An Audio Play

Footsteps. Industrial clanking. The sound of smoke stacks stifling the air. Street sounds that are sparse and cold and dead. An older woman, VAL, begins to speak.

Val: Ever so much. The time it takes to trot across the town…to find and seek…to begin… and ever so much it all begins again. And over there, that’s where it was, the bakery. I would go to the bakery for Mom and Dad because they could not walk as far as me. Great legs, the boys said. Not just lookers, but walkers, too. Ever so much the sound of lightbulbs and the smell of lightbulbs—very metallic, almost like the taste of pills in your mouth but in your ears and nose instead. About a week ago when I got the letter—ever so many words in there, but I could make out the words “Congratulations” somewhere in there. I showed it to Chrissy and she said I’d won an award, but I’ve never done anything in my life worth an award. Nunsense, said Chrissy with her accent, Nunsense Val, yeer an ahrtiste! I am walking across town and it is very grey. On the green grass since passed a girl—myself—would play and lay among the dirt and learn that crabgrass does not have pincers but it pinches when you sit bare-bottomed which I often did. A boy onetime among the grass had asked why I paint those pictures and I said as I often did say that I painted because there’s a hole in my heart and a mass in my head. He mistook me and asked why the church met in my brain—I didn’t explain. And now to think all these years and now an award. Award—A warding off of failure.

Light sounds of a boy’s laughter followed by footsteps.

Val: Who laughs?

Boy: I heard yer joke.

Val: A bad pun.

Boy: Ai, bad pun good joke. How it goes.

Val: How it goes.

Boy: Where yeou gooin?

Val: The university.

Boy: Prime, that, grand place, never seen a grander billdin in all me life.

Val: There were grander buildings once.

Boy: Old heads oolwees seeyin that!

Val: It’s true.

Boy: Things awlways better in yeer time, ai, that’s what theey awl seeyin!

Val: That is not what I meant to say.

Boy: Weel why yeou goin?

Val: I’ve won an award.

Boy: What for?

Val: My paintings.

Boy: That’s grand.

Val: So I’ve heard.

Boy: What deed you paint?

Val: I would paint my feelings.

Boy: How’s that?

Val: You use color and shape to suggest something wordless.

Boy: Sounds deeficult to comprehend, that.

Val: It’s just colors, it’s just shapes.

Boy: Weel, I better head off on my way, the road over here that goes southbound calls me, ai.

Val: Alright, thank you for your company.

Boy: Good luck with yeour award.

Sounds of the boy trotting off. A train whistles in the distance.

Val: Never had trains in my time. It was ever so much then with the cars and the busses and the airplanes and the ships and the bikes and the trikes and helicopters even. Never will forget the first helicopter I’d seen. It was ever so much noise and metal. It looked small in the sky but when it landed it looked monstrous. I said I’d paint that, the big thing that’s small in the sky. So I did, and it was just after I finished that painting that we stopped seeing them around. When I could not sleep at night I’d pretend a helicopter flew above my head and the ceaseless whirring put me right to sleep. So soft the droning hum of rapid whooshes cutting air in half. A soft violence, that. I wonder if I’m to give a speech. Chrissy said I will but I don’t want to. I suppose I should practice. Dear gentlemen, I thank you all for this award. I’ve painted all my life in ever so many situations and in ever so many styles that I no longer know exactly why you’d give me this award. Though all that to say I am glad. The end. No, that won’t do. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I never thought I’d receive any recognition for my painting. It’s a silly thing, painting. It doesn’t mean much, perhaps it means nothing. But I cannot help it, it’s addicting to share oneself with others. No, this won’t do. I’ve not heard a grand speech in fifty years or so. I’ve forgotten all about speeches. The speech that Thomas gave me right before he died, the one where he said he did not want to die a virgin—grand speech, that. Didn’t sleep with him and felt bad when he died a few days after. But there is a token, perhaps, in dying a virgin? Well, maybe not. Strange to die never having done that. So strange it might deserve an award. But is it really so strange? Strange to say it’s strange to say the things to say. There’s ever so much things to say. Girl growing tired of guttural growls and speech, opt instead for inane projections of the inner sensations. There’s an art to art. It’s neither hot nor cold today. No use for the weatherman; I miss the weatherman, he was always wrong and he made us feel so smart.

Sounds of a train chugging and hollering.

Val: What was it that my dad would say about the trains? “They sound like a pack of fat metal wolves and foxes, struggling for breath and chasing the ends of the Earth.” He never said that.

The sound of horns playing a vaguely musical, atonal, number.

Val: There’s the University in all its glory. A grand little building. An entire world in that one building. Incredible feat of engineering.

The sound of Val opening the door, the sound of varied voices mingling amongst themselves. One voice stands out.

Man: Val! Val!

Val: Yes?

Man: This way! You’ll go through the main hall, here, and give your speech after we give you the award.

Val: Ok, then. I just sit—

Man: You’ll sit up front, to the right. There’s a space, it’s even reserved for you.

Val: Ok, then.

The sound of Val walking to a seat. She sits. Eventually, the same man quiets down the varied voices.

Man: Everyone, everyone! This is a very special ceremony and we are now getting started.

Voices die down and people take their seats. The man continues in a more serious, prepared tone.

Man: Gentleman, we are here to celebrate a lady. A lady who, in the course of the last fifty or so years, has dedicated herself to documenting our lives and times. A lady who, against all the odds that history and society shove against us, stood up and continued to create great works of unfiltered and honest art. For two generations our world has persisted against the forces of destruction; we are honored to be amongst a great resistor of destruction, someone dedicated instead to creation. Gentlemen, we are honored to offer this year’s Cultural Legacy Award to Val Deauchamp.

Claps, Val walks up the stage.

Man: And now, a few words from Miss Deauchamp.

Claps. Val begins to speak. More formal than her earlier monologues.

Val: On my walk here I met a boy. I know we stopped counting years as years twenty or so years ago, so I’ve lost track, but in my old world way, I think it was 80 years ago that I was around this boy’s age. I thought about just how much I’ve seen—near total destruction and a grand attempt at rebirth—and I thought a little about how much this boy might live to see if he is blessed, or cursed, with a long life like mine. There are no constants in life except the ones which you create. This is, perhaps, the reason I painted all my life. The world can go to shit and your closest friends may die in the name of freedom, a freedom which turns into enslavement, and more friends fight for freedom and die, and their children die and their children die. And it all gets fairly hopeless. And yet I painted. And let me tell you, my paintings fifty years ago were widely regarded as derivative and “womanish.” My works were considered nothing more than a bored woman’s hobby. Yet I painted. Ever so much I painted and could not stop. Because it was the only predictable thing—the act of creation. Despite all the happenstance of the world in which I lived, I could choose to paint, to create. I’ve encountered many men and women who speak so often of regret, but I regret nothing, because at some point in the line of history, you see the world less as a story unfolding in time, but as a series of photographs disjointed and jostled by the currents of, not time, but the times. We’ve made a lot of progress, but we’ve lost a lot, too, and I hope that some of you out there, you younger ones especially, take my life not as some snapshot of a creative woman’s artistic aspirations achieved, but as a person who sought to make themselves known to the unknown through the uniquely human ability to create. I succeeded on a personal scale, and that is good enough for me. Thank you for the award.

Claps. Val takes her seat. There are mingling voices and applause as the sound shifts into the clanking of the industrial streets and Val’s footsteps walking on the pavement. Her voice and tone are more in line with her monologues from before.

Val: Ever so much the many-sided visions of a world untenanted. Bless us and keep us, why do what we do? The vision of a girl in grass, the boy afraid of death, the link between the dumb brute and the modern woman might be nothing more than a desire to create. Great curse of the great blessing—to be yourself you must first know of your demise. Long ago a poet travelled into Hell and only there saw himself in Heaven. Ever so much the things we think, the things we dream, the things we do, ever so much forever and ever. Amen.

The footsteps recede into the distance as the sound of metal clanging and trains becomes loud (but not overbearing) until the sound of a Robin’s song can be heard out the clanks and harsh whistles.

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