Sorry, I bin away so haven't been able to forward this as requested. NB,
folks, to send to the whole list, use the address
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looking forward to reading this at some stage... R
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 15:24:42 +0100
From: john chris jones <[log in to unmask]>
To: R I Caddel <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Allen's Big Questions
dear Richard Caddel,
Having joined the list after Allen's questions appeared on it I wrote to
him asking to see them - he could not find the exact words but sent me his
memory of the substance. I'm replying via yourself believing that thereby
this will also reach Allen and everyone who is following the
correspondence? (If I've not addressed it correctly for this to happen
please let me know.)
Allen:
in art & design college, part of the tuition has to do with understanding
personal interests, using research to analyse them, develop ideas through
conceptual thought and developmental or design drawing. learning skills
for application. issues of context occur as part of this complexity, but
as precedents for it.
some e-mailers think that anthologies are what are required to teach
creative writing.
that means they relie on exemplars, and i think, on copying these
exemplars, but don't deal with innovation from personal interests.
personal interests evelps from necessity and without necessity artists,
designers, poets simply reproduce each other's work and do not shift into
new business.
my reactions:
In teaching what some have called design-poetry I try to relate personal
impulse to perception of 'the world as it is'. I often find that the people
I'm asked to teach are not used this, they have been taught to think more
of academic ratings or of the limitations of the market, or else of
'creativity' as personal property, and 'the world' as hostile, or of art
having to do only with 'meaning', etc..
In trying to jump beyond these divisive and dis-spiriting notions I ask
them to pay attention to the tiny thoughts (the chatter of the mind, or
'existentia' as I call it) as they contemplate 'things as they are'. And
yes, I often refer to Gertrude Stein's essays (in 'Look at me now and here
I am') as examples of how to do this.
I append an essay (from Notes and Plays, Spectacular Diseases, forthcoming)
in which I try to exemplify this way of doing what you Allen seem to be
calling for, a way of relating one's inner thoughts and necessities to the
outwardness of things.
And thank you, Richard Caddel, for initiating this list and correspondence
- I think it's wonderful to see poetry, the art which has already adopted
and transcended mechanical production (via the shift from vocal poetry to
printed writing) entering now the more colloquial medium of electronic
writing. What will ensue?
good wishes
john chris jones
here is the appended essay:
HUMAN MIND : THE REAL THEATRE ?
notes while attempting to clarify some ideas of how theatre (and other
performings) might be now,
with reference to the plays and theories of Gertrude Stein and to oriental
theatre
(january 1979, revised june 1990)
HUMAN MIND. Gertrude Stein's phrase . As opposed to what she calls HUMAN
NATURE. Human mind is present, she seems to say, when one is lost, unaware
of self, while attending to what one is doing. Completely involved.
One is, when acting thus, not the person as known to one's friends but
in some other mode of being. A mode I'd call sublime. As John Cage puts it
(quoting, I imagine, from medieval mystics) 'I am everywhere', 'open to
divine influences' (I can't find the references now). Though I'd hasten to
say that this is not at all an other-wordly state but one of being extra
attentive to one's context, while being neglectful of one's usual conscious
attention to one's self-interests, the state of what Gertrude Stein calls
HUMAN NATURE, or "me as my little dog knows me" as she puts it, meaning I
presume me as I am known in my public identity.
I like very much the implication, in her odd choice of names for these
well-known states of mind, that human nature, though it may be fixed more
by external influences than by choice, is, nevertheless, an optional state,
one we are free to leave, at times, if we are blessed with the gift of
being able to attend to externals, and to the flow of thought, to the
neglect of social imperatives and of self-interests. And there obviously
are plenty of occasions when everyone, not just the makers of masterpieces,
becomes lost in activity, or in thought, of some kind.
But perhaps my main reason for choosing the term human mind is that I'm
thinking of a theatre that is organised on the assumption that the play is
not what happens on the stage but it is what happens in the mind of each
person present. Thus there are as many plays being performed as there are
people to perceive them. The play can thus be released from the limitations
of realistic portrayal, by illusion, within the limits of the cost, time,
imagination, etc., of the players, directors, writers, etc. The scale of
the play can be at the full extent of all that can be experienced, the
scale of mind itself, which I take to be the largest entity possible. (Not
that it's an entity, or an it . . . . . . or?)
As in Oriental folk theatres and courtly theatres, (noh, javanese shadow
puppets, etc.) realistic simulation is dropped in favour of conventions
(shadow of cut-out is person, dance is an emotion portrayed but not felt be
the dancer) which are not those of ordinary life and, by their presence in
the playing, admit the presence of mind, or more of it than naturalistic
realism allows. And, unlike oriental theatres but like many kinds of
'modern art', there is the intention not to impose meaning that has been
decided in advance by the artists or the performers. Instead there is the
intention of making a context in which it's possible for each person to
find, in their thoughts-aroused-by-the-performance, vast new distances and
spaces of experience that are normally out of the reach of one's thoughts.
The art, the skill, in making art-works, or plays, or whatever, in this
way is partly transferred to the audience who do ALL the creating and
interpreting that is done while perceiving. This is the perceiving, the
thing itself. But there is a hidden part of the artistic activity (which I
call composing, using the word to mean the organising of context), which
operates in a different scale from that of audience-mind (what I'm calling
the play). I see this hidden part as a so-far nameless which is being
slowly discovered in the efforts of twentieth-century experimental artists
of all kinds. It is the composing of contexts, situations, in which one is
released to experience, to think, to be, outside the range of how one is in
daily life (the modern equivalents of grace, or other religious states, but
shorn of belief in hierarchy?) To me this is what is behind such seemingly
empty, challenging, phrases as anti-art, minimal art, the
alienation-effect, the music of silence. These are, I believe, all examples
of a general wish among artists to explore the possibilities of experience
freed from the single-interpretation that is usual in conventional (i.e.
hierarchical?) human affairs. Is that why Gertrude Stein used the term
human nature for what I'm calling single-meaning?
But this is not meant to be an academic essay, in the meanings of words,
but a practical statement of my thoughts about how theatre might be
organised now, and of how I'd like to attempt it myself, given the
opportunity.
How, in practice, could 'the theatre of mind' be realised? What would it
be like? It's hard to imagine.
Notes in the dark
To approach that question I'll have to be indirect, to step back a bit to
the source of these ideas, to the notes that I've been making, for several
years now, while sitting, often in the dark, in theatres, cinemas, and in
front of the tv. These notes are only occasionally in the form of practical
suggestions. More often they ar records of the thoughts aroused bythe play,
or dance, or mime, or film, or whatever-it-is, as I attend to it. They are
sometimes my attempts to write down fragments of the whole new world that
is being aroused, in my mind, by what's happening in the performance. More
often, perhaps, they are more critical than that: notes of features that
irritate, that grate on me, and my guesses about why present theatre etc.
is so alienating in so many of its details. But there's no need for me to
anticipate, I'll look for some typical notes, in the dark. . . . . . Here
are some remarks selected from many more written at a performance of Hamlet
, in the costumes and language of traditional Korean acting, at the Mickery
Theatre, Amsterdam, in April, 1977. My 1990 additions are in italics and
I've slightly clarified some of the abbreviations of the text:
"We wait in darkness with music to see them motionless.
Each moves hardly at all and hardly reacts to the others' actions.
Each action is only to express emotion! It's expressed but not
'sincere', so no falsity because it's a 'formal' expression.
i.e, the key to oriental theatre is that it is emotional but the expression
of it is formalised.
"what to do with my hands?" is not a possible question because each
holds to a formal pose while the other speaks, & switches to a new pose
after each 'emotional unit'.
Units can be quite long, like the fool's dance, perhaps minutes.
Not glimmer of a real smile on Hamlet's face as the others fill in the
fool's dance, he smiles formally all the time.
Very colourful versions of the clothes they normally wear in Korea?, or
very sombre versions.
So why not do the same in 'audience theatre'?
i.e. each to bring own clothes and to decorate or embellish them in the
manner od Adam's silver coat (Adam's friend unpicked his worn jacket that
had grown to fit him so well and used the pieces as patterns for a new coat
in silver.).
Hamlet doesn't react during someone's speech but his arms are held in
eighteenth-century-like postures.
Is that why such plays are so good, because of their formalism? Is it
that what is good in plays is false in life?
Is this a kind of theorem?:
on stage: formal emotion = non-deceit
in life: formal emotion = deceit
But why? Is it because of who is communicating with whom?
Hamlet's hand moves very slowly & formally to his sword which he very
slowly raises and partly withdraws from its scabbard and then hesitatingly
slides it back in and then very slowly lowers it to accompanying slow
chant. He says nothing. (This I took to be their way of enacting 'to be or
not to be')
During this very slow motion the man performing Hamlet looked directly
in my eyes (I sat in the front row and he stood close to the audience on
the same level as ourselves). I felt as we exchanges glances that he did
not feel himself to be there 'as Hamlet' but as himself, as I am me. I felt
this also as he smiled gently to the applause that followed."
Then there were more notes in the dark, ending with:
"Face drenched in visible sweat is no obstacle to formal acting.
Grave becomes winding sheet for Ophelia, who is now in white (oh, I see,
the long waving sheets across the stage are representing the water as she
drowns). "
(c) © 1979, 1990 john chris jones. You may transmit this text to anyone
for any non-commercial purpose if you include the copyright line and this
sentence.
I do not have a website but you can see some more of what I'd call design
poetry on the ellipsis site:
things (and other things) by myself and others await an inquisitive mouse
at <http://www.gold.net/ellipsis/> and a mirror site at
<http://www.ellipsis.com>
(apologies for the length of this - please delete if your disc is getting
swamped!)
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