Marc Anthony Has Returned With More to Say

 

Jeff--Saturday

 

In 2020, the spirit of William Shakespeare came to me proposing that I allow his chosen messenger to give voice to the Bard's take on contemporary American Politics. Not being one to deny the Master his due, I did; little realizing that five years later that same messenger would insist the times once again demanded that  his creator's fictional thoughts on the rulers of his time be postulated as  revealing the character of who rules us today.

 

So, with apologies to Shakespeare and in deference to Marc Anthony's demand here goes:

Marc Anthony

 

Friends, Russians, countrymen, hold back your jeers;

I come to fathom Caesar, not to braise him.

The evil that men do enriches them;

The good is scoffed, much as bankrupt loans;

As have we seen with Caesar. His choice of nobles

Hath shown you Caesar is capricious:

Viewing power a glory to exploit,

And gloriously hath Caesar used it.

Along with likes of Bannon and the rest–

The imprisoned and not yet convicted;

All viewed by Caesar as honourable men–

Until he sees them as funereal.

We need leaders, faithful and just to US:

And what of those who call him pernicious;

Many honourable men and women.

Plus, the many children caged on borders

Whose parents sought a better life for them:

Did this in Caesar seem nigh righteous?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath slept:

Governance should be made of caring stuff:

Yet so many cling to Caesar as solicitous;

Among them many an honourable man.

We watch and hear how on the nightly news

They bow when he suggests a kingly crown,

Which he would not refuse: was this sedition?

Or deflection from a plague so vicious;

Dismissed by him as it is what it is.

I speak now to disapprove what he spoke,

And seek the answer I’ve so longed to know.

Many did vote him once, some without cause:

What cause still drives them then, to yearn for him?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin with our nation,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

 

 

And for you classists, here’s the original version, from Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–

For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men–

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

–Jeff

May Shakespeare Forgive Me. Again.

 

 

 

Jeff—Saturday

 

It's been one hell of an interesting week.  Perhaps one day soon I'll get to tell you all about it.  But for now there's no way I dare put pen (or fingers) to paper (or keyboard) lest my current state of mind has me jumping the gun, running amuck, or any number of more literate analogies to counting chickens before they're hatched.  So, instead I offer you this take on where my mind is at the moment...whether I want it to be, or not to be.  [Did you catch that cutesy little word play (so to speak)?  But that's from Hamlet's soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 1 of his eponymous tragedy, and this parody is based upon Macbeth's soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 1 of the play bearing his name.] 

So, with apologies to The Bard (and Caro), I give you the King of Scotland describing my life at the moment:

 

Is this a blank page which I see before me,

The blog thought toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To writing as to sight? Or art thou but

A blogpost of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the late-night pressèd brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I write.

Thou deceived me the way that I was going,

With such inspiration I was to use.

Mine blog is made the fool o' th' other ones done,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,

And on thy screen and laptop gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There’s no blog here.

It is the bloody press to write which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale god Poe’s offerings, and withered murder,

Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With deadline’s ravishing strides, towards some design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my words, which way they speak, for fear

my very stories prate of my runamuck,

And take the present offer from the time,

Which now sits on me. Whiles I write, MIE lives.

Words to the heat of reads too bold breath gives.

 

 

And now the original...

 

 

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There’s no such thing.

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder,

Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives.

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

 

 –Jeff

 

Playacting

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

It's been kind of crazy around here (or then again, maybe just in my head)! 

The revival of 'Hitting (on) Women', a play I wrote 15 years ago went off pretty well. I enjoyed watching it much more this time around--and I loved the pop up 'pub theatre' feel of it. And yes, there's a pub just outside of this! 

It only seats 150, but they were sold out for the whole run, which always feels good!

What's sad that the play didn't feel dated: Singapore's still moving towards decriminalising homosexuality but hasn't got there yet. 

It reminded me so much of when I started out in theatre, doing lunchtime shows and a show a month didn't seem crazy... 

This is the view from just outside Projector X: Riverside, where the play was staged. What you're looking down at here is the Singapore River. 

The other play, Kwa Geok Choo, is the new one that's running now till the end of July. 

It's been quite polarising, to put it mildly. Some people really hate it while others say they were moved and touched. But I suspect this has less to do with my writing than the subject matter--it's the story of the woman who was the wife of our first Prime Minister and mother of our current Prime Minister. 

The hate mail started coming even before the show opened (luckily writers are thick-skinned!) but there have also been full houses and standing ovations so I think this was a project worth doing.

This is a shot of the cast doing sound and lighting checks before the first show. 

Cast and crew are an incredible team to work with. It must be really physically, mentally, emotionally draining to go up there night after night (plus matinees!).  

And it's in a much grander venue--the Victoria Theatre...

It's really much more pleasant outside the theatre. Part of me wanted to go on sitting/walking/watching out here with the old trees, young people and sea breeze coming in.

But then that's how I feel about most things in life--it's much more comfortable to be looking in from the outside. And most of the time I prefer staying not just out of the spotlight but out of the building. The only reason for going back inside is because you have people you care about inside there.

Not just the cast and crew and support team, but the characters whose stories they're telling. Every performance is different because every audience reacts differently and the actors respond to the different energy. That's the magic of live theatre that we've missed through the Covid years!

As for the 'official' view vs all the dirt I've been accused of hiding (but which I wasn't actually able to unearth)... I've been thinking about how Shakespeare was staged in the 18th century. 

Not censorship but contemporary sentiment removed all the obscene talk Hamlet directs at Gertrude, there were no comic scenes in the tragedies (no Fool in King Lear, no drunken porter in Macbeth, no gravedigger in Hamlet).

And 'worse'--King Lear was given a happy ending where Cordelia marries Edgar and inherit Lear’s kingdom. (the tragic ending we know and love-hate now was restored in the 19th century). 

The happy ending was described as one that ‘can never fail to produce those gushing tears which are sealed and ennobled by a virtuous joy,’ 

The problem is, even such worthies as David Garrick and Samuel Johnson went with the happy ending to Lear though they had access to the original scripts (which caused a minor fallout when Garrick refused to lend them to Johnson because Johnson notoriously ruined borrowed books)

 

(Samuel Johnson manhandling a book--not relevant except I love how he's grabbing and devouring it)

It makes me realise I can't be aware of whether I'm being influenced by 'contemporary sentiment' when I write what I see as 'truth'.

The frightening responsibility of being writers is we're both reflecting and reshaping contemporary sentiment. Yes--how and why we murder our victims and what happens to our killers reflects how we see our reality and may reformulate tomorrow's reality. 

So-- may we all kill wisely and well!

Pushkin Had It Right

 

Jeff—Saturday

 

Caro’s blog yesterday inspired me to admit defeat.

 

If only Putin would do the same. God bless Ukraine and its fiercely brave people.

 

My defeat is of a different sort.  I’ve lost the fire to write the blog I intended—a parody of a poem titled “Napoleon” written two-hundred years ago by Russia’s most famous and celebrated poet, Alexander Pushkin.

 

The poem begins…

 

The wondrous destiny is ended,
The mighty light is quench’d and dead;
In storm and darkness hath descended
Napoleon’s sun, so bright and dread.
The captive King hath burst his prison—
The petted child of Victory;
And for the Exile hath arisen
The dawning of Posterity.

 

Change but a single word and it’s as if Pushkin were writing Putin’s epitaph.  But to take the parody further requires far more thought and energy than I care to spend focused on the soulless monster wreaking relentless catastrophic tragedy and despair upon the world.

 

Instead, I’m falling back on something I wrote ten years ago as a parody of Hamlet’s self-questioning To be, or not to be soliloquy that asks his famous “whether” question in its second line.  I thought, how aptly that post applies to my current state of mind over whether or not to write that Pushkin parody.

JEFFREY: To blog, or not to blog--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

In despair at most blogs’ outrageous fortune

Or to take pens against our shared troubles

And by exposing end them. To fly, to leap--

To soar—or do we creep away to end

The headache, and the thousand natural blocks

That publish is heir to. 'Tis a consternation

Devoutly to be wished on others.  Weep--

Perchance even scream: But at the very nub

Of a possible death to the dream of some

Is why we suffer at this mortal toil.

Let us pause. There's the respect

That is the balm to a long writing life.

For who would bear the ups and downs of time,

Th' reviewer's wrong and downright contumely,

The pangs of edited work, the pub delay,

The insolence of the press, and its spurns

Showing patient merit worthy of a saint,

When he or she might quiet exit take

To make a living?  Who would deadlines bear,

To grunt and sweat a solitary life,

But that the dread of giving no more breadth

To all those undiscovered thoughts that churn

Our traveling minds, and puzzle our will,

Would make us far more ill by half

Than denying readers what they know not of?

Dedication makes writers of us all,

And a simpler life of remuneration

Is sacrificed to one of words and thought.

Any enterprise giving pitch and moment

To our words, even if currently awry,

We can’t lose in the name of no action.  

So now fair Colleagues, bring on opinions

That our blog be long remembered.

 

—Jeff

 

 

A Guest Parody by Marc Anthony: Friends, Russians, and Countrymen

 

Jeff--Saturday

 

I don’t know how many of you realize that William Shakespeare lived his entire life in the shadow of plague.  For further details check out this terrific article in the New Yorker by Stephen Greenblatt.  As for the Bard’s thoughts on the rulers of his time, read his plays.

 

He remains a force to be reckoned with, so who am I to resist a chance to surmise his take on today’s American politics. I can’t say he wrote this, though something about it is strangely familiar, but whoever did obviously believes now is the time to speak out. So, with apologies to Marc Anthony (the original version), here goes:

Marc Anthony

 

Friends, Russians, countrymen, hold back your jeers;

I come to fathom Caesar, not to braise him.

The evil that men do enriches them;

The good is scoffed, much as bankrupt loans;

As have we seen with Caesar. His choice of nobles

Hath shown you Caesar is capricious:

Viewing power a glory to exploit,

And gloriously hath Caesar used it.

Along with likes of Bannon and the rest–

The imprisoned and not yet convicted;

All viewed by Caesar as honourable men–

Until he sees them as funereal.

We need leaders, faithful and just to US:

And what of those who call him pernicious;

Many honourable men and women.

Plus, the many children caged on borders

Whose parents sought a better life for them:

Did this in Caesar seem nigh righteous?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath slept:

Governance should be made of caring stuff:

Yet so many cling to Caesar as solicitous;

Among them many an honourable man.

We watch and hear how on the nightly news

They bow when he suggests a kingly crown,

Which he would not refuse: was this sedition?

Or deflection from a plague so vicious;

Dismissed by him as it is what it is.

I speak now to disapprove what he spoke,

And seek the answer I’ve so longed to know.

Many did vote him once, some without cause:

What cause still drives them then, to yearn for him?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin with our nation,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

 

 

And for you classists, here’s the original version, from Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.

 

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–

For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men–

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

–Jeff

If Shakepeare Had to Write a Blog...

Jeff--Saturday

With all the distractions of the past week--and undoubtedly more anxiety provoking moments ahead--I decided to stick my head in the sand and post something of my creation completely unrelated to reality. In other words, what it's like writing a blog.  But from Shakespeare's perspective. After all, he lived through the plague. Whoops, there I go again, bobbing back into reality. Now on to Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1.  

Is this a blank page which I see before me,

The blog thought toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To writing as to sight? Or art thou but

A blogpost of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the late-night pressèd brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I write.

Thou deceived me the way that I was going,

With such inspiration I was to use.

Mine blog is made the fool o' th' other ones done,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,

And on thy screen and laptop gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There’s no blog here.

It is the bloody press to write which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale god Poe’s offerings, and withered murder,

Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With deadline’s ravishing strides, towards some design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my words, which way they speak, for fear

my very stories prate of my runamuck,

And take the present offer from the time,

Which now sits on me. Whiles I write, MIE lives.

Words to the heat of reads too bold breath gives.

And here's the original:

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There’s no such thing.

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder,

Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives.

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

—Jeff