…what do we see?
A question, although minus the horses, posed by Dan Rebellato.
I hope thus far, dear reader, you have been entertained with my theatrical musings, occasional rants, and multitude of instagram posts -some of which were originally taken for academic purposes, I promise.
#MApurposes
We don’t always imagine things visually.
(Rebellato, 2009, 21)
While reading and being in discussion with Pornography (not that kind. Filth, the lot of you!) by Simon Stephens, Dan Rebellato got thrown into the mix, and made us call into question imagination. Now, we all have one, and we all use it, but how does it work? What we can imagine is limited to what we know and how far we can stretch and craft that knowledge, it can be fooled and is imprecise.
You can imagine such a world without doing so visually.
(Rebellato, 2009, 22)
As strange and impossible this sounds, we do it all the time when asked to imagine, even if indirectly. When reading a book, or a play, we create these worlds in our heads without seeing each minute detail. We skim over what the grass feels like, or where the freckles lie on the secondary characters face.
And as I found out, we can imagine that which we have never seen.
Following Pornography, I read The Author by Tim Crouch.
*If you, dear reader, are of a sensitive nature, I’d recommend leaving us here, and re-joining us at the next blog post, or over at Performance Musings*.
Now there’s just the strong minded left, let me continue.
While simply reading The Author, I became disgusted at myself in a way I didn’t know was possible.
I’m an avid reader, and have read a lot from as soon as I could decipher words on my own, but I’ve never questioned my own moral standing and self before by what I had imagined through reading. Something which usually brings me joy and a sense of escapism instead made me jar, stop, and question “what the fuck?”.
Tim (the character Tim, not the author Tim), describes a sexual act which he either a) witnesses online and masturbates to or b) commits himself between himself and a sleepy baby.
I put the play down.
And paused.
What the f**k had I just read, and the further, created?
I find some sort of solace in that Gregory Currie believes that “we do not in any sense imagine ourselves to be seeing the events depicted. We simply see the depiction and we imagine that the events are taking place” (Rebellato, 2009 ,22). Wait…do I? Either way, my mind created these images which were described.
The responsibility of the author must come in to play here – Crouch has said that he has protected future actors by keeping the character name as ‘Tim’, where the other ‘characters’ should be changed to that of the actors performing, but to protect the audience. Yes, we can put the play down and close the pages, we can even choose to walk out of a performance. But once those words are seen or heard, they linger in the air, waiting to fall down into place, and our glorious minds are more than happy to comply with their requests.
Now, excuse me while I go back to Hogwarts for an hour or two. I know my wand is around here somewhere…
References
Rebellato, D (2009) When We Talk of Horses; Or, what so we see when we see a play? Performance Research, 14(1) 17-28.