Katarzyna Wi\u0144ska
\nThe Metanomos Rondo (A Small Oratorio)<\/p>\n
The action takes place on a whaling vessel and in an astronomical observatory. The actors read the text from music stands. The conductor alternately takes the form of AHAB and PYTHAGORAS. As AHAB he speaks through a megaphone. THE WHALERS (young members of an organization) turn into PYTHAGOREANS, pulling white shirts over their dirty bloodstained ones, taking off their leather jackets. ISHMAEL is a female observer, off to one side with her music stand. In the background: the music of the spheres<\/p>\n
On board a ship. The harsh sunlight illuminates the boards in streaks of blood and blubber. Sailors in black \u201ctogs\u201d carry out the quartered whale with whaling grandissimo, pouring water from buckets, swabbing the deck. Suddenly a silence descends upon the white ship. They sit turned from one another and drift off into daydreams.<\/p>\n
(Andante) AHAB stabs the air with the harpoon, bends over to free the snagged line, the flying coil wraps around his neck. The sailing ship begins sinking in the sea. ISHMAEL on top of the mast: castaways on the shore \u2013 the bastards the women entranced by the silence they eat the syllables of prayers Night. The PYTHAGOREANS surround a radio telescope that emits the music of the spheres. Suddenly, AHAB\u2019s voice rings out from a megaphone. ISHMAEL exits. Smoke appears in the four corners of the observatory. The PYTHAGOREANS perish in its wisps. The smoke falls. The scene resembles the beginning \u2013 all blood and oil. The sailors swab the deck.<\/p>\n ISHMAEL:<\/strong> Big bang! Cry the faded explorers End[:]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" METANOMOS is a seance to summon secret brotherhoods: the Pythagorean Union, alternating with the Whaling Brotherhood, under the leadership of Ahab from Herman Melville\u2019s Moby Dick. The link between these two communities is Ishmael \u2013 a woman attempting to understand the principles of male initiation. Far away from women and living as hermits, young men…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"portfolio_category":[],"portfolio_tag":[],"class_list":["post-791","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1646,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/791\/revisions\/1646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"portfolio_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_category?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"portfolio_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kinoteatrbluboks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_tag?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Oh Metempsychosis! Oh Pythagoras!
\nIn bright Greece you perished
\nso good, wise, and quiet
\nI sailed with you along the coast of Peru
\nand though I may be foolish, I taught you
\nhow to knot a rope…
\nThe sun is setting. Above the deck is an astronomical observatory. The echosond monitors from the previous scene show pictures of outer space instead of the ocean depths. Pythagoras mans the telescope. Members of the Pythagorean Brotherhood, cloaked in white, are standing by the monitors.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> What craft do you know best?
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> I know none. I am a philosopher.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> What does that mean?
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> Human life is like the Olympic games
\nsome are in it for the glory
\nother to profit from purchase and sales
\nand a third group \u2013 neither for the cheers nor for the gain
\nbut to observe most carefully
\nand to seek the causes
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Better than others?
\nThey want the power to judge?
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> Your words, not mine. (he exits)
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Pythagoras!
\nThe PYTHAGOREANS speak in turn.
\n1: Quiet, there are no names here.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Why did he depart?
\n2: He is with us and above us.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> To whom does he speak?
\n3: He\u2019s listening.
\nISHMAEL<\/strong>: To whom? To the voices from beyond?
\n1: Ask him.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> I\u2019m going after him.
\n2: Stay, novitiate.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> How long?
\n3: Five years.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> To ask a single question?
\n1: To understand the response and to don the white robes.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> I\u2019ll be waiting patiently at home.
\n2: He is not a preacher you can visit.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Am I to live in a monastery?
\n3: The human spirit does not flourish in an inn.
\nWe gather the truth in silence, for others.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Connoisseurs of silence…
\nAm I to be for everyone yet have no one myself?
\n1: You\u2019ve understood half of it.
\nNo one here will betray you.
\nAnd soon you\u2019ll find out; easier to maintain
\npoverty and cleanliness
\nthan to be subject to the rules.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> I listen to the captain.
\nTOGETHER:<\/strong> Here you must read the orders for yourself.
\nThe sun rises. The brothers vanish. ISHMAEL on deck of the ship with the sailors turned away from her.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Lonesome men live on the mountain peaks
\nSome light the first star, which they named themselves,
\nOthers polish the great surfaces of mirrors
\nfor reading the most distant future
\nwhich has no bearing on anyone present
\nStill others rev up the time machines
\nthe best of them will travel ten billion light
\nyears in a single night
\nThey all love to play at solving riddles
\nevery right answer checked by the machines
\nis the key to a thousand new questions
\nand so on, in circles
\nIn fact they ought not to catch our eye
\nor only for a few days
\nwhich for them, too, are numbered
\nevery night they\u2019ve a night less for their revelry
\nthey must focus more and more
\non down-to-earth activities
\nuntil the day comes when they\u2019ll have to be carried
\nback down with the utmost care
\nout of fear that they\u2019ll hurl curses:
\nouter space would cease to expand like a balloon
\nit would contract and shatter on itself
\nwe\u2019d have to start everything from the beginning
\nThe clatter of a bony leg is audible. Captain AHAB approaches. His prosthesis is stuck in a hole in the deck.
\n(Presto)
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Gather everyone together.
\nWhat do you boys do at the sight of a whale?
\nCREW:<\/strong> We sound the alarm.
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Good. And what then?
\nCREW:<\/strong> We drop our boats and pursue him!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> What\u2019s your motto?
\nCREW:<\/strong> Either the whale dies or the boat\u2019s reduced to splinters!
\nAHAB flourishes a coin.
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Whosoever spies my white whale
\nits brow furrowed and its jaw crooked
\nwhosoever of you should spy a white whale
\nwith three holes near the tail
\nbeware! Whosoever should spy that very whale,
\nto him goes an ounce of gold. Boys?!
\nCREW:<\/strong> Hurrah!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> The whale is white, I repeat,
\na white whale,
\nbe on the lookout for his eyes
\nand watch keenly where the water\u2019s white.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Captain, was it that whale
\nwho took your leg?
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Yes, he\u2019s the damned one that crippled me
\nI really will pursue him
\nthrough the fires of perdition
\nbefore I abandon him
\nand that\u2019s why you\u2019re all here today
\nto chase him across both ends of the globe
\nthrough all the corners of the world
\nuntil his black blood flows,
\nwhat do you say to that, boys!
\nAre we on?
\nYou seem plenty courageous!
\nCREW:<\/strong> Yes, yes! We\u2019ll keep a sharp eye out for the white whale!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> I\u2019ll strike the sun if the glare bothers me
\nSwear, you crew of a death-bearing ship
\nDeath to the Leviathan!
\nLet God himself pursue us
\nif I do not find it.
\nISHMAEL remains alone.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> The white whale does not seek you
\nit is you who seeks it.
\nNight. The PYTHAGOREAN brothers recite their maxims in chorus. PYTHAGORAS is the silent conductor hidden in the shadows.
\n(Andante)
\nALL:<\/strong> He said
\nLYSIS:<\/strong> Nature teaches you
\nit reveals the mystery of all things
\nedge just a step closer to it
\nand your body will conquer a healthy spirit
\nALL:<\/strong> He said
\nARCHIPPOS:<\/strong> You shall have your eyes open to everything
\nyou shall see how man amasses earthly yearnings
\nwithin himself and suffers
\nthough goodness is right nearby
\nonly a chosen one can break free from
\nthe vicious circle of sufferings
\nALL:<\/strong> He said
\nPHILOLAOS:<\/strong> Judge everything through reason
\nlet reason be your chariot
\nand when you leave your body
\nand you soar into the open firmament
\nyou shall leave the earth for centuries
\nyou shall trod upon death and become a God
\nALL:<\/strong> He said
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> Of beauties more unexplored than that
\nwhich a lover gleaned in the eyes of a woman
\nmay faith oust the facts
\nand may imagination oust memory
\nand so I cast my eye upward and I believe
\nALL:<\/strong> He said
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> The cobbler and the tailor are real
\nThey cut according to the latest fashions
\nReady-made to wear right away.
\nthe inauthentic painter and poet
\nthink on command
\n– in a hundred years they\u2019ll be given a salon
\nso they may change their address
\nand themselves beyond recognition.
\nThere are galaxies at the bottom of falsity
\ntheir portrait from billions of years past
\nhanging over our heads, in order to move us
\nby the blaze of a supernova to a place where
\nthe void has yawned for millennia.
\nLYSIS: Falsity is unable to count its breaths
\nSeven. The seven tuned strings of the zither.
\nThat instrument is an image of the divine power ruling the world.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> I fail to understand.
\nARCHIPPOS:<\/strong> Seven is the only number which
\nby its nature neither gives birth
\nnor is born
\nit is an image of the Lord ruling everything
\nequal to Himself
\nunlike all others
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> I still fail to understand.
\nARCHIPPOS:<\/strong> The planets are also tuned
\nthe whole sky is harmony and numbers
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> You spoke of strings
\nPHILOLAOS:<\/strong> they are lodged in the transparent spheres
\ntheir rotation produces sounds
\nthe lower they are, the more resonant
\nlike the strings of a zither
\noctaves, fifths, fourths
\nthey originate in the heavens
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> The music of the spheres? I can\u2019t hear a thing.
\nLYSIS:<\/strong> It has always been ringing in your ears \u2013 you\u2019re accustomed
\nto needing a pause to hear them
\nor the end of the world
\nIt dawns. AHAB approaches, shouts at the blacksmith:
\n(Presto)
\nAHAB:<\/strong> I demand a harpoon!
\nOne that can\u2019t be broken by the thousand pairs of devils
\nthat inhabit that whale
\none like its own flipper
\nhere\u2019s your material \u2013
\nthe nails for the shoes of racehorses
\nmelt them, like a glue made of a murderer\u2019s bones
\nQuick! Forge me a harpoon, right away!
\nThe blacksmith strikes with hammers of various sizes.
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Here are my razors
\nof the very best steel
\ntake it for a spearhead
\nsharp as a needle of ice.
\nThe blacksmith hesitates.
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Take it, man
\nI have no need of them
\nI no longer shave
\nI don\u2019t eat I don\u2019t pray
\nuntil… but now to work!
\nThe blacksmith slides him a tub of water.
\nAHAB:<\/strong> No! No! It\u2019s not water I need.
\nAhoy! What ho, pagan!
\nWill you give me the blood to temper the spearhead?
\nCREW:<\/strong> Yes!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Ego non babtizo te in nomine patris
\nsed in nomine diaboli!
\nAHAB selects a shaft, checks the tow rope, gives it a tug. He exits; the clop of his bone leg and of the shaft of the harpoon. Dusk falls.
\nPYTHAGOREANS:<\/strong> The universe is not only stranger
\nthan it appears to us
\nit is also stranger
\nthan it can appear
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Are you in search of heaven?
\nLYSIS:<\/strong> No, no, it\u2019s not there for us
\namidst the storms of several centuries
\nof unceasing winds
\nand cosmic events
\nhere on earth we seek to summon it
\nbased on the model from up above
\nALL:<\/strong> The universe is not only stranger
\nthan it appears to us
\nit is also stranger
\nthan it can appear
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> What was the beginning?
\nARCHIPPOS:<\/strong> In the beginning there was music
\nit was hard to speak of it
\nwe were missing the words
\nit was just pure \u2013 like everything at the time
\nlater came form
\nmodelled on music, harmonious,
\nmoulded by hand
\nPHILOLAOS:<\/strong> entranced by the agility of the hand
\npeople combined form and thought
\ngave names to whatever came along
\neveryone pitched in
\nmany had tin ears
\nLYSIS:<\/strong> thus began a dark epoch
\nof specialist dictionaries
\nbut the people sensed something
\nthey are quite restless
\nthey confuse words and shrug their shoulders
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> When we hear it \u2013 one note from beyond \u2013
\nthat will bring man\u2019s cosmic solitude to an end
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> As well as our monopoly on rulemaking
\nin this corner of the universe
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> The chances are slim during our lifetime that
\nwe shall find ourselves in the right place
\nat the right time to witness
\nan event of cosmic significance
\nALL:<\/strong> The universe is not only stranger
\nthan it appears to us
\nit is also stranger
\nthan it can appear
\nSunrise. The deck of the ship.
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Thou shall know people by the numbers
\nthey invent;
\nmadmen count in their heads
\nthey show the sums on their fingers
\ndouble them in octaves etc.
\nThey number symphonies from 1 to 100
\nthe unmusical build counting machines
\nsmaller and smaller, because replacement parts are in demand
\nthey use numbers from \u2013 to + infinity
\nto predict public opinion and harvests
\nand the universe can be counted
\nwith stars shining in a trillion suns
\nand the heavy dust of a million elephants
\nproducing various sounds all the while
\njoining in the famed harmony of the spheres
\nI know God for his unaccountability
\nI sense only certain digits bound to him
\nfrom 1 to 3, but they give me no illusion of certainty
\nto say nothing of His music
\nThe clop of a bone leg is heard, AHAB is approaching. He pounds his prosthesis on the deck.
\n(Prestissimo)
\nAHAB: <\/strong>Do you see him?
\nCREW:<\/strong> Can\u2019t see anything, captain!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Spread the rigs of the sails!
\nLike a breath before you leap
\nhave you the courage, boys?
\nCREW:<\/strong> Like a dauntless fire!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> What do you see?
\nCREW:<\/strong> There she leaps! There…!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Yes, leap to the sun for the last time
\nMan the lifeboats! Make ready!
\nTo your oars… Harpoon man! Iron! Iron!
\nHelmsman, steady as she goes, if you value your life!
\nI meet you face to face for the third time
\nbrace sharp, plough straight for the eyes of the wind!
\nCREW:<\/strong> Thar she blows!
\nAHAB:<\/strong> My heart\u2019s ship sets off for the third time.
\nCREW:<\/strong> By your will…
\nA whale! A whale!
\nIt\u2019s turning around for the encounter!
\nThe whale strikes the ship.
\nAHAB:<\/strong> Here, take it! Take the spear!<\/p>\n
\n(Animato)
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> The hunters of the white whale
\nin the lap of a wanton vessel
\nthe stalkers of the immortal Ahab
\nsubmitting to the swelling fury
\nbefore the conclusion of hell<\/p>\n
\nplant their footsteps extravagantly
\nas if they already knew
\nthat their feet would punch through the deck
\nthey would drop their arms helplessly
\ntheir hands would be for fighting<\/p>\n
\nemerge from the depths of the land
\nin exchange they get
\nthe burden of the mystery of shadows<\/p>\n
\ntill their throats go dry
\nthe last word is \u2013 Amen<\/p>\n
\nVOICE:<\/strong> You are surrounded
\ntomorrow\u2019s your trial
\nyou\u2019re accused of participating
\nin the secret rule of the world
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Should I inform them?
\n(Sostenuto)
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> No one will believe you
\nwithout an advertising campaign
\nthey\u2019ll boo the symphony off stage
\nVOICE:<\/strong> Surrender!
\nISHMAEL:<\/strong> Shall we destroy the papers?
\nPYTHAGORAS:<\/strong> The truth is in us.<\/p>\n
\non the moon and adjust their glasses
\nBingo! Replies the cosmic echo:
\nvoices from here are transformed when they arrive
\nbecause of the distance and the dark matter
\nwhich here, too, gives a sign
\ne.g. in communicating the truth
\nthe distance from it grows
\nwith every transmitter
\nAnd yet:
\nBig bang! maintain the stellar inventors
\nto deride the last philosophers
\nbut the naked eye of the dim majority
\nis pointed upward anyway with folded hands
\nit repeats the spells that came from over there
\nbefore the discovery of dark matter
\na few thousand years ago<\/p>\n