Libretto «Sunville»
Characters
The Woman with Long Braids
The Retired Boxer
The Brave and Ancient Queen
The Former Husband
The Hunter
Mr and Mrs Broccoli
The Crowd
The Choir of Survivors
Act I: Psalms Against the Sea
Scene 1: The Sea as a Picture Postcard Scene
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
The sea is a wild beast
The sea is never satisfied
The sea has huge teeth
It crushes men, eats them
And spits and spews the bodies on the beach
The boat pitched and rolled all night
The desperate cries of people falling in the water
Would frighten you to death
THE RETIRED BOXER
The peoples wept in every tongue
In French, in Swedish
In Russian and in Vietnamese
In German, in Czech and in Romanian
A melodious and sinister cacophony
For a world stuck in the mire
No offence to the Spirit of the Matrilineal Ancestor
THE CHOIR OF SURVIVORS
The sea vomits up car wrecks
The sea is a walking cemetery
The sea is a fat shit
The sea is a traitor
The sea has no friends or partners
The sea spawns our nightmares
THE CHOIR OF SURVIVORS
The belly of the sea is filled
With the shreds of dreams all spent
And deprived of the Good Lord too
THE CHOIR OF SURVIVORS
The sea is death trap
The sea is a highway robber
THE CHOIR OF SURVIVORS
The sea entombs our pasts and our laughter
Our expectations and our desires for freedom
The sea is a demon, a cannibal, a psychopath
The sea is an open-air prison
The sea, the sea, the sea
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
This Mediterranean route is dangerous
It is a vile route, full of misfortune
The sea bared its claws and its barbaric muzzle
The sea slaughtered, the sea swallowed, the sea squashed
THE RETIRED BOXER
We danced the polka
We drank beers
We had a laugh
Life was good
On the boat
Suddenly, the sea grew rough
People began to yell
I swam and swam
THE CHOIR OF SURVIVORS
The sea is a rat trap
THE RETIRED BOXER
All sorts of diseases
Hit the boat
Syphilis, gonorrhoea
The plague and dysentery
Bird flu, scurvy, scabies too
We flung the bodies
The corpses into the sea
To avoid contamination, rank odour, nausea and stink
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
Death is a fortunate occurrence
It brings us back to nature
We return to the earth
To nourish the earth
Like our fathers before us
Like our fathers’ fathers before them
THE RETIRED BOXER
The only Mediterranean route
Is an archive of botched dreams
Of mammoth plans
Buried by the sea
Act I, Scene 2: Requiem for the Stateless Dead
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
(song of mourning)
They disembark from Europe
They disembark from the Americas
From China, Indonesia and Japan
They are indecent, filthy, crumpled by disease
Drool dribbles from their mouths
Their journey was long and perilous
Their death a mournful and macabre symphony
Lord, have mercy on their souls
Lord, have mercy on your children
Receive them into your Kingdom
Don’t look at their faces
Don’t judge them by their origins,
Their skin colour, their religion
Disregard their failings, their bloody pasts
Forgive them their dirty teeth and putrid mouths
Ignore the heresy of their syphilis and measles
Lord, open the doors of your house
To your children and their children
Give them their fill of food and drink
Give them eternal rest
As it was in the beginning
Act I, Scene 3: Things and Things
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
She is older than the sun
This woman is a centenarian
She has no teeth left
She spends her life among the dead
And she ignores me
(Me and my madness)
She loathes, detests and denigrates me
She calls me every name there is
This woman wants my hide
She prefers me dead than alive
THE RETIRED BOXER
She’ll love me
The queen will wipe my shoes
And wash my clothes
I am the finest man on earth
I have the energy of a bull
The strut of a peacock, the verve of a lightning bolt
An intrepid yet charming fellow, well brought up
Smooth talker, but a sweet lad nonetheless
She’ll love me
The queen will revere me
I’m the gentlest man on earth
The most courteous, the most chivalrous of boys
I know how to talk to girls and plants too
(The Retired Boxer draws near to the Ancient Queen and starts to shadowbox as if he were in a ring. He’s trying to entice her. The Brave and Ancient Queen doesn’t react for a few seconds)
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
I was a queen
I am a queen
A queen remains a queen
It’s in the blood
It’s in the mind
THE RETIRED BOXER
I am not resurrected
I am not yet dead
I come from a far-off land
The Republic of South Africa
My voyage has lasted a decade
I’m hungry, I’m thirsty
Pour rice wine in my mouth
Give me some grub
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
I deal only with the dead
The living don’t interest me
Their life is their life
What are you seeking, boy?
In this lost kingdom
THE RETIRED BOXER
I come from a far-off land
In my country, everything is compartmentalized
Restaurants for Blacks, restaurants for Whites
Brothels for Blacks, brothels for Whites
Public latrines for Blacks, public latrines for Whites
Trains for Blacks, trains for Whites
Hospitals for Blacks, hospitals for Whites
I fled, I left that sinister country
Like my brother and my sister before me
Like my ancestors before me
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
(song of mourning II)
I am not a boxer
I am not a blacksmith
I am not a soldier
My trade is the finest job in the world
Each morning, I spray myself with rainwater
Each morning, I don a long white dress
Next, I go to the beach
I collect the bodies and I wash them
I wash the children first
I wash the men next
I wash the women after
I dress them in white,
I pray for them and then I bury them
A candle for each tomb
Some days, the sea spews a thousand bodies
And I spend days and nights
Washing the corpses and dressing them in white
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
She hums a joyful song
When she lifts the bodies
She tells the dead
Happy tales
Funny tales, love stories
THE RETIRED BOXER
I was born in Mamelodi
I have always lived in Mamelodi
The township of love
Spearhead against Apartheid
And its bloody bureaucracy
All my associates are in prison or grafting in the mines
They came
From Soweto and Tembisa
From Khayelitsha and Sebokeng
From Botshabelo and KwaMashu
But I am a child of Mamelodi, Mamelodi, Mamelodi
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
(spoken text)
Have you ever seen a dead child’s corpse?
Spat out by the sea on the beach
I don’t deal with the living
Their life is their life
No offence to the Spirit of the Matrilineal Ancestor
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
It’s a drop of water in the ocean
She wants to make the city clean
Expunge the traces of the departed
But the stubborn sea is deaf to her fancies
The sea spits out the bodies
Along with the papers, teddy bears and trousers
The musical instruments and cooking utensils
The shirts, tables, shoes and spectacles
The bottles of beer, bags of corn and cans of petrol
The umbrellas, fur coats and bicycles
The sleeping bags, books and cigarettes
That belonged to the departed
Act II: One Foot in the Past
Scene 1: Lives in Tatters
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
She’s a liar, this witch
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
Sofia, aka Queen Beatriz
My name is Sofia
I was born in Ethiopia
The only African country never colonized
Country of Haile Selassie
Birth name: Tafari Makonnen
Descendant of the dynasty
Of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon
I, Sofia Jernberg,
Jernberg like torrential rain
Jernberg of day and night
Jernberg like the song of metal birds
I grew up in Vietnam and Sweden
I studied jazz and composition
Both in Sweden
I have another life off-stage
A broad and fabulous, thunderous past
I was a Queen for several years
Back then, they called me:
Queen Beatriz Coumba Ngolamino Kazembe Moreira Da Souza Sophia-Madeleine
THE NARRATOR
I am Fiston Mwanza Mujila
A writer and librettist
I first saw the sun in Katanga
The capital of copper and uranium
I would like to briefly tell you about the enthronement of Queen Beatriz Coumba Da Souza, aka Sofia.
The enthronement of a new queen is an extraordinary phenomenon. An exceptional event. A very colourful spectacle that takes place every forty or fifty years on average. It precedes the killing of the Queen-Mother by decapitation. Two queens cannot coexist in the same kingdom.
In the kingdom of the fallen sun, a queen-mother must not laugh in public or eat in front of her subjects. The queen must not be struck by serious illness. Her health must not fail. The queen must not age. She must not be deaf, dumb, blind or even one-eyed! Her body must stand as straight as the midday sun. So when the queen begins to age and suffer all sorts of pathologies, the whole world watches her, observes her and scrutinises her every action and deed down to the smallest detail; and then one day, they organize her death. She is killed because a queen must not suffer (through illness) or have any sort of physical anomaly. They decapitate her! They cut off her head with a machete. That’s what happened to the mother of Beatriz Coumba Da Souza. She got old and caught Alzheimer’s. They decided to kill her. A murder organized with great pomp! Because the death of the Queen signifies her ascent to the world of the Elders.
The enthronement of Beatriz took place the day after her mother’s death. It ran like all the other enthronements: same setting, same characters, same scenario, same sacrificial animals, same musicians, same instruments, same sun, same belly dance.
It began with forty cannon shots into the air. At the thirty-seventh shot, twelve virgin women started dressing the future Queen with adornments fashioned from pearls, shells and diamonds. Next, they tattooed her hands and face with the totemic animals of the Primordial Ancestor: the serpent, the goat and the buffalo.
The sun slunk away and the new Queen set about her tour of the city. At each halt, one goat, two white hens and a snake were sacrificed until she had completed the twenty-five stations. As she returned to her palace come nightfall, two hundred and twenty-five drummers of both the male and female sexes (some eighty years old), the best drummers and percussionists in the entire kingdom, played their instruments (with unsparing energy) in a crazed, euphoric atmosphere. They played (and sang) as if possessed by the river spirits. They played until early morning. As the forest began to burn and the metal birds flew off by groups of six towards the south, the twelve virgin women cut the hair of the new queen as she slowly hummed the enthronement song.
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
(spoken text)
I am young
I am the new queen
I will reign over men and animals
I will dominate plants and lighting
I will imprison the rain and the sun
I will domesticate the metal birds
Even if I become adult
One day
Even if the twelve virgin women
Cut off my head
One day
Like they did my mother
Like they did her grandmother
With a machete
THE NARRATOR
After the enthronement, the new queen took the moniker of Queen-Mother, even if she were yet to have offspring. She was loved and adored; her praises sung; her intelligence and beauty, all her virtues, lauded. She was mentioned in every possible conversation. She was nicknamed: Sun, Queen, Queen-Mother, Daughter of the Queen-Mother, Favourite Daughter of the Queen-Mother, Eternal River, Thick Forest, Oasis, Wellspring of Wisdom.
Yes, the Queen has every privilege. She belongs to us. We belong to her. She directs everything. She controls everything. She directs men, women, aquatic beasts and metal birds. We are her slaves. All children born belong to the Queen-Mother. That is why an adage says: «the Queen has five thousand children». That is why they say, «the Queen-Mother’s belly is a forestland». But once the Queen-Mother reaches a certain age, people start to look at her, insult her, scorn and spurn her, consider her a witch, call her slut, smartarse and whore. And then they kill her. They cut off her head. They cut off the Queen-Mother’s head. And they throw the Queen-Mother’s head in the River so that the River reburnishes the Sun and contributes to the fertility of plants and the rain.
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
Everything died
The rivers ran dry
The plants withered
The volcanoes petered out
When I grew old
And I caught Alzheimer’s
I took the Mediterranean route
I fled my Kingdom
Rather than have my head cut off
By the twelve virgins
Act II, Scene 2: Hunting Scene in a Tropical Scrubland
A succession of waves. A thud. A wrecked ship. A man (with a rifle and a leopard skin) is spat out by the sea.
THE HUNTER
(spoken text)
Millions we were
Seeking plots of land running with game
How unfortunate
To find myself
On this rotten island!
THE HUNTER
(hunting song)
My grandpa and I
Went to Africa
Strutting about
Through the scrub and jungle
We hunted elephants
Rhinoceroses and birds
We shot buffalo
With live rounds
There’s nothing finer
Than an African hunt
Act II, Scene 3: A Season of Pathologies and Curses
THE RETIRED BOXER
(Mining song)
We entered the mine in the morning
And only exited the belly of the earth come night
Our hands muddy
Our eyes shrivelled
Hair dusty
No offence to the Spirit of the Matrilineal Ancestor
We dug furiously
We dug up copper and cobalt
We dug up gold and uranium
We dug up tin and malachite
We dug up zinc and iron
We dug up bauxite and manganese
THE CHOIR OF SURVIVORS
We didn’t sleep
We didn’t bathe
We dug and we dug
Until we fractured our backbones
Like our fathers and mothers
Factotums all
Since before the world was even born
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
(Bride’s song)
I was married fifteen times
I was divorced fifteen times
I have known all sorts of husbands
A jealous husband, an alcoholic husband,
An unfaithful husband, a mythomaniac husband
A violent husband, a wilful husband
A husband who lies with every breath
I was married fifteen times
I left my husbands fifteen times
Alcoholic husbands, mythomaniac husbands
Shambolic husbands, mocking husbands
THE RETIRED BOXER
(biography of the Woman with Long Braids)
Her last wedding was the finest and biggest
Innumerable guests
With all sorts of gifts
Sacks of salt, bottles of wine
Seashells, spices from Zanzibar
Pearls and sunflower seeds
Fur coats and umbrellas
The guests danced till dawn
The rumba and the waltz
The polka piquée and the bolero
Her last wedding was the finest and grandest
THE FORMER HUSBAND
(A succession of waves. A thud. A wrecked ship. A man enters completely soaked, having been spat out by the sea.)
We sought Zion
For millennia
We ended up here
How unfortunate
This paradise deprived of fuel oil
THE HUNTER
(carrying a leopard skin and a buffalo horn)
(Hunter’s song)
I have loved Africa and Africans
Since I was a youngster
Exploring African rivers is my passion
The forests of Africa enchant my soul
African languages are melodious
African food is succulent
I know Africa by heart
Act II, Scene 4: The Woman with Long Braids
The Woman with Long Braids washes her clothes. She lights a large fire. A bonfire. She burns a car wreck. She’s as thin as a rake. She doesn’t eat. Actually, she does eat. She feeds on smoke. The sea is calm. It hasn’t spewed a single body for two days. Just a considerable pile of rubbish: bicycle frames, saucepans, bottles, glasses, iron beds, kitchen tables, mattresses, trees, plastic cups, worn clothes, toys, shoes, streetlights, fans, boat wrecks, car wrecks, suitcases, cables, tyres. . .
THE RETIRED BOXER
She has seen everything since my exile
Sugarcane plantations
Drudgery in the copper mines
Travel by goods train
Shameful diseases
Her life is a long and turbulent river
But she comes back to life
As soon as she dies
THE HUNTER
Europe bores me
All the animals are in zoos
You can’t kill
Here, it’s just as boring
There are no giraffes, no elephants
Not even a damn antelope
I want to hunt, I want to hunt
Where are the giraffes?
Act II, Scene 5: The Loss of Hair Ushers in Joy
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS and THE RETIRED BOXER
We survived malaria
We survived bird flu
We survived sleeping sickness
We survived gonorrhoea and dysentery
We survived cholera and the plague
We survived scurvy
We survived chickenpox
We survived measles, famine,
Sun, heat and the vagaries of flooding
We survived anti-personnel mines
We survived the sea and the sea’s curse
We survived landslides
We survived the sun’s castration and defenestration
We survived scabies
We survived raids
THE RETIRED BOXER
The cemetery had been razed
THE FORMER HUSBAND
Bakeries replaced by brothels
Schools replaced by factories
Pharmacies turned into bars
Huge contraptions digging everywhere
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
The sky birthed dead babies
While metal birds announced the queen’s exile
THE RETIRED BOXER
We didn’t let ourselves be hoodwinked by the rain
We laughed and swore at the lightning
THE FORMER HUSBAND
Don’t cut your hair
Your hair is a fine flowing river
Your hair is an age-old tale
Your hair is your family tree
THE HUNTER
This place is a dustbin
There’s no hot water
No cigars, no champagne
THE FORMER HUSBAND
The hair of our ancestors
Cut over many centuries
THE RETIRED BOXER
Don’t cut your hair
It enthrals us, it gives us peace
Your hair gives us joy
You hair gives us sunshine
THE HUNTER
Where are the giraffes?
Where are the crocodiles?
I miss Africa and Africans
THE FORMER HUSBAND
Don’t sell your hair
Don’t cut your hair
THE RETIRED BOXER
Don’t sell your hair
Don’t cut your hair
THE FORMER HUSBAND
Don’t sell your hair
Don’t cut your hair
THE CROWD
Your hair is a geography of joy
Your hair gives us cheer
Don’t sell your hair
Don’t cut your hair
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
(She cuts her hair)
My animals are dead
My friends were lost at sea
It’s time to cry
To grieve for our people
(In a religious silence, she removes her clothes one by one, before dressing in new clothes one by one. Then she laughs loudly, first a great satanic laugh, then a great rainy laugh, flamboyant and joyful.)
ACT III
Scene 1: The Narrator Recounts the Arrival of the Strangers
(spoken text)
In this rotten, godless
Lawless world
Where microbes (as big as eggs) reign supreme
Where the stink of dead animals and corpses competes with the pollution and smoke of car wrecks
The Woman with Long Braids tends her passion for burning, carbonizing and scorching wrecked cars and boats
It brings her to life to see the smoke and the cars go up in smoke
It makes her smile to see the burned wrecks smoulder
She doesn’t eat.
She doesn’t drink.
She doesn’t feed her body
(for one thing, she doesn’t even have a body)
For her, feeding means (happily) watching the smoke
In this rotten world
In this world where after-effects persist
Where pathologies take a different turn
Where the moon has broken teeth
Where the sun has an aluminium back
In this spoiled world, deprived of fuel oil, cursed, filled with all kinds of noises
A couple arrive dressed
Like a rainbow
The rainbow (Mwanza Kongolo)
The rainbow that stops the rain and its cynical policy of flooding
The rainbow as the fusion of the two serpents (the male serpent, Mwanza Kongolo, and the female serpent, Mwanza Nkangi)
The rainbow that bribes the river animals and the metal birds
This maritime couple shows up all spick and span
Everyone looks at them with eyes full of jealousy, love and even tender rage
Even the Woman with Long Braids (whom nothing interests) goes into ecstasies and stops burning a locomotive or clothes belonging to the dead
She laughs, makes a grimace or farts
This is perhaps the first time she has experienced feelings since her birth
Will the Queen-Mother go and hide?
Will she take her medication against madness? Is she ashamed?
Or isn’t she interested in talking to these strangers dressed in bright colours like the forest?
Does she feel badly dressed for the first time?
The Retired Boxer shadowboxes to mask his irritation
The Choir of Survivors quieten their lamentations and songs of misfortune.
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
I burn wrecks
To unwind
And to settle my past
The smoke delivers me
From my demons
From my alcoholic husbands
From my chequered past
THE RETIRED BOXER
(spoken text)
The couple strut about in their finery
(Do they have fine memories too? Or cardboard memories like we do?)
They stop in the middle of the island
And organize or improvise a fashion parade
They open their suitcases
They sport new clothes
They walk for five minutes
They change clothes and walk for another five minutes
They change clothes again
And walk for five minutes
And this parade of the diseased (and the alcoholic) lasts until the small hours.
THE HUNTER
I love Africa and Africans
I love rhinoceros hunting in Africa
Oh, Africa, oh, Africa
Act III, Scene 2: The Public Hue and Cry
The Crowd (The Retired Boxer, The Hunter, The Former Husband of the Woman with Long Braids) comment. The Queen is not present. Is she washing the bodies spat out by the sea?
THE CROWD
(spoken text)
Look at these people
They indulge in fiendish games
The woman’s name is Mrs Broccoli
The man is Mr Broccoli
They are haughty
They are landowners
Have they seen the metal birds?
Or eaten grass
It’s abominable
It’s grotesque
It’s supererogatory
It’s dismal
It’s bestial
Act III, Scene 3: Erotic Landscape or Loving with Handcuffs
Mrs Broccoli handcuffs Mr Broccoli to an iron bed or a wreck (a boat propellor or a train engine). Mrs Broccoli holds a whip. Everything on the island is a wreck. The chairs, the huts, the memories, the sun and the plants.
MR BROCCOLI
Love is strange
We love each other madly
We forget ourselves for the other
Unhealthy passion, uncontrolled desires
Oh, Mrs Broccoli
I love you
MRS BROCCOLI
My horse, my favourite animal
Gallop through the meadow of my feelings
Come and join me
On the equivocal shores of ecstasy
MR BROCCOLI
Mrs Broccoli
I follow you everywhere
Me and my soul in distress
Subjugate me
Domesticate me
MRS BROCCOLI
My maritime animal
Swim in the waters of my infinite tenderness
Join me in the paradise
Of plants and animals
MR BROCCOLI
Love is a perverse game
Congratulations require words
Congratulate me
MRS BROCCOLI
My horse, my jackal
My rhinoceros, my white bear
My wild boar, my dinosaur
My palm tree, my river
I am mad with desire for you
MR BROCCOLI
Oh, Mrs Broccoli
MRS BROCCOLI
Oh, Mr Broccoli
Act III, Scene 4: Call to the Queen
The Queen eats in her hut
The others are outside
The Queen must not eat in public, or laugh and drink in public
She is the creature of Mvidi Mukulu Wa Tshiame
Mvidi Wa Bende
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
They insult us
They call us
Undignified
THE HUNTER and THE RETIRED BOXER
Mr and Mrs Broccoli make fun of us
Mr and Mrs Broccoli taunt us
Calling us scumbags and good-for-nothings
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
Tawdry words, words devoid of quality
THE RETIRED BOXER
We were dirty and happy.
Since their arrival:
Plague and cholera
THE FORMER HUSBAND
They say I am not a faithful husband
THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
I don’t concern myself with these trinkets
THE RETIRED BOXER
They say the same about you
THE FORMER HUSBAND
They call you a smartarse
THE RETIRED BOXER
Mr and Mrs Broccoli spit on you
Mr and Mrs Broccoli denigrate you
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
If you can’t launder your reputation
Launder the reputation of your family
THE CHOIR OF SURVIVORS
They pontificate from morning till morning
She isn’t even a queen
She’s a fallen mythomaniac, a neurotic fanatic
Oh, don’t let yourself be ridiculed, our queen
Show these people your magnificence
They need love
Give them love
They will leave us be
MRS AND MR BROCCOLI
These people are damaged
They live in the past
They make do with spoiled memories
We were this
We were that
We were princes
We possessed empires
Copper and love
Mvidi Mukulu, your children ruminate in the dustbins of history
MR BROCCOLI
It’s not my fault
If she fled her kingdom
MRS BROCCOLI
It’s not my fault
If she deserted her kingdom
MR BROCCOLI
During her reign: dictatorship
MRS BROCCOLI
The livestock died
Men worked their fingers to the bone
The metal birds withdrew
Act III, Scene 5: The Sale of the Island and the Search for Fresh Slaves
MR BROCCOLI
We want to buy the island
MRS BROCCOLI
We have money
MR BROCCOLI
A lot of money
MRS BROCCOLI
We want to build on this island
MR BROCCOLI
Factories, workshops, plantations
MRS BROCCOLI
We are seeking
MR BROCCOLI
We are seeking
MRS BROCCOLI
Strong men and women
MR BROCCOLI and MRS BROCCOLI
To dig diamonds and bauxite
We seek slaves
To work in the mines
And on the plantations
Act III, Scene 6: The Huge Upheaval
THE QUEEN
(spoken text)
We won’t invent the nuclear bomb
There’s no point in more slaughter,
In demolishing more cities
We won’t go into exile
We won’t send satellites and rockets to the Moon or planet Neptune
We will stay here, standing
And say two or three things to the Sun
Sun: get out of here so we can sit
Sun: leave us in peace
Sun: defenestrate yourself from our hopes
Sun: annihilate our excesses
Sun: the sea spews corpses; don’t put spokes in our wheels; let us delight in life!
The Brave and Ancient Queen starts gathering the dustbins. The others follow her lead. They set to building a structure.
THE CROWD
(Work song, hope song)
Chaos is a little cold you catch
Strength lies in work
We are happy
To roll up our sleeves
To dig by day
To dig by night
Nothing will stop us
Neither hunger, nor alcohol
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS
Without porcelain
Without copper and diamonds
Let’s turn this shitshow
Into a sun-filled paradise
Let’s build a city
By the sweat of our brows
THE RETIRED BOXER
(spoken text)
A Republic
The Republic of joy!
Epilogue: Collective Laughter as a Deliverance
THE WOMAN WITH LONG BRAIDS and THE BRAVE AND ANCIENT QUEEN
(spoken text, sung text)
Laughter is the appeal against idiocy and puerile dogmatism. Laughter is a foodstuff. Laughter is the river that supplies villages. Laughter is the oasis in the desert. Laughter is what’s left after syphilis and solar eclipse, after fire and disaster, after shipwreck and exile. We were defenestrated from Heaven (from the Summit) but we still keep laughing. It’s all we have left after the great banishment. Laughter, yes, laughter is our lifeline. Laughter as redemption. Laughter to remainder the chaos and pauperization of our desires of grandeur. Laughter as an antidote. Laughter as the alphabet book of joy and delinquency – happy delinquency as a brake on ineptitudes and the ranking of peoples. Laughter is our parachute. Laughter is our wallet. Laughter is our battle flag. Laughter is our lucky charm, our elixir and our love for eternal pleasure. Laughter as the apotheosis of insouciance and disobedience. Laughter, the best route to happiness and to the subjectivity of reason. Yes, we still have a hundred years, two hundred years, even four centuries to laugh and laugh some more until we break our spines. Laughter to plug the breaches of hope uprooted by bombing. Laughter as poetry. Laughter as a sacred calling. Laughter as religion of life and solicitude. Laughter as resilience. Laughter to paralyze insomnia and get rid of inner suffering (once and for all). We must not let ourselves wilt through the idleness of days deprived of fuel oil. We must not let ourselves be inoculated by the plague of intrusion. We must not let ourselves be crucified on wooden posts. We must not let ourselves be damaged, demolished, dismembered and sequestered by regrets and primordial remorse. We have need of insolence against idiocy; and this laughter is that rough Trojan horse of a poetry during these lean years. Laughter, laughter, as a panacea against phobia and xenophobia. We declare the year of laughter for a thousand years. We laugh against insomnia and sleeping sickness. We laugh against racial profiling. We laugh against deportation and depopulation. We laugh against the violence and criminality of the police. We laugh against the violence done to animals. We laugh against famine and price rises. We laugh against raids. We laugh against slavery. We laugh against colonisation. We laugh against corruption and the arrogance of power, against assimilation and the stiffening of ideas. We laugh against dictatorships infected by microbes. We laugh against imperialism and fabrications. We laugh against genocides and the architects of genocides. We laugh against wars and warmakers. We laugh against the murders of Lumumba and Steve Biko. Laughter as a memory and relic of Queen Pokou, the prophet Simon Kimbangu and Kimpa Vita. We laugh against the imprisonment of Mandela. We laugh against the exploitation and pillaging of human and mining resources. We laugh against colonial soldiery. We laugh against the carving-up of the world. We laugh and will ever laugh against Nazism, Islamophobia, antisemitism and extreme hatred of Black people. We laugh against the normalization and institutionalization of evil. We have laughter, and our laughter announces a bigger, brighter day!
(The sea spews wrecks of ships and other bodies)
