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Feb. 18th, 2006 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3pipeproblemI bought Equus awhile ago and tonight made the mistake of skimming through it, so now I'm all overexcited. The first time I read it I practically stayed up all night. It's that kind of play (although it sort of falls apart in the second half). Anyway, so long as I was forcing quotes on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dien in IM, I figured I'd post them here, for my own personal reference more than anything else.
ALAN: It was sexy. That's what you want to know, isn't it? All right: it was. I'm talking about the beach. That time when I was a kid. What I told you about....
I was pushed forward on the horse. There was sweat on my legs from his neck. The fellow held me tight, and let me turn the horse which way I wanted. All that power going any way I wanted...His sides were all warm, and the smell...Then suddenly I was on the ground, where Dad pulled me. I could have bashed him...
Something else. Whe the horse first appeared, I looked up into his mouth. It was huge. There was this chain in . The fellow pulled , and cream dripped out. I said 'Does it hurt?' And he said-- the horse said--said--
It was always the same, after that. Every time I heard one clop by, I had to run and see. Up a country lane or anywhere. They sort of pulled me. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Just to watch their skins. The way their necks twist and sweat shines in the folds...I can't remember when it started. Mum reading to me about Prince who no one could ride, except one boy. Or the white horse in Revelations 'He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True. His eyes were as flames of fire, and he had a name written that no man knew but himself'... Words like reins Stirrup. Flanks...'Dashing his spurs against his charger's flanks!'...Even the words made me feel--Years, I never told anyone. Mum wouldn't understand. She likes 'Equitation'. Bowler hats and jodhpurs! 'My grandfather dressed for the horse,' she says. What does that mean? The horse isn't dressed. It's the most naked thing you ever saw! More than a dog or cat or anything! Even the broken down old nag has got its life! To put a bowler on it is filthly!... Putting them through their paces! Bloody gymkhanas!...No one understands!...
Except cowboys. They do. I wish I was a cowboy! They're free. They just swing up and then it's miles of grass....I bet all cowboys are orphans!...I bet they are! No one ever says to a cowboy 'Recieve my meaning!' They wouldn't dare. Or 'God' all the time.'God sees you, Alan. God's got eyes everywhere--'
DYSART: The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills - like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made lethal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest. My tools are very delicate. My compassion is honest. I have honestly assisted children in this room. I have talked away terrors and relieved many agonies. But also - beyond question - I have cut from them parts of individuality repugnant to this God, in both his aspects. Parts sacred to rarer and more wonderful Gods. And at what length ... Sacrifices to Zeus took at the most, surely, sixty seconds each. Sacrifices to the Normal can take as long as sixty months.
DYSART: His pain. His own. He made it.
Look...to go through life and call it yours-your life-you first have to have your own pain. Pain that’s unique to you. You can’t just dip in the common bin and say," That’s enough!"...He’s done that. All right, he’s sick. He’s full of misery and fear. He was dangerous, and could be again though I doubt it. But that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life. And let me tell you something: I envy it.
DYSART: All right! I'll take it away! He'll be delivered from madness! What then? He'll feel himself acceptable! What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, like plasters? Stuck on to other objects we select? Look at him!...My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband - a caring citizen - a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however is more likely to make a ghost!...Let me tell you exactly what I am going to do to him!
I'll heal the rash on his body. I'll erase the welts cut into his mind by flying manes. When that's done, I'll set him on a nice mini-scooter and send him puttering off into the Normal world where animals are treated properly: Made extinct, or put into servitude, or tethered all their lives in dim light, just to feed it! I'll give him the good Normal world where we're tethered besides them - blinking our nights away in a non-stop drench of cathode-ray over our shriveling heads! I'll take away his Field of HA-HA, and give him Normal places for his ecstasy--multi-lane Highways driven through the guts of cities, extinguishing Place all together, even the idea of Place! He'll trot on his metal pony tamely though the concrete evening--and one thing I promise you: he will never touch hide again! With any luck his private parts will come to feel as plastic to him as the products of the factory to which he will almost certainly be sent. Who knows? He may even come to find sex funny. Smirky funny. Bit of grunt funny. Trampled and furtive and entirely in control. Hopefully he'll feel nothing at his fork but Approved Flesh. I doubt, however, with much passion!...Passion, you see,can be destroyed by a doctor, it cannot be created.
You won't gallop anymore, Alan. Horses will be quite safe. You'll save your pennies every week, till you can change that scooter in for a car, and put the old 50p on the gee-gees, quite forgetting that they were ever anything more to you then bearers of little profits and little losses. You will, however, be without pain. More or less completely without pain.
And now for me it nevcer stops: that voice of Equus out of the cave: - "Why me?...Why Me?...Account for Me!"...All right - I surrender! I say it!...In an ultimate sense I cannot know what I do in this place - yet I do ultimate things. Essentially I cannot know what I do - yet I do essential things. Irreversible, terminal things. I stand in the dark with a pick in my hand striking heads!
I need--more desperately than my children need me ---a way out of seeing in the dark. What way is this?...What dark is this?...I cannot call it ordained of God: I can't get that far. I will however pay it so much homage. There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out.
dien in IM, I figured I'd post them here, for my own personal reference more than anything else.ALAN: It was sexy. That's what you want to know, isn't it? All right: it was. I'm talking about the beach. That time when I was a kid. What I told you about....
I was pushed forward on the horse. There was sweat on my legs from his neck. The fellow held me tight, and let me turn the horse which way I wanted. All that power going any way I wanted...His sides were all warm, and the smell...Then suddenly I was on the ground, where Dad pulled me. I could have bashed him...
Something else. Whe the horse first appeared, I looked up into his mouth. It was huge. There was this chain in . The fellow pulled , and cream dripped out. I said 'Does it hurt?' And he said-- the horse said--said--
It was always the same, after that. Every time I heard one clop by, I had to run and see. Up a country lane or anywhere. They sort of pulled me. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Just to watch their skins. The way their necks twist and sweat shines in the folds...I can't remember when it started. Mum reading to me about Prince who no one could ride, except one boy. Or the white horse in Revelations 'He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True. His eyes were as flames of fire, and he had a name written that no man knew but himself'... Words like reins Stirrup. Flanks...'Dashing his spurs against his charger's flanks!'...Even the words made me feel--Years, I never told anyone. Mum wouldn't understand. She likes 'Equitation'. Bowler hats and jodhpurs! 'My grandfather dressed for the horse,' she says. What does that mean? The horse isn't dressed. It's the most naked thing you ever saw! More than a dog or cat or anything! Even the broken down old nag has got its life! To put a bowler on it is filthly!... Putting them through their paces! Bloody gymkhanas!...No one understands!...
Except cowboys. They do. I wish I was a cowboy! They're free. They just swing up and then it's miles of grass....I bet all cowboys are orphans!...I bet they are! No one ever says to a cowboy 'Recieve my meaning!' They wouldn't dare. Or 'God' all the time.'God sees you, Alan. God's got eyes everywhere--'
DYSART: The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills - like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made lethal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest. My tools are very delicate. My compassion is honest. I have honestly assisted children in this room. I have talked away terrors and relieved many agonies. But also - beyond question - I have cut from them parts of individuality repugnant to this God, in both his aspects. Parts sacred to rarer and more wonderful Gods. And at what length ... Sacrifices to Zeus took at the most, surely, sixty seconds each. Sacrifices to the Normal can take as long as sixty months.
DYSART: His pain. His own. He made it.
Look...to go through life and call it yours-your life-you first have to have your own pain. Pain that’s unique to you. You can’t just dip in the common bin and say," That’s enough!"...He’s done that. All right, he’s sick. He’s full of misery and fear. He was dangerous, and could be again though I doubt it. But that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life. And let me tell you something: I envy it.
DYSART: All right! I'll take it away! He'll be delivered from madness! What then? He'll feel himself acceptable! What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, like plasters? Stuck on to other objects we select? Look at him!...My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband - a caring citizen - a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however is more likely to make a ghost!...Let me tell you exactly what I am going to do to him!
I'll heal the rash on his body. I'll erase the welts cut into his mind by flying manes. When that's done, I'll set him on a nice mini-scooter and send him puttering off into the Normal world where animals are treated properly: Made extinct, or put into servitude, or tethered all their lives in dim light, just to feed it! I'll give him the good Normal world where we're tethered besides them - blinking our nights away in a non-stop drench of cathode-ray over our shriveling heads! I'll take away his Field of HA-HA, and give him Normal places for his ecstasy--multi-lane Highways driven through the guts of cities, extinguishing Place all together, even the idea of Place! He'll trot on his metal pony tamely though the concrete evening--and one thing I promise you: he will never touch hide again! With any luck his private parts will come to feel as plastic to him as the products of the factory to which he will almost certainly be sent. Who knows? He may even come to find sex funny. Smirky funny. Bit of grunt funny. Trampled and furtive and entirely in control. Hopefully he'll feel nothing at his fork but Approved Flesh. I doubt, however, with much passion!...Passion, you see,can be destroyed by a doctor, it cannot be created.
You won't gallop anymore, Alan. Horses will be quite safe. You'll save your pennies every week, till you can change that scooter in for a car, and put the old 50p on the gee-gees, quite forgetting that they were ever anything more to you then bearers of little profits and little losses. You will, however, be without pain. More or less completely without pain.
And now for me it nevcer stops: that voice of Equus out of the cave: - "Why me?...Why Me?...Account for Me!"...All right - I surrender! I say it!...In an ultimate sense I cannot know what I do in this place - yet I do ultimate things. Essentially I cannot know what I do - yet I do essential things. Irreversible, terminal things. I stand in the dark with a pick in my hand striking heads!
I need--more desperately than my children need me ---a way out of seeing in the dark. What way is this?...What dark is this?...I cannot call it ordained of God: I can't get that far. I will however pay it so much homage. There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out.
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Date: 2006-02-18 06:41 am (UTC)