Greek Influence

ACT I

Scene 1

Figment:

There's a guy, called Sisyphus.  He was Greek and he was bad so when he died he crossed the river Styx after paying the ferryman, and came to Hades.  He was punished for what he did.  His punishment was to push a boulder up a mountain until it got to the top where it would do nothing else but roll back down to the bottom.  Every day he had to do this and this was eternal.  Boulder pushers, that's what we are, every day inching the boulder up a little higher than the previous day, and every time we think we are finished we find we have to do it all over again and this is in the mortal realm.  Perhaps we are in Hades.  The punishment has to be eternal because what we do in life is so terrible that only torture should be our award.  Chasing the wind, that's all we do when it comes to meaning, pleasure, wisdom, wealth, all are acceptable answers to the pressing question.

A sax solo begins to play, softly, meandering.  Two spotlights appear.  FIGMENT steps into one.  CHOICE steps into another.

FIGMENT:

it's been a while, how've you been?

choice:

picky.  Unsatisfied.

FIGMENT:

now what's up?

CHOICE:

I dreamt that I was accused of being mentally ill.  I was saying what I thought was a reasonable argument when someone boldly said that I must have been under the strain of depression, or psychosis, or schizophrenia, or kleptomaniac, something that made me saying things that normal people wouldn't say.

FIGMENT:

It's too cliche to say no-one is normal.

CHOICE:

I'm normal.

FIGMENT:

who's to judge?

CHOICE:

it's the clear lights that unsettle.  You see everything too much.  Man cannot bear...

FIGMENT:

...too much reality.  I know it well.  Forget the source, some sort of party of some profoundness.  But reality is strange and getting stranger so maybe it is more accurate to say that man cannot bear to much strangeness.

CHOICE:

what is strange?  That our hearts never stop beating or our lungs never stop breathing?  I can't get excited over it.

FIGMENT:

what is astounding is not Adam's astonishment of being created but his lack of astonishment.

CHOICE:

He wasn't created with an imagination.

FIGMENT:

meaningless.  Newspapers are filled with terror, boring fear.  Ants work as soon as they are...hatched?  How are ants born?  I've never observed, but I know that they work from the first day.  They work in a group building a colony but it's not known if they ever truly understand what they are doing.  I can't trust an ant, that's why I never invite any to my house.

CHOICE:

Ants remind me of clocks, peculiar clocks that destroy time.

FIGMENT:

Ah yes...time.

Blackout.  Silence.

Scene 2

Lights.  Empty stage.  Soon COLOUR appears.

Colour:

time is hard when you wait.  You have to endure time when you are in anticipation.  Man is a prisoner in chains waiting for his moment to leave the room.  Time is eternal.

laughs.

COLOUR:

that's a good one.  Actually no-one knows.  It just goes on and on.  Some men contest that time is completely artificial while wearing two watches.  One analog, one digital.  Two types of time.  One going fast, one slow.  Time acts differently when you're being watched.  It's a performer trying to get a reaction.  A dancer moving with ease and complexity.  The sands drift down onto a beach where we are by the shore playing with seashells.  Burning sand is a setting of eternal punishment in a more well thought out system of Hell.  Pain stretches time as a person on a rack tied and pulled by both ends.  Time can be a form of punishment.

LUck(offstage):

tell them about Aaron.

COLOUR:

you tell them.  I'm tired.

LUCK enters.

LUCK:

Aaron was punished, first almost by hanging but he didn't care, he was damned and he loved it, eventually he was buried up to his neck and left to starve.  Presumably he died and was then punished for eternity for his many, many crimes.

COLOUR:

wasn't he your friend?

LUCK:

yes, all my friends are punished, it's why I love them.

COLOUR:

Love?  Oh dear...

HAPPY and JOY enter and shake LUCK and COLOUR's hands.

JOY:

We are so glad you brought it up.

happy:

We admire you, we really do.

JOY:

It's a skill we have.

COLOUR:

We've no time for you.

JOY:

No.  You were never able to create time.

LUCK:

one's a sociopath and one's a psychopath but I can never tell which is which.

HAPPY:

We never really liked you.

COLOUR:

Right.  I'm glad we got this cleared up.

JOY:

No pain?

LUCK:

No.  We have nothing to be punished for.

Exit LUCK and COLOUR.  A piano plays without technique but with feeling.

HAPPY:

pathological liars the pair of them.

JOY:

Yes, they know full well that they deserve to be tortured, I mean why shouldn't they be?

HAPPY:

If you were to prepare a punishment for them what would you choose.

JOY:

Present or eternal?

HAPPY:

Eternal of course.

JOY:

I think that when they die the should have to deal with every former self that they have created in their life.  They would be so divided and unhappy with themselves that chronic mental illness would be inevitable.  How about you?

HAPPY:

Lake of fire has always been a favourite of mine, traditional I am.

JOY:

I bet your married.

HAPPY:

Quite right, after all it is the normal thing to do.

JOY:

How many wives do you have?

HAPPY:

Enough, I think, to make me happy, but you never know, one more may do the trick.

JOY:

I'm married to myself, perfect companionship.  I did consider marrying a bridge, I mean after all you can depend on a bridge, makes a lot of sense really.

HAPPY:

If you always said the word love it would lose it's meaning.

They laugh long and hard.

JOY:

Law must govern love.

HAPPY:

Unquestionably.

JOY:

Glad you agree, if only we could convince them.

HAPPY:

agreed.

JOY:

I mean democratic absolutely consenting love is far too much to ask for, particularly with the people we deal with.

HAPPY:

Yes, it might be born of poverty and pleasure but no one is asking it to perform miracles.

JOY:

Funny you mention it but I do believe in miracles.

HAPPY:

Well everyone has their flaws, I can't blame you.

Enter SAFETY.

safety:

Sorry I'm late, the most terrific thing has just happened, I've fallen in love.

JOY:

Ah, wonderful, come with us we'll let you in on a little secret.  It's about God.

Scene 3

GLASS:

So I'm on my own.  Not completely on my own obviously.  God is with me.  I don't know if I'm chasing God or if they are chasing me.  Are God the villain or are they not?  I walk on staircases and then onto walls.  I open a door.  There's a corridor.  A door is at the end.  There are stairs leading down.  Another door on the floor, another corridor.  Door at the end.  It's in black and white and it's shot in slow detail.  I think it's great.  The dream is so real and it's beautiful.  It's what I imagine Heaven to be like.  I'm thankful that it was created.  God is a wonderful creator.  God offers you an experience of the senses, wonderful tingling senses that can feel piercing pain and exotic pleasure and you can feel confusion about how it all came about, embrace that confusion, God wanted you to.  God gets what God wants so God help us all. 

Enter TRYST.

tryst:

From what I've heard God is dead, we murdered him.

GLASS:

Yes, old news.

TRYST:

Aren't you sad?

GLASS:

God feels no pain.  There is no punishment for the Eternal.

TRYST:

We are God's punishment.

GLASS:

Can we still be friends?

TRYST:

We can try.

Scene 4

KING:

There I was finally on stage, they were staring, they were waiting, it was time to perform my joke.  I'd been preparing this joke for months.  I worded it, re-worded it, cut it, polished it to a standard that I thought to be good.  I was nervous.  The last joke I performed killed a man.  I only ever perform one joke in an evening.  It's an art that I have tried to perfect because I believe that if you are anything of a decent comedian you should be able to satisfy in one single go.  I start to sweat, only a little, the lights are hot, they remind me of the sun, I think that although I have seen the sun often and don't really think I know what the sun is, then there is light and I realise that I'm being distracted, I concentrate, I started the race and begun talking.  It started off well, so I kept going, kept at it, running as hard as I could.  I despise the audience.  It's my hatred of them that keeps me going for the joke is not only a long joke but an offensive one as well.  That's what I go for, a sharp stick in the eye of the cyclopes because that is how I think of the audience, of people in general.  Their tyrants.  Who could control anothers' life?  Who is born to rule?  The joke is still going on, more and more sentences pile on each other and I keep going.  To think that somebody is out to kill me.  I kept getting death threats from this one person.  They give me a date for my death and then when the date is past I get a letter saying how sorry they are that they did not kill like they said they would only such and such thing occurred and got in the way of my plans.  This happens often, so I'm not worried tonight as I perform my joke.  It's going well, I haven't stumbled or hesitated, just smooth continuous prose tumbling from my mouth.  The punchline is up ahead, I'm running like a Centaur after some lust and I see the finishing line in sight.  Then as I get to my last words someone in the front row reveals the barrel of a gun.  I got out like a light.

CUBE screams.

Scene Five

cube:

All of my family have died.  They died because I thought about it too much.  Morbid, they would say to me, you're all so bloody morbid.  I was there by all of their deathbeds.  Agonizing death each one.  I heard their screams.  I was like one of Job's friends, comforting, consolidating even when I didn't believe in what I was saying.  I pushed falsity into the laps of my family and the weight of guilt I now feel is overwhelming.  I've got to continue, to marry, to have children, passing on the successful genes.  I couldn't kill myself.  That would be against the will of the world, right?  I laugh in my sadness but it is a fake laugh.  I wonder what punishments they will be given as the earth reclaims their bodies, no longer occupied by their souls.  Is the soul a bird that flies out through death?  I have often thought so but I am now a little unsure.  The soul, if it is like anything, would have to be like mud getting a body stuck into it so it can cling and survive.  The light of the body is not the soul but the mind, the imagination capable of imagining a soul so powerfully.  I feel that I am ready to die.

FIGMENT and COLOUR enter.

FIGMENT:

What coffin would you like?  Wood, steel, Fiber optic or plastic?

COLOUR:

You don't have to be buried you can be burnt.

CUBE:

Or eaten.

FIGMENT:

Really we live in arrogant choice.

CUBE:

Maybe I'll flip a coin.

COLOUR:

Or ask a starfish.

FIGMENT:

Blow up a building.

COLOUR:

You can take an item of arrogant choice with you.

CUBE:

What could I possibly choose that would forever mean something to me?  After a while everything loses its meaning.  Semantic entropy.

FIGMENT:

As if you know what that means.

CUBE:

It's true not all meaning is present at the beginning.

FIGMENT:

I've picked out the perfect place for you to be buried.

COLOUR:

I've picked out the perfect place for you to be scattered.

CUBE:

I've picked out the animal I will be eaten by.

FIGMENT:

I'm sure we can talk about it, discuss it, at great length, after all we do have the rest of our lives to life as much as that scares us.

Scene Six

Enter JOY and CHOICE.

JOY:

I play a lot of tennis, something about competition that fires me up, knowing that somebody is about to lose.

CHOICE:

I've played against you but it was a tie.

JOY:

More training for the both of us.

CHOICE:

We always fight, can't help that.

JOY:

Sport is a type of war, acceptable but nothing is as great as real war.

CHOICE:

Blood on blood, shot tears and exploded hopes.

JOY:

I was in war.  I was a hero.  I was awarded medals for killing people, people we would have normally been kind to had it not been luckily for our leaders who decide to risk the lives of the young generation.  I had friends who died.  I don't think much about it now.  Another country.

CHOICE:

Fighting is essential.  We need the excitement.  I'm geared up for a war that I know will never come.  We're all too peaceful now, too humane, I'll never be able to grieve for my friends, my colleges, my lovers, I'll just die through boredom like everyone else.  Die young or face the living death.  That is a sort of punishment.

Scene Seven

Figment enters skipping with a skipping rope.

FIGMENT:

I knew a man who played on the harmonica.  He played a few tunes and asked me how long I thought he had been playing for.  I said "30 years?".  He said "No, three weeks".  I was astounded.  "How did you learn to play so well so quickly?" I asked, "Videos on the internet" he said.  He taught himself to play with self-help videos.  Anyone can learn to do anything nowadays.  You just need the will to do it.  If you want to do it badly enough than you will.  You might still be fucking shit at it but then you can't teach talent.  It's unfair that some people have all of the talent and end up in positions telling us what to do despite the fact that they might not have the moral authority to do so.  I believe I am born with a certain amount of moral talent.  I can tell what is good and what is bad.  I am a sort of King Solomon.  I give the child to the woman who doesn't want to cut them in half, but I wish I could do the opposite.  I don't wish to do good it's just what I do.  I am just, but God how I wish I was otherwise.  No-body cares for Justice, not even me, but we all want our own particular justice for ourselves and the people we love.  No one can care for the justice of a country.  It doesn't mean anything.  And the justice of a planet?  Forget it...We are only as good as the choices we make.  Luckily I make mistakes.

Joy and Glass come on with boxing gloves.  FIGMENT skips off.

JOY:

now it's easy to make statements of things larger than yourself, such as 'the earth is burning', or 'let the markets decide' but really what do you know of larger things?  You're trapped in your head and you only really know yourself and even then the mind is mysterious, we're only beginning to understand what goes on in that ivory box.  Of course we can do tests and conduct experiments and this all builds up a picture of our contexts.  Even still people claim to know more than they do, but I am not afraid to admit my ignorance.  I don't know what Keynesian economics is and I don't know why the watchman is blind and I don't understand why the weather forecasts are so technical.  I try to learn but I can only know so much, yet there are many important decisions to make.  What do you think?

GLASS punches JOY.

GLASS:

My dream is to build a labyrinth and use it to cure people of conspiracy theories.  Worried about the Georgia Stones?  Fearing chem trails, false flag operations and fluoridation?  Then come to 'Rational World' the purging of poisonous world views.  It's a type of therapy and entertainment combined.  The labyrinth, as espoused by modern authors deprived of the Nobel Prize, is a symbol of the world in all it's complexities, falsities and delusions, and it brings you face to face with the reality of life.  It's a God game played by people thinking their God spies.  There would be a number of challenges to confront the patient's theories and by the time they reach the centre their beliefs will be cast aside by evidence, logical thinking and rational argument.  After which they may be able to continue with live living more constructively and more healthy.  I would build this knowing that most customers would not be cured.  Rational argument does nothing to concrete faith.  People believe what confirms in them their own importance.  A person who believes that terrorists are personally out there to kill them are more likely to be suffering from loneliness and neglect.  It's a comfort to believe that somebody cares enough about you to harm you.  Mostly nothing happens.  What seems like an eventual history is nothing more than long stretches of boredom punctuated by stand alone events.  Conspiracy is just a way to cope with the indifferent world, an apathetic humanity.  The universe doesn't cry for you, at least you have tears and you can cry and think upon the absurdity of life.  It is, after all, a product of an evolving world to bring about a sentence such as 'the absurd can strike you around any corner'and yet such a product is a reward that you possess.  It's treasure that costs only effort of thought and imagination.

JOY:

yes, the only thing we can be certain about is our uncertainty.  We can strive for cultivation, knowledge, peace, though they might not all go in the same direction, and it is because of it's difficulty to gain this that makes us live.  Not being satisfied keeps the fires burning, even if it does burn up the whole Goddess, the earth.

GLASS:

We could be the last of our kind to understand profound statements regarding the world.

JOY:

We could be killed.

GLASS:

what a time to be alive, if only briefly.

JOY:

life is learning how to spend your time.

GLASS:

shall we make love?

JOY:

and in an apocalypse of ecstasy I will achieve orgasm in the death of the world.

Scene Eight

LUCK is standing on a chair with a megaphone.

LUCK:

Give me sex!  I need sex!  Sex, sex, sex!

LUCK puts the megaphone away from her mouth.

LUCK:

Oh I've had many lovers but I need many more.  I want to have sex with every man so that I can know for sure who is the greatest lover.  It's a serious hobby.  I want only the best and why not?  Isn't great sex the only purpose for living?  Many people don't understand me but then I think most people don't understand about living.  It's not about education merely reflection.  People don't take time to think about life.  They rush.  I discovered my calling while I was in a nunnery playing a nun.  I would pray and worship and fast and read the Bible, but while I was there I couldn't bring myself to really believe in God.  I knew I was missing something and I couldn't really go through with the mortgage, marriage, car and kids route as conventional as it is.  Then in the nunnery a man appeared, a visiting monk, a special monk who was only allowed in because he was so handsome.  When I saw him I knew what I needed and I was determined to have sex with him.  Unfortunately he really did believe in God and was devoutly celibate, so I left.  To this day I think he would have been the best sex I could have had and I mourn my loss.  Still having sex is the best way to keep my mind off it.

Enter TRYST with a bigger chair.  He sits on it.  LUCK looks at him.  He looks at her.

LUCK:

Give me sex!  I need sex!  Sex, sex, sex!

TRYST snatches the megaphone away from her.  LUCK slaps him and storms off.  CUBE enters and sits at the feet of TRYST.

cube:

let me serve you.

TRYST:

are you a good servant?

CUBE:

yes, I will do anything for you.

TRYST:

do you like being punished?

CUBE:

If you were to do the punishing I would.

TRYST:

then we have an agreement, sign here.

CUBE signs a paper.

TRYST:

then what I require of you is to sit here.

CUBE:

yes, my lord.

TRYST:

let me sit at your feet.

CUBE:

yes, my lord.

TRYST:

You are now responsible for ruling.  I don't want to think anymore.

CUBE:

but lord, I don't know how to think.

TRYST:

it's easier that way.

HAPPY enters with a gun and shoots TRYST and CUBE.

HAPPY:

I'm not good with endings.  Shouldn't been given this job.  Oh well.  Nobody can choose their end.  I mean you can but you shouldn't.  Or you should.  What I mean is it's difficult to get it right.  It either happens too early or it is very messy or humiliating.  I don't know what I'm doing.  Just make it through life until I can't anymore.  I've been given a gift even though I can't decipher it's message.  Oh well.  I was arguing with my friends in a cafe in the city.  I was talking about how gardening can rescue the doomed world.  They said I was talking nonsense.  Nuclear weapons is what we need they said.  I need flowers.  I need the animal life of insects.  I need the smell of overpowering oh I don't know what.  Concrete is what I hate more than all the wars the torture by democratically elected leaders the suicides.  I hate concrete.  It is a deep hatred that has informed my character more than any Oedipus or Electra complex, more than any mythological archetype or cognitive breakdown.  I have to deal with this hatred that does not go away and does not soften.  I've been to countless psychiatric all trying to persuade me of the goodness of concrete but I can't see it.  I am fundamentally opposed to it and am at odds with the rest of my country.  I dream of deserts and I believe that in the great sands I could create a magnificent garden to outshine all gardens and in it I would then be happy.  We all try to get back to our original Eden, our paradise dictatorship, but we struggle, we struggle.  All I can end with is my personal wish.  I don't know what to believe in but I can hope in a garden.  I don't know maybe that might be enough.  Maybe, finally maybe, we may even be rewarded.

All characters enter and stand behind Happy while he is talking.  They begin to clap.

THE END.