CLEAR THE PATHWAYS
When I was at school, I was taught history as a series of facts.
Facts that had to be learnt by heart and then reproduced in examinations.
A “fact” I learnt was that one of the causes of the French Revolution was the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu.
They were prophets who told people that society did not have to be run by a tiny minority of aristocrats for their benefit while all the rest of humanity starved.
I think of them now as I reflect on our society which is run for the benefit of a tiny minority of the ultra rich at the expense of everyone else.
And at the expense of Planet Earth.
And I think my work is about saying no.
It doesn't have to be this way.
And it's about imagining different ways of being.
I was very struck to discover in Manila that my play "Light In The Village” which I wrote 30 years ago was actually ahead of its time. Because what it's talking about has now come true.
Yesterday I was applying for a residency and one of the things I had to do was supply samples of my work.
One of the pieces I took was a scene from my “Losing Venice”.
It's a play about the folly of England not accepting it no longer has an empire and continuing to live in its imperial past.
And yesterday, when the British Prime Minister was announcing the so-called defence review, he was still using the same old tired second world war rhetoric of Britain being a world leader… As if we still had an empire.
And I thought: but I wrote about that in 1985. Have we really learnt nothing?
And even though when I was writing the internet did not exist I swear that I foresee it in this scene:
“PABLO. You’ve gone mad.
QUEVEDO. No it’s the world. Pablo. The world is
mad. Madness incarnate. Total chaos.
Or so it seems. But underneath is the web.
Pablo, I’ve seen the light.
The light of the world.
The web, the wondrous web.
Everything, Pablo. Everything is inter-connected.
Everything.
Even the most disparate of objects,
the most hopelessly contrasting events
…all connect. They all connect.
A puddle, Pablo, a puddle connects with
The stars.
PABLO. How?
QUEVEDO. Exactly. How? That, Pablo, that is
The point of poetry. The object of wit.
To make the connections apparent.
And the greater the disparity, the greater
The wit. Then understanding brings the
Homage of laughter.
PABLO. I don’t understand.
QUEVEDO. You don’t understand? Pablo listen. I call you a pen.
PABLO. A what?
QUEVEDO. A pen, Pablo. A pen. I know.
The intellect objects. You are not a pen.
You have no feathers. You have no nib.
You are not sharp, you are blunt.
Very blunt. And you do not write.
But Pablo, but: you speak. You record
events. You tell me your day has been
good. Or perhaps bad. Who cares?
You ate spaghetti. You pen. You
speaking pen. I know the intellect
objects. Pens do not speak. Pens have
no tongues. But on paper, on paper,
Pablo, a pen can be more eloquent than
Silver-tongued Cicero himself.
PABLO. Stop.
QUEVEDO. Yes. The intellect objects. A silver
tongue could not speak. But think, Pablo
think of the worth of the spoken. And so
we speak of a ruby tongue.
PABLO. Do we.
QUEVEDO. Yes. Of course. Yours for instance.
I take it it is red. Or a golden tongue.
A tongue of diamonds.
PABLO. Shite,
QUEVEDO. Yes. ‘Shite’ too. We are surrounded
by metaphors. Hordes of them. They
overcrowd our wardrobes, they overflow
from drawers. They drop from the ceiling
in golden showers, and then they run
towards us wagging their dear little tails.
Oh Pablo, Pablo my dear friend, we live in
a labyrinth of connections, trapped like
flies in a web. And yet we do not
struggle, for the web upholds us, the
intellect travels free within its
boundaries, and wanders amazed in awe and
in wonder.
PABLO. But what do we do?
QUEVEDO. Do, Pablo do?
PABLO. Yes.
QUEVEDO. We lose ourselves in contemplation.
QUEVEDO loses himself in contemplation. Music. “
And all this in my heart as I contemplate this morning’s verses,
With Isaiah telling us of the prophet howling in the wilderness:
MAKE CLEAR THE PATHWAYS!.
And yes. Make clear the pathways for the new.