Sergio De La Pava - Personae

Of this giant, orphaned at ten, ultimately blinded by life itself, who felt he was merely working but in truth made a gift to the world of immeasurable beauty little need be said beyond a brief account of events he authored around 1741.

Around then humans were still organizing themselves into things like Counts and one of them had trouble sleeping so had his Goldberg, fourteen but supremely gifted, play harpsichord (no pianos yet) for him in the antechamber in those instances, which playing must have set into stark relief the relative dearth of cosmos-rattling pieces existent at the time so that this Count Kaiserling sought out Bach to request a creation.

Bach’s response was the following. A timeless aria followed by thirty variations thereof then a heartwounding repetition of the aria as if the whole of life hadn’t just changed in the interim. The aria’s melody is simple if highly ornamented but that’s like saying something like water is simple and so falls well short of the full story. Anyway the variations do not spring from this melody but rather from its harmonic progression and they span the entirety of what can best be termed merely human experience.

Most importantly it would take more than two centuries for the full significance of the above events to emerge. In those centuries Bach would die leaving his masterful The Art of the Fugue incomplete while other men would don uniforms that they might better enslave or liberate others with great improvement in the tools they used to do same and while there’s been a seeming decrease in man’s ability to invent music like the variations the closer we get to today there’s also been an indisputable sea-change in our ability to preserve that music or more accurately performances of that music.

And somewhere in those centuries, on September 25, 1932 in fact — in a house in Toronto, Canada — to another family armed with Music, Glenn Herbert Gould was born.

PERSONAE

LIST OF DRAMATIC PEOPLE

Clarissa: a person

Nestor: another person

Charles: yet another person

Ludwig: a fourth person

Linda: the same person

Adam: the first person plural

Not Adam: the last person singular

ACT ONE A clinical but ambiguous room with five beds in the shape of an X. A terrible moaning by the four inhabitants growing in intensity and heartfelt pain until reaching a clamorous din. A gun is prominently displayed in a glass case in the corner below a sign indicating it is for emergency use only.

NESTOR: Wait a minute I just realized I’m all moaning but not in any actual pain.

( all stop, seemingly coming to same realization )

CLARISSA: Your point?

NESTOR: That this is bad enough without us having to create unnecessary noise, that point.

CLARISSA: So without physical pain no reason to moan, that what you’re saying?

LUDWIG: ( moans loudly )

NESTOR: What? ( at Ludwig )

LUDWIG: You two aren’t going to start up again are you?

CHARLES: Moans in agreement.

( Responsorial moans begin until eclipsing former intensity then suddenly they stop as the front of a wheelchair appears in the doorway. The occupant looks up at his pusher as to why they’ve stopped then gets suddenly and violently rolled forward until coming to rest at foot of Nestor’s bed. Nestor looks down .)

NESTOR: ( pointing )

Dear God look, his legs, they’re hideously mangled, oh the horror!

WHEELBOUND

STRANGER: They’re fine actually. ( rising )

LUDWIG: What’s that you say? Call you Adam?

ADAM: I didn’t say that.

LUDWIG: I know you didn’t say that , you said call me Adam.

NESTOR: Yeah and why say call me all ambiguous-like. Your name Adam or not?

ADAM: It isn’t and I never said it was!

CLARISSA: Relax Adam.

LUDWIG: Yeah relax, if you want us to call you Adam we will. We’re easy that way.

ADAM: I don’t so please don’t.

NESTOR: Easy, we all have names, I’m Nestor. Well that is to say my name is Nestor.

CLARISSA: Electra or Clarissa for short.

LUDWIG: Menelaus

ADAM: Huh?

LUDWIG: Menelaus. M-E-N-E

ADAM: I know but isn’t anyone named Tom around here.

LUDWIG: Oh Menelaus is just a nickname of sorts, it’s not my real name, don’t be ridiculous.

ADAM: What’s your real name?

LUDWIG: Ludwig

ADAM: ( blank stare at Ludwig then looking at now sleeping and loudly snoring old man hooked up to multitude of machines )

And him? His name?

NESTOR: It’s actually funny you said that thing about any of us being named Tom. Funny in a coincidental way I mean. An amazing coincidence really if you think about it.

( Others agree nonverbally. )

ADAM: So his name’s Tom?

NESTOR: Chuck but you can call him Charles.

ADAM: So why ( thinking better of it ) I’m just going to sit over here if that’s okay.

CLARISSA: Suit yourself Tom we were just moaning when you came in.

ADAM: I’m not Tom.

NESTOR: Of course not but your name is Tom and we were undoubtedly moaning when you came in.

ADAM: My name is most definitely not Tom, it’s Adam. No ( angry at himself ) it’s not Adam!

LUDWIG: Fine but one thing you can’t deny, Not-Adam, is that we were moaning when you came in and furthermore that moaning is undoubtedly contagious.

NOT-ADAM: My name is not Adam.

CLARISSA: Yeah, we heard you the first time.

NOT-ADAM: No I’m making a negative statement here. I’m saying that when I tell you my name, which I will do shortly, that name will not be Adam.

NESTOR: ( slowly ) So why’d you say we should call you Adam with the aforementioned ambiguity?

NOT-ADAM: I didn’t. ( frustrated )

LUDWIG: There’s a very simple way to end all this Not-Adam, one that I’m sure has occurred to you.

NOT-ADAM: Yes, of course.

LUDWIG: Simply tell us why you insist on being called Adam when that is not your duly-given, Christian name.

NOT-ADAM: No. ( more frustrated )

CLARISSA: You refuse to tell us why the insistence?

NOT-ADAM: No I’m saying that the way to end this is to tell you all my actual name. My name is—

NESTOR: And to admit that we were moaning when you came in.

NOT-ADAM: Right. No! Moaning? What? ( no one responds ) Anyway, my name is… what moaning?

NESTOR: Which moaning.

NOT-ADAM: That’s what I’m asking.

NESTOR: Which or what though?

NOT-ADAM: What?

NESTOR: Really? Because I lean to which.

NOT-ADAM: Huh?

NESTOR: No, huh-moaning makes no sense, I simply must draw the line there.

NOT-ADAM: What?

NESTOR: Fine, I concede and it’s settled.

LUDWIG: How?

CLARISSA: When?

NESTOR: Where?

( Not-Adam is rapidly moving his gaze to each speaker. )

CLARISSA: Why?

LUDWIG: When?

NESTOR: Said that already.

LUDWIG: When?

NESTOR: Before.

LUDWIG: Who?

CLARISSA: Me.

LUDWIG: Right.

NESTOR: Left.

CLARISSA: No, wrong. That right.

NOT-ADAM: Could we not talk for a while? I’ll take this one.

( He takes the middle bed. )

CLARISSA: To answer your earlier question the moaning referred to went something like this.

( She demonstrates but the moans of ostensible pain soon take on a decidedly sexual aspect and as such the moans soon entrance the room’s other inhabitants including Charles who sits up to get a better look .)

NESTOR: So, Adam, welcome is what we’re saying.

NOT-ADAM: ( not responding because staring at Clarissa )