"Prop State" - pt 1

PROP STATE


Mortals have settled in their minds to speak of two forms, one of which they should have left out, and that is where they go astray from the truth. They have assigned an opposite substance to each, and marks distinct from one another. To the one they allot the fire of heaven, light, thin, in every direction the same as itself, but not the same as the other. The other is opposite to it, dark night, a compact and heavy body.

-Paramenides, "The Way of Truth." 50/55

Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven.

-Apollinaire, written on Henri Rousseau's tombstone.






A school rests on the edge of a jungle. Or rather, in its center. Lush and full of frightened and confident animals, the jungle is not benign, and not malignant, containing a hidden organizational system. In fact, it resists easy categorization, although it often serves as a meeting place and archive. A factory spreads caustically in the center. Of the school or jungle, it is often not clear, as both move back and forth through time, as if photographed by many lenses. The campus appears surrounded on each side by strip malls and conference centers. Several guides to the school regularly present tours and generate the initial pedagogical and administrative structures. They prefer subtle music. Although anonymous workers, they control the descriptive model of the school. Their ambitions to middle management are misplaced. Henri Rousseau, wanders the jungle, hoping for some sort of sloughing off: the antipodal grace of the surviving cave-people; the poetry that was surrendered at Thebes, ground to dust, and reappeared in the gilt slo- ganeering of anti-Fordist activists. Baruch de Spinoza, breaks from grinding lenses, to sing hymns. Alfred Jarry, vigorous bicyclist and factory owner, only wishes to write again, but feels a sense of duty to his shareholders. A Pig Farmer, leaning on his now useless spade, hopes for the continued modernization of his profession, through advances in genetics and skin fabrication.

ACT 1:

Scene: Noon, campus

Public Address, sent as a series of messages to every mobile device on the campus:

_______ ___________________

and then, seconds later:

alas.

Scene: Evening, campus

Guides enter, fashioning weapons from whatever is at hand. They are ethical, conserving what resources they can, using what
is available to them sparingly. They make their way slowly through the smog of the campus steamrollers, the sharp smell of asphalt, the muted evening heat of the blackened surface. The light is blue-green, the white masks at their mouths glowing in the dusk. They speak the same language.

Guide 2: This humidity....

Guide 1: We are not certain that this school is asleep. We are early; the air is cool.

Guide 2: (gesturing)
To the left you will see the cantina, where the students organize, and present impromptu lectures. These lectures aren’t researched, but are created on the spot, from the information available in the air.

Guide 1:
Above are the cliffs, where the despondent throw themselves. Above the cliffs, the gods.

Guide 3: (introspectively)
How many legs are required for suicide? Do octopuses commit suicide?

Guide 2:
How many legs are required?

Guide 3: (murmured)
How many...

Guide 1:
Who will forgive us our metaphors? Who will descend to present us with safety vests?

Guide 3:
Who will remember the swine-herders, the lonely drop-shippers, the faithless sheep-cullers, the pull-men, the neo-structuralists, the antiquarian book dealers?

Chorus of Guides:
When we were young, our mothers taught us to write, to write in language that could float in the air for others to pluck. We had a name for this floating, but we are old, and have forgotten it. Our mothers met under the freeways, always leading with spray cans towards the tunnels; the drainage was our teacher. The edging of the jungle was all that we needed to know. There was no end point, only subterranean truth.

We bring this memory to our work; we apply ourselves daily. There was a moment when we seemed necessary: that moment when dull faces turn towards a microphone, blushing with pricked conscience and the expanse of surprisingly ancient radio waves.