Going Too Far (46 page)

(
There is a clamor to be heard from every voice, including that of
TERPSICHORE.
But it is
EUTERPE
who manages to gain the floor
—
or, rather, the ether
)

EUTERPE
Sister, Sisters. Surely we can compromise. Do let us have a free-floating discussion, but let those of us who babble on (
everyone looks at
THALIA
, who
is not in the least disconcerted
) restrain our verbosity, while others of us who tend toward less active participation strive to be more, well,
present
. Surely we can manage that, can we not?

(EUTERPE
is so winning in her earnestness and grace that
THE MUSES
subside into agreement. Good will appears to prevail
)

CALLIOPE
I see only one last objection to this choice of form. Remember, Sisters, why we are in this particular garret.
(THE MUSES
exchange glances
) Yes. And as soon we open her ears, that Daughter will find herself seized with our thoughts and our presences. If we choose free-form discussion, will she be able to grasp us at such a speed? Can her mind dance with light?

MELPOMENE
No. (
She has not spoken before, and now we notice that the other Muses regard
MELPOMENE
with a grave respect, all except
THALIA
,
who, oddly, gazes at her tall sister with love born of a sense of intimacy
) She will hear only our echoes, read only our footprints. But we will be no clearer to her should we take a million different
forms. It is no matter. In her striving to understand what grasps her she will grasp us. That is all she can hope for. It is sufficient.

(
The Nine are silent. Then, a glance and a nod passes from one to the other, until exchanged by all. The communication ends at
POLYMNIA
,
who then rises, leans down toward
THE POET
,
and lightly claps her hands once
.
THE POET
rubs her eyes and runs her fingers jaggedly through her hair in a suddenly nervous gesture. Then she gulps a mouthful from a coffee cup on her desk, grabs a fresh sheet of paper, inserts it in her typewriter, sits up straight in her chair, and takes a deep breath. It is as if she is listening to an internal voice
)

POLYMNIA
Let us begin.

(
As
CALLIOPE
begins to speak
,
THE POET
starts typing. She continues this activity soundlessly but without cease throughout the dialogue, except where indicated
)

CALLIOPE
The question is raised as to female culture. Has there always been one? Is one possible only now? Surely the Muses have always been female—and feminist, too, to the degree this foolish planet would recognize that—but how much of ourselves have we been able to communicate to our children?
Is
there a feminist culture, a feminist approach to art? There are those who answer flatly that there is not.

THALIA
They are called men.

CALLIOPE
Thalia, please. That is not necessarily true. Besides, we mustn't get diverted from our subject. There are those who say that there
is
such a special approach, but some of them seem to trivialize it, defining it solely in terms of uterine shapes, or eternally self-justifying confessions, or the numbing overuse of such words as
menstruation, struggle, labia, consciousness, teardrop
, and
liberation
.

EUTERPE
Dear me.

CALLIOPE
But there are also those, so far almost entirely women, who feel committed to the creation of what might become a feminist culture. Even some of these children lack the realization of how real that woman's culture already has been, for eons. So when they are asked the basis for their commitment, they fall silent with their faith alone. The question goes, “How can you speak of female culture when in fact culture differs from group to ethnic group? You cannot think, for example, that the culture of a white woman in, say, North America, is the same as the culture of a black woman, even in the same continent, country, city—can you?” The answer at first is “No. They are not the same.”

MELPOMENE
Different. Separate. Isolate. Not the same.

CLIO
      The answer is deeper, and older, and simpler. They are separately sprung from one root. Look, Sisters, at a single example. Let us try to find a meaningful difference between this quilt (
a patchwork
quilt of mandalic beauty materializes across
CLIO
'
S
lap
) and this bowl (
a clay bowl shaped in perfect balance and painted in hues of startling intensity appears, similarly, in
CLIO
'
S
cupped hands
). Let us, for the sake of argument, restrict ourselves to that North American continent—although precisely the same point could be made about any two or ten or thousand cultures on the planet Earth. That point is this:

Quilting, in North America, began as a frontier necessity. As the years passed, it became less of a necessity and more of a leisure occupation—needlework. We could characterize this, at least from the (by patriarchal date-reckoning)
(THALIA
sniffs in derision
) nineteenth century on, as a part of white middle-class women's culture.

Now let us move backward in time to that age when this continent of which we speak was cared for by its native peoples. Let us examine the handiwork, especially the pottery, of those Native American peoples. Today such pottery is displayed in the museums of those who conquered and destroyed the creators of the work, and in these displays it is labeled “Native American art and culture.”

Yet it was the women who invented pottery; the women are still the great artist-potters in Native American societies. In some Native American nations it is
tabu
for men to throw pots at all; only the women may create from clay.

So, my sisters. Is that women's culture or Native American culture? I say it is women's culture, women's art. Predominantly. I say this because of the
connective
between the purportedly middle-class quilt and the ostensibly primitive pottery.
(CLIO
lifts a corner of the quilt in one hand, and the bowl in the other, as if finding a balance in their weight
) Both combine
beauty and use
. The patriarchal overculture has usually dismissed anything which was both beautiful
and
useful as a “craft.” Yet our Daughters, restricted to materials that were perforce useful, invented the techniques to make them articles of loveliness.

URANIA
More than loveliness—
meaning
. They invented the techniques to universalize these materials into art. And this, while weaving a means to keep the children warm in bed. And this, while molding a means to carry food for nourishment.

MELPOMENE
And these, while the weaver of the quilt was raped and murdered by the brother of the potter, and while the potter was raped and massacred by the husband of the weaver. This quilt. This bowl.

CLIO
      So say I, then, that there has been from time before time something which can be called a female culture. Let those who will deny it!

THALIA
Don't exercise yourself, they will. But many of those same unfortunate souls deny the existence of art itself, all art, any art. If I must overhear one more combat-boot-brained young woman asking if all art isn't “inherently bourgeois,” I shall find myself fleeing to the Establishment—and you know how I feel about
it
. All I would
encounter there would be self-indulgent ignoramuses who regard art as A Good Investment or The Met Opening or who are too busy jockeying for the newest award or biggest foundation grant to divine my presence.

CALLIOPE
Come come, Thalia, none of us have visited such people since the days of Tiberius. You know that. We could march before them as in armies, wave on cresting wave of us, artist and artisan alike—they would not recognize us for who we are. We could descend openly as Muses—massive, magnificent, mellifluous—and they—

THALIA
 —would patronize us with their attitudes but not with their alms? Ah yes, Calliope. But before you spin more images to demonstrate how all unknowing these reactionaries are, look to the revolutionaries, and defend art, too, against the slings and arrows of
this
audience.

EUTERPE
How much more painful to confront those who claim to be devoted to new forms, to change!

THALIA
This is the hook that gets us every time. And then they bark, “Bourgeois!” and exile their best hopes.

CLIO
      Surely the concept that culture is irrelevant to radical change is itself born of a sexist, classist, racist, and elitist attitude (all the venalities of which they accuse culture).

THALIA
(
jumping up and down with partisan glee
) Oh, I
say
, Clio! Go to it!
What
an imitation! I never thought you had it in you. Why, you're marvelous.

CLIO
      (
drawing herself up in stately fashion
) I am not trying to impress you with my mimetic talents, Thalia. I am merely trying to point out how breathtakingly stupid is the notion that art is “bourgeois” because, ostensibly, the poor don't like or understand it. How does this attitude account for the Italian immigrant who, no matter how penniless, somehow managed to possess a musical instrument or a phonograph and some cherished recordings of opera?

CALLIOPE
And what about enghettoed Jews who died of starvation rather than sell their books?

POLYMNIA
Where does the black slave fit into this theory, the slave who forged the soul of American music, who would not be silent, who swallowed pain, alchemized it in the forge of the throat, and spit it out again as sung glory?

URANIA
Yes, you are right. I too have been repelled by this idea that the poor somehow are dullards who hate art. The thought itself is middle class and middle-brow and … middling. And
why?

CLIO
      It is that same white middle-class liberal guilt we saw so much of in the decade called the sixties.

ERATO
Or is it something more? Is it a virulent resentment that, despite the Marxist formulae about alienated labor as the rule under capitalism, the artist alone has managed to perform
un
alienated labor
everywhere, at all times, and under all systems? As if it were an act of love?

POLYMNIA
Or an act of prayer.

EUTERPE
You mean it could be envy, then? At the artist for being the intrepid exception? Ah, I see …

MELPOMENE
… the intrepid exception who pays with her life, and who could even, if given a chance, prove the rule better than the formulae—since a real revolution could make artists of everyone. Or is
that
the fear?

EUTERPE
Everyone an artist. How exquisite.

THALIA
A bit excessive, I'd say.

EUTERPE
No, no, Thalia, think back. They've come within visionary distance of it a few times. Remember the Middle Ages? Chartres? The anonymous collective united shared chorused expression of aesthetic love? Think of the troubadours, the jongleurs, the tapestry weavers working together on one loom—

MELPOMENE
They were burned for being who they were. There were millions of common artists, for once. And then there were millions of torches who screamed in the night. And then there was silence again. (At
this last
THE POET
,
who has been steadily taking everything down and who has broken rhythm only once or twice to insert a new sheet in her typewriter or to gesture frantically at the air as if her own thoughts were coming too fast and thick to be got down on paper
—
THE POET
,
at this last comment of
MELPOMENE'S
,
buries her face in her hands and utters one long rasping groan of despair
.
THE MUSES
above her exchange pitying looks
.
POLYMNIA
reaches out a hand as if to stroke
THE POET'S
hair, but does not touch her
.
TERPSICHORE
is rocking slowly from front to back, as if she were keening for her dead
.
THALIA
has moved lightly from her place to sit next to
MELPOMENE; THALIA
draws
MELPOMENE'S
head down to her breast
.
MELPOMENE
submits to this embrace in grateful silence
)

CLIO
      If we mourn, we will be given over to mourning.

EUTERPE
(
softly
) Can not one of us speak something which will bring us back to gladness? We must celebrate our living as well as our dead.

URANIA
Yes, my dear sister. And we have work before us. Erato?

ERATO
I—cannot speak yet. That age Melpomene spoke of was my own. The Age of Courtly Love, it has been called. My Daughters bore it, ruled it, wrote, sang, strung, wove, painted it, and perished for it. No, I—cannot speak yet, not of other things.

THALIA
(
after a pause, almost glumly
) It certainly makes you long for the good old days when Euphrosyne and Aglaia were still tripping about, doesn't it? (
She sighs and scuffs her toe
) All this mythomorphosizing into new versions gets me down sometimes. I'm the only Grace left.

URANIA
(
appealing for help in reviving the discussion
) Calliope?