As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh
Page 15
[SS was in London largely to sit in on a workshop collaboration between Peter Brook and some of his actors—including Glenda Jackson—from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Polish experimental theater director Jerzy Grotowski and some of the actors from his Laboratory Theatre.]
“Come at half noon,” “half three,” etc.
The metopes of the Parthenon discover the flexible body so distinct from the ceremonial body. The natural (real) body as distinct from the social body—
On Egyptian statues, you can even write on the body (more accurately, on the stiff costume) giving rank of person or a prayer. Unthinkable on Greek statues.
In Parthenon metopes, the bodies of men and animals (horses) are the same—muscle, bone, veins, flesh. Same texture, same degree of articulateness, same sensual authority.
8/5/66 London
My habit of trading “information” for human warmth. Like putting a shilling in a meter; lasts for five minutes, then have to put another shilling in.
Hence, my ancient wish to be mute—because I know what most of my speech is for, and I’m humiliated by that.
I suffer from a chronic nausea—after I’m with people. The awareness (after-awareness) of how programmed I am, how insincere, how frightened.
Joe says I look at people to find their limits. As if what a house was was a roof only. Always too small. Only with one person (———) did I acknowledge limits without minding them; did I see that although the roof was small, the house was spacious—
What’s wrong with my obsession, among other things, is that it prevents me from seeing what’s good in other people. Their possibilities.
G[rotowski]’s work suggests that everyone has his vicious animal imago and his regressive, good, infantile one. For some people, both imagos are grotesques, caricatures, self-parodies, eruptions of lunacy. For others—one imagines [Ryszard] Cieslak [Grotowski’s principal actor]—both are beautiful: purifications, improvements on the “human style”
G: Whatever is easy (possible) is not necessary.
Two beginning Buddhist meditations: (1) on breathing; (2) on compassion, kindness.
#2 is a sequence.
I think of myself. I wish that I be whole, harmonious, mature, happy, at peace …
I think of a friend, someone I love. I wish that he or she be …
I think of someone to whom I am neutral, I wish …
I think of an enemy …
I think of my family …
… my community etc.
… all sentient beings.
[Agehananda] Bharati, “Tantric Buddhism”
8/6/66 London
Grotowski has made a practice as well as a theory of self-transcendence (spiritual, corporal) using many of the ideas I projected in The Benefactor. But while I distanced them, through irony—unable to resolve the contradiction between my belief that these ideas were mad + my belief that they were true—G. is dead serious. He means what I said.
Because he doesn’t feel this contradiction? Because, for him, they’re not just ideas—He’s put them into practice—
Peter Brook:
Very intense, high-pitched, pale blue eyes—balding—wears black turtle neck sweaters—warm sensuous handshake—fleshy, meaty face
Studied with Jane Heap (famous Little Review lady from the 20s) living at end of her life in Hampstead); a pupil of Gurdjieff; her Sunday afternoons
Brain-picker
Of Jeremy Brooke, “Oh. Do you think so. I thought he was an interesting failure.”
His wife, Natasha. Married 13 years. She had TB for a while, so they’ve only just begun to have children. Have one daughter, age three (?). Wife about to have another child in 7 weeks.
Both parents were doctors—came to England, had to study again (humiliation, etc.) + take exams. Came from Russia.
Went to Cambridge—directed while there
Mother discovered laxative formula: Brook’s ExLax
Directed Dalí Salome (opera), Irma La Douce, King Lear, The Screens, The Deputy (in Paris), The Physicists (in London + Paris), the Lunt-Fontanne The Visit, Marat/Sade
His way of gesturing, low seductive voice
[The British playwright] P[eter] Schaffer says [Brook] “orchestrates” people.
Can sit very quietly
In a group: he turns the spotlight; you’re on—people are eager to perform for him.
Grotowski:
Around thirty-five
Like Caligari or magician in [Thomas Mann’s] Mario + The Magician
No one knows anything about his sex-life
Was never a critic
Has studied Yoga in India for a time
In his company, no one brings him his or her personal problems
Obsessed with religion (hatred of R[oman] C[atholic] church); his great theme: sex + religion
Recurrent motifs: crucifixion + flagellation (somewhat Tennessee Williams, says Brook)
[Pedro] Calderón play [The Constant Prince]:
Cieslak as the Prince almost naked on a platform, the rest of the actors in primitive medieval costumes, moving around him
Fantastic energy flowing through company w[ith]o[ut] breaks
They whip Cieslak hard with towels—
G. says they discussed + read through play for months using a bird for each part
To become silent, to be one’s body
Then: Writing would be something secret, the vice of words become residual +:
All the more intense
Cf. Stapledon—words an art form only
Grotowski + actor (Cieslak: “the instructor”)
(G.) Mr. Mind:
fat (plump?)
black suit, white shirt, black narrow tie
young (34?)
dark glasses
cutting gestures
unlined, slightly reddish face
dark brown hair, cowlick
smokes
(C.) Mr. Body:
black trunks
maroon sweatshirt
lean
panting
high cheekbones
thin legs
slippers
smile, sweetness
29 years old
face heavily lined
light brown hair
wipes his chest, brow, arm pits, w[ith] white handkerchief
head down into chest as he walks
claps hands to get attention
speaks halting English
What if the instructor were Grotowski—+ brought along the fat man w[ith] the dark glasses to pretend to be Grotowski?
Remember [William Castle’s 1959 film] The Tingler!
(Grotowski!)
N.B. The dramatic effect that everything G. says has to be repeated by Brook. (For me, [it’s] like watching an American movie w[ith] French subtitles. I’m equally + simultaneously interested in both.) So that the actors learn of G.’s method with Brook’s voice, intonations, + gestures. The authority of Brook remains unchallenged.
8/7/66 London
Ronald Bryden in essay in The Observer today: “The technique of the commercial … is the jump-cut from wish to fulfillment. It has become the technique of the new international pop-cinema … And with the speeding up, automatically, goes comedy. Anything accelerated to a faster pace, as Chaplin liked to demonstrate, somehow becomes absurd. The trade mark of the new comic-strip cinema is instant, absurd satisfaction …”
Buddhist monk the other night (“Virya”) =
Dignity
A rule
The body straightens
Speech becomes what is necessary
8/8/66 London
Puny exploits—penury
Beckett (from 3 dialogues with Georges Duthuit):
“Total object, complete with missing parts, instead of partial object. Question of degree.”
[Highlighted:] “In search of the difficulty, rather than in its clutch. The disquiet of him who lacks an adversary.”
“To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail
… failure is his world …”
Holland in the Hunger Winter of 1944–45—
The chief has a vast collection of pre-electric records
Some secret disgrace in his early life
Lolly Pop (music arranged by Big Beat Mephisto)
Title: The prisoner
Eating ideas
Novalis, Thoughts:
[Highlighted:] “There are moments when even alphabets and books of reference may appear poetical.”
“A character is a completely fashioned will.”
…
[Highlighted:] “Philosophy is properly home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.”
“To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, + disputed against it.”
“The power by which one throws oneself entirely into an extraneous individuality—not merely imitating it—is still quite unknown; it arises from keen perception + intellectual mimicry. The true artist can make himself anything that he likes.”
In America, religion equals behavior. One stops going to church or synagogue because [of] prohibitions or excessive burden of ritual, not (as in Europe) because of a crisis of faith or belief. Hence, Midwesterner who gave up going to church when he came to NYC as young man, may very well send his kids to Sunday School when he marries + moves to Long Island. All he has to discover is that Prot[estant] church in L.I. doesn’t ask him not to smoke + drink as the one back in Iowa did …
[After half a dozen pages of transcription of passages from Samuel Beckett’s Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, SS writes the following:]
I would be more myself
1. If I would understand less of what others mean
2. If I would consume less of what others produce
3. I would smile less; eliminate the superlatives, the unnecessary adverbs + adjectives from my speech
Because of 2 I am not fully present in many experiences:—more armored, I can absorb more. More open, I would be filled by one or two things—I would confront them more deeply.
With 1 I’m continually darting out of myself—I am not loyal to my own plane of perception.
I vulgarize my feeling by speaking of them too readily to others. As of Grotowski to Joe [Chaikin] + to Peter Brook + to [SS’s friend, the widow of George Orwell] Sonia [Orwell]. With each I saw how he or she w[oul]d react to Grotowski, + accommodated to that!
The English monk’s name now is Virya, which means energy. Summonera Virya.
HOW TO MOBILIZE ENERGY.
G. almost always inert—doesn’t waste his energy?
Or is it bad that he’s like this—two switches, on + off. Is it that that makes him, when expressive, demonic?
(Dr. Jekyll + Mr. Hyde)
Theatre jargon:
“You play off yourself” or “you play off other people”
Opposite of hide oneself is not show oneself (which is the same thing, inverted) but something beyond showing or hiding (shamelessness or shame).
Hiding and showing are both primarily self-regarding attitudes.
Imagine an attitude in which one’s total attention is fixed on an other (not just to see one’s own image reflected in the eyes of the other), an attitude in which consciousness of self (though hardly self) is obliterated.
Is this the aim—to abolish consciousness of self.
Cf. Sartre, who precisely denies that this is possible.
Harvard [Throughout the 1960s, SS , who had left Harvard having completed her coursework and exams for a PhD but without writing her thesis, toyed with the idea of doing one.]
Thinking about self-transcendence in modern French philosophy (Blanchot, Bataille, Sartre)
More precise thesis topic:
Self-Consciousness, Consciousness of Self, and Self-Transcendence in Contemporary French philosophy [Henri] Bergson, Sartre, Bataille, Blanchot, Bachelard
role of self-manipulation
role of language and silence
role of art, images (sight)
role of religion
role of concrete erotic relations
role of objectivity, impartiality
G. always dressed the same:
Black shoes highly polished; black socks
Always wears dark glasses indoors
C[ieslak:] several different sweaters—one baby blue, one maroon, one navy blue; several pairs of slacks; brown casual shoes
P. Brook: long skull, high forehead
There we sat, in a stupor of self-forgetfulness.
A Frenchman who had retired from the consular service + lived there quietly with his books
8/10/66 London
Elements of “Org”
It’s a study of
friendship
paranoia
Man who is most paranoid (Aaron) is the betrayer. His remorse.
Do I have to decide if the Org is good or bad?
Leave it mixed. Like the Jews—
Emphasize that the Org has given many men of genius to the world, though often these were people who denied their Org membership—
Chauvinism of Org people—
Popular prejudice that Org people are cleverer than others—
Nowadays, tend to find them in big cities; not so in the past—
From Paul Goodman’s “Down in the Mouth,” notebook of 1955
“To know an ‘objective truth’—this is fairly idle and for the most part a phenomenon of withdrawal from contact …
“ … I am not worth the truth because I have not succeeded with ‘my’ truth …”
The future of work, if I dare think of it. (To think of what’s beyond makes submersion in Org less painful):
A book made up of two novellas, each about 100 pages. Each centered on a kind of “theatrical” event.
Maren in T.
The Martyrdom of Virtue (or: The Rehearsal)
(G., C., etc.)
Title: “Two Stages”
So: The Benefactor (novel)
“In League” (novel)
“Two Stages” (novellas) > “Witness,” “The Rehearsal”
“The Ordeal of Thomas Faulk” (novel)
8/23/66
I’ve read this summer: [Arnold Bennett,] The Old Wives’ Tale; [Thomas Hardy,] The Mayor of Casterbridge; Gerhardi, Resurrection; Blaise Cendrars, Moravagine; Sheridan le Fanu, Carmilla; [Guy] de Maupassant, The Horla; [Jane Austen,] Pride and Prejudice; H.-H. Ewers, L’apprenti Sorcier; Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men; Gérard Genette, Figures; [Giorgio] de Chirico, Hebdomeros; [Diderot,] Rameau[’s Nephew], La Religieuse
Today, watching Godard making Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais d’Elle at the HLM [French acronym for a public housing project]
[Herbert] Lottman, the hack + vampire, asks: “What’s this movie about?” [Godard’s] A[nswer]: “I don’t know.” Q: “Is it about anything?” A: “No.” Q: “What is the general theme of your films?” A: “That’s for you to say.”
8/26/66