Saturday 28 May 2011

The Water Clock

As you can imagine, or as you know if you were there, last night was a strange one.

The Water Clock was on at the QFT/Brian Friel Theatre. I was running late due to all the bomb scares around Belfast; does anyone know the significance of these? Why yesterday? Anyway, I got there just before it started.

The show seemed to be a sort of walk through the imaginations of four sisters, five if you count the one who spoke at the opening, that told a story about their past, including the loss of their youngest sister Taygeta. The sisters are named for the Pleiades, which was evident by their names in the program, if not by their nicknames (Ty, Ellie, etc.). One of the sisters was nicknamed Meri, and although I haven’t seen her in person in a few years, looked to be my old friend Meri Cain, and spoke about a boyfriend named David (the name of Meri Cain’s boyfriend). As if she was playing herself on stage.

I knew from her recent blog posts that Meri was coming back to Belfast, and she has been following [in]visible belfast with us, but she said nothing about having any involvement in The Water Clock, which is somehow connected with the mystery … I’m certain she is lying about some things. The question is why. I’ve been ringing Meri’s mobile number since last night after the play, but she's not answering.

I was handed a camera at the start of the play, right when I was seated, and told by the person who handed it to me (a “guide”?) to record everything I saw. I did my best. Then, at the end of the show, the guide took it off me again, and never explained why I was filming. Other people seemed to have been given handheld cameras as well. Were any of you?

I was so focused on watching the play and trying to film it that I completely forgot the task of picking up the letter from Aster’s scene. Did anyone pick it up?

As for the story of the play, my take on it is this. A Narrator introduced us to the story, about seven sisters who have a painful history. He told us that this would be a trial, and that the opinions of the audience would count for something. Then he opened the floor to the sisters.

There were six sisters in the play. In age order I would guess: Maia, Ellie, Alce, Meri, Ty. Each of them had part of a story to tell, and each of them had some sort of residual cross to bear, related to her father. The play really began when the oldest sister Maia wrote a letter inviting the other sisters to her home (their childhood home) to honor the 20th anniversary of the death of the youngest sister. Then you see each of the other sisters, getting a sort of glimpse into her life or her mind, traveling from one backstage space to another, led by the guides.

The second act was more traditional, as we were seated in the Brian Friel Theatre. I sat with a girl from my course who I ran into during the intermission, and afterwards we discussed what we think the father’s crimes were. The father killed the youngest, Ty, by using her as a “human shield” when his paramilitary cronies were after him. There also seemed to be the possibility of the girls being abused somehow, hinted at in a couple of the early scenes and then quite strongly in the second half. The father never showed up, giving it a sort of Godot-esque quality, but there still had to be a trial, according to the Narrator. So he put Maia on trial; it is revealed that the father was never coming.

Maia was made to give a testimony. Then the Narrator stopped the storytelling and demanded that the audience vote Guilty or Innocent, and votes were taken. The majority vote was innocent. The Narrator attempted to overturn this somehow, and the sisters overpowered him. In the final bit of the play, the Narrator seemed to stand in for the father, and pay for his crimes in some sense.

Things that caught my eye, beyond the obvious … Meri had the book Invisible Cities sticking out of her bag; the Faulkner quote in the second act about time; that fact that there was no seventh sister (Celaeno).

I don’t know what else to say right now. I left the theatre feeling very confused; it was all a bit surreal. Any thoughts from any of you?

Thursday 26 May 2011

Finnegans Wake

Because of the Joycean turn that the mystery has taken of late, I’ve started rereading Finnegans Wake before bed.

Some things that catch my interest …

The relationship between brothers Shem and Shaun, penman and postman—the one who writes messages and the one who delivers them. Or. the man of traditional writing and the man of dispersed communications. Which of these is [in]visible belfast more interested in? Or, to put it differently, I keep wondering, why The Star Factory? It’s such a traditional book in so many ways, it’s difficult to know why this group or person is so interested in that book … and why they want us to be interested in it as well.

Ana Livia Plurabelle … who is associated with the river(s), the plurabilities, and so on.

Phoenix Park, in Book 1.

The importance of letters and delivering letters. The whole book seems to fit within the space of time it takes to write, deliver, and receive a letter, and the events seem to form around that central one.

The book as a literary representation of sleep and dreaming. I need to do more research on this.

Page 322

You were right to ask about this. Here you go.


I'm getting pretty psyched for the Water Clock.

Monday 23 May 2011

Messier 45

I’ve spent the morning doing some research on the mythologies surrounding Messier 45. Some interesting things I’ve found so far, from various sources:

From Greek myth:

The Pleiad(e)s were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Plein means `to sail', making Pleione `sailing queen' and her daughters `sailing ones.' The cluster's conjunction with the sun in spring and opposition in fall marked the start and end of the summer sailing season in ancient Greece. Pleos means `full', of which the plural is `many.'

‘Astromorphosis: One day the great hunter Orion saw the Pleiads as they walked through the Boeotian countryside, and fancied them. He pursued them for seven years, until Zeus answered their prayers for delivery and transformed them into birds (doves or pidgeons), placing them among the stars. Later on, when Orion was killed (many conflicting stories as to how), he was placed in the heavens behind the Pleiades, immortalizing the chase.’

‘Lost Pleiad: The `lost Pleiad' legend came about to explain why only six are easily visible to the unaided eye. This sister is variously said to be Electra, who veiled her face at the burning of Troy, appearing to mortals afterwards only as a comet; or Merope, who was shamed for marrying a mortal; or Celæno, who was struck by a thunderbolt. Missing Pleiad myths also appear in other cultures … Celæno is the faintest at present.’ Celæno means `swarthy' – she had sons Lycus (``wolf'') and Chimærus (``he-goat'') by Prometheus. No other data on Celaeno.

From another source: The mythology states that only six of the stars shine brightly in the Pleiades star cluster becuase the seventh, Merope, shines dully because she is shamed for eternity for having an affair with a mortal.

Atlas – The father of the seven sisters, it is said that Atlas worked out the science of astrology and discovered the spherical nature of the stars.


Mythology of the Pirt-Kopan-noot tribe of Australia:

‘A lost Pleiad is the the queen of the remaining six. She is revered by the heavenly Crow (Canopus) and never returns to her home after she is carried away by him.’

‘As the Pleiades cluster is close to the ecliptic (within 4°) in the constellation of Taurus it is a spring and autumnal 'seasonal' object in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Being close to the ecliptic, there are frequent occultations of the cluster with the Moon and planets. To our superstitious ancestors these were, no doubt, portentious events.’

‘The heliacal (near dawn) rising of the Pleiades in spring in the northern hemisphere has from ancient times augured the opening of the seafaring and farming season: while its dawn autumnal setting marked the season's end.’


North American legends:


‘Coincidentally, a similar legend to that of the ancient Greeks is retold by the Kiowa tribe of North America. Seven maidens were transported in to the sky by the Great Spirit to save them from giant bears. The Spirit created the Mateo Tepe (the Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming) to place them beyond the bears. Yet the hunt continued, with the bears climbing the sheer cliffs – the vertical striations on the side of the rock formation were ascribed to be the bears' claw marks, gouged as they climbed after their prey. Seeing the bears close in on the maidens, the Spirit then placed them securely in the sky.’

‘To the Blackfoot tribe of south Alberta and north Montana the stars were known as the Orphan Boys. The fatherless boys were rejected by the tribe, but were befriended by a pack of wolves, who became their only companions. Saddened by their lives on earth they asked the Great Spirit to let them play together in the sky, and so he set them there as a group of small stars. As a reminder of their cruelty in contrast to the kindness of animals, every night the tribe were afflicted by the howling of the wolves, who pined after their lost friends.’


Other mythologies:

‘The Pleiades are among the first stars mentioned in literature, appearing in Chinese annals of about 2350 BC. The earliest European references are somewhat later, in a poem by Hesiod in about 1000 BC and in Homer's Odyssey.’

‘The Bible contains three direct references to the Pleiades in Job 9:9 and 38:31, and Amos 5:8, and a single indirect reference in the New Testament. This latter passage (Revelation 1:16) describes a vision of the coming of the Messiah – who holds, in his right hand, seven stars…’


Other names:

‘Mao (昴), the hairy head of the white tiger of the West - alternatively, the Blossom Stars and Flower Stars. (Chinese).’

‘Subaru: 'gathered together'. This was adopted as the trading name of a car manufacturer. (Japanese)’

Hoki Boshi: 'dabs of paint on the sky', literally, the brush stars. (Japanese)

The 'lost' star(s) in Kimah: The Talmud Rosh Hashanah relates that God, angered by mankind's degeneracy, reformed the work of his creation by removing two stars from Kimah and caused the cluster to rise at daybreak, out of season. The biblical flood of Noah was the direct result.

Sunday 22 May 2011

The Moving Staircase of the Beast

I’ve been having more dreams.

This time, I dreamed that I was trapped in a sort of hell, layered like Dante’s Inferno, and my father was leading me through it—just his voice, rather—telling me about my fate, the significance of my past, the dangers in my future. I followed his voice through the maze of pain and suffering, seeing things that were terrible … not a good dream.

“I am alone in space,” I heard my dad say at one point, “with emptiness on every side. I can see nothing but the moving staircase of the beast.”

The spiralling hell seemed to go on and on, until finally we reached the surface of earth, and my father told me, “Grey Belfast dawn illuminates you…” And then he was gone. And I woke up.

It was just a nightmare. But still, I’m left with a feeling that I don’t want to end up like my father; that he was truly alone, in the end, and that he was so sad, having destroyed the things he loved.

This game sometimes feels like a sort of maze. I’m often confused. It’s clear that some people are in their element and discover things quickly, but many like me are usually lost. I have to say, I’m not used to asking for or accepting help. I hate it, in fact, and always have. But in this case, if I’m to be any kind of proper protagonist, I do need help.

For one thing, we need more conspirators. There are just a few of us, and there is a deluge of potentially useful information all the time. Does anyone have any ideas of how to get more conspirators on board?

Maybe I’ll contact @visiblebelfast directly and ask what to do. Although it seems wrong somehow … like giving up.