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21.12.2014

Docile Dilettante Dashing Syria: Giveaways



Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Spiritual Hunt by Matti Paasio

The Spiritual Hunt

by Matti Paasio

Giveaway ends December 31, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win

I am very happy to announce that I've finally completed the script for my play on Syria, Rimbaud and Mapplethorpe (and Zarqawi). It is available here. Brits get it a bit cheaper, since I set the price and buy my copies there. But I've bought all of them, so there's none available, ha ha.






Those willing and crazy enough to read Finnish are able to enter a "competition" to "win" an earlier draft of the play BELOW.



Here's how The Hunt, or, The Torture Flight to Syria, begins:


PROLOGUE



Darkness. Voices of a demonstration, shouting. Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead…” This goes on, although single voices break out from the choir, declaring, There’s no military solution to,” War, not peace! I mean,” “Stop it,”  “The law! International law!” “Stop it,” “Stop yourself,” “What?” “I’ll show what. Asshole,” “Boys, boys!” Leviathan! Stop!” And finally, “Stop the war!

Someone lights a match. The flame goes out.

APOTHECARY & WESSON (in the dark): Bring out your dead, bring out your dead!

MAPPLETH (in the dark): Fuck it.

APOTHECARY & WESSON: Bring out your dead, bring out your head!

MAPPLETH:  Give me some instead.

APOTHECARY & WESSON: Bring out your dead, bring out your dead!

MAPPLETH: The stuff that dreams are made of—lead.

A match is lit. The flame goes out.

APOTHECARY & WESSON: Bring me your librium, and bring me a bed!

MAPPLETH: Maybe if we turn on the lights—?

APOTHECARY & WESSON: Surprise: You’re dead!

Lights on the actors, standing in a row. APOTHECARY and WESSON both have a black pillowcase over his/her head. Hands crossed behind one’s back. MAPPLETHORPE is standing between the two with a short candlestick in his hand.

MAPPLETH: I know what it looks like. Robert Mapplethorpe, the patron saint of the pervert, standing here with a candle in his hand. But I assure you, my intentions… my aims are entirely honorable.

Speaking over his shoulder.

Thanks, you can go now. I can manage. I’ll be good. Thank you, thank you. Thanks!

APOTHECARY grabs WESSON by the hand. They go.

I promise, I won’t stick it anywhere. Cross my heart. See? I’ll throw it away. All I wanted to do was to light a candle in the memory of our fallen heroes, to celebrate our all-too-brief Day of the Dead. But I won’t. I won’t. There it goes.

He puts the candle in his pocket.

Satisfied? As a member of the deviant international gay conspiracy, I’ve been denied any expression of solidarity. The rights to express any solidarity, I mean, mean… what do I mean? Can’t express it. Presidential decree.

One more thing. Could the janitor please close the doors? There’s a nasty kind of draft in here. Else we’ll catch our death. What you hear in here, whom you see in here, stays in here. Got it? Didn’t think so. I expect nothing less of you. Thank you.

Death is getting away!

Gets a grip on himself.

I’m Robert, and I’m an addict. Sex addict mostly, that’s what I died of, but also coke, speed, acid and other, what? Were to my liking, would be still, but today all corporeal indulgence is a strictly no no no for me. Dr Death has no sense of humor. He’s a terrible bore, a fanatic, as a matter of fact. Es un terrorista. Yet you can try. If you don’t tell, neither will I.

He lights a cigarette.

We have assembled here around this ancient and insane pastime to celebrate the genius of a certain French poet, and more than that, the ability of my former squeeze and dear friend, Mrs Wesson, to interpret that poet. The genius of... a real medium, Mrs Wesson is, that is. So, without a further delay: no more talking! Everyone knows I’m no public speaker; this time, however, out of respect for Mrs Wesson, I passed the MDA. Yeah, well, didn’t have much of a choice. Fanatics! Please welcome, straight out of Detroit, the fallen city, the pet laureate of punk, Mrs Chatty Wesson!

Now the man in my head tells me she’s not ready. Yet. Stall a while. Alright, let’s stall.

My roommate from Hell,  Doctor of Journalism Hunter S. Thompson, wrote a touching piece about jackrabbits. Anybody read it? Didn’t think so. Anyhow, the description fits us down there to a tee, and possibly, some of you in here as well. Thompson says about the jackrabbits that “most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now & then…” In Hell, as I said, the physical stuff is strictly forbidden, so that leaves us, what? The bush, nothing else. Even if it were a burning one, the scene gets pretty old pretty goddamn fast.

And yet the jackrabbits of Thompson’s have one way to enrich their daily lives: a self-administered adrenalin rush. Thompson goes on to describe how a rabbit waits by the side of a desert road, in the dark, until a pair of headlights do appear. Still the rabbit waits. It waits and waits until the very last moment, the split second, as Thompson says, then dashes across the road right in front of the murderous wheels, avoiding, if it’s lucky, a brutal death only by a burnt hair. Holy lettuce, the rabbit thinks. That was close! And he loves his miserable jackrabbit life oh so dearly for the simple chance of losing it. A while… until the jackrabbit becomes bored again. And thus he is hooked, with no hope of recovery in sight.

Then again, who cares about recovery? And I quote, “Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol…” End quote, and debate.

Thompson tried to justify his disastrous wheeling and dealing with his deadlines when he produced that piece of poetry about the rabbits. What is my excuse?

I am trying to tell you what it’s like to work with a unique artist like Chatty Wesson on a hugely ambitious project of political performance. There, I said it. Might become a public speaker after all, one of these days. And my job in this project was to follow the news. I became a war junkie. As you can see, and… Whoa, here she comes! Excuse me, gotta go. Catch you later.

Quick Fix”—the album version of a song by Foetus.[1]



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