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Bliss Apocalypse

 

Bliss Apocalypse Shaman Encounter

GIRL: Born to dance and sing Divine Knowledge between green leaves
           on Molecule hillsides
                shapes of pure sunlight shining
                    …I can’t believe it!

She sinks down among the rest. For a moment everyone is frozen, kneeling, standing, fallen. The music changes to wheezing wailing Gagaku No-drama high-pitched microtonal sound with shrill Hichiriki flute as the Shaman enters from the back rocks, his movements tai-chi slow, walking like tense scissors, gliding angles, holding a cane, carrying a raffia suitcase, dressed in a simple green serape, barelegged, his face painted with a green and black North-American indian hawk-mask design, hair matted.

SHAMAN, walking through the Chorus, chanting above them:
          With every step I take the Earth is drenched in blood somewhere!
          Whose ears will hear my lament? Whose ears will hear my lament...

WANDERER, among the Chorus on the ground: HOW LONG DOES THIS AGE
        GO ON?

SHAMAN, suddenly turning, raising his staff in the air: Drop! BY DROP! …Until it is EMPTY!

The Shaman stands serene amid the Chorus, they begin to approach him, to look into his face, they demonstrate their anguish through gestures. This part is impro-vised. The Chorus may ask questions the Shaman must Koanically answer. He faces physical bombardment and with mercury gestures straightens the energy flow, calms some, fails to calm others at first. Finally, after the air fills with the tumult of mad urgencies from the Chorus, the Shaman speaks a phrase or makes a noise, leaps into the air, somehow brings everyone to the point of attention-tension.

He begins to arrange everyone as human trees in a voyage-environment, he gives each one a sound pattern to vocalize. Shapes may be women in the middle forming a womb he goes behind and is born through, men making electricity wave-sounds as space energizers. The Shaman works serenely but swiftly. He goes to the suit-case, opens it, takes out a large, heavy shaman-robe with dangling, hanging metal and mirror pieces, places it in front of the womb-opening. He strips naked. He improvises a chant of pure consciousness principle flying free through blue nonspace before birth through vocal glossolalia sounds, dances. Then he is drawn to the womb-gate, he goes through it slowly, rising up into the shaman-robe, his arms and head jutting through it. Emerging, he sings of this birth and by his movements or words reveals the connection later made manifest between this characterization and the Wanderer. The Shaman then suddenly rushes to the suitcase and brings out a rattle, a mirror he holds in his hands, a leather bearded mask which he puts on, a fur hat on top, a long bright aqua-blue cloth. He begins to dance a battle-encounter with the Beast of Matter and Destruction.

SHAMAN, singing: Goddess Kali meets us on the iceberg of flight with huge jaw-moonlight gnashing sharp teeth through skeletons ... (He becomes heated, leaps, darts, and lunges, shrieks, lets out long ecstatic cries) … to transform this heavy Body of Realizations to Light Energy flowing into Everywhere at once! (This link allows new inspiration to come through, he begins to chant a litany)
        O River of Light, come through, come through
        O River of Light, come through, come through—
     Through bone, through blood, out of this air, from deep darkness—
               Come through, come through!

The Chorus begins repeating this, moving now out of their frozenness. The Shaman goes to the back of the stage, lifts a curtain of white silk, and ripples it, it shimmers like a waterfall. Behind it, he puts on the robe of the River of Light, blue and silver streamers, waterfall rippling. He suddenly jumps over it onto the ground, there is an icy burst of high bells, he stands in the center. The Chorus makes a circle around him, goes to the ground, lying flat, they rise up like cobras around his motionless sound. Then he gives each a mantra, each moves with the mantra, finally all freeze around the Shaman as branches in a figure of the Tree of Life. Everyone chants a long open Aum, the first sun-disc rises behind a peak, the Shaman sits with the mirror catching the torch-light, casting it out into the audience. Finally the Chorus members lunge forward.

FIRST VOICE: Lightning bursts from our pillows.

SHAMAN: Through these Eyes...

SECOND VOICE: We breathe serene in a Sea of Clouds.

SHAMAN: In this mind...

THIRD VOICE: Gesture of Movement, the Mind is Movement.

SHAMAN: In this Eye...

Lee as Wanderer

The Wanderer walks forward slowly, weighed down. He doesn’t leap but waits in long silence.

WANDERER: …Is the Void of Serenity too strange for the Mind of Man?

FOURTH VOICE: Mirrors break, Rivers flow backwards, five Suns rise!!

FIFTH VOICE: Fire in the Night, Water of Sunrise!

SIXTH VOICE: You can’t see it, you can’t speak of it.

Everyone is in a line, they begin breathing together heavily, bend down and arch up together.

ALL: Unborn, undying, we breathe the curvature of Space... breathing, breathing...

They begin breathing now, bellowing, bending down and rising, heaving like a wave, repeating their phrases all at once. What was so clear before becomes jumbled, while behind them and not having joined them but anxious, the Wanderer has been pacing frantically, we hear his voice rising to a pitch behind theirs. The Chorus has unraveled a red net across themselves. The Wanderer’s voice hurls gibberish words, finally he bursts through their line in anguish, takes the net with him, they recoil into silence.

WANDERER: OOOOO WHY ARE WE BORN ON THIS PLANET? In this Age!
In these Bodies? Out of galaxy miles of bloodstream viscera
    to these eyeballs swiveling!
        THIS ass ribcage heartbeat tidalwave footstamp Earth interknit, pulsing!

The Chorus behind, on knees, pulses.

WANDERER: THIS MOUTH CRYING OUT!
Tomorrow a fossil, but now a splendor!
Yesterday a futuristic DREAM, but now Air shaking various Voices, this beating this
                breathing...

The Chorus, in a huddle behind him, suddenly rises up, heaving breath-noises, arms in the air, then silent, eyes frozen, like a wall of staring ghosts. The music becomes haunted rhythms. The Wanderer runs back and forth along this wall, stopping in front of one or another, shaking. They are whispering, speaking gibberish, singing celestial songs, talking, complaining, crying. He chases their voices which stop when he’s in front of them.

WANDERER: What are these walls that are whispers in my own head…

He turns and goes to the front and sinks down in heavy meditation, they sink down behind him repeating echoes.

CHORUS: Walls... that are… whispers… in my own… headdddddddd.

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bliss apocalypse

Author's Note

Characters

Scenery and Setting / Beginning

 

 
 

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