Typed Living

ACT 1
Scene 1

I sometimes wonder whether it can be right for the prudent theologian, philosopher, or other such person of precise & delicate conscience to write history. How can they pledge their word on a popular belief? How can they answer for the thoughts of unknown persons, & advance their own conjectures as valid coin?' - Montaige


Dark. Typewriter noises. Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-Ting! Rrrr...clack-clack-clack-clack-clack. Quiet birdsong. Tweet-tweet-coo, coo- tweet-tweet. Footsteps. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Light. MEASURE is sitting on the ground typing. COURT paces behind. TILLINGHAM lies opposite, bound by sleep and ropes. Clack-clack-clack. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tweet. MEASURE stops typing.

MEASURE:

is he a suicide? Murder victim? Or a natural? I can't decide. He could be either one. Suicide. Victim. Natural. Each one is plausible. There's a lot of choice in death. A lot of ways to go. Does he kick the bucket? Sprint to the finish? Or shuffle of his mortal coil? Endings are difficult. It could easily go on and on but it doesn't. It has to end at some point. At some full stop.

CLACK.

MEASURE: but how is it done? I'm leaning more towards suicide, but not ordinary but...ritual. Ritual suicide? Yes, yes I see. Unnerving defiance. An unsettling hheroism It's clear. It's controversial. I like it. Is that what we want? Can't we have him choking on a bottle top? Something a little less dignified? Ritual suicide isn't too honorable, but then it does have a certain sense of a noble action. We can't risk making him a martyr. We can't have any chance of canonisation. I suppose he hasn't achieved any miracles. Yes, that's true. No possibility of a sainthood. Good. I'm glad. Can we avoid making him a hero? I'm not so sure. I did have an idea. Alzheimer's would be good. The slow shutting down of all knowledge and remembrance. Madness via syphilis is equally good. More dramatic, & the tragedy becomes squalid. Or, & I think this is the best; make him an old man, brain gone, friends deserted and beaten by his carer. But with the twist that he deserved it. Yes, that will do.

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack. TILLINGHAM stirs, slowly.

MEASURE:

ah, and he is woken by human voices. You know what comes next, don't you? After being woken? Nothing yet...but every line of verse will return to you after a while, just like all other words and then all other action. What do you think his first words will be? After waking in a place such as this? What will be his first thoughts? I know what his actions will be. What other movement could he do other than writhe like a worm. Or more accurately put: a bookworm, I believe that is his species. I suppose other then, wriggling and squirming, he could read.

MEASURE takes up the papers beside him and walks to a slowly sitting up TILLINGHAM.

TILLINGHAM:

oh, what is this place? Are those birds I hear so close and loud? Is that the wind I feel brushing my hair and chilling my skin? I would check with my hands if it is the soil that I sit on but my hands are tight together and will not move to help me. Wherever I am, pleasant as the small songs and cool breeze are, I feel that I will not enjoy my time here.

MEASURE:

perceptive, quick and true. Those are your hallmarks after all. We feel that you have enough time to already enjoy. The fact you have been lucky enough to enjoy any time at all shows that you will at least have nice memories during this unenjoyable time of yours. For us this will be a very pleasant time that we are both very pleased to feel lucky enough to have, but, however, I would like to make clear that neither of us do this out of pure enjoyment. Think of it as a fortunate necessity that we both are happy to perform. Read this; tell me what you think of it.

MEASURE offers the papers that TILLINGHAM cannot hold.

TILLINGHAM:

what are you giving to me?

MEASURE:

do you not wish to read? I am sorry, I did not realise you are illiterate; but I should have guessed.

TILLINGHAM:

you put me in this position and know you insult me for being in it & I do not even know you are.

MEASURE:

what makes you think we did this to you? What if we happen to chance upon your tied up squirming body? Many people would like to throw you to the soil and leave you to the worms. You've said a lot of guesswork with the confidence of what knowledge sounds like. Clever guess maybe, but not clever enough, not clever by far, not even half. Well if you do not wish to read, or cannot, then let me read it out for you: 'I walked into town today and I couldn't help the feeling of revulsion the crowd gave me. I hated every person who walked by me. The ones I did not know for them not knowing me. The ones I did know for them knowing me too well. There is no body that I can trust, not even to make me lunch. They disgust me.' Do you recognise it?

TILLINGHAM:

every word is unfamiliar. The style of each sentence is equally strange.

MEASURE:

very strange indeed, particularly when it is your style, your words, yours.

TILLINGHAM:

I have never written in such a manner; I have never thought in these ways.

MEASURE:

yet here they are, and with your name- Tillingham- upon the top.

TILLINGHAM:

what are you doing?

MEASURE:

literary theory. You know one or two things about that do you not? About writing?

TILLINGHAM:

I have written books.

MEASURE:

then you should be familiar with 'The Death of the Author'

TILLINGHAM groans.

MEASURE:

you shouldn't have spent so much time alone and away from other people. The man who stands alone may stand the strongest but also lies as the weakest. We should get a fire going before it becomes dark.

TILLINGHAM:

To die for one's theological beliefs is the worst use a man can make of his life, but to die for a literary theory!

MEASURE:

plagiarism! You thief! Is allusion to good for you?

TILLINGHAM:

intertextuality! Fictions resonating with fiction, responding, calling out to each other. It's all the same country. I happen to go on little visits. That is all it is put simply. I go, I look and I come back with nothing but experience. What if I have no words in myself? I said another man's words in this desperate time, only because he said them better. Of course I'm a fraud, I said I had nothing to declare, the suitcase is open and look! A bottle of whiskey, five hundred cigarettes and a stack of ten pound notes. I don't remember packing them, but there they are! It hardly seems to matter now. I can say 'ropes to sand' but the rope stays a rope. Words won't save me now. Everything you say is original and dull. Dull, dull, dull, DULL!

MEASURE:

no, it's looking through windows, carefully burying corpse, sifting through what's left behind. Guessing! Making it up! Layer upon layer until no-one can see each other. You're a warper, a distorter, a moral shifter; a coward. You throw stones, who else is there but you to blame? Now you've fallen on rocky ground whose going to wipe the blood from your eyes? Whose going to cry over you? You're alone, & with tormentors. There are no more lies to help you escape, no false walls to hide behind: Nil Deus Ex Machina. No gods will scoop you implausibly away. The birds sing but they don't publish their songs. Do you think that maybe somebody has been telling lies about you? Do you hear those knocks on those doors of unhappiness?

TILLINGHAM:

maybe they are doors of perception.

MEASURE:

oh? What do you see?

TILLINGHAM:

things you do not. In between the details of the lines there's black sand with each grain it's own meaning. It is a curse to have a microscopic sight of words, to know what has fallen down there, lost from expression and hidden in the silence. I dig & dig to bring it all back up. To let others know what I have known.

MEASURE:

if you are the messenger then we do not like your message & in having no-one else we will kill you. Maybe it is arbitrary but it is inevitable. Whatever dirt you bring up from whatever mine you hack in we would rather send it back and collapse you in it then let the filth ruin the spotless rooms we've worked hard to clean. Even if it is unlimited coal we would only turn the skies black before a solitary diamond is found. What is a jewel next to the world? You would replace one with the other. That's the danger you present to us. It's the danger you let yourself in for, & you've really let yourself in for it. By the time we're done you'll be more of the over read knight than the celebrated author. Not charming or childlike, but contemptible and cowardly.

TILLINGHAM:

I'm not a opener, or a continuer, or a gradualist, or a commitari, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all...

MEASURE:

who is free? You have to eat. Is that your choice? You have to breath. Is that your choice? It's your right because it cannot be stopped & not everyone wishes to kill. So 'free' is dubious. 'Artist' much the more so. What is art but stylized opinion? You hold awful opinions, & you won't care for my disdain for that, but your style is the waste of the world.

TILLINGHAM:

what are you taking part in? The closing of my curtain?

MEASURE:

much worse...we're going to immortalize you. People, generation before generation, will know you & they will hate you. You will be left in the obscure corner of a library for obscure scholars to find & recognize your rightful place in the sewer of disdain. You'll be put down & smothered by a layer of concrete criticism of clinical words where you'll stay without say in the pipes, your rightful place.

TILLINGHAM:

those who know the underground know the secrets. So some may dislike my words but they are not unhappy with me. So some may take credit for the things I did not say & for the attitudes I did not take but you too will die to be judged & you too will have your supporters with your deniers.

MEASURE:

we are the lucky ones. We are the unknowns.

TILLINGHAM:

you are helping me to become more certain by creating a mystery. It is a privileged to know a least the answer to one mystery. Your torture gives me a strange thankfulness that only helps to undermine your actions. No one can torture a writer better than himself. What you think is pain in my voice is only laughter only you have lost your humour as I will soon lose my life; executed by others. Who could it have been the person took both hands to your smile & snapped it straight. A tired lover walking away into the unlight? A cruel mother that took away toys? A discourteous friend who tore rags into broken horizon? An impolite stranger that stole clean riches neatly stored? A crying clown?

MEASURE:

a generous giver of inspiring noxious words now bound by his dangerously ill receiver. The unhealthy doctor.

TILLINGHAM:

I never wrote a prescription.

MEASURE:

you signed them with your seal of honour twined with your code of approval & I swallowed each injection catching each infection that you threw to me.

TILLINGHAM:

if I built houses using materials poisonous with blueprints incomplete do not be surprised to find yourself worsening in the open home I asked no-one to reside. I re-arrange the world which contains dangers of different denominations but even paper cuts. You are a flower in the garden of memory. Memory is a garden.

MEASURE:

whose words are that?

TILLINGHAM:

they are mine.  I am saying them and you may quote me if you so wish, that is your privilege.  Letting me live is also your advantage.

measure:

no advantage to me I'm sure.  Hearing you speak, even under my command, is an unpleasant blissful noise that I both hate and love.  I want to hear you squirm more than read you with confidence.  A trick it is to keep people reading you- a terrible trick.  You've fooled us both enough.  I shall not be fooled again by you.

Court:

Let it die.  Let it be left a mystery, a historical secret.  I am not curious.  You waste so much time.  The interview gone on long enough I am tired.  Tillingham you deserve to die at our hands, the hands you so unwittingly scarred; but crime is crime.  There must be punishment.  Your crime is for being boring. Writing boring books that bore the poor reader rendering all words into a babble of dispirited noises.  I have had enough.  I wish for great tales of hallucinatory knights, monks gone astray, storytellers evading execution, not your small and pithy nonsense.  What we have to do is a duty of criticism.  Let this draft be finished!

COURT brings out a gun MEASURE clack-clacks on the typewriter.  CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-PING!/BANG. Go to dark.  BANG-BANG.

act two


An empty stage apart from the paper and typewriter. From the silence, voices, two women, KINGSLEY and TRISH enter laughing.  They see the instruments.

KINGSLEY:

what could have happened here? What common cause was it that laid these objects at our feet?

TRish:

there is a typewriter.  Maybe there was a writer.

KINGSLEY:

and what he wrote upset him.  Still that's hardly possible.  He could have scratched the errors away, or burnt them or eat them.

TRISH:

maybe he came to a realisation that the work was inherently wrong, a heresy against himself that came from him.  The source had to be stopped.  Now his fountain is dry.

KINGSLEY:

  Perhaps it was co-authored.  One could have here been dictating.

TRISH:

then the diction became wrong.  Here is the evidence let me read from it.

TRISH picks up a page of scattered paper.

TRISH:

"I am needlessly in remission.  Canceling certainly cuticles. Flirting, flying, found.  Tree climbing monkeys.  A sound pearl.  A choice of reason I believe, amply played out deftly drawn in it's all in composure but that's all right even if you don't know everyone"

KINGSLEY:

a strange piece.  Could it be a fashion of poetry?

TRISH:

I wouldn't know, I'm not a poet.  How could one recognise poetry without training?

KINGSLEY:

There's no need for training.  The ear informs the heart.  I can tell that this was poetry in training, a sensual workout, an organizing mess in the solitude silence.  This, I feel, was a creative suicide pact between writer, agent and editor.

TRISH:

we must be the publishers, come along at the last minute to wrap up the product and to place it out for what we would call the public.

KINGSLEY:

it feels like a command.  Are we forced to do such a thing?  Why would it be worth putting together a series of sketches post-humour for a crowd unprepared for such a work from such an unknown person?

TRISH:

even the unknown person was at least a person.  Whatever they wrote if it was worth the proof of his existence now discontinued.

KINGSLEY:

or we could let it burn.  Let the words evaporate into the evening air fulfilling the environment with its incorporation.

TRISH:

we should treasure it privately.  Get it bound and hold it for ourselves as sole owners.

KINGSLEY:

though it's not ours to own.

TRISH:

someone has to be the custodian.

KINGSLEY:

let the grass and the flowers observe its survival.

TRISH:

this is a human act and must be continued by human hands.  The world cares not for words and does not need them.  It lives life wordlessly but not silently.

KINGSLEY:

I am uncomfortable with this process.  Let us at least read it and judge it with sure minds.

TRISH:

or better yet we could write ourselves a little something.  A distraction, an enjoyment, a challenge.  Then we could publish to the whole of humanity and become famous after a fashion.

KINGSLEY:

yes I can imagine that, our great fortunes furnaced in this flame of inspiration.  What wonders are laid at our feet.  A whole world to explore and with pleasant company to spend it with.

TRISH:

we could search our souls for a little hole to dig in and reap forth gems of life.

KINGSLEY:

gems of life that shin and sparkle in a noonday sun or in the midnight moon, a life of tiny perfection cast down into a mighty form.

TRISH:

this could be our hope to ourselves.  I often wondered what I would be doing with my life and here I am seeing myself in a life I barely imagined but has offered itself towards me.

TRISH gets to the typewriter and puts in a sheet of paper lying nearby goes to type but stops.

TRISH:

what are we writing?

KINGSLEY:

let's see.  Every writing has its pointing start, it's beginning source but where shall we find ours?

TRISH:

I fell over when I was young and in that falling over was a mystical experience where I felt the weight of the world hit me with metaphysical significance.  Perhaps a description of the fall would suffice a beginning?

KINGSLEY:

yes, I too had a similar experience only I was pushed but in that push was a impact of meaning.  Before the push I was a simple shoe-tied girl but after it I was laces undone and wonderful.  I really think I made the most of my time after that push.

trish:

a push and a fall.  we can merge these two things together a fall following a push or, if we are to become lyrical about this, a falling into a push.  There are options available to us.

KINGSLEY:

we can do anything, even murder and lies.  Yes I like the idea of lying.  Telling the thing that was not.

TRISH:

we can say we are princesses and we were fighting monsters and evil kings who took us against our will.

KINGSLEY:

yes!  and there can be garden mazes and dungeon traps and crusading knights that is our scenery.  I like the thought of it.

Trish begins typing.

KINGSLEY:

yes!  maybe we are trapped and maybe we were too clever because we outwitted all encasement.  Escaped from all ploys and plots, even subplots, I like this a lot.  We are creators and our world is beautiful, full of our kind of beauty.  Let us suffer, let us have trials but most of all let us have beauty, a beauty to astonish any passerby or onlooker. 

TRISH:

I am doing the best that I can, but I fear my powers are limited so please do not be shocked at how dismantled our dreams have become.  We should add our writing to this writing here.  No-one will ever know about it and its not stealing because there are no owners to comprehend.

KINGSLEY:

to amalgamate our imagination with another? 

TRISH:

why not?  we need more material than we can supply.  We have quickly ran out of resource for ourselves.

KINGSLEY:

but we must...


TRISH:

  Here read it...

Trish holds out the piece of paper but COURT enters disturbing them.

COURT:

I am re-scanning each intellectual article in my mind seeing which ones still have power over me and which are still useful.  For my mind has been scrambled, overcooked, burnt-out, short-fused and blown up.  It hasn't happened to a genius but to an average human brain and to an average human mind.  What pain it is to realise the state of being average.  To some I suppose it is a comfort.  I am like a child who sees the floor and wants to walk on it while still being carried bu a responsible adult- how I could wish I could grow-up!  I thought I might share this with you.

COURT exits.

TRISH:

we could fit that in our writing to stuff it out with pages.

KINGSLEY:

what has real life got to do with our lives?

TRISH:

it sounds good because its true.

KINGSLEY:

truth is boring and there's lots of it. Cut it out and let us imagine our lives as heroes.

TRISH:

in truth we could never be heroes.  we are too cowardly.

KINGSLEY:

this is why we write.  To better ourselves.  We should keep this secret.

TRISH:

why?

KINGSLEY:

because secrets are holy for us.  Only us know about them so they are raised up to being special.  We'll we keep this holy secret between ourselves and smile in silence whenever anybody shows?

MEASURE enters

MEASURE:

I am a broken novelist at the bottom of the barrel searching for a light, not too distant light, for my reawakening my true calling.  I am wondering how I am to get out and will I ever get better.  Writing is surely a curse, an illness spreading malaise.  I am no-longer in a position to judge.  I simply wish to live with light.

MEASURE exits.

(a police officer, MENCH, enters.  The girls hide away the papers)

mench:

you there.  what have you seen?

(the girls look at one another)

KINGSLEY:

each other

MENCH:

you know something!  You seen!  where is the evidence?  Show me the hard copy that I can see you hiding in your hands.

KINGSLEY:

are you a policeman?

MENCH:

I am a policeman.

TRISH:

what hands?

MENCH:

you, we're not playing games.  I see you have important evidence for the solving of my murder case.  I am here to negotiate some order into this business, after all.

KINGSLEY:

but who's dead?

MENCH:

no-one yet, not if I can help the crime being committed- or perhaps everyone important is dead.  It is only the following failings that are ready to die.  All the successful are happily dead.  What this statement means is that I am unhappy with living but my work orders me out as a successful person, not very successful I grant you, but not an outcast bum either.  You'll understand when you grow older.  You dreams become reality or they fail you in some important aspect.  Truth be told I've lost my way somewhat in these woods.  I used to know where I was going but somewhere at some point my intuition became faulty.  Now I wander around for any sign or clue.  Fragility of sense I suppose.  Come!  Don't make me torture you, I can give out pretty nasty papercuts.  Bring over the evidence.

TRISH gives him what she has been writing.

MENCH:

what's this?  Princesses?  What nonsense!  Can this really be the evidence?  Why should I say it isn't.  But then again as far fetched this wording maybe a castle really does exist, and perhaps there is a dungeon for a locked soul.  Do you know where this castle is?

KINGSLEY:

as it happens you are not too far away from it.  You would see it if we has a clear horizon.  Here, see my finger pointing towards that pathway.

MENCH:

yes.

KINGSLEY:

it's towards there.

MENCH:

thank you.  Now on my way!

MENCH exists

KINGSLEY:

what a power we wield

TRISH:

what terrible power we command

KINGSLEY:

that's the way it should be.  That's how belief is formed and from it heroes born,

TRISH:

shouldn't we be careful of what monsters we may make?

KINGSLEY:

as gods there is nothing to fear.

TRISH:

even the gods do horrific things.

KINGSLEY:

it is for the best that we are so feared.  Let them fear us and our works.

TRISH:

I'm scared of such a world.  What else can we get away with.

KINGSLEY:

give the typewriter to me and I'll type an even better lie.

TRISH:

no I'm going to throw this in the river where we cannot do damage.

KINGSLEY:

you fool, how are you going to pay for your life?

TRISH:

I'll beg

KINGSLEY:

what an idiot, you're throwing away sound money.

TRISH:

it's not ours to earn.

KINGSLEY:

give it to me!

KINGSLEY tries to snatch the typewriter away from TRISH but she holds tight to it.  TRISH runs away and exits with the typewriter.  KINGSLEY runs after her exiting.

TILLINGHAM enters.

tillingham:

to have nothing is an awful plight.  You're stuck in a mud and the ditch is getting deeper.  Sometimes there is a rock underneath to push yourself up out from, sometimes there is a cunning trap that amazes and scares you.  The search goes on until you are tired.  A search for two men trying to kill you in the woods.  They will be your inspiration if not your continued death.  Life jumps about and seizes you with wonder. A miracle report in life that arrives unannounced but is still there.  I have had these miraculous experiences before.  I pray I may keep having these punctuations of logic within my life.  My inspiration has been stretched.  Indeed where does it grow, how does one go about to find it and then proceed to harvest the fruits?  Difficult I say to you, difficult indeed when the winter is bad and crops die.  Sometimes only inspiration that happen at certain times in certain places.  This is why writing is like astrology.  You need the planets to align for that perfect phrase to pass over you.  It requires a lot of patience.  Waiting for the phrase makes me feel like a prisoner tied to a chair feeling the beatings and lashings of a whip.  It is very much like being tortured by two gentleman who speak the Queen's English perfectly.  Don't crimes become covered over and than done over once again?   

TILLINGHAM exits.

Enter MENCH.  He picks up a piece of paper.

  MENCH:

and more trails to follow.  What does this one say?  "Help".  A calling card for help, how does that help me?  It's very true in what it says I very much do need help but how could it have known?  Someone must be watching me.  Those two girls!  They've laid me on a trick, they're playing games with me and now I feel foolish.  What have I got it coming to.  I feel no good at being a policeman now.  No time for self-pitying reflections let them come to me in the husk of night for I have handiwork to do.  Perhaps if I retrace my steps I can find the overall structure to this play that will be my salvation...

enter Court.

MENCH:

ah!  where there's another being there is a hope.  I say!  You there!  Have you seen a murderer in these woods?  Or a castle of some description?

COURT:

unfortunately not.  Have you seen a murder victim in this vicinity?

MENCH:

unfortunately not.

COURT:

we're both a bit stuck aren't we.

MENCH:

I have my notes.  They tell me what to do.  Here look at this one I have.

COURT:

it says "look for suspects".

MENCH:

that's what I am doing now.  And the next one.

COURT:

it says "arrest the murderer".

MENCH:

that's what I have to do

COURT:

I have papers telling me who I am.

MENCH:

it reads "Court, 39, a teller of jokes"

COURT:

that piece of paper is me.

MENCH:

a teller of jokes are you?

COURT:

not anymore.  I have turned my back on humour and have accepted my fate with tragedy.

MENCH:

how can you tell tragedy is your fate?

COURT:

I have stopped laughing.  Too much thinking deadens the nerve for living.

Enter TRISH and KINGSLEY still chasing each other.

MENCH:

you two!  I'll have you arrested for writing lies!  What you gave me I thought was evidence but it wasn't true and you with the typewriter had to be the offenders.  I'm arresting you.

KINGSLEY:

no, you've got it wrong, we found the typewriter with things already written and it's unoriginal even when we found it.  Every school child knows about princess' in castles.

MENCH:

oh they do do they?  They know all the lies you put around and propagate?  Well I'm having none of it.

enter Measure

MEASURE:

let them lie, it is much better than telling the fact as it is.  The truth is dangerous, wrap it around with fancy artifice than it becomes an object of desire and desire it better than hate.  Have you seen a man who tells the truth?  I had him held but he's got loose and I fear he maybe dangerous.  We have had incautious dealings with him.  He's a desperate man- he's looking for inspiration, which we know doesn't grow on trees or in fields.

MENCH:

such views is unpardonable.  Maybe it is you who should be arrested.

KINGSLEY:

they should they should look at all of this that they wrote.

KINGSLEY flaps the paper in the air.

COURT:

they wrote fairy stories we wrote biography.

MENCH:

stop it stop it!  I'll arrest you all.  You, you're under arrest, you're under arrest, you're under arrest and you, yes you, you're under arrest

He arrests them all.

enter TILLINGHAM

MENCH:

writer's I'd arrest them all.  Who are you- not a writer I hope?


TILLINGHAM:

no, not for much longer.  A writer in recovery I would say.  I have scared myself with writing and I crave for something less hurtful.  Ah! the typewriter!  Now with this gathering of assorted people who do not deserve this I have finally the inspiration I need to finish myself off.  I was a dead man with a deadly writer's block, without knowing how to continue but better than going on I now know a piece even more useful, more practical and hands-on.  This will be the end of my life this last sentence I produce, the death sentence, and with it I'll be happy to complete this episode.


KINGSLEY:

no more words for us?

COURT:

you want us tied and useless for your drama?

TILLINGHAM:

perhaps some one thing you could say but I'm heading this towards the end now.

TRISH:

the end!  but we had only started to flourish, you don't mean you'll cut us up so soon?

MEASURE:

ha, you got your way didn't you, and we thought we knew how to deal with you but we had no idea you had a way with miracles.

MENCH:

so what is the last thing?

TILLINGHAM:

I finally know how to finish this writing for the rest of my life.

fade to black.   clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-ting!