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=> Three Week Hamlet

Posted by parhad (Guest) - Sunday, November 30 2003, 12:09:42 (EST)
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Some years back I started my Shakespeare collection...busts of thirty main characters from the plays of. The idea first came to me on a subway ride in New York...where lots of good ideas originate...in 1978. Rodin used Dante's "Inferno" as an inspiration for several of his better known sculptures...why not Shakespeare, whom I can never get enough of. We were living in St. Helena when, in 1993, I finally felt as ready as I would ever be.

It was Narsai's property where I used a deserted tractor shed for a studio setting up thirty armatures ringed around a sort of an arena with an openning at one end. Eventually all thirty sculptures would face more or less towards the center from where I could turn round and see each one confronting me. Just under each portrait I painted a specific verse or line that captured each character for me. For Iago I chose..."I am not that I am". I especially liked Henry Percy's line (also delightfully known as Hotspur). "Send danger from the east unto the west, so honor cross it from north to south." Gives me goose bumps still, after 400 years.

Over the dead center of the arena at the spot I would stand to survey the field, I painted these lines by Prospero from "The Tempest" on an old wood board, broken and hanging from the rafters...

"Our revels now are ended...These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: we are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Now, I ask you...

I can forgive the British Empire all its crimes for that one incomprable poet/thinker/bawdy roustabout they produced...yet if the choice were mine I'd throw all his plays into eternal oblivion if one mean life rubbed out by the Brits could have been spared. But then I'm Assyrian...not Christian, I don't believe in having people crucified "for my benefit".

I don't remember exactly when I stopped working on them but at least three years of effort later Narsai said to me one day..."It CAN'T take you more than three weeks to make Hamlet". That was the last day I worked on them. Fortunately my son had made a video of the scene already with some shots of me working on the busts. A few months later I threw all thirty portraits away. A patron like Narsai is like having a barbarian standing over you. I know what he was trying to do...he was relatng to me like one of his dishwashers from the restaurant days...his one shot at glory...or like the hapless workers and carpenters he'd select becaause they were cheap but also becuse he sensed he could badger and brow-beat them.

It used to amaze me about him...I know he wanted to save a buck, but he invariably picked the cheapest, least skilled or responsible workers who'd leave just enough of a mess behind them to irritate him no end and, often enough, wind up costing him more in the end. Then I realized why he did it...these were the guys at the bottom, desperate for the work...all of them filled with visions of working for a rich guy. He knew they would take anything he dished out and I used to cringe hearing him belabor them...especially when it came time to pay. He was buying more than a new wall or driveway...he was buying a person...buying his or her meagre store of self-respect so he could slap it around some more.

Narsai is a bully at heart...anyone who's worked for him or is related to him, will tell you that. I think he even takes pride in it...and a bully, as all of literature knows, is a coward. And that's Narsai whole and entire. He doesn't like being one...but what can he do? He never reached as far as his grasp would have allowed him to and he resents it and hates himself for it. It also makes him particularly despise those who do..even his own son, Daniel, who is a vastly talented artist in his own right. This presents Narsai with a huge conflict...almost a Greek-sized tragedy because he hates where his greatest love should be and it eats at him. But never mind that for now.

Before the "three week" comment from Narsai and before destroying the Shakespeares I'd contacted the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC and made an appointment with the curator and the library director. I sent the video tape ahead and when we met told them I wanted to have the unveiling of the collection in their magnificent Elizabethan styled building when it was ready. They weren't averse to the idea, though they'd never done anyting like it before...but I was used to going to people who had no idea of something till I showed up...like the entire Assyrian community for instance. We left it at that. And then, soon after, I threw them all out. Narsai took another one of his calculated gambles with me...and he lost every one(the last one was when he sent me $500 less than I asked for legal help in avoiding the Hole In The Head Gang and their attempts to send me to prison here...I was supposed to finally capitulate to him, that's why he sent only enough to be able to tell people, as he is doing now..."I sent him MONEY too...to HELP him".)

Narsai thought I would be spurred on to complete the project faster if he goaded and needled me. Not that he has the fainest idea of what's involved in such a task but, as an employer of minimum wage labor, he's used to behaving as if he's ALWAYS getting screwed by the "help". Often he used to tell me that I couldn't expect to live "for free" off of him for much longer. ..as if not having to pay rent alone solved all my problems in supporting a family of six so I could afford, at his expense, to lounge my way through thirty portraits of Shakespeare's characters(actually I'm sure old Will had some of the same problems). I was supposed to try harder or something...to Narsai an artist is a glorified...a self-glorifying, dishwasher. It's the main reason he involves himself to such a degree in what he considers "classy' affairs...because he knows he has none. He could have had, but it would have taken more guts than he has. Persuing the Arts...following your Muse wherever she leads can't be done honestly and cleanly if one MUST profit financially by it...and for Narsai, as for Jackie...and so many of our "fine" people...money is what buys them a Self they're never certain they could have earned any other way.

After the Shakespeares were done away with I went back, with grim determination, to finish the Shumirum Monument...now THERE was a smart move.

note: I'm wondering now if the whole thing was a misunderstanding...maybe he said "three tiered omlette"???

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