Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Spiritual Hunt
by Matti Paasio
Giveaway ends December 31, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
I am very happy to announce that I've finally completed the script for my play on Syria, Rimbaud and Mapplethorpe (and Zarqawi). It is available here. Brits get it a bit cheaper, since I set the price and buy my copies there. But I've bought all of them, so there's none available, ha ha.
Those willing and crazy enough to read Finnish are able to enter a "competition" to "win" an earlier draft of the play BELOW.
Here's how The Hunt, or, The Torture Flight to Syria, begins:
PROLOGUE
Darkness.
Voices of a demonstration, shouting. “Bring
out your dead! Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead…” This goes on,
although single voices break out from the choir, declaring, “There’s no military solution to,” “War, not peace! I mean,” “Stop it,” “The
law! International law!” “Stop it,” “Stop yourself,” “What?” “I’ll show what.
Asshole,” “Boys, boys!” “Leviathan!
Stop!” And finally, “Stop the war!”
Someone lights a match. The flame goes out.
APOTHECARY & WESSON
(in the dark): Bring out your dead,
bring out your dead!
MAPPLETH
(in the dark): Fuck it.
APOTHECARY & WESSON:
Bring out your dead, bring out your head!
MAPPLETH:
Give me some instead.
APOTHECARY & WESSON:
Bring out your dead, bring out your dead!
MAPPLETH:
The stuff that dreams are made of—lead.
A match is lit. The flame goes out.
APOTHECARY & WESSON: Bring me your librium, and bring me a bed!
MAPPLETH:
Maybe if we turn on the lights—?
APOTHECARY
& WESSON: Surprise: You’re dead!
Lights on the actors, standing in a row. APOTHECARY
and WESSON both have a black pillowcase over his/her head. Hands
crossed behind one’s back. MAPPLETHORPE is standing between the two with a short candlestick
in his hand.
MAPPLETH:
I know what it looks like. Robert Mapplethorpe, the patron saint of the
pervert, standing here with a candle in his hand. But I assure you, my
intentions… my aims are entirely honorable.
Speaking over his shoulder.
Thanks, you
can go now. I can manage. I’ll be good. Thank you, thank you. Thanks!
APOTHECARY grabs WESSON by the hand. They go.
I promise,
I won’t stick it anywhere. Cross my heart. See? I’ll throw it away. All I
wanted to do was to light a candle in the memory of our fallen heroes, to celebrate
our all-too-brief Day of the Dead. But I won’t. I won’t. There it goes.
He puts the candle in his pocket.
Satisfied? As
a member of the deviant international gay conspiracy, I’ve been denied any
expression of solidarity. The rights to express any solidarity, I mean, mean…
what do I mean? Can’t express it. Presidential decree.
One more
thing. Could the janitor please close the doors? There’s a nasty kind of draft
in here. Else we’ll catch our death. What you hear in here, whom you see in
here, stays in here. Got it? Didn’t think so. I expect nothing less of you.
Thank you.
Death is
getting away!
Gets a grip on himself.
I’m Robert,
and I’m an addict. Sex addict mostly, that’s what I died of, but also coke,
speed, acid and other, what? Were to my liking, would be still, but today all
corporeal indulgence is a strictly no no no for me. Dr Death has no sense of
humor. He’s a terrible bore, a fanatic, as a matter of fact. Es un terrorista. Yet
you can try. If you don’t tell, neither will I.
He lights a cigarette.
We have
assembled here around this ancient and insane pastime to celebrate the genius
of a certain French poet, and more than that, the ability of my former squeeze
and dear friend, Mrs Wesson, to interpret that poet. The genius of... a real
medium, Mrs Wesson is, that is. So, without a further delay: no more talking! Everyone
knows I’m no public speaker; this time, however, out of respect for Mrs Wesson,
I passed the MDA. Yeah, well, didn’t have much of a choice. Fanatics! Please
welcome, straight out of Detroit, the fallen city, the pet laureate of punk,
Mrs Chatty Wesson!
My roommate
from Hell, Doctor of Journalism Hunter
S. Thompson, wrote a touching piece about jackrabbits. Anybody read it? Didn’t
think so. Anyhow, the description fits us down there to a tee, and possibly,
some of you in here as well. Thompson says about the jackrabbits that “most of
them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat,
fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now & then…” In Hell, as I said, the
physical stuff is strictly forbidden, so that leaves us, what? The bush,
nothing else. Even if it were a burning one, the scene gets pretty old pretty
goddamn fast.
And yet the
jackrabbits of Thompson’s have one way to enrich their daily lives: a
self-administered adrenalin rush. Thompson goes on to describe how a rabbit
waits by the side of a desert road, in the dark, until a pair of headlights do
appear. Still the rabbit waits. It waits and waits until the very last moment,
the split second, as Thompson says, then dashes across the road right in front
of the murderous wheels, avoiding, if it’s lucky, a brutal death only by a
burnt hair. Holy lettuce, the rabbit thinks. That was close! And he loves his
miserable jackrabbit life oh so dearly for the simple chance of losing it. A while…
until the jackrabbit becomes bored again. And thus he is hooked, with no hope
of recovery in sight.
Then again,
who cares about recovery? And I quote, “Anything that gets the adrenalin moving
like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps
the veins free of cholesterol…” End quote, and debate.
Thompson
tried to justify his disastrous wheeling and dealing with his deadlines when he
produced that piece of poetry about the rabbits. What is my excuse?
I am trying
to tell you what it’s like to work with a unique artist like Chatty Wesson on a
hugely ambitious project of political performance. There, I said it. Might
become a public speaker after all, one of these days. And my job in this
project was to follow the news. I became a war junkie. As you can see, and…
Whoa, here she comes! Excuse me, gotta go. Catch you later.
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