2009-06-14 16:23:49留白
Six Degrees of Separation Author’s Preface閱讀心得
無論作家，演員，導演，抑或設計師，廣告策劃人，只要可以稱之為「創作者」的人，大概都會把「生命經驗」當作人生關鍵字好好珍惜。稍為有過主動的創作經驗的人會感受到，創作有時很像連線遊戲，一件創作品，就是把生命中不同面向的經驗連結起來產生出某種意義、某種感覺、某種魅力的某種東西。我喜歡看我八歲的弟弟畫的畫，因為他的生命經驗相對地少，我大概可以掌握得到，看著他的創作，我大概可以感受到這是由「甚麽」結合「甚麽」得出來的「甚麽」，這可能就是導演工作的逆向操作，把不同的元素像化學實驗般放在一些，看看會產生出甚麽東西出來。
John Guare這篇Author’s Preface帶點神秘色彩的描繪了創作的某種特質：無意識地儲蓄已久的創作資源在某個你不為意的瞬間爆發出來。有過創作經驗的人知道，那種時刻感覺十分爽，十分HIGH，這種時刻通常被稱為靈光戶乍現，繆思降臨，然而，接下來的問題是，你如何抓著這隻繆思，使這個乍現不至於是曇花一現。John Guare的答案是多做筆記，記錄你的生活。我們經常可以從雜誌或媒體看見或聽見九把刀、李欣頻這些創作者談他們的創作方法，用唇膏在計程車玻璃窗上寫筆記然後拍下來，傳短訊給自己等等。這些方法固然甚具啟發性，而且是創作者的必然功課，然而，這些方法是豐富創作資料庫的方法，卻沒有解答出我們這些學子一直渴望知道的某種東西：那條連結的路徑。他們是經驗豐富的創作者，已有一定的創作技巧與方法，這條路他們是走過的，或者已經標上了很多路牌，以減低迷路的機會。我想，尋找這條路的方法，不是他們吝惜於告訴大家，而是根本無法告訴別人。
賴聲川在他的《賴聲川的創意學》用相對地比較方法論的形式解說了創作的奧妙，然而，對於那條路的發掘，他仍是留給了靈修式的神秘主義。這令我感到十分奧惱，然而，換個方向去想，如果創作不是那麽神秘，就不會那麽吸引我了。我喜歡讀李立群在PAR雜誌上的專欄「演員的庫存記憶」，通常他不會講一大堆表演理論，他寫的都是些生活經歷，然而，你卻能在他的文字中感受到「表演」兩個字。從他那些講登山，講登山，講練拳，講當兵的經歷中，你會感受到「彷彿若有光」，偷窺到創作與生活經驗中的某中關係。
難道就這樣言盡於此？好像繞了一大個圈，甚麽也沒有說過。創作雖然神秘，John Gauge還是給我們留低了一點線索，我十分記得他在文中寫過READY這個字，我想，唯有是這樣，保持靈敏，隨時KEEP READY，等待，直到門被敲響。
* Six Degreesof Separation(六度分離理論) 是一項社會學理論，意指兩個不認識的人之間，中間最多只隔了六重分隔的關係。"Six Degrees of Separation"是美國劇作家John Guare寫於1990年的劇作。作者在劇本前言寫了一篇關於此劇創作經歷的文章。文章摘錄如下：
原文：
The question actors get is, How did you learn all those lines?
The question writers get is, How long did it take you write this?
How long did it take to write Six Degrees?
Let me backtrack.
In 1967, I wrote a play, finished except for one salient detail. I couldn't figure out a way to begin the damned thing. It began sort of on page ten in what was obviously the second scene and went along to its conclusion. But how to begin it?
I knew what the beginning needed to be, musically—sort of a poem. No, it had to be a declaration of sorts. No, it had to—what? What? I was dry.
My father had died the summer before. Going through boxes of his stuff, I found he had saved notebooks I'd sent him in lieu of letters, from school, from the Air Force. And one from 1965. Travelling. I began reading about events I had no memory of writing. They were simply acts of writing like memos dashed off. An entry marked Rome. In 1965, hitching from Paris to Egypt, I ducked off the main road out of Rome to escape a drenching rain. I staying in this building which turned out to be the Etruscan Museum, stayed a few hours. The rain subsided; I went back out to the road and resumed my hitch. In my notebook during the squall I had written a long riff—“If I could have been born anybody— my pick of a Kennedy or a Frank Sinatra or a Ford or the King of Greece—out of that whole hat of births I still would've picked to be an Etruscan.”
I put down the notebook. The section I had written two years before ended at exactly the point where my new unbeginnable play started. I joined the two sections together. You can't imagine the weirdness of seeing that join—of feeling the play which even had a name: Muzeeka—to see it suddenly exist and breathe. But what frightened me was that I had been writing this play unawares. Muzeeka did not require my waking participation to complete writing in New York what I had started in Rome two years before.
What alarmed me in addition to my lack of memory was my carelessness in not taking care. Suppose I hadn't found it or lost it? What would have happened to the play? This long monologue became the very reason for the play. What spooked luck drew me to finding what I needed when I needed it? I don't trust luck. Theolonius Monk says, “There are mistakes and then there are good mistakes.” I realized if I was going to be a writer, I must first trust this unknown work process that goes on within and realize my job as a writer now becomes protecting it. Okay—I'll start by writing every day—overheards—dreams—fights—rages—jokes—laughter—events—then go over it—searching it out for patterns. If I have nothing to write, write down passages from books I'm reading. Don't throw anything you've written away—cut brutally when you're working, but keep everything because this is the great fact. We are all strangers to ourselves. From palm readers to analysts we try to find the way to decipher our dreams. Don't try to sort it out—make stones—make clay—a writer is a sculptor who has to make his own rock. I understand now why it's not playwrite but playwright—wright as in wheelwright—boat wright—wright refers to the craft and the craft is the method we use to make a new map to the unconscious.
A writer learns his or her life as a writer is entrusted to work being done in a room, a studio, an atelier not at the top of a stair but hidden somewhere within the mind. Why the hell is the place that is most truly us the place that is most inaccessible? And a writer grows to hate that room and its gnawing presence and its inaccessibility. A writer's life becomes a history of the trek of how he or she returns to that room down a path as trustworthy as mercury. The writer strews the path with booze or drugs or lies and resentments and fear of abandonment and despair and jealousy and selfloathing and hatred that we have lost the way to that path which is most us. Because the inhabitants of that room demand attentio when they are ready or else they will drive us mad. You didn't try hard enough to find me. You didn't structure your life in the right way to hear us when we called. But you have to go on living. This is not Dostoevsky. This is not Byron.
I heard about an event in 1983. Read about it in the papers. Forgot the event. Or thought so. Six years later in 1989 I was breaking my back trying to solve a play and also working on a film script that I liked but that would also pull double duty of payig to support my playwrighting habit. Overwhelmed? My plate was very filled.
And of course that's when the knocking started. Six Degrees of Separation -- title and all -- announced it was ready and must be collected and everything else put aside. Now! The workshop had spent the past six years collecting data, reworking, inventing, finding a style of narrative. Luckily the call didn't come during an appendectomy or wartime invasion or a loved one's emergency or a parachute jump. It came when I was in proximity to my pen.
Which I picked up. Because you cannot say to that knocking: Later. Or not right now. It's perverse, that unconscious. It only shows up at the most inappropriate time, when it's not been asked for. I wrote the play. I showed it to the people at Lincoln Center. It went into production.
So ths preface is some sort of homage to the unconscious. Six Degrees is done. Back to conscious living. Back to writing everyday, trying to charm my way back down that mercury path, find the map to that room once more. And keeping the hope alive that it will exist once more. The search drives you crazy. The waiting. The trust. Plays and novels about writer never work. How do you watch somebody do this? Now about actors.
No, the people are right. How do actors learn all those lines?
How long did it take to write Six Degrees?
The actual writing happened quickly.
But how long did it take to write?
51 years.