TALKING TO BRICK WALLS 2 Some notes, pics, and texts

I like talking to a brick wall—it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me  

Oscar Wilde

Friday July 8th 2022

18.30 Northwest Regional Psychotherapy

Association

https://www.nwrpa.org.uk

Talking to Brick Walls

or 

the joys and necessities of not hearing

and misunderstandings

a contemporary meme:

joyReactor & public domain

public domain: Pyramus, Thisbe, and Wall by Riverside Shakespeare Company 1978  

the mechanicals perform a tragic play within a play about a dream

BOTTOM

There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and

Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must

draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies

cannot abide. How answer you that?

SNOUT

By’r lakin, a parlous fear.

STARVELING

I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.

BOTTOM

Not a whit: I have a device to make all well.

Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to

say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that

Pyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the more

better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not

Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them

out of fear.

QUINCE

Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be

written in eight and six.

BOTTOM

No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

SNOUT

Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?

STARVELING

I fear it, I promise you.

BOTTOM

Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to

bring in–God shield us!–a lion among ladies, is a

most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful

wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to

look to ‘t.

SNOUT

Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.

BOTTOM

Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must

be seen through the lion’s neck: and he himself

must speak through, saying thus, or to the same

defect,–‘Ladies,’–or ‘Fair-ladies–I would wish

You,’–or ‘I would request you,’–or ‘I would

entreat you,–not to fear, not to tremble: my life

for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it

were pity of my life: no I am no such thing; I am a

man as other men are;’ and there indeed let him name

his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

QUINCE

Well it shall be so. But there is two hard things;

that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for,

you know, Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight.

SNOUT

Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?

BOTTOM

A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find

out moonshine, find out moonshine.

QUINCE

Yes, it doth shine that night.

BOTTOM

Why, then may you leave a casement of the great

chamber window, where we play, open, and the moon

may shine in at the casement.

QUINCE

Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns

and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to

present, the person of Moonshine. Then, there is

another thing: we must have a wall in the great

chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby says the story, did

talk through the chink of a wall.

SNOUT

You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?

BOTTOM

Some man or other must present Wall: and let him

have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast

about him, to signify wall; and let him hold his

fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus

and Thisby whisper.

emphases added by msf.

a  fissure, gap, or hole? (in the former Berlin Wall: public domain)

The Staffordshire Moorlands Pan

public domain & British Museum 

The text reads

MAISCOGGABATUXELODUNUMCAMMOGLANNARIGOREVALIAELIDRACONIS

Sir Winston Churchill building a wall

public domain: Australian bricklayers recruitment site

Some Reading & Viewing

Wim Wender Wings of Desire 4K Restoration 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iAzYofuItM&t=95s

Ted Hughes Pyramus and Thisbe in Tales from Ovid  1997

RSC Faerie Abduction: The Mechanicals' Untold Story Video undated.

https://www.rsc.org.uk/midsummer-festival/faerie-abduction-the-mechanicals-untold-story

BBC revision guides on : metaphor, simile, analogy etc

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zfkk7ty/articles/zxk7kty

Four Walls is a suite of vocal and piano music by John Cage commissioned by the choreographer Merce Cunnigham in1943/4. The form was hybrid; the production required music, dance, spoken word and stage action. In 2022 a new recording appeared.

Talking to a brick wall Meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jq7iQsxQg

Jacques Lacan: Lecture On the Bo

dy. Yale University 1975.

Here Lacan produces a knot with four rings. Three rings represent the individual's Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real worlds. The fourth ring becomes the symptom your clients are trying to express or complain about in their own words, narratives, gesticulations, writings, or songs.