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Athol Fugard Talk

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Attended a talk today by the famous South African playwright Athol Fugard. Lovely stories – he quit university three months before he got his degree, hitch-hiked throughout Africa, he didn’t want to be seduced into teaching or “good jobs” by the security of being a graduate. He wanted to write, and he did.

Some words of wisdom from his long life.

– In writing begin with stories and words, the politics seeps in but don’t start there
– Writing is cannibalism – you cannibalize people when you put them in your plays
– Every play starts with a secret, guard that secret carefully
– The five stages of death (a beautiful structure for a play)
Fresh, bloat, decay, advanced decay, dry remains

Thoughts from a son of the soil who has come back home as he moves towards his own passing.

Creativity: Mourning Part Three

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I’ve learned some things in these weeks of mourning. Here are my discoveries, many shared by friends who have been through this.

1.  Be around those who love you (sometimes doing nothing) Maybe a lesson for life. I spent Sunday with a friend and his 11 year old son and we played with markers and ate Chinese food and watched cartoons. This helped a lot.

2. Create in the memory of those passed on. Translating the poem, and now writing a film and play honoring Jo’s memory helps. The grief has an outlet, I like the active feel. All that I thought was “her out there” I am claiming as a part of me as I write in her memory.

3. Grieving connects and soften the heart. I understand now why people have periods of mourning: the wearing of black, or rules about food or contact for a period after death. This space of mourning sometimes feels like a sacred space – away, apart, internal. I can feel my heart softening, perhaps this will bring me closer to the suffering of others.

A picture of our beloved Jo.

The Breath of the Ancestors / “Le Souffle des Ancetres”

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A friend sent a poem called “Le Souffle des Ancetres” (The Breath of the Ancestors) which I spent the morning translating it into English. This helped in the mourning process, I felt closer to Jo, connected through creativity.  Here is my rough translation and the original french.

The Breath of the Ancestors
by Birago Diop

Listen more often
to things than to beings
the voice of the fire
the water that speaks
the voice of the wind
the bush that weeps
this is the ancestor’s breathing

Those who have died are not gone
they are in the darkness around
the darkness that fades
the dead are not underground
they are in tree that shivers
the woods that quiver
the water that runs loud
in a hut, in a crowd
the dead are not dead

Listen more often
to things than to beings
the voice of the fire
the water that speaks
the voice of the wind
the bush that weeps
this is the ancestors breathing

The breath of the ancestors
who are not gone
who are not underground
who are not dead
those who have passed are not gone
they are in a woman’s breast
in a child’s wailing song
in the coals that won’t rest
the dead are not underground
they are in the fire that burns
in the rock that yearns
in the grasses that weep
in the forest, at home when we sleep
the dead are not gone

Listen more often
to things than to beings
the voice of the fire
the water that speaks
the voice of the wind
the bush that weeps
this is the ancestors breathing

Each day they renew
their pact with us
the pact that binds
this breath to our kind
our dead are not dead
this pact binds us to life
this law that binds us to breath
breath, even as we reach our death

In the bed of the river or on its banks
is the spirit that gives many thanks
in the rocks that yearn and the grasses that weep
we find the spirit that keeps
in the darkness that around that will fade
the trees the shiver, the woods that quiver
in the water than runs, the water that rests
are the spirits that bless
they are not dead
they dead are not gone
they dead are not underground

Listen more often
to things than to beings  . . .

.

Le Souffle des Ancetres
par Birago Diop

Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres,
La voix du feu s’entend,
Entends la voix de l’eau.
Ecoute dans le vent
Le buisson en sanglot:
C’est le souffle des ancêtres.

Ceux qui sont morts ne sont jamais partis
Ils sont dans l’ombre qui s’éclaire
Et dans l’ombre qui s’épaissit,
Les morts ne sont pas sous la terre
Ils sont dans l’arbre qui frémit,
Ils sont dans le bois qui gémit,
Ils sont dans l’eau qui coule,
Ils sont dans la case, ils sont dans la foule
Les morts ne sont pas morts.

Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres,
La voix du feu s’entend,
Entends la voix de l’eau.
Ecoute dans le vent
Le buisson en sanglot:
C’est le souffle des ancêtres.
Le souffle des ancêtres morts
Qui ne sont pas partis,
Qui ne sont pas sous terre,
Qui ne sont pas morts.
Ceux qui sont morts ne sont jamais partis,
Ils sont dans le sein de la femme,
Ils sont dans l’enfant qui vagit,
Et dans le tison qui s’enflamme.
Les morts ne sont pas sous la terre,
Ils sont dans le feu qui s’éteint,
Ils sont dans le rocher qui geint,
Ils sont dans les herbes qui pleurent
Ils sont dans la forêt, ils sont dans la demeure,
Les morts ne sont pas morts.

Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres,
La voix du feu s’entend,
Endents la voix de l’eau.
Ecoute dans le vent
Le buisson en sanglot:
C’est le souffle des ancêtres.

Il redit chaque jour le pacte,
Le grand pacte qui lie,
Qui lie à la loi notre sort;
Aux actes des souffles plus forts
Le sort de nos morts qui ne sont pas morts;
Le lourd pacte qui nous lie à la vie,
La lourde loi qui nous lie aux actes
Des souffles qui se meurent.

Dans le lit et sur les rives du fleuve,
Des souffles qui se meuvent
Dans le rocher qui geint et dans l’herbe qui pleure.
Des souffles qui demeurent
Dans l’ombre qui s’éclaire ou s’épaissit,
Dans l’arbe qui frémit, dans le bois qui gqmit,
Et dans l’eau qui coule et dans l’eau qui dort,
Des souffles plus forts, qui ont prise
Le souffle des morts qui ne sont pas morts,
Des morts qui ne sont pas partis,
Des morts qui ne sont plus sous terre.

Ecoute plus souvent
Les choses que les êtres….

Tombs and Cathedrals: Mourning Part One

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A few weeks ago I am in Egypt and we descend down into a tomb, but not the tomb of a Pharoh or a king, or even a group of them, instead it is a tomb where 70 bulls are buried, each of them with their own chamber, a granite tomb the size of a small room.

I understand cathedrals – the glory of God, being swept up to the heavens. I know synagogues, and mosques, – a stillness or a sense of awe. But these tombs, I could not fathom.

That is until a close friend has now died and I find myself wandering through my days, thinking and longing for these tombs, driven perhaps by the same confusion and reverence that their creators felt. I understand now why one would create a monument to death.

 

On the Map: Be Strong and Naledi

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Part of my commitment in this new life phase is to be out in the world doing what I love in community with others. I have often felt strange, ill at ease in my own head – the chasm between my inner world and outer reality sometimes incomprehensibly vast. And yet, in this new phase, I am choosing to step out none the less.

I’m now on a board of an organization run by an old friend called Be Strong Families and I’m now a judge for the South African version of the Tony Awards, the Naledi Theatre Awards.  I find myself emerging.

Cairo Visit

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Four days in Cairo for for a friend’s graduation.

Festivities then roaming the city, including seeking out beer (it takes us two days, and four hours, the windows have plywood nailed over them because in this Muslim city, you don’t want to be seen from the street.)

Then a descent into tombs and Erwan (the brother) is bored and listening to hip-hop on his Iphone and I try to tell him no, these were the first rappers, don’t you see? They made whole rooms to show off their wealth and possessions. He doesn’t really buy it.

Mostly I am amazed by the movement – teaching cows to walk, the geese threatening to take flight.

We come upon the first rounded wall and the first graffiti (c. 1,800 BCE) done by some priests.

In Cairo I feel like I have awoken from a slumber – seeing old friends, back in a family, the pulsing of a city 20 million+, descending into the massive grave of 24 dead bulls with black granite tombs and then emerging to the pale heat of the desert – I just want more.

Dismantling a Tree (or ode on the occasion of ending a very long relationship)

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Don’t believe the hype – it’s all lies, these stories about trees falling in the forest. To fell a tree you don’t hack away at the core, you don’t throw your weight against its large trunk and emerge victorious, you don’t take vicious strokes and then yell “timber . . . “  This is all myth – there is no struggle, no crack, no thud.

Instead when you remove a tree, you do so in parts. You start from the top and you cut away: branches with a chainsaw, side trunks with an axe, ropes and pulleys to guide each falling piece. This is how you take apart a tree, until, in the end, the removal is so clean and so complete, you forget that the tree was even there.

 

 

 

Alex Burger Writing Featured in New Book

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My play, Whose Blood, is featured in a new book Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives.  The play is discussed, along with George Wolfe’s The Colored Museum (not bad company) in the Chapter “Making Them Laugh: Making Them Cry: Theatre’s Role in Challenging History. ”  In the chapter, the lovely Judith Bryan credits the play with an elegance and depth that I can only hope are actually there.

 

Sign of the Times: US Road Trip

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I’ve just completed a five week trip across the USA.  Atlanta, across the south to Texas, up to Kansas and Iowa, through Chicago and Detroit, down through Philly and the Carolinas and back to the South. Stopping on the way with friends, listening to Greek tragedies on tape while driving, watching the signs out my window.  Here are a few.

Play Reading in Iowa: “my grandpa’s dead body”

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This morning my aunt Susan, uncle Steve, aunt Julie (my Skype), my mom, and my friend Jim all read through my play “my grandpa’s dead body.”  The play borrows elements and characters from our own family, although mixes them with a darkness and a skewed vision of Iowa different from the one I live. It was a brave and moving experience, art and life co-mingling.