Play 31


it's a journey a journey a journey



The men are gathered around. The meeting is set on the bow of the ship, throughout various projects can be seen, all abandoned to attend the meeting. The ship rocks gently but diligently.

Captain: When we arrive, men, then you'll know. It'll all make sense then. It will come together in your mind, bridging the gap between the creation you've constructed and the simultaneous construction of doubt that eats away at your creation... you will sleep better. You will eat with a new appreciation. Once we are off here and into the land, once we accomplish this goal-we look to that goal. Nothing opens doors like closing doors. Nothing breeds a creative mind than the completion of a journey... men, imagine what's to come because nothing is sweeter than reality being better than your imagination. It won't be long now, it won't be long.

The men disperse, back to their projects. Two men head to a sculpture, they work and talk.

Man1: You believe it?

Man2: Believe what?

Man1: All that bridging the gap, glory land stuff?

Man2: I dunno

Man1: Whattya mean, you dunno?

Man2: I want to, I mean... that's why we got on this boat to begin with, right?

Man1: Right. But...

Man2: But, I'm losing it, man. Losing steam. Lost the steam. I mean, look at this thing. Really look at this thing in front of us. What are we doing here?

Man1: It's our sculpture. What we've worked on since we've been on this boat.

Man2: But what is it? What does it mean to you?

Man1: It's the clay and paper representation of what we left behind.

Man2: Right. And why? Why does what we left behind need a justification in clay and paper and the shapes our hands give it?

Man1: Well if we knew why, we probably wouldn't have left

Man2: But listen, listen, what can really be different? The captain talks about this magical place, this answers to all our questions land... but I don't know, man, we've already been on this boat a whole lot longer than we were told we were gonna be on it, and everyone just works away at their own individual shit and every day we hear a speech about how much greater it's going to be, but no one ever tells me how... we just hear the same lofty claims day in and day out and are expected to keep working on our same bullshit projects day in and day out because we are one day going to hit land and in this land, our projects will make sense, and we won't feel the same nagging and longing and lack of appreciation for the nonsense that we've learned to call our art.

Man1: Nonsense? Well, first man, you have to believe in it. It can't mean anything to anyone if it doesn't mean anything to you

Man2: Can't you hear yourself spouting the same exact phrases that we've been told over and over and over? “Believing”... finding personal meaning... blah blah blah. I didn't leave everything behind to be told the exact same art cliches I was told in elementary school art class.

Man1: Then why did you come?

Man2: Because there has to be something else... there just has to be. Something beyond arbitrarily priced gallery space, beyond paint tubes and sheet music and left to right poetry...I couldn't live where everyone was just doing their definition of weird in order to prove quirkiness in order to prove creativity in the hopes that they could have a blog written about them or be on the cover of People or some shit. Everyone was an artist, everyone had a vision...and why? So that they could become another celebrity in the pool of fucking awful that everyone else who wasn't able to convince all the exact right people that they were cool enough can sit at home and stare at these marketed, false versions of humans on their tvs and their phones and their magazines. Everyone wants to be obsessed over. And in order to do anything, anything at all, we have to abide the system, we could never be allowed to just do what we wanted all the time because the way all the assholes before us set it all up is that we have debts and we have bill after bill and it's all just compounded on the rules made fucking forever ago that force us to all be miserable, to have to do miserable things in order to just keep our head above water... when those with intelligence and ideas should be rising to the top, those who have somehow acquired more numbers, the numbers following the rules set up, the ones with money... they are the winners. They are on top. And I was getting to this point that I either needed to escape or blow it all up because the rules and those who follow them and those who convince themselves they're breaking them... it all just was welling and welling and making me freak out, freak out. So I got on this boat, to be taken to what's next, to the new land, the new set up... but we've just been stuck on here, with no hope, no answers and the same contrived bullshit “art” we had before.

pause

Man1: That's kinda bleak, man

Man2: Well, why'd you come?

Man1: I wanted an adventure

the men gather around

Captain: Very soon. Very soon, men, it'll all be clear. You'll know and I'll know. And the answers will come before the questions.