#101, July 3^rd, 2006

Scenes from “The Piper”

The concept behind this production (very much a work in progress) is the coming together of drama and dance to represent different aspects of the human experience, the external and the everyday represented through drama, and the internal and psychological represented through dance. While there would be cross-over in the meaning and significance of the two performing arts, the drama would provide a glimpse of the positivist world, providing one moral framework for viewing our central character, Arnold, while the dance would reveal his mind at work, enraptured by art and children’s literature, enticed and imprisoned in a world of acid and madness. And in all of this there will be the work of creation, the coming together of psychedelic rock as a product of alienation, of romantic yearning for a world outside the post-war sterility of suburban Britain, and/or an acid reflex (excuse the pun).

[It should be noted that this entry was originally posted a couple of days before Syd Barrett's death. Since then it has been altered a little. Arnold clearly has a very different background from Syd Barrett, who was more middle class than the character here. But the response to suburban culture emerging in England at the time would have been similar.]

The stage will have to allow for quick transitions from drama to dance and back, though the choreography may incorporate or weave through parts of the scenery.

Arnold is based very, very loosely on the life and artistic work of Syd Barrett, the founder of The Pink Floyd, and through ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ the story focuses on the breaking down of Arnold's character as he wound his way towards a reclusive existence. The title of the album, drawn from The Wind in the Willows, will allow the particular chapter with the album’s name to be represented through dance, along with other scenes that will be placed in the context of the stage drama. The music will not just be the album in question. One of Barrett’s influences, Jimi Hendrix, will need to be represented – along with his impact on the racial psychosis of ’60s Britain. The sections from The Wind in the Willows will need a different tone and quality from the pieces coming from the album – most likely with two different sets of dancers, one group representing the childlike, the other madness – though the two will come together and mix on occasion.

Particular pieces to choreograph from the album:

"Astronomy Domine"

"Flame"

"Chapter 24"

"Matilda Mother"

"Scarecrow"

Music for the scene from “The Wind in the Willows” will be "Gnome"

Music for the Piper at the Gates of Dawn scene will end in "Matilda Mother"

Music for other purposes – madness scenes in play: "Interstellar Overdrive"

Sample Scenes:

Opening Scene: Arnold Unscene

Music from “Astronomy Domine”, group dance set off by psychedelic lighting effects. Arnold in the middle of the stage curled up in a crouch. As the music approaches the end of the song and descends into “lime and limpid, green the sounds surrounds the icy water under ground” he comes unfurled and rises into a standing position with acoustic guitar around his neck and with arms outstretched. The dancers slow down as the music does and with the last note all the dancers turn to look at Syd, the lighting framing him.

Arnold:

Welcome to my mind –

screams above delusion;

a victim of my rhyme –

searching amidst confusion.

[moves to side to pick up note pad and pencil, and continues reading, semi-tunefully singing, and correcting his jottings.]

Welcome to my world –

a world of madness and destruction,

a world where thought is trapped

in sterile mod construction

where humor remains

the soul mate of the child

and music is

the sole mate of the wild.

Be the scarecrow,

the mole, the rat, and toad,

‘cos there ain’t much else

to supply a...

to reap the mother lode…ugh!

[enter father; Arnold looks up at him]

Father: A load of old cobblers, if you ask me. What are you wasting you time on that lot for? There’s a good job to be had, if you’ll only apply yourself, lad.

Arnoldd: Leave me alone, Dad. I’m composing. It’s a new world. We don’t need your factories anymore – what are you making? -- same old same old. I’m going to make dreams and fantasies become reality. The real has become unreal and the unreal has become the new real. You can’t live off your bread alone – and anyway you’re just waiting to be put on the unemployment queue – while my load of old cobblers is going to ignite the world.

[lights, music, dance.]

Middling Scene: Organization Man/Bike

[Part of stage made up as a sparsely furnished sitting room – sparsely, so that there is room for the movement and dance that develops in and around the room. The lights come up on Arnold standing animated, father sitting in his arm chair with his Daily Express, mother sitting on sofa.]

Arnold: I want to make music that transports people away from this shit. I want to be a piper calling the people from their miserable lives, their nine-to-fives – nine-to-five, what’s all that for? [To father] Running around like a chicken with your head cut off, being ordered around by the boss, day in and day out, just so that you can live here. What’s that about? You think you’re The Man, but you get pushed around like you’re still a kid...

Father [dismissively]: Get a job, why don’t you! Then you’ll understand there’s more to it than that. You need security, and all you’ve got is this dream of being a little pied bloody piper. Well you can take your little children off into your little drugged out utopia of fornication, while we grown ups will make it possible for you to live your cushy lives. All you’re going to do is sell a few bloody records – the people who buy them are the stiffs who have the jobs. They’ll listen to your 45 a few times and then toss it, because they won’t give a toss about your bloody druggy heaven. Look at you, no one’s going to follow you anywhere, with your greasy locks and sissy clothing.

Arnold [distractedly, disengaged]: I’ve got a bike you can ride it if you like, it’s got a basket, a bell that rings, and things to make it look good. I’d give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.

Father: There you go again, with your nonsense. You think anyone cares if you are Humpty bloody Dumpty, Winnie the frigging Pooh, or Toad of bleeding Toad Hall? Get a job!

Arnold: I’ve got a mouse and he hasn’t got a house, I don’t know why I call him Gerald. He’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse… [continues to recite “Bike” through remainder of scene]

Mother: Leave him alone, dear. He’s being creative.

Father: Creative, my arse. We don’t live in a world of creativity, we live near Milton bloody Keynes. We live in a redbrick heaven and he thinks he’s part of some nativity, the second bloody coming. Well there’s the product of all his fornication, a second coming, but he’s so drugged up he doesn’t even know about the first.

Mother: You weren’t so different yourself, dear. You seem to have forgotten when you used to go down the boozer with the lads after a game and get drunk out of your skulls. I bet you were off seeing the local girls too when we weren’t looking.

Father: Look, Ethel, we were becoming men. We knew we were going to be working all our lives to look after the wife, bring up decent kids, give them an opportunity – opportunity for what? – for this? We fought a bleeding war against Hitler, what for? so our kids can go over to Munich and play some electronic noise at their night clubs. We were saving the bloody world, saving civilization, so that this drip can drop his stink bombs on society and think it’s bloody music.

Mother: It’s a different world alright, and we just need to begin recognizing that. We were different from our parents. My mum never worked in a factory making shell casings, your dad never lived in a suburb – he walked to the factory – he didn’t have a Morris Minor.

Arnold [shouting, crescendo to end in scream]: I know a room full of musical tunes. Some rhyme, some ching, most of them are clockwork. Let's go into the other room and make them WORK.

[Key music from “Pow. R. Toc. H.” – choreographed dance around and through the sitting room, and around the characters; Arnold responds occasionally to different points of the music, as if in anguish, with parents coming to him thinking he is having a seizure of some kind. Lights turn off and scene ends with the final crash of the music.]

Scene: At the gates of dawn

Lights come up on the Mole lazing on bank of the river. Enter Arnold and the Mole.

Arnold [reading from “The Wind in the Willows”]: ….It was still too hot to think of staying indoors, so the Mole lay on some cool dock-leaves, and thought over the past day and its doings, and how very good they all had been. The Rat’s light footfall was presently heard approaching over the parched grass….

[Enter The Rat.]

The Rat : I’m afraid the Otter has troubles. Young Portly is missing again.

The Mole: Well he is always rushing off, he is so adventurous.

The Rat: But this time he’s been gone for days and there is no sign of him anywhere. There are traps out there and he is not the best swimmer so the family is very anxious. Otter’s not the fellow to be nervous about any son of his before its time. But now even he is nervous. He is now staying next to the ford where he taught Portly to fish, to wait for him to return. He is hoping that he will return there as it is the child’s favorite spot.

Arnold: [reading]: They were silent for a time, both thinking of the same thing – the lonely, heart-sore animal, crouched by the ford, watching and waiting, the long night through – on the chance.

The Rat: Well, well, I suppose we ought to be thinking about turning in.

Arnold: But the rat never offered to move.

The Mole: Rat, I simply can’t go and turn in, and go to sleep, and do nothing, even though there doesn’t seem to be anything to be done. We’ll get the boat out and paddle upstream. The moon will be out in an hour or so, and searching is better than going to bed and doing nothing.

The Rat: Just what I was thinking myself. We may pick up some news of him from early risers as we go along.

Arnold: They got the boat out, and the Rat took the sculls, paddling with caution. They traveled upstream until they found a willow to which to fasten their boat. The friends then landed and patiently explored the runnels and their little culverts, the ditches and the waterways. Embarking again and crossing over, they then carried out a search on the other bank. Then, after the moon’s hour had come and she sank earthwards reluctantly, and left them and mystery held field and river.

Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them. A bird piped suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole looked at him with curiosity.

The Rat: It’s gone. So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!

Arnold: Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.

The Rat: Now it passes on and I begin to lose it. O Mole! The beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.

The Mole: I hear nothing myself, but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.

Arnold: The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported, trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.

The Rat: Clearer and nearer still. Now you must surely hear it! Ah – at last – I see that you do!

Arnold: Breathless and transfixed the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade’s cheeks, and bowed his head and understood. For a space they hung there, brushed by the purple loosestrife that fringed the bank; then the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will on Mole, and mechanically he bent to his oars again. [Continues reading while music grows, and dancers appear around the three characters]….

Final Scene: ‘Chapter 24’

Arnold lying on a table surrounded by people holding him down, as if he were being given shock therapy by doctors and nurses (though he isn’t being), while the music of ‘Chapter 24’ is playing and psychedelic images are shown on a screen and dancing images flit across the stage in streaks of color.

Arnold [in a trance]: I am the piper, the piper; I am the piper, the piper; I am not the piper, not the piper; I hear the siren call….

The play ends with a primal scream, morphing into the ending of the album – those last tacked-on bits of music played at the end of ‘Bike’.

© Rob Gregg, 2006