Year 4, Day 17: Shakespeare Institute -- I am Spartacus, and Caesar.

The fourth year of my PhD has begun, and the occasion has passed without any fanfare.  I am still writing this monster of a thesis, and will be for another two years.  There is no cause to celebrate this news as it would be like commemorating an un-birthday, a three-years of almost sobriety, or a Tuesday.  As in, the person experiencing the event considers the idea to be mundane so if you try to throw them a party, they will most likely find an excuse to leave early.  Now, because we were talking about it, I'd like to tell you my thoughts on the broad idea of meta-theatre, as it has pervaded my thesis and thus my life and everything in and around it.  Gather round children...

First, I must catch everyone up by answering the relatively easy question of: What is meta-theatre? According to Wikipedia, "metatheatricality is generally agreed to be a device whereby a play comments on itself, drawing attention to the literal circumstances of its own production, such as the presence of the audience or the fact that the actors are actors, and/or the making explicit of the literary artifice behind the production."  Did you get all that? In fact, meta-theatre or meta-drama are expressions that are still seeking exact definition within the western culture of theatre history and analysis, but this one definition is the principal way in which I would like to use the expression here. An act of theatre that is meant to comment on acts of theatre. It is a sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes self-effacing, but mostly just plain selfish act to find the theatre within your own actions. That is, however, what people have been doing since before Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream over four hundred years ago.  Only now, this meta-theatre comes in the form of Instagramming your food because an act of theatre to us human beings is now as ever-present as the cameras we document them with.

To be clear, there is nothing interesting about your food to the casual observer. There is also not anything interesting about your food to you, the photographer, past the moment of you eating it and photographing it, save for a little indigestion or a lot of gas.  It is in that moment you capture your point of interest on camera, however, that the act of personal theatre and thus an act of meta-theatre lies. The moment you point your camera at something, a plate of food - a little boy chasing down pigeons - yourself and three of your BFFs - incorrectly spelled public signage... it is in that moment that you are hovering in an act of metatheatricality. You are aware of the camera as it is capturing your experiences, or at least the experiences you may wish to convey to the "rest of the world" via Facebook. It could be the most mundane out-of-focus off-balance piece of crap shot you've ever taken... but right in that moment, you liked the idea of someone finding you important enough to document your life far more than you were actually enjoying the moment itself. You liked the feeling so much that you documented something else you saw five minutes later, which, if we are being honest, was equally "meh".

The reason this can be called meta-anything is that when you are taking the photo, you already know, even while it is happening, that you plan to look at this photo later on, or seconds after, to make sure that you got the shot that you wanted.  (This idea of "meta" is not cause for the term "meta" to enter your everyday vernacular, and if I hear you saying "that is so meta" I better like you enough NOT to throw something heavy or sharp at you.)

Now that everyone is caught up, here is why I've been thinking about it.  I have become desensitized to the theatre of everyday life.  I feel the same amount of consternation at a politician lying as I do when friends of mine misspell something on social media.  I feel that school shootings in the USA are just as tragic as the spoken, written, and publicized passive platitudes that inevitably follow them, "OMG, this is terrible!"  I fear dying as just a statistic far more than I fear living as one.  The theatre of life has been dulled, and I feel that the Sondheim lyric, "if life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one" should be amended to, "if life is made of moments, make a bigger moment and share it with everyone you know to punctuate the monotony of those other less important ones."  I am aware of all these things as they are happening to me, and yet I cannot stop them.  I am aware that I am absorbing all the stories, all the theatre, all the pain, strife, happiness, power, struggle, ends and beginnings of life all over the world and I have become dulled to it all.  So, after you've become aware of the dull or numb feeling in your life, what is the biggest problem you face?

It's finding the off-switch, the mute button, or the bookmark.  That moment when your eyes are tired, your ears hurt, your throat is sore, and you just need a shower and a nap.  Where nothing is quite so inviting as your pillow, a blanket, and a dark room where no one knows and no one cares.

You will decide whatever it is tomorrow, cause you've heard all that you can handle already today and it's not even noon.

Even this blog post... why did I write this?

Why are you reading it again?

I'm so tired I can only focus on those one sentence truth-bombs that Buzzfeed, Distractify, and politicians are so keen on, and I want so badly to have the energy again to think deeper than that.

Maybe there is a TV show on that can think it for me, or a song lyric that I can quote, or an internet meme that shows me the way, mostly so I can look like I have it together.

I have had the most boring day so I'll pretend to get excited about this spaghetti bolognese.

I won't complain about life unless I can simultaneously lecture someone on how they are doing it all wrong.

Wait, was that someone talking about me?

Hi, my name is David and I'm an addict of the attention I get when I turn on the microphone, and turn up the speakers to 11.

I'm a self-righteous jerk who knows everything about everything and I can't stop.

I can't.

For if someone must be Caesar, I shall fall on that sword.

For I am tired and don't know who else I could possibly listen to but myself.

"I could be well moved if I were as you.
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks.
They are all fire and every one doth shine,
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world. 'Tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive,
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion. And that I am he
Let me a little show it even in this:
That I was constant Cimber should be banished,
And constant do remain to keep him so." -- Julius Caesar (III.i)

Year 4, Day 17 - Words Written: Over half of all the words.