He was switched
From calling his father’s ghost “he” to “it.”
And not even a complete “it” –
A contracted “it.” Two lines before it was “his” beard,
Now “it” will walk.
Of course, he’s switched back and forth
Several times before this moment
He clearly cannot decide what to do
With this information.
He. It. Him. His. It’s –
The back
The forth
What do you do with the ghost of someone you loved?
A thing that both is and is not the person that you knew.
Author: erainbowd
I will watch tonight.
Sometimes all I want to do is watch
To give up any sense of having to do –
To surrender to what is before
And just float along on the narrative someone else created
That someone else is responsible for –
A world in which all the decisions
Have already been decided
Where tragedy is either inevitable
Or forestalled
Inevitably
Because someone made it that way.
Some nights
Nothing else will do
But to find some way to watch.
It was as I have seen it in his life, a sable silvered.
A sable silvered
Seven Silver Salad Servers
Slivered slippery snakes
I picture something like a ferret
A tabby ferret maybe
Turning grey
Growing older
Slower
Sleek still
Sleek enough to slip
Through someone’s fingers
And run rampant through a life
His beard was grizzled, no?
This is the last question
Before Hamlet decides to go check out the ghost for himself.
The answer is such that it pushes him into action.
Simply the color of his father’s beard, as described by Horatio,
Is the final detail that he needs for confirmation.
I wonder if Hamlet had a particular affection
For his father’s beard.
I certainly remember when my father had a beard
And even more acutely
I remember when he shaved it off.
I came down one morning and there was a strange man in our house.
My mother soothed and assured me
That this was my father, yes.
I didn’t believe her still
Even when I stopped crying.
It was obvious that my mother wanted me
To believe that this stranger was my father
So I humored her
But remained deeply suspicious for some time.
Recently, one or the other of these parents
Told me that they had purposely
Had me watch as my father shaved his beard
To avoid this very problem.
I had watched the razor
Skim the hair and cream on his face.
I saw the beard vanish and a face I’d never really seen before emerge.
My memory erased this entirely
Even in my sleep that night
Leaving me never 100% sure that
There hadn’t been a strange father switch
When I was very small.
Not when I saw’t.
Odd that Horatio should quibble
With Marcellus and Barnardo about the time. What does it matter what definition
of “long” they use? How much longer could Marcellus and Barnardo mean?
And why should it matter that Horatio felt the time to be shorter?
Is this just a quick reminder that Marcellus and Barnardo saw the ghost before and Horatio only this once?
It feels like a power struggle
For a point of view.
Longer, longer.
Just when you think the day is enough
No, no – it must extend, extend into the night
Until we are working nonstop
For hours upon hours.
At an artist talk last night,
The director extolled the benefits of being irresponsible
He asked “Who will corrupt our youth?”
His actors, he says will want to work
On their parts at 3 am and
All he wants to tell them is
To get drunk
Get laid
Take an actual break, kids!
Some people get better at working
Others get better shirking
But in a world in which we work 24-7
We all feel like we’re shirking at some point
Sometimes all the time.
Which one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
What a way to say “about a minute and a half.”
This is one of those lines wherein a student is likely to say
“Why doesn’t he just say what he means?”
Which of course, he does. This is exactly what he means.
And the image of a moderately hurried guy
Standing there counting to a hundred
As a ghost stands there with his beaver up
Looking very pale is pretty kick-ass.
Maybe Horatio has a counting man in his imagination
The way they tell people working on their anger to count to ten,
Horatio’s got a guy in his mind
Who shows up and starts counting
When the going gets scary.
When everything you ever believed
Is crashing down around you
I can see that a man
Just saying number after number
Might be very reassuring.
Stayed it long?
My favorite sketch
When I was a kid or a teen or something in between
Was called
“The Thing that Wouldn’t Leave.”
It was in a horror film genre
John Belushi was a guest
Over at this couple’s house
They tried everything to subtly get him out
They yawned
They hinted
He got out their records and started listening to them.
It strikes me now that it probably
Resonated so strongly with me
Because it takes an everyday terribly banal experience and mythologizes it.
Now I can fit this memory
Into the structure that I fit many of the things I love into,
Which is fairly convenient I suppose.
Or maybe I just loved those looks of horror on the couple’s faces.
Very like, very like.
In life
We repeat
We repeat
Words sometimes
Or phrases.
When actors try to
To say them
You know, to say them
They often sound ridiculous.
They sound ridiculous
But nothing could be more natural
Nothing.
I have a friend who says almost
Everything she says
She says twice.
It was not always so
But as she’s gotten older
You’ll know she’s finished her speech
Because she’ll say it twice.
If a character in a play did that
She would be a comic exaggerated persona
Probably a self-important duchess at a banquet
– or the host of an inn.
But my friend is an ordinary woman
Who just happens to say
The end of things twice
The end of things twice.
It would have much amazed you.
As much as I sometimes feel like a failure,
There are moments in which
I can imagine bringing my younger self
To recent events, as a spectator in time.
As if I were my own ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
Spiriting myself through the ages. I’d bring me first to that first show we made
When we were full of drive and passion
Convinced that our work was the best
That had ever been done
Convinced that we would be rewarded
That this magic would move us ever forward.
I’ll bring myself to stand next to myself
Just as I think, “I could die now.
This is what I was meant for – I did it.
It’s just what I wanted and what I meant
If this is it, that would be okay.”
But I went on, of course
So I’d have to bring myself elsewhere
Maybe like a montage
Because nothing was ever quite that satisfying again
But added up, in a whirl of vision
It might look amazing.
The Hamlet Project 