April 06, 2008

NOTES ON BRAN THE BLESSED


SCENE: side of a reservoir, outskirts of city, before the city is there. DATE:then, now; always.

BRAN appears staggering over horizon, materialising out of light, as silhouette. Stumbles down EMBANKMENT. Falls down reclining on it.

Gets buried up to neck in sand. Pissed on. Drowned? (by the Thames’ advancing tide). Then there are the subterranian rivers, lost rivers. A buried current of language. Bran’s head spouting, literally. A river from his mouth, to be lost in the soil or sand he is buried in.

BRAN stumbles down earth embankment carefully holding can of SUPER (not too carefully- he’s pissed), spills beer down front of one of one of THREE LOITERERS. They take can off him, drink, he can’t get it back. They pass it between them and spit some at him. Comic, clowning almost.They knock him into a shallow pit previously unnoticed. He stumbles back into it, he falls face up, head slightly pillowed on the earth at it’s edge. Three figures and Bran’s head, just projecting above ground. They kick the earth that is piled round pit onto him, he’s too pissed to object.
CLOSER bran’s head lolling drooling slightly, and spitting out earth when it goes in his mouth, legs kicking the earth flicker into his view now and then. They pour his beer on him. One of them pisses on him. He vomits and screams at the same time.

If liquid is poured on you, do you grow? If so, do you put down roots, and where?

So they knock him down, bury him, water him (to make him grow?) with beer and piss. John Barleycorn. Beer and piss, transubstantiation.

He throws up, violently, liquid spouting from mouth, running down stubbled chin and then running over ground (which is loose earth here) . CLOSER -liquid running over dark ground.

And his language, slurred with vomit and drunks' rage- just scraps, tatters, fragments. A current of words dividing into tributaries or a tree, the trunk multiplying, subdividing into branches. Watered by piss and beer.

Buried up to his neck in shit, pissed on -you could say fertilised…it’s where it all comes from, fertility- from the piss and shit. Some wino buried up to his neck in it. He doesn’t take it lying down, you wouldn’t would you.

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