Collaboraction is a fine company that came into my sphere of influence (them influencing me for the most part) by way of one Jacklyn Hosely, a wonderful girl who managed a show for them a few years back.
I had the opportunity to see 1001 last weekend and it charmed me as all their shows have.
They pull skilled people and let them play safely, they create magical spaces… anyway, I’m a fan.
At the show, I happened to sit between two fantastic people, a young woman who wished to go unnamed, who dropped, this on me:
And a cool guy who happened to be reading A Game of Thrones. “Oh, you’re going to start that now? Knowing what you know?” I asked him.
“What is it that I know?”
“That it took him like 10 years to write the last book and there are, what? Five left? And it was supposed to be a trilogy.”
“Well, I’m only on book one, and I have four or five to go, I figure he’ll be done by time I get to it. Plus, it’s not crack, I can stop anytime I like.”
“Just from looking at you, I can tell, it’s not likely to take you ten years to finish five books. Long as those books might be.”
And then the show happened.
Afterwards I asked Kai, “What did you think about the use of 9/11 as a backdrop.”
“Oh, what?” She asked in return.
“Well, how did you feel about it being set during the 9/11 attacks?”
“Was it?”
I tell her how I saw that as the main thread, the story that all the other stories went back to.
But in the moments of watching she felt all the stories remained unconnected, bits of dream unfinished, nothing whole. She felt my musings, that they fit around a particular tragic narrative made sense, particularly the sadness of it at the end. “Made it sadder though.”
I tell her what I know about Sir Richard Burton, a man who helped popularize the Arabian Nights, but I forget to tell her about his wife. Who burnt all his unfinished manuscripts despite his final wish that they be published. He’d told her for sure, but due to letters we also know that he secreted this knowledge to a close friend, told him to break into his house and grab them, that surely she’d not let them survive long after him.
His wife told the press and friends, “He came to me in a dream, and repented for the past sins of his work. He’d fully converted right before God took him into heaven.” I know well of the theory that even after death, we get one last chance to sit and choose between good and evil. I don’t think that Sir Richard Burton’s writings were evil, but the times were different back then. Book burning was more prevalent, I’d imagine.
This weekend is the last showing. If you end up seeing 1001, these vinniets will probably be more meaningful. If you don’t see Collaboraction’s 1001, dream about it instead.
Speaking of dreams, don’t forget about Journey to the End of the Night.
