Let me break it down for you again
Let me tell you what you know
Everything I’m about to say is common knowledge
The information
That will shortly
Fall out of my mouth
Like water from a fountain
Flowing from one word to the next word
With no seeming end
Is not news.
If I tell you it is not news
I am asking you to listen
For something other than fact.
I am preparing your ears
For something
Else.
Author: erainbowd
For all, our thanks.
For the smell of bread baking
For feet striking the floor in soft rhythm
For harmony
For the way one part of the body relates to another
For the elevation of art
For ideas that bust the worldview open, cracking its glasses, sending it scrambling
For stories that move, that inspire, that relate, that make you wanna do something
For songs that expand you
For arms that hold you
For eyes that smile
For words that comfort and words that heal
For water sliding over a tongue
For curious hands and eyes and minds
For wisdom
For contradictions
For circles of connection
For hope
For faith
For it’s gonna be alright.
Nor have we herein barred Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone With this affair along.
When you said this was a horrible idea
We heard you.
That screaming by the side of the road you did
Don’t think we didn’t notice.
We saw that sign you made.
We heard that protest song.
You make a very good point.
Yes yes
You do.
You did.
Anyway – it’s done now.
Thanks for your input.
Take this pat on the head as our thanks.
It really was terribly kind of you
To share your opinion.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen, Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state Have we, as twere with a defeated joy With an auspicious and drooping eye With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage In equal scale weighing delight and dole Taken to wife.
Picture a piece of wood
Interlocked with another piece of wood.
A joint
Of glue or nail or careful
Interlocking notches.
She is a jointress
An imperial one, no less,
Connecting a martial state.
Is it all hinging on her?
Are the challenges to the borders
Somehow less because she stands there
Connecting state to state
Or king to king.
She is the interlocking piece somehow
A fitted joint
Who must stand connected
Or the state will fall.
Jointress
Bringing together all the opposites
Containing all the dualities
Defeat/joy
Mirth/dirge
Funeral/marriage
Delight/dole
She’s the meeting place.
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death the memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wisest sorrow think on him Together with remembrance of ourselves.
The wisest sorrow
He says
Is the one that has a double vision
To see both loss and gain at once.
Discretion has won this battle with nature
Which, of course, assumes that they are on separate sides.
If grief is natural
Doesn’t discretion suggest
The expression of it?
We do not bear our hearts in grief
Or knit our brows in woe
On purpose.
It is natural that we should
But if we do it because reason says we ought to
That is no longer grief
That is no longer woe.
We’re in trappings and suits territory here.
Then, too, if we feel our hearts in grief
And want to knit our brows in woe
And do not allow them forth
Due to some imagined discretion,
Aren’t we then betraying our wisdom?
The wisest sorrow
Would seem to be the one that knows what it is and
Finds its way out
Allowing the heart to heave if it must
Or the brow to knit.
The wisest sorrow is not likely to be
A double-speak speech
Circling around the idea of sorrow.
It is not likely to brag
About the triumph of reason
Or discretion
Over nature.
It is not a bulldozer laughing over fallen trees.
And I this morning know where we shall find Him most conveniently.
Marcellus has Hamlet’s schedule memorized.
Is he hanging out by his locker
Trying to look casual
As Hamlet gets out of class?
Does he just happen to pass him in B Hallway
Sometimes?
I want to give Marcellus a Blackberry
With schedules in it
So he can compare where he is and
Where Hamlet might be next.
Of course, Marcellus probably doesn’t have a crush on the Prince.
The place they’ll find him conveniently
Seems to be the place everyone is that morning –
A kind of Royal State of the Union address
Where presumably anyone could find anyone
Most conveniently.
Why do I prefer a story about unrequited love?
It’s a kind of imagination spin off.
Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Lee Blessing’s Fortinbras
But this time unlucky Marcellus gets a play –
One wherein he’s painfully jealous of Horatio
And eyes Ophelia suspiciously everytime he sees her.
Maybe he even pushes her into the stream.
No, no, that goes too far.
But maybe he has Pirate friends he sends after Hamlet once he’s sent to England
And ghostlike he saves his life from afar.
Maybe Marcellus finally gives up in Act IV
And misses the final bit and if he’d been there
He would have saved them all or at least
Our Hamlet. His Hamlet.
He knows where to find that one most conveniently.
Let’s do’t, I pray.
Do’t we shall
We’ll do it
It let us
Do – it we
Will we shall
One
Sound
At
A
Time
Let’s
Smush
Two sounds
In to one
Let’s do’t.
Do you consent we shall acquaint Him with it, as needful in our loves, Fitting our duty?
Horatio speaks of our loves
Plural.
It’s clear that he loves our Hamlet
But I’m not so sure about Marcellus and Barnardo
We never really see them again.
If they love Hamlet, too,
Where are they as this play evolves?
Devolves?
Is this, in fact, some kind of royal “our”
Or do subjects, just as a rule,
Love their prince?
Our hour has come to
Meet this beloved Prince with
Duty and love. We’ll all be acquainted shortly.
And by my advice Let us impart what we have seen tonight Unto young Hamlet, for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
The first mention of the title character of the play and he’s “young.”
Is he young in comparison to his old father with the same name?
Is this a distinguishing “young?”
If so – there are many other ways to distinguish these Hamlets.
We could tell the Living Hamlet this story
As opposed to the Dead one.
We would tell Prince Hamlet
Instead of King Hamlet.
Fleshy one instead of ghost one.
The one who will not fade when roosters crow
The daylight Hamlet, not the nocturnal,
The scholar Hamlet, not the martial
The son, not the father.
Hamlet is, after all, in his 30’s.
Horatio, his friend, is likely his contemporary.
It is curious, this “young”
But if we meet him this way,
Do we watch young Hamlet age
As the play grows older?
That mute spirit will speak to him and change everything.
Break we our watch up.
Springs
Gears
Casings and
Numbers
The minute hand lies across the face
Like a broken limb
The hour hand peeks out behind a gear.
We have broken this watch
Into all of its pieces
Smashed it
Scattered it
Left it unrepairable.
The Hamlet Project 