Theater of the Moment
Jack Wright

"All writing is rubbish.
People who try to free themselves
from what is vague in order to state
precisely whatever is going on in
their minds are producing rubbish."
- A. Artaud

The following is written before it should be written; it is a glimpse, an angry groping, intentionally lacking in sufficient experience of what it points to, not waiting for hindsight. It is both perverse challenge and shadowy direction to the present writer/player in his dissatisfactions with his activities as performer, and is an attempt on his part to find fellow adventurers. It is the work of a musician pushing out with his body into the space of a stage and then going further in thought and imagination than he has yet dared or may ever dare in practice.

THEATER OF THE MOMENT

1. There is no rehearsal and no failure. It is practiced every time only as a real nexus of life forces, as fully there, not a preparation, not good or bad or relatively so, not improved upon, no goals, no climbing the stairs, not meant to be repeated. Each experience exists for us whether there are onlookers or not. It is a play-ing that goes to the heart of the matter every time, even as it surpasses our perceptions of it. Our frustration with what we do is carried into the next time, perhaps, as in life, only to be encountered years later, after wreaking havoc.

2. Bold in its awkwardness, hesitancy, irrelevance. It assumes we do not know for sure and never will. It does not hide our ignorance under layers of demonstrated competence. It leaves us with a bad taste in our mouths of the incomplete and unfulfilled. Strength is trapped in its haughty disregard of confusion; certainty is undermined even as it rises to the surface, refusing to be submerged in the whole effect or in the gestalt.

3. It plunges into the precise instant like the knife, it tears away what is unnecessary and harmless, then turns and runs before triumph can be proclaimed. It is the unity of time-place-action taken to its limits, no introduction, no way to understand where it all comes from, only the drowning of a struggling body. In media res, a single act stretching the skin of measured time until it breaks open, light pouring out with nothing to be seen. All terror, the terror of not having time to think and choose in peace. We abandon our good plans in the rush, and find our brains taking orders from the rest of the body.

4. It is excessive and contains the fear of excess, the disgust with it, the revulsion of our deeds, that we could be so crude. Spit and sound mingle and pour from the mouth, not as gestural affectation but as overflow.

5. Theater of the Moment gives us the tantalizing dream-illusion of release from the pain of existence, it shames us in our accommodations, disrupts the juggling display of thought-feeling-action. For a brief time we are separated from the controlling consequences of life. It releases us from the need to live for the sake of our self-justifications, to save ourselves from our past deeds and to project our lives and selves into the future. It is an enactment and mockery of what controls us. It comes from the immediate nexus of internalized forces chasing us, qualifying us, criticizing us, giving us our place in the world and thereby alienating us. It is the reaction and integration of these forces; we eat their poison to live. It is melody and story to this chorus and refrain of suffering, the joy not of triumph over pain but the song of pain itself, which as song must always be joyful. Only in this sense is it free. It is the one hand or one eye or one cell always left alive to experience it all (that is, to grab after it), only magnified and given the whole stage to be alone in. We are buried laughing. To be conscious of such tremendous insufficiency is as close to being ourselves as we can get. (We can even pity at this point those whose activity is based on that alienated thing called belief in yourself.)
We are alone, trying to escape from our danger and failing, then plunging directly into it, the danger of having nothing but ourselves. In a world which is our machinery, that claims every cell of our bodies and validates every sickening thought of our minds, we are for the moment, for this one revolutionary moment, a ball of tears and laughter, of mockery and blood, a knife in our hand and a knife at our throat. We become the living proof of our existence, in spite of and because of the crushing monster that rules us and is us. Smell rushes at us with full force and flattens our face.
We do this against our better judgment, and there is no god or divine force on which we can pass blame or to which we can offer thanks.

6. It is a most intense this-worldly experience, changing time from abstract chronology to the most specific instant at which life enters or exits. It is like suddenly finding yourself in a car accident; the routine of driving is revealed for the threat it always does contain, as "outside" and "inside" collapse; nothing else exists but that, but in some way you aren't really there consciously because it is to much impact to absorb.

7. We usually fear things which are overwhelming; paranoia builds in this and symbolizes the threat as physical. Theater of the Moment is the opportunity for the absorption, the eating of this totality of force rather than resisting. It can be metabolized by our bodies because it is simultaneously being shat out of us. Like the soldier in the midst of bombardment who can't hold his shit, neither can we. It is shameful for its violation of our social code, but we are at this point slaves to our sensual pleasure, rising waves; giving and taking become one. Our attempts to round things off, put things in perspective, mediate between and the expectations and perceptions of spectators, all get tangled in nets of confounding dance and laughter that have no fear of the deep.

8. Form is what we find littered behind us, the reflection of what has happened rather than a plan for the future. We are making form there and then, as consequence of our focus, not filling in details of a framework. (It is a pleasure to do this, to realize a form, to create according to a guiding image, but this is not the place for it here.) When the direction of our actions appears in a guise we recognize as familiar, when the road we are on becomes a groove, we let such familiarity slap us in the face and throw us off target. We don't know what is best until we have done it, then it is best, that is, it has appeared and cannot be judged, it is the standard, the controlling form, to be plowed under in its turn as part of its project.

9. We have put ourselves on the state (no matter what name we give it), knowing this is the place where others will judge us, and differently than when we just walk down the street. Yet when we begin, we lower the curtain, cutting us off from the power of others to define us. The social context of our lives, which penetrates all our activity, even crowding the most private, and guides our self-judgment, drops out of sight. We have bought the stage with our efforts, have exchanged labor power for the expectation of spectators, for the chance to turn against the internalized specter/spectator within us. It is others who will calculate our entertainment value, it is happily out of our hands. When we stop watching and judging ourselves through the eyes of spectators, when we find ourselves alone, then we can do anything, and the anything becomes precise, unique and detailed. We discover what the anything is by learning that we can't know what it is not.

10. Theater of the Moment is wholly dependent on the eyes and ears of others, whether imaginary or real, whether attentive or not. It is the plaything of the others; it floats in the air they breath. They are the environment created by the event, the most variable and volatile, the big question mark that is plunged into. There is no safe or accurate calculation possibly of any response, hostile or friendly, no definition even of a "good response." Is it good or bad if people yell at you, or say they like your work, or sit speechless, or ignore you? Do we know how an experience might affect someone even ten years later? The mystery that is in these witnesses, when that is touched, there is the stage created for it. If we try to calculate the good effect and then duplicate it, build a career on it, then Theater of the Moment will run from it in horror and take up new lodgings. It would be better that all spectators be imaginary than that we manipulate their assent for our gratification.

11. The real relation to spectators is this: what we have in private is hidden and secret, it is the cave of our dreams. Our acts are protected from the sight and knowledge of others, as the private truth we know would not stand the test of scrutiny. It is our version of things, not to be compared or criticized. It is crime, sex, it is secret power, hidden divinity of the body. It is whatever liquid can be held in this vessel, in concentric circles of safety, the illusion of the truth of facing ourselves.
What is done in public is the projection of this private body suddenly outward, thrown into the open air, and told to fill it. We are told that every move we make or sound we give out will be turned inside out, and we have no control of the results. All our truth will be lies. It is the move from the safety of night to the light of day, the roaches on the countertop when we flick on the switch. We choose to allow ourselves to be seen running when we are trapped. When we finally do stand still it is over.

12. We walk along the edge of our craziness, swing lightly over the cliff by a cobweb rope, feeling the hot breeze from the valley. When we have had this, why should we come back, to the surprise of applause, recognition, approval, financial reward, re-integration, security, superiority, triumph, illusion, the crippling embarrassment of success. Hands reach out to bring us community and we are there. This is the necessity of death.

13. Theater of the Moment is finally the opportunity to focus all energies, to be permeated by the void, to be emptied and filled at the same time. It is the fruit tree shaking itself, it is the tree through its seasons and its lifetime. It is everything contained in the period of time, time standing still. Quinta essentia, the quintessence extracted from chaos which the alchemists were after. It stands however only on the edge of order; each time it is the last, the mad swirling before succumbing to harmony, the death rattle before the peace of death, the lunge towards knowledge, the scream of impotence and ignorance at the point where it knows it is going and cannot stop, hands on the handlebars, racing, the momentum is all there is left.