Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Post 15: After Dreams

IDYLLS OF THE IDLE

Laurent is not able to use writing as a sole means for escape. The process can be mean and is always confrontational. It's often awkward and the long stretches of silence that block his creative flow can burden him. Following a scent, he attempts breast stroke underwater from one source to another. Mushy particles from a phantom carcass are carried down to the sedimentary bed. During his later morning writing exercise, Laurent still has a headache from conjuring gods in his sleep, now diminished. A man strikes a chord from the hollow in his head. 

In order to make the transition into morning softer, he takes the purple glass smoking pipe from the nightstand to scavenge any remaining weed in the bowl, or at least enough clumps of newer, moist resin. The tar-like substance requires longer exposure to the flame and a harder intake, but Laurent enjoys the slow sizzle. Luckily, the bowl is only half scorched and so he scrapes off the top burnt layer and begins working on the rest of the green bud. In the past he’s had successful writing sessions after smoking a little weed. There is a threshold of incapacity all too easily passed if he carelessly puff puffs away without allowing enough time between the inhalations for him to adjust into each new increment of euphoria and heightened sensibility. Too many levels up and Laurent will lose track of his original intention, resorting to searching through social media, arts and entertainment articles, or amateur pornography videos. The writing would not get done. At the most he would be able to pound away a half-hazard paragraph, proving later to be a laughable effort as he edits. Laurent limits himself to taking seven hits off the pipe and then brings his fingers to his lap top’s keyboard. 

Charlotte puffs at one half of a joint that she saved from the previous night. Ever since the news came about her brother Charles’ upcoming visit, Sister has spent more time thinking about her siblings and her parents back abroad. She is baffled by how deliberately uncouth Charles and how socially stunted her sister Chloe are, lamenting the second’s regressive development because she always thought her young sister to be so pretty. Both of her younger twin siblings are as attractive as she or Laurent and looks do a great deal of help. Chloe is distinguished to Charlotte from the rest of them with her delicate but arresting presence that might evoke Edith Scob’s masked angel in captivity from the film, Eyes Without a Face. Underneath her poise, however, Chloe’s neuroticism more and more gives her away. Charles, well, he’s self-assured and charismatic enough to make it through.Yikes, but why is she so weird? How can they just step back and let her fall apart like that—without stepping in? In this thought Charlotte forgets that while growing up, Mother and Father were always very involved with how all of their children formulated and nurtured their personalities. The siblings’ eccentricities are more likely related to an overstepping onto the dark matter of their organic outlines—not from Mr. and Mrs. Yardley keeping any distance from all the adolescent development. Well, Mom and Dad sure do know how to put on the pressure. I’ll give her that, the poor girl. They need to give her a fucking break and let her come visit. 

Sister reflects upon her mother and the ideas she worked into her maternal script. She wonders about Chloe, who very well may be the way she is due to how her parents eventually came to perceive the first two of their children as off-track sqaunderers, stalling out in errant and rebellious lifestyles. Or do Mr. And Mrs. Yardley deflect that sober acknowledgement with some sort of defense mechanism, ruling out that theory? Regardless, Charlotte must admit to herself how she enjoys this perception. It places her (and Laurent) into a dark, but interesting light. As if Chloe is not extravagant in her own way. She is freakishly irregular. Again Charlotte contrasts her younger sister with Charles. Is Charles really the most successful Yardley child? No, no, no. That’s got to be complete bullshit. I’m an actress who’s found work. 

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Post 14:

AUDIENCE AND STAGE AT WAR

At this time many in the audience may want a break. This deep into the words and some buttocks are beginning to numb from the weight of bone and upper organs. The shading of these organic outlines is no flighty business; direction takes time. Instances of eventfulness depend on a meeting of time and one chosen from out of many places. There has been essentially one setting and perhaps fifteen places, so it falls back on the eternal stream of time. Yardleys have all the time in the world, so we will have to cap them off at some point. Take the fabric cutting shears and cut the cord between family and its power source. Sever the feed before it all turns mushy. 

Numb flesh burns, but if we give them a fifteen-minute break between each part to the play, then we’ll never finish. Yes, unfortunately the first part goes directly into the second, with only a brief black curtaining for cushioning the head and rebuilding stamina. Believe us when we say that we want nothing more than to keep your favor. Numb flesh gives way to fire. 

********************

 WOMEN ON FIRE

Sophia scratches the side of her knee under the thick hem of her dress. Perspiration comes and goes and the armpits of her attire have become slightly damp. Little wet creases have formed all alongside her fabric where it has been pressed into the red velvet of her seat throughout the first act. The man next to her is bursting out of his tightly drawn in suit. His fat bulges out of the arms of the wool jacket and brush forcefully against her skin. She can feel the expansion and decompression of his lungs ripple in energy throughout the rest of his body. Earlier there were moments when she thought she might make more of an effort to synchronize her breathing with his, so that there wouldn't be any awkward counter rhythms. It hasn't been as unbearable for her as times where she is lying in bed with a man who refuses to meet her pace of breathing and instead respirates on the downbeats of her own phrasing, but the unevenness of this small physical interplay is apparent to her enough at times to detract from the action on stage. 

She wishes she could have had a seat secured for her up with her friends, Christopher and Julien, in their box secluded on the third tier, with more space for her emotional response to the performances to occupy leisurely, but those seating arrangements were finalized ages ago. I can't wait to get the fuck out of here. There is a damp air about the row from the crowd and Sophia is finding it harder and harder to resist taking a stroll out of the theater into foyer for a breather and refill of bubbly. Sophia twitches slightly and this movement is registered by the man next to her who brings his arm closer in to his body. Jesus, do you mind? For the most part strangers do not enjoy being trespassed upon and he can appreciate that boundary once it is reinforced. The man is cultured and the actively cultured members of society are generally apt in the art of feeling and permitting personal space. He watches Laurent up on stage bring tea out to Charlotte, who, unlike Sophia next to him, has become quite comfortable in her seating arrangement next to the director, Broussard. Suddenly remembering the knot in his neck, he manipulates the muscles to crack his joints and ligaments and Sophia responds by exhaling a quick stream of air through her nostrils to communicate a growing lack of impatience.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Post 13: Afternoon Wine with the Director: Part 2

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Post 13: Afternoon Wine with the Director: Part 2

UPDATES AND PROBLEMS 

Broussard redirects her probe:

—What I do ask of my crew is for their trust. I believe the final product comes out bolder and truer when I have that. It's not the mechanics I want as much as the essence. I'm always looking for an essence. When I think I've found the right person, I give them my trust. I only expect that, in return, they do the same for me.

Sister knows she must comply:

—I understand perfectly. I'm ready to be molded or…pushed. With the script I realize I’ll have to suspend hesitancies and jump—just jump right into it all. And that's all there is to it.

Three glasses are brought to their holders' lips. Brother smothers a piece of baguette with the pate. Brother amuses himself with the thought of smudging Sister's forehead with the fatty concoction. How far can Sister be pushed? Brother offers the platter of foie gras to Broussard, who is obliging and humored after finishing her cigarette. His counterpart refuses the same offer and resents the crunching noises following from his mouth. 

Broussard:

—You've come to realize this, I'm sure, as you've grown more accustomed to France, but we come from backgrounds of intense discipline. I'd say it's an obsession, how we regulate ourselves. We measure out exactly our personal interactions on parchment, just so, and seal them off with polite kisses. Many who visit interpret our culture as one mediating through deliberate coldness, but I say we interact in a way that is très simple et claire. (She speak more slowly) This is not my approach in film. I do not want to pull the ceiling down over my team to where it just barely misses the hair on their heads, or to mold my leads down to models I've already pre-conceived. I can work with a tight aesthetic and let it drape around the work naturally. I think it's nice to breathe. 

Laurent:

You're going to have a rough time reigning in this one, though. 

Broussard raises her eyebrows briefly to Laurent, like a quick spasm from a muscle unknowingly tensed, and stoops closer toward Charlotte:

What motivates you as an actress?

Charlotte, making sure not to look at Laurent, puts out her cigarette:

—Does an actress need to know what motivates her?

Brother tsk tsks to himself. Throughout the meeting he had been waiting for Charlotte to repeat some of the half-heartedly felt witticisms and broad aesthetic statements on acting he fed her before the guest of paramount influence and opportunity arrived. Sister buckles silently in her seat and clears her throat. Broussard lets out a quick exhalation of short breath.

Charlotte continues:

—I'm joking of course.

Broussard:

—I'm not one of those directors that think her actors and actresses to be dispensable. I am searching for an essence and a source of constant freshness.

Charlotte:

—Absolutely. I'm…not entirely sure (she laughs). When I think about it, I realize I've always been acting. Laurent and I have always acted. Isn't it fantastic to be able to take what is common and spin it upwards through an inspired lens, up to the ceiling of a performance hall (she wipes the sweat off of her forehead with her backhand, as if rubbing away the smear of pate with which Laurent fantasized her)? I like to make things grand even in their mundanity. It's like writing, I suppose (she turns to Laurent). We owe ourselves to some…reality, but we also leave gaps, or, they're already there for us to fill up. What am I saying? 

Laurent, who knows Charlotte has reluctantly turned to him for assistance:

—We owe ourselves to ourselves. Well, we owe ourselves to the art and to the daily toil.

Charlotte brightens and hastens:

—It's everything to me. I believe pretense heightens the raw materials from our lives and reveals to us subtle interactions of these sources in ways that we don't always immediately recognize. At the same time I also thoroughly enjoy a performance that does not lean back on the artifice, but makes a window of itself to what is common in an uncanny, even troubling way…(she laughs) perhaps an intensely boring way. Like I said, I promise we really are quite boring here. 

There she goes again claiming to be boring and insisting upon herself being reduced to the level of "common." Sister repeatedly refers to the setting of the Yardley house as boring—as a dull pulse that consumes time, and it does. All the time in the world is not enough for the Yardley siblings to consume, as well, to pick up dust from the angles of their playhouse (wait, that is Martha's job) and sweep in here and there and to order more gin and tonics and to lounge on the backstage. There is something rather lush about the known security of wealth, isn't there? No kidding. More sips of wine are taken, including a larger gulp from Laurent. Laurent and Charlotte adore the sluggish sun cloud that seeps into the house each morning after their nightly toking sessions. Boring is sexy. Performative boredom is riveting. A this time, Laurent performs boredom while trailing backwards to ground where the remains of the dragonfly have been eaten away to mere bits of wing, glass from a precious lamp shade that have lost their original sharp ability of light refraction. Laurent reanimates what has been struck down and scorned:

Long-winded and not prone to compartmentalize each gleam of the twisting joyride, the dragonfly, the drunk, demands they change their tone—to shape up or be snatched up. Shift and bend out of shape, bottom layer to this lawn forest of the molted outer substance. The dragonfly is drunk in the air with wet mandible emerald nape, to feed in-between emotional planes—never on, but inside. Tyrant of the lawn sky, he is compelled. He chews out a mean battle drum, waits for the hover to emerge from of them all below. Below, they scatter, step, prick at, are cautious, but regard the brilliant current. Do they decide, then, that some sky is worth a severed head?

His perception follows the heat of the ground to the clouds and imagines a giant dragonfly homing in above its destination at the Yardley house. He sits and feels his sternum rattle from the underlining base-like woof of the beast's weighty humming, magnified and made into a grinding plague. The predatory sky makes him nauseous. Lower in the gastrointestinal track he feels the base of the song attack, loosening silted bowels. There is no time to recuperate from the last pound of the bass before the next blare. Heavy heaving drone. He imagines another man, older and even more confounded, outside of himself, choking on the thick air, each particle buzzing and pushing inward into the trenches of sound, snaking inward. Crunching over, as if to cough wildly into his fist, the old man shakes and the framework of his upper body responds to the heavy bass of the dragonfly. The bones acquire a hard plasticity that is difficult to make work with his lungs.  His clenching ribs clunk against the softer tissue and are pushed back further than is natural with the driving beat of the music. Green armor plates drown out the sky as the dragonfly nears. 

For a couple minutes Brother drops out of color. Next to him the two women continue their conversation. After a dazed look elsewhere into the sky above the backstage, Charlotte lets her head fall back gracefully, like a drifting leaf meeting the water of the swimming pool. She lights another cigarette. Charlotte then drifts further down this smooth imaginary garland toward Laurent, who has been in a whole other "elsewhere" of his own. Gently, she rubs his right shoulder with her hand, coaxing him to attentiveness, and then looks back to Broussard, keeping all of her body still in its new marking, except for her neck which twists back to the director. Charlotte takes a drag of the next cigarette, hand positioned over Laurent and eyes locked on Broussard, as she speaks:

—For instance…

As if pre-rehearsed a countless number of times earlier in the day Charlotte exhales the smoke through her lips into Laurent's mouth, who slowly sucks in the smoke while closing his eyes. While tilting his head backyard, Laurent then blows the smoke out and upward through his nostrils. Broussard keeps her neck craned to get a good full picture, smiling with her mouth slightly open. The two of them before her have carefully monitored their presentation; only, both have taken different (not opposite) approaches. Why the sudden generosity? In the end this is not entirely collaboration for the siblings, at least not a conscious one. Practice in their theater leads to moments of autonomy, but, while these ornamentations of performance lend themselves to an overall musical reception, intended or not, grasped or not by the performers, they are not everything for either Yardley. Quickly, the moment is dismissed by Laurent, pretender guardian of the below, of everything Charlotte overlooks, and he excuses himself from the table to leave the director and Sister to their business. 

Charlotte, determined not to be the mere second to last feature following the performative coalescence, says to Laurent:

—Bring me a cup of tea? Mint tea, if you would. 

Laurent nods while walking back inside, his eyes look to the space preceding his footsteps as he comes to the exit of the scene and enters the house. The audience takes delight in the performances. Some believe these scenes become comedy because the leads act so deliciously and so drunk that the motions become uncomfortable. They are both deeply silly, for stepping outside of nature, and evil. We ask the guests to revel with the actors in how exquisitely ridiculous the tropes used can be after being groped by hundreds of hands preceding before them, both nuanced and inept. Revel in how the hands tonight tap into really carnal, base things. The idle moments of the Yardleys access the most base, manipulative shit in a gleeful, giddy, and nonchalant way. Charlotte believes that her demeanor is rebellious. 

The director asks Charlotte if she considers herself provocative. Charlotte responds with a shrug that pretends to accept the label as neither here nor there for her. There follows a few clicks of her tongue and she wets her lips gingerly, before going into a brief portrait of the temperamental girl she was years ago. Her beaming face shakes as if she were actually unsure of the answer, or at least unsure of its contribution to her daily spectacle, while managing not to commit to any of the insights that come out of her mouth. She finally responds that she sees no point in blurring any lines that didn't exist to begin with in her life. Does she make herself clear? 

Broussard:

—First, let me first say that I only want to go forward if I have your complete trust. I think that trust is everything for a role such as this. I’d like to think that I can trust you as well—not to back out once we reach a certain point. 

Charlotte intently nods, pressing the director to elaborate:

—I agree, of course. 

Broussard:

—How do you feel about onscreen nudity?

Charlotte:

—I don’t really have any hesitations. I know your work and don’t feel there’s any need for either of us to be embarrassed.

Broussard:

—Excellent. So, you know there is going to be nudity in the film. Please also know that I’m promising now that I’ll never breach our trust and or force you to perform anything that you might find compromising. You know, I didn’t say it before, but I had a hunch about you. I want you on this project and knew you’d be able to deliver. What do you say now? Are you ready to go forward with me?

Charlotte:

—I sure am. (Then, cupping her breasts with her hands) So are they. 

Clear off the stage, keep the backdrop, heads up! Marks in five minutes. The pretenses air out and drift back through the side doors. With them walks their adoptive owners, everything, back into the dressing rooms. In the wings of the stage the actors take deep breaths so that the upcoming events, strategically blocked by the cast and crew earlier, can take flight. No, this is the end of flight. Too much time spent in the air can make one dizzy, so we will have to pull everything back—back to tracing the scent upstream. Bring us the cutting shears. New platforms, NOW!!! 

infinity and bitches' brew

She pulls an ice cube out of her iced coffee and flicks her fingers.

It's funny to me just how wrong some people get their lives.

Yeah, but if it's their own...

She wipes her hands on the side of her shirt, where the excess fat hangs with the infinity sign tattoo above her waistline.

Ownership is cool and all, but honestly I'm a little tired of people thinking they can snag some validation simply by owning their shitty choices and behavior.

I get what you mean, I think. Yeah, like some jackass who's rude but can get away with it by explaining that he's just being honest.

She looks up to meet her eyes briefly and then brings her gaze back down to her coffee. It's tiring for her to keep going on like this with her friend, but she'll manage.

What ever happened to regret? Why the trend saying everything happens for a reason or why the yolo?

Haha, but we're so fucking young still, though.

I feel old enough already.

You're crazy. Regret's a waste. Just channel your energy into finding balance with all of the choices and your efforts into new directions.

Oh my God, whatever.

She takes a sip of her drink and wonders why she told the barista whole milk would be fine. It makes her sick.

Natalie, don't you think that you should call Brad and invite him to the party?

Fuck that. No. He needs to think about his choice--really do some reflecting, you know?

Talk it all out with him.

I'm so sick of it. I wonder how I keep going at all. I mean like I know my problems and can recognize how I've hurt his sister's feelings or whatever, but come on! She's pregnant again and had an abortion last year. At least I know that--wait, holy shit. Haha, here I go being a total fucking shitty person. Charlie, I totally have regrets.

She looks back down to the buoyant buoyant ice cubes at the top of her beverage. There's a fly stuck on top of one of the cubes. It makes her sick.

I'm so sick of this, Charlie. Let's get out of here.

There's no buzz at all to the insect stuck to its watery grave.

This shit is ruined, Charlie. Let's leave.

You're right, Natalie. Forget Brad tonight, then.

Infinity, Charlie. It's not an excuse to take shit and spew shit. I'm just trying to project positivity, you know?

I totally feel that.