SYNOPSIS
'The Beginning' exposes a malaise that is ingrained in our society, one that may manifest itself in different guises but at its root is fundamentally about the struggle with self-acceptance and the connection to a world outside of self.
We are taken along on a journey that brutally confronts the desperation and destruction of addiction, the alienation of gender identity disorder, the helplessness of depressive illness and the tragic repercussions of loss. Groaning with restlessness and discontent the characters are saved by the thread of friendships that weave in and out of their lives but the strength drawn from love, compassion and acceptance is relentlessly threatened by the possibility of breakdown and disintegration.
Character A is the central narrator, with no concrete gender identity. A adopts the role of caretaker and the problems of the other characters, B, C, D and E are absorbed by A’s resilience and apparent selflessness until the occurrence of an event forces A to re-evaluate everything, including love and its salvation, exposing a futility and an impeded existence created from the roles we play out in our lives.
The Beginning
I am participant A, I may not always write the truth but I write about a true world and it may not always seem that way but yes the glass will be half full until I find it half empty.
My close friends are the other participants, we exist in solitude until one life touches another, an interdependent union exists for a time, it could be short, a small knotted tangle, a delicate twist or lengthy, a complex enmeshed entanglement but at any of these moments together or apart something might happen and that is where my responsibility lies. I exist in each moment I am part of it all and what I see I pronounce and what I don’t see I speculate, simple interpretation for the creative process but it is always mine, I choose the word, define the action, convey the feeling. I control it until you sever the possession and take it for yourself. Perhaps there is no convoluted ambiguity in all this, perhaps nothing will be provoked beyond that which is presented but is language so flat, isn’t it full of assumptions and internal contradictions, I question this whole experience, is it relevant, will it move you, will you participate or are you a spectator where will you put yourself, I am interested to know.
On this great day each moment must be lived Carpe Deum, I play Purple Rain, it inspires and transcends, recaptures youth, bows to maturity in sophistication and suddenly I’m nostalgic. I regress into past events, remember something poignant from another time bringing a sentimental sorrow into now, I don’t want to go backwards to live in memory it cannot be trusted, I can make memories damaging somehow and I know what about this moment now. I think about intimate relationships I’m constantly fascinated by them, I go back again, I think about the early friendships in adolescence, volatile suffering from the same arguments and jealousies of lovers to come, the intensity of the relationship, unfathomable but real, the break up so painful until an equally wonderful capricious alliance replaces it. The friendships from school days are defining, a commonality exists under a shared external structure and intimacy thrives on recollection and reference. There are some relationships that were made at the beginning because they were supposed to be there at the end, through it all is the friend you have in life, I am always thinking about the many relationships that are woven into the fabric of our lives.
My friend in life is preoccupied with the end, I have known B since the beginning, there is a closeness that is unbreakable but I am afraid, I fear her not being here any more. She talks about the end with such alacrity she may even have envisaged it, perhaps I indulge her but even so I feel bound to salvage her from this wreckage and you must know I continue to hope because I love her and hate her pain. It was not always this critical, her dark moods were recurrent but she recovered “ it’s not a death sentence you know” she’d say bouncing back to us and it was different then, the essence of her stronger, I don’t know what happened, maybe it was just the relentless similitude in the passing of time. Now she says I was fortunate to have hope then and a world with possibility has gone too.
No point she says, no point like this and then what can you say to that. I know she’s thought it through I know she’s capable but how could she. I wonder if I’m wrong to desperately hold on to her, my experience of living is not hers, if I say look that is beautiful can I expect her to see the beauty, feel it like I do, I can tell her she will but maybe she can’t. I’m different to B, our suffering disparate I could never give her total liberation, I have learnt this is personal, nebulous, if you try to grab onto it to examine it to deconstruct,
it just runs through your fingers like sand. B and I share a lifetime and while we share a presumption of an abounding darkness where at times we have crouched together in the dark crater, mostly darkness swoops down and captures us in solitude. I do not need to know that death is always a possibility, death to me is only a certainty, I don’t have a compulsion to be its maker. For B it is a prerequisite “I just need to know it’s there for me” she says, she is afflicted by a chronic chemical imbalance in her brain, it swings from high to low but actually mostly it’s just lows. She’s taken tons of pills over the years had lots of clinical support even so it’s still prevalent, B believes it controls her and always will. She confides in me because she trusts me but she feels no one can help her, “it’s obstreperous
can’t fix it” she says “it’s engrained in me now it lives in me, it’s taken my identity an invisible thief.” I can’t listen to this I see her with no spirit, she’s surrendered, sits it out, accepts her nemesis without a fight, no bottle, no grit, no spunk, it wasn’t always like this. I love her and I need her you see, she understands me before I get it myself, she has a wonderful mind an abundantly generous nature but there is no hiding from it, this illness defines her and because of that she’s self-interested, self-obsessed and stagnant. Our friendship is a done deal, I’d never give up, if you love someone you just don’t want to let them go.
Death aside, my concern is with where I can be in life escaping loneliness I’m acutely aware of my aloneness, I’m highly accomplished at feeling alone, alone but fortunate in friendships, enduring relationships, constant, loving, kind they consistently pull me in from my peripheral existence so that I belong for many precious moments with them.
I recall early feelings of dislocation, it was a process, then it snapped inside me as I grew bigger, I found it increasingly difficult to contain feelings like they were oversized, boiling and spilling over, just like a chemistry experiment unable to curb the rush as it changed its form, emitting hot steam, the liquid ran over the lips of a test tube the inadequate container that was me. I could never understand the rules of attachment because I was unknowingly growing unattached from myself, rejecting, dissociating, unhinging. I was popular for an abundant energy, a creative mind but I was too much, too aggressive, patience wore thin, relationships suffered at home, at school and I spent the early years of senior school in a succession of failing friendships. I had an insatiable need for exclusivity, for
assurance, too serious, too intense, too insecure. All the time there was a raging inside couldn’t understand, it couldn’t satisfy it.
Later, when I started hanging around with C we fitted together, our lives connected with a click.
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