Downloadable WORD document February 24, 2025
Prologue
THEMES
Three Personages are introduced.
Breath & Poetry
Poet and Attestation
Duration and Time
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our recitation that shall forever blossom.
I am Caithlin Ni Houlihan, blessed in gratitude to be the Epic Storyteller. From the point of view of the epic storyteller, may I first and foremost present Mssr. Antoine Artaud circumscribed by his own time frame as he reckons himself to humanity’s dreams and nightmares to which we all must reconcile and attest.
Antoine Artaud
Hello, mademoiselle, monsieur. I am Antoine Artaud. If I may, I am a transformer of sacrifice.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
We now present Monsieur Andrei Tarkovsky, master of the scenography and opacity.
Andrei Tarkovsky
Thank you, Sir. I consider myself recognized.
I oversee transition and opacity throughout the epic; transition- the grey clouds imperceptibly grow darker on a winter day, a dog appears in opacity image from where he always is, the chair creaks behind the mist, the gate opens, the fire ignites and all returns to shadows under the orange light of the fire.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Now, let us introduce, Thomas Fenn, a human being whose lifetime is reflected through these stories.
Thomas Fenn
Hello. My name is Thomas Fenn.
I am, as you say, the scribe of my own story. I record details. I meet people. I am carried from one place to the next in accordance with the needs of the epic.
I attempt to live in poetic and melodic harmony with you, my invisible guides.
I listen to your instructions, reflect, and then allow my pen to venture into the realm of discovery.
Antoine Artaud
A poet is a creator of little ships, little wooden ships that travel on different currents within the shared dreams of human beings.
I look out to diversified aqueous cloud formations through your time, and I say to you, I pledge to attest to your lifetime and your role as we both must work to illuminate the epic through breath, whether it be the breath of the galaxy, the breath of the sun, the breath of the solar system, the breath of the earth, the breath of nature, or the breath of man. It is the same breath within different time dimensions.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Please understand, that breath and breathing is the rhythmic pulse of the epic. The relationship between time-passage and breath is likened to the relationship between time as a phenomenon perceived by the senses and duration which surrounds and creates time.
Duration cannot be perceived without awareness. This is why watching a clock without looking away for more than a minute is difficult to bear. Time allows for the perception of form through the three dimensions of space. In this sense, time is the prime mover that justifies distance, as it requires time to move from point A to point B. Duration does not. There is no perceptible dimension within duration.
Duration is related to the transformation of breath, whose process within time cannot be fathomed in the physical world. In this sense, sequential time passages are waves atop the ocean surface of awareness; each wave disappears into the sand just as a breath disappears into the heartbeat. Duration is the ever-continuing breath of the ocean that manifests in the gentle movement of undulation, like the water in a backyard swimming pool moving back and forth when carefully lifted.
Andrei Tarkovsky
In dream memory, the intimacy between the breath and breathing, is determined by an underlying tonality or frequency that enables the breath and the breathing to intermingle. We may refer to this frequency as the music of the human lifetime.
Antoine Artaud
The great scope of an expression is based upon the eternal instant when the breath is released from the breathing.
On this side of the curtain, expression ferments as flashes between breath and time. And on the other side of the curtain, dream memory presses with incommensurable force. The dream memory has no orientation in time but requires to be witnessed.
Thomas Fenn
If I may, at this point, I wish to recount a little episode from my adolescence.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Please. Thomas.
Thomas Fenn
I received my learner’s permit when I was 15 and a half.
A learner’s permit, you see, allows one to drive with a parental guardian, and eventually, one can drive without a guardian during the daytime.
And so one day, I took my parents’ car along with my small typewriter, drove forty miles from their home, pulled over to the side of the highway and lit two green conical pyramidal-shaped incense sticks. I then moved to the back seat and began typing a poem. It was the first time I had thought about writing, however, I was possessed by the image of a radiant palace or library where all the books yet to be written are housed. I referred to this palace as the Palace of Unwritten Books. This image had no precedence; however, it accompanied me as a vision in my dreams throughout my life. I remember rereading the poem and feeling the cold breeze of a Renaissance villa at night. And different people were listening.