STAGE
In the archive, present day |
|
NEVA |
Archival researcher, mid-thirties |
GERTRUDE |
Archivist in her seventies |
LLOYD |
Archival assistant and guard, early thirties |
New York and Mexico, 1917–18 |
|
MINA |
Mina Loy, age 35 |
SAGE |
Reporter from the Evening Sun, 1917 (anon.) |
CRAVAN |
Arthur Cravan, age 30 |
Aspen, 1965 |
|
LOY |
Mina Loy, age 82 |
BLACKBURN |
Paul Blackburn, poet/interviewer, age 39 |
JOELLA |
Loy’s eldest daughter, age 58 |
The play is written for five stage actors, with the following multiple roles: NEVA/MINA; GERTRUDE/LOY; LLOYD/CRAVAN; SAGE/BLACKBURN. The JOELLA role should be kept separate, if possible, for the sake of clarity. Costumed, these actors can also perform the film roles, though these can equally by undertaken by additional actors according to directorial intentions and resources. The film excerpts from Libeled Lady and Test Pilot are meant to be the Hollywood originals.
FILMS
MARINETTI |
Filippo Marinetti, leader of Italian futurists |
DODGE |
Mabel Dodge, arts patron |
STEIN |
Gertrude Stein, American writer |
PAPINI |
Giovanni Papini, futurist philosopher |
DUCHAMP |
Marcel Duchamp, French artist (NY Dada) |
PICABIA |
Francis Picabia, French artist (NY Dada) |
CRAVAN |
|
MINA |
|
BLONDE COUNTESS |
Figure at the Arensbergs’ salon |
WILLIAMS |
William Carlos Williams, American writer |
BROWN |
Bob Brown, American writer |
MCALMON |
Robert McAlmon, American writer and publisher |
BARNES |
Djuna Barnes, American writer |
WALTERS |
Member of modernist scene in McAlmon’s “Post-Adolescence” |
POLICE OFFICER |
Mexico City, 1918 |
JOELLA |
Age 16 |
PRE-RECORDED VOICES
BRITISH ART SCHOOL TEACHER |
At Saint John’s Wood |
MARINETTI |
Reciting the futurist manifesto in Italian |
ACT I
At rise, GERTRUDE sits at the archivist’s desk,
filling out a form in pencil. LLOYD stands to
the right of the desk, hands clasped behind
his back, looking faintly bored. NEVA sits at
the researcher’s table, a pad, pencil, and tablet
in front of her, waiting with growing impatience.
She is obviously cold and puts her jacket on.
Eventually, she stands and approaches GERTRUDE’s desk.
NEVA
Excuse me.
GERTRUDE looks up, nonplussed.
GERTRUDE
Yes.
NEVA
It’s 1:30.
GERTRUDE
(Checking her watch) 1:33.
NEVA
Okay, 1:33. Didn’t you say the files would arrive from the central library at noon?
GERTRUDE
They did.
NEVA
Well, do you know when my Loy files might arrive?
GERTRUDE
Loy?
NEVA
Mina Loy.
GERTRUDE
The actress?
NEVA
The poet. The files I ordered yesterday?
GERTRUDE
(Checking her chart) Yes, they’ve arrived. They’re being processed downstairs.
NEVA
Do you know when they might be brought up?
GERTRUDE
Yours isn’t the only request, you know.
NEVA
Er, right … But I’m the only one here.
GERTRUDE
Correction. You are the only one who has chosen to wait here. There’s a professor working on environmental records who has come every day for three months.
NEVA
Right, well, I’m only in town for two days. What are the chances I might see something this afternoon?
GERTRUDE
We are dealing with budget cuts, you know.
NEVA
Yes, of course.
GERTRUDE
And it’s been very busy.
NEVA
(Looking around the empty space) I can see that.
GERTRUDE
Fine. (Pushing a piece of paper across the desk to NEVA) Why don’t you write down what you most need and I’ll see what I can do.
NEVA
Great. (Digging in her pocket for something to write with) Thanks a lot.
NEVA pulls a pen out of her pocket
and moves toward the sheet of paper.
GERTRUDE
STOP!
NEVA
What?
GERTRUDE
Is that a PEN?
NEVA
Ah –
GERTRUDE
Lloyd!
LLOYD approaches.
GERTRUDE
Lloyd, this woman has a pen. It is your job to ensure that no one enters the archive with a pen.
LLOYD
I checked her bag.
GERTRUDE
Diligence! The pen was hidden in her pocket.
NEVA
It wasn’t hidden –
GERTRUDE
It was concealed. A concealed pen.
GERTRUDE pulls forward a sign on
her desk that reads: PENCILS ONLY.
PENS WILL BE CONFISCATED. She holds
out her hand to NEVA.
NEVA
Seriously?
GERTRUDE
I assure you we take the care of our materials very seriously.
NEVA hands over the pen.
GERTRUDE takes it, handling it like
a dangerous weapon.
GERTRUDE
You may claim it when you leave. (To LLOYD) Lloyd, please check downstairs on the status of the Myrna Loy1 files.
NEVA
Mina Loy.
GERTRUDE
That is what I said. You may return to your seat while Lloyd inquires downstairs.
Lloyd exits S.R. NEVA loiters by
GERTRUDE’s desk, waiting.
She rubs her arms again.
NEVA
Is there any chance the heat might be turned up a little? It’s really cold.
GERTRUDE
This is the temperature best suited to the conservation of documents.
NEVA
It feels like it’s five degrees in here.
GERTRUDE
Ten degrees. Control of temperature and relative humidity is critical in the preservation of library and archival collections because unacceptable levels of these contribute significantly to the breakdown of materials. Heat accelerates deterioration: the rate of most chemical reactions, including deterioration, is approximately doubled with each increase in temperature of ten degrees.2
NEVA
I see.
GERTRUDE stares. NEVA returns to
her seat and rubs her arms and blows
into her hands for warmth. GERTRUDE
returns to her paperwork. LLOYD enters
S.R. with a large box of files and places
them on the desk beside NEVA.
NEVA
Thanks.
LLOYD nods and turns to leave.
NEVA
Um – sorry about the pen thing.
LLOYD
’T’s okay.
NEVA
I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I mean – (NEVA lowers her voice and LLOYD moves toward her) is it always like this here?
LLOYD
Pretty much. Except on fire drill days.
NEVA
Fire drill – ?
LLOYD
And once someone discovered a bloody knife in one of the boxes.
NEVA
A?
LLOYD
Knife, yeah. Something to do with a murder case like a hundred years ago.
NEVA
Wow. That must have been exciting.
LLOYD
Yeah, sorta.
There is an awkward pause.
NEVA pulls the box toward her.
NEVA
Well, thanks. I guess I’ll dig in here.
LLOYD nods and walks back to his
post beside GERTRUDE’s desk, hands
behind his back. NEVA removes the top
of the box and goes to pull out one of
the files. GERTRUDE looks up and
jumps out of her seat.
GERTRUDE
Wait!
NEVA jumps and backs away from the box.
GERTRUDE
Gloves!
NEVA
Gloves?
GERTRUDE
Did you bring white gloves to handle the materials?
NEVA
I’ve worked in a lot of archives. I’ve never had to wear gloves.
GERTRUDE
Then we will have to supply them.
GERTRUDE removes a pair of white
gloves from a drawer in her desk and
hands them to LLOYD.
GERTRUDE
Lloyd, please instruct this woman on how to put on the gloves and handle the materials.
NEVA
My name is Neva.
LLOYD brings the gloves over to
NEVA as GERTRUDE watches.
LLOYD
Ah – so. You gotta put on the gloves.
NEVA sighs, takes the gloves,
and puts them on.
LLOYD
Um – what are you looking for?
NEVA
An interview, mostly – that Loy did with the Evening Sun in 1917. And a bunch of other stuff. I’m writing a book on Loy. Loy and the interview as literary genre –
LLOYD
Okay. Well, interviews are print. If you get to photographs, try to handle them on the edges only.
NEVA
– I think it’s about genre. But it could be about poetics. Like, is the poetic voice authentic in Loy, or is it, like the interview, always performed?
LLOYD
Okay.
NEVA
Especially with Loy. Is she confessing … or is she playing? Honestly, I don’t know and I’ve been working on her for three years. There are all of these layers … Does that make any sense?
LLOYD
Sure. I mean, yeah.
NEVA
(NEVA looks over her shoulder and sees GERTRUDE looking at them) She’s watching.
LLOYD
Gertrude is always watching. She’s like –
NEVA
God?
LLOYD
More like Big Brother.
NEVA
In Orwell?
LLOYD
On CBS.
NEVA
Okay.
LLOYD
Your name’s Neva?
NEVA
Yeah. Yes.
LLOYD nods and walks away.
NEVA
(To herself) Stop talking. Just stop talking about the project.
NEVA looks over her shoulder.
GERTRUDE is watching.
GERTRUDE
Ssshh!
GERTRUDE turns back to her charts. NEVA takes a breath, looks over her shoulder, and begins to sort through the files. The stage lights darken and are replaced by a black light, which shows the white gloves moving back and forth between box and table. NEVA opens a file. As she takes out materials and spreads them on the table, archival images appear on a large projection screen onstage: a sketch of one of Mina Loy’s inventions, a handwritten page from a short story, a drawing. Each piece has words at the bottom of the page, which spell out the following phrase: “Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea – Mina Loy.”3 NEVA opens another file. We hear MARINETTI shouting the futurist manifesto in Italian. NEVA quickly shuts the file and the noise stops. NEVA opens another file. We hear the sounds of a jazz club in Paris in the 1920s. NEVA’s gloved hand rises as though she is about to call a waiter over to order a drink. She lowers her hand and closes the file. NEVA opens a third file. On the screen, we see an image of the 1917 newspaper interview. The image fades as the lights rise C.S. on MINA’s apartment in Greenwich Village, which is draped in exotic fabrics and papered with sketches for art projects, inventions, etc. There is a knock at the door, unanswered, followed by another. SAGE enters S.L.
SAGE
Uh – hello?
SAGE looks around the apartment
and scribbles something in his notebook.
SAGE
Miz Loy?
SAGE looks at a few poems that
are scattered on the desk. He raises
his eyebrows.
SAGE
Miz Loy?
MINA enters, in a bohemian dress
and with a cigarette in a long holder.
MINA
Real or apparition?
SAGE
Pardon?
MINA
(Lighting her cigarette and walking around SAGE) It’s the first thing one must ask when something appears in the living room. Is it real? Or has it been created in the realm of the imagination?
SAGE
Well, the door was open.
MINA
It always is. One must never close the door on imagination – or on the unexpected.
SAGE
Miz Loy. I’m Sage. From the Evening Sun? I have an appointment?
MINA
How fascinating.
SAGE
What’s that?
MINA
That we have an appointment. Usually I like to be taken by surprise. Of course I forgot about you, so you’re a surprise after all. Won’t you sit down?
SAGE
Sure. Sure, that’d be swell.
SAGE sits in an overstuffed purple
loveseat. MINA moves over to an
easel and begins to paint.
SAGE
I’m glad I’ve found you. Greenwich Village is a jungle. But here you are – 150 West Fifty-Seventh.
MINA
Here I am.
SAGE
Er – yes. Well, let’s start, shall we? As my editor may have mentioned, the article is about the modern woman. Who is she, where is she, what is she? Some people think women are the cause of modernism, whatever that is. (Trying to be clever) Looking at you now I already have a caption in mind. “Mina Loy, Painter, Poet, and Playwright, Doesn’t Try to Express Her Personality by Wearing Odd-Looking Draperies – Her Clothes Suggest the Smartest Shops, but Her Poems Would Have Puzzled Grandma.”4 What do you think of that one?
MINA gives SAGE an ironic glance
and chews idly on her cigarette holder.
SAGE
So, let’s get to the point: what is this “modern woman”?
MINA
The modern – (pauses as she adds a detail to the painting) the modern flings herself at life and lets herself feel what she does feel; then upon the very tick of the second she snatches the images of life that fly through the brain.5
SAGE
I … see. Well, what about your poetry, then? Your poems are the kind that people keep around for months and then dig out of corners to read to each other.6
MINA
SpawnofFantasies
Silting the appraisable
Pig Cupidhis rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage …7
(Looking at SAGE) Are you blushing? (Studying SAGE carefully) Vermilion.
SAGE
What?
LOY
Not crimson, cardinal, cerise, or scarlet. Your cheeks are vermilion.
SAGE
Well, ya gotta admit, Miz Loy – your poems are rather frank.
MINA
But of course that’s the modern way … if you are very frank with yourself and don’t mind how ridiculous anything that comes to you may seem, you will have a chance of capturing the symbol of your direct reaction.8
SAGE
Sounds a bit Freudian. Something to do with childhood, I suppose?
MINA
Oh, undoubtedly.
SAGE
How’s that?
MINA
I don’t think anything biographical would be cheerful.9
SAGE
Come now.
MINA
(Shrugs) If you like.
Two black and white photos appear on
the projection screen as though on a
newsreel – one of MINA’s father,
one of her mother, both very Victorian.
MINA stands in front of the screen and
gestures to each in turn.
My father:
Exodus10
The highest paidtailor’s
cutter in the City
ExodusLord Israel
nicknamedfrom his consummate bearing
his coaly eye
challengingthe unrevealed universe
speaking fluently“business English”
to the sartorial world
jabberingstock exchange quotations
and conundrums of finance
to whichunlettered immigrants are instantly
initiate11
My mother:
Early English everlasting12
quadrate Rose
paradox-Imperial
trimmed with some travestied flesh
tinted with bloodless duties dewed
with Lipton’s teas
[…]
Rose of arrested impulses
self-pruned
of the primordial attributes
a tepid heartinhibiting
with tactful terrorism13
[… ]
She
simpering in her
ideological pink
He
Loaded with Mosaic
passions that amass
like money
implores her to take pity upon him
and come and be a “Lady in the City”14
[…]
Oh God
that men and women
having undertaken to vanquish one another
should be allowed
to shut themselves up in hot boxes and breed15
MINA returns to her easel and begins a sketch.
MINA
Despite this Victorian beginning, art school, at least. First London.
BRITISH ART SCHOOL TEACHER (VOICE)
There, Miss Lowy. More shading. We want it to appear much like the object itself.
Image of St John’s Wood16 style of
drawing appears on the screen.
MINA
Then Munich, for a year …17
Images of Jugendstil embroideries
appear on the screen.
MINA
Then back to London for more art school …18 Then Paris for art school …19
Image of one of MINA’s nude model
photos appears on the screen.
MINA
These were the days of the dark-haired little dwarf … my first husband, Stephen Haweis.20 He had a famous name from his parents.21 I, of course, made my own name … Löwy to Loy. That was the difference between us.
MINA’s sketch of Haweis appears on the screen.
MINA
I believe Stephen must have hypnotized me … and I found myself pregnant. My parents were delighted.
The photograph of MINA’s parents
reappears, with animated hands clapping.
Thus it came about that I, this weakened creature, actually united in wedlock to the being on earth whom I would have least chosen.22 (She picks up a paintbrush and turns to another project)
Stephen found unexpected success photographing Rodin sculptures in Paris.
Snapshots of Rodin appear on the screen.
I spent my confinement drawing and painting in our basement studio until the birth …
MINA puts her legs up on the table,
simulating labour. “Parturition” is
projected on the screen and over MINA’s body.
Stir of incipient life
Precipitating into me
The contents of the universe
Mother I am
Identical
With infinite Maternity
Indivisible
Acutely
I am absorbed
Into
The was – is – ever – shall – be
Of cosmic reproductivity23
MINA’s legs drop to the floor.
MINA
(More seriously) Oda was a beautiful baby. She had a way of making shadows dance upon the wall by turning the exquisite wrists of her outspread hands (extending her arms) – watching them gravely as if to time them to some eternally remembered measure.24 (Arms drop to her sides) She died of meningitis two days after her first birthday.25
MINA returns to sketching in a
concentrated, almost frenetic fashion.
A dark composition begins to appear on
the projection screen, followed by MINA’s
work L’amour dorloté par les belles dames.
MINA
Of course no one paid much attention to me. All of Paris was abuzz with scandal. The scandal of Les Fauves at the Salon D’Automne …
Les Fauves paintings appear on the screen.
… The scandal that was Picasso …
Picasso images from 1905 to 1906
appear on the screen.
MINA
While our home life was … unconventional, when I found myself pregnant again Stephen and I left Paris for Florence. A daughter, Joella.26 A son, Giles, two years later.27 Really, my conceptions of life evolved while … stirring baby food on spirit lamps … and my best drawings behind a stove to the accompaniment of a line of children’s clothes hanging round it to dry.28
SAGE
You met a great number of artists and writers in Florence, though?
MINA
In Florence, the expatriates gathered at Mabel Dodge’s Villa Curonia. Mabel is the most ample woman-personality alive29 – and my son’s godmother.
A newsreel of DODGE in front of
Villa Curonia runs on the screen.
DODGE (FILM)
(Holding baby Giles) I’ve opened up my Florence home to artistexpatriates. It is a place where I can be both majestic and careless, spontaneous and picturesque, and yet always framed and supported by a secure and beautiful authenticity of background.30 Here, too, I have had installed a rope ladder so that my husband Edwin might descend into my bedroom from the floor above … but he is too matter of fact to use it. (To the baby) Isn’t he, Giles? Yes he is. Yes he is.
MINA
Everyone gathered at Mabel’s. And it was at Mabel’s we finally met Gertrude Stein.
A newsreel of STEIN runs on the screen.
STEIN (FILM)
Both Haweis and Mina were among the very earliest to be interested in the work of Gertrude Stein. Haweis had been fascinated with what he had read in manuscript of The Making of Americans. He did however plead for commas.
Gertrude Stein said commas were unnecessary, the sense should be intrinsic and not have to be explained by commas and otherwise commas were only a sign that we should pause and take breath but one should know for oneself when one wanted to pause and take breath. However, as she liked Haweis very much and he had given her a delightful painting for a fan, she gave him two commas. It must however be added that on rereading the manuscript she took the commas out. Mina Loy equally interested was able to understand without the commas. She has always been able to understand.31
MINA
Gertrude was
Curie
of the laboratory
of vocabulary
she crushed
the tonnage
of consciousness
congealed to phrases
to extract
a radium of the word32
SAGE
But, Miz Loy, the Anglo-Americans weren’t your only influences in Florence. We’ve all heard about the Italian futurists, and Mr Filippo Marinetti in particular.
MINA
Yes, but it was Giovanni Papini, the movement’s philosopher, I saw first … his portrait, I mean, when we first moved to Florence …
Newsreel of PAPINI, framed in a portrait.
MINA
… “the ugliest man in Florence,” they said. But I knew we would get along. I asked him to sit for me and did my own portrait of him …
The portrait is silent for a moment,
then begins to speak.
PAPINI (FILM)
My own ugliness pleases me. To it I owe the encounter with my wildness, the greater isolation and the sense of superiority of the solitary spirit.33
Newsreel fades.
MINA
(Picking up notebook, dating a letter, then speaking to audience) Dear Mabel, I am rather blue. I have seen Papini again and I’m frightfully in love – and he hates me – with a voluptuous and exotic frigidity – I do want to run away and come to New York – But there is no way financially at present of settling the children – and at present no war! to put an end to the daily passions of life.34 Stephen has left for the South Seas so I am without a husband, such as he is, thank God …
(To SAGE) Marinetti was entirely different. “The caffeine of Europe,” he called himself.
A newsreel of MARINETTI runs on the
screen. Futurist art is projected on
the stage in a high-velocity immersion
into futurist aesthetics.
MARINETTI (FILM)
We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness! The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt! We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed! We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism, and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice! We want to glorify war – the only cure for the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman!35
(Seeing MINA) You, beautiful woman – give yourself to me. You and I!!! I see our natures are identical. Each one of us has a cemetery within ourselves. That cemetery must be reduced to a minimum – a minimum! Bah, what’s the use of talking to you with the mists of romanticism rising in your eyes.
MINA
Oh, I understand all you say – but I can’t make out where you are going.
MARINETTI (FILM)
We’re not such cowards as to ask where we are going – we’re brave enough to go! You should see me in a vermilion car – exceeding the speed limit – no lamps – no mudguards – paroxysmally into ditches. That is the futurists’36 way of life!37
MINA
(Looking bored, writes a letter) Dear Mabel, I am in the throes of conversion to futurism, but I shall never convince myself. There is no hope in any system that “combat le mal avec le mal” … and that is really Marinetti’s philosophy … though he is one of the most satisfying personalities I have ever come into contact with.38
MARINETTI (FILM)
(To MINA) Why write in your little book? Education is wasted on woman. Come, let me possess you.
MINA
One can never possess another human being.
MARINETTI (FILM)
I know.
MINA
Then why, in your reconstruction of the universe, leave woman out?
MARINETTI (FILM)
Woman is never going to change.
MINA
Then the side of you that responds to the feminine element is never going to develop – you’re held down.
MARINETTI (FILM)
The futurist will finish her off.
MINA
She will rot in your propensities.
MARINETTI (FILM)
Dear lady, it would be so much more interesting to be talking about you.
MINA
I am.
MARINETTI (FILM)
I mean to talk about you the way I want to.
MINA
The way you want me to be.
MARINETTI (FILM)
Just as you are.
MINA
That, I have never found out.39
MARINETTI film cuts out abruptly.
Still portraits of MARINETTI and PAPINI
appear side by side. MINA rises and gives
a ringmaster’s performance of “Lions’ Jaws.”
MINA
Raminetti
cracked the whip of the circus-master
astride a prismatic locomotive
ramping the tottering platform
of the Arts
of which this conjuring commercial traveller
imported some novelties from
Paris in his pocket...
souvenirs for his disciples
to flaunt
at his dynamic carnival
(Gestures to PAPINI’s photo)
The erudite Bapini
experimenting
in auto-hypnotic God-head
on a mountain
rolls off as Raminetti’s plastic velocity
explodes his crust
of library dust
…
Raminetti gets short sentences
for obstructing public thoroughfares
Bapini is popular in “Vanity Fair”
As for Imna Oly40
(Gestures to herself and vamps)
I agree with Mrs Krar Standing Hail
She is not quite a lady.41
SAGE
You have said, though, Miz Loy, that you give credit to Marinetti for waking you up.
MINA
Oh yes, he did do that.
“Feminist Manifesto” appears on
the screen. MINA delivers the
manifesto to the audience.
MINA
The feminist movement as at present instituted is Inadequate.
Women if you want to realize yourselves – you are on the eve of a devastating psychological upheaval – all your pet illusions must be unmasked – the lies of centuries have got to go – are you prepared for the Wrench –? There is no half-measure – NO scratching on the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition, will bring about Reform, the only method is – Absolute Demolition42
Manifesto fades.
MINA
(Laughs) You have to admit, it has a certain power behind it, no?
SAGE
I’d have to say you’re already halfway through the door into To-morrow.43
MINA
I’m halfway through the door into New York.
MINA gives a cue into the air. Music
of the 1910s comes on accompanied
by projected images of the New York
skyline at this time, ship entering the
harbour, interspersed with footage of
a dancing Isadora Duncan. MINA
pulls out a new project, a lampshade,
and begins working on it as she speaks.
MINA
No one who has not lived in New York has lived in the modern world.44 It’s why I left Italy. And the modern world meets at the Arensbergs’ salon …45 I’ve met a great number of people there and elsewhere. Marcel Duchamp.46
A newsreel shows DUCHAMP in the
vein of a mugshot. Images of his art
cut in and out of the picture.
DUCHAMP (FILM)
(Nonchalantly) I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste. Take this fountain I submitted to the Society of Independent Artists. It is signed, dated, with the correct fee included. Who is to say that it is not art?
A picture of PICABIA and PICABIA’s
works appear on the screen.
MINA
Francis Picabia.47
A similar shot of PICABIA plays,
interspersed with images of some of his works.
PICABIA (FILM)
Good taste is as tiring as good company. If you want to have clean ideas, change them as often as your shirt, Marcel.
An image of CRAVAN follows.
MINA
Arthur Cravan, the boxer-poet.48 He claims to be Oscar Wilde’s relative – Wilde’s wife was, in fact, his aunt – and entertains the avant-garde with stories of “Uncle Oscar” even though they never met – and published at least one poem to which he signed Wilde’s name.49 As a boxer-poet he became a symbol of toughness for the moderns and lectured at the Grand Central Palace.
A newsreel of DUCHAMP,
PICABIA, and CRAVAN runs.
DUCHAMP (FILM)
Drink this, Cravan, it will give you courage.
PICABIA (FILM)
Yes, Arthur, have another.
A reel runs of CRAVAN speaking at the
Grand Central Palace. A banner reads
“The Independent Artists of France and
America.” CRAVAN gets up to speak,
very drunk. He hits the table, takes off
his coat, vest, collar, and suspenders,
and starts shouting obscenities. He is
jumped by four officers, handcuffed, and
taken to the police station.
DUCHAMP (FILM)
(To audience) What a wonderful lecture.50
MINA
I didn’t really want to know Cravan, this boxer-poet, and when I first met him in the Arsenbergs’ salon he looked like a farmer, a husband, a …
A reel runs of the Arensbergs’ salon.
DUCHAMP and CRAVAN loll on a divan,
drawing their fingers along the stockings
of a BLONDE COUNTESS stretched among
the cushions.51 CRAVAN rises, sits next to
MINA, and tilts the brim of her hat onto
the tip of her nose to cover her eyes. She
tilts the hat back up and there is a long look
between CRAVAN and MINA. The film fades.
MINA shakes herself free of the memory, puts
the finishing touch on the lampshade she
has been working on.
MINA
(To SAGE) There. Do you like it?
SAGE
What is it?
MINA
It’s a lampshade. I am going into business, you know.
SAGE
Miz Loy, it’s been an education.
MINA
Yes, thank you very much.
SAGE
Thank –
A fire alarm sounds. MINA and SAGE look
around in confusion. Lights out on the
apartment. Lights up on the archive.
GERTRUDE is sitting at her desk; on hearing
the alarm she jumps up and retrieves a
fluorescent traffic vest from a box beside
her desk along with a fluorescent traffic wand.
GERTRUDE
Fire drill. Everyone out!
LLOYD hurries in S.R.
GERTRUDE
Lloyd: fire drill. You know what to do. Clear everyone out of the basement.
LLOYD nods and leaves, almost
bumping into NEVA on the way out.
NEVA
What’s going on?
GERTRUDE
Fire drill. Immediate evacuation.
NEVA
But if it’s only a drill …? I’m in the middle of something.
GERTRUDE
Young woman, I am the fire marshal.
NEVA
You’re the archivist.
GERTRUDE
This is a federal building. Every federal building has a fire marshal. That’s me. Let’s go.
GERTRUDE herds NEVA “outside”
to a corner downstage.
GERTRUDE
I’ve got to check the other fire exits. Stay here!
LLOYD emerges down S.R.
NEVA
Wow. She takes this pretty seriously.
LLOYD
Yeah. She likes fire drill day.
NEVA
All of my notes are just sitting on the table.
LLOYD
How’s it going?
NEVA
Good. Okay. I mean, I found the interview and a bunch of drafts of Loy’s assorted poems. But it’s all fragments. I wish I could make it cohere, somehow … Still, she’s really amazing.
Here’s this woman who grew up in a Victorian household, decides she’s going to be an artist, goes off to Paris, lives in Florence, meets all the expats there, ends up involved in the craziest of the avant-garde movements, starts writing poetry – but not just poetry – really racy, really daring poems, stuff almost no one would write now – runs away to New York, becomes the centre of New York Dada …
LLOYD
Right place, right time kinda thing.
NEVA
Partly, maybe. But she also made it happen. She could have just sat at home, like she was supposed to. But it wasn’t enough. Even to say that at that time, that it wasn’t enough. And that’s not even the end of the story. In New York she meets this boxer-poet named Arthur Cravan. This guy’s a real tough guy who happens to write poetry … He’s like a legend with Dada. And he and Mina fall in love –
LLOYD
Did it work out?
NEVA
– And she wrote this autobiographical novel about being with Cravan – “Colossus” – that’s what she called him. And no one has a copy of this book.52 I mean, like, no one but her editor. And this archive has her drafts. And they’re just sitting on my desk right now. While we’re in the middle of a fake fire exercise. It’s killing me.
LLOYD
Sounds like you take it pretty serious.
NEVA
Pardon me?
LLOYD
Nothing.
NEVA
Tell me.
LLOYD
It’s just –
NEVA
What?
LLOYD
All you people come in here and get all fired up about this stuff – and it’s just, you know – old.
NEVA
Old.
LLOYD
Yeah. Like you don’t care about life. You’re just messing around with dead stuff. Like – grave robbers.
NEVA
Grave robbers.
LLOYD
Yeah. Exactly. Like there’s a whole world out here you don’t even notice. All sorts of stuff you don’t even notice.
NEVA
Like what?
LLOYD
What do you mean?
NEVA
All this great stuff I apparently don’t notice?
LLOYD
Well – there’s … uh.
NEVA stares for a beat. LLOYD looks uncomfortable.
LLOYD
Gold panning.
NEVA
Gold panning.
LLOYD
Yeah. My uncle Dean used to take me. You go out on the river, and you’re outside with the sun on your face, and when you find something it’s like – it’s really worth something, you know? It’s not just paper.
GERTRUDE enters S.R., still in her fire vest.
GERTRUDE
Everyone may return to the building.
NEVA
(To LLOYD) Excuse me.
NEVA exits S.R. LLOYD watches her go.
GERTRUDE
Lloyd.
LLOYD
(Pulling his attention away from NEVA) Uh – yeah.
GERTRUDE
I hope you have not become distracted from your responsibilities.
LLOYD
Uh – no, Gertrude.
GERTRUDE
These young academics are so full of wiles.
LLOYD focuses on GERTRUDE for the first time.
GERTRUDE
High heels in the archive! … One must be diligent and focus on the work at hand. Do you understand what I am saying?
LLOYD
Yeah, I got it.
GERTRUDE
Good, then let us return. We’re expecting a delivery from Central this afternoon.
GERTRUDE and LLOYD exit S.R. Lights up
on MINA’s New York apartment. MINA is
painting a lampshade. The phone rings and
a film of CRAVAN appears on the screen.
MINA answers the phone.
MINA
Hello.
CRAVAN (FILM)
What are you up to, then?
MINA
Oh, hello. A reporter’s just been here … from the Evening Sun.
CRAVAN (FILM)
Did you run circles around him?
MINA
Yes. Yes, I think so. I read him some poems.
CRAVAN (FILM)
Well done. Every great artist must have a sense of provocation.
MINA
Do you think so?
CRAVAN (FILM)
Darling, forget about all that. We’re lovers!
MINA
Is that what happened?
CRAVAN (FILM)
… do you regret it?
MINA
I never regret wasted time.
MINA and CRAVAN laugh.
CRAVAN (FILM)
Good. I’ll see you later, then.
Film fades.
MINA
(Returning to her lampshades and speaking to the audience) In New York, Cravan and I wandered everywhere …
A montage of New York in the 1920s
is projected onstage. CRAVAN sits in his
apartment downstage left, which is bare
except for a desk and bed.
CRAVAN
You had better come and live with me in a taxicab. We can keep a cat.53
MINA
(To audience) He must have hated the Great War more than anyone in Europe …
CRAVAN
Conscientious objector? … But I don’t object! They may all allow themselves to be murdered for aught I care, only they need not expect me to follow suit …54
MINA
(To audience) Colossus immediately left any country that declared war, and when Wilson announced the end of American neutrality he left for Canada. After a time in Newfoundland, finding the Canadians no more sympathetic than the Americans, he escaped to Mexico.
The light changes to show CRAVAN’s
apartment is now in Mexico.
CRAVAN
(Writing a letter) Please, my love, come to Mexico so that we can marry. Send me a lock of your hair. Better yet, come with all your hair.55
MINA
In New York we were together, but joining him in Mexico … Play was over. Looking for love and all its catastrophes is a less risky experience than finding it.56
MINA picks up a suitcase and the lights fade
on the apartment. A train chugs over the speakers.
The lighting becomes pink, as though in the
Mexican desert, and shadows of cacti and other
tropical vegetation appear on the projection
screen. The projections end in the simulated light
and projected images of a street scene in Mexico
City. CRAVAN sees MINA, hugs her, and puts the
suitcase in the apartment. They link arms.
MINA
Of course we both wanted to “really” marry in a rosy Mexican cathedral, spill our excessive delight in receptive aisles splashed with the wine and gold of stained-glass windows (lighting shift reflects this fantasy), but the money ran short of this fantasy and we were married by the mayor … (colour drains out). I was so convinced of the mere formality of Mexican ceremonies that after the vows Colossus had to nudge me.57
CRAVAN elbows MINA.
MINA
I will!58
MINA and CRAVAN embrace then move to
the bare apartment S.L. CRAVAN lolls on the
bed. MINA makes coffee with old grounds
and orange peels.
MINA
(Carefully) Is there no more work at the boxing school, then?
CRAVAN
No. Not much. Or not enough, anyhow … What’s that you’re making for breakfast?
MINA
You forget we’re eating breakfast every second day now.
CRAVAN
Hash with bangers and eggs, you say? Marvellous.
MINA brings two battered coffee mugs
to the bed and slides in beside CRAVAN.
MINA
Coffee, anyway.
CRAVAN takes one of the cups from her
and has a sip. He makes a face.
MINA
Old grounds flavoured with orange peels, I’m afraid.
CRAVAN
Oh come now, you couldn’t make coffee even when we could afford it.
MINA
That’s true.
CRAVAN
(Putting the mug aside) It doesn’t matter. You’re beautiful. I’ll feast on that.
CRAVAN pulls MINA toward him. MINA laughs.
MINA
I’m not beautiful. I’m skinny. A man looks better than a woman when he’s starving.
CRAVAN
Not to me.
MINA
Colossus.
CRAVAN
Mmmm?
MINA
What will we do?
CRAVAN sighs and leans back on the pillows.
MINA
When there’s nothing left, I mean.
CRAVAN
There’ll be nothing left to do. We’ll have to kill ourselves.
MINA can’t tell if he is serious and half-smiles.
MINA
No, really.
CRAVAN shrugs. MINA sobers and lays her
head on his shoulder.
MINA
No, my love. How can we die when we haven’t finished talking?
CRAVAN pulls MINA closer. They are silent.
CRAVAN
Buenos Aires, then.
MINA
We haven’t money for the journey.
CRAVAN
Salina Cruz first. We’ll use the last bit of the insurance money from your father. There are writers and artists in Salina Cruz. Expats.
We’ll have friends there.
MINA
All right.
MINA and CRAVAN lie in tableau for a moment.
MINA rises and walks downstage centre,
speaking to the audience. She is in spotlight
and the rest of the stage is dark.
MINA
Eventually we made it to Salina Cruz. Our friends Bob Brown59 and his wife, Rose,60 saved us from starving, and we had a good time with them.61
A newsreel of BROWN appears on the screen.
BROWN (FILM)
At the end of the rainy season, Cravan lurked around the docks until he found a boat. Because of a hole stove in its hull, he bought it cheap. Each day Cravan would go down to the pier and fit the boat for the voyage while Mina cooked the meals and sewed the sail. Mina and Cravan, separated by a strip of sunny beach, worked out a primitive system of signals to keep in close communion throughout their hours of work.62
During the description MINA walks to
the front of the stage and sits. She has
tucked a pillow from the bed under her
shirt to look like mid-stage pregnancy.
She bangs on the floor with a metal spoon
and waits a moment, and over the speakers
we hear a signal in response. MINA pounds
with the spoon again and we again hear
a response. MINA laughs.
MINA
A test sail? Already? (She hits the floor with her spoon) Bon voyage, my love! Come back soon!
MINA stands and waves to a departing CRAVAN.
The lights change to suggest the passing of day
into night, night into day. The light sequence
repeats. MINA becomes increasingly worried
and desperate, finally withdrawn, sitting on the stage.
BROWN (FILM)
Mina, you must come in the house. It’s not good for the baby.
MINA pounds on the stage with her spoon. There is no response.
BROWN (FILM)
(To audience) We didn’t know what to do other than stick with the plan we had made with Cravan. We put Mina on a Japanese ship bound for Chile and met up with her in Valparaiso. From there we travelled over the Andes together and made our way to Buenos Aires. When we got there, still no Cravan. He’d disappeared, though there was no end to the rumours … he’d been murdered, he’d drowned, he’d run off …63
MINA is still motionless on the stage.
Images/sound from the Buenos Aires
general strike of 9 January 1919 and then
Mardi Gras appear on the newsreel. A
steamship is projected on the screen, and
pictures of London. A baby’s cry is heard.64
Gradually the scene changes to Paris
and a jazz café. Footage and sound of
jazz musicians playing at a club in the
twenties plays behind MINA. The jazz
music rises in volume and intensity and
then stops suddenly. The visual footage
continues to play with no sound. MINA stands.
As she recites, “The Widow’s Jazz” is projected
over the stage, across the jazz footage and
MINA herself. MINA recites in a whispery voice.65
MINA
Cravan
colossal absentee
the substitute dark
rolls to the incandescent memory
of love’s survivor
on this rich suttee
seared by the flames of sound
the widowed urn
holds impotently
your murdered laughter
Husband
how secretly you cuckold me with death …66
ACT II
Next morning in the archive. A tape
recorder and headphones have been added
to the researcher’s desk to simulate an
audio archive. GERTRUDE sits at her
desk doing a variety of tasks. NEVA
enters S.R., looks around for LLOYD,
and approaches GERTRUDE’s desk.
NEVA
Good morning.
GERTRUDE
Good morning.
NEVA
Have my Loy tapes arrived by any chance?
GERTRUDE
(Looking on the shelf behind her desk and finding the tapes) Yes. Here they are. When I finish here, I’ll take you to the audio area.
GERTRUDE pointedly finishes up some
paperwork while NEVA waits. NEVA is
exasperated but tries to be patient and
inconspicuous as she looks around for LLOYD.
Eventually, GERTRUDE stops her work and
leads NEVA to the researcher’s desk.
GERTRUDE opens up the tape machine
and hands NEVA the earphones.
GERTRUDE begins to adjust the dials.
NEVA
(Talking to fill the silence) This is an interview that Loy did in 1965 in Aspen. There was a writers’ festival and a couple of the poets thought it would be a good idea to tape record her –
GERTRUDE
She always did have broad appeal. It was her class, I think. (Looking at NEVA pointedly) It drew people in.
NEVA
Well, she certainly was charismatic.
GERTRUDE
I’ll never forget her in Libeled Lady,67 sitting on the garden wall with William Powell.
The scene from the 1936 Myrna Loy
film plays in the background silently.
GERTRUDE’s voicing of Myrna Loy’s
line is in sync with the film.
GERTRUDE
Her character thinks Powell will never get around to asking, or that he might be engaged to someone else, so she finally says, “It’s the most important question I’ll ever ask. Just answer yes or no. But don’t explain. If it’s no, don’t explain.” And then she says: “Bill, have you been proposed to much? You know. Proposed to. Your hand in marriage.” And then she just straight out and says it. “I’m asking you to marry me. Will you marry me? Will you?” And then she says “Now. I mean now. Tonight. Will you, Bill? We’ll take the car and drive.” And he says … “To the moon.”
The film clip ends.
GERTRUDE
(Shaking it off) Well, it’s about time a book came out about her. She’s due.
NEVA
Myrna Loy.
GERTRUDE
Yes, of course.
GERTRUDE turns to leave but then turns
to face NEVA again.
GERTRUDE
You don’t think it’s possible, do you?
NEVA
What’s that?
GERTRUDE
That you and I have something in common. You think you’re so different.
NEVA
Well, I –
GERTRUDE
I see the way you feel about these records. The way you hold them. The way you want to protect them, despite your lack of training.
You’re not so different.
NEVA
Well, I think we have different material in mind and different approaches –
GERTRUDE
You know what, honey? – Give it forty years.
NEVA
For –
GERTRUDE
They’ll listen to you now because you’re young. Because your approach is “fresh.” You won’t stop caring but first they’ll stop watching … and then they’ll stop listening. Just stop. For no reason, really, not any you can tell. You’ll still have interesting things to say, you think. You’ll still have opinions. Only no one’s listening. It will be you and the files.
NEVA
Ah –
GERTRUDE
And stop looking around for him. He doesn’t come in until one on Wednesdays.
GERTRUDE marches back to her desk.
NEVA closes her eyes and takes a breath.
NEVA
Well, okay then.
NEVA exhales, then puts the headphones on.
She tries to press play but fumbles the button.
NEVA
Damnit!
NEVA presses play again, more smoothly.
Lights up on C.S.: Aspen in August of 1965.68
MINA’s New York apartment has been replaced
with LOY’s Aspen home. The furniture is plain
and mostly wooden. LOY sits C.S., slightly nervous.
Some files and a copy of Lunar Baedeker sit on
the end table beside her along with a short glass of water.
The doorbell rings. JOELLA and BLACKBURN69
can he heard talking offstage. LOY alternately
listens, smooths her skirt, and pats the cover
of Lunar Baedeker. Dimly, behind LOY, we can
see a filmed version of the scene between MINA
and CRAVAN in the apartment in Mexico.
JOELLA (OFFSTAGE)
I think she’ll be okay today. There are ups and downs, of course.
BLACKBURN (OFFSTAGE)
This is a nice house.
JOELLA (OFFSTAGE)
Typical Aspen style, or what we’re hoping will be. My husband is an architect.
BLACKBURN (OFFSTAGE)
It’s been a great spot for the writers’ festival.
JOELLA (OFFSTAGE)
Well, that’s what we’re praying for … that eventually it will be a haven for these sorts of things – both arts and recreational, I mean.
JOELLA and BLACKBURN enter.
LOY looks up. The film fades.
JOELLA
Mother, this is Paul Blackburn. The poet who has come to talk to you about your writing.
LOY nods.
BLACKBURN
Ms Loy, it’s a real privilege.
BLACKBURN begins setting up the tape recorder.
JOELLA turns to help LOY with her dentures.
LOY
Take them out? Don’t put them in here … No, then they’ll look at me.
JOELLA
They don’t look at you! They look away. (Giggles)
BLACKBURN
Let’s see how –
BLACKBURN figures out the tape recorder
and there is a click. JOELLA watches for a
moment and then exits.
LOY
I never had any teeth all my life.
BLACKBURN
Hmmmm.
LOY
Did I tell you the story of my teeth? (Laughs) There’s a fine way to start an interview.
BLACKBURN
No!
LOY
It’s very wonderful. My life was very – ah – unpredictable. When I was, oh, I suppose in my very early teens, I went to a dentist. Oh dear. (Laughs)
BLACKBURN
Fine!
LOY
I went to a dentist to have a tooth stopped, they called it, you know – filled, and he began drilling this nerve of the tooth out.
BLACKBURN
That’s painful.
LOY
Yes, it was, it had never been heard of … So there I was in the chair with the perspiration streaming down my face, and when I tried to get out of his clutches, I found that I was bound to the chair with some kind of heavy metal fixture, I couldn’t get out, and the nurse –
BLACKBURN
It’s like a nightmare!
LOY
Oh, it was simply terrible, because I wasn’t a coward, I was … And I sat there while he drilled the whole nerve out of this tooth, it needn’t have been drilled out at all.
BLACKBURN
Oh God, it’s terrible.
LOY
… And had the tooth pulled out, and this went on and on and when I was very young I hadn’t any teeth of my own, but when I told people about this to find out why they did it, everybody laughed and they thought I’d gone mad. They’d never heard of such a thing. There wasn’t such a dentist. And when I was in my latest teens, I think, or perhaps over twenty, I met one man, somebody or somewhere among intellectuals, and he had either come across or heard of this dentist, he really existed, because there wasn’t another one in the world!70
BLACKBURN and LOY laugh.
LOY
Oh yes … That’s been my life … Everything happens to me like that. I married a man who was, well, once when I met him, a French celebrity. My husband was English but he lived in France and … he disappeared and we hadn’t quarrelled, and I was the only person he would speak to, he used to snub everybody, which made him very famous (laughs with interviewer) and was a poet – he was a poet.
I don’t know, did I tell you this story before?
BLACKBURN
No.
LOY
You said yes, I did.
BLACKBURN
No!
LOY
No? I thought you said yes. Well anyhow, I never saw that husband again, after he left for South America on a sailboat. And then at last I found out, through the Christian Scientist71 – which was very funny, they always seem to put you right – I went to a Christian Scientist, and I told this story, and she had just met a man who had told her that the most wonderful man he had ever met in his life he’d met down in Mexico, which is where we went, when we were starving. He said he was the most wonderful man he had ever met, and he was murdered; it was such a pity.
(Laughs)
So I found out that he hadn’t tried to shove me off, I didn’t think he had, because we were the only people who could talk to each other. There was no question about getting out, if he’d wanted something else beside a wife I wouldn’t have bothered very much but … he was dead. They had murdered him to get this little bit of money out of his pocket that he got from my – oh, the money that came to me from England,72 there was just a little left after the war … And that’s what we were going out to Buenos Aires on, and start a new life.73
BLACKBURN
Would you like to try to read some of the poems now?
LOY
All right. Now what am I to read to you … “Lunar Baedeker” – is that all right?
BLACKBURN
Fine.
LOY
(Reads)
A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia
To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies …
I don’t think I …
BLACKBURN
Try!
LOY
(Recites)
Peris in livery
prepare
Lethe
for posthumous parvenus74
Can I smoke?
BLACKBURN
Naturally! Certainly, of course. Let me help you here.75
LOY picks up a cigarette and leans forward
to accept a light from BLACKBURN.
LOY
Yes, you may, thank you. But you have no idea how surprised I was that you didn’t shriek and run away when I read you that stuff that I read before …
I always feel I’m going to blush when I read my poems, because when I first … because I’m getting old, you see, it was a long time ago … Somebody, some female poet, said that I was the most immoral creature that ever lived … I suppose I sounded as though I was rather pugnacious, you know, I wasn’t at all .. and I’d only written these things for the sake of the sounds of the words. It was like making jewelry or something. Just seems …76
(Looks down and shuffles through some papers)
“Pig Cupid,” oh, that’s very famous.
BLACKBURN
Could you read it?
As LOY reads, the poem is projected across the room.
LOY
Spawn of Fantasies
Sifting the appraisable
Pig Cupidhis rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage
“Once upon a time”
Pulls a weedwhite star-stoppedstar-topped
Among wild oatssewn in mucous membranes.
That’s clever!
BLACKBURN
That’s very good, yes.
LOY
I wouldaneye in a Bengal light
Eternity in a sky-rocket
Constellations in an ocean
Whose rivers run no fresher
Than a trickle of saliva
Yes, that’s quite good, isn’t it. But that’s why they said I was so frightfully immoral. Fancy talking about a “trickle of saliva.”
Theseare suspect places
I must live in my lantern
Trimming subliminal flicker
Virginalto the bellows
Of Experience77
Coloured glass (Laughs)
Wasn’t I funny?
BLACKBURN
Well, you’re beautiful. Magnificent. You’re very funny.
LOY
(Flattered, looks up and smiles) Yes, but I never, I never discussed anything about doing writing in any particular way, modern or more contemporary. It must have been something I lived in – I learned in a former life. I certainly did have some subconscious memories of a former existence.78
LOY looks away and the lights fade.
A short film based on Robert McAlmon’s79
account in “Post-Adolescence” runs on the
projection screen.80 BARNES and WALTERS
are sitting at a table in a New York café.81
BARNES (FILM)
She is commonly what is known as brilliant, isn’t she?
WALTERS (FILM)
People don’t grasp her meanings; naturally they think she’s intellectual. She has a romantic soul underneath sophistication, which is painful to herself, I suspect.
BARNES (FILM)
Well, for God’s sake, all I have to say is I wish she’d show up, then. I’ve got to have a bright flash in my life soon.
WALTERS (FILM)
She’s been down on her luck lately and feeling miserable; unhappy about a dead husband, or lover, or some such thing.
BARNES (FILM)
Ah, that; who in hell is happy anyway? There’s too much said about that. Does she write anything worth looking at?
WALTERS (FILM)
Her ideas and style are unique, unusual to her. She writes brittlely about ideas, insistent in her ideas on irony. Maybe that’s second-rate. Something alive in her work, though … Her attempt to believe in her own writing is too obvious a sham for her own wit, but in some way she seems to still expect adventure or romance – after what she’s seen.
BARNES (FILM)
She doesn’t sound a hell of a lot different from the rest of us, except I suppose she’s more of a lady than I am. I’m so lacking in culture, they all tell me. What is it, and where do you get it so I can qualify?
WALTERS (FILM)
You’d better keep rough, Djuna, so at least there’s someone around to express a sort of protest. “This generation! This civilization!”
MINA enters the café and joins the table.
MINA (FILM)
I intended going out this afternoon to see if I couldn’t get some fashion design work to do, but my will seems paralyzed for the time being. What’s the use of any kind of movement? Don’t mind me. I’m not up to anything but wearing on your nerves at the moment until I get a cup of coffee within me. My mind will keep wondering about that husband of mine – whether he’s really drowned or not. If it had only been my first husband so he couldn’t pester me about the children.
BARNES (FILM)
You have children – and in the plural – were they accidents?
MINA (FILM)
No, not quite. The third, who is only two, I wanted because I liked her father so much. The other two I rather wanted because I detested their father so much, and thought they’d keep me from reflecting on that all the time. I married so young that it took me some years to have sense enough to break away, and we lived in a horrible conventional English environment in Florence. One got to thinking there might be nothing else in the world.
BARNES (FILM)
My children ain’t. I took well care to see that they weren’t, though one operation nearly did me in. And there’s some tell me I’m all mother and should have seventeen, but who’d keep them? I, like a poor boon, have spent most of my young life supporting men, brothers, one husband, and lovers through some periods. I’ve no luck at all.
MINA (FILM)
We’ll have to form a union of women to show the men up, and make ourselves exhibits A and B of horrible examples.
WALTERS (FILM)
The poor cusses. But I don’t think they’re really the seat of the trouble with the world.
BARNES (FILM)
What, then?
WALTERS (FILM)
Say sex; it’s an answer; or morality; or capital; or the weather …
MINA (FILM)
What people we are; what a party we are. To change the awful trend of thought tell me, how does one make a living? Of course, though, that’s the worst possible question … I must go back to England.
BARNES (FILM)
Oh no, you must not. Everyone likes you so well here.
MINA (FILM)
Yes, people never quite dislike a person if she is finished.
BARNES (FILM)
Have you seen …
MINA (FILM)
Don’t please ask me what I’ve seen. I’m bored to death with seeing, and with the necessity of being interested in anything: plays, music, books, painting, what not. Really I’m not fit to talk tonight. Don’t be courteous and stay to talk to me, for I’m going to simply sit here for hours. Please go; I know neither of you can want to talk with me as I am now. Another time.
BARNES and WALTERS get up to leave.
MINA (FILM)
Good night. Don’t let my bad humour annoy you.
BARNES (FILM)
Hell, I’ve just begun to like you because you showed real emotion in wanting us to go to the devil for boring you. We’ll see each other again. I’m not always so down and out as I am tonight; I’ve had a run of hellish luck myself.
WALTERS and BARNES depart. MINA plays
with her coffee cup and looks hungrily around
the restaurant. MCALMON enters and joins her.
MCALMON (FILM)
You sit looking at your cup as if you haven’t eaten yet.
MINA (FILM)
(Evasively) Oh yes, I’ve eaten.
MCALMON (FILM)
Have a chop or something with me. It won’t flounder you, and I like company when I’m eating so you won’t watch my jaws going and make me self-conscious. Bad for the digestion, that.
MINA (FILM)
May I have lamb chops?
MCALMON (FILM)
Sure, anything you want. I’m flush tonight, with almost two dollars on me, and the prospect of getting a few more tomorrow. That’s wealth in this neighbourhood.
MINA (FILM)
How do you survive and make money? Employers always treat me with much respect and think the position I’m after not quite big enough for me.
MCALMON (FILM)
I do it irregularly, and at about eighty different kinds of work. They don’t treat me too respectfully, but I don’t them either. It’s do and get paid. I’ve done a five-day hunger siege once, but one gets a little panicky after the first three days, and loses all ideas of romantic suicide. The hunger protest condemns one to life and battle.
MINA (FILM)
You’re feeling dull tonight too, Bob. Don’t.
MCALMON (FILM)
Let’s go somewhere, do something, hear some music or see a show. We need to have our imaginations livened up a bit.
MINA (FILM)
Tuts, what are you suggesting to me, that I lack imagination? That’s an awful crime these days. Your implication is unbearable, and I with a vengeful nature.
MCALMON (FILM)
I said we. To the divil with your vengeful nature. Let’s snap out of it and get out on the street anyway, or we’ll be talking about art, or life, before we know it, and I’m not up to that. At any rate we can look up some place to have a whisky, and in that illicit naughtiness find solace.82
The film fades. LOY returns to the present.
LOY
Well, that was the way Robert McAlmon told it, anyway. When we were in New York he was poor like we all were. But then he married a millionheiress83 – for a short time, anyway – and was wealthy as could be. That’s where he got the money to publish my poems, in Paris, when we all lived in Paris.84
BLACKBURN
Do you have some others that you like particularly?
LOY
Hm? No. I think I’m getting hungry.
There is a click. Lights down on the interview.
Lights up on the archive.
NEVA
Hungry.
NEVA takes off her earphones and pulls
a brown paper lunch sack out of her bag.
She gets up from her desk, takes her lunch
outside down S.R., and sits on the bench.
She opens the bag, takes out a sandwich,
and has a bite. She is clearly enjoying the
sun after the cold of the archive. She takes
another bite of sandwich. Just as she does,
LLOYD enters S.R. He is wearing a backpack.
He sees NEVA and hesitates, then walks toward her.
LLOYD
Hi.
NEVA
(Chewing, covering her mouth and gesturing, putting the sandwich back in the bag) Hi.
LLOYD
Can I sit down?
NEVA moves over and LLOYD sits on the bench.
LLOYD
Having lunch?
NEVA
(Swallows) Yeah. Seemed safer than the cafeteria.
LLOYD
Probably. (Pause) Listen. I’m sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean –
NEVA
No. It’s fine. It’s okay.
LLOYD
How’s it going in there?
NEVA
Good. Well, sort of. I’m listening to an interview Loy did when she was older – in Aspen. Almost no one focuses on that time. It’s always Loy when she was young and glamorous in New York or Loy when she was in Paris between the wars. Anyway, in this interview, she’s still got it, she’s still very acute mostly … but she’s sad. Like she never got over …
LLOYD
(Only half-listening, looking around) Listen. I got something for you.
NEVA
What?
LLOYD looks around again. He pulls a file
out of his backpack and hands it to NEVA.
NEVA
Oh my God! You made copies of Loy’s drafts of “Colossus”!
LLOYD
Uh – it’s not a copy.
NEVA
These are the originals?! From the archive?
LLOYD
Yeah. I got them for you. Last night.
NEVA
You took them?
LLOYD
Well –
NEVA
But people are going to think I stole them! Are you crazy?
LLOYD
No. You signed that box back in. People will just think they … went missing. Things go missing all the time.
NEVA
They do?
LLOYD
Sometimes.
NEVA
Oh my God.
NEVA runs her hands over the sheets of paper.
LLOYD
So. I was reading some last night. This Mina. She was really smart. And this Cravan guy was – well, kinda tough, right? But they still ended up in Mexico together.
NEVA
(Dazed) For a while.
LLOYD
So, I was thinking. Maybe we could have dinner.
NEVA
This is just –
LLOYD
Like, Mexican even. There’s this spot over on Third –
NEVA
– the most amazing –
LLOYD
(Encouraged) – and who knows, right?
NEVA
– most insane, highly illegal thing anyone has ever done for me.
NEVA runs her hands over the sheets one
last time and gives them back to LLOYD.
NEVA
Thank you. Really. But you have to put them back.
LLOYD
What? Why?
NEVA
Because –
LLOYD
But what about Mina?
NEVA
What about Mina?
LLOYD
It worked out for her. And Cravan.
NEVA
How far did you get in the book?
LLOYD
(Pause) Not that far.
NEVA
Well, it didn’t. It didn’t work out. It doesn’t work out. Not in real life. All you can do is try and get at some of the complexity of why not. Like Mina’s work does.
NEVA puts her lunch back in her bag
and gathers her things.
NEVA
Look. I need to get back, okay? This is my last day in the archive. Gertrude is going to flip out if she sees I’ve left those tapes just sitting there.
LLOYD nods slowly. NEVA hurries back
to her table in the archive. She puts her
face in her hands for a moment, then
puts on the earphones and presses play.
The lights rise C.S. LOY finishes some
yoghurt and puts the bowl aside.
LOY
That’s better.
BLACKBURN
Good. Now, do you have other poems there that you like particularly?
LOY
Other – ?
BLACKBURN
Poems – that you like particularly?
LOY
No, I just really can’t remember them.
BLACKBURN
What is the next one there?
LOY
(Looking down) “Three Italian Pictures.” This is when I lived on the hillside in Florence.
(Begins reading poem) We English …
(Looks up from poem) I was thinking, why do we call ourselves English in England? Why is it called England when it’s spelled E-N-G? And I was wondering what the original word was.
BLACKBURN
Anglo.
LOY
Well, that isn’t English …
BLACKBURN
The Angles and the Jutes. They were Danes, I believe, originally.
LOY
Angles and whats?
BLACKBURN
Jutes! Jutes!
LOY
The ankles and the jukes?
BLACKBURN
Jutes!
LOY
What’s the juice?
BLACKBURN
Jutes!
LOY
Jews?85
BLACKBURN
JUTE!!86
A click is heard over the speakers.
LOY
Did you just stop the recording?
BLACKBURN
Er – yes. But I’ll start it again. Shall we hear the poem?
LOY
(Acidly) Ah yes, the poem.
Well we English make a tepid blot
On the messiness
Of the passionate Italian life-traffic
Throbbing the streetupsteep
Upupto the porta
Culminating
In the stained fresco of the dragon slayer87
Well – haven’t you heard enough?
BLACKBURN
Um – are you tired?
LOY
(Looks down at the book in her hands) I can’t remember. I can’t remember what the Contact edition looked like. Robert McAlmon published it for me in Paris in 1925.88 After Buenos Aires I was all over the map. But I settled in Paris. That’s how it was then, in Paris in the twenties. Always someone to talk to in a café – Joyce, Pound. Always someone. Eventually I did pull it together and opened up a lampshade shop with my own designs.
A short film runs on the projection screen,
showing MINA’s lampshade designs including
the illuminated globe, a water lily, and a
calla lily. MINA attends to a client in the shop.89
MINA
Yes, madam, we do sell the Globe Céleste here, 200 francs.
JOELLA
Mama, it’s a telegram from Papa.
MINA
What does your father want all the way from his extravagant travels in the south seas? Wandering artist, indeed. Kidnapping your brother to wander with him. Is it money?
JOELLA
No, it’s –
MINA
Joella, what is it?
JOELLA
It’s Giles, Mama. Papa says Giles has died … A cancerous growth in his brain.90
Sound of lamps breaking. Newsreel ends.
LOY
Eventually everyone left Paris – the threat of the war, the stock exchange. People started stealing my designs. There was nothing to do, in the end, but close the shop. Well, after that I became a kind of art agent for my son-in-law, well, the first one, Julien Levy …91 Such a nice-looking boy. Have you heard of surrealism?
BLACKBURN
Surrealism – yes!
LOY
Well, of course, I knew them all in Paris and then helped Julien acquire many of their paintings. We had so many beautiful paintings then. Do you know the one about memory?
Images of the paintings appear on the screen.
BLACKBURN
The Persistence of Memory?92
LOY
Yes, my son-in-law bought that one and so many others … Max Ernst,93 de Chirico,94 Kahlo …95 Oh dear.
BLACKBURN
You getting tired?
LOY
What was life all about, anyway?
The paintings fade out.
BLACKBURN
Well, are you tired? Should I read to you now?96
LOY
I don’t think it matters how many poems you wrote …
BLACKBURN
No.
LOY
… do you?
BLACKBURN
Not necessarily, no.97
LOY
No. I did paint too. Well, when the war threat became real, my daughters insisted I come to New York. I lived in the Bowery, where all the street people lived.
A newsreel runs showing a derelict street
in New York. MINA is seen picking up pieces
of refuse and putting them in her pockets.98
The screen shows an application of materials
that overlays this scene, ending in a complete
picture of one of LOY’s montages.
LOY
“You should have disappeared years ago” –
so disappear
on Third Avenue
to share the heedless incognito
of shuffling shadow-bodies
animate with frustration
whose silence’only potence is
respiration
preceding the eroded bronze contours
of their other aromas
through the monstrous air
of this red-lit thoroughfare.99
(Silence.)
Cravan … Everything’s been funny in my life. But it wasn’t funny losing him, we got on wonderfully. He and I used to talk quite – happily.100
Well, I get along all right here in Aspen with my daughters. They are planning some kind of utopian village here. That’s what it is to be young, though, isn’t it? Build kingdoms in the sky? I know we did. Yes, we did …
Shall I read you one last poem?
BLACKBURN
Oh yes.
LOY
I like this one, you know. Though it never did have a title –
There is no Life or Death,
Only activity
And in the absolute
Is no declivity.
There is no Love or Lust
Only propensity
Who would possess
Is a nonentity.
There is no First or Last
Only equality
And who would rule
Joins the majority.
There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity.101
The tape recorder clicks. Lights down C.S.
In the archive, NEVA takes the tape out
of the recorder and returns it to its case.
NEVA
Only intensity. (Half-smiles to herself)
NEVA slowly packs her things and walks
over to GERTRUDE’s desk. She waits for a
moment at the empty desk. GERTRUDE enters
and takes her seat.
GERTRUDE
Finished?
NEVA
Yes.
GERTRUDE
Will you need these tapes again tomorrow?
NEVA
No. I’m going home tomorrow. It was just a two-day trip.
GERTRUDE
I see.
NEVA
Well, goodbye then. And – thanks.
GERTRUDE removes NEVA’s pen from her drawer
and passes it to NEVA, who nods and pockets it.
GERTRUDE
So that’s it, then.
NEVA
Yes …
GERTRUDE
You know he’s just lurking in the basement (jerks her head S.L., in the direction of the basement) trying to find a moment to put that file back.
NEVA
(Carefully) You know about that?
GERTRUDE
Sweetie, I know about everything that’s happened in this archive. Even in the sixties.
NEVA
Rea-lly.
GERTRUDE
(Nodding) So?
NEVA
I’m leaving tomorrow. It would just be dinner.
GERTRUDE
Honey, can I give you some advice?
NEVA
Sure. I mean, yes.
GERTRUDE
Speaking as you, forty years from now … the archives tell you something. It’s mostly fragments, in the end. There aren’t a lot of stories, not complete ones.
NEVA stands there, looking uncertain.
GERTRUDE begins putting files away. NEVA
turns and walks decisively toward the basement,
in the direction GERTRUDE indicated. Left alone,
GERTRUDE turns on her laptop. We see a scene
of Myrna Loy and Clark Gable together in
Test Pilot.102 GERTRUDE laughs. As the house
lights come up, the audience departs to an
overlapping soundtrack of MINA’s and LOY’s
voices reading from The Lost Lunar Baedeker.