More Wrestling with the Idea

The underlying (core) idea of an age (its spiritual assumption) represents a new (or revised) view of the relationship between the Temporal and the Eternal. Out of this assumption arises the structures (mental and physical) through which it can be translated eventually into daily living.

The idea, symbolically assembled at a deep subconscious level, comes into the perception of seers (oracles) who first formulate it into language through codes (and maybe the speaking of tongues) until its significance, never completely understood, shifts upwards and outwards into philosophic and more practical spheres, and begins to be interpreted in terms of available building materials, enclosing shaped assembly places that reflect that first ideal spurt. As the idea breaks the surface and grows, so the enclosing buildings modify themselves in tune to the spreading complexity of interpretations arising from a variety of experiences. All the time though, for as long as the first assumption can hold on to its essential truth, the structure remains at heart faithful to the impulse that brought it into being. When the truth loses its resilience, and has to yield to a fresh assumption, the structure finds itself increasingly under attack. The sum of ideas blanches, and the structure becomes a dead one, awkwardly containing the hostile new, debilitating its development, until it is forced to collapse under the relentless strain.

Norman architecture gave way to Gothic, not because the spiritual assumption was in a state of collapse, far from it, but because important changes were inwardly demanded of the older structure that could no longer sustain the old forms of divination. Architecture and idea changed their form together. Medieval gave way to Renaissance with its "rebirth of learning" and the old theatres became increasingly untenable.

The Proscenium Theatre was no accident. It was unremittingly fashioned by the Renaissance idea. The Renaissance threw over the Medieval fixed idea of Heaven to the right and Hell to the left with a static world in between, re-admitted the Classical, forged a middle-class link between High Society and the Serfs and coalesced around Descartes' "I think therefore I am" - Head over body/ reason above all - and the emergence of the individual. Perspective, mechanical and technical ability, the enchantment of scene making (the growing dominance of eye over ear) and the ability to light a scene) brought about the proscenium arch and its curtain, so that changes in the performance-space could be achieved without the audience looking on: but all these changes came about in the practical world because the deepdown assumption about the relationship between the Temporal and the Eternal was shifting. God was being brought nearer betraying the mutability of his face. He was having to talk through the landscape rather than superciliously from above it.

To perform is to asssume a form per which the communication is made. The form, whether consciously or not, affects the nature of everything fed through it. It is the controlling factor that goes without saying. We are so imbued with form that mostly we forget that it is there. In an age where content (behaviour) is rated above all other conveyances of meaning, form is taken for granted and then sworn not to be involved.

Spiritual - symbolic - philosophic - practical: these four aspects of the form share their values with each other. Start with one, the other three can be induced.

The Proscenium Theatre consists of a box-like structure with one of its sides replaced by an opening with a movable curtain. The stage is a raised platform, with the curtain (and arch in front), backed by a "wall" or backdrop, with two "wings" - spaces, masked from view, where stage-hands operate, and the various mechanical, electrical devices are operated from. Before the curtain, when a performance is in operation, sits the audience, anonymously and in the dark, ready to receive the offerings from the important lit space.

This theatre is part of a building, to the front of which is the box-office and, buried somewhere in its recesses, the supporting functions of theatre, where the administration and various strata of staff reside (in their working hours).

The box-office is a filtering agent, allowing in those who pay and keeping out those who don't, or can't. The audience, then, is not so much the people, but its representatives (chosen or selected in some way). The box-office also filters further those who are able to buy their way in: according to the price paid, so the seats are graded, the "better" ones going to those who pay more. The established hierarchies of society outside the building are carefully copied within. In a capitalist world, this is the way it should be. The more important a person you are judged to be, the closer to the action you are entitled to be. However, in the performance, you are still one of those who sit in the dark, receiving the message that is in the process of being conveyed. The nature of the performance, and its rank in terms of class or quality, determines the nature of those who turn up to experience it. The status of a performance can be judged both by those who turn up to witness it and by those who stay away.

The performance area consists of a raised lit space, from which the creative (or otherwise) pronouncement is transmitted forwards into the dark, against a "fixed" back wall, and with masked lightless spaces around. Those who cavort in the lit space are the chosen message conveyors - chosen for their skills at getting the message right. Their job is to inveigle the darkened "receivers" in front of them into a suspension of disbelief, so that the potency of the message can be swallowed whole. These lit-space performers spend years learning the techniques by which this "inveigling" can be best achieved, even if their messages are more relevant to the world of the lit space than to that of those sitting gawping (and responding) in the dark.

However the lit-space figures, with their charades, are themselves not their own bosses. They depend on three other forces: the slaves in the wings, who have been trained also, but to do the menial jobs that enable the lit-space presentation to run smoothly; their professional masters who have brought them to the pitch of being able to deliver the message properly - director, stage manager,designers of lights, sets, sound effects , costumes etc; and the management structure in which all else is cocooned, the administrative overlords who exercise the final judgment about what kind of message can be handled in the first place. And all these levels, emanating from the need for a lit-space, are held in the grip of, and mimic the controlling structures of the social mores of the surrounding macrocosmic society.

And then there is God, whom this structure simply cannot allow not to exist, even if, with the advent of machinery and increasingly complex scientific posturing, the nature of that God can be played with in all sorts of surrealistic ways.

God, and the implications of what I think I'm saying and why, as a result, the proscenium stage and all that it stands for has to be on its last legs - I'll leave to my next post.

THIRTEENERS

(written in 1978)

18
if you want a revolution attack
symbols not systems - the simple forms
that (blithely) give the truth away
tying down millions to their terms
quietly with no one answering back

where the stage is makes the play
keeps actors (meanings) to those norms
stability requires - change tack
(remove the stage) violent storms
will sweep the old regime away

eventually there'll be no going back
once new symbols breed new germs
and strange hopes redesign the day


34
the world's in a bad state
leaders who cannot grasp
the immensities of living
people caught in the clasp
of ignorance (stuffed with hate)

essential substances giving
off poisons (the nuclear asp
already biting) too late
planet earth at its last gasp
maybe by chance surviving

just one crude hope as bait
for a fresh world - a loud rasp
of chaos (dreamed-sense reviving)



35
nothing happens most days to suggest
urgent forces are surging from the earth
changing the vital measures of our lives
most people plod through states of little worth
it's hard to point to a hope that has progressed

but once your head's been turned a vision thrives
in every aching cell - once more a birth
has found a savage time to be expressed
tawdry signs squeeze richness out of dearth
a different way of feeling thinly strives

a sick worm gnaws the fabric of the west
yet out of sickness something close to mirth
takes to flying - soars and wheels and dives

36
apologies - i keep on (i know) too much
about a new world breaking through the drab
when common sense demands the world is doomed
i share with most rank horror of the slab
laid out for all of us at the nuclear touch

but yet i feel the doom too much assumed
the death-wish is a kind of power-blab
to nobble the life-force (the wizard's clutch
freezing our parts) denying our right to stab
upwards from our own earths into a bloomed

array of truths no god would grant as such
gifts (long decried) of the common gab
furnished with joys old-fangled and new-broomed