Mark was telling me last night that in Japan they are running out of grave space, like there's basically no gravespace left in Tokyo so people have to go far away to bury their loved ones.
Possible additional premise: There's only one grave left in Tokyo, and all of the people in the play are competing for it after they die. This is rough and pretty basic, but I think it could lead to a really cool structure. I just find the image of 6 dead people all looking down at one gravesite striking.
Only Asa will understand this: Would it be too cruel to look at text from the coffin is too big for the hole?
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that's a really really great idea.
corollary idea which i had not thought of until reading this: there are many ways in which dead bodies are dealt with (burial, cremation, embalming...). what is different about each?
if we go with the one-grave idea, there's something really interesting about the way in which the body continues to be considered as the the person, just with perhaps the soul removed. but, since the body is buried in the ground, there is also the assumption that they will return to being simply organic matter, and not a person.
i am rambling, but basically what it boils down to is: graves to me bring up many interesting questions about the continuity between consciousness (the "self" we deal with on a day-to-day basis) and our more corporeal selves...makes me think of the way lots of characters in "Kafka..." talk about "containers".
Ooh yeah yeah yeah which TOTALlY recalls a lot of the text Mark was bringing in from people who were victims of trauma: there's always that moment when they're outside themselves. Or they close their eyes and their consciousness loses touch with their corporeal realities.
Mark, can you post more stuff from the trauma book/bring that in when/if we have our "Think-Tank Hullabuloo"?
Totes. There's a few more things I'll post, and I'll definitely bring the book. I'll also keep an eye out/ review other sources for that class we've already looked at. A lot of the texts talk about schizophrenia and the dissociation of the body and all that stuff.
Woo
Ahhhhhh.
I just had a random flood of ideas regarding this while I was reading Kafka on the Shore. So I'm on the 2nd chapter with Johnnie Walker and how he talks about he needs the cats' souls to make a flute, which will let him catch bigger souls, and get him a bigger flute and so on......
Isn't this just like the monster?
And then it also made me think about what you said, Annie, about the separation of body and soul after death and ALSO about the whole one-grave-thing. Let me see if I can articulate this:
Both the flute and the monster are based on the idea of combining souls to make a larger one (whether or not that's a single "new" soul or just a collection of them, I don't know--ANYWAY). And the one-grave-idea is all about how we have several bodies -- not "combinable" -- and only one grave....
I don't know. Nothing concrete, but does it make sense? I guess a kind of further complication/exploration of the body/soul deal.
Sorry, the passage I'm talking about is the last paragraph on page 140.
Also of note: how Johnnie says there's "an essential order" to the soul-collecting he must follow
cool, yeah. i like that idea, jaime.
if y'all are interested, i could look for sources about certain psychological disorders...post traumatic stress disorder in particular, as well as dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder), where the person becomes a container for more than one self...the different "selves" have different ages, genders, life histories, as well as different allergies, vision, heart rates/blood pressures!
so, on this note, it might be interesting to look at memoirs of people with these disorders, in order to further identify the subjective experience of your "self" being shattered, divorced from your body, or otherwise messed up.
just like dead people!!
Dood, Johnnie Walker IS like the monster, but I'm blanking on what his ultimate goal is. The monster's is a name, Johnnie Walker's is a new soul?
This is a great overlap.
hmmm
bigger theme here is
greed/ego is a monster,
yeah, i agree that the grave thing could be great, as long as it doesn't become a race towards the grave. but it could be really funny to have that be the REASON they're all in Russel house.
But, also, with the number of cultures that don't bury their dead do we want to play with the idea that if they're not buried they're not at peace?
but, ultimately, i really like this idea. it GROUNDS the play, it will be funny for the audience, add another layer to our already very interesting (non)score.
schizophrenia is interesting. my aunt is schizophrenic. she's been a big part of my life, yeah. interesting stories, that stuff really runs in my family. (any suprises here?)
i think about Jonnie Walker/The monster
It's a lot like the monster in spirited away, or like dick cheney. the whole horrific thing about greed is that it just gets bigger. it never goes away, it just leads further and further towards dissatisfaction and suffering. there's no end to it.
joy love
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