I, Yearn
I, Yearn
[A and B are men. Similar stature, similarly and cleanly dressed. As a general rule, lines should be delivered with more restraint than excitement.]
[Lights up. Empty stage save A and B downstage-center. They stare intensely at the ‘fourth wall’, on which (though obviously not visible to the audience) is a painting.]
[Long pause.]
A: And what do you make of it?
B: Bugger it!
A: Bugger it?
B: Yes.
A: Yes?
B: Yes.
A: Not to your liking?
B: No.
A: No?
B: Yes.
[Pause.]
A: And might I ask why it isn’t to your liking?
B: It’s nothing more than mere paint on canvas.
A: It is a painting, after all.
B: A smattering of nonsense in green, blue, and black!
A: Perhaps. But striking nonetheless.
B: Looks like my piss and shit on a wall!
A: Then I would recommend you see a physician. Personally, I find it captivating.
B: Captivating?
A: Captivating.
B: No.
A: Yes.
B: Certainly not.
A: [Firm.] Certainly.
[Pause. They reflect.]
B: And what exactly do you make of it?
A: Well, as you say, it’s a smattering of nonsense in green, blue, and black! [Beat.] But don’t we need a little nonsense now and again?
B: Nonsense is nonsense.
A: Nonsense! For nonsense isn’t always nonsense. Nonsense often makes quite a bit of sense.
B: That’s nonsense.
A: I see I’m making myself well understood then.
[Pause.]
B: Meaning and nonsense are mutually exclusive.
A: Ah, but what if we — [gestures at the ‘painting’] what if it — were to invite nonsense…embrace nonsense…produce nonsense…even mean nonsense?
B: Bugger that!
A: Does it not at least lead one to think?
B: To think?
A: Yes, to think.
B: I don’t yearn to think. I yearn to feel.
A: To feel?
B: Yes, to feel.
A: And does this not make you feel?
B: I feel…irked.
A: Irked?
B: Yes, irked. Peeved. Displeased. Aggravated. Irritated. Vexed. Miffed. Wound-up. Made cross.
A: The painting’s ruffled your feathers? Rattled your cage? Pissed…you…off?
B: In so many words.
[Brief pause.]
Caravaggio, Conversion on the Way to Damascus, 1601. Oil on canvas. Wikipedia
A: Those certainly are feelings.
B: But certainly not the proper ones.
A: The proper ones?
B: The proper ones.
A: And what are these proper ones — your so-called proper feelings?
B: Well…feelings are hard to put names on, aren’t they?
A: Did we not together just name approximately a dozen ways of saying you felt annoyed without ever saying you felt annoyed?
B: But we never did say I felt annoyed, did we? Besides, annoyance is not a proper feeling for art. Proper feelings are harder to name.
A: Proper feeling for art? Are not the feelings summoned by art the very same as those summoned by everything else?
B: Certainly not.
A: So…you feel annoyed looking at this painting?
B: I said I feel irked.
A: And, when not looking at this painting, do you never feel irked?
B: You know my irked-ness [urkidniss] knows no bounds!
A: There you have it then! Irked-ness in art, irked-ness in life. Potato. Tomato. There’s always the “-ato!”
B: And the “-o-.”
A: Oh?
B: Yes, the “-o-.”
A: Oh?...No…
B: Oh yes.
A: What?
B: Never you mind! [Beat.] In any case, annoyance or vexation or miffed-ness [miffidniss] or any other kind of irked-ness has no place in art.
A: Aye? Then what does?
B: I’ve already told you — proper art feelings.
A: And what are these proper art feelings?
B: I can’t name them — or otherwise they wouldn’t be proper art feelings, would they?
A: Try, won’t you?! [Beat.] Repeat after me, “From art, I yearn to feel…”
B: From art, I yearn to feel.
[Pause]
A: …what?
B: What?
A: What do you yearn to feel?!
B: Oh. [He reflects. With difficulty:] Uh…I yearn…to feel…[dawning clarity, with more passion than heretofore]…wonder! And rapture! Truth! And awe! And Love…Spirit…Civilization. I yearn for Enlightenment. For Solace. For Salvation…For Being!...For Meaning!...I yearn…for God.
A: Now that’s nonsense.
B: Bugger you too.
[Long pause.]
Detail of Gustave Klimt, Beethoven Frieze, painted for the 14 th Vienna Secessionist exhibition in 1902.
A: What else can be said barring… [He reflects.] We’ve drunk up the sea — sponged away the horizon.
B: I can feel the breath of empty space.
A: I can smell the divine decomposition!
B: We murderers of all murderers!
A: You madman! [Aside.] Erudite bunch we are, eh?
B: Erudition can’t help us now…can’t save us now.
A: Someone’s rather dour.
B: Indeed I am. And are you not?
A: [Reflects.] Indeed I am. Terribly foolish not to be. I’m simply not as morose.
B: Is dour not simply morose by another name?
A: Dour can simply be morose — but it also simply can’t be. For dour is simply dour and morose, simply morose. You can have dourly moroseness and morose dourlyness — just as we can make sense of nonsense as we make nonsense of sense. [Beat.] A modern day Lewis Carroll, I am!
B: [Trying to rhyme. Fails.] Less Lewis Carroll, more…dialectical — Damn, it doesn’t really work.
A: Careful now. We’re trending towards the didactic.
B: Less didactic, more Brechtian.
A: For the love of God, will you stop it! [Long pause. Then, disheartened:] It wasn’t nonsense what you said, by the way.
B: What?
A: What you said earlier.
B: I said many things earlier. You know I’m quite fond of saying things earlier.
A: What you said about art. About yearning! About wonder and awe and Civilization and God.
B: So you yearn too?
A: [Bitter.] Of course I yearn!
B: Shall we yearn together then?
A: Yearn for Civilization? For Salvation? For God? [Beat.] I can’t. It’s impossible.
B: Impossible?
A: Impossible.
B: Why is it impossible to yearn?
A: It’s impossible to yearn because yearning is dreaming, and dreaming is fantasy. We’d yearn after smoke and shadows — after history’s unkept promises. You say you yearn for Rapture? And for Truth? And Solace and Spirit and Meaning? Bugger it all! …And what in the bloody hell is God?! Nonsense, that’s what! …You want God?! [Points at the ‘painting’.] That is God! That is Rapture. And Truth and Enlightenment and Solace and everything else. That is Spirit! That is Salvation! That is Meaning! [Briefly reflects. Then, disheartened:] Or…it was.
B: A smattering of nonsense in green, blue, and black is and remains for us a thing of the past.
A: Really? Another German? [Beat.] What is its title anyway?
B: What’s what’s what?
A: The title! What the painting is called. What it is named.
B: What it’s been dubbed. Styled. Labeled. Designated. Denominated. Christened?...Baptized?
A: In so many words.
B: [Walks toward the edge of the stage, stares at the ‘wall label’. Slightly heartened:] Huh, that’s peculiar. Or perhaps serendipitous. Maybe fluky…or fated.
A: Nonsense! What’s it called?
B: [Walks back to A. Then, rapturously:] Gethsemane.
A: [Knowingly.] Ahhhh, that Gethsemane.
B: That Gethsemane.
A: We cometh unto a place called Gethsemane.
B: Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.
A: Yonder where the Son thrice beseeched his Father to deliver him from his fate.
B: That cup did not pass.
A: He was frightened.
B: He was helpless.
A: He was sorrowful.
B: Exceedingly sorrowful — and unto death at that.
A: Exceedingly human — unto death — and beyond.
B: But the physical pain.
A: Oh, unimaginable.
B: The suffering.
A: Terrible.
B: The Passion.
A: Miserable.
B: But also…magnificent. Divinely magnificent! Human misery…human Agony…human death…but then, resurrection! Rebirth! Ascension! All twined in a single, glorious…Passion.
A: Denomination pending.
B: The important bit is the God/Man thing — the new covenant.
A: The beauty of incarnational theology!
B: Ah, divinity made flesh! Appearing visible to show us the invisible. The unity — the oneness — the primordial identity — of God and Man.
A: Hu-man.
B: But of course. Egregious mistakes certainly were made. [Beat.] Fail better, as they say.
[Pause. A and B stare at the painting — with renewed intensity. Then…]
A: Well that about sums it up then, does it not? Painting…nonsense…the oneness of Being…the human in the divine…the divine in the human.
B: Does this mean we might now be able to yearn again? The spirit is willing.
A: Ah, my friend, enter ye not into temptation. For you must have forgotten: we’ve already recited the Nietzsche.
[Pause.]
B: [Truly dispirited.] Bugger.
[Long pause. Tableau. Fade to black.]
William Blake, The Agony in the Garden, c. 1799–1800. Tempera on tinned iron. Tate
Marcel Duchamp, Étant Donnés, 1946-1966. Mixed media. Philadelphia Museum of Art
