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Before They Were Night Vale #3: A User Friendly Guide to the Torah
🕑 Added 2020-05-07 15:22:05 +0000 UTCWelcome to "Before They Were Night Vale", our new feature in which Night Vale creators Jeffrey and Joseph share writing from before their Welcome to Night Vale collaboration, along with commentary. Come explore their early writing, both good and bad.
Warning: This piece contains explicit content.
Joseph: Today I browsed back through my writing folder on my computer. I've copied that folder from computer to computer so faithfully that there are documents in there with a Last Modified date in the late 90s. I stumbled on this piece of writing and thought it might interest folks. This is a short play I wrote about 10 years ago for a workshop with the Neo-Futurists, the theater company through which I met Jeffrey and Cecil. I wrote this play in about 10 minutes, based on some prompt that I now forget. My goal was to write a summary of the Torah that was accurate and yet set in language that would make it somewhat unrecognizable. I was raised religiously Jewish, and I feel that identity in a lot of what I write, but it rarely is right on the surface. Those with some knowledge of the Torah might notice some of the subtle references and jokes I put in this. Others can just enjoy what is a sloppy but, I think, interesting bit of poetry.
A note again that, like the Torah, this passage contains at least one bit of seriously explicit content.
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Man sits center stage.
Which is to say that the son saw the father in their mid-size home somewhere in a mid-size state somewhere in a and the son saw the father and the father was nude and completely erect which is to say that the son saw the father and the father was fucking the daughter and he was nude which is to say that we are blessed, we are blessed, we are blessed, we are blessed, we are
Man rises at “we are blessed” and exits while still speaking. Beat. He enters again mid-line and sits.
“I’m leaving,” he said, “I’ve left,” he said, “Go forth,” he said, we had a lovely barbecue with some work friends, but there was no food and so we lit the fire and we watched the coal glow hot but cook nothing, “I’ve arrived,” he said, “I’m leaving,” he said, “I’m blessed,” he said, “I’m blessed, he said, he said “I’m blessed,” he said, oh, and then the mosquitoes came and we all took to the hills but not nearly fast enough, he said
Man rises at “I’m blessed” and exits while still speaking. Beat. He enters again mid-line and sits.
And it is done a certain way, so that we never see it through the window nor feel the breeze through the casement, and it’s done a certain way in which this goes over here, just so, and we hang the laundry on the fire escape to save on costs, and this never becomes that, nor the other way around and it’s done, I should say, a certain way, so that the sunlight perfectly, and I mean perfectly, perfectly blessed, we are perfectly blessed, we are perfect and blessed, we are perfectly blessed, and I almost forgot that it is done a certain way, so that
Man rises at “perfectly blessed” and exits while still speaking. Beat. He enters again mid-line and sits.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41
Man rises after a few moments of counting and and exits while still speaking. Beat. He enters again mid-line and sits
Looking back, you know, at the son seeing the father and leaving, and it is true that the father was, looking back, quite nude, completely so, he said, which is why, you know, it must be done a certain way, you can count on that, 2, 3, 4, in any case I won’t make it to the do I’m afraid, but it’s been a lovely day, a really lovely day, and I just feel blessed, just blessed, you know, because, you know, anywho, I found the right way of sitting, I think, “It’s over there,” he said, “Just over there,” he said, “Bless you, “ he said, and bless you, and he blessed, and in saying, he said.
curtain
Comments
NickX
I always love your poetry but I have nothing much to compare it to in this case, because I was raised an atheist. Lest you get the impression that this was some bourgeois luxury, understand that I was born in 1982 and I was raised in Houston, Texas by two people who had been deeply let down (and worse) by the practitioners of the endemic religions of the American south. In my turn, I would come to understand where they were coming from, growing up transgendered (and gay, but at that point what does it matter? ;)) in that environment while it was still common for southern politicians to talk about homosexuality like it was a demonic plot to destroy western civilization. Responsibility for acts of demonic nihilism and the fate of western civilization is a heavy mantle to bear when you're 13 years old. When I got this poem in my inbox, I sent it to my best friend, who was raised Jewish and who was proud to take a Jewish name when he transitioned, even though he's an atheist now. He said, "I found the Torah description to be a really productive perspective of the Torah, and I enjoyed it immensely. Have you read any parts of the Torah?" And I thought, I'd like to, actually. And I was pleased to have shared Night Vale with him, and perhaps for him to share the Torah with me. [apologies for the other comment slot, I hit enter too soon D;)
