The Sticking Place Theatre and Film productions

Never mind Einstein’s unintended complicity in the possible incineration of a world bereft of legitimacy, yet, as the poets say, necessary because of the temporary love of one couple, one child, one parent: in the now still apartment, a new voice, thanks to the department store’s new pet shop, can be heard. Its sweet and repetitive song, not written by a composer, fills the empty room, its irrelevant furniture formerly used by many, the important books, somewhat dusty, the frayed carpet, just as in bad novels of loss and chance. Human aural sensibility is mysteriously congruent with its genetically patterned rhythms so that they can be proclaimed to be pleasing, even past-provoking. The very same bird sang through my childhood. It died every year or so, of exposure to drafts, of fatigue, of mysterious and unknowable ailments, of the after-effects of a refreshing bath in its tiny tub, to be buried sadly in matchboxes, and to spring triumphantly to life again soon after, a new clone, or – perhaps imperceptible to us – an entirely different being, to sing the same – or perhaps same to us only – song. It sang its way through civil wars, the first aerial bombing of civilians, the era of the concentrations camps, undoubtedly holding the promise of a life that can be different in it trembling throat for those with the leisure to listen to it; for it sang only during working hours, falling asleep before the appointed hours of electronically transmitting news programs that had not yet been invented. Fifty years later, it sings of future concentration camps, of incineration and firestorms, of the promise of a life that can be different. Its astounding immortality rests on a few grains a day, frequent defecation, the occasional bath followed by a fluffing of feathers and the reproduction of its own essence, qualified by important inter-species differences unknowable to us. The last matchbox was buried when I was twelve. Or was it eight? And now I am sixty-one. Shall I buy a new bird? The department store has a new pet shop, its manager a person of determination and ambition. As many birds as possible must be sold as quickly as possible or the shop will be closed; such is the iron law governing our pleasures. And I do recall the sweet voice, the unexpected onset of its melodies, its equally sudden cessations. The apartment, now silent, the carpet frayed, will be filled with illusory transcendence: personally beneficial, it also lulls us into listening to song regardless of weather and keeps all injustices intact.

© Amos Vogel, 18 April 1982
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