Like a brook

 

THE FATHER

 

– Our reality, sir, belongs neither to yesterday nor to today: it is eternal!
You believe you can create us, yet it is we who compel you to acknowledge us.
We already exist, sir! And we live… even if you refuse to hear us.”

THE STAGE MANAGER

 

– But really, what do you want from me?

 

THE FATHER

 

– Our tragedy!
The one that burns within us and that you cannot change.
For once born of an author’s imagination, we possess a life of our own, immutable,
which no one—not even the one who brought us into being—can ever erase.

Luigi Pirandello – Six Characters in Search of an Author

 

Hot Blood begins a spectacular transformation. He addresses Ignatius while knowing full well that he cannot hear him.

— I know how deaf you are to what I say to you… That matters little to me; it is enough for me to imagine that you hear me… and while I’m at it… I shall do as you do… you will be my creature! Have you ever seen a creature create its creator? Well then? Are the dice cast? If the rule remains unchanged… the players change… and now the ball has been thrown! Beware… it is time to learn your number before stepping into the ring. Do you hear the clamour… the stamping of the spectators and the coarse notes of the brass band? Red-nosed braggart, you shall be Ignatius, and Lucian the white clown… and Felix the director in the long night coat, his hands and face gloved in white. His right hand, full of tenderness and gentleness, reaches out to you, Lucian… while his left hand, folded behind his back, conceals the whip. Beware, foolish scribbler, lest he write upon your back what he secretly plots within your mind. The circus, as you know, is in constant disarray. In the dust, everything is assembled and dismantled. Both are upon your back, and Don Carrot rides above them.

— You see, Ignatius and company, how the world turns, turns back upon itself… and penetrates us…

In an instant, Hot Blood has transformed. Lost is that belly-world… lost those endless displacements. Standing fully within the otherworld, the mind alert, chewing over terrifying questions.

— How much can poor incarnations endure being the insatiable demons of an author dreaming of exhaustiveness, methodically, in the name of authority and freedom, without regard for the condemned bearer of this burden? To escape domination and submission—that is my quest! And since images give birth to words, I hope to give birth to images through words… And with that, Hot Blood, without further thought and without any experience, takes a pencil and begins to draw. Beware the unbeliever and the ignorant: knowledge stands at the threshold. At the slightest draft or movement, it enters. As surely as faith moves mountains, the brush gives life. Hot Blood’s notebooks, like a stream or a rain-swollen pond, fill up.