I want to show you some photos I took on my way home from Embla the other day. While I'm selecting and uploading them, I'm thinking of Kurtz. During the day a new Kurtz has been emerging in bits and pieces. Some has come from emotions that have been locked and hidden by the influence of Marlon Brando, or the way I've seen him, some has come from Joseph Conrad's Kurtz and some from Elliot's poem The Hollow Men. And I rembered that early in the process of working with the monolouge, I used a woman as a substution for Willard, Kurtz's assassin. 
The pictures reminds me of pictures from the film, the lights in the deep darkness. And, by the way, Embla is the woman god in Norse mythology. I think a female element is what I need for Kurtz, and I want to make him much weaker, more in need of compassion and care.
I want to see him as a man who leaves the world "not with a bang, but with a whimper", to use Elliot's words. It did me good to find this way of seeing and experiencing him, because under the influence of Brando I've been struggling to make him tough. I've chosen clothes that will show what I've got of muscles, and tried to look like a tough man of war. I've never really believed in this, neither myself as tough in this manner, or the character. I found the opening lines "I've seen horrors. Horrors that you have seen" almost impossible to fill with meaning, and considered leaving them out. I thought of them as Kurtz wanting to teach the young Willard the realities of war, but it never did quite stick. Now they give perfect meaning. He is pleading for compassion, pleading to be seen in a softer light because of the horrors he has seen.
Now I feel that there is life and movement in my work with him, I'm not stuck any longer. Maybe he'll change again several times til Monday, but that doesn't worry me. On the contrary, I look forward to seeing which way it goes.
And every day I'm shining those boots. Tonight I was at it for close to an hour. I polish them til my mind goes totally blank and my sight grows dim. Maybe Kurtz will come out clearly from that.
The pictures reminds me of pictures from the film, the lights in the deep darkness. And, by the way, Embla is the woman god in Norse mythology. I think a female element is what I need for Kurtz, and I want to make him much weaker, more in need of compassion and care. I want to see him as a man who leaves the world "not with a bang, but with a whimper", to use Elliot's words. It did me good to find this way of seeing and experiencing him, because under the influence of Brando I've been struggling to make him tough. I've chosen clothes that will show what I've got of muscles, and tried to look like a tough man of war. I've never really believed in this, neither myself as tough in this manner, or the character. I found the opening lines "I've seen horrors. Horrors that you have seen" almost impossible to fill with meaning, and considered leaving them out. I thought of them as Kurtz wanting to teach the young Willard the realities of war, but it never did quite stick. Now they give perfect meaning. He is pleading for compassion, pleading to be seen in a softer light because of the horrors he has seen.
Now I feel that there is life and movement in my work with him, I'm not stuck any longer. Maybe he'll change again several times til Monday, but that doesn't worry me. On the contrary, I look forward to seeing which way it goes.And every day I'm shining those boots. Tonight I was at it for close to an hour. I polish them til my mind goes totally blank and my sight grows dim. Maybe Kurtz will come out clearly from that.
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar