Disorienting
Some disorienting and disconcerting things:
- Pulling over to the curb near downtown Tacoma at 12:30 Sunday morning to check the map, and hearing a noise, and looking up to see a man outside the car attempting to open the door (pulling on the handle and knocking on the window).
- Waking up several times in the middle of the night due to bad dreams, and not being sure what time it is despite the handy clock because it's daylight saving change night.
- Falling asleep on the plane as the pilot is explaining that we're about to take off, and waking up as the plane starts to shudder and jolt as if going out of control due to extraordinarily heavy turbulence. And panicking as this continues for several seconds, and grabbing the headrest of the seat in front of you and saying "Jesus Christ!" (in a swearing rather than praying sort of way) loudly enough to be heard by the young man in the next seat, and then realizing as your head clears that you're on the runway and about to take off, rather than, say, in the air and about to crash.
- Realizing as you edit a story on the plane that the people sitting next to you on both sides appear to be reading over your shoulder.
- Deciding to stop at the gas station two blocks from home on the way home from the airport, at the end of a long and tiring and disorienting weekend, and driving to the gas station's location more or less on autopilot, and realizing you're in the wrong block, and going around the block (it's a big block) to get to the right block, and then realizing that in fact you were in the right place in the first place and that the gas station is dark and surrounded by a chain link fence and where the gas pumps used to be is a big hole in the ground.
Anyway. I'm home. The memorial service was fine. I'm glad I went, but now I have a lot to catch up on at home.
I went up a little earlier than necessary on Saturday and drove to Seattle for the afternoon and evening to see Ellie and meet Dana. Was good. In the evening, Ellie and Dana and I went to see a modernized version of The Trojan Women—the original was an ancient Greek play (written around 415 BC) by Euripides, set at the end of the Trojan War, in which some of the women of Troy talk about the war and its effects on them. Britannica says:
This play is a famous and powerful indictment of the barbarous cruelties of war. It was first produced only months after the Athenians captured the city-state of Melos, butchering its men and reducing its women to slavery, and the Trojan Women's mood may well have been influenced by the Athenians' atrocities and the Melians' fate, which are both mirrored in the play.
I haven't seen the original. This new version is a rewrite rather than simply a modernized production: it apparently has much the same plot and characters, but the dialogue is mostly modern, including quotations from Holocaust survivors, from witnesses to 9/11, from (I think) a Hiroshima survivor, and so on. It was dark and disturbing and horrific, and very well written. And it was also totally bizarre, because there was other dialogue from (I think) daytime TV talk shows (of the "I killed my sixth husband" variety), and then there the pop songs and showtunes. Two songs from Chicago, a Madonna song, a Britney Spears song, a haunting and lovely Jane Siberry song, various others. Almost all of the characters had sympathetic moments; even the vicious and brutal Greek-soldier characters, played as swaggering thugs with nightsticks, had some disturbing and insightful comments on men and male violence and gender relations. Some painfully realistic observations from various characters. A few interesting comments on class. Many interesting comments on war. A particularly disturbing ending, which is apparently very true to the original. All-around good, but very intense and very hard to watch. (The opening is particular brutal—like being pinned down and repeatedly slapped hard in the face for ten or fifteen minutes.)
(The songs were particularly interesting to me for a couple reasons: (1) I wasn't familiar with any of them, so I don't think they had quite the intended impact on me; (2) according to the program notes, ancient Greek theatre often included songs that would've been familiar to the audience; (3) it's a technique much like the one used in Moulin Rouge, and if I hadn't seen that movie a few weeks ago I would've had absolutely no idea what to make of the device here; (4) bizarrely enough, the songs actually worked pretty well in the context of the show, though they did provide momentary respite from the horror, which may have increased the impact of the horrific bits or may have decreased that impact, I'm not sure which.)
Anyway, I'm glad I went, but even after we spent an hour or so winding down from it over dinner and chat, I had bad dreams that night—the kind of thing where the bad guys are holding you captive and are arbitrarily nuking buildings and will do much worse unless you agree to participate in what they're doing. Ugh. Elements of various movies mixed in there along with the play and general anxiety and stuff going on in real-world geopolitics.
Um. So if you have enough of a tolerance for this sort of thing, and you find yourself in Seattle sometime soon, I highly recommend seeing this show. But don't let the presence of showtunes give you the impression that it's a light and fluffy piece.