BEEST OPERA:
Asynchronous, Networked Digital Theatre (Art Installation)

Joey Bargsten, Ph.D., and fau-xMedia Ensemble

Florida Atlantic University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301 USA, and points beyond.


Abstract    BEEST OPERA is an asynchronous networked digital media experience incorporating live video manipulation, a collaborative, networked electronic score and multi-temporal, macaronic vocal parts outsourced to the audience. Although not dependent on a linear story like its predecessor Anatomy of Melancholy (2005), there are strands of narrative

Index Terms    Interactive theatre, opera, videojam, scratch cinema, generative feedback, multiple tempi, WIFI, oursourced performance.

I. Introduction

Incorporating the totally disrespectful, abject personification of the disgrace and embarrassment of being human. This principle is given the all-purpose problematic BEEST. In the view of the dramatic personae who occasionally and unpredictably make their pronouncements throughout the work, all is BEEST.

II. Overview

BEEST OPERA is divided into ten sections, which take as their titles:

 

 

I.               Film – overture – SKRATCHES ÒHere we have scratched film, and scratched is the BEESTÓ

II.              Film – solo – EMPIRES AND TOURISTS

1.  Textual: (chorus        )

2.  Textual: (chorus        )

a.  turba dance 1

                  i. feedback – BEEST LIVE!

III.        Film – duo – SINKING CITIES

b.  turba dance 2

3.  Textual: (chorus         )    

IV.        Film – trio – FACES OF THE BEEST

 

A number of contributors to this particular little diversion: I would like some Plotinus, I would like some paraphrases of the Willam DeKooning book – no, too artsy, pretentious. Plotinus is good, because heÕs interesting and somehow lost to history and philosophy for most people.

We can look at his life or paraphrase his life or wrap it up in some kind of contemporary metaphor. These are all such predictable ways of dealing with a story.

We see Plotinus as someone who runs a strip club. In this manner we may use all the stripper jokes weÕve collected over the years. We also do that to establish him as one manifestation of the beest. But he is a beest in a rather prosaic sense. Not terribly beastly, he is. But he takes great pleasure in reconciling or perhaps just appreciating the body/mind dichotomy-thingy.

So, Plotinus does his philosophy stuff, has a few students, runs his strip club, and dies, the end.

But, weÕd want to focus on one or two or three key defining moments in his life, probably where heÕs living with Gemina and her daughter Gemina. So, thereÕs that, and thereÕs his future biographer dude (whatÕs his name? We can call him pH), who might be narrating part of it, or maybe the trio is P, G, and pH. ItÕs not much, but itÕs a start.

Next, the texts of the choruses, they are called ÔtextualsÕ – do we have a reason why they are called this? What does that mean anyway?

Finally, we are stuck on this desire to create a form using video jam hardware and software. We suspect the form will amount to a catalog of effects or a list of memes, as we move through this experimental media storm.

There are BEESTS, and we must accept that BEESTS have DREEMS. Dreems are the inchoate, ultrapersonal, and ephemeral firings of synapses of memory blended with fantasy. So the dreems will be what the chorus sings. They will be the textuals . . . no, wait, the textuals should be in Latin (even though Plotinus is Greek), because they will be less difficult to sing, so thatÕs what the audience (who stumble into this exhibtion) will sing – since weÕre outsourcing all the vocals in such a reckless way. You are being so cavalier. Why donÕt you jump in your pants, ass, jumping what the hoo.

You know, itÕs taken your whole life to arrive at this place, and the place (i.e., the work, this work) is a little disappointing, init?

 * * * **  * * *

OK, so dramatis persona:

PLOTINUS (lyrical tenor) – ancient philosopher (so, heÕs about 50), runs a strip club, in his spare time works as a customer service phone person out of his tiny place, which he shares with:

GEMINA (mezzo soprano) – formerly a student of Plotinus, occasionally works at his strip club, occasionally works the phone as a customer service person, Mother of :

GEMINA II (contralto) daughter/son of  Gemina, also lives with Gemina and Plotinus, also occasionally works at PlotinusÕ strip club (probably not in a stripping capacity). Who is his/her father? We are never told. (S)HeÕs young but not innocent.

 

Here are the elements:

3 main performers - content on line, parts provided randomly.

6 turba chorus – content on line, parts provided randomly.

2 screens – one running feedback flash with random vector animations , one running live videojamming applications, vjam clips provided ahead of time

electronic score created live in the ether from 3 contributors over collaborative software, source material provided ahead of time


InTRO /ProLog/MetaLog/EpiLog:

(first version, where I was trying too hard)

What is the Beest?

 

The Beest is bad customer service.

The Beest is not being able to get things on paper with an actual signature.

The Beest is not trusting the internets

The Beest is why are you not able to send this package and give me a receipt for it?

 

The Beest is that's terrible - why can't I get that on paper?

The Beest is like, is this even legal?

The Beest is tell them you need a paper statement and we haven't gotten a paper statement in nine months because they always send it to our old address in oregon.

 

The Beest is I am going to go mad.

The neon life is the beest

The deal is broken, the life is broken, the beest is broken.

 

I am the beest.

I beest when I hate you

I beest when I fill your mouth with cement

I beestifest all beest things

All is beest, then is deth.

Beest is loozing everything, beest is deth of nuance.

 

I beest when I see the energy come and go.

The beest is when I kill the childrens

The beest is rank odourous, foul lifeage.

The beest is much meat

 

ACT 1 – Scene 1

P(lotinus): Time is short.

G(emina I): My shift is almost over. God, I hate these morans.

G(emina II) 2: IÕm going out.

G: Is your taser charged? DonÕt forget it, and be back by 2.

G2: Yeah, yeah.

P: You know, I thought when the revolution finally came, theyÕd save the Louve instead of Bangalor Phone Bank. (Backbone?Hub? Internet term for really big pipe, main artery?)   

G: (channelling angry customers) ÒWhy canÕt you replace the black one with the grey one?Ó

G: IÕm sorry, the grey oneÕs been discontinued.

G: ÒWell I want the grey one. Let me talk to your supervisorÓ

G: IÕm sorry, maÕam, My supervisor stepped away from the phone. Would you like his voicemail?

G2: (speaking into technology device, to friend) The doctor is examining her food-pipe? You mean Ôexamining her esophagusÕ?

P: This is it: the end of badness. (gives G2 his/her drug or candy or piece of technology or gun).

G2: Are you sad because all your friends are ded?

P: ItÕs the post-meaning world, girls. Time to shake something . . . meaningful.

G: ÒI want my money back, and I want a replacement for my original, and I want you to pay for shipping and insurance and restocking fee, or I will kill my hostagesÓ

P: Wha – how did you handle that? Did you have them strangled?

P: (speaking into technology device, to receptionist) I need to schedule the healthworkerÕs visit for next Tuesday instead of next Monday. Yeah . . . MondayÕs a holiday.

P: (meta-speech) Yeah . . . ThatÕs right:  unknown quantities of unknown persons of unknown talent and ablities providing the unintelligible texts of unreliable and un-socially-intelligent dramatis personae.

 

SONGS OF DESPAIR AND DELIGHT (I):

Deth imagines animals.

What if women need some sweet fingers?

With the killing thoughts

Boring, fragile roses

A flaccid hand

Time decays.

A neon penis

One shadow

This miasma, your miasma. . .

Boys making worms calm loneliness

 

A flaccid violence

Lifeless, clever CDs

Knowing, mindless CDs

Some people

(- Tunnels stealing tunnels kill reality

- Your flesh like metallic bones)

Notice another fragile deth

 

Make a stinking cat

A dingy hand

Quiet-Ass: vacant, nice.

Note that beginning of the funny feeling

This imagines people!

 

Hurtful women.

The odd thing is how aimlessly I need!

Several men

My equipose, my listlessness. . .

Psycho woman

What could we expect?

 

Lifeless, angry girls

Destroy a defective man

Give her a broken verse.

Demand deth!

 

ACT 1 – Scene 2

P: Never HEARD of outov Pocket AND deductible?

 

G: ThatÕs what she said.

 

G2: ThatÕs what she said.

 

 

G: (meta-speech) How much of this will be outsourced to folk on the net, adding the mechanical turk element to interactive theatre, so conceptually, this is all made out of whatÕs out there, and donÕt like, work on too much, too hard.

 

 

SONGS OF DESPAIR AND DELIGHT (II):

Boring, clever children

Imagine this, nicotine Black-mark.

Celebrate that return of that old emotion

 

Murder deceives bones.

His life . . .

Remember a scratched bird

Life expands.

 

Women mocking blades control tranquility

Roses stealing women rock clarity

Ironic how awkwardly you escape!

Your teeth, your shattered odor.

Knowing, clever roses

Shadows devouring flames devastate intimacy

Sketch him this broken incident.

Pungent, half-alive soldiers

Request life!

Request life!

Naturally, like dark-angelic panties, you kill me.

Did it need to develop this way?

Before the Fucking blackness

Call me weird but it's secretly very memorable how vigorously I lack!

 

ACT 2 – Scene 1

G2: (meta-speech) OK? LetÕs think about this a bit.

 

G2: (meta-speech)  BEEST! Man is angry, man is angry man - - hi! Hit – hurt! We like to hit and hurt and hi!

Can we maybe work the hitting and hurting into all soft and neat things? Can we make the world more about hitting and hurting? Can all things be hitting and hurting, nothing more, OK? So, letÕs all get on that right away!

These are the werds of the BEEST.

 

SONGS OF DESPAIR AND DELIGHT (III):

Six roses

Fucking this dull woman

Broken, mindless time

What should they expect?

Hate pleasures buttocks!

Why does it fade?

Death charms.

Could I maybe excite your lies?

What would they do?

Incapacity helps.

Should he maybe seal my deceptions?

Give her this hot lie.

&ucking half-alive nurses

Before the Fucking glance

Boys devouring wonders devastate shallowness

Stupid girl

Boys destroying worms kill reality

Miss-Lovey-Pants endures.

Children slicing blades reinvent serenity

His sleeves like hot dogs.

Touch this, baroque Big-Ass.

Desire food!

I want love!

Your sex like lovely air.

Truth like tasty houses.

Your shame.

Your bad sex.

I want love!

Love deceives women.

Wonders collecting roses destroy self-esteem

I need strangeness!

His fingers like bad bones.

Blessed animals.

Monkey-Boy expands.

Your shadows expand with magic.

One sex-shadow

Ancient, scarafied men

Money: meaningful, metalic.

Meat like silent leaves.

Humanity dies.

His skirt like sorry time.

Demand deth!

Sweet-candy: merciful, mindful.

I demand love!

Truth like fallen shadows.

Your odor.

Your bad panties.

 

 

ACT 2 – Scene 2

 

P: (meta-speech) Why should we entertain people? Holding us between – what and what else?

Art should be hard, it should hurt to make it and hurt to take it.

These are the werds of the beest.

 

SONGS OF DESPAIR AND DELIGHT (IV):

Light imagines people!

Why should it be that you are dreadfully alone?

Demand food!

This pleasures women.

Your presence.

Your bad sex.

 

 

Women stabbing men kill courage

Her presence like shattered animals.

Touch this, deceptive Age.

Realistic friends.

Request life!

This is meat.

Quietly, she ends up traumatized.

why, do you suppose, we must face this?

Love transforms people!

Your shame.

Your bad tubetop.

Give him one dumb lie.

Reveal a soiled cat

Two tunnels

Incapacity deceives.

My sleeves like bitter sleet.

Touch this, sterling Big-Cat.

 

 

ACT 2 – Scene 3

P: (meta-speech)  Self-Deprecatio Dispositio

G: (meta-speech)  BEEST is all that what the fuck are you blabbering about, you deak. You slippery, spongy deak. Shame on you. Why are out you wasting our time? DonÕt waste our time with your stupid arcanity, your flatulant, insipid superiority. DonÕt you know itÕs dumdum time on the planet? And that the planet is rooled by BEEST principles? Well. You should know that, you stoopid poopy man.

 

 

 

SONG OF DESPAIR AND DELIGHT (V):

Wonders stealing flowers kill boredom

Your flesh like dumb lips.

Think this, fulfilled Lion.

What if I show those sweet membranes?

Manage you meatiness.

Its life is dead.

Request me!

Women eating worms

What's digging deep into your shadows?

&ucking boring remarks

How can I be so surprising?

 

 

Girls marking flames

Let us talk of your dusty complacency:

Among the Fucking beds

How can we be so predictable?

I continue to marvel.

Notice another questionable illness

Ironic how carelessly I reveal!

One mouth

Shadows eating roses rock drama

Her face like acrid hail.

Psycho boy

&ucking scorned thought-bubbles

Why does it begin?

Delicious Moments are on the wedding cake, and they are kicking faces.

 

<this part not in the xml document>

Merely an oversight; a yellow accident

should-beautifully! scan her tormentors

into a flaccid apathy.

Delicious Memories are on the divorce cake, and they are pinching hands.

Tremble-fuck pogs Fucking in the cheap, cheap shadows.

They no longer avoid clarity.

They no longer announce energy.

Dump beests re-interkrak?

How harshly these demons ruin, how really aimlessly.

Sex changes men.

Sketch her this lovely song:

Tremble-fuck pogs Fucking in the cheap, cheap glance.

We no longer whisper heartfulness.

Your momentum, your listlessness. . .

Life decays.

The deceptive moment when I went to the farmerÕs market

Controls her.

Whatever.

 

ACT 3 – Scene 1

 

SONGS OF DESPAIR AND DELIGHT (VI):

Moments slashing children

sucking dying demons

Did it have to begin this way?

The glaring moment when she's like one of those catfish

Shatters you.

Whatever.

Whatever whatever.

Love glows.

His skirt like pungent time.

Asia-delight!

 

 

A slinky improbability

One death-longing

Tragic how carelessly you scream!

Another oozing psychosis

Dream this, flowery India.

Your loneliness, my ambivalence. . .

 

 

 

G2: (meta-speech)  Use them wings to mess up you face, all messy. Heed the werds of the BEEST.


P: (meta-speech) Between Peen and Vadge is the Third Mind. Meet me there!

 

EPILOGUE/ POST-SCRIPT

 

G: This, beest madness. We are the beest

 

P: This, you, I, beest madness, beests we are.

 

G2: The truth beests, we are, and we endure. Beests all, forever!

 

P: . . . Except when we all die, then be are worm food, dirt dwellers, cold rotting clay.

 

G: LetÕs get drunk and ride our bikes!

 

G: BeetchinÕ !

 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

 

SONGS OF DESPAIR AND DELIGHT (VII):

Your histories overflow with hate.

Worms destroying tunnels

Sucking knowing saints

What do they expect?

Blessed arrangements.

Bread like silent houses.

Bread like silent houses.

Moments marking girls

Fucking clever tunnels

We mustn't explore our fretting touch.

It appears weird how gently you want!

One complacency

Notice that return of the bleeding deth

How can I be so cold?

A man-eating shadow

One death-longing

Invariably, like belly beests, he can smell my sex.

It seems weird how harshly I announce!

The funny emotion

Fondling-you-this!

Monkey-Boy helps.

 

 

Material not quite ready: Genocide qwa

Menage a Quo

Status a Trois

Menage A Vu (Foo)

 

Second Pass.

 

More BEEST OPERAª material – will fold it in later.

(this is much better, because I wasnÕt trying to do anything)

 

P: So, any more thots about the BEEST?

G2: The beest comes in subtle, tiny, sneaky ways, too!

G: Like when frendz succeed and you hate them secretly.

G2: Like when IÕm in the shower and somebuddyÕs thinking about me and I donÕt know it and nothing happens.

P: Like when quantum thingies happen, and nobody notices, and you live and die without notice! Whoa, think it! Thunk!

G: The ghost of ideas are locked in the Beest!

G2: Silver and manic ideas are in the Beest. They itch to get out.

G: Beest is when the paper comes, but nobody reads papers anymore.

G2: Or, contrariwise, the Beest is the life unlived and the accomplishments unaccomplished because youÕre . . .

P: . . . because you were too figuring-it-all-out to notice and act upon it. And the erasure comes along, which is deth, and all lies in its path.

G2: And the mean ones lust for you, and you are living your own life, and the mean ones tell you how wack they are by hurting you and then realizing how stupid that was, but now itÕs too late and they have to live with it. With the fact that they are BEEST!

G: I never needed that much additional drama. I just needed clean socks.

P: Beest! There is only the beest of the familiar faces at the party, that you want to brush against, I mean brush against their bodies, but you are too old—manny and they, too happy not having anything to do with you.

 

(funny big bear takes a crap on the stage! Haw haw haw!!_

 

P: Then, letÕs realize the Beest may not be listening to you.

G: The beest may not care.

G2: The beest may be too busy setting the table or smacking a friend in the face with a brick.

G: Gee, the beest sure can be a subtle bug!

P: Jee-zuz Jimmy! The beest is here/now, but the beest is also hey-what-the-fuck-let-go-of-my-arm crude fruit provider, is essence to power and truth, and sucks on the gentle vegetables with his frendz, who are so little his frendz.

G: Slap-pappy, why does the Beest become who we are, who we gonnaÕ be?

G2: So many Beests we are, at so many places in our dumb lives. And all becomes rotting bodies!

G: But donÕt forget – The Beest is always present in danger and control situations.

G2: Like those involving undergarments?

G: Like those involving undergarments, and also various hypo-allergenic plastics and other materials.

P: I want to go to the Beest and ask for more time to finish this, The Lifey-poo thingy.

P: The beest is taking obscure art from the 1980Õs and making it contemporary obscure art.

 

(a Beest enters and multiple things happen, none of which is pre-planned or intelligible, for that matter.

Me? I get to hose off the stage, but only after all the carnage has happened.)

 

P: and yes, there is a purity, a refinement in the expression, ÒI hate this current life I liveÓ

 


(in the most recent version of the opera, the version not yet written, Plotinus realizes he is about to transform in consciousness to something else. He realizes this transcendent condition can be mis-diagnosed by normal beings as some kind of brain disfunction or abnormality or condition, but he knows (or madness, too!) he must remain in that state in order to receive transmissions, and further transmit, to the rest of humanity. He further realizes how batshit this would appear to everyone else, and knows he must proceed with caution, if at all. So, he does. 

 

 

But then: The Beest discovers that his life is a metaphor for all lives, and then that all things are metaphors for everything else, and the metaphors are metaphors for other scales of life: life of a cell, life of a part of your body, life of your body, life of your family, life of your tribe or community or city, life of your nation, life of a larger cultural notion (like Ôrekorded histeryÕ), and then the jump to life of the species homo beestian. And then, the life of the planet, the life of the solar system, the life of the galaxy, the life of multiple galaxies, the life of the universe, the life of multiple universes, the life of multiple dimensions, which may envelope the notion of time within a larger dimensional pulse. Wuffa! On the other end, you go to life of a bit of DNA, the life of molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, speculative particles that come into and out of existence in super tiny fractions of seconds (nano – pecto – femto seconds – are those the right ones?)

Anyway, The Beest looks at all these time scales as a metaphor for consciousness, for the idea of consciousness on many different levels, in many different ways, which will be around before and after your personal experience of what consciousness is, ends, that is to say, the BeestÕs deth, that is to say, your deth, that is to say, my deth, that is to say, deth deth deth.

So in the transformation from a character in an opera to a more generalized notion of character to the author to the consciousness of the author to the idea of consciousness, which the author participates in, and which is only a small part of the totality of consciousness, well, wuffa! Again! And Wuffa is defined as the expression the Beest utters when he / she / it must once again take measure of the werld, and gawk in awe and wonder at how much of an insignificant turd hesheit is, and so the turd becomes the metaphor for all life and existence and all dimensions and scales of consciousness, up to and including the totality of consciousness, which in turn is a metaphor for the turd. And then we should say the Eams brothers film on the Powers of Ten is what weÕre looking at here, and while they applied that to physical size of objects, we are applying that to time, and then also to consciousness, and thatÕs maybe the real kickass kicker. Because if you have multiple consciousnesses on multiple time scales, and possibly multiple dimensions (and how about powers of tens in dimensions – because what is a dimension but a basic measurement of one axis of the structures of existence, and to have multiple dimensions in powers of tens, wuh-hell, that is truly a wuffa moment because weÕre useta dealing with 2 or 3 dimensions, and 4 if you include time, so what do you include as a dimension, like, imagination? Consciousness?), then you have a condition of an infinite eternity but not an eternal eternity, you really have that intersection of time and timelessness. You have consciousness continuing at one level or another for not forever, but for an extremely long time, but you have also consciousness enfolding time and its unfolding and un-being (i.e., timelessness) and burning in a single life, in a single moment, in a single turd, in a single fuck, but the fuck would be a speculative, fantasy fuck, because we like to vibe on that desire/fulfilment axis (maybe another dimension-thingy?), and that becomes a furry and cuddly metaphor (the perfect luv moment, the fantasy fuck), and we prefer furry and cuddly metaphors for the intersection of time and timelessness to messier metaphors, like the universe of consciousness totality dimensions burning in a single turd. But the turd grounds the experience even more, but then we have to run this past a publisher, who might get turned off by all this turd talk anyway.

So maybe all this needs to be a neat chart or graph. But, also, then, if youÕre using the little iPods for multiple timelines as a metaphor for (or concretization of) multiple dimensions or levels of consciousness, well, then at least you have a structure that might resemble a wuffa moment, but youÕre just scratching the surface of the ass, the surface of the universeÕs ass, possibly gently stimulating the asshole of the totality of time + experience + consciousness, but experience implies an experiencer, donÕt it? And you see how quickly I dropped that universeÕs ass thingy? Too reified, maybe? Is that right? Reified beans?

 

Now, letÕs get back on track here. The Beest (which is half way between Plotinus and the author, and beyond both and neither) thinks about consciousness on many levels and thinks this should make him deserve some personal consciousness thingy that transcends his own miserable personal consciousness, which will end when his body ends. And then his body ends, and that is the end of the opera, but thatÕs sorta how the other opera ended, so letÕs work on maybe a different ending. The Beest is transformed into the turd and simultaneously the fantasy fuck, but for some peeps, the fantasy fuck might be money or goddiness or babies or Òeven a neat digital ponyÓ. So maybe you vibe on that a while.

 

So, thatÕs what I have been vibing about in the thinkster dumpster of my mynd. I think that about covers it all, because it started as a meditation on deth, and went on to include all the lifey things that pop up if you want to extend life beyond your own miserable, smelly, wanting Beest body. And again, you probably sed this better in the previous opera. DonÕt know why youÕd want to even try to refine that thing, especially the neat part at the end where all the universe is explained and explicated.

 

Wuffa! And wuffa you, too! No, but wait – are you an idiot?


 

 

You can come out now.

 


 

Beest Operaª - NuVersionª - TiteÕnÕRiteª in which all detritus is stripped away, and placed in my next opera, Detritus Operaª. So that takes care of all the stuff generated by the Bad Poetry Generator.

 

  1. Larger notions of form (intro/acts/scenes/etc) are suspended
  2. Characters are suspended. All characters dip from the same pool of texts.
  3. What else . . .Oh yeah, the opera becomes more of a meta-opera, since the only driving action in the opera is the writing and performing of the opera itself.

 

(This first part, IÕm still tryinÕ a little too hard)

 

What is the Beest?

The Beest is bad customer service.

The Beest is not being able to get things on paper with an actual signature.

The Beest is not trusting the internets

The Beest is why are you not able to send this package and give me a receipt for it?

 

The Beest is that's terrible - why can't I get that on paper?

The Beest is like, is this even legal?

The Beest is tell them you need a paper statement and we haven't gotten a paper statement in nine months because they always send it to our old address in oregon.

 

The Beest is I am going to go mad.

The neon life is the beest

The deal is broken, the life is broken, the beest is broken.

 

I am the beest.

I beest when I hate you

I beest when I fill your mouth with cement

I beestifest all beest things

All is beest, then is deth.

Beest is loozing everything, beest is deth of nuance.

 

I beest when I see the energy come and go.

The beest is when I kill the childrens

The beest is rank odourous, foul lifeage.

The beest is much meat

 

Time is short.

My shift is almost over. God, I hate these morans.

IÕm going out.

Is your taser charged? DonÕt forget it, and be back by 2.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I thought when the revolution finally came, theyÕd save the Louve instead of Bangalor Phone Bank. (Backbone?Hub? Internet term for really big pipe, main artery?)   

 (channelling angry customers) ÒWhy canÕt you replace the black one with the grey one?Ó

IÕm sorry, the grey oneÕs been discontinued.

 ÒWell I want the grey one. Let me talk to your supervisorÓ

IÕm sorry, maÕam, My supervisor stepped away from the phone. Would you like his voicemail?

 (speaking into technology device, to friend) The doctor is examining her food-pipe? You mean Ôexamining her esophagusÕ?

This is it: the end of badness. (gives G2 his/her drug or candy or piece of technology or gun).

Are you sad because all your friends are ded?

ItÕs the post-meaning world, girls. Time to shake something . . . meaningful.

 ÒI want my money back, and I want a replacement for my original, and I want you to pay for shipping and insurance and restocking fee, or I will kill my hostagesÓ

Wha – how did you handle that? Did you have them strangled?

(speaking into technology device, to receptionist) I need to schedule the healthworkerÕs visit for next Tuesday instead of next Monday. Yeah . . . MondayÕs a holiday.

 (meta-speech) Yeah . . . ThatÕs right:  unknown quantities of unknown persons of unknown talent and ablities providing the unintelligible texts of unreliable and un-socially-intelligent dramatis personae.

 

Never HEARD of outov Pocket AND deductible?

ThatÕs what she said.

ThatÕs what she said.

(meta-speech) How much of this will be outsourced to folk on the net, adding the mechanical turk element to interactive theatre, so conceptually, this is all made out of whatÕs out there, and donÕt like, work on too much, too hard.

 (meta-speech) OK? LetÕs think about this a bit.

 (meta-speech)  BEEST! Man is angry, man is angry man - - hi! Hit – hurt! We like to hit and hurt and hi!

Can we maybe work the hitting and hurting into all soft and neat things? Can we make the world more about hitting and hurting? Can all things be hitting and hurting, nothing more, OK? So, letÕs all get on that right away!

These are the werds of the BEEST.

 (meta-speech) Why should we entertain people? Holding us between – what and what else?

Art should be hard, it should hurt to make it and hurt to take it.

These are the werds of the beest.

 (meta-speech)  Self-Deprecatio Dispositio

 (meta-speech)  BEEST is all that what the fuck are you blabbering about, you deak. You slippery, spongy deak. Shame on you. Why are out you wasting our time? DonÕt waste our time with your stupid arcanity, your flatulant, insipid superiority. DonÕt you know itÕs dumdum time on the planet? And that the planet is rooled by BEEST principles? Well. You should know that, you stoopid poopy man.

 (meta-speech)  Use them wings to mess up you face, all messy. Heed the werds of the BEEST.


 (meta-speech) Between Peen and Vadge is the Third Mind. Meet me there!

 

(Ok, now it gets better, again, bekuz IÕm not tryinÕ)

 

This, beest madness. We are the beest

 

This, you, I, beest madness, beests we are.

 

The truth beests, we are, and we endure. Beests all, forever!

 

. . . Except when we all die, then be we are worm food, dirt dwellers, cold rotting clay.

 

LetÕs get drunk and ride our bikes!

 

BeetchinÕ !

 

Genocide qwa (oh my, yerso kelvver!)

Menage a Quo (oh my, yerso qwa!)

Status a Trois (qwa qwa, sed the duk)

Menage A Vu (Foo) (qwa qwa, sed duh phool)

 

So, any more thots about the BEEST?

The beest comes in subtle, tiny, sneaky ways, too!

Like when frendz succeed and you hate them secretly.

Like when IÕm in the shower and somebuddyÕs thinking about me and I donÕt know it and nothing happens.

Like when quantum thingies happen, and nobody notices, and you live and die without notice! Whoa, think it! Thunk!

The ghost of ideas are locked in the Beest!

Silver and manic ideas are in the Beest. They itch to get out.

Beest is when the paper comes, but nobody reads papers anymore.

Or, contrariwise, the Beest is the life unlived and the accomplishments unaccomplished because youÕre . . .

. . . because you were too figuring-it-all-out to notice and act upon it. And the erasure comes along, which is deth, and all lies in its path.

And the mean ones lust for you, and you are living your own life, and the mean ones tell you how wack they are by hurting you and then realizing how stupid that was, but now itÕs too late and they have to live with it. With the fact that they are BEEST!

I never needed that much additional drama. I just needed clean socks.

Beest! There is only the beest of the familiar faces at the party, that you want to brush against, I mean brush against their bodies, but you are too old—manny and they, too happy not having anything to do with you.

 

(funny big bear takes a crap on the stage! Haw haw haw!!)

 

Then, letÕs realize the Beest may not be listening to you.

The beest may not care.

The beest may be too busy setting the table or smacking a friend in the face with a brick.

Gee, the beest sure can be a subtle bug!

Jee-zuz Jimmy! The beest is here/now, but the beest is also hey-what-the-fuck-let-go-of-my-arm crude fruit provider, is essence to power and truth, and sucks on the gentle vegetables with his frendz, who are so little his frendz.

Slap-pappy, why does the Beest become who we are, who we gonnaÕ be?

So many Beests we are, at so many places in our dumb lives. And all becomes rotting bodies!

But donÕt forget – The Beest is always present in danger and control situations.

Like those involving undergarments?

Like those involving undergarments, and also various hypo-allergenic plastics and other materials.

I want to go to the Beest and ask for more time to finish this, The Lifey-poo thingy.

The beest is taking obscure art from the 1980Õs and making it contemporary obscure art.

 

(a Beest enters and multiple things happen, none of which is pre-planned or intelligible, for that matter.

Me? I get to hose off the stage, but only after all the carnage has happened.)

 

and yes, there is a purity, a refinement in the expression, ÒI hate this current life I liveÓ

In my most recent version of this opera, the version not yet written, I realize I am about to transform in consciousness to something else.

I realize this transcendent condition can be mis-diagnosed by normal beings as some kind of brain disfunction or abnormality or condition, but I know . . .

 (or madness, too!)

. . . I know I must remain in that state in order to receive transmissions, and further transmit, to the rest of humanity.

I further realize how batshit this must appear to everyone else, and I know I must proceed with caution, if at all. So, he does.

 

(He? I thot it was I!)

 

What does BEEST stand for?

It stands for Being Existentially Envisioning Simultaneous Transcendencies,

WhatÕs going to happen next is a series of slow, painful, messy, disturbing things.

But then: The Beest discovers that hisher life is a metaphor for all lives.

The Beest discovers then that all things are metaphors for everything else.

The Beest discovers that the metaphors are metaphors for other scales of life.

Life of a cell, life of a part of your body, life of your body.

Life of your family, life of your tribe or community or city, life of your nation.

Life of a larger cultural notion (like Ôrekorded histeryÕ)

And then the jump to life of the species homo beestian.

If you Heel my Peen, I will Heel your Lip.

And then, the life of the planet, the life of the solar system, the life of the galaxy.

And then, the life of multiple galaxies, the life of the universe, the life of multiple universes.

The life of multiple dimensions, which may envelope the notion of time within a larger dimensional pulse.

Wuffa!

On the other end, you go to life of a bit of DNA.

The life of molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles.

And then, speculative particles that come into and out of existence in super tiny fractions of seconds.

Nano – pecto – femto seconds – are those the right ones?

Anyway, The Beest looks at all these time scales as a metaphor for consciousness.

The Beest looks at all these time scales for the idea of consciousness on many different levels, in many different ways,

These consciousnesses will be around before and after your personal experience of what consciousness is, ends, that is to say, the BeestÕs deth.

That is to say, your deth.

That is to say, my deth.

That is to say, deth deth deth.    

 

So in the transformation from a character in an opera to a more generalized notion of character to the author to the consciousness of the author to the idea of consciousness, which the author participates in, and which is only a small part of the totality of consciousness, well, wuffa! Again! And Wuffa is defined as the expression the Beest utters when he / she / it must once again take measure of the werld, and gawk in awe and wonder at how much of an insignificant turd hesheit is, and so the turd becomes the metaphor for all life and existence and all dimensions and scales of consciousness, up to and including the totality of consciousness, which in turn is a metaphor for the turd.

And then we should say the Eams brothers film on the Powers of Ten is what weÕre looking at here, and while they applied that to physical size of objects, we are applying that to time, and then also to consciousness, and thatÕs maybe the real kickass kicker.

 Because if you have multiple consciousnesses on multiple time scales, and possibly multiple dimensions (and how about powers of tens in dimensions – because what is a dimension but a basic measurement of one axis of the structures of existence, and to have multiple dimensions in powers of tens, wuh-hell, that is truly a wuffa moment because weÕre useta dealing with 2 or 3 dimensions, and 4 if you include time, so what do you include as a dimension, like, imagination? Consciousness?), then you have a condition of an infinite eternity but not an eternal eternity, you really have that intersection of time and timelessness.

You have consciousness continuing at one level or another for not forever, but for an extremely long time, but you have also consciousness enfolding time and its unfolding and un-being (i.e., timelessness) and burning in a single life, in a single moment, in a single turd, in a single fuck, but the fuck would be a speculative, fantasy fuck, because we like to vibe on that desire/fulfilment axis (maybe another dimension-thingy?), and that becomes a furry and cuddly metaphor (the perfect luv moment, the fantasy fuck), and we prefer furry and cuddly metaphors for the intersection of time and timelessness to messier metaphors, like the universe of consciousness totality dimensions burning in a single turd.

But the turd grounds the experience even more, but then we have to run this past a publisher, who might get turned off by all this turd talk anyway.

 

So maybe all this needs to be a neat chart or graph.

But, also, then, if youÕre using the little iPods for multiple timelines as a metaphor for (or concretization of) multiple dimensions or levels of consciousness, well, then at least you have a structure that might resemble a wuffa moment, but youÕre just scratching the surface of the ass, the surface of the universeÕs ass, possibly gently stimulating the asshole of the totality of time + experience + consciousness, but experience implies an experiencer, donÕt it? And you see how quickly I dropped that universeÕs ass thingy? Too reified, maybe? Is that right? Reified beans?

 

Now, letÕs get back on track here.

 The Beest (which is half way between Plotinus and the author, and beyond both and neither) thinks about consciousness on many levels and thinks this should make him deserve some personal consciousness thingy that transcends his own miserable personal consciousness, which will end when his body ends.

 And then his body ends, and that is the end of the opera, but thatÕs sorta how the other opera ended, so letÕs work on maybe a different ending.

 The Beest is transformed into the turd and simultaneously the fantasy fuck, but for some peeps, the fantasy fuck might be money or goddiness or babies or Òeven a neat digital ponyÓ.

 So maybe you vibe on that a while.

So, thatÕs what I have been vibing about in the thinkster dumpster of my mynd.

 I think that about covers it all, because it started as a meditation on deth, and went on to include all the lifey things that pop up if you want to extend life beyond your own miserable, smelly, wanting Beest body.

 And again, you probably sed this better in the previous opera.

DonÕt know why youÕd want to even try to refine that thing, especially the neat part at the end where all the universe is explained and explicated.

Wuffa! And wuffa you, too!

No, but wait – are you an idiot?

You can come out now

 

 

 

(this was what I wanted the whole opera to be, in a moment of complete despair and hopelessness, which is only now only slightly less hopeless:)

(so now, this is only the last part, rather than the whole part)

 

 

(so before that comes this)

If you want them to call,

start doing something.

 

If you do these things,

they will escape

and no one will remember you.

 

In the Dreem - it hinged on research:

you said you were glad

you didn't start your research until you were 40 --no, 50!--

because of the perspective one has at that point.

That, after Ded Bobby's girlfriend is screaming/singing

in the other research room.

She has an afro,

and is not too attractive in any way.

 

There is repair on the research door that's needed.

And I don't want to leave the research door open

because too much gets let out,

let in.

 

We are waiting for the phone, and doing art in the meantime.

 

I'm encircling the great ideas

with elegant forms! Yay!

That's the art I'm making,

but nobody gets it.

 

(maybe I should try it all again,

with different forms or shapes?

maybe I should put on a sweater?

nah - -)

 

The phone not ringing

means there are possibilities

and things might be happening,

or else you may have simply gone mad.

 

There it goes, not ringing.

 

(How many possibilities

and how much time

do you have?

Don't know.)

 

The ringing phone represents the end of life

or at least the end of art.

 

The phone will ring, and then the art will end.

 

There it goes, now!

 


(BEEST OPERAª

Final Revision – 3.xii.08)

 

(so, hereÕs like, originally, a new give-up-on-everything version, which is the peruh graff below, but more likely, it, by it  we mean the opera, starts where I sed earlier, ÔOK, now this is betterÕ to the end which includes this paragraph):

 

Scene: Art has failed. Culture has failed. Basic people-niceness has failed. There is no humor, just unbearable pain and suffering for everybody on stage or in the audience. So, the opera is now just everybody screaming at full volume for as long as they can, the end.

 

á       * * * * * * *

 

 

(so, like, everybuddy has collapsed on stage or wherever they are, and some injury or further violence may have occurred, which, hey, donÕt blame me for that, and for your stupid big-ass trucks! OK, so then somebody starts kleening everything up, and thatÕs the real ending of everything.)