promote a kind of floating, simple beauty as an alternative to costly spectacle, but they fuss over objects, and they fight with each other as often as they are sweet and silly. So, what happens when you are ‘fed up with the stagnation, the inactivity, barely hanging on in the hope that things might improve after all’? Vaclav Havel, ‘Power of the Powerless’. Well... We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’ll show you the rest of the piece. Maybe there is a part in it for you... This is Cass.

CASS (speaking to BOLDO): This is Boldo. Boldo, disarmed, interlocking parts, ready to arm... Then, there you are, armed. I am armed too. You grew up in the woods, but no good at building, still, you got a good job. Now you’ve got a good job, and still you’re sitting here, you telling me you are ready to fight. Today, you are ready to fight?

BOLDO (speaking to CASS): Here I am.

CASS (speaking to BOLDO): At the end of the day, I say, ‘I have no soreness towards you, towards our things. I don’t need. But, I got this... These are ours together.’

(BOLDO and CASS lock eyes, stare at each other.)

ASSISTANT ONE (speaks unheard by BOLDO and CASS): If you loved me, you couldn’t steal my capital or my energy from me until I became blind. If you had nothing but love for me, you wouldn’t have to tell me what to do. If you loved me, I wouldn’t have to be content with your projection of me.

ASSISTANT TWO (unheard by BOLDO and CASS): This is how lovers will talk to each other. They will have their own private, beautiful language, they will amplify each other’s assembled gestures. Still, there will be misunderstanding in every subject, misunderstanding every verb, every object.

ASSISTANT ONE (unheard by BOLDO and CASS): Sum Total.

BOLDO: If got I, got us.

CASS: Say, ‘Rain!’ ... If you want me, speak this way, say ‘Rain!’ Or, tell... her... love... sum. Tell... sum... low... Why so much water in our love language? It was always raining on our Wednesdays in Brooklyn. Rain or no rain, we could always go inside and talk about politics.

BOLDO: Your legs are big, but you can imagine your legs bigger than they are... ‘Airrus,’ says the rain. The rain can make the wind’s sound.

CASS: Rain, or... bad things will happen. Say to our future child: 'When the milk is radioactive, send milk to the Soviet Embassy; when Kennedy has his pen under a chair cushion, send bottles of ink to the White House.’

(CASS takes BOLDO’s hand and dunks it in his mouth. BOLDO pulls away.)

CASS: La la… what? That’s mine!

BOLDO: Stop.

CASS: You said you would freeze the real.

BOLDO: I never said that. I was being silly because I liked your nose: I said you could structure your life around a search for a feeling of flying. I meant: Tighten your understanding of ‘original.’ You won’t get that, originality, being great, but it doesn’t hurt to try... I meant: Here, have a drink.

CASS: You’re a Monument Man.

BOLDO: Yeah, I would preserve monuments. They don’t have to be up there in the square, but we should keep them somewhere. Why not?

CASS: But then, you’re a conservator, not an original.

BOLDO: Yeah, well... Where I’m from, original doesn’t get you much money.

SCENE FOUR
(ASSISTANT ONE conscientiously builds an absurd monument, stacking, balancing a long, thin column of scrap wood.)

ASSISTANT TWO (back to the audience, unheard by BOLDO and CASS): ‘Fraternization: 1) Become personal friends with the soldiers; 2) Convince them that the objectives of the regimes which they serve are unjust and immoral; 3) Persuade the soldiers to reduce the efficiency with which they carry out orders, or, eventually, persuade the soldiers to refuse to carry out orders; or 4) Convince the soldiers to provide information for the population on the regime’s plans.

For example, during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Hungarians made deliberate efforts at fraternization and at influencing Soviet soldiers, both by personal conversation and leaflets in Russian. These efforts seem to have had a degree of success. one journalist reported that as a result of Hungarians talking with Russian soldiers, ‘something like a bond of sympathy was arising…’’ Gene Sharp, ‘The Politics of Nonviolent Action’.

SCENE FIVE
(Apartment, BOLDO hunched at the computer, CASS is right next to BOLDO, flirty while patching a sweater.)

ASSISTANT ONE (unheard by BOLDO and CASS): Thugs.

BOLDO (reading): ‘Political dissent may be expressed by wearing on one’s person some item of clothing, a color, a badge, a flower, or the like.’ Gene Sharp, ‘The Politics of Nonviolent Action’.

CASS: Send this message to the butcher: the ox is starving. The butcher has a talent for difficult situations, scrimping and saving, using all of the meat and the marrow for soup.

BOLDO: No… there are no talented butchers. Real talent is something else. Butchery ruins real talent. Butchery is not talent. Butchery will never be a talent.

CASS: I want to spend money.

BOLDO: Instead they fuck, fuck skulk fat, talk about austerity measures. No more gloves and fancy scarves, not lamb. Instead, tuna fish or veggie burgers. At the same time, by now, both: gruff and ready-to-cry. They decide it would be good at least to try and leave the apartment.

ASSISTANT TWO (speaks unheard by BOLDO and CASS): Fucking.

(CASS and BOLDO are right next to each other, changing their clothes to go out of the apartment. BOLDO slowly puts on something suggesting a Security Officer’s uniform. CASS puts on clean street clothes.)

BOLDO: I have nothing to spend. I’m broke, right, because I’m in love with everywhere. I have been selfish. How to dress your sagging eyes. You, petrified, hating me when I am away. (BOLDO stops dressing, balances a toy car up on one finger, sings then hums): I need somebody. Not just anybody...

(CASS has not finished dressing. CASS helps BOLDO finish dressing, tenderly, as if BOLDO is a child.)

CASS: What I mean to say—in sudden voice, teeth perfect—latest want, back of ear.

ASSISTANT TWO (unheard by BOLDO and CASS): Sum Total.

BOLDO: There is another argument about money, how many dinners and movies. Then I say, ‘I guess I must bottle a heap.’

ASSISTANT ONE (unheard by BOLDO and CASS): The protesters elicit violence.

BOLDO: I mean... Cass is distraught, it’s not philosophical anymore, not abstract, it hurts, eyes are nowhere and a high heel catches a pothole. I try to help. Under the marquee to the boarded up theater, I said, ‘Eat an orange.’ I don’t know why I said that. I could have said anything. Nothing would have worked. She would still have been upset by the time we got to... boarded-up storefront.

CASS: The couple comes up the stairs. Very slowed down footage of a couple dancing around in the street.

(CASS and BOLDO are dressed by now.)

BOLDO (back at computer): If we devote ourselves to ire, then OK fox, OK fire... if quiet nookie, no madness, no getting caught out in the rain.

CASS (picks up the broom, sweeps until the end of the scene): But, binding binds. Multi-benefit, Boldo. We’re here together, man. Rain is romantic. You can handle that little disaster. Rain, it’s just water. It’s not so bad.

BOLDO: His gruff goat is at a standstill. He is still reading. News blogs, you know.

(BOLDO pulls at CASS without looking at CASS sweeping, BOLDO still looking at the computer.)

ASSISTANT TWO (unheard by BOLDO and CASS): Circle Home.

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Surrender

Paper accumulates. Among other things, I am a teacher, an art teacher—I get notes and I make notes.

I started gluing some of my papers together, making my papers into stuck-together paper chunks, bricks of paper, stuck-together piles, thick clumpy piles of paper. I see drafts on paper, and drafts for drafts, paper proposal #4: list of relevant questions.

There are my handouts and there are other people’s handouts, and then maybe I just sent around earlier a sign-up sheet on a paper pad. I make signs and posters. I get schedules of soon-to-be speakers, announcements for screenings I would like to see… I get copies from students of pretty good permission forms they’ve written and printed out for their students, and I treasure their perfect paper ‘zines… And there is that peculiar museum map, there are magazine clippings handed off to me. I accept them. I accept these papers. I keep them sometimes.

I make diagrams too. Last week, I drew out a version of a museum case as I would want to see a museum case… With arrows and circles on graph paper pieces, I might illustrate an argument for a student as I understand the argument from a reading.

I also make lists, TO-DOs, and reminders to myself: Taxes, rent, call for haircut—a list on a notecard that rubs against another list is in my pocket, with keys, or phone, or wallet. I call for a haircut, and I might tear away that piece of paper where I wrote: call for haircut… or I cross out those words. Or else I continue to sit on that paper, on those papers, on my TO-DO lists and notecards in my back pocket. My TO-DO list is in my back pocket. I’m sitting on it. TO-DO: Watch The Rape of Europa, get train times, field trip snacks.

My listing, my TO-DO’s make a conversation with myself. The conversation with myself goes like this: Marcus, did you check out a camera? No, Marcus, I did not. Marcus, remember to check out a camera. Marcus, I checked out a camera. Marcus, return camera. Marcus, did you return the camera? No I did not. Marcus, return the camera. Marcus, I returned the camera. Camera charger. Marcus, find the camera charger. Marcus return the camera charger to Pat.

Then, too, there are drawings, sketches, not mine, they get left behind, I find them in the classroom, they float from time to time across a scratchy tile patch of the charcoaled floor, and I don’t throw them away with the water bottles and bags from pretzel snacks. That paper from the floor is sometimes deliciously thick, I think, the drawing is like a rough emerald… I like the paper sketch left behind. I pick it up.

I am paper—paper in my bags, my pockets, my hands. I think I am a certain percentage paper… If all the paper I have with me was stuck to me, my body would be 14% percent paper.

Sometimes, some days, a phrase will strike me, and it will seem like the most beautiful phrase. I will write it down on paper in block letters: “The Proof is in the Pudding.” Someone said that. I loved that. I wrote that down on a Monday morning, “The Proof is in the Pudding,” in block letters. “He has a big heart.” Someone said that. I loved that. I wrote that down on a Saturday afternoon.

Paper piles up next to my bed, on my kitchen table, on my desk, on my other desk, and on my mother’s old sofas—all of the notes and drafts and articles and drawings…

I do recycle. I bring down bags of paper for recycling.

My mother asked me to clean out some storage and there I found more papers: old papers, programs from plays, car service receipts for cars no one owns anymore, an essay I wrote on Hamlet in high school, letters from old friends about our battles, bitternesses truthfully I had mostly forgotten.

Paper is with me, it comes to me. I would be under a layer of paper.

I want the glued-together paper piles to be brown and red and orange-red, or otherwise they should be black. I’ve been dipping and painting the piles, and now I think they are sort of like internal organs or jars. But only paper organs or paper jars… Now, they’re thick with paint and paper.

One night I had a dream about a white surrender flag. In the dream, a surrender flag popped up, like in a forgotten Hollywood war movie, out of a tank. I started thinking about how a surrender flag might be torn from whatever there is, whatever scrap is white, whatever scrap of shirt or underwear, whatever can be found in that moment where surrender is necessary.

The white surrender fabric feels related to the paper piles somehow. Paper is everywhere—special often, to me, but everywhere. The surrender flag is more unusual, more of an anomaly… How often do I surrender? I never plan to. I never really do.