acousticspace

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NARRATOR:
You have approached Zarathustra, and as you have come closer, you brought forth the death-as-dog, you rang in the air, in our ears, you whispered, you sighed, and you have spoken with flaming roars:

ZARATHUSTRA:
They come like fate. They appear as lightning appears.
Too terrible, too sudden

NARRATOR:
(Overlapping Zarathustra) Wonderful and unbearable.

Loud, irregular drum beat turns into soft rattles.

NARRATOR:
Death alit, you have set the night alight, Zarathustra, it is still burning.

ZARATHUSTRA:
A dream I had dreamt, life of renounce, that a night-watchman I had become, a grave-guardian. I inhaled eternities, and there on the sidewalk my soul laid covered with filth. Brightness of midnight surrounded me and lonesomeness cowered on my side and the death-rattle stillness embraced me with such warmth.

The rattle ends. Silence.

ZARATHUSTRA:
I heard the clang of rusty keys I carried with me, creak of all the gates I opened, croak of long hallways I strode, a bird’s cry I unwillingly awakened. But then all fell into silence, a malignant stillness, and I alone sat there in thirst for sound. Time passes, thus life, and there rang at the gate the peals of thunders and I howled and I cried “O life! Did you burn? Who will carry your ashes unto the mountains?” Then did a roaring wind tear the folds of the gate apart:  whistling, whizzing, and piercing, it threw unto me a black coffin!

NARRATOR:
Life is now burning in very small rooms Zarathustra, with windows shut tight, even the roaring winds cannot leak in. These rooms, narrow and low, are dispersed throughout many flights of tall buildings. Their walls are light gray with melancholia of the drizzly afternoons, and they are rubbed clean and adorned with white linen.

Loud, irregular beats of the drum resume.

ZARATHUSTRA:
And in the roaring, and whistling, and whizzing the coffin burst a thousand peals of laughter. And a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools, and child-
sized butterflies laughed and mocked, and roared at me. I cried with horror as I never cried before and I was woken up by my own cry.

The irregular drum beat, together with other noises, car crashes, screeches, screams, sounds of explosions and gunshots, gets louder and noisier and comes to a sudden stop. Narrator speaks almost with a whisper.

NARRATOR:
Life is now burning in absolute silence. We breathe in its smoke of fear and phantom pain. Are we not poisoned, Zarathustra, are we not dying its phantom death?