But how is it that this lives in thy mind

Two themes that stick in my mind when reading the tempest are unveiling and remembrance. The unveiling centers around Prospero and his cape….but this is not just any cape, t’is a magical cape! Remembrance encompasses each and every one of the characters (Miranda sticks out for me though).

In these next lines, Prospero is recalling the past, Miranda’s history, to help her remember but also to see how much of it she still remembers.
MIRANDA
“You have often
Begun to tell me what I am, but stopped
And left me to a bootless inquisition,
Concluding, ‘Stay. Not yet.’”
PROSPERO
“The hour’s now come.
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.
Obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell?
I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not
Out three years old.”
MIRANDA
“Certainly, sir, I can.”
PROSPERO
“By what? By any other house or person?
Of anything the image tell me that
Hath kept with thy remembrance.”

As Miranda recalls her takers, the muses, and a few other things, Prospero replies:
“But how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
If thou rememberest aught ere thou camest here,
How thou camest here thou mayst.”

The power of remembrance is so strong but it is interesting how we think that things happened though they really may not have. Remembrance and imagination can be tied together so tightly, also becoming dangerous for a person. The passage that I quoted above from The Tempest sent shivers through me. My memory is so great and so horrible. I can never remember what I should, but always remember what I wish I could rid from my mind. “In the dark backward and abysm of time”, I find myself constantly looking at the past, recalling memories stored in the darkness. It is as if they lurk behind this veil that one could label with many words: sorrow, love, pain, and misery. I long to unveil them and hopefully be free of them, but there is always another “vale” for them to hide behind. They transform rapidly. Remembrance. The past. I carry it with me, allowing it to weigh me down.

What Dreams May Come

This next blog is written with a compilation of notes that sit in front of me. My note cards are like a jigsaw puzzle, I can’t quite get them to all fit together though so I might just have to post many blogs in order to “organize” my thoughts.


I will start with the line:
“Good wombs have borne bad sons”
Initially I laughed when I read this line, but it was only because I didn’t want to cry.
I then came upon lines from Miranda:
“But thy vile race,
Though thou didst learn, had that in ’t which good natures
Could not abide to be with.”

And that is when I allowed myself to shed a few tears. I know, but can’t verbalize why these lines spoke to me, probably because I could associate them with people that I love so dearly. Miranda was so good to Caliban, teaching him, but he let his evil ways get in the way of it. No matter how hard she tried to overlook or help him, he continued to treat her poorly. How could anyone read over this passage without some sort of feeling whether it be remorse, sadness, or disbelief at the least.

When Caliban is first introduced to the play, I felt a sort of sympathy for him. I have a soft spot in my heart for horrible people I think because so much of me feels hope that people change or are they way they are because of some horrible experience. I want to help the “bad” so that they can feel love and see the “good” in the world. Caliban was one of those men for me, but that died quickly. He in fact reminded me of a movie that I have called “What Dreams May Come”. The scenes that take place in hell are absolutely terrifying in this film! Even in the beginning of the play, when the ship is ablaze, I picture “hell” as this movie portrayed it. I can’t read the tempest without these horrifying images drifting in and out of my mind, the actors replaced by Shakespeare’s characters. The images in this movie take your breath away, there is so much imagination and many illusions in this play that take place through both dreams and reality. The trouble comes in deciphering which is which. I posted 2 clips from the film, one representing hell- a place of fury, fire, darkness and chills, while the other is representing heaven- a place of beauty, imagination...PAINT! I had a hard time tracking down great clips though, and most had songs accompany them, so try to just take in the imagery!

Music as therapy and Re-birth

I posted a video in one of my last blogs that featured Sigur Ros. Listening to that song got me thinking about music and therapy. I know that Jon Orsi also touched on music and the effects that it has on a person and it reminded me of a conversation that I had last week with my therapist. Whether it is the music itself or the lyrics, music can have such a profound effect on people.

Ferdinand reflects this most beautifully when he hears Ariel’s song:
ARIEL
“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands.
Curtsied when you have, and kissed
The wild waves whist.
Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, bear
The burden. Hark, hark!”

FERDINAND: “I heard the music creep over the wild waves, calming their fury and soothing my own grief with its sweet melodies. I followed it here, or I should say it dragged me here. But now it’s stopped. No, there it is again.”

Music can be therapeutic but it can also be thought of as a remembrance. Music can bring a person to an entirely different place in their mind, creating images that were once behind those dusty, wrinkled veils. A name, a word, a tune- a remembrance.
I know that Jon was talking about a “re-birth” in his blog, which I thought was an interesting point, especially in music. I have always been a lover of music, but now I am constantly listening to sad songs that don’t allow me to grow, but to be stuck in the past. Music is a strong remembrance, memories I want so badly to let go of, but so badly want to hang onto. “Re-birth” is so cyclical. We are constantly being re-born by the things we hear, say, do, or see. Maybe I am the only one, but I have reached a point where I really thought that I had come full circle, a point where my own “re-birth” had taken place, but I find as time passes that the re-birth passed much too quickly and here I was again searching, waiting to be re-born. It also reminds me of the introduction to a CD by Alicia Keys, the element of freedom:

“And the day came when the strength it took to remain tightly closed in a bud was more painful than the strength it took to bloom”.

This for me depicts “re-birth” through beautiful imagery. Even those flowers have to die, to make way for new life…and so the process continues. Cheers to continuous re-birth.

Love or Magic?

I can’t help but wonder if the love felt in Act II between Miranda and Ferdinand is real. Prospero wants them to realize the value of their love, but is it love or was it just that Miranda so “magically” appeared when Ferdinand was in need of companionship and love? Ferdinand seems to throw his words around so freely on this subject. I can’t quite grasp how much magic on Prospero’s part is involved.

PROSPERO
“Soft, sir! One word more.
(aside)
They are both in either’s powers, but this swift business
I must uneasy make lest too light winning
Make the prize light.
(to FERDINAND)
One word more. I charge thee
That thou attend me. Thou dost here usurp
The name thou owest not, and hast put thyself
Upon this island as a spy to win it
From me, the lord on ’t.”

Beauty and fear

Once again, I have started reading The Tempest, a play that seems to be assigned each and every semester to me. I can honestly say though, that until tonight The Tempest never spoke to me in the way that it does now. I never appreciated this piece of work to this extent.

The first thing that got me was the representation of the sea- this vast unknown place. It got me thinking about not only the amazingly dark, yet beautiful imagery in The Tempest, but the music that surrounds the island. I found a song, used in the movie of The Tempest, Sigur Ros "Sæglópur" (meaning: lost at sea) the song is sung in Icelandic (and also mixed with "hopelandic"- talk about imagination), from what I have gathered through translations, it is about a seafarer, lost and returning home.



Similar to Shakespeare, this music video leaves the viewer hanging on, wondering if the child was actually saved- it reflects the imagination and desire for resolution.

The sea and the storm in The Tempest depicts fear and chaos in a more imaginative way than anything else I have come across.
GONZALO:
"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground: long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death."

The sea is an enormous creature with more life in it than we could ever fathom. The enormity of its waves and its ability to completely engulf us in one sweep overwhelms my mind. Miranda provides for me (at least within the first 2 acts) the most beautiful, frightening image of the sea when she says:

"If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to th' welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. Oh, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer. A brave vessel
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her
Dashed all to pieces. Oh, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallowed and
The fraughting souls within her."

Souls, lives, evils, dreams- all captured in this one body of water. I find the sea to be extremely terrifying, yet stunning all at once. It draws me to its waters, though I am hesitant. I remember this feeling when I was whale watching (I will not capture this well enough through words), the day was cloudy, the temperature within the 60's. As we went further out to sea, the wind picked up, the sky grew darker- I was so excited to be on this boat, viewing the most spectacular life that we could ever catch a glimpse of. These enormous creatures, in those vast, dark waters, deeper than I could ever imagine. Leaning over the boat and trying not to blink so as not to miss one moment, a humpback whale approached the boat within feet (I was amazed and had never even see a humpback whale up close!!!!!). Here I was looking so hard to spot a whale and he was there right in front of me. Anyways, the whale was so close, the boat so small- I thought to myself, "dear god, this whale, or these waves could swallow me up in a second". I was ok with dying in that moment if that is what it came to be. My fear became excitement and anxiety all in one. I always have said to myself that if I die, it will be doing something I love- I would have died enchanted, loving, breathless.

When I spent a month in Carmel, CA, the ocean became an escape for me. I wandered down to the beach so often to think, journal, and just be. The sound of the waves crashing were soothing. The sea doesn't speak, it just sings. A constant rhythm- back and forth. I wrote in the sand, one single word knowing that within mere seconds, it would be erased, washed into the sea- no longer with me but somewhere deeper, hidden. This became a habit for me, a therapy of sorts. There was always anxiety though watching those waves wash away a part of me, those grains of sand that my fingers ran through, creating something larger, never to be touched or seen by me again.

The personification of nature (specifically the sea and sky) never ceases to amaze me in The Tempest. There are elements of fear and pity reflected through the sea and sky and this next excerpt created an image that I wish I could draw out. It is so clear in my head and I am going to try to illustrate it this week!! The sea screams, but the sky sighs. BRILLIANT! I don't know if anyone could do imagery of the sky and sea as well as Shakespeare does in this play! I am speechless.
"There they hoist us
To cry to th' sea that roared to us, to sigh
To th' winds whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong."

The next lines that I really, so badly want to capture through my own, very personal illustrations are these:
"Salt of the sea and salt of tears.
When I have decked the sea with drops full salt,
Under my burthen groaned;"
We have the sea, a single tear drop. This quote speaks to me on a much deeper level than I realized until I started blogging. I want more time to really think and write about this though. I am feeling fatigued, overwhelmed with emotion and weighted down by more than I can handle at the moment. I have more to say about tears, the sea- and those two things becoming one.

The Statue

I was reading Jenny's post about the statue and the question as to whether the statue was real or not. It got me thinking about the fact that "we see what we want to see"...usually- or sometimes we see exactly what we DON'T want to see. Either way, the mind and the imagination are so complex that what we think we are seeing as real are really just figments of our imagination. Jenny also asked why Shakespeare would create such a statue with wrinkles, etc. with age comes beauty and wisdom (or so I like to believe) For me the statue represented not a perfect image but an image of flaws and imperfections (mirroring Leontes' own qualities.

I can't help but think though that Hermione and Paulina were staging some sort of clever plan to get Leontes to want Hermione. It reminds me of a really depressing country song my sister told me to listen to ("If I die young")...part of the song goes:

"A penny for my thoughts, oh no I’ll sell them for a dollar,
They're worth so much more after I’m a goner
And maybe then you’ll hear the words I've been singin’
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin’"

It's just like real life! Leontes doesn't realize her worth until she is gone (or so he thinks) and then when he sees that she is resurrected he wants her back. Does love have no worth until it is lost? That is what it seems to be, tragedy or comedy. Love has to become nothing before it really becomes something.

Tying back to my previous post, I am thinking about how much a statue stands for remembrance. We have a statue to remember a person by, yet we also have this disconnectedness through the aging process- she is both known and unknown. This helped me to create my own vision of the statue and allowing room for imagination to flow. Is it real or not? Why is she imperfect? Let's see how far our imaginations can go...

Another part I loved, that could have blown right past me:
"she thrice bowed before me,
And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes
Became two spouts"

There is such a fine line between dreams and reality. Dreams foster imagination, they show us what is both real and not, creating these false emotions in what I like to call "the other life". To me, my dreams are my other life. I am there in them, I especially felt this in the summer when I dreamt of something absolutely horrible, something I had never experienced and wish I hadn't. Just 2 hours after I woke, this horrible "dream" was a reality. To feel such emotion and disturbance through dreams is something I will never truly be able to explain.

So, I continue to ask, what in Shakespeare is real and what is not?! I can never quite tell. Thankfully, shakespeare is a supporter of dreaming and imagination so I will continue to wonder and create while reading his works.

Remembrance and distance

"You have issues, don't you Lisa?" I don't think that anyone has really ever come right out and said that to me. So, thanks Dr. Sexson for at least giving me a good laugh. My "issues" brought me to the act of remembrance because I think that is really all they are. Remembrance has become my issue. In discussing remembrance in "A Winter's Tale", Dr. Sexson points out that Shakespeare distances us from the recognitions so that we do not see them. I have been pondering why Shakespeare would distance us from this remembrance when usually it is directly in front of us. I would like to think that Shakespeare is doing this to not avoid the remembrance but show us that though it may go unseen or unsaid, it is still unavoidable. No matter how much we attempt to avoid remembrances, we really can't.

Another thing that caught my attention during class was this mention of art and "piedness". While this is an extremely distant connection, it sparked some interest in me- "pied" in french, means foot. Then I started thinking about art, feet, french- nada. The connection was brief. As I wandered lost in thought later that night though, I began thinking about art and feet...the DANCE. So many of Shakespeare's plays contain the act of dancing (well, the ones that I have read) and this circled me around to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where."

The dance is remembrance itself. That is what my mind was connecting. Dance. Remembrance. Distance. Time past and time present.