(2 starts to tell the story that cracks him up every time: how his sister won an art competiton when she was 14, and was livid when she had her award presented to her by bosco.)
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No don’t tell that fucking story.
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Some problem?
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Deeply unfucking funny.
I didn’t like your story at the party. -
Why?
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It hurt my feelings.
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Story about mon sister?
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Yeah.
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huh?
pause
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hey?
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You tell me. Why would that make me angry? Why do you think?
pause
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It hurts me that you cant see why.
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'tcould be anything. uh… moi don’t see. million possible reasons.
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Yeah.
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chirstsakes clue please! Ok, yeah, that my sister was humiliated? That I could be sick enough to enjoy something like that?
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Yeah. It could be just that.
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Or it could be anything.
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Yeah.
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It could be that you are revolted by the fact that I find the idea of trying your best and even succeeding and still being fucking destroyed by bosco… funny.
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Look I’m not getting into this. This is not a debate. I’m not going to put what I felt for you and your fucking story into words.
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Why?
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If we argue over it, you’ll win. Your good at winning arguments. What you said was fucking horrendous. Its right there. Its horrible. If you can’t see that, certainly nothing I could say could make you feel it.
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For Chrissakes!
(background: beautiful blue flowers unfold)
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For Christ sakes. See those flowers?
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Yeah.
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I think they’re beautiful. I can tell you how bright their colours are. I can tell you about their, fucking …smell. I can tell you they’re beautiful, but I cant make you see it. You either see it or you don’t.
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So I don’t have what it takes to see what was so wrong about my story.
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So it would appear.
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Or you don’t have what it takes to show me.
pause.
pause.
3:Your life is fucking pointless. Of all the fucking judgmental! Arrogant! fucking… fuck man!… Damn! I don’t even know how to tell you how dumb you are. You absolute cunt. NO! Don’t open your fucking mouth.
Nobody likes you. You will never know happiness, only mediocrity. I have never allowed myself to hate anybody in my entire life, but I hate you. I hate how pointless your life is. Devoid of truth, culture, courage, or ambition. You are shallow. Its true, isn’t it? Shallow. Your life is just a shallow little grave.
(a long and unhappy pause. 3 addresses 1.)
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Sometimes I just start wondering about my life, you know? Like am I going to be ok? Will people like what I do? Will I be successful? I feel better sometimes to have faith in my dedication. That I will still be able to be proud if I live to be 40 and die an abject artistic failure. That would be better than to ever give up. I don’t think ill give-up. I cant see myself ever being happy if I just gave up and got, I dunno a normal job, a normal life. But Will I crumble when my first failures matter?
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That’s a real part of what you try to do.
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Yeah. But I feel at my best when I’m under these delusions of world conquest. I know its possible to, I dunno, be great or whatever, because there are great people. But sometimes I see that the reality is that most people never become great. And though it feels right to try, its impossible to REALLY try, if you don’t think you will ever be great.
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what do you mean by great?
pause
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Confident and successful I suppose. You know? Like, when I really feel confident, I feel fuckin terrific. Really just, amazing. Brave, strong, amazing. It gets me in and out of anything. Bed, danger, dance clubs.
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So you want to succeed, because it will help you get that confident feeling.
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Yeah, I suppose. Sort of. Its that confident feeling that I like. Confidence helps you do shit. When your shit goes well, it makes you confident. But I don’t know anything that destroys that feeling quite like doing something with confidence, and turning out to be absolutely wrong.
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Tell me about your pursuit of confidence.
pause
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Well, I was at a wedding last night.
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4 and 5’s?
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Yeah. It was my first wedding. Pretty interesting.
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Were you sitting at the friends table or the looser table?
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I was sitting at the looser friends table. One of them, 6, has a ridiculously hot girlfriend.
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7?
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I dunno, I didn’t catch her name. Anyway, I spent the meal flirting with her. Afterwards we went out to the lobby and started chatting. It looked like it was on, but then 6 showed up and his girlfriend got really shy and uncomfortable.
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Fair enough.
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Yeah, I know, but he’s just such a knob. He started telling me about his kung-fu and how you need to be a little crazy to do what he does, and what a badass he is. When he was done spraying me with testosterone, he walked her into the dance hall with “I’d love to stay and chat 3, but I’m going to go slow dancing with my girlfriend. You just cant compete.”
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What did you say?
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Just ‘I’m not much of a slow dancer.’ He gave a mean little laugh, all puffed up like a rooster, and said “you don’t know what you’re missing.”
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what a dick.
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Yeah, but what a fine line eh? I’m on the side that looks so bad when its some sleazy dood purving over your girlfriend. I don’t feel bad about doing it, but I’m glad I lost, because it keeps me as the lovable underdog. And I could see that in her smile.
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Weren’t you worried about his kung fu?
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Not really. If it came to a fight, one of three things would have happened. He’d destroy me, and I’d wake up with his hot girlfriend tenderly wiping blood from my eyes. Or, Neither of us would win, and I’d have held my own against a real martial artist. Or finally, I’d win, and ok, I’d probably become the bad guy, but at least he’d have to rethink his whole D4 badass routine. Regardless, it would have been a better wedding if there was a drunken brawl outside. The thing is, he was dead eager to righteously smite me, and I was curious to see it happen, but didn’t feel that I was on morally steady ground to justify rising to a fight.
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Why?
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Well, it was his girlfriend after all. I think she’d have more fun with me, but its bad manners to pursue like that. I don’t want him broken hearted and disillusioned- not on a randy whim of mine, first time I see some hot and responsive bird. She’s more to him than that, you know?
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Yeah. Your a real swell guy.
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Fuck off.
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I dunno, I say fuck him. And if you ever get a girlfriend, keep an open mind when people respond to how hot she is. You sort of have to watch: if she wants to be with you, great. If she wants to be with somebody else, then too bad.
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Too bad for me or for her?
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You.
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Yeah.
pause
- ok confidence. Everybody should be confident. Because it feels fucking terrific. And it feels right. And great things happen when we are confident. We are irresistible, confident. Invincible, confident. But
(sound of heavy rain on the roof interrupts 3. All sit in silence for a moment listening to it getting heavier and heavier. Eventually 3 continues in a softer voice:)
Oh lord the rain.
The collapse from confidence. Moments of understanding, followed by rain. And that leaves the craving for more confidence. But its only real when you are immune to that craving. When it’s beneath you. Do I have to do shit to get confidence? Fine by me, ill do almost anything.
2: Will you be honest?
3: Of course!
- Honesty requires effort. The confidence itself is effortless.
3: I have confidence. It’s in me. I just don’t know exactly how to surrender to it yet. Surrender to my confidence. Or let it sweep me up higher. Dance with me. I can feel it as who I want to be.
1: Honesty is an effort to show the truth. An artist must be brave enough to see the truth, and show it.
3: It fucking breaks my heart that 2 cant see the tragedy of bosco’s influence on contemporary Irish art. Its right there. How can I explain it any better? Or…
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(gently) Or maybe its not there. Maybe there’s nothing to show. Maybe its just a feeling that you feel, triggered by the story, but triggering other things for other people.
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How can I accept that? How can I accept that somebody could be incapable of appreciating how beautiful something, lets say a band can be? Some people will listen to it, and cultivate a taste for what they hear. Other people could listen to it for any amount of time, hear everything, and feel nothing. What if its not an error they’re making? The more you expose me to something I don’t like, the deeper my revulsion.
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You can see something. Its there for you. You can try to show it to other people. Some people will start seeing it too. It will be their for them. Other people will look and see something else. It will be uninteresting or unpleasant. That’s what will be there for them. You can’t make them see it your way, it doesn’t exist. Hop up and down and scream yourself horse; they are quite right to think you’re finding beauty in… just a bunch of flowers.
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That’s upsetting.
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Maybe. But its the result of honesty. You can honestly only see things for yourself. You can honestly do things only for yourself. You can’t capture what anyone else sees in a song, or a book. Only what you can see. see? That’s why there is no limit to what you can do. That’s what entitles you to proceed with confidence. Real confidence, not the fake stuff. And so what if not everybody will get what you do? So what? Sure it would be nice to be the one to unite the world under some artistic banner of truth and beauty. But its not going to happen. Forget about it. Doing that would mean you are right and everyone else is wrong. And that would be the death of art. You can’t be right for everybody else. That’s how J-pop happens.