Ingeborg Houwen 1 Jan 2001

Diagram A Speech-in-Space Act 1.1

Science Fiction Performance Drama (Part 1 of 5)

(pre face)

(lecture)

(to be yelled against)

The General of Incontingency speaking.

Listen to the story on a neuro-linguistic profession that translated kinetic force-data in self related digital response. The name was Diagram. Diagram's next version brother was named PaperWhite, but of that poetical machine this script is not about.

The Diagram Survivors lived inside their imagination. They could be who they were and what they were and where they were. Text prooves to be a bad medium to capture all this.

And yet in text the Returned Aliens chose to return. Aware of their unsourced ununderstandable leveling making meaningless sentences, anticipating the young earthly ears, no where the text looses track, really, very far. It's a dezemt discourse. Very dezemt, actually. There is no postmodern physical shifting, no cyber fun operating. We see the spasmodic syndromes of a chroma key actress, crying out in the lonesome blue. And basically that's all. As Mister Halfthorn says: theater is our first science.

The spin off of the story is fairly protestant. Coming from the happy high tech Nasa space bunker, in a area called Lazy Space Babe Bay, we wonder ourselves : why start to tell the story from a family/work situation…? Because even after sixteen zillions of happy projected uttering years, that remains the top of the world: Creating worlds and jobs? Helping people to earn a living? List up badly remembered theory?

For the condensing mind the Diagram Drama might become a scenario. For those who are different; whatever the sound, we must treasure any kind of novelizing. Even if there is a monster of an Unknown Dangerous Trauma underneath. The feeling of failure and success.

But, Now:

Was it cultural evolution, a bio-logical tale ; these patterns, that were seen by Diagram, and pleased the Diagram family, like phenomena of culture, first to study individuals and later to build the Optimal Life Style Program In Space.....?

There was so much to think, so much to play. If only we

we

dedicated to my Mama

list of characters in order of appearing

Smart Kid

(Radio Free IICE 2001)

Captain Papa

(Small Opera)

Police

Mama

DJ

(Tussenstukje)

Loosenothing Halfthorn

On

Off

Derrida

Deleuze

Austin

Ingeborg Houwen

AUDIENCE

Diagram(s)

READING ADVICE

0 Glue off from your partner, if you have one.

1 Choose to read or listen.

2 If you read, choose a role, by tasting the text.

Dream into the horror of narrative transformation.

Change voice every character. If you develop opinions on style and character, sense the intention behind the utterance, consider to take the speakers text over, and act.

Enlarge

diagram -

Act 1

“the autists awoke”

SMART KID

Before we blew up the planet, when we still lived on Urrth, Papa and Mama ran a hotelbar called Unter Dem Pentagon. In our sauna, under the very damp showers of Unter Dem Pentagon, the Diagram was pitched, negotiated and planned by three language-philosophers. And later Papa was involved, as Diagram employee. And because love and tradition grows the finest strongest families, I also went along. Mama was lost in that beginning moment, in the game of social configuration up-town. Sensing clearly 24 hours 7 days each week that the macho, the phenotype of Businessman, breeded his types even in our small friendly post sixties community, even in her very own womb,
only because He couldn't stand his mama; she, frustrated because her senses didn't make sense, made up reasons to forget all her thoughts, put the world in the front, and start affairs like seducing the Head of Protocols at Foreign Affairs, to help out entrepreneurial girlfriends. Neuro-linguistic rape or not, community life felt activating. Swat she said. Mama hated our plotting in the sideline, but with a loving kind; always sharpening us up. Don't get fat guys, were the wonderful wise sentences she blew in our minds. Mama was the chain-saw in our massacre. She turned our lives into the perfect television, and she was the best food for our prejudices. Our Mama was a Biological Cultural event, such as existed everywhere, as we found our later.

So, I come from a small community, and was raised in Chomskys trees: listening to the Universal Wind of Grammar, that is; my personal version of it : the soft private truth that this free hut should remain a right. That was it.

PAPA

The stringing of his words represents a persons DNA, and that very idea alone can develop over consciousness, to ruin the minds sewing space.

I accept no other sound than my own, which was pretty difficult in the early reality. Oops. My grammar has always been short, like my drippings are ugly and not sharp. I never know where I am, when I drip. It's funny also. Not that I'm dripping now. Well, not really. But, to enter the emotional historical core: to manage the Diagram was a Task Too Forceful. Actually. Sorry.

To our big surprise we are all still very much busy with Urrth. And on Urrth, may I give away, one is hot busy with us.

SMART KID

Mama served as the motivation or even motivator to realize Diagram. All was done to rewind Mama, let her rediscover her easy physical forces in an optimal kinetic setting, with maximal illocutionary choice. So she could be all she could be, while we watched her traces and developed our insights. For in spite of all that was lost, like we may now finally regret, our contemporary pleasant surrounding here, is Diagrams DoomsDay's final result. Welcome in Space Bay.

Sixteen billion years ago Jacques Derrida, Steve Austin and Gilles Deleuze fought the First Ethical Fight about Diagram, soaping their bodies with our very own Unter Dem Pentagon fragrance (see the pink cloud) (under the damp showers)(and also, why not, feel the naked limb).

Deleuze came up with the idea of a cultural control machine. They had been watching television in the Pentagon Lounge, and after 30 minutes of sincere zapping felt an urge to rinse actuality off. Almost almost it became a discussion on the environment, when Gilles said:

''‘Look, in the name of our bored Brains; let's create a meta-linguistic machine that tracks all utterances, that is : looks at their lines of flight, and by doing so enlarges in every way the domain of discourse. Let's call this thing Diagram...'''

Being indeed pretty bored by our petite place in the service industry, Papa and I - actually serving croque monsieur- started dreaming straight away. Computer Software became the keyword, of course. And it was also clear from the start that it all should happen under a clear sky. Which meant all machinery should be covered, because we wished total freedom for Mama.

Never change the order of the planets, by the way.

We imagined a sensor on Mama's crown, that would allow us to never miss her actions again, to who knows align things up for her one day, by finding and sending her a sensitive mumloving man. This idea in fact gave Papa the energy to build the Diagram. We loved our Mama, very much.

Who really mocked Diagram, in the name of his secret disposition, was Jacques Deride. He was breathing like a fire horse, wanting to explain that Mama's steps should not necessarily be transparent, or knowable, even though she had hardly survived two and a half decenia of cultural adaptation and behaved typically typical. For us it was clear that Mama had difficulties in the Information Society, designed to exclude the fully nerved, the over sensitive. In our terms we had to promise Uncle Jacques that all madness remained Mama's natural right, even if Diagram was named a tool of cultural evolution.

Diagram would never interfere in any affaire, only perhaps later in terms of agreement. Or when the usual history was taken place, and institutions needed our friendship.

But Derrida was still shouting and showering the ketchup of his croque monsieur, to protect the cheese, to then cry over the lost and soaked toast. In many living room that speech-act would have made him into a hero, a top performer, we couldn't help thinking. And: This near-linguistic mission was really funny, hearing our selves laugh. Derrida's intention however had been filled with irritation, as his swollen purple neck muscles signified. Then came his famous utterance.

''‘When a man of the world wants to take a shower with his croque monsieur, can he express this by saying: boeboeboe, and still be considered a man of the world? Yes.Yes. Yes. For words mean nothing in particular in the world, therefore it's such a dynamic pool of...'

‘Words mean everything in the world, for instance; they represent civilization''' roared Steve, now trembling from fear, and sounding even a little French.
''‘Shut up Austin, and continue Derrida, please,' said Gilles Deleuze, tres americano.

''
In his elegant fluid lipline Derrida continued. Blessed was his mind, even though Unter Dem Pentagon seemed to have influenced his discourse somewhat. He sounded tres japponais.

''‘Our language is one of our best tricks, also outside the university people are able to grow in it. But we are philosophers. Let's not create more bad politics. So, to return to our croque monsieur. Think about the ‘streaming' of water, dear Gilles, or the ‘flying' of an arrow : inside the academic tradition, inside our linguistic and neuro-linguistic theory, these actions or verbs in words mean nothing. ‘Flying' might signify a rhythm, a wave, a skwoeskwoeskwa. In any case: shut up about your Diagram. It's disgusting.'

‘Girl, you better watch out. Boy, you are loosing it, Steve Austin shouted, ''‘I'm not going to like it at all.

Jacques loved Steves totalness, had however learned how to shut off his ears, and so he continued his utterance.

''‘..the ‘f*l*y*i*n*g' changes all the time its meaning. Or, the meaning of ‘it* changes all the time. This is so easy. It drops when it stops. We can never catch it. Even if it leaves a trace. Gilles, Steve, don't make me mime the semiotic triangle, please. Lines of flight do mean nothing. It's mathematics at the most. We do not know what we fly when we say what we think that we mean. So, we should stop create engineering philosophical aspirations. It's done, it's over. It's finished. It's the postmodern waiting chamber, accept it. WE can not go higher.'

‘Cowards! No!, I shouted, ''‘Let's save our anus and exploit our knowledge until ‘heaven' bursts open! First, we have to sell our cognitive out looks! One more decade of realism and then : change the ether, in total free technological comfort, to arrange new old fashioned lanes.

MAMA

Had I been on that moment as capable as I am know, most certainly I would have let Diagram throw in a perfumed red plastic ball, saying : ''‘Guys, this is designed for you, just to throw up!'''

KID

City of Angels indeed. Yet, in spite of Pentagons fine herbal foam feeding and scenting their heavy wise bodies, Austin and Derrida radiated a sensible bad mood, that almost colored my insides with dark brown entering raven black, as Diagram would notice later, inside her infinite memory.

Later Jacques walked out with Mama. And Deleuze kept denying the machine. In the end we build up Diagram with Steve Austins help. Steve may have been a trembling leaf, his hard core scientific study of the human speech act served us well.

He and us designed a program that could track kinetic powers and illocutionary forces in human speech acts, in the way scientists of nature expose herds of aggressive worms in trees, by climbing in a helicopter or on a satellite, and shoot reality with a camera. If Diagram turned out to be not too intelligent, and were her conclusions very stupid and naive; we ourselves could distinguish what was the real case, even if it wasn't our own Mama radiating on the screen. Thus, we became Urrths cultural watchers. To only expect a Diagram2.

PAPA

Yes

The Early After Urrth Years in Space were very difficult. The analogy of mind-as-space became Diagrams Premise 1. O, such lovely outcomes it generated, my head exploded, only... And then to realize it affected the whole universe. O how foolish. But the immatter didn't matter, so it was alright, even if no-one could follow me anymore, and my grabby sentences disguised many diseases, as

Is hopefully not

Frizzable

anymore

KID

Papa is trying to say that Diagram captured the all as a black box seen as a projection space. Later, we verified this, although color remained relative in force, compared to the others. Some naturally printed stardust black covered the inside of our head. Were we back in the nineteenth century?

MAMA

Well, there, you start to speak like your father. Filthy well raised white trash.

This is the revenge of the poets. Now stations called Chaos Radio swing and sway their fantasy sentences in the air. O praise the Oxford Dictionary; I just met Sir Lovell, the radio astronaut. And that was a line for my son. O should I speak, the feminist aspect? Leave fiction behind, become real?

KID

A good performance, so when the performative aspect of our speech act, which marks only - or- at least half of its acquired forces - but a good performance, also the artificial one, so a good performance has the highest value. And yet the stuff was never or hardly ever well paid.
Only price cows got it reasonably. One of the cultural rubs nobody wished to discuss, only in the atmosphere of ..pffff

After we left Unter Dem Pentagon, we didn't even feel the urge to use our i-technology. We slept half of the time, while Doctor Diagrams Seven Spine Splitter did his work, and our cells became more and more, and the amount of space bigger and bigger. We emptied ourselves. Diagram took over. She was very busy with the left over of Urrth. Nice pictures.

The best thing about progression is that future can be predicted as different. Maybe I should have more back slashes.

A plan is a plant is a seed that grows.

Putting Diagram in the most hysterical - the historical tunnel, we conclude that the plan wasn't so unique, considering the many developments in especially the media world at that time. Medianomics created nice and even common jobs in these days. Little Annie worked in that area. She was selected in our bad television lives, because she had told us all her lines of flight. We resume the top as following; when the one aunt gets sacked, because his behavior fits somewhere else better, the new power uncle is on. Every dombo Tom knows when he's in charge, in some parts of the time. Some parts without knowing half the rest.

Nothing to do with art, of course, but all the more with culture (an old wall between two old categories Diagram, by the way, has officially brushed out.)

PLease don't ask for evidence, for the evening would be very long, and my presence become enormous. But in any case since no other plane seemed successful, we dared to let our thoughts glide freely alongside the discussion on our new media future. We have to talk in these terms, if we consider Deleuzes idea.

Now, let me guess:
Without having anything said, you sense what we mean. We may blow up the world, if we want, take the risk of destroyal and failure. And that's power. And it makes you wanna feel intoxicated.

MAMA

OOO, there's so many sides. And so much to explain. First we had to prove that different cultures race different grammars!

KID

Thank God the field of politics kept it's face during our cultural evolution. So we played it every way - in a quantum gravity style - to afterwards sell the audience to the banks. Classical cultural crime indeed.

After sixteen billion years things seem somehow really connected. I mean: we have designed the Sensorial Corset around Urrth. Look what the corset did in the first plan, and didn't we call Urrth Mama, therefore? And could she hold it up, or could she hold it up! Well, she couldn't. Because she didn't need it. Why didn't we care to leave her alone…

We blamed it to the end of history, that had filled her veins with a sticky understanding, the madness of emancipation.

Time is a cloud that chambers the cabinet of the mind. We had a life on Urrth, from deeply inside, on a neuro- logical level. And this destroyed our culture. It may have had a social cause, but it was a cultural disease. If only one should have the chance to read it, hear it. Of course it reacted upon each other. The growing of the text, the growing of the

for more information on this play

See for continuation of this text: Diagram -A Speech-in-Space-Act 1.2