The whole play minus the plot equals the whole play

[imomus]

There's a neon sign by the artist Martin Creed I've always found both minimal and profound. Its illuminated letters spell out a simple yet suggestive formula: "The whole world plus the work equals the whole world". To me, the formula means that when we add a work of art to the world it doesn't change the world, but it does become part of the world, and that's a plus. On the one hand, the formula is an image of the futility of art. We work on art, but our work doesn't change the world. On the other hand, it's an image of how our work integrates us into the world, gives us our place in it. Instead of changing the world, we belong to it, and our products have the ultimate honour of becoming part of the world's furnishings. There's something about this minimalist, futile and yet heartening phrase I think Samuel Beckett would have liked.



I know Beckett was influenced by kabuki and noh theatre, as Yeats was before him and as David Bowie would soon be. I often think of Beckett's late television plays when watching kabuki. The costumes and gestures in both are so mannerist yet so dignified, so stiff and strange and unworldly, so reduced and yet so magnified, so ancient and yet so sci-fi. Entire parallel worlds can be evoked by a single movement, a slowly rising yelp greeted by unexpected applause. Entire generations of hack directors and hack actors fall by the wayside as you silently reproach them in your mind: "Would you ever have dared to dream up something as wildly strange, graceful and beautiful as this?"



I was thinking about Creed's formula today as I sat through four hours of a kabuki play called Kyoto Snow. I was wondering how I could draw so much pleasure from this performance -- and from Japan itself -- when I don't speak the language and therefore can't follow the plot. My first thought was, I've always hated plot. I've always focused on other things, even when I do speak the language. Plot is for people who like crossword puzzles, detective stories and soap operas. It's for people who demand that art keep their left brain keep busy filing, typing notes, tying up loose ends, worrying over details, trying to make sense of chaos. I've always wanted more chaos, more strangeness in my art. Instead of complaining "That doesn't make sense!" I've wanted to scream at the proscenium arch "Stop making sense!" Plot, for me, is mostly justified as a pretext, should one be needed, for the real adventures of art -- a text which leads to texture, a piece of logic which leads where logic could never go, a bridge to somewhere interesting. The important "content" of art, for me, is what people often call "form": fantastic atmosphere, wonderful colour, graceful poise, rich fantasy and strangeness, music, and a lot of empty space I can insert my own personal dreams into. This is why I prefer contemporary dance to theatre, and why I love kabuki even when the plot means nothing to me. It's also why I feel I'm not actually missing much when I look at a piece of Asian theatre without simultaneous translation cluttering up my head. To misquote Creed, "The whole play minus the plot equals the whole play".



Below I'm linking to a Quicktime movie I made of some scenes and details in Kyoto Snow. Like Andy Warhol watching TV movies "for the shoe styles", you can tell that I'm watching stuff I "shouldn't be": the ghostly, self-effacing way the black-clad stagehands creep on and off, in full view, their posture saying "I'm not really here!" The man who sits at the front of the stage and clacks bits of wood on the floor for emphasis and punctuation. The hairstyles (I'm dreaming about how they might be copied, today, in a city like Berlin). The beautiful, spooky kabuki child in her fabulous orange cloak. The op-art flicker rhythm of bendy stripes on a purple robe, which, worn with a bold lilac obi, reminds me that clothes can be wonderful, even though they so often aren't. The cut of the pants. The way the musicians are also poetic narrators, and the way their voices overlap with the actors'. The dry wandering lines the shamisen chops out. The rich strangeness of the speech intonations. The way one of the actors draws death out of an inner pocket in the form of a knife wrapped in a red cloth, and the way the audience applauds his rolling-eyed yowl as he confronts it. The way Brecht would have adored that. The delicate paper snow that flutters from the roof and drapes the painted bamboo. And, of course, the vocal delight of the audience itself, of whom we could also say "The whole play plus the audience equals the whole play".

Hakodate Kabuki (Quicktime movie, 6 mins 45 secs, 11.1MB)

Comments

[lilchiva.livejournal.com]

You are so good you make me cry.

[(Anonymous)]

No plot, just chaos - is that really what you want in your life?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Some people think that when you take away plot, there's nothing left.

[auto-appendix.livejournal.com]

Yet sometimes the plot is the most mysterious thing of all. The infernal machine of 'Oedipus Rex', for example, is breathtaking in its ruthless, hidden logic. Or Kyd's 'The Spanish Tragedy' where two plots, one cosmic and one human, are in competition with each another. Wouldn't you say that plot was of central concern to Brecht? Or indeed any political art? I'm thinking now of your own 'Cockle Pickers' song.

Beckett has a nice parody of plot in 'Murphy' when he includes a two-page list of moves from a chess game, such as 1. P-K4 (b) 2. Kt-KR3, etc.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, if we can make a parallel between plot and 'traditional songwriting', Brian Eno has recently declared songwriting "the last really difficult and interesting thing in music". Yes, Mr Texture has come full circle and become Mr Text because, as he points out, anyone can now make good music at the touch of a button, but not everyone can make good lyrics. Then again, what exactly was the plot of "The Third Uncle"?

Burn my fingers
Burn my toes
Burn my uncle
Burn his books
Burn his shoes
Cook the leather
Put it on me
Does it fit me
Or you?
It looks tight on you.

If that's plot, riddle me a plot. But forgive me if I consider the really important thing there the rhythm, the tone, the way the guitar cuts across the lines, the screechy feedback...

This reminds me of the time I was having dinner with Howard Devoto, and I quoted the line he opens his song Philadelphia with -- Your clean-living, clear-eyed, clever, level-headed brother says he'll put all the screws upon your newest lover -- and asked him "What happened next?" And he just shrugged.

[(Anonymous)]

I've always hated plot. I've always focused on other things, even when I do speak the language. Plot is for people who like crossword puzzles, detective stories and soap operas. It's for people who demand that art keep their left brain keep busy filing, typing notes, tying up loose ends, worrying over details, trying to make sense of chaos. I've always wanted more chaos, more strangeness in my art. Instead of complaining "That doesn't make sense!" I've wanted to scream at the proscenium arch "Stop making sense!"

This reminds me of the Art Fundamentals course I'm currently taking. I tell you, it's a real pig being surrounded by all these bleakly-meaningful Artists, when all you ever wanted was to make something pretty/cute/funny/cool.

We're slaves to television! We're turning into computers! We think we're getting better, but we're acutally getting worse!

What a nightmare...

[(Anonymous)]

*actually

i concur

[ensenchiridion.livejournal.com]

Plot is for people who like crossword puzzles, detective stories and soap operas. indeed.

"some people" say the most ridiculous of things. i don't have to tell you that when you take away the plot there's everything left, the way there's something left when we've abandoned the various processes and repetitions of routine, the putting of things in their places, the channel surfing, the "what do you want to do tonight?" because actionactionaction something needs to be done. a good journal is equally good example, in the waste of have having read "today i walked 500 meters to the store, bought some chocolate and talked to marsha, and walked 500 meters home" verses "my left foot replaced itself 500 times, my right foot four hundred and ninety nine, i arrived and departed with thoughts of whether the taste on my tongue was worth various labours here and abroad, and if it mightn't taste better walking upward as down" - though true, my mother, flanked in the various coloured covers of a danielle steele collection would find plot in the four hundred and ninety ine steps (and i love mother, really) it is also true that i would not.

of course in livejournal, exceptions need to be made for readship sake. as there's some reading to be done here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/) i'm[/ve] [been] reading you. perhaps you'll add me in return, perhaps not. in any case, i hope you'll continue to write more of the same.

~ n

[violaine8.livejournal.com]

Imomus plus Japan equals engrossing artistic experiences shared generously.
I almost shouted at my monitor for the person to sit down while listening to the kabuki video!

[(Anonymous)]

The hairstyles (I'm dreaming about how they might be copied, today, in a city like Berlin).

the chon-mage might go well in a few years time:

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

As far as Japanese Dramaturgy goes, you're looking exactly where you're supposed to be. There's a great bit in "The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691007926/)" about this regarding the introduction of film to Japan:

[In the early days of motion pictures,] some installations insisted that a crew of ten people was necessary to run one projector. There was a handle-turner to crank the film through the machine, a lens-focusor, a reel-rewinding man, a man to look at the screen and make sure everything was going well, a man to adjust the carbon arcs, a man to thread the machine between reels, a general supervisor, a boy to fan those working around the hot projector, and several others whose duties were not specified.

[...] Japan has a theatrical convention of treating the necessary mechanics as a part of the performance itself, as in the Kabuki, where sets are changed with the curtain up. This interest in the machine rather than the content of the film was most apparent when one of the early showmen placed his projector at the right side of the stage and the screen at the left. Most of the spectators, if they could see the screen at all, viewed it quite obliquely, but at least they had an excellent view of the projection team in action.

[wrighter.livejournal.com]

Of Waiting for Godot, Beckett said, "There is no plot. There is no meaning." The theater was pivotal in experimenting with the cardinal elements of storytelling. The very nature of theater allows for this, and its audiences have come to expect it. Beckett placed conventions of characterization, denouement, and plot aside, instead relying on stark visual imagery, a vocabulary as much his own as it was borrowed. This came about for several reasons. Beckett was writing in detest of limits, attempting to drudge up what is essentially human, what is real...That sounds trite, as if i'm deeming him an existentialist, but i'm not. Others with much more authority have already done that. Beckett's experiments with elements, like plot, were attempts to show audiences/readers what is unshowable, unexpressable, meaningless, impossible. 'Attempt' is very important here, because like theatre, disciplines of movement and dance, etc of the Japanese tradition, Beckett, along with his characters, recognized his attempt impossible, but allows us to pay witness to the struggle. It is the struggle of impossibility that is intriguing, not the plot. The veritable grace a master artist can exercise even in moments they know they will fail is truly remarkable. Failing, but doing it beautifully. Suzuki, not the method of music training but the 20th century movement discipline, is based on the idea of failure. A series of poses, body contortions and movements that all have one singular perfect execution in mind, but are physically impossible for the body to accomplish. You will always fail. You cannot succeed. It is therefore not necessary to judge your performance, but only attempt to obtain that idolized perfect end.

I have deviated from the initial discussion of plot to discuss failure. Because the idea of failure allows us into what is sensual and affecting about our own human nature. The japanese recognized this long before western traditions. Beckett was pivotal in experimenting with this in theatre, literature and film, but it was the French who really allowed for this. During the age of neoclassicism with their self-effaced organization who congregated to uphold the legal requirements of art. The board, as it were, was handed down a series of elements specific to disciplines of theatre, ballet, opera, literature, even architecture. Their responsibility was to use this list to review and evaluate an artists work. The artists responsibility was to adhere to the rules. I think this incredible, that there could be legal-artwork and illegal-artwork. But it is the establishment of these rules, that is important. These rules became limits. The limits became points of inspiration. So while the artist experiments within these limits/rules and shows us how resourceful he/she can be, the artist is also more effective in breaking them, recognizing what these elements accomplish, i.e. plot.

i'm rambling.

(i'm not sure where all this analysis just spawned from. my background is strongly rooted in theatre, especially 20th century aesthetics and experimental work. i haven't worked in the theatre in a long while, except for a quick directing stint last november. i think i miss it.)

[ink-ling.livejournal.com]

I am so happy to read what you say here about chafing at plot. I prefer non-linear fiction and poetry, but I have a hard time translating my taste for others since they so usually balk at those works, alienated by them.

Still, better to be warm in shared appreciation with like others than to spend too much energy trying to convert, I guess.

Enjoying the alien.

[orlac.livejournal.com]

When you say you feel like you're not missing much by not understanding the language I cannot help but think your being a little sensational. You may be finding something new to find interesting about the performance, but that does not mean you're not failing to comprehend something that's there, i.e. missing something. I wholeheartedly support this type of alternate perspective on art. I've always found that you can extract the most wonderful feelings, meanings, any-sort-of-reactions out of even the most superficial and art, if you approach it from the right space. I think that by approaching any piece of art in your own way you are by definition instilling it with things very personal to you, and by definition somewhat interesting to you. I don't, however, think that this can only be done when the art takes a certain form. I don't think that the meanings, or whatever type of un-ordinary enjoyment you got out of watching this (Nice; thanks for videoing and posting by the way) was present in Japanese art and absent everywhere else. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we see that which is different differently not because of the exact contents of it, but primarily by virtue of being different from what we are used to, what we have been steeped in our entire lives, that which is transparent to us.

An interview with William Gibson I heard a couple of months ago about his latest book, which I guess is titled Apophenia, has recently been popping up in my thoughts, and seems relevant to what I'm saying about what you said. Apparently apophenia means something like "finding meaningful connections in randomness". Since I heard the interview I sort of tacked on to this idea that it was even stronger than that, that it was the joy of finding connections in randomness. Anyway, I cannot help but notice that a large part of art seems to deal with this sort of obfuscated meaning, even from the artist. For example I think of David Lynch getting random strange ideas on the set and, not even thinking them through, just implementing them, and sure enough the he and viewers piece them together into some sort of reaction, that while multifaceted and illogical, is somewhat coherent, or at least singular. While many people will get many different reactions no matter how intentional the work is, it seems like a lot of the art in observer side of artiness comes from this joy of making connections out of apparent randomness. In other words, the more apparently spontaneous the reaction, the harder it is to trace the reaction back to the authors intentions, the more it has to have come from you. There is something enjoyable and interesting in letting someone throw a bunch of cues at you, and watching/feeling how you react. Anyway, I guess I'll turn back on what I said in the beginning and say something like, the when the authors meaning is more obscure, such as when you cannot understand the author's language, the more your reaction is yours and not the intended one, which is very different from watching something you understand. I'll stop now. Thanks for prompting that rant.

[c0m0r3v1.livejournal.com]

Kabuki's plots are hard to understand for Japanese like me, too.
I heard that Kabuki started by women but prohibited by government because sexy prostitute girls copied the dance, then restarted by beautiful boys.
But government prohibited again because they were too beautiful,
government thought they helped people becoming Gays...
after that Kabuki actors must shaved their hairs looked like strong men.
not like beautiful boys.

The broken world plus the plot equals the whole world

[auto-appendix.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on your perspective. If you life is already senseless and chaotic, your occupation alienating and your daily life controlled by forces beyond clear comprehension, then perhaps a little plotting can be quite a comfort. At least two of my friends with mental health issues find crosswords, detective stories and soap operas very therapeutic. Is that escapism? Is it still art? I don't know but it is their way of integrating with the world.

[(Anonymous)]

Why don't you demonstrate this by taking the plot out of a sentence and showing what's left? That would be interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

You are soo f'ing drole!

[peripherus-max.livejournal.com]

I love the notion that things made "too beautiful" cause rampant homosexuality, and that shaving one's head deflects a gay reading.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

As a(n obscure) writer, I have to concur that plot is too often an empty formality, both a crutch and a hindrance to the imagination.

I'm reminded by this post to mention that I'm currently writing a novella set in Japan that is distinctly influenced by Oskar Tennis Champion, and I'm trying to find ways to subvert my own plot at every turn so that the scenes remain only as pictures on a folding screen.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Kabuki's plots are hard to understand for Japanese like me, too.

Yes, I was with Lehan, who speaks fairly good Japanese, at this play and at the end I asked her "Why were the child and her mother tied up? And what was that severed head doing in the bucket?" And she said "I have no idea!" We both enjoyed the play a lot, but the plot completely passed us by. I think it's a bit like opera in the West -- who really cares about plot in opera? It's just an excuse to dress up and sing.

[wrighter.livejournal.com]

you should read MERCIER AND CAMIER. Carole Maso's DEFIANCE. Winterson's ART & LIES. Anderson's WINESBURG, OHIO.

Re: The broken world plus the plot equals the whole world

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

All of Momous' perspectives on which bits fall outside or inside of 'plot' are of course reliant on his singular vision of the culture.

Clutching that Cultural Capital

[(Anonymous)]

Plot is for people who like crossword puzzles, detective stories and soap operas.

You're aware that this is the classic high culture snob complaint against middlebrow and low culture, right?

Next they'll want pictures to look like things!

Marxy

Re: Clutching that Cultural Capital

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Against middlebrow culture, yes. Like the girl upthread who was embarrassed by her mother's taste, even although she loves her. But these avant snobs (and I'm one) tend to like 'low culture'. For instance, many of us hang on every word by Dizzee Rascal or Mark E. Smith or some Jamaican toaster, because the working class lingo is as impenetrable as a Cy Twombly painting.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Here you go (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/15811.html), Anonymous Detractor.

By the way, isn't leaving your name out of your comments a bit like leaving plot out of narrative? A name is, after all, a structuring device and every structuring device is good because it defines things, right, and we always need everything defined and labelled and clear and tidy, right?

[(Anonymous)]

You haven't studied the history of Japanese sexuality, have you?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

By the way, one of my favourite novels is Sterne's Tristram Shandy (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/tristram_white.shtml), and I was listening to it recently on Radio 4 and thinking that, for me personally, it's the best novel in the English language. I love the playful way it fucks with plot, promising anecdotes then endlessly regressing thanks to other anecdotes, promising the narrative of a life and then never getting beyond the very first stages because too much life gets in the way. And here we reach the usual paradox -- just as the rejection of metaphysics becomes, itself, metaphysics, so the rejection of plot becomes, itself, plot. Or, as Creed might say, "The whole plot minus the plot becomes the whole plot".

[mckibillo.livejournal.com]

this is COMPLETELY off topic, but...

since you mentioned in a previous post not knowing who Hilton Paris is, well now you and the rest of the world can get a pretty exhaustive idea. Seems her Sidekick was hacked and all her addresses and photos are now up on the web. I found this via http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/danger/paris-hiltons-sidekick-ii-hacked-what-about-yours-033637.php but by now it's probably all over the interweb.

just FYI.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I DON'T CARE!

[mckibillo.livejournal.com]

jeez... OK, don't get your nickers in a twist. Just thought you might, since she's everything you claim to care about... glamorous, sexy, poppy, frilly. Sorry I mentioned it.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I shall have to look out for them. One of the most interesting books I read on the subject recently was Fictions of Desire (Narrative Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafu), by Stephen Snyder. Kafu is one of my favourite authors, and this study focused on Kafu's awareness of the artificiality of fiction, and the way that the prostitute or the geisha are so often used as metaphors for the writer in his work. In particular it deals with his work Dwarf Bamboo, which contains themes of forgery, and which seems deliberately constructed with dangling participles of plot to confound the reader.

[bitter-twisted.livejournal.com]

Paris Hilton is neither of those things, you silly sausage.

Back ON topic, all i currently know about this form of theatre is the (somewhat one-sided) view of it as seen in the Patrick McGoohan tv-movie 'Koroshi', in which our hero is deposited into Tokyo on a top secret mission and investigates a 'murder brotherhood' who use this theatrical form as a front for their activities. "The poetry of death!" says their head honcho, bewitched by the elegant violence on stage. "You should recognise it," says Amanda Barrie, "it's a kabuki version of hamlet."

That's a somewhat loose description of being on topic, i know... :)

Playing with Plot

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

Quite. Have you seen Beijing opera? I saw a troupe of players in Sheffield University, of all places - it was amazing, though quite indecipherable.

Nonetheless, there is much fun to be had in playing with plot, even using it to satirise the idea of a plotted noved - as with Box of Dreams by David Madsen (the review of which in the Guardian captures much of the book's fun philosophical playing, and which I therefore include below!)

"The id is out of its box and scampering all over the shop in Madsen's gothic romp. Our narrator, who may or may not be called Hendryk, wakes with a start from a dream of stubbly sexual assault on a train. Finding himself in a bewildering Mitteleuropa, he is counselled by Dr Freud (not that one) and embroiled in the irrational doings of a malodorous ticket inspector, a sadistic valet, a lascivious count and his luscious daughter. He is also confined to a velveteen skirt and taken for an authority on yodelling. Madsen (the pseudonym of a theologian and philosopher who, I'm guessing, rarely has this much fun in the day job) has his favourite themes - food, sex and Catholics - and here adds psychoanalysis to the mix, as Hendryk struggles for self-knowledge. Amid furtive fumblings, man-to-man horseplay and a cattle stampede, he sidles from dream to dream, repeatedly waking to find that his consciousness has been drooling again."

[robotbrain.livejournal.com]

I think you're on to something, thinning haired bohemians need more alternatives to the shaved head and the comb over...

Re: Playing with Plot

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The crazy thing is that as a writer I've used plot more than just about anyone; my songs have almost been Country and Western in the literal, sequential thrust of their narrative (cf. Bishonen).

I haven't seen Beijing Opera, but I have seen Cantonese Opera in Hong Kong. I documented it here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/46780.html).

Re: The broken world plus the plot equals the whole world

[auto-appendix.livejournal.com]

This is true, of course, I just wanted to stick up for the crossword puzzlers and detective novel fans from Nick's rather sniffy comments. Most of Oulipo were into both and they managed to create some smashingly inventive fiction (mostly with plots, though, I fear). And anyway, what is 'Momus' if not one of the best, longest running soap operas on the web?

Re: Playing with Plot

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

"The crazy thing is that as a writer I've used plot more than just about anyone; my songs have almost been Country and Western in the literal, sequential thrust of their narrative (cf. Bishonen)."

Is this personification of what you're complaining about some twisted-up form of killing the thing you love? ;)