Interior Shots

 

Front room.  Dimly-lit, curtains drawn – brown curtains with marigold stripes.  

It was a large room.  Large enough to accommodate a score or so of people; in this instance, ten of them were gathered in a circle in the middle, meditating, most upright on wooden stools, and one of them sinking into a bean bag chair; they had only so many hard wooden stools unfortunately.  Unfinished paintings of lotuses decorated the room’s white walls.  Incomplete teal-blue lotuses.  Rose-red half lotuses.  Partially-done mulberry lotuses.  One forest green lotus lay quarter-finished on the back wall next to a tall bookcase with a small framed photo on top of Fatty Arbuckle looking very sad indeed; encyclopaedias, eccentric dictionaries and occult favourites lined the shelves of the bookcase, and on the lowest, a row of vintage penny dreadfuls.  ELDER was at the front of the room, sitting by a piano only others played combing his beard sensitively and surveying the congregation as they meditated below.  Near the piano was a blackboard which said on it:

4 Steps to Depoliticisation:

1. Keep still, eyes closed
2. Breathe slow through front holes
3. Turn brain over until soaked in head juice
4. Wait

The chalk lettering was more fanciful than surely it needed to be, but ELDER’s innate swish was unstoppable no matter which writing utensil he used.   

 

A single studio light had been set up in the middle of the room on a tripod.  It was there to capture a certain atmosphere CAMERAMAN was after as he moved around the circle with a Super 8mm camera, filming them one after the other in close-up, while in their individual states of serenity.

 

The Cast:

 

ENGLISH FOLK SINGER

The soft yellow fluff on his chin declared a man in his mid-twenties but he was well into his forties by now.  He had a hit in 1970 with Aw, Mr. Tumnal.  But there were no more hits after that.  He arrived in Ireland last year to participate in the anti-nuclear protests at Wexford and proceeded to rebuild his public profile (in Ireland at least) with appearances on numerous television programmes where he discussed the issue at further nauseum.  He had made no plans to leave the country just yet.

 

FOOD CRITIC

A rake-thin woman in her fifties whose book Best Places To Eat in Offaly was widely regarded to be the final word on the subject.  She had spent the last five years wandering from Zen master to Zen master until finding ELDER who she told within weeks of arriving: I like how you spread your nut butter.       

 

ARCHAEOLOGIST

He had taken leave of absence last winter after an excavation in Westmeath went horribly wrong.  Following a dispute with his team leader about the likelihood of encountering some pottery in a cluster of ring ditches they had found, he was subsequently accused of stealing the man’s sandwiches while wandering alone like some creep in the campsite.  The incident sparked months of self-reflection and the search for a new home, which he now believed, though wasn’t absolutely certain, he had found.         

 

COGNITIVE THERAPIST AND HIS WIFE THE UNFINISHED LOTUS ARTIST

A pair of sinless baldies.  They were out of their gourds half the time on hash or mushrooms, keeping to what they believed were the more natural earthier substances, and the others had to hide their cocaine away in case they got a scolding for it.  Together one evening they tonsured their heads after watching an episode of Kung Fu and to this day they proudly told the story when someone happened to ask them about their shiny shaved heads so as to be absolutely honest about their ‘journey’.  Secretly they were deeply embarrassed to have been inspired by David Carradine’s bald cap and squint but let it be known by all that they were naive back then.  They were now schooled enough in Buddhist scriptures and traditions to lie about how they got there and get away with it, but they feared their future incarnations might be compromised if they resorted to such monkey business.   

 

ALCOHOLIC

A former conveyor operator from Cavan, he was the only one who had so far admitted he had a significant problem with the empire of booze, which made him a perfect human project for the others, someone to mentor, advise, comfort, pity, probe and humiliate in the free time between enlightenment sessions.  He’d lost his job because of his drinking and now he was the ultimate searcher.  All the New Age stood for, its humanity and generosity, its viability in a disoriented world, was clearly there for everyone to see in his weepy hopeful eyes.

 

RUNAWAY 2

Pretty with long red hair, you might have seen her dancing in the audience when Thin Lizzy were doing Jailbreak on Top of the Pops, but it wasn’t her.  Just someone who looked a lot like me, she would tell you.  A philosophy undergraduate at UCD, she fled the course when an electrocution (brought on by a faulty old toaster in her digs) resulted in a near death experience: she found herself floating in a lemony sky with wavy shapes she imagined were angels, resolutely atheist ones, reaching out to her in the distance.  Waking on the kitchen floor to her entering flatmate’s shock, she got straight up, went to her room, packed her bags, and began a year-long trip which took in a number of cultural festivals across Europe, an affair with a punk rock star, heroin addiction, and a brush with Satanism before realising finally ah, she was really a hippy when all was said and done.    

 

POSTMASTER

He had come in the spring full of fatherly bravado with the aim of freeing his daughter, RUNAWAY 1, from ELDER’s spell; however he wound up getting sucked into it all himself and stayed on and his daughter was long gone to pursue a career in teaching.  Like his daughter now, he was a servant of the greater public, so he was extremely confident the post office would quietly take him back once he was done with his quest for spiritual refinement.

 

FRENCH NOVELIST

She had so far refused to allow her novels, La Castration and L’Anus D’Or, appear in English translations, even though both had been widely respected within the countercultural movements of the late 1960s, and Alain Robbe-Grillet had been eager to adapt La Castration for the screen before she embraced a more arcane existence.  Some years earlier, she became fascinated with UFOs and an article written by ELDER for the Fortean Times entitled I have Identified Flying Objects over the Irish countryside...and they are ALIENS, a rather swaggering piece, had enticed her enough to abandon Parisian literary society for a life of contemplation under those same mysterious skies.  Even in middle age, she had an eternal beauty like one of those stars born in the silent era, fragile and ageless like Lillian Gish; but intolerance was rising now on the face of Lillian Gish, for a swinging foot – not hers – was just below kick-kick-kicking and interrupting her spiritual calm, and it was the foot of

 

HUMANIST

Who was the one sinking into the bean bag and oblivious to the personal space of others.  A deeply unpleasant man...

 

ELDER: (standing up) Cut!

 

CAMERAMAN stopped filming and everyone opened their eyes.

 

FOOD CRITIC: What is going on?  I’m not fully cleansed yet.

ELDER:  I think a car just pulled up outside. 

He slid back part of the curtain to have a look; the outside day shone into the room and rather than uplift them with its splendour, the assembled shielded their faces like a pack of sun-fearing ghouls.

ELDER:  Ah...

FOOD CRITIC: Who is it?

ELDER:  Two people.  However, one of them I know.  I asked her to come here.  I completely forgot.  Ha!  Please.  Do not tell them about...you know...at least...not yet.

FOOD CRITIC:  Yes, of course.  (turning to ARCHAEOLOGIST)  Do not tell them anything.

ARCHAEOLOGIST (irritably):  I know.  I heard him.