"When Story Stops, the Leak Begins" by John Sullivan (Part 3)
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My personal history involves making a lot of live theatre and this hybrid text reflects that focus. When Story Stops, the Leak Begins is composed of poem-scripts, a format that combines poetry and spoken word (primarily as dialogue), the internal arrangement of a performance script, and a more or less omniscient fictional spy-eye lodged inside each character’s head. These poem-scripts — considered collectively, though not necessarily in consecutive order — comprise a story structured into three acts. This poem-script experiment stems from years of making non-representational performances where speech conveyed content, but also led another life as a form of gestural action. It helps to think of When Story Stops, the Leak Begins as a loose contemporary take on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
This excerpt is the third of a four-part series that previews When Story Stops, the Leak Begins.
Baba Yaga’s in the House
(Miz’ Chan, Mr. Rougarou, and the Right Reverend RSV move light and careful through something that may be a deep forest. Right Reverend RSV serves as “way-finder” for the group. Though not without some justifiable grumbling in the ranks.)
Miz’ Chan
(She growls:)
So where in this drag dog Ministry
of Sackcloth & Sour Mash / Leavin’s …
Mr. Rougarou
(at / …)
Or, of a day, this day and its very own cleaving: it’s
Beguiling, bereaving and so, we go and
where in this Ministry of Peregrinatio ad Coeli …
Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou
(In unison:)
… are we goin’ to?
Right Reverend RSV
Goddoggitt!
Your Growl-O sure is Tasty-O!
Though’s I know not what you’re speakin’ of
you’re goin’ where you got to be.
(Right Reverend RSV gestures “hands way up to the sky” for a credible vision, for magic transport, for more animal presence. Think whoosh of updraft. Followed closely by a combination flurry of thud & crash.)
So: lay all ya’all’s eyes upon me and behold: “The Navigator.”
Crawled out from underneath the Stone of Destiny, I did,
one dark midnight upon the Hill of Kings.
Left hand steady, fomenting strife and siege,
right hand swellin’ up the peril all around this fishbowl of an Anthropocene.
It’s down to me, now, he who stride around all fuzzy like a nut.
Like an iffy mushroom, see, see, with me: it’s all comin’ up three’s!
Just maybe?
Miz’ Chan
Yeah, yeah, “Navigator,” go rub your own growl three times over
like a genie. I see nothing but that same sky. Again?
Mr. Rougarou
Same sky don’t get it done, Daddy.
Right Reverend RSV
Daddy, indeed, O-indeedy-do.
I’m way up here in the pulpit
just for you, and you, jumpin’ up & down,
transcendent and, to boot, a little stoned on it.
I am the last best wild track west, absolutely original
para-para-psychic bone-print of the actual,
One thousand feet of fire rushing to eat the neighbors,
(I’d say it’s high time, now, to high-tail out of town).
Whew! Still jumpin’ but it could be
could be, could be, too, something
Pomp & Beautiful to do.
Miz’ Chan
To do … to do, you say?
I do my own do on my own.
Mr. Rougarou
I do my do with dignity, Dad.
Doin’ it til I’m dead, I am.
Miz’ Chan
A beast to boot.
Mr. Rougarou
A rap I cop to.
I take it while it shines,
Rosetta.
Miz’ Chan
Hot & Meat-Hungry, I do, too.
I do likewise unto you,
You Hallelujah-Mongerer.
Mr. Rougarou
Me, too. Me, too.
That could be my very own do, you’re doin’, no?
Right Reverend RSV
Whine, whine: blue-biz-blue.
And I suppose and do you know what to tickle,
what to suck, without me here to show you?
Hello, again, you’re out of luck, and always.
Miz’ Chan
O Brave New Happy Mouth!
You’re killing me.
Show us some Brain Ranch
or set us free:
Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou
(in unison:)
Ignition … Lift-Off! Boom!!
Right Reverend RSV
Indeed, indeed, this zoom-zoom
ride will never full-belly be
for thee & thine, again.
Mr. Rougarou
O-Mr. Daddy, Mr. Daddy-O,
it’s no payback we lack.
No guise on the outside, neither.
Die-Young-Stay-Pretty
don’t get it done, Dad.
Show us some Skull.
Right Reverend RSV
OK, OK, Ye hollow Blurs of Bone.
We are here! We are here!
All ya’all Drop-Dead Blues Entities, we are
here where I fall, God-Struck, from my horse
and tell ya’all, precisely: Scope
the transubstantiation of growl into cower,
where one swell’s fly angularity be made straight:
brimmed over, like I say, and like I like it:
Fully fuzzed, fully nutted, every orifice left ajar.
Call in all thy dark birds, now, from their
skulks in their corners and have a sit.
And let it all go down. We’re here –
or, at least, you are:
time to adapt or just hallucinate for days.
This is your Jones talkin’
and none of my own.
Miz’ Chan
Here? Here, you say? So here is where?
Right Reverend RSV
A place where you can’t get to without me.
A place where I can’t go.
Mr. Rougarou
Where? There? And where is what?
My dreams tell me they can live longer without me,
grow legs, greedy hands, and fly.
My dreams tell me they may someday kill their dreamer:
Bye-Bye, Baby. They say
it makes you stronger - but you still gonna’ die.
Right Reverend RSV
It’s simple, dreamers, simple as spit.
Parse it, goose it, yank out the death-
kit and twiddle some knobs.
Apply a little dire flux and fiddle and
how and soon, soon, you’re one foot on the moon
and one foot in the fire.
(Pause. Right Reverend RSV is glad to be almost done with his role
as “judas-goat” and eager to just “disappear.”)
But now’s I got to go back over to
where blood’s the most thick, most thick,
where beasts, the most ferocious.
I got’s to go and do my own do,
on my own.
Miz’ Chan
Well go then, go.
And UR! to you. May you
never stop wishing you stayed
to do your do …
Mr. Rougarou
May peace, for you, remain always just a rumor - and lame,
and further-evermore - for your ears, alone.
Right Reverend RSV
Careful what you’re working, sister / brother,
I’m not a better angel, not even, I never
had a mother, and you know, I left many warriors laid low,
aunties, kiddos, saints that failed their finals,
All nailed to the devil’s very doorway,
wrapped up in a pretty bow.
(The Right Reverend RSV makes a secret-sacred sign that best fits his current eschatological frame over Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou as he says:)
So I leave you absolutio ad cautelam.
Best I can do. Best to dream on, too.
And sheerly enough, for both of you.
(Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou step over Lady Striga’s home turf perimeter. This activates her digital stream of traps and lures and sensors, and leads them to her virtual hidey-hole in the very heart of the forest. The Right Reverend RSV - no longer with them, embodied – is always near in spirit. )
(This also activates the Object-Monster – whom we all thought (maybe) exploded in a prior act of heroism / or maybe simple pain-avoidance. The Object-Monster hovers over Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou - like a “digital angel?” Something about them both seems portentous, but the Object-Monster needs more data to decide just what that something is, and why. Perhaps, also, a (digital?) skeleton key to the human meaning of portentous?)
(Mr. Rougarou instantly goes hyper-vigilant when the Object-Monster switches on: he sniffs, he senses something, maybe due to his partially Cajun / partially lupine corner of the genome. He’s been down this road before.)
(Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou enter their sleep-screens and glide straight to Lady Striga. She’s arranged herself within a de rigueur shamanic expert tableau with a huge book (of ancient arcane pedigree) in her lap. This moment is borrowed from centuries of Faith, Doubt, and Chicanery. Think: postmodern crone meets a timeless, more pedagogically inclined Baba Yaga with no sweet tooth or urge for tender meat.)
Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou
(Their sleep screens flicker and wake up, but briefly. Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou
find themselves sitting cross-legged on either side of Lady Striga. In unison:)
What? Who?
Miz’ Chan
(Miz’ Chan is a quick study. She quickly schools Mr. Rougarou:)
No Fear. Don’t scream. I think we found the beam
that pulls us: Come Hither.
Let’s give this old bird half an ear, together.
(Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou resume
their digital fugue state.)
(The Right Reverend RSV barks an order from somewhere outside the perimeter. His command disturbs and (maybe) mystifies the Object-Monster who still has a lot to learn about these beings.)
Right Reverend RSV
GO!
Lady Striga
Though everything I say or do is just a quote,
what I now read to you is not just an ad for the real act.
No parallax, no tedious Arguments of Perihelion, here.
It’s all reconciled over miles of light years, see?
I can only feel what I can memorize and say:
from me straight into you, direct from
the source star, O People of the Book,
it’s time to listen, and then to, maybe, pray:
Lady Striga Sings an Ancient Fable of All the Old Men,
Sleeping, Raging, Roaring,
& All the Old Women, in Full Glow
Old men rage in sullen bathrooms, listen:
How they choke, throats full of gall and goddamn,
Their boots kick hard against the goad, again,
Again, they’re kickin’ it, and again, how it doth ram.
Old men rage in fallen hallways, kick up a roar,
Full of broken teeth, empty windows, all bare to thread,
Listen: how their pang & throb rocks the secret wounds
Of a gone world open, shakes down a new world
They can’t even name, holds a next world, always,
Like a pale flame in its palm.
Old men rage and lurch and buck
And fall down under willow trees
Old men slam shut heavy-lidded orbs
Of eyeless, pointless, flicker, and freeze:
And so they are just what they be: old men,
old men, all of them, together, doze
Away the century.
Old women walk, all light-foot, together, carry
Lamps and astrolabes that glow, forever, up and down
Bare hills, past pine woods lake, down to the beach
On ghost-patrol, and winding, winding, always winding
Beyond reach, and nervous, like a snake.
Old women float with stars in their hair, faces
Flecked with ice, hard weather on their brows, hard
Weather in their gray-green snow leopard eyes: one
Foot in this world, one foot in some other, hands
Driving hard the great dream of Heaven.
Always right, they’ve never got a reason; always ready,
Their paradise is now.
(Miz’ Chan interrupts the digital trance.
Mr. Rougarou is just a scootch slower to ignite.)
Miz’ Chan
Bloody Hell!
You’ve all lived in vain.
Your God’s gonna’ cut you down!
Mr. Rougarou
(Also interrupts. His speech is more like prophecy
without anathema, or unkind jive-ass slurs.)
Caught in a fog of sighs,
Insane wind howls through it.
A whole crash-yard of flattened isms:
O what a fire for the future!
(Lady Striga makes some sort of hand-to-screen swipe-like gesture to reconfigure her digital palette. She reasserts control over tone and timbre, theme and tempo. She speaks-reads again.)
Lady Striga
Listen to The Book. All us People of The Book,
listen how the book speaks to all us people
in all possible ways at once.
(Lady Striga continues the ancient tale:)
“Where are you, old men,” each old
Woman calls out, carrying a sense of doom
Soon to be on her back like a papoose?
“What are you looking for? Why does it matter?
Where’s your little House of Nod
All tucked away, snug?
Where do you hide your ghost in the daylight?
Where do you lay yourself down to have
A say, a sit, a sigh, a sing, even, maybe?
Where do you lay yourself down to
Disappear, now that the dream lock’s sprung open?”
“Back in here, old women, where light don’t
Reach, the I, the we, speaking for
The tribe,” says one old man, then another,
Voices all wired up in a fist.
“Back in here, I/we feel changes; only feel,
See, I/we can’t give the change a name
that’s proper. I/we think we’re growing souls, now.
I/we know we’ll never fly, or fight
again, or kiss no more. No more.
It’s gone. It’s over.
I/we showed us something, showed us more,
showed us nothing much at all.”
“Burn the church, I/we say, now: do it.
Don’t care which goes where.
Have it done. Have it done. Have it done.”
Blue Light-Red Shift: comes on in waves.
In full, never two of them quite the same.
Old women feel the pull of stars, the
Gravities of weather, they turn and lift
And hover over all the old men, declaim
Like thunder:
“Good night, good night, old men.
Sleep you boldly.
Shout us in your dreams.”
(The Object-Monster (maybe) fears for Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou. S(h)e / It jams Lady Striga’s network & “the two” come to.)
(Lady Striga softly flagellates her head, then dons her official Helmet of Sad Pointless Memories. Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou throw barbs her way as they flee.)
Miz’ Chan
Arch, eldritch, dire: one sick what-cha-ma-call-it’.
But now: time to bounce!
This stream of rage & roar & shiny-shiny ladies,
brought to cure or brought to rot,
becomes less & less curious-er
as on & on & on it goes.
(Mr. Rougarou sniffs the air before he speaks. Can he smell – almost see – the Object-Monster with his Cajun-lupine gifts? Or maybe just its ghost-print?)
Mr. Rougarou
(To Lady Striga:)
So the wet-shroud, footless, goeth a’ghosting?
This dirge you do works my nerves like a drug.
And this dope-sick drug is a doomer.
(Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou step beyond Lady Striga’s perimeter. They shake off the traps and lures and sensors and prowl the “forest,” again, free-thinking monads that they are.)
(The Object-Monster closes her/his/its “eyes.” Could that expression be a smile?)
Lady Striga
It gets dark so early now.
(To Miz’ Chan & Mr. Rougarou:)
Remember me: a made thing.
A frayed-around–the-edges, smudged, and grayed-out, sun-bleached thing.
A laid-down burden, prayed over thing.
Remember: remember-some-thing.
(Now this aside slices through her heart like a scalpel.)
This next time, I want a better daughter.
This next time, she’s the big one
and he’s her long shadow.
(Pause & Regret? – not a mood you normally associate with your typical shaman. Generally speaking, as a sanctioned cartel of psychic professionals, they just don’t look back.)
All this air around is so damn big and I am so damn little.
Jesus … I cry so easy now.
(Lady Striga freezes: one sad giant tear emblazoned on her cheek.)
Right Reverend RSV
(From his secret point-of-vantage just outside the perimeter.)
“Journey agents” of pre-history: cast off
your chains and you best remember
how “the rich ones go to bed
with good whiskey in their heads.”
Only that. Only that.
Remember the whip of history.
(The Object-Monster lifts an “eyelid?”
Something like disquiet, here?)
DONE
JOHN SULLIVAN was an ACTF Playwriting finalist, received the 'Jack Kerouac Literary Prize,' the 'Writers Voice: New Voices of the West' Award, AZ Arts Fellowships (Poetry & Playwriting), an Artists Studio Center Fellowship, WESTAF Fellowship; he was also a featured playwright at Denver's Changing Scene Summer Playfest, an Eco-Arts Fellow with Earth Matters On Stage, Artistic Director of Theater Degree Zero, and directed the Augusto Boal / Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) wing at Seattle Public Theater. He and Sheli Rae (Producing Director: Theater Degree Zero) facilitated a series of acting/playwriting workshops inside the Pima County Jail in conjunction with the Pima County Library and the Tucson Writers Project. He uses TO with communities to promote dialogue on environmental and climate justice with environmental health scientists. His work has been published in a variety of print and online venues. Weasel Press (Manvel TX) published his first book, Bye-Bye No Fly Zone, in December 2019. When Story Stops, the Leak Begins came out from Unsolicited Press (Portland OR) in April 2020. A collection of performance pieces, Dire Moon Cartoons, was released by Weasel Press (now of Lansing MI) in October 2021.
