To Dimitris Danis "amici amico"

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Music rises and holds

Lighting

Curtain rises

ALEXANDROS is standing downstage left.

During the first speech, he'll move in a slow semi circle to upstage centre.

Music fades under speech

ALEXANDROS speaks:

(speaks first paragraph very clearly, while moving, but also quite casually, almost throwing it away, with no accenting and no pointing.):

One is caught by the amazement of a moment, a different moment, a moment unaware, a sudden mingling apparently of nothing with itself within the braver light of the unknown unsurpassed. Now all is past. Now all must be, it must become completely disregarded.  Completely otherwise.  All seen as retreating into silence.

I have no heart.  No heart at all.  Only a hole the wind blows through when it feels it will.  Once I was hearted, ribs ached with the beating of my heart.  Once I hearted and could hardly breathe from the pain of it.  So I called the black bird out of the sky.  Out of the rainstorm.  Out of the menace of moons harsh destiny.

So I called, so he came: devouring: devouring.  So now I am heartless like all the rest.

But if you think the similar is not the same, very likely you perceive a variation in perceptible to most or all.  There's no knowing where this may end.  Here, perhaps, under the crimson blanket  -  where, indeed and after all there is no comprehending anyway.  Here, then there is not there.  Nor very likely where the revelation, the desired., may well be taking place.  And yet maybe it really is, and when unknowing have simply passed it by.  Too late now to return!

Music rises and holds

Lighting

Movement?

Music fades under speech

When we heard we were silent because really we had no least idea of what to say.  And so the day gathered itself  round us, and so we remained fastened to whatever remained to us of certainty.  Not much, perhaps, but the best  -  and surely the all  -  we could set hand or foot upon to find strength.  And so the battle was won.  And so Babylon fell to us.  But the ground shifted beneath our feet.  Not quite an earthquake, not quite a landslide.  Something in-between. And so the grey stones went rolling, all but taking us with them.  All the same we managed to remain upright.  Steadfast.  But now how often I wished that we had not.

The mind quivers and an ancient alphabet is born.  How  can that be?  How could it not?  Elements of antiquity persist in their own reappearances.  And, what's more, insist upon their recognition.  Affording and according which provides a little respite  -  an oasis in an interrupted desert.  Caught between these rare conundrums the heart faints, the brain desists, and all is comfort once again.

To make a journey is a grand enough thing..  Not to make one is an even better.  All sorts of benefits accrue to staying still.  Many a midnight will open  it's entrancing  store. Many a midday reveal unsuspected and astonishing treasures.  Jewels of the stillness.  Still, that is true that listening, listening, you may hear something quite not as expected.  But then maybe you will not understand.  So that you will still and after all be safe.

Music rises and holds

Lighting

Movement

Music fades under speech

Marked by innumerable inventions, though not quite scarred, not quite the back end of any combat, not yet, the inveterate traveller remains consistently perceptive of one thing or of another.  Even if from a most peculiar point of view.

These are they who saw a star fall, and rushed to seize it.  Look at them now!  Scorched .  Unrecognisable.  Could one save any truth at all that what they found,  that what they grasped,  that what they fought over, has done them any good?  Any good to speak of?  Well, for a start they are hideous, certainly.  But then, believe me, they were never beautiful before.  That star divided at it's fall, each fragment staining to scarring the unrecognition each who touched.  Are, well, perhaps it was an improvement in the end. 

Can there be comfort?  Dare there be some sort of other consolation?  Well, perhaps  -  and  yet again  maybe it is all within the bare anticipation of an uncertain and certainly  unwelcome dream.   Best to forget forever all that sort of thing!

Music rises and fades

Lighting

Movement:  Action

Music fades under speech

They bought me a stranger.  He said he had travelled, journeyed, explored  -  but what did that mean?  What could it have meant?  Unsure, he stared and said nothing.  Or maybe even merely grunted our assent.  Neither knowing or caring in the end as indeed how can one care for anything one knows to be untrue?  So there is no point at all in asking questions.  No point even pretending some sort of interest. 

Thus we were a poor audience on the whole.  Hardly inquisitive, barely polite.  And sometimes, I know , not even that.  What else could we have been?  What we were was the best that any of us could manage.  It was not, of course, enough.  So he withdrew  from us into silence.  And so died.  When, and only then, did we discover he had only ever spoken the truth.  Was it worth it?  For him?  For us?  Was it really?

Music rises and holds

Lighting

Movement

Music fades under speech

There is of course a moment  -  well, anybody knows that  -  when things, unsuspected things, actually happen.  Really happen.  Graves open.  Tombs disgorge.  Gods descend.  Saints speak.  Virgins weep.  And  Pausanians, even  Pausanians who killed my father and was crucified, appears to revive as if contemptuous of that cross of his. 

No one believes, of course.  But it makes a good story all the same.  Though not for some.  My tutor Aristotle saw rather more clearly than I.  And said as much.  Though I myself have always preferred, despite all appearance to the contrary the anonymity of silence.  No one can contradict you then.  As they did the outspoken philosopher Aristotle.  Cruelly, too.  Still, what he had seen came to his aid.  And he vanished.  Never to be seen again.  His library started to crumble, was found a menace, and was swept away.  Yes, indeed one must keep clear of miracles. 

Music rises and holds

Lighting

Movement:  Action

Music fades under speech

There is an amazement in the air tonight.  Let us hope that there is more.  Let us hope that there is something else.  Or else  -  disaster surely rides the donkey!  AND  the darker side of any star between the hours of Tierce and Prime.  A  long way round.  But in the end encompassing plurality of purpose after all. 

Spying an intrigue in a butchers; shop,  he asked  -  did King Phillip my late father  -  for prime rump steak.  Throwing everyone, (who all knew, naturally, it was not beef he referred  to)  into bare confusion.  By the time he had finished explaining, confusion had increased fifty  -   if not sixty-fold .  Only I apparently knew that what he referred to was Pausanians his faithless lover.  But I chose not to speak.  Elected silence sometimes is the best. 

Shifting suddenly sideways may provoke a racking attack in Tyre and / or  Sidon.  But, however, the rare disturbing of a dosing Deity  may well make a massacre a major worthwhile enterprise.   "STAY  STILL  -  KEEP QUIET."   Are for fine words all too seldom used, obeyed, or understood.  Like everything else, like nothing else, they do provide an intimation naked to the comprehension.  Though what one would prefer to see, naked, is usually if not always open to interpretation.

Music rises and holds

Lighting

Movement

Music fades under speech

One is not nothing, perhaps, which does not of itself mean that one in fact is anything at all.  Still, the observation may be allowed:  if only because in the end there is probably something else as well.  Maybe even Alexander The Great, Alexandros of Macedon, has upon occasion caught himself wondering whether he might not be rather less than something after all.  Which seems, in view of his recorded subterfuge of days and utterings, hardly likely.