The ultimate topic here is my sleep patterns, which I will post about more systematically in a while. Here I’m trying to take some of the burden of background material off that posting by stashing it for easy reference later. Picking an item — the revival by Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre of Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros — that I also view, in desperation, as carrying an urgent message about today’s sociopolitical climate.
It will start with odd everyday routines of no consequence, but will end with contemplating literal dehumanization, staring evil in the face. I’m touchy on the point, having never fully recovered from the shock of seeing the Nazi death camps exposed when I was a child. And understanding that that could happen to me. (No, I don’t think children should be protected from such knowledge. They should be treasured and supported, as I was, but they should also see the dangers clearly, so that they can arm themselves against them.)
But first, the routines. (If you think I’m just a nutter or a pathetic neurotic in need of professional care, fuck off; it’s none of your business. I’m doing stuff that works for me; why should you care?)
Sound tracks of the night. I was an only child, but not until the academic year 1981-82 (at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences) did I spend significant periods of time utterly alone; there were always family and friends around the house, in summer programs, at college and in grad school, and then living with my partners. Suddenly I had rooms all by myself (on Mayfield Rd. in Stanford’s “faculty ghetto”), most of the time (I had occasional, wonderful guests). This struck me as unnatural and unsettling.
I thought to soothe my anxieties by playing NPR stations on the radio. Someone talking to me, or at least talking where I could hear them. Not nearly as satisfying as having an intimate curled up with me in bed, talking inconsequentially in low voices, but it was something. Sometimes the stations played music, mostly classical music from the traditions I had been trained in, and that was a good thing of another kind.
That’s the set-up. When my CASBS year was over, I went back to communal life, in many settings with many different people. Until Jacques got moved into a dementia care facility. And, in 2003, died. Leaving me bereft, then and still.
Nighttime NPR to the rescue. And then I got access to Apple music utilities and was able to run through my gigantic collection of classical music recordings as well. So I did both: for medical reasons, I needed to sleep sometimes in my bedroom, sometimes in the living room, so, eventually, I just installed and ran both of them.
Now I have to remind you that during the night I awaken roughly every hour to whizz. Stand up and use the two urinals that live by my bedside. This is an exercise of a few minutes at most and I can then put myself back to sleep almost instantly. But … mid-whizz I’m getting often absorbing programs from NPR in the bedroom and music I love (can identify and sing along with) from the other room. I am then wrecked for dropping back to sleep, because I’m actually attending to the content of the program or to the music or both. I am interrupted.
I learn things, reflect on ideas, dredge up music-historical or music-theoretical notions. I keep a pad and pen in my nightstand, so I can take notes.
Eventually I am sated, turn thought off, lie down, and put myself back to sleep.
And that’s how I came to Rhinoceros. As a truly gigantic sleep interruption.
Rhinoceros on NPR. From the NPR site, “Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre puts on revival of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’,” on Morning Edition 8/21:
The American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University premiers a revival of Eugène Ionesco’s landmark play, “Rhinoceros.” NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer talks to director Diane Paulus and actor John Turturro.
The interview (which I listed to raptly, all the way through) seems not to be available in transcript, so for this posting I went to the A.R.T. website on the performance, playing 8/21 – 9/27:
Everything seems normal one Sunday morning … until it’s not. One by one, friends and colleagues transform into rhinoceroses, and Berenger is forced to decide: will he follow the crowd or stand his ground? As resonant as when it premiered in the wake of the Second World War, Rhinoceros reminds us of the importance of holding on to our humanity amidst mounting pressures to conform. Eugène Ionesco’s landmark play is staged in a new adaptation by A.R.T. based on Derek Prouse’s seminal translation [AZ: ouch on seminal, because it looks like fancy over-writing, something program notes often fall prey to — but in fact it’s entirely appropriate in the sense ‘early and influential’ for Prouse’s 1959 translation]
Tony Award winner Diane Paulus … directs her final production at the Loeb Drama Center before the A.R.T.’s move to its new home in Allston, the Goel Center for Creativity & Performance.
The play doesn’t just remind us of the importance of holding on to our humanity amidst mounting pressures to conform; it’s a flaming warning in the sky — screaming This Can Happen Here, We Can Lose Everything.
Surrealist drama for Ionescu. Earlier, the real-life Hitlerjugend. Later, in pop culture, the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (aka Pod People), profoundly creepy in both of its versions (especially the re-make). Ionescu is playful, but the tale is dire.
The playwright. From Wikipedia:
Eugène Ionesco (born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian: 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco instigated a revolution in ideas and techniques of drama, beginning with his “anti play”, The Bald Soprano [La Cantatrice chauve], which contributed to the beginnings of what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd. He wrote a number of plays that, following the ideas of the philosopher Albert Camus, explore concepts of absurdism and surrealism.
If I remember correctly, The Bald Soprano was one of the 14 assigned readings for the Modern European Literature course I took in my first semester (autumn 1958) at Princeton, a course I took because it was about things I knew hardly anything about (I was fine on Shakespeare and on American fiction, those being the alternative courses, but the whole point of sweating my ass to go to a place like Princeton was to engage with stuff that was as brand-new to me and as sparkly as possible).
I will not attempt to summarize the anti-plot. I chose not to write a paper on this one (though I did get to write several ace papers and thoroughly enjoyed the experience).
Now save all this up for recall in a posting about my sleep patterns and about the double day I endured on 8/21 — first unspeakably awful, literally shitty; and then gloriously, vigorously, sing from the rooftops wonderful.
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