I have heard this speech hundreds of times. I have read it over and over again. I have even memorized it and performed it. But I don’t know if I ever really gave this line much thought. Looking at it on its own, it feels like I’ve never heard or seen it before.

Out of context, I would think if I were attempting to tent a man, I would be attempting to get his manhood to stand to. Or if not raising the tent pole, tenting him might be to provide him shelter. Tents are seemingly the same idea for Caesar and Antony as they are for us, though without the zipper and high-tech fabrics, of course.

But in context, it seems tenting has an entirely different meaning, one that is perhaps more related to attention than tee-pees. To tent someone to the quick might then be a way to attend to them so closely, you could almost see inside them.

Sometimes that’s what doing Feldenkrais feels like. Just attending to someone so closely you can almost read their minds *but of course, you are simply (or rather not so simply) reading their bodies and movement.

Eye-tracking technology is particularly fascinating. It is the most precise way to observe someone’s looks, that is, their eye movement. It’s the way to know what they are looking at, which can provide a window into how they think. Turns out that what we look at first gives some indication of our worldview.

For example, in an aquarium scene, the western eye will spot the big fish first. The Eastern eye will see the coral first. And this holds up metaphorically. Western culture is definitely more interested in the Big Fish than the bigger culture.
If I had my life to do over again. I think I might want to be a scientist so I could work out a study that helps us understand each other through our eyes, through our looks.

We saw a production of King Lear Saturday night. It’s one of my boyfriend’s favorite plays but even so, after it was over, he said, “What’s up with the word nuncle?” For some reason it gives him the willies. Then he found an on-line dictionary definition and clicked on the pronunciation audio file again and again – until it became, like a dance hit featuring “nuncle, nuncle, nuncle.”
Anyway – while I understood nuncle to essentially mean “uncle,” I hadn’t worked out that it was rooted in the elision of “mine uncle”, that “mine uncle” sounds very much like “my nuncle.” And I thought, “how many occasions are there to discuss “mine uncle,” really?” It wouldn’t seem to be an excessively used phrase.

But then of course, this is a perfect opportunity. Hamlet has many occasions to talk about his uncle and with good reason. It does seem good, though, that he’s not going to stage a play about his father’s murder for his nuncle. Nuncle nuncle nuncle.

Murder has this publicity problem. He does really great work. Every day someone takes another person’s life and Murder can’t say a thing about it, despite the fact that he’s a very successful anthropomorphization. But he’s a tricky guy, Murder. He knows how to get the word out about his work and the people who do it for him. Sometimes it’s with DNA. Sometimes it’s with spontaneous confessions at plays. Sometimes he has to wait a while – until the body rises to the surface of its shallow grave or until the paperwork suddenly reveals a surprising trend. But he has hopes that sooner or later, his work will be recognized. He hates to labor in obscurity.

Has this ever really happened? Was this a real thing?
The only time I’ve ever heard of it has been in plays. It strikes me as a thing we theatre people WISH would happen when we put on plays. We’d like to imagine that our work has so much power that guilty creatures would overcome all bounds of propriety, stand up and confess. We’d be better than church that way. And put on even better shows.

But we live in a culture of stories now. A guilty person might not be able to get through a day without encountering a story related to the thing he’d done. Now, a murderer must be immune to this sort of thing if he hopes to get away with his crime. Perhaps, 400 years ago, it might catch you by surprise and trigger an involuntary confession muscle.

The Hamlet that I think of as my Hamlet – the one in the first production I was in (not yet my own performance. That will be my Hamlet but before then, this was and is the guy) said this line without the comma. He gave us the sense that thoughts and fumes were circling around in his head making trouble.

I don’t know how I feel about this comma here.
It seems to make the line a command to his brains, like he were a military sergeant commanding his thoughts to About Face.

Yeah. Fie upon it! Fie!
Fie on you, Art! You seduced me at an early age, opening me up to new perspectives and possibilities, not to mention new aspects of myself. You suckered me in with a promise of fulfillment and a life of ideas and making things. I fell for it, hook, line and sinker and now I’m lost forever. Toiling in the shadows for you, never recognized or seen. . .but ever there, at your dark service. Every day waiting for some glimmer of hope, for some crumb of sustenance and everyday disappointed again.

I never wanted a house in the suburbs, Art. All I asked for a life with you. And that is all I got. And this month when I yet again do not know how I will pay the rent, the work behind me lost to history, the work ahead, unfunded, I just want to throw things at you, Art. I just want to. . .foh!

In this day and age, whores are not particularly known for their words. It is a strange reference here, really: Whores and drabs being particularly known for acts of the body, not for the heart nor words from it.
Is Hamlet confusing whores with poets? Because poets do unpack their hearts with words sometimes – and beautifully so sometimes, too.

It is curious that a writer has chosen to call someone who unpacks one’s heart with words a whore. Because, theoretically, that is what the writer is doing and the words, are, of course, the MOST valuable, the most precious thing that might emerge from a heart.

And, of course, it would be a writer who would feel the futility of unpacking with words more than anyone. We hate the things we love the most. That’s how I feel about theatre, certainly. And when I unpack my theatrical heart for people who don’t appreciate it, I often feel like a whore.

So: okay.
But also, “a stallion”? In other editions, they’ll edit it to be a “scullion.” How is the most macho of horses another word for a whore? Or is it a word for a John? Has Hamlet switched mid-metaphor?

You know – normally I’d agree. I would stand up and be counted among the asses of America. But today I am finally tired of blaming myself. What if it’s not my fault there’s no place for my art in America? What if there’s nothing I can do to change the climate I live in?
What if I could lay the blame for the shitty culture I’m scrambling to make stuff in at someone else’s feet? Doesn’t mean I’m not still an ass. I’m an ass, sure. But it’s not my fault.

I just saw a rat scurry from under a van to a mini-van and in the direction of an ambulance. It is the middle of the day. And a rainy one no less. What is that rat doing on a busy city street in the middle of the day?

I don’t hate many people. I couldn’t think of anyone I wished vengeance on. The wrongs I’ve had done to me are such that vengeance would be overkill. I might get some schadenfreudic pleasure at some folks’ misfortune. I might really enjoy witnessing one or two people’s come-uppance. I have to confess, while I wouldn’t wish it on them (or would I?,) I might get a tiny bit of satisfaction.

And that rat running up the road right now has never done anything to me. But because rats scare me, I wouldn’t say no to a little bit of vengeance, you know, from someone with more fire than I.

But maybe, you know, that rat is running up the road for his own vengeance. That ambulance ahead perhaps ran over his brother and he’s risking the diurnal spirits to go and chew on its tires.