~dedicated to Robert Lepage^, a master at remembering~
~
we enumerated our days thusly,
each one was commenced with skyward glance,
eliciting an epithet, a blessing or a curse,
none passed unremarked, the plainest even,
acknowledged with an indecipherable glancing
mmmm* from the chest cut or purred,
quick withdrawn and quietly shared
thus recorded, our history disordered,
who can recall if it rained or snowed
on the last Sunday of July of 1998,
or even the sunset fabulous
that was its global signature signing of au revoir
of course, agreed, we remember the great hurricanes
as if they were births or deaths of our most intimates,
but the vast attended, unto mounds collected,
the ticket stubs of dead leaves, sunburns,
rain showered soaked ruined silk blouses
and pairs of good shoes, are not recycled,
but forlorn forgotten condemned men in
a life's imprisonment of an unmarked grave,
with no epitaph possible for no one knows what here lies
~~
written on Sunday March 26th, 2017 9:08am
inspired by the happy happenstance intersection of
this poem and Robert Lepage's memory play 887,
but of course in no way equal to either.
Dead Leaves
by
Georgia Douglas Johnson,
1880 - 1966
The breaking dead leaves ’neath my feet
A plaintive melody repeat,
Recalling shattered hopes that lie
**As relics of a bygone sky.**
Again I thread the mazy past,
Back where the mounds are scattered fast—
Oh! foolish tears, why do you start,
*To break of dead leaves in the heart?*
~~
887 is a journey into the realm of memory. The idea for this project originated from the childhood memories of Canadian director, actor and playwright, Robert Lepage; years later, he plunges into the depths of his memory and questions the relevance of certain recollections. Why do we remember the phone number from our youth yet forget our current one? How does a childhood song withstand the test of time, permanently ingrained in our minds, while the name of a loved one escapes us? Why does meaningless information stick with us, but other more useful information falls away?
How does memory work? What are its underlying mechanisms? How does a personal memory resonate within the collective memory?
887 considers various commemorative markers—the names of parks, streets, stelae and monuments—and the historical heritage around us that we no longer notice. Consequently, the play also focuses on oblivion, the unconscious, and this memory that fades over time and whose limits are compensated for by digital storage, mountains of data and virtual memory. In this era, how is theatre, an art based on the act of remembering, still relevant today?
All of these questions are distilled into a story where Lepage, somewhere between a theatre performance and a conference, reveals the suffering of an actor who—by definition, or to survive—must remember not only his text, but also his past, as well as the historical and social reality that has shaped his identity.