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Blue paragraphs are not read aloud. They serve as advice regarding the aloud reading of the numbered black paragraph which immediately follow each. The piece begins with its title being read aloud. This can be can be delivered in any way deemed appropriate, with extensive added context, or none. Indeed, it is permitted for the title to be skipped completely, or repeated many times.
A sitting position is taken. There is no gesticulation from the hands, indeed no body movement at all; even the head is still. Except for the eyes, which move only enough to read words, nothing but the mouth moves. The voice assumes deep tones and precise diction, almost academic, and proceeds slowly. It verges on being boring, which is countered by significant variation of pace, emphasis, pitch, tonality, and gravitas. The delivery changes quite a lot, even as it retains this distinct slow and deep precision. Great effort is made to enhance the sense of meaning in each word and sentence. This is achieved not only through the variety of ways that the voice changes (pace, emphasis, pitch, tonality, gravitas) in response to the meaning of the words and sentences, but also through pauses. Words and sentences linger as they're spoken and afterward, as if the meaning of them is so dense and layered that long pauses and lingering is necessary in order to understand them.
There is a pause, then the above is repeated, but a little bit faster. Otherwise, the earlier instructions regarding no physical movement and a deep but modulated voice still apply. Then it continues below, in the same frozen body and varied but deep lingering voice, though with a little less academic precision, perhaps more warmth.
Pause. Then smile and read.
Still sitting and still with no hand gestures. The head and body may move a little, with the legs allowed to start to move much more. It's still barely noticeable at this point, but "restless feet" starts.
Before any further aloud words are read, there is a tiny moment of the runaway jackhammer feet going by themselves. This moment is tiny enough for the reading to continue naturally without an unnatural pause, but not so tiny that it's not noticeable. After this tiny moment, the reading continues, now with the restless feet picking up and becoming defined: rapid alternating foot taps imitating a jackhammer, such jackhammer becoming more frantic and chaotic, or less frantic and chaotic, depending on the content and intensity of the writing. They respond to the aloud words.
The foot tapping continues to respond to the aloud read words.
*Author's note: the more time I spend crafting and editing a piece of writing, the more intricate and essential its layers of repetition and rhythm become. It isn't clear to me if these efforts make the layers more pronounced and discernable, or just convoluted and impenetrable. Nor is it clear whether any piece of writing's internal structures and patterns are just some gimmick, or if they're actually important. The "restless feet" gimmick here solves neither of these conundrums, though I think it does argue in the affirmative. Or at least it enhances the fiction that this writing is both discernable and genuine. Ultimately, the feet respond, merely, but I do think they help.
The tapping becomes hard stomping, still responsive to the writing.
Pause, then resume.
Stomping hard with the words here.
Pause , then resume reading and having restless feet, but back to tapping rather than stomping.
Restless feet pause for the next paragraph, which is read with more emotional emphasis.
Resume stomping, chaotic but muted (affecting sadness)
Less chaotic but still muted
Less chaotic and less muted, almost rhythmic
Tiny pause, then come to standing
The piece changes from here. "Restless feet" become running feet, with the weight of the footfalls and their rhythms still responding to the writing, but from here on out it is "running feet" rather than "restless feet", also standing
from here, running feet will respond to the pace, which is fairly explicit in the content, so there will be less extrinsic instruction in blue, but speaker's legs are still moving
running and walking in fun rhythms, but also moving around the stage, and responding to the writing with less with moving legs and more with location and posture or posing.
running stops, but
funny walking
Origin of the Idea
This idea may never have an actual end. It is occupying a space and has assumed a form, as all ideas must, just as all things occupying a space and having a form do eventually occupy every place in their space and assume every shape in their form. After this they can and do repeat. However, repetition is limited. Such limitation applies to material and immaterial things, as well as to locations within a space and shapes within a form. The only difference is that immaterial things have a bit less tolerance for repetition in their spaces and shapes, while material things get to repeat a bit more. Perhaps immaterial things occupy larger spaces and assume more robust forms. Regardless, eventually, the space is filled and the shapes are exhausted. This filling and exhaustion is a kind of end. But not yet. Let's take another pass at this.
However, and interestingly, I keep finding new spaces and forms for this particular idea. There is a hope that I will keep finding new spaces and forms for it. This hope might be an intuition, or a premonition, or even possibly the logical conclusion that I can keep finding new spaces and forms for it, indefinitely. I am finding that every new space or form for it that I find seems to suggest several more, and I get the sense that, in my life, I won't come close to exhausting the spaces and forms for this idea, and that, after I'm gone, others might be able to keep moving and transforming it, indefinitely. Whether or not such happens, I think such is possible. This idea may never have an actual end.
But it did have a beginning.
A few years ago, my mind got taken over by a runaway jackhammer.
I thought a lot, and in every direction, and all the time. I couldn't stop it, and I couldn't direct it. It went in every direction, and all the time.
In the quietest dark of the night and in the loudest screaming shining sunlight day. As the sun rose and as it set, in shadow and light, and even in the fucking penumbras that define the boundaries between shadow and light, I found myself drowning and thinking and drowning and thinking, there was a runaway jackhammer in my mind.
Thoughts came and I fucking thought them.
Most of them were horrible and angry. Occasionally they were hopeful and wise, but the hopeful and wise thinking just made =space for more thinking, mostly and mostly again, horrible and angry (to fix: better balancing of the metaphors of angry/sad and horrible vs. hopeful and wise)
all the time, and in every direction.
I thought in great volumes;
indifferent and compelled,
manic and flat,
joyous and enduring.
Angry and sad.
I thought in great volumes, but to little effect.
I like thinking, I cherish it even. I have a funny brain, and it encounters the world both directly and reflectively. I like reflecting, and might even say that I'm skilled at the craft of reflection. But, a few years ago, it really just got away from me, and I found my mind taken over by a runaway jackhammer.
I thought in great volumes and in every direction, but to so little effect.
Things had happened in my life, tough things. I had done things to my life, tough things. I was angry, and sad. I went in a lot of different directions to manage this thing that had happened to me, and that I had done to myself (to fix: the above paragraph of what had happened to me and that I had done to myself needs some editing, for rhythms)
I went in a lot of different directions to manage the fucking runaway jackhammer that had taken over my mind.
I ran a lot in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.
Sometimes the ruminations were so strong that I couldn't run, so I walked. I walked and ruminated.
As I walked, the rumination would ease off and just become thinking, and so I could start running again. At first the restarted running and thinking were soft, but as I kept going, they grew harder. Soft running and soft thinking. Then moderate running and moderate thinking. Then running and thinking harder, and soon enough I was in full sprint and screaming brain, going farther faster than I had lungs for... so I would walk again. I would walk and ruminate and huff and puff, until was able to just think and breathe easily. On and on like that, in cycles of running and ruminating and walking and thinking.
Slowly, the sledgehammer brain eased off, but I kept up the mixed intervals of thinking, sprinting, and walking. I ran, I walked, I stood. In varying intervals, I imagined the sky, I felt the dirt, and I heard myself. In these intervals, I found myself making up stories. I don't remember the stories, and they were more like dreams anyway- nonsense premises, disconnected causation, fantastical conclusions. I would be chasing demons from familiar places for strange reasons, then the demons became FDR but also my grandmother and a close friend, and together we jumped over fallen trees into labyrinthian fields, and we walked those labyrinths so delicately, lest we wake the minotaur. All of this I would promptly forget. My running pace varied, my thinking varied, but my forgetting was consistent. A variety of stories took shape. They evaporated as quickly as they formed. Over time, they lingered, and stopped evaporating so quickly. As stories, they remained nonsense. As ideas, they took more time to boil away, but still boiled away. As feelings, they became a bit more substantial. My mind and body moved, they spoke to each other, and as I did more of both, the conversation became more and more interesting.
What were they talking about? They weren't telling stories, not exactly. A slice of a story would arise here and there, but more as anecdote or emphasis, and not really as narrative. They weren't talking about me and my troubles nor my happiness; I had managed to move the ruminations to a space where I could manage them better, so this was no longer my overriding concern. Sometimes they seemed to talk about ideas, about philosophy, or history and politics and science and literature, but again, thoughts about these things were more tangential and in support of another conversation rather than being about the things themselves. My mind and body weren't talking about nothing either- it wasn't some perfect Zen experience where you deliberately focus on your breathing and reach a place of calm. I wasn't disturbed, though I certainly wasn't calm. I was listening, and starting to pay really close attention to the conversations between my mind and body. Breathing and physical sensation, and peace even came up in their conversations, but that's not what they were talking about. What were they talking about? I wasn't sure, after many hours running. Hours running in many days, days running in many weeks running, then a good three months of this. After a few months of running and listening, I still didn't know what they were talking about. But, I sensed that it was interesting, worth trying to capture and create something with. There was something in their conversation...
Oddly enough it was seeing the sandwalk from the movie Dune that gave me my first clue. In the Dune books and movies, the giant sandworms are attracted to rhythmic sounds, so, when in the desert, in order to break up their rhythm, characters walk in a strange slow dance. How to run and think arrhythmically seemed to be a topic of discussion between my mind and body.
The next time you think and run, try to do so without pattern while maintaining coherence and momentum.
It's surprisingly difficult.
I saw that my mind and body were working on this, and supporting each other in their efforts. Arrythmia wasn't the overall topic of conversation between my brain and body, but it was a specific subtopic. I was getting closer to understanding their discussions. Thinking about the Monty Python sketch about Silly Walks pushed me farther forward, and then remembering Calvinball from Calvin and Hobbes made it click.
My mind and body were playing and talking about games. Weird games, the kind that didn't lack rules, but also didn't have them. This is strange- how can a game have and not have rules? Oh! Rule creation games. That's what they were doing. Make up a rule, and then play with it, adjust it, think more about it, run in a funny way according to a rule and see how that rule affects the running, then imagine a whole rule set and run with a slant according to the structure of that set, then reformat and walk and think, then sprint again, then think of another rule set and see how that one could interact with the current rule set, play with it in movement. Imagine and move.
If I could figure out a way to catch and share some of this, I would have an art form.
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