The reader and the text (“Birthday issue” 2020)

Now the first anniversary of my year – Shakespeare’s birthday – is approaching fast, and I will probably not be able to commemorate it in any way I would like. As by eating out with Claudia or putting up my own ”festival” as I did last year. (Though I have a faint hope of something online – like some Shakespeare from Digital Theatre, or maybe streaming “Twelfth Night” released by the National Theatre - which probably won’t work as there will be hundreds of people streaming … Thousands???) But I might celebrate anyway, in a different way, by looking into READING. (And, very aptly - as I am still “under the influence” – into theatre …)

Right in the beginning, I unconsciously used the term READING as it is defined by common use, as dealing with WRITTEN text. But this was just because of how I got started, using my blog – and the idea of reading Shakespeare again – as “therapy”. I thought I’d just start reading and then see what happened. It was only by and by that I got into the habit of acquiring theatre productions and film adaptations of the plays on DVD and watching them after having read the text. Only then did I observe that I use the CONCEPT of reading, as it occurs naturally, to describe how I engage with fictional text in an intense and complex way which is basically the same when I am reading written fiction or am watching a film or a staged play. In fact, the most basic object or activity or event in real life as such is infinitely more complex than any text could ever be, but we are accustomed to REDUCE their COMPLEXITY in order to deal with them. Reading, instead, is an activity that encourages and ENHANCES COMPLEXITY by dealing with text on different levels AT THE SAME TIME. Intellectually, by finding out what happens in that story, which is often rather complicated, or why it happens, and so on. Emotionally, by reacting to characters with empathy or repulsion. Sensually, by automatically creating sensations and images, or reacting to the way they are created with pleasure, distaste and so on. Ethically, by making judgements on characters and their actions, and probably more … And this way of creating complexity is what I experience as AESTHETICAL.

(Which, as I just found out, is quite important because “aesthetical” is the fundamental adjective referring to ART – and my natural understanding of aesthetical – which is, of course, anything but new! – nonetheless defines art as something profoundly “democratic”. I realize that what I am doing when I am reading is to take the text out of the hands of the artist and use it AS MY OWN. This is also the reason why I am totally not interested in “elitist” art – art which is DEFINED by the personality of the artist. (Which doesn’t mean that I deny its existence or importance!) And why I love the theatre so much more than I actually ”use” it – because nothing can HAPPEN there without the audience becoming a part of the performance. The inevitable corona update: Football premier league can start again without people watching, as almost everybody is watching (and paying!) on TV anyway, and an audience makes zero difference to the playing. But – even if we could watch remotely! – reopening the theatres without letting in the people makes no sense at all.)

The secret of reading, therefore, is making something more complex than it is. And this requires a SKILLED READER. A person that can not just decipher text and determine its meaning, but somebody who is aesthetically skilled. Somebody who LIKES to make things more complex than they are and knows how to do this. (The last being, I think, what is commonly referred to as IMAGINATION. Fiction is certainly not the only but the most comprehensive way of dealing with this nagging feeling that there are ALWAYS more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.) And it requires a TEXT that can be used in this way.

In the fictional universe, a TEXT is not just the written word but every object that can be used aesthetically, as films, TV series, theatre productions, songs, paintings, even instrumental music. The reason why I am never dealing with painting or music is that I am not a skilled reader of these. I may happen to deal with them in a significant way occasionally, being totally happy and fascinated with some music I am hearing, or suddenly struck by a painting, as “everybody” is. But this is over very fast, and I seldom think about it. I have no real skill in dealing with them whereas, I think, I have become an exceptionally skilled reader of written or spoken text and art featuring interpersonal relationships a long time before I even knew it. I suspect the reason is that, unlike most people, I have never taken either of these for granted but experienced them as beautiful and enjoyable (where the written or spoken word is concerned) or utterly scary and nightmarish. (The latter mostly when it comes to interpersonal relationships. And I just realized – partly due to the corona crisis – that I still do. How extremely cautiously I am still dealing with real people, suspecting the madness and bullying to come out at any moment, though I am never prepared for it when it does. I think, one of the first things I learned, socially, is that I am the kind of person that will be disliked and maltreated – and I still think it is something as important to remember as it is to forget … I actually forgot! Must have been this film that reminded me? See below …)

Obviously, READING is the most important concept in this world I am investigating because it describes its BOUNDARIES. Everything that is not reading, or somehow came into my reading, has to stay outside. READER and TEXT are next, the first dichotomy, basically without hierarchy because they are totally dependent on each other. Without a text there are no readers, only people, and without a person to read it there are only words but no text. As this is such a commonplace statement that it is almost embarrassing to utter it – why do I still find it so fascinating? I suppose because I never know HOW it begins. How the two come together, or why. The only thing I know and can describe is WHEN it has happened.

The READER might appear to be the far more important concept in my blog because I am constantly writing about them – especially about ME as a reader. It appears that this is what it is all about – all I can write about with authority: what happens to me when I am reading. But the text is so much more fascinating and mysterious. As a reader, I only BECOME interesting when I am dealing with a beautiful and fascinating – or fascinatingly nightmarish - text and am experiencing the change it brings about in me. As regards content, the text is so much more important than I am. It is the “thing” I absolutely need, the thing I worship, the thing without which I – as a genuine (= not dull and bullshitting) human being – cannot survive. But what is this thing?

Maybe the most important part is to understand – as in Socrates – that I don’t know. The only thing I know about a fictional text is that it is never just words, words, words … Maybe “What?” is even the wrong question because it should in fact be “When?”. As it starts to be a fictional text WHEN it transcends words. But how do I KNOW when? How do I know that I can begin to deal with something I read or see in a complex, aesthetical way?

I so wish that I could remember my first time. When I got told a story and realized that is was a STORY. I guess that there must be something like GOING THROUGH A DOOR involved. To OPEN a book, the sensation when a curtain is raised … that is how we LEARN what a fictional text is. (When we have learned it we are able to make guesses, I suppose, and will recognize it even in unlikely places.) Actually, the first natural way I have observed with children to appreciate and use fiction is in fact some kind of THEATRE. A curtain is raised and Kasperl and Gretel (or Judy and Punch) appear. It is a way of initiation, and other nations have different ways. In fact, a glove puppet is more than enough to get any small child totally excited. And I remember my baby niece visiting for the first time and instantly inspecting the content of my bookshelves that didn’t even have any pictures. (Actually, as I know her, mostly as a means of reassuring herself, and making sense of ME: Oh, this aunt is something like my mother, she READS!)   

And I might just have found out why it is THEATRE. Why theatre is this ideal place to set up a fictional situation. As usual, there was a really long “run up” to get there.

Which I started far back in the past, but the finding out began with the elder of my two sisters calling recently. When we were done talking about the corona situation, she told me that she had seen “Joker” and had been totally fascinated with the film, the actor and, obviously, the (actor as a) man. I was pleased as I knew I could get the film the next day at Müller Markt (the German equivalent of Boots which is also the only chain store in Germany where they sell music and DVDs on a big scale). I bought it and watched it and was fascinated. I told my sister I would send her a text when I had seen it, rating my reaction to the film, the actor and the man on a scale of one to ten. That was a joke – it eludes me how people rate ANYTHING on a scale from one to ten, but I did something similar. I send her two thumbs up about the film – which is fascinating, (though I was bored in the beginning and only got fascinated during the last quarter, where there is this bit about tragedy and comedy – saying exactly what I said in my last post, only so much more perspicaciously and radically.) I gave the actor one thumb up – solely because - as, in this case, the actor practically IS the film and the film is great - I had to ASSUME that Joachim Phoenix must be a good actor. (I should have been reassured about this by him winning an Oscar, of course, but I never am.) The thing is that I couldn’t TELL. In fact, I had been bored with the much bigger half of the film and only fully noticed what an interesting film it is when I was done watching ( – which sounds absurd but happens regularly to me. It is the reason why I almost never stop watching when I am bored. I know from experience that I might be bored because I don’t (yet) understand what the film is about. And the films that I don’t understand at first are the most likely to tell me something new or show me something in a new light.). The reason I had been bored was exactly THIS: That I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell if I liked what the actor was doing. And that bothered me … more so as I have now positive proof that it has nothing to do with my rating of him as a man – where I must have disappointed my sister giving him two thumbs down. The proof being what recently happened about Toby Jones and “Uncle Vanya” - which made me aware that my finding somebody fascinating as an actor basically has nothing to do with the fact that I find them sexy, or attractive as a person. (“Basically” because, if I don’t, it might take so much longer until I NOTICE that it might never happen.)

It bothered me that I couldn’t tell about Joaquim Phoenix – having so much “independent” proof. And this made me aware that this is something which happens all the time. That is, it happens all the time IN FILMS whereas it never happens when I am watching THEATRE. With theatre, I can always tell if an actor is good or not. And quite often this even leads to unpleasantness – mostly when I am actually IN the theatre watching. I am stressing this because I see theatre productions much more often on DVD or in the cinema than actually in the theatre because I cannot afford to travel to London or Stratford all the time. And with recorded theatre this practically never happens: a lead actor being more or less out of sorts. It just happens EVERY TIME I am actually IN the theatre. And – though this has only been a few times lately – I guess that means that it happens a lot. It happened when I saw “Macbeth” in Stratford, and - even though I loved Chris Eccleston’s playing - I could see that he was only at about sixty to eighty percent on that day (- which is still over fifty percent more than most other actors!). And I definitely KNEW this when I finally saw him at a hundred and thirty on DVD. (Still, if he wants to go on playing Shakespeare - which I fervently hope! - he should really get used to learn his text WORD FOR WORD, it actually helps!) It happened with “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Olivier Theatre – where everybody was good on that day EXCEPT Ralph Fiennes – whereas he WAS when I saw it again in the “Cinema”! And it happened recently when the curtain was raised on “Uncle Vanya” and I became aware that Richard Armitage was boring me … And - though I was appalled, especially in this case! - in a way, I always come to love this kind of failure. I love it because it infallibly leads to some important discovery. As “Uncle Vanya” could not be recorded, there will be no direct comparison, but my most intense theatre experience – at least until I saw James McAvoy recently as Cyrano – was the twenty or so seconds when Richard Armitage entered the stage in “The Crucible” BEFORE he opened his mouth to say anything and BEFORE he did anything at all, and when I KNEW something extraordinary was going to happen. Compared with what DIDN’T happen when I saw him at be beginning of “Uncle Vanya”, it is my stellar point of reference for what I can always see in the theatre and so often cannot see in films. In the theatre, I ALWAYS see if an actor is ACTING.

  

I don’t know yet why this is so, but I suspect that I had actually been right about the FOURTH WALL when I brought it up the first time in my blog. In the theatre, I never just see characters in a story, I ALWAYS see actors acting at the same time. And when I CANNOT see it, I know that there is something wrong. There is nothing more irritating or dispiriting in the theatre than an actor who isn’t acting. I believe the reason for this is that, in a stage situation, it is the ACTING which creates the fourth wall. More precisely: the acting and NOTHING ELSE. I love to hit on the “fourth wall” in films – when a speck of mud or drop of water hit the camera – because I like it to become aware of a fictional situation. It is also an indication that in films it is created in a different way. That the way of going through a door into the fictional world is different. There are important films without any significant acting – though I usually love the other kind. I sometimes notice the use of music in the theatre with pleasure – but I would never miss it. Whereas I desperately miss it in films, except in the rare cases where the lack of a soundtrack is actually compensated by the acting - as I noticed recently on behalf of “My Zoe”. Most (conventional) films actually don’t WORK without their soundtrack, whereas in the theatre only the actors – and especially the way they are INTERACTING - determine what we are supposed to feel. There is this intense PHYSICALITY which somehow never works like this in films where people get naked all the time, and have sex, and it is never remotely like when actors just touch or just react physically with one another on a stage. Of course actors love this: being so totally in control of the fictional situation, getting in touch with their audience without actually having to meet them, having this immediate power to guide us where they want to. But it is also a heavy and exhausting responsibility, doing this every single time over a period of weeks and months. Therefore I am always lenient regarding this kind of failure, at least if it is temporary – but this is not the point.

The point, in this context, is that, watching theatre, I CANNOT start reading until I get convinced that the actors ARE ACTING. In the theatre I cannot go through that door into the fictional world unless the actors open it for me. And this happens THE MOMENT I see them acting. The exciting twenty seconds in “The Crucible” and the many agonizing minutes at the beginning of “Uncle Vanya” are positive proof of something that is usually difficult to determine: if there is some quality IN THE TEXT that actually turns the expectation of a fictional situation into a fictional situation. It is one of these rare opportunities where I was able to actually lay a finger on something that has to be there - independent of me as a reader - and which I came to think of as the TEXT VORTEX.